I shut myself in the bathroom, clicking the lock before anyone can follow me, then fumble along the wall for the light switch. The cold, buzzing glow of the fluorescent bulb fills the room, and immediately I catch sight of myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. My usually tanned skin looks pasty, and I can’t tell if that’s from the light or the shock of the day. My long, almost-black hair that I braided down my left shoulder this morning before school is now limp, and strands are falling out and curling all around my face.
I stare hard into the mirror, looking at my own reflection. Only this time I’m not looking for recognition, I’m searching for a memory. Did I know this woman? Did Mom ever tell me about her? Was I just not listening? Did I just not care? I can’t recall anything, and for the first time since she left, I feel really and truly angry at my mother. How could she leave me? How could she leave out this giant piece of our—of my—history? What else did she omit? What else don’t I know?
And then, like the last anchor on a hot-air balloon has snapped, I feel completely untethered, floating away, aimless and lost. It’s just me. Alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Our apartment is in a complex called Windridge Estates, which makes it sound way more fancy than it is. When it was built, about twenty years ago, it was probably considered if not luxurious, then at least nice. But it had been built fast and cheap, and the years have not been kind to it. The pastel Easter egg paint jobs on the different buildings are weathered and chipping, and dark mildew blossoms out from all the rain gutters. Our apartment is on the top floor of Complex C, near the back of the development, cheaper because it’s far from the pool that’s always full of leaves and is a chemically unnatural neon-blue color. Our building backs up to the interstate. At night, I usually lie in bed falling asleep to the sounds of cars and trucks whizzing down I-95.
Tess waits in the living room, perched on the fake leather couch that came standard in our furnished apartment, while I attempt to gather anything I think I might need, or anything I don’t want to see wind up in a landfill. There isn’t much. After all the moves, I’ve learned to travel light. Most of my possessions fit in either my one battered suitcase or my backpack. Still, the apartment is full of the detritus that accumulates when you live somewhere for more than six months. Somewhere along the way, we’d become the kind of people who keep a vase on the dining room table, a garlic press in the drawer by the stove. There are books on the shelf in the living room, mostly cheap paperbacks from used bookstores and a few manuals from my mother’s various hobbies (yoga, massage, general karmic self-help). Two blankets are thrown over the arm of the couch, and more than a few candles in jars and on pedestals are scattered around the apartment. None of it is important or meaningful. But realizing it will probably soon all be gone makes me feel very, very alone.
I throw all my clothes into one half of a suitcase, thankful that I’d been to the laundry room over the weekend. Showing up at my foster home with a suitcase full of dirty laundry would have felt even more pathetic somehow. I empty my top desk drawer into the other half of the suitcase, placing a small photo album in there, along with my phone charger and a couple of the fifty-cent paperbacks I’d picked up at the library sale and had been planning to read over the summer.
I’m just closing the suitcase when my phone buzzes with a text from Ali.
Ali: Here. Parked by the pool. Come down when you’re ready.
For one passing moment, I wonder if I can ask Tess to come back and pick me up later. But as quickly as the thought comes, I let it go. I’m not having queso at Margaritas with Ali tonight. Even if Tess would agree, which I doubt, I’m too much of a mess in the head to be good company. My long-awaited first date will have to be a little more long awaited.
I slam the suitcase shut and yank the zipper so hard I end up losing my grip and falling back on my butt. Mom thought she was setting me free? What a bunch of bullshit. She’s off milking goats or practicing her asanas or lord knows what else while I’m being yanked out of my life, away from my friends and my crush and my last summer with all of them.
I go to the window and see his car parked nearby, an old Jeep Cherokee with the Taste of India magnet still affixed to the side. Ali uses the car to make deliveries sometimes, and he often forgets to remove it, bringing the Taste of India with him wherever he goes.
I can just make out his figure in the driver’s seat. He’s staring down at his phone, the glow of the screen illuminating his face. I think about the other version of me, the one who didn’t have Tess show up at her door. The one with the mom who’s flighty and a little odd, sure, but who at least managed to stick around until her daughter graduated from high school. That version of me is racing out of the apartment right now and climbing into the front seat of Ali’s car. Instead, I’m a new version of myself, one who’s packing all her stuff into a broken suitcase to go live with a woman she doesn’t remember, with no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less what the summer holds.
That doesn’t feel a damn bit like freedom.
And so, after a little fine-tuning on the message, I finally fire off a reply.
Ritzy: Disaster at home. So sorry!
Have to reschedule. :(
Soon, ok?
I read it back one last time before I hit send, hoping it’s enough to keep Ali from asking questions, while also letting him know that what’s keeping me from our date is a big damn deal and that I really, really want to go.
His reply comes almost instantaneously.
Ali: Bummer. Hope it’s ok. Can I help?
My heart swells, my eyes itching with the threat of tears. I don’t know what my mother had in mind when she left with instructions to follow my own path, but in my opinion, my path should be leading, at least in the short term, to Ali. Instead, I’m heading to a foster home.
Ritzy: Nah, it’s all good But thanks Talk soon?
Ali: Definitely.
And then I watch as he pulls out of the parking space, his taillights disappearing out of the lot.
