Chapter Text
The summer begins like this.
Nat beats her case of senioritis back with a serious combination of orange juice and backpack-smuggled Ritalin. Shauna Shipman puts in overtime helping Nat coast through her History final. Tai throws down, like, forty dollars on a graphing calculator that Nat doesn’t even know how to use, but that inevitably ends up securing her a passing grade in seniors’ remedial algebra.
Van drives her to graduation in her shitty, shitty Tacoma, and Jackie pulls her to the side of the auditorium before the ceremony starts to help her reapply her lipstick. It’s smudged from Nat’s incessant worrying that this is all just some elaborate prank, that they’ll pull the rug from under her and the camera crews will descend from the rafters and everyone will point and laugh at stupid, stupid Scatorccio , thinking that she might break the generational curse and finish something for once.
“For the photos,” Jackie says, even though Nat knows she doesn’t have anyone in the audience who’ll be taking a picture of her when she crosses that stage, shakes hands with another person in the long list of those who look surprised to see her up there.
Jackie ends up being right, anyways. Shauna’s mom finds Nat from across the field after the ceremony and snaps a shot of her with her Polaroid, graduation cap askew, hand raised in an awkward wave.
She doesn’t want to go home yet, and she knows Van doesn’t either, and Tai kinda just goes wherever Van is these days, so the three of them watch the post-graduation crowds disperse and wave goodbye to Tai’s folks and then they march over to the soccer field outside the gymnasium. The grass is still wet and dewy, but they unzip and lay out their graduation gowns as a sort of kitbashed picnic blanket to protect Tai’s nice dress, and Nat’s shitty dress, and Van’s thrift store suit. Nat pulls a joint from somewhere in her bra and lights it, puff-puff-passing it Van, while Tai lights up a rare celebratory cig. The three of them lay there in hazy, wonderful silence, until Tai breaks the moment.
“Got any exciting summer plans, Scatorccio?” She asks.
Nat has to laugh. “No,” she says, between another hit of the joint. Van is making grabby hands next to her. “Didn’t even think I’d make it this far, to be honest.”
Van hums, cause she gets it. They’re both leading ladies in that stupid novel the senior class had to read for English this year— no money and no prospects . Tai doesn’t get it. Tai’s gonna get out of this bullshit town. Make something of herself. Come back home to cheers and applause.
“Nothing? Not even a job? Community college?” Tai pushes.
Natalie’s shoulders scrunch up to her ears. She rolls over onto her side. “Shit, Tai, way to make a girl feel.”
Tai goes to smack her, but doesn’t anticipate Nat's movement, and falls short. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she huffs. “Come on, dude.”
She rolls her eyes. “Just call me a fucking loser already.”
They’re too opposite of people, Nat thinks, her and Tai. Always have been. It took them nearly all of high school to stop being at each other’s throats, and even then, Tai still lets an occasionally mean-spirited crackhead slip through, to which Nat always retorts back with an equally cruel prissy bitch . Tai isn’t all bad, though. She’s all about small kindnesses— loyalty, acts of service. She’d never hold Nat’s hand and tell her everything is gonna be okay, not that Nat wants her to. But one time she did push Allie Stevens into a creek at a bonfire after finding out she was the one that sharpied an ugly slut into Nat’s locker door.
Van suddenly shoots up. “You should come with us, Nat.”
Nat rolls over so she’s facing them again. “Come with you where?”
“Oh shit, dude, we forgot to tell you. Tai got this internship in Ocean City, up the coast. She got the call a couple days ago.”
A blink. “Nice, Tai, congrats.”
“It’s not a big deal. I’m just gonna be pencil pushing, grabbing coffee for the mayor's office.”
“Still.” Nat sits up so she’s at the same level as Van. “You’re gonna move out there, Tai?”
Tai nods, and then she pushes herself up to her elbows, her half-smoked cigarette dusting ash onto Van’s blue graduation gown. “My uncle has this beach house out there. It’s got two bedrooms. Van and I can share one. You should stay in the other room.”
