It wasn’t long into their drive before Kit began having second thoughts. He was nice to her, sure, but what would a whole life with Manny look like? Was it just going to be the two of them all the time? Did he have family? Friends? What was she going to do all day? Not that she had ever liked school, but it had been a place to escape the foster homes and get a good meal. Sometimes she even learned something. Would Manny even know to put her in a school somewhere?
Manny slapped the seat back so loud she jumped.
“We should celebrate this new partnership,” he said. “Where should we go, Kitty Cat? Somewhere fun? We could drive to San Antonio and have enchiladas on the River Walk . . . we could go tubing at Schlitterbahn? Anything you want.”
“I don’t know where those places are,” she said. She was feeling guilty for thinking about leaving him, but eventually she would need to figure out a backup plan in case things didn’t work out. “You pick.”
“Come on, this is your chance!” he said. “Okay, look, how about I surprise you?”
A surprise. Another thing no one had ever done for her. She pictured the props of a surprise as she understood it: balloons and a cake, a bike. She could stay around for this.
Within an hour she started seeing signs for a place called Galveston. Clues that they were entering a different climate started to appear. Bushy oleanders lined the esplanade between several lanes of traffic on Interstate 45, wind whipping them around, scattering across the windshield blossoms of white and apricot. The sticky, salty air a coating on her skin. Gulls appeared, cutting through the sky, settling on billboards and dropping guano. Then the highway took them across a great causeway that stretched over miles of marsh and water rippling below. The bridge swept them up, high above the waves. She felt dizzy looking out over the expanse but could not take her eyes away. She saw little splashes bloom at intervals. Fish? Dolphins? She couldn’t imagine what wonders teemed beneath the surface.
“Is that the ocean?” she asked.
“Not exactly. That’s a big waterway. We’ll be at the coast in a few minutes. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen the Gulf of Mexico before.”
She shook her head.
“Goddamn.” He clicked his tongue.
The causeway spat them out onto Galveston Island, and they pulled up to a single stoplight at the coastline, the entire Gulf spread out, waves tumbling toward them. Manny took a right onto a narrow highway. To their left was a long gray beach and a line of cars and a broad boardwalk between the two. Traffic immediately slowed down as people looked for parking and took in the sights.
As they rolled down Seawall Boulevard, Kit observed the little scenes like a comic strip. Surfers undressed behind their cars, peeled wet suits to their waists. Sunburnt children sat in open trunks, legs dangling, sucking on Popsicles or scraping black gobs of tar off their feet with shells. A man smeared oil all over his wife’s freckled and rounded back, her bathing suit straps fallen to each side. A Jeep full of shirtless young men cruised to the sounds of the Beach Boys, hung their arms out the windows, and a group of beautiful girls in rainbow bikinis swanned by on roller skates.
Manny U-turned and parked along the boardwalk.
“Hey, I’m just gonna grab us some treats,” he said and pointed to a pretty, darkly tanned woman in cut-off shorts and a crocheted bikini top standing under an umbrella. Kit looked back at him and then to the ocean, which looked bigger now, menacing. “You scoot down to the beach, splash in the waves. I’ll be right back.” Then he removed his shirt, folded it neatly, and lay it on the front seat. He walked away, his strong back catching the warm tint of the sun. Kit considered waiting in the car until they could go down together, but she didn’t want him to think she was afraid.
She found a set of steps and made her way along the craggy seawall to the sand. Blue crabs scuttled sidewise into rock crevices, flies swarmed a putrid fish that was tangled in strands of net.
Kit was overheating in her new blue jeans. She sat down and yanked off her shoes and socks and rolled her cuffs up to her knees. The sand was not loose and gritty like she had imagined, but fine and wet, more like concrete before it has cured. There was a powerful smell, of salt, fish, and minerals. She approached the water, sharp bits of shell underfoot, and squatted near the slow, lapping tide. She watched the exchange of sea and land, waves slurping up sand and drawing it back, then spitting out shells, plants, replacing some of the sand it had taken.
“Why don’t you go in?” Manny said, his voice pushed back by the wind. She turned around and saw him standing there with a bright yellow towel over his shoulder and in his hands, two dripping ice cream cones.
She took one of the cones and licked up the layer of soft, sweet melt. “Thanks,” she said. “Where’d you get that towel?” she asked.
“Oh, I made a friend up there.” He winked. “She thought you were cute. I told her you’d never been to the beach before, so this is all her treat.” Kit looked at the woman under the umbrella. Her shorts were cut so high Kit could see her butt folds. The woman turned and waved and smiled a big, white smile at Manny. Kit was suspicious at the idea of perfect strangers giving her things for no reason, but then Manny had been a stranger not that long ago, and here they were.
When Kit had finished the last of her ice cream, Manny took her by the hand and led her to the water. She leaned back. “I’m not too good at swimming,” she said. She flashed to Paul Macher chucking her into the public pool, the water up her nose, down her throat. How she’d flailed and tried to scream but the water had overcome her and she sank, thrashing, and watched the distorted shapes of people passing by without looking. How someone’s dad had picked her up and laid her on her back at Paul’s feet and pumped her chest till she spewed pool water, her lungs on fire, and how Paul had teased her afterward, to keep things light, to downplay how he’d almost killed her.