THIRTEEN
March 22, Nine Days to Deadline
The sun melted the girls down as they sat in the Fiesta Mart parking lot Saturday afternoon. The heat was angry, hissing at everything it touched. Edie and Georgia rocked back and forth on coin-slot mechanical horses as Dawn lazily spun on the baby carousel. Her knees were tucked uncomfortably to her stomach so she could fit into the machine. Georgia watched as Dawn rested her just-bought chocolate ice cream pint to her forehead to feel the cool.
Brown sludge melted down Dawn’s hands as she spoke. “Guys, I have some news.” She spun excruciatingly slowly in another circle on the carousel as she made her announcement.
“What?” Edie asked, already sweating.
Dawn had dragged them out for a day of errands she needed to run, which had met its midway point with all of them buying pints of ice cream in Fiesta and promptly realizing there was nowhere to sit in front of the store. Georgia felt like the sun was draining all the energy directly from her skin.
“Guess.” Dawn licked her bottom lip to catch the ice cream dribbling down her chin and laughed.
“Ugh, why?” Georgia whined; her least favorite game was guessing things that she would definitely find out anyway. “You finished the documentary,” she posited impatiently.
“God, I wish. Guess again.”
“You’re going to start wearing pantsuits to project your dominance as a modern woman.” Georgia smirked.
“You know my thighs are too big for that.” The girls rolled their eyes.
Both rides stopped at almost the exact same time. The festive songs crunchily spilling out of their sound boxes died down as they rolled to a standstill. Dawn fished around her jeans’ pockets for quarters. “You guys have more coins?”
“Just tell us!” Edie shook her hand and the strawberry pint she was holding spilled onto the sidewalk and oozed outwards in a pink clump on the sizzling concrete.
“Okay, chill. So, you know how I applied to NYU for film and TV?”
Edie jumped off her horse and crowded around Dawn to give her a hug. “You got in!”
They screamed and attracted the attention of two older men walking into the store and a woman rolling her cart out to a container of watermelons resting atop a set of broken pallets.
“Dawn, we might be going to the same place! Well, like, four hours away, but basically the same place,” Edie exclaimed.
“I know. I can’t believe it. I mean, I doubt I’m getting financial aid, but yeah. I’ll find out in a few days,” Dawn said.
“Well you don’t both have to sound so freaking excited to get away from me.” Georgia sat alone, still on the machine. She tried to mask her sadness but felt that it was too obvious. Now, they were both leaving her, officially.
“Never,” said Dawn setting her ice cream down.
“Never,” Georgia repeated back mockingly.
“I’m serious,” Dawn said as she reached her pinky out towards the other girls. The chocolate from her fudge ice cream covered her hand in little dribbles of brown-colored sugar. “Pinky promise we’ll video call you and write letters and everything no matter where you are. I mean, I can’t even technically go so, you know.”
“Pinky promise.” Georgia reached out her hand towards theirs. She didn’t like being the odd one out. Even if they called every day, even if Dawn ended up somewhere else, she’d still be far away, leaving Georgia alone with nothing to do. She had to get into a school.
They locked their fingers together and laughed at the ridiculousness of the scene, of each other. Edie and Dawn chucked their ice cream in a nearby trash can while Georgia worked her lemon sorbet over for the cold, sugary soup at the bottom.
“We need to have a senior trip or something,” she muttered between slurps. The last bits of ice dripped down her arm and freckled the parking lot.
“What, like, go to Europe and find ourselves like the River Oaks kids?” Dawn asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, no, obviously we don’t have the cash money for that. Something chill so we can be together before we all disperse into the trenches of university life. What if we went to Galveston?”
“When? After graduation?”
“No, like right now.” She stood in front of Edie and Dawn so that they couldn’t walk any further. “I mean, we’re not going to France, we’re not going to hike up some trail and kiss nature and realize we’re specks in the universe, so let’s just go to the beach. It’s so hot.”
“It’s not even graduation yet,” Edie pointed out.
“Forget the senior trip thing. Now, I just want to go to the ocean. Today. Right now.” Georgia was practically buzzing with the idea. “We can go into the store and buy snacks for the ride and the beach.”
“What about swimsuits?”
“I always keep one in the back of Georgia’s car, duh,” sang Dawn, a cheeky smile planting itself on her lips.
Georgia scrunched her brows together, puzzled. “Since when? For what?
“Since forever! A lady can never be too sure. Are y’all wearing bras?”