“Your uncle isn’t gonna be around?”
Tai shakes her head. “He’s a pilot, he’s never there. My mom has a spare key he said we could use.”
“I wouldn’t have anything to do,” Nat says. She takes a drag from the joint and coughs when she realizes they’ve basically smoked it down to the filter. “Fuck am I gonna do, sit around playing maid for you guys?”
“I got a job lined up at the boardwalk, at the movie theater,” Van butts in. “They might have another position, or something else. Maybe you could be one of those balloon cart people.”
“Har har.” Nat looks between Tai and Van skeptically. “You guys are serious about this?”
Tai shrugs, which is about as serious as she gets with Nat. “It wouldn’t hurt to have another person in the house.”
Van takes the little piece of roll from Nat’s fingers and still manages to work one last drag from it, stubborn little fuck she is. She blows the smoke towards Tai, whose eyes flutter closed as she inhales. “Whaddya say, Nat? Wouldn’t you rather spend the summer by the beach with your two bestest friends instead of cooped up at home with your mom and her soaps and an empty fridge?”
“Don’t you start shit about my fridge, Palmer.”
“Let me sell it to you, Nat.” Van leans back down into the grass, her hands raised up to the sky in a frame. “I can picture it now. We’re such good roomies we don’t need a chore chart or anything. I’m gonna learn to surf. Tai’ll bring home the bacon at her big city bureaucrat job. We can all walk down to the beach every night to drink beers and watch the sunset.”
Nat can see it. She hates that it’s actually appealing, the picture Van’s painting. That isn’t what really sells Nat though. It’s Taissa fucking Turner, slapping Nat’s shoulder after too long of a moment of silence.
“Come on, Nat.” Tai says, eyes serious like how she gets when she’s calling a play on the field. “Are you really gonna pass this up? You wanna die in Wiskayok without ever swimming in the ocean?”
“I barely know how to swim, Tai. What if I fucking drown.”
“Okay then, Ms. Pessimist, let me rephrase that. Would you rather die in Wiskayok without ever seeing the ocean, or die in the ocean having seen it?”
Nat stills. Her hand reaches out for a clump of grass, and she rubs the wet blades between her fingers. It’s probably just the weed— but Nat’s eighteen and freshly graduated, with nothing on the good ol’ agenda and nothing on the bucket list, either— and she thinks about all the ways she could die in Wiskayok. Popping a bad pill. Getting run over by Jeff Sadecki’s truck because he never drives with his fucking headlights on. Melting into the couch like her mom, and never getting back up.
Ocean doesn’t sound so bad. Ocean sounds really nice, actually.
“Yeah, okay, fuck it. I’ll come.”
Van jumps to her feet and yells, running a lap around their spot. Tai sticks her hand out like it’s a business deal they’re shaking on. Natalie slaps her palm away with a grunt.
“Pack your shit, Scatorccio.” Taissa helps her to her feet, and Van runs up to both of them, wrapping them all in a wide-armed hug. “We’re moving to Ocean City, New Jersey.”
Packing her shit means emptying out two drawers worth of clothes and a cardboard box full of mixtapes and— no, yeah, that's about it, really.
It makes Nat reel to realize her whole life— everything she cares for, everything that’s hers — fits into her gear bag. A couple skirts, some band tees, a few pairs of underwear, her walkman, her toothbrush. She thinks she can make off with her radio, but her bedsheets are too big of a risk. She’ll have to get a new set once they settle in. She’s wrapping the last of her cassette tapes in some shirts to make sure they don’t get damaged during the trip when she pulls the one labelled Kevyn’s mix for Nat .
“Fuck.” She whispers to herself. Mixtape in hand, she steps lightly out of her room, careful not to wake the sleeping beast that is her stagnant mother. Natalie tip-toes to the house phone, and punches in Kevyn’s number.
The landline rings for a few seconds, and then Nat hears a click, and a woman’s voice appears on the other line.
