She sounded like an adult. I was surprised she knew about Mom. I told her thanks, and I was sorry about hers too. “Before Aunt June, I mean. If there was a real one at some point.”
“My birth mother. Yeah.” She shrugged. “I can’t really talk about her.”
“But now you’re adopted. So maybe it turned out for the best.”
“Oh, totally. I’m lucky.”
“Heck yes you are. I wouldn’t wish foster care on anybody.”
“It’s really bad?”
“So far, yeah. I hate it pretty much every minute of the day. It’s like a cross between prison and dodgeball. And there’s not enough food.”
“Dodgeball, like whenever you play with older kids that want to laugh at you?”
“Yeah. Hurt you, and then laugh at you.”
She seemed to be thinking about this. I mean really turning it over. She whispered, “Do the kids get abused? I’ve heard that.”
“My mom definitely had molester type shit done to her whenever she was little. In a supposedly Christian home. I just basically watch my back, night and day.”
She blinked a couple of times. I was surprised how well I could see her in the dark. I knew I shouldn’t shock Emmy, given she was already upset. But she’d asked. Nobody ever did. I told her I was sure there were good fosters out there that are God’s angels, like everybody says. But I had yet to meet them because they didn’t take kids like me.
“What do you mean, kids like you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She took in a big breath and let it out. “I was so mean to you and Matty last summer. I’m sorry. This has been a year.” Again, it was like she’d turned into somebody’s mother or one of the nicer ladies at church. I couldn’t figure out what I was dealing with. I wished I was older.
“You were okay,” I said. “At times.”
She smiled. “Yeah. After you saved me from the sharks.” She pulled up her knees and showed me the silver bracelet I gave her that day. She was wearing it around her ankle. Leave it to somebody like her, to think of something like that. I couldn’t believe she still had it.
“It’s not like they were going to take you down. I never got why you were so scared.”
“Because they’re evil creatures with dagger-like teeth? Why were you not?”
“No reason. I’m just not. I like thinking about the ocean, and what all is living in there. It’s like my brain-Lysol. It calms me down or something.”
“Seriously. Sharks calm you down.”
I could see pieces of the everyday Emmy sneaking back into the conversation, but I didn’t mind. Maybe it meant this thing we were doing now, whatever it was, might not just go poof in the morning. “Not sharks specifically,” I said. “The whole being-underwater thing. I put myself there and float. Just, you know. Inside my skull movie.”
“You have a skull movie? You could see yourself drowning. That’s relaxing.”
“I don’t, though. That’s the one bad thing that for sure won’t ever happen to me.”
“Because what? You took Junior Red Cross swimming?”
I laughed. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t ever been swimming that much. In water that was deeper than like, an inch.”
“And still you’re drown-proof, because?”
I’d never told anybody the weird way I got born. But being awake in the dark with a girl was outside my normal. The whole world quiet. I tried to put it in the best light: I took Mom by surprise, coming out so fast I was still in the water bubble that protects babies in the before-life.
“The caul,” Emmy said.
“What?”
“You were born in the caul. That’s the medical terminology. Mom saw it happen one time and said it even freaked out the doctors. You’d be amazed how many babies get born in the ER.”
Nothing at all would surprise me as far as Aunt June and the ER. But I liked knowing what happened to me was real, with a name. “Yeah, that. I had the call. If that happens to you, it’s a guarantee you won’t drown. So the ocean is this giant thing that won’t ever defeat me.”
Emmy laughed. “That’s just some old hillbilly superstition.”
I got a little hurt at her for that. Even if she was right. “Your mammaw is the one that told me, so take it up with her. Ask about Jesus coming back from the dead, while you’re at it.”
We’d been talking so quietly, our faces were just a few inches apart. Now I sat up. This whatever-it-was was over. Probably in the morning it would be a never-happened. But she didn’t go away. She sat up too, looking at me a while, and then said the words I hate: “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. No big deal.”
“It is, though. I could understand why you’d want to think about someplace totally safe. After everything you’ve been through. Your mom and all.”
“My mom dying is not even the worst part. If you really want to know.”
She sat facing me, waiting. She smelled like fruit shampoo. I wanted to say something mean, or just the truth. I wanted to tell her about my baby brother that was technically younger than the murder-family baby, and dead. I said that word: Sorry. “But you know what? If that kid ends up dying, it’s not the worst thing. Being dead is better than an orphan your whole fucking life.”
“No!” she said, so loud she put her hand over her mouth. Then took it off and whispered, “He’s got grandparents. They’re in some other country, but they’re going to come get him.”