Georgia and Edie pulled the collars of their shirts away from them and looked down. They nodded in unison.
“Then just wear that. I think if we leave now, we can get back by tonight before Edie’s parents freak out. We might even get back by, like, six.”
“I’m down.” Georgia responded, already turning back towards the store.
Edie stared up at the sun. Georgia could see her calculating all the things that could go wrong as if the numbers and statistics were floating just above her tilted head.
“Are you sure we’ll be back by six or seven at the latest?”
“Yeah. It’s only an hour drive. We can stay for like,” Dawn started to do the math on her hands slowly, “four hours. Or we can leave early if we have to.”
Georgia knew that Edie was strong, but she had been struggling. She needed to get out of her cycle of thinking about Ben, crying, doing homework, then thinking about them some more. Now that she’d gotten over the few days when she acted like she didn’t care, she was like a bird running into the same cage wall over and over again, trapped in her sadness.
“Yeah, okay. Let’s do it. But I swear, if we don’t get animal crackers for the road, I’m changing my mind.”
Dawn squeezed them both into a hug. “Your wish is my command. Let’s go!”
They all rushed into the store to grab food for the car ride and the beach. After ransacking the snack aisle for animal crackers, Oreos, and trail mix, they all crammed into Georgia’s car. Edie rolled her window down in the backseat and let the trapped heat escape through the crack.
Chloe x Halle spilled out of Georgia’s busted dash that, after many years of working fine, now only played CDs. When it broke, the girls had spent a week burning homemade CDs filled with perfect songs for the road. They had ridiculous titles written out in red and black Sharpie like Songs for Running Down a Hill in a Long White Dress and Solange Saved My Life and So Will This Playlist. Edie was going to miss these little moments, the stink of oil refineries along Highway 288 coming in through the window and filling the car as the music played on.
The waves bruised the crumbling shore harsh and fast on Jamaica Beach, a strip of land along Galveston Island where the Gulf of Mexico kissed the edge of southeast Texas. The highway faced the water and mossy grass grew alongside it in thick patches before the sand. Houston families usually crowded its shores during holidays, but when the girls arrived, it was all but empty save for a few parents hoping to occupy their nearly naked kids running along the seaweed scattered sands for a few hours over the weekend.
Dawn was wearing a cherry red bikini with a bow at the midpoint above her ribs and a matching one tied over her butt. She stamped across the beach, each footstep pressed into the sand another strut on an imaginary runway.
“I am as free as the wind on this beach,” she ceremoniously pronounced to no one. The waves thinned for a moment and caught her words.
“Hot!” encouraged Edie from her spot under a blue and white parasol that, seemingly abandoned, she’d reclaimed for the three of them.
“Did you just quote Paris Is Burning?” Georgia asked, her head tilting towards the sun to face Dawn.
“Maybe,” yelled Dawn from across the sand. She’d always loved the documentary. Her favorite scene was when Brooke and Carmen Xtravaganza frolicked across the sand of some New York shore in jean shorts so extremely cut off at the thigh that they might as well have been denim underwear. Brooke talked about being trans and feeling free as she danced around the beach. It was one of the most beautiful moments Dawn had ever seen in a documentary. “I am what I am, Georgia.”
Dawn kicked the sand at her feet and placed her hand over her forehead to keep the sun out of her eyes. She looked out at the massive body of water. It reminded her of her childhood. The way her dad would drive them far out with nothing but two fishing poles, a cooler, and a bag of pretzels and Coca Cola in the backseat. He’d rest his palm behind her head while she sat in the front seat to make sure the poles didn’t swing in her direction when they hit bumps on the highway. She would fall asleep pretending his hand was a giant’s and she was as small as a flower.
These adventures were always just him and her. Dawn was the youngest of four. Her step-siblings were adults with jobs and children. They were the result of some first marriage of her dad’s Dawn knew almost nothing about. Her father was older than anyone she knew in real life, seventy-two, or maybe seventy-three, she couldn’t remember. His mood swings started when she was in middle school. He’d disappear often and forget things constantly. Her birthday, her name, where he’d put his keys, car, papers for work. Then he’d reappear with things, a new car the family couldn’t afford, trash he’d collected for a business idea he hadn’t quite figured out yet.
Things hadn’t really started to fall apart until Dawn’s mother died. He retreated into nothingness and could barely keep the days of the week straight. His upswings were like fires to put out, the smoke stinking up everything for weeks afterwards.