“Tan residence, hello?” Comes the voice, crackling through the static of their cheap receiver.
Natalie pauses for a sec. Considers hanging up the phone. The only thing that stops her is the face that flashes into her mind— Kevyn’s eyes when he finds out she left town, disappeared, without even saying goodbye. Will he be surprised? Probably not, she thinks, and then his face shifts downward, his eyes shut and mouth pulled tight. No, not surprised. Heartbroken.
“Hello?” Kevyn’s mom cuts through Natalie’s thoughts. “Is anyone there?”
“Hi, Mrs. Tan, it’s Natalie.”
“Oh!” Nat can hear the confusion in her tone. “Hi Natalie, is everything okay?”
Natalie presses her head to the peeling kitchen wallpaper. Picks at a piece of it with her thumb. “Yeah, everything’s cool. Um, sorry to bother you, Mrs. Tan, but is Kevyn home right now?”
A pause. “No, he went out for a walk with his friends.” The unspoken truth of what a walk usually entails hangs before them. “Why? Do you want me to take a message?”
“Um, sure.” She takes a breath. “Could you just tell him that I got a summer job, so I won’t be around much? And—” Tell him she said bye. Tell him he was a good friend. Tell him she’ll drink a beer on the beach in his honor. “—that I said good luck at the city college.”
“Okay, Natalie,” Mrs. Tan says. “Are you sure you’re fine? This all sounds very last minute.”
“Yeah, yeah, everything is fine, it’s just, this job is, uh—” Nat looks at her mother, passed out on the couch, “—time sensitive.”
“Alright,” Comes the sigh of a woman who has let her son’s drunk friend crash on her living room couch far too many times. “Just be safe, please.”
“I will,” is her hurried reply. “Thanks, Mrs. Tan.”
Natalie slams the phone back on the receiver. It’s loud enough to startle her mother awake, and she glares lethargically at her daughter.
“When did you get home?” She asks, more accusatory than anything.
“A couple of hours ago, ma.” Nat stands there awkwardly— debates telling her she’s leaving, telling her about graduation, asking if she can take her bedsheets with her.
Her mom grunts. “Next time you’re out for so long, don’t be surprised if you come home to new locks.”
Natalie’s fists clench. “Ask and you’ll fucking receive, mom.”
She barely hears the shouted watch it! over the slamming of her bedroom door.
Sunrise comes after a night of tossing and turning; a night of anticipation, or worry, of hopes and dreams that Natalie doesn’t have the energy to quell. She spends the whole night laying in her stripped bed, still, like a corpse in a coffin— some creature of the night from one of Shauna’s gothic novels. When the peach-pink dawn begins filtering through her plastic window shades, she rises from her mattress-tomb. She’s slept in her clothes she’s planning to leave in, like a child excited for a field trip to the zoo.
If Nat doesn’t think about it too much, this really is just a field trip— she’ll get on the school bus and drive down to the beach with friends, and for one glorious day, or two months, it’ll just be the sun and the sand and Natalie and freedom. No mom that doesn’t want her— no father’s ghost.
She’ll leave all the rumors and reputation in the trailer park. Let the graffiti in the girls bathroom, the words they used to say, lay to rest.
Nat takes a deep breath, and prepares to leave Wiskayok behind her.
Van lays it on the horn at exactly 10:22 AM. Nat has about four minutes until her mom comes to, still half-drunk from the stupor of the previous night. She maximises her time. The window slams open, and Nat pushes out her gear bag first— her whole life in a bag, everything that matters. It falls to the dead grass outside with a soft thunk . She isn’t worried, knowing she spent most of the night wrapping and unwrapping her cassettes with care and anxious delirium. She slips on her boots, lacing them hurriedly, only tight enough so that she knows they won’t slip off when she follows her bag, legs first, out the window. She has to do a little shimmy to prevent her leather jacket from getting caught on the ledge, which she’s certain Tai and Van are busting up about this very minute.