I don’t say a word to Tess as I trudge past her, dragging my wheeled suitcase over the carpet, where it wobbles thanks to one cracked wheel. I stride straight out the door, no last look over my shoulder, which is how I imagine my mom departed. I wasn’t there to see it. She left for the airport while I was at school, and I never imagined her being even a little bit sentimental about our apartment. She probably didn’t give a single thought to the garlic press or the patchouli candle on the coffee table. It was nothing more than a way station before her next great adventure. I can be charitable and imagine that she saw me going off on a great adventure, too, but the truth is, I don’t think she was really thinking much about me when she left. She meant what she said. It’s my turn now, and I have my own journey to take. Unfortunately, since she decided to leave four months shy of my eighteenth birthday, my journey is being charted by the Florida Department of Children and Families.
I heave the suitcase into the back of Tess’s car, a nondescript sedan the color of wet sand, then climb into the passenger seat, buckle my seat belt, and stare straight ahead into the fading sunlight. Soon it’ll be dark. Soon this day will be over. Soon everything will be different. This is the last day of the before. Soon everything else will be after.
“What’s going to happen to the rest of our stuff?” I ask.
“It can stay here through the end of the month,” Tess says, “but once you’re settled, we’ll probably have to make some decisions. Potentially storage?” She doesn’t tell me what the other potential outcomes are, but a dumpster is probably one of them. Storage will be cheaper than rent, but I’m guessing my job at the sandwich shop is on hold, which means no income. Which means we, or more accurately our stuff, will definitely be evicted. It’ll be boxed up, and with no one here to claim it, will it just wind up on the curb with the trash? I’m positive Mr. Benson, the property manager who wears his polo shirt tucked into his jeans and the kind of glasses that make you look like a serial kill
er from the 1970s, won’t be holding it for us beyond that.
Tess and I zoom up the interstate toward this new/old home of mine. She fiddles with the radio, but turning the dial seems to yield alternately Christian, rock, Christian rock, or about forty-seven different country stations. She finally stops on public radio, where a reporter with an authoritative voice smooth as butter spends the next few minutes talking about the unrest in the Middle East. I try to focus on what she’s saying so I won’t have to think about my own reality, but after several minutes, I’m still not sure if she’s talking about one war or several.
The segment ends, and a man’s voice comes on with a news report.
“According to a recent study, at-risk teens are six times more likely to be arrested, nine times more likely to visit rehab, and…” He continues in that semi-robotic but somehow still soothing voice everyone on public radio seems to have. I remain stone-still, though out of the corner of my eye, I can see Tess shifting slightly in her seat, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. I can practically hear her wondering if she should change the station, but she doesn’t, and the newscast continues on. I want to laugh or point out that despite all indications to the contrary (Mom gone, me sent off to a foster home), I’m not at risk for anything. My grades this semester are fine, mostly As and a few Bs. I hate the way alcohol makes me feel, I’m terrified of doing drugs, and I have never so much as shoplifted a stick of gum. Throw my mostly situational (but maybe a little bit moral, I haven’t decided yet) virginity in there, and I’m practically a poster child for the surgeon general’s office.
But Tess doesn’t know all that. She doesn’t know me at all. All she knows is that my mother abandoned me, my father’s name is “none,” and I’m going to live with a stranger who took care of me when my mother apparently crapped out on the parental role the first time. I wouldn’t blame her for thinking I might be at risk for snorting household products or running away to join a cult.
There’s a light drizzle outside as Tess takes an exit. I’m not sure where we are until I see a green highway sign for Helena Island, the white letters reflecting in Tess’s headlights. Which means the expanse of darkness out my window is the ocean. Despite living in a city that borders the Atlantic, I almost never get to the beach. For one, it takes three city buses and more than two hours to get there. And those buses usually have sketchy AC at best.
Helena is one of the coastal islands off the northeast coast of Florida, only a short bridge away from the mainland. Helena and the other small islands are mostly vacation spots for the wealthy, covered in resorts and golf courses and vacation “cottages” that are really mansions. A few are historic, and some even have year-round populations, but I’ve never actually been to one (at least not that I remember, although now it seems as though I spent my babyhood on one).
We turn off the two-lane road and drive over a low bridge that connects the island to the mainland. On the other side, a large, carved stone wall with big brass letters welcomes drivers to HELENA ISLAND in a swooping font.
We drive up a short Main Street, lit up and shiny despite the earlier rain. It’s all glossy and landscaped, with each shop and restaurant sign matching like a theme park. There are no golden arches here, no neon signs advertising lottery tickets or two-for-one hot dogs or beer. Tess takes a left around what looks like a town square, and I swear I see an actual bandstand in the middle of the manicured green.
It’s nearly dark, the sky a deep purple, but there are people out and about, walking dogs and chasing kids. As we pass a restaurant, I spot a group of kids my age, all in matching school uniforms, clustered around a whitewashed picnic table topped with a cobalt-blue umbrella. It’s so idyllic, I feel like I’m driving through a commercial. They look like they’ve been posed for a promotional shot for better living through plaid and khaki.