On the fishing trips, she never caught anything or even really helped. Except with the worms. Her job was to pick out a container of them from the island’s corner store and put them on her father’s golden hooks. She’d liked watching them squirm between her fingers before she slipped their fat bodies onto the hook, dark red and angry.
She splashed out and in on the edge of the water, her toes getting lost below the lapping waves. The water in Galveston was a murky, dark green. Not romantic or even beautiful, but always colder than the brutal Texas heat, so accepted for its flaws. The same body of water she’d fished in with her father a lifetime ago.
The waves tired her eventually, and she joined the girls at their spot next to the umbrella.
“You guys know Jill?” Georgia asked after a moment of relaxed quiet.
“Your girlfriend, Jill?” Dawn chimed in, giddy.
“The girl, Jill, who you are dating and who you are in fact in love with, Jill?” Edie laughed while lodging her book down into the sand. She propped herself up on her elbow to look at Georgia expectantly.
“First of all, relax. Second of all, yes. I mean, no. But basically, yes.” She stumbled over her words and looked down at all of their sand-filled socks piled at the edge of the towel.
“What’s up, G?” Dawn placed her fingers on Georgia’s knee as if scandalized by the potential for gossip. “Literally do not skip a single detail. We’ve been waiting for you to say something for weeks.”
“Y’all, I don’t know. It’s just really easy.” Georgia smiled a little as she went on. “We have so little in common, but it just totally works. I mean, we have the important things in common, like taste in poetry and love of antique vases, of course. We’ve gone on a couple dates and stuff and we talk about poems and cooking and good TV shows. And she’s so smart and so kind. Like, I told her about this book I really like, the one I mentioned to you D, about queer clubs in Brooklyn? And she got it from the library and read it the next day.” Geo brought her fingers up in front of her nose and snapped. “Just like that. The next day.”
“Wow. That’s serious.”
“Yeah, the last time someone recommended me a book I didn’t get past the dedication,” Edie laughed. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen when we graduate, though. It’s like we’re going to be on two different planes. Like physical planes, you know?” Georgia’s face bent into a near pout.
“That’s hard. You could always text and try to keep it up if you’re that serious about her,” added Edie.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It just feels like summer is the end of everything. Houston just evaporates and we’re supposed to become new people in new cities. I mean, assuming I get into any colleges.”
Dawn sat up and looked at Georgia straight on. “Of course you will, G.”
“God, I hope. I sent off some new writing to Kenyon.”
“Do you have any?”
“What, like, with me?” Dawn nodded “Alright, I have some. But, they’re not great.”
“Shut up, they’re always great.”
“Read them! Read them!” Edie and Dawn chanted in unison until Georgia stumbled into a standing position, the waves crashing behind her.
“Okay, fine. I have one called “Teen Superstars Scream Fire Over 59 Highway.” It’s about us.” She held her phone in one hand and raised the other majestically towards the dimming sky.
2AM the Waffle House is packed
Teenage bodies glowing golden
Gray parking lot of possibility
We have hotboxed the car
With the words of Stevie Nicks
The smoke of her words fishing into the folds
Of our brain matter
Convincing us we are in love
With love
With life
With each other
Policemen watch the moon,
watch us, our fears touch
Mine sounds like my mother’s
Yours sounds like a father’s imitation of a mother’s song
rushed and virulent
3AM mourning broke across our headrests like rain
Us with our young skin
twinkling mouths
Pearl beneath clam shell tongues
4AM we settle under our own somber fires
Our flames innocent and shy, only incidentally to blame
for the housefires
Lives not lost between red lights
We have so much summer left inside
Georgia bowed and the girls clapped. The waves crashed softer now, just barely lapping sweetly at the sand. The sun started to ease down and Georgia collapsed into a cuddle with the girls on her striped towel. A long silence reached out between them as they breathed in the warm air.
Dawn reached her right arm up towards her face to look at her watch. It was getting late. “I think we need to go soon.”
“Yeah, I was just going to say. I’m sorry we can’t stay longer,” said Edie as she stood up and started to dust off her shoes.
They all got up and cleaned themselves off one last time in the water. All the boats on the horizon were gone now, either back to the dock or made invisible specks by the darkness.
They beat their sand-filled shoes against the wooden steps leading up to the parking lot and rinsed their toes in a faucet attached to a metal pole. They stuffed their wet feet uncomfortably into their damp socks and trampled across the searing asphalt.
In the car ride home, thirty minutes vanished. An hour. The Houston skyline appeared outside the passenger seat window, majestic and glinting orange from the dying sun’s reflection.