On her way out, extending her arms to the maximum of their reach, she grabs her tape deck from the top of her dresser and guides it gently through the window frame, careful not to scratch or bump it. She had debated taking it with her, worried about it making the trip, worried about the finality of what leaving and bringing it with her meant— but it’s hers, she justifies, she paid for it, worked all summer her sophomore year doing odd jobs with Kevyn and Rich, so fuck if she’s leaving it behind when she may never return.
“Natalie, let's go!” Van is yelling, her head poking out the passenger side window of her truck, Tai leaning back to give her space. “We’re never gonna beat the traffic at this rate!”
“Alright, alright!” She shoots back, throwing her bag over her shoulder as she guns it for the truck. Her boots, broken in but not exactly made for the action of a heavy sprint, buckle as she takes off, and her ankle rolls. She catches herself before stumbling into the gravel road, tosses her bag into the truck bed, and then Taissa is opening the door for her to clamber inside, crawling over the dropped middle seat and into the back bench of Van’s truck. “Hit the gas, Van, my mom’s gonna come rolling out any minute.”
“Shitballs,” Van mutters, as she throws the old Tacoma into gear. It stutters for one agonizing, breath stealing minute— and then shudders to life, tearing through gravel and dirt and pushing out a cloud of burnt exhaust.
“You didn’t tell your mom you were leaving?” Tai wheezes, as she cranks the window on her side up.
Natalie meets her eyes in the rearview. “Nah. Who gives a fuck. Not like she’d miss me anyways.”
As Van wrestles with the gearshift and they ramble away from the trailer park, Natalie glances out the window behind her, waiting to catch a glimpse of her mom in her socks and sweats, stumbling out the door, maybe to shake her fist at the sky and curse out one final don’t bother coming back, natalie!
But the door never opens, and the busted-up trailer that Natalie called home for eighteen years just shrinks, silent and frozen in the distance. No one comes chasing after her; no one comes to watch her leave. It’s like no one even lives there. Like no one ever has.
It shouldn’t sting. Still does, though. Fuck.
Once they hit the highway, Natalie slides her headphones on and presses play on the tape she preloaded into her walkman— Sonic Youth floods her ears—
—the guitar fades out, the drums crash, the tape flickers and hisses as it winds to a stop, and Natalie wakes to a soft click.
“—took a wrong fucking turn.”
“How do you take a wrong turn on a highway , Tai?”
“Just… give me the fucking map—”
A scuffle, and then a yelp. “You’re driving !”
Natalie cracks her eyes open. She must’ve drifted to sleep somewhere between Saucer-Like and Washing Machine, between Wiskayok’s city line and… wherever the fuck they are now.
“Mom, dad, stop fighting.” She grumbles, slipping her headphones off to let them dangle around her neck. Being cooped up in the back for so long has left her sore. There’s a distinct pop as she stretches her legs— at least as much as she can in the back bench. Realizing she’s been out for a minute, she glances around for any national landmarks she might’ve missed and is greeted by trees, trees, trees. “Where the hell are we?”
“Just passed Allentown,” Taissa grits, and the same time that Van says, “Fuck if I know.”
“Ohkay,” Nat drawls. She pats her pockets for her cigarette carton and groans when she comes up empty, realizing she smoked her last while she was packing. “Tai, you have any cigs on you?”
“Nope, because I don’t need three a day like you.”
“Fuck off. And you’re wrong, by the way.”
“Yeah,” Van butts in. “She needs four.”
Nat kicks the back of Van’s seat. “Can we pull over?”
“Why? You need a smoke break to get through the rest of this car ride?”
“No, Tai, so I can take a look at these maps you guys can’t read. You’re both shit at navigating.”
Both front-seaters grumble their dissent, but when they pass the next rest stop sign, Tai flicks on the blinker and peels right off the highway to a tiny gas station-slash-convenience store thing in a tinier town that's comprised entirely of McDonalds and Burger Kings. The truck’s brakes squeal as Tai pulls into a spot directly in front of the store. Van is the first to hop out, citing a need to go to the bathroom and grab a new bag of Doritos for the road; Nat tosses her a five to get her a pack of Spirits at the register.
