Back in high school, after she and Hannah and Henry had gotten ripely stoned on the roof of Henry’s house one night, the moon so low it was a fourth companion, she’d showed them the marks on her back. She’d never let anyone see them before. She feared pity, thought it contagious.
Now she closed her eyes, brought the memory into focus. She could see Hannah vividly, her cheeks so round back then, that peachy blush she used to wear, too orange against her pale skin. She could see herself, too, her T-shirt collar cut off at the neck, her arms wrapped around her knees, her long hair grazing them. Her mind flickered to Henry, the image of him smudgy. It was strange the way she could remember each of his features but not quite add them together to make a face. No matter how hard she tried, her mind would not let her see him.
Maya was laughing when she showed Hannah and Henry the scars, shrugging them off as nothing. What else could she do but make it not matter?
But then Hannah had put her hand on Maya’s back, traced her soft fingers over the white raised slashes, and maybe it was the pot, maybe it was just that Maya was so fucking high, but something shifted inside her. She could feel Hannah’s fingers penetrate her skin, her bones, probing until they found how deep the cuts actually went, pressing lightly on the wounds to staunch a bleed that had never actually stopped.
“You’re like a whale,” Hannah said, voice hoarse with the weed and with a kind of soft wonder.
Why did Maya feel like she wanted to cry?
“Henry, tell her she’s a whale,” Hannah said.
“You’re a whale, dude,” Henry said. He was lying back on the slant of the roof, looking at the sky.
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Maya said, taking another drag on the joint. It helped to say fuck, to carve her mouth around the hardness of the word. It was instinctual to reject softness. Isn’t that what all the motherless did? Made themselves not need it, disdain it even. But it got in anyway, slipped in some side door of her. Thankfully, no matter how much Maya resisted it, Hannah and her softness always got in.
“Henry, tell her what it all means,” Hannah said.
Henry shook his head in wonder, an unfathomably deep question to ponder.
Hannah sighed, exasperated that her profound pot-induced insights couldn’t be followed. “Because whales are all scratched up from shark bites and orcas and whatnot,” she said. She nudged Henry. “Remember that documentary we watched?”
“You watched,” Henry said, gazing up at her. “I was watching you.”
Hannah bent over and kissed him, then sat back down, reclined against him. “Whales are awesome, man. They’re all like, ‘Whatever. Go ahead and try me. I don’t care.’ They just keep cruising on, getting bigger and bigger until they’re bigger than everyone, the biggest on earth.”
“Whales are outrageous,” Henry said.
Hannah sat back up then. “That’s you, Maya. Inside I mean. You’re the biggest person I know. No one can break you.” She’d spread her arms as wide as the future.
Maya laughed it off, but then Hannah said, “Don’t you get it? She threw plates at you and the plates are what broke. Not you. She was aiming for you but only destroyed her china.”
And fuck, Maya really was going to cry then. She closed her eyes, and the scars on her back, those marks of hatred and violence, of being unloved, they were reordering in her mind—shit, was this pot laced?—transforming into the shape of a whale. And where once there was her mother’s fury, now there was a benign, resilient mammal tattooed on her skin, in her heart. Where once there was her mother’s fury, now there was Hannah and her love, not replacing it—if only!—but covering it like a soldier lying over the wounded.
She wanted to say this but it was at once too corny and too meaningful. Instead she said, “You’re stoned, Hannah.”
“She is,” Henry said.
“I am,” Hannah replied, and then she threw her head back with that great laugh she had, so genuine and rewarding.
She thought of present-day Hannah, too frightened to even walk into a motel room. Was it possible to miss a laugh so much you sprained your heart? She could hardly fathom Hannah smoking pot, much less sitting on a rooftop or throwing her head back with such pure perfect joy.
She caught her reflection in the mirror. A whale. She rolled the word around in her mind like a pool ball, smooth and calming, knocking out worries of what she would do if the bank loan didn’t come through. It would, of course—but just in case, it helped to be reminded that she was a survivor. She looked again at Hannah’s Xanax, picked it up and tucked it in her own bag. She would prove to Hannah that she didn’t need it. That Hannah was a whale too. She walked out, leaving the bathroom door open enough to create a strip of light across her bed.
“You still awake?” she said.
“Unfortunately,” Hannah said. “Why?”
She had the impulse to tell Hannah about the situation with her house, to say, “Look! Another shark attack.” She didn’t know why, who she was trying to convince that she’d survive it.
But then Hannah said in a small, tired voice, “You’re not really afraid of the dark, are you?”
“Of course not,” Maya said. She walked back to the bathroom, turned off the light. “Go to sleep.”
She got into bed and pulled out her phone, checked her social media feeds, refreshing them several times in case something interesting should come in. It didn’t. She cheered herself with the reminder of her secret plan. Fired off a quick text. She couldn’t wait.
She listened for the sound of Hannah’s breathing, noticed it had slowed. Then she got up and turned the bathroom light back on.
BLUE
Blue woke with no idea where she was. She blinked into the disorienting tilt of an unrecognizable room—stained walls, an orange paisley bedspread, a television set circa 1971. She was supposed to be in beautiful Montauk, waking to salt air and the rustle of the ocean, birdsong at her window. Instead she was in a cheap motel off some random highway. She had to laugh. She let herself be convinced by Maya of all people—the used car salesman of friends—of the perfect dream vacation and this is where they’d ended up. It was so typical. It almost wouldn’t have been a real trip together if it had gone down as promised.
And then, less amusing, she remembered Maya’s phone call to Renee. Also typical Maya. She rolled away from the spill of early sun through the blinds, yanked the sheet over her head. She knew it was childish to be upset about it, but the residue of betrayal lingered. Well, she wouldn’t let it ruin her trip. It was a quick call, nothing more. If Maya had any clue what Renee had done, it never would have been made.
The sounds of low talking wafted through the thin walls, and Blue tried to listen in case Hannah and Maya were talking about her. But their voices were too muffled to make out. She’d forgotten how the invisible divide between her and them had always been there. Not that it was intentional. But sometimes, when they were all together, a vague loneliness slipped in like a fog, reminded her that Maya and Hannah were always each other’s number one. She had lost the one person—Renee—who loved her best.