One of the guys perched on the picnic table, his long legs folded up with his feet on the bench, glances up at the car as we drive by. I see him squint, as if he knows right away that we’re outsiders. He ruffles his blond hair, all cowlicks and curls. I watch in the side mirror to see when he looks away. I lose sight of him before he does.
On the next block, the quaint commercial district gives way to a neighborhood of cottages and bungalows in pastel colors, like beautiful little Easter eggs buried among the green trees draped with Spanish moss. I can almost imagine someone on a ladder carefully placing each piece. Artful lighting beaming up from the lawns makes all the homes look like works of art displayed in a gallery.
The houses are small at first and close together. Still clearly high-end, but nestled neatly side by side, like some architect’s idea of what a quaint downtown should be. As we drive farther, they start to spread out. Lush lawns appear, and security gates that guard circular drives and ornate fountains, all landscaped with palms and rock gardens and tropical flora.
And then the landscape starts to change again. The trees get denser, the gardens a little more wild. The houses, fewer and farther between now, look like they predate the rest of the development by a hundred years. The sidewalks are gone, as are the streetlights. And just before it feels like we’re about to drive off the edge of the island into the ocean, Tess turns down a nearly hidden driveway.
All along our drive across the island, I’ve been studying it, scanning my memory for any flicker of recognition, but so far, nothing. As soon as the car bounces up the gravel of the drive, though, I brace myself. Because surely the house, the one I started my life in, will spark something. Maybe it’s my mother’s influence, years of talk of past lives and connections, but I’m waiting for the energy of the place to feel familiar, for the island to reach out and say, Hey, I know you. Welcome back.
All I can see of the house is what the headlights illuminate, and even that is mostly obscured by a pair of ancient magnolia trees rising up from the front yard. The house is two stories, with a sloping tin roof rising high and overhanging a porch that encircles the house as far as I can see.
The car stops in front just between the magnolias. The porch light is on, the windows illuminated, making the house look warm and bright in the dark night.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the moment, and try to slow down the pounding of my heart. If what Tess said is true, this woman hasn’t seen me in almost sixteen years. Yet when she got a call, late on a Friday afternoon, asking if she wanted me back, she said yes.
And so, it appears, I’ve come home.
CHAPTER FIVE
The first thing I notice as the car pulls up is that Kristin, my foster mother, is waiting out on the front porch. Before Tess has even turned off the car, she’s rising from a wicker chair and coming down the porch steps. Her long blondish-brown hair is piled into a messy topknot, and in floral leggings, a black tank top, and one of those comically oversized knit cardigan things, it looks like we’ve interrupted her evening yoga or one of those other workouts that require weird machinery and deep breathing that only rich people do.
When Tess first said the words foster mother, my mind immediately conjured up a kindly grandmother sort of woman, maybe a great aunt, her hair streaked with gray, a few lines on her face, and probably wearing a T-shirt commemorating a holiday or a 5K she volunteered at but didn’t run. I certainly never imagined a woman who looks like she stepped out of a picture from one of those lifestyle fashion blogs Lainey likes to read. I can’t help but hear my mother scoffing. I’ve listened to her endless rants on the commodification of everything from organic food to inner peace. She’d definitely see Kristin as a privileged poser.
The second thing I notice is that she’s not alone. Still seated in the matching wicker chair opposite her is a middle-aged man. He’s got a full head of dark, wavy hair and a pair of black-framed glasses. He’s gripping the arms on the chair like he’s debating whether to sit or stand. Tess never mentioned a foster father, and from the look of him, I think maybe this is new information for him, too. He looks as nervous as I feel.
I climb out of th
e car and turn to face Kristin. I notice a slight widening of her eyes, a quick drawing of breath. I try to put myself in her shoes (a pair of those hippie sandals with the cork soles that only look chic on a person who is chic already). I try to see me as she must see me, trying to find the two-year-old she knew in the seventeen-year-old standing in front of her. Does she recognize my wavy dark brown hair? Or my green eyes? Did I have the same smattering of freckles across my nose back then that I have now?
I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but I know it’s going to be big. And in a moment of bubbling panic, I know I’m not ready. So instead of standing there staring and waiting, I take charge and busy myself going around to the trunk of the car to pull out my suitcase. That’s when the guy on the porch rises from his chair, taking the steps two at a time, giving me a smile as he practically hip checks me out of the way to pull my suitcase from the trunk.
“I got this,” he says, and I wonder if he’s reassuring himself more than he is me.
With no other choice, I finally turn to Kristin, who breaks into a nervous smile that looks like it’s trying a little too hard.
“I’m glad you made it! Welcome! Oh my gosh, look at you! I’m Kristin! Kristin Stokes! It’s so good to see you! Come in!” It all comes bursting out of her, a cacophony of exclamation points. Her smile falters a bit, and she grits her teeth. “Sorry, I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what I was going to say first, and it appears I just went with ‘all of the above.’”
I can only manage to return a strained smile, though, because I have no idea what to say. Nice to meet you seems wrong, since we’ve met before. But Good to see you again doesn’t feel right either, because I have no memory of her. Thanks for taking me in on a whim sixteen years later when I’m practically a stranger feels like the truest thing, but also the least appropriate.
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