The Other Side of Blue(5)

“Bon.” Not “good afternoon” or “hello,” just “good.” Shorthand. I haven’t heard Mayur’s voice in a year. Not since the day before Mother and I left Curaçao. The day when we stopped at the Bindases’ house to thank Dr. Bindas for his help with Dad on the beach. The day I pushed Mayur into the pool, still dressed in his best clothes from a family wedding he’d just attended, because of what he said to me.

“What do you want?” Last year, he said he had a secret I would want to know. He didn’t get a chance to tell me and I didn’t ask. So he has kept it for a whole year.

“Mamí said you were back. With a new girl.” Without your father. He doesn’t say it. But he pauses, so my mind fills the silence.

I don’t say anything. Silence is a tactic I learned from the counselor Mother sent me to after we got back to Maine. Counselors like empty spaces. They know if they wait, the other person will fill up the space with words. Now I wait.

“Mamí told me you and the new girl must come to visit. You must come tomorrow,” he says.

We haven’t spoken in a year and he’s already ordering me around. Or trying to.

“The new girl is Kammi.” At her name Kammi turns around and cocks her head at me. She was listening after all.

“Kammi,” he says. “Mamí says you and Kammi must come. Three in the afternoon. She says to bring your swimsuits.”

“Your mother is very nice.” Meaning he is not. “Tell her we’ll come.”

Kammi raises her eyebrows at me, asking me a question without speaking.

I shrug. After yelling to his mother that we’re coming, Mayur starts to brag about some new game gadget he bought. How much it cost. I listen without hearing.

Then his voice gets low. “You remember what I said? Last year?”

Air rushes in my eardrum, as if the phone has become a shell and I can hear the sea.

“I’m hanging up,” I say. I don’t wait for Mayur to finish.

Mother’s voice carries down the metal stairs. “Who was that?”

“Mayur.”

“Bindas?”

“Yes.” As if there were any other Mayur. “His mother invited Kammi and me over tomorrow at three.”

Mother doesn’t say “That’s nice” or “I’m surprised after what happened.” She just changes the subject. “Have you shown Kammi around?”

“We’re going to the beach now.” I shoo Kammi out the French doors. I’m closing them as I hear Mother start, “Be—”

Careful, she means to say.

I am past that point.





Outside, the sun is so bright it hurts my eyes. Kammi slips her sunglasses back on, but I just squint into the glare. I don’t believe in sunglasses.

“Let’s go,” I say as we walk down the wooden steps of the deck and onto the sand. It squishes between my bare toes, so soft it almost tickles. Magic sand, Dad called it.

“Wait.” Kammi pauses, tugging off her slides. Tiny, leather-soled, the shoes are a smaller version of Mother’s. Like Mother, Kammi won’t want them to get wet or covered in sand.

I feel Mother watching us, but I refuse to look up to the windows or the widow’s walk beyond.

Instead, I dig my toes into the sand and wait. I brought only two pairs of plastic flip-flops to wear, no nice shoes. For clothes, I packed two broomstick skirts, five T-shirts in pastel colors, enough underwear for a week, and a bathing suit with a ruffle at the bottom that Mother made me buy the week before we left. She said it would be flattering. She didn’t say the ruffle would hide the roll of fat around my waist, the one I see her look away from whenever I lean over. Or that it would visually balance my growing breasts, which have expanded along with the rest of me this past year. She watched me slip the suit into my suitcase, on top. That’s all I brought, though. Most of my summer clothes from last year don’t fit anymore. Instead of telling Mother, I just stuffed towels in my suitcase to make it look full. I hate shopping, hate how nothing on the hangers looks right on me. As if the clothes belong to someone else and I’m just borrowing them.

Shoes off, Kammi nestles her pale toes in the sand. Even her toenails are pink.

Perfect. I laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

I shake my head, glancing down at her feet and then at the water. “Nothing.”

“What?” Frowning, she looks at her toes. “You don’t like my nail polish?”

“No, I mean ... sure, it’s fine. Pink’s perfect, really.” For her. She’s soft and easily burned.

But if I can see Kammi’s pink, why can’t I tell what color I am? Yesterday, I asked Martia what color she thought I was.