While Van is inside raiding the shelves, Nat and Taissa pile out of the truck’s cramped cabin and spread their state maps over its still-warm hood. Taissa gestures broadly around a yellow highway line with a Sharpie, rattling off about street signs and road blocks and redirects. Tai’s kinda funny when she gets like this, all commander in chief. Like she isn’t a nineteen year old like the rest of them, like Nat hasn’t seen her eat shit in a mud puddle during a particularly moist mid-spring practice.
All the while as Tai tries to over-explain the concept of a map to Natalie, she’s been silently tracing the street names and landmarks. When she recognizes enough to place them, Nat puts herself out of her misery and wrestles the Sharpie from Taissa’s unexpecting hands, then tears its cap off with her teeth.
“We passed an off-ramp for this road on the highway.” Circle. “I think we drove for four or five blocks before stopping.” Circle. “We must be here—” Circle. “—which means if we want to get to Ocean City before it gets dark, we gotta get on the freeway here.” Circle. “And then Van drives straight for two hours, and no one makes any unnecessary stops. Or turns. Or exits.”
Taissa looks at her like she wants to crumple up her traitorous map and toss it into the burning engine. “Thank you, Natalie,” she forces out.
Nat slides the Sharpie cap back on, tucking it into the front pocket of Tai’s jean jacket. “No problem.”
They both lean against the hood, silent. Taissa, effortlessly cool with her foot kicked up on the bumper, Nat fiddling with her walkman, trying to rewind her tape.
“Your mom didn’t notice you leaving.”
Nat jolts. “Do you ever ask questions? Like, how was your nap, Nat? You looked cozy in the back seat, was the back seat soft?”
“Back seat’s hard as bricks.” When Nat shoots her a look, Tai’s eyes conveniently take interest in a leaf fluttering under a trashcan a couple feet away. “Van has pulled me back there enough times.”
“Gross, Tai.”
“After the first half hour, it’s hell on my back.”
Natalie’s eyes grow wide. “ Half hour? Good for fucking you, dude. ”
Taissa’s eyebrows furrow. “Oh, that’s not—” she shakes her head. “You never answered my question.”
“You didn’t ask me one.” Tai kicks her in the leg, ow. “ Ow , Tai, fuck. I just assumed with all the noise she’d come running to throw bottles at you guys or something.”
Brown eyes regard her like she’s a piece of evidence crucial to solving a crime. Tai has always been able to see people like that, reduce them down to their rawest, most embarrassing insides. Natalie used to be on the worst end of it, still remembers how Tai could find her biggest insecurity-needle in a grungy persona-haystack. “She doesn’t care that you’ll be gone,” Tai finally says, after she’s finished stripping Nat down to her rusted parts.
Tai won’t leave this alone, huh? Nat’s lucky she catches a flash of ginger through the window of the shop. “The fuck does it matter? I’m never going back to that place anyways.”
Tai opens her mouth like she’s gonna say more, but at that moment a chime sounds and a glass door swings open. Van Palmer, Patron Saint of Perfect Timing, steps out of the store with a can of RC Cola in one hand and a plastic bag of snacks in the other.
“I have returned from my hunt victorious!” Van exclaims, banging her head so her sunglasses drop back down over her eyes. “Did you guys figure out where the fuck we are?”
“Nat gamed it out,” Tai says, grabbing the stack of maps off of the car. “Trade you.”
Van passes the snack bag to Tai, taking the maps in return; she gives them a once over before looking up with a grin. “Good shit, Natty, I knew all those times we used to sneak into the Boy Scout meetings would pay off. Oh, here—” Van pats her jeans pocket, producing a blue cardboard carton from it, tossing it to Natalie. “A-plus, padawan.”
Nat catches the flying pack of cigarettes easily. Peels the cellophane off the box, cracks the seal, and uses her teeth to pull a fresh cig out so she can light it with her other empty hand. While she performs this familiar and intimate ritual, Van and Tai split up the snacks in the bag. Peanut M&Ms for Taissa, Combos for Van. The keys to Van’s truck, which Tai had clipped to her belt loop for safekeeping, are coyly manhandled back to their owner as everyone climbs into their respective seats.
“Alright kids, buckle up,” Van says as she jerks the key in the Tacoma’s ignition. “Daddy’s about to break a lot of speeding laws.”
The engine roars to life, and they careen out of the parking lot. Natalie keeps her headphones off— just long enough to make sure that Tai is following her notes on the map correctly— but once they make it on the freeway Nat slips them back on, replacing Sonic Youth with Bikini Kill. It’s the perfect soundtrack to drown out the rumbling of the truck as they whiz past half of New Jersey, Taissa death-gripping the dashboard the whole way down.
They miss the off-ramp into town twice. They only manage to make it to town before dark because Van drives like she’s Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder .
Natalie is kinda surprised by how small the town is, all things considered. She hadn’t expected much, knew it was a beach town, but driving through the side streets at sunset gives the entire town a claustrophobic feeling. Rows upon rows of slatted beach shacks, blue condos, and beveled townhouses. There’s a little downtown area with some shops— tourist traps and candle makers, that kind of bullshit— and then there's the mighty boardwalk, which extends what looks like halfway out into the ocean and is still hopping with an evening crowd even though summer has only just begun.
Maybe it’s the ocean itself that seems to dwarf the town. They’re surrounded on all sides by it, and when Nat looks out the window to her right as they pull through, she’s struck by this insane awe she’s never felt before. Living in Wiskayok, growing up with the same people your entire life, everything seems like all there is. The liquor store on the corner and your shitty high school drama and the things people say about you once that follow you for the rest of your life is all there is— and everything seems so big — but looking out at the ocean, Nat realizes that that’s not true. She sees that endless stretch of water, curving out in all directions, and thinks, no, that’s fucking big . Everything else is just… sand.
Ocean City, New Jersey is not a place Nat would ever imagine to be caught dead in, maybe a week ago. Now, she wants to peel back its layers for all it’s worth.
“Is it just me, or is this place like… smaller than Wiskayok?” Van asks, seemingly experiencing the same thought process as Nat in this moment.
“It’s quaint.” Tai suddenly slaps Van on the shoulder. “Oh, turn left up here Van, that's the house.”
They turn down a street into a nauseatingly cheerful cul-de-sac. Right on the corner where they turn, Tai guides Van into a concrete driveway that leads up to a two-story duplex, the blinds and shutters drawn. The walls are the kind of eggshell off-white that all suburban houses are, with an oaky walk up and what looks like a back patio in matching, salt-weathered wood.
Van lets out a low whistle. “Everyone say thank you, Uncle Turner.”
“Thanks, Uncle Turner,” Nat drawls, echoing.
Tai rolls her eyes. “We haven’t even seen the inside yet.”
Nat leans forward between both of them, all three staring up at this house, framed by the orange sunset, in wonder. “Can’t be any worse inside than some of the places Van and I have had to sleep in.”
“True that,” Van says, lifting up a fist for Nat to bump. “Can we unpack? I need to get out of this truck before my legs fall off.”
They all stumble out awkwardly, taking a moment to stretch like listless cats, knees bent, elbows popped— a decompression of the past couple of hours spent trapped in a vehicle. Nat pulls out the pack of American Spirits Van got for her and lights one up, taking two deep puffs before exhaling out a lungful of smoke. It helps to soothe the soreness in her ankles and thighs, and her body relaxes. She reaches into the truck bed and grabs her things, slinging her bag over one shoulder and balancing her tape deck on the other. It isn’t difficult for her to notice that Van and Tai have brought about twice the baggage that she has.
They all lank up the stairs. Taissa fumbles with her coat pocket before pulling out a small envelope and retrieving a keyring from inside it. While Van tries to balance the amalgamation of their combined luggage, Tai slides the key into the lock on the door, jiggles it around until the latch clicks, and pushes the door ajar.
“Home sweet home,” Tai sighs.
Natalie tries to get a good peek inside, but what with the door only halfway open and all the lights off it’s hard to get a look. It’s only after Tai and Van have made their way inside that Natalie, standing in the doorway, can survey her surroundings. There’s a small living room with a TV set and, to Natalie’s delight, what looks like an old record player, adjacent to a kitchen with a bar table and a little breakfast nook. The whole place has bookshelves and storage all over, but not a lot of things to decorate them— it looks half-lived, not dissimilar to some of the places Natalie grew up in.
“We’ve got the master bedroom,” Tai says, like Nat ever had a choice in the matter. “Yours is on the right.”
“Cool.” Nat looks around. Van has already made a beeline for the console table to unpack all her VHS tapes. “I’ll see you guys for dinner? I gotta unload.”
Tai nods, having already mentally exited the conversation. Nat gets it, she fucking does— it was a long ass car ride to get here, and now that they’re actually here, everyone just wants to get settled in.
As Tai disappears into her and Van’s room, Nat gives herself a minute to do a self-guided tour of the place. She scopes out the bathroom and tries to stop herself from doing a small dance when she sees the sheer size of the fucking shower. Then she circles back to the patio, eyeing up the old salt-rotted lawn chairs they’ll definitely need to find replacements for. She passes by Van again, who now looks to be in the final stages of sorting her tapes by genre and alphabetically.
The whole place is kinda… nice. Inviting. It’s probably three times as big as the run-down trailer Nat’s spent her formative years in, but it doesn’t have the big emptiness of Jackie’s house. There’s no wasted space in here. Everything is connected by shared walls, and nothing feels unnecessary or out of place.
Nat tells herself not to get too cozy. This isn’t her home. Home was a place she left behind eighty miles ago, and she’s never going back. Whatever this is, it’s a spot on a map, to her, and nothing more.
That feeling is cemented when she nudges the door to her room open with her foot to find bare walls, a plain dresser, and a box spring mattress on a metal frame.
She cackles when she sees the mattress. It’s just— she did end up taking the sheets with her, after going back and forth about it all night. Tore them off the top of her twin mattress on the floor as a final fuck you to her mom. Her mom, who didn’t even halfway care that she left. Her mom, who couldn’t be bothered to stand on the front porch and look disdainful the last time she may ever see her daughter. So Nat took the sheets right off her bed and shoved them into her gear bag in a hastily bundled ball.
Natalie took the sheets, and they won’t even fit on this bed, because this is a rich person’s house so of course the guest bedroom has a full size bed. Why the fuck would it be a twin?
Natalie cackles, and then she throws herself on the bare mattress and sighs.
They take Van’s beater down to the only grocery store in town, the truck rumbling the whole way like the engine is gonna fall out of its ass. Van cranks the windows down and Nat leans out, taking in the sharp coastal breeze.
She learns something about Van and Tai that morning— Taissa shops like she’s never cooked for herself, and Van shops like she’s never cooked, period. She lets Tai toss three cartons of eggs directly into the cart and watches as Van lifts about thirteen frozen TV dinners from the shelves before she takes over and starts looking for actual ingredients, like pasta. And vodka. Nat can’t find the fucking vodka.
“I can’t find the fucking vodka,” Nat calls out to Tai and Van, who are bickering about which percentage of milk tastes the best and definitely not paying attention to Nat. She rolls her eyes. “Hey, did you guys see any booze when we—”
“You aren’t going to find anything here,” a voice says, to her other side, and Nat damn near jumps.
She looks to the right and is greeted by the sight of a six-foot tall ethereal Amazon in cuffed khakis and a frumpy polo that reads Ocean City Boardwalk over her left breast. In the flickering, fluorescent light of the ACME, she’s the most beautiful person Nat has ever seen.
“Ocean City’s a dry town,” her supermarket angel says. She twirls a piece of mahogany hair around a finger, not really looking at Nat, kinda just glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. “You want to buy booze, you have to drive out to Somers Point.”
“Where the fuck is that?”
“It’s three miles up the 52.”
“ Three miles? That fucking blows,” Nat grumbles.
“You guys aren’t from around here, huh?”
Supermarket angel is looking at her now, seemingly deciding that Nat is more interesting than two-for-three-dollar boxes of Cheerios. Nat shies away, shrugs. “Nah. my friend there—” she jerks a thumb behind her, to where the aforementioned Taissa is now shoveling handfuls of yogurt cups into Van’s expecting arms, “— got a job at the mayor’s office, so we packed up from shitty Wiskayok to come out here.”
“That’s cool. Are you guys, like…” the girl trails off, her eyes glancing curiously between Nat and her two idiot friends in the dairy section.
“No, don’t be fucking weird.” Nat gags. “I mean Tai and Van are, probably, I don’t really know. I caught them making out in the janitor’s closet once in Junior year but I never brought it up.” Further down the aisle, an armful of yogurts tumble to the floor. Is she being weird about this? Nat suddenly feels sweaty. Why is she being so weird? Walk away, just walk away. Stop being here, be anywhere but here—
“Do you want to come to a party on Saturday?” Supermarket angel asks. Nat turns slowly to her like if she moves too fast she’ll scare her. “It’s just, there’s gonna be booze, and it seems like that's what you’re looking for, so—”
“Yeah,” Nat cuts her off. “No, yeah, that sounds sick. Where at?”
Slender fingers dip into a khaki pocket to produce a pink Sharpie, and the girl gestures to Nat’s arm. “May I?”
Nat nods, wordlessly thrusting her arm out. An address is scribbled quickly, just above her wrist. Supermarket angel smiles at her, quick and dangerous.
“See you Saturday?”
“Saturday.” Nat repeats, thumb drifting to the still-drying ink on her wrist. “Thanks for the invite.” She cocks her head towards the array of cereals in front of them. “You should get the Lucky Charms, by the way. The box has a word search on the back.”
“Good call. Lucky Charms are my favorite.” The girl reaches up, plucking the box from the shelves, tipping it against her forehead in a mock salute. “See you around.”
“Yeah, you too.” Supermarket angel wanders down the aisle and out of view. Unconsciously, Nat grabs a box of Lucky Charms and tosses it into the basket.
It’s chased immediately by a dozen fruit-flavored yogurts.
“Who was that?” Tai asks, craning her neck to catch a view of the stranger’s fading back.
Nat shrugs. “Some girl. She was cool, though— invited us to this party on Saturday.” She shows her wrist to Tai and Van. “Even gave us a hookup on booze, since apparently this shithole doesn’t sell.”
Taissa snaps her fingers. “I knew I totally forgot to tell you guys something.”
Tai, who has never forgotten anything, not an equation nor a grudge. “Yeah, thanks. You guys get everything you need?”
They all look down at their shared pile of groceries— forty eggs, twenty yogurts, a pile of frozen salisbury steaks and five different kinds of pasta with tomato sauce, with one box of Lucky Charms on top.
Tai says, “Yeah, we look good.”
“Great.” Nat palms for her wallet, remembers she’s broke as a joke, and then looks at the two chucklefucks beside her. “You guys are fronting for all these eggs, by the way.”
No alcohol, but plenty of cigarette cartons behind the counter— Nat throws down a crumpled up ten on the conveyor belt and grabs two packs to go, just to be safe.
Van and Tai realize they forgot to get orange juice and run off to grab some before the lady finishes bagging their groceries. Left alone with a gentle looking woman twice her age, Nat leans in and asks, “Hey, you guys don’t sell sheets here, do you?”
A confused look, and a shake of her head. “Yeah, I didn't think so.”