PART ONE
Chapter One
Katie
Sometimes I think I remember my mom, but most of the time I’m not sure if what I remember is an actual memory or just something my mind conjured up from one of the few stories I’ve been told about her.
I only have one picture that she’s in, and it’s far from recent. She and her older sister are sitting on one of the tabletops at Zoe’s Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that is still open today. My mom’s blond locks tumble down in light waves from her ponytail, just brushing her shoulders. In her hand is a melting vanilla ice cream cone topped with multi-colored sprinkles and chocolate syrup. A little dab of the ice cream is on her freckled nose. She is laughing and facing the camera, but her eyes look at her sister. I like to think that it’s a look of admiration, but I suppose it could be amusement. My aunt Georgia, her sister, is five years older and around fifteen in the photo. She has dark, wavy red hair that falls past her shoulders. In her left hand, she’s holding a chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone. She’s laughing too, but unlike my mom’s, her eyes rest on the camera. They are both wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops – a testament to the Florida weather they grew up in.
I used to spend hours staring that picture, as though by looking at her when she was a ten year old I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me. By age seven, I could recite every single detail of it.
The edges are worn now, from spending too much time in my hands. A corner of the picture is burnt, from when I was six and Georgia realized my mom wasn’t coming back, so she tried to burn all of the photos we had of her. Despite Georgia's efforts, she didn't destroy all the photos - the one I stole is still hidden in the second drawer of my nightstand, beneath my eighth grade yearbook, my cell phone charger, a funny shaped piece of driftwood I found washed up on the beach. After ten years, Georgia has still not found it.
My mom and aunt look so alike in that picture. They have the same prominent cheekbones and tiny noses, perfect eyebrows and lips that are neither too thin nor too large. They even have the same perfect, straight white teeth.
The similarities that are apparent on the outside of them apparently did not carry through to the inside. I have been told my mom was the social butterfly all throughout her school years, constantly having a flock of friends behind her. I look a lot like my mom, my aunt says. I have her very blonde hair, along with the freckles. I share the facial structure with both of them. Truly though, I’m just thankful it’s only her looks I got and not her notoriously wild, spunky demeanor.
Georgia told me that my mom was a freshman college student studying for a degree in law when she got pregnant with me. When her boyfriend found out she was pregnant, he broke up with her. About a week later, he transferred to another college out of state and ran off with his tail between his legs. All I know about him includes that bit of info, as well as the other useless facts that he was a charmer, had green eyes, was left handed, played football, couldn’t stand Italian food, and was allergic to clams, all of which Georgia gathered from the one time she met him.
When my mom finally gave birth to me on August 23, at 4:43 p.m., her parents had convinced her that she needed to stay in school, but I would be too much of a hassle. I was a burden to her high-powered life and career, so she didn’t want me. Georgia had talked her out of having an abortion, and had offered to raise me instead, unable to have kids herself. As soon as I was out of the hospital after I was born, my mom left me with Georgia in Epsilon, Florida. She told my aunt she would visit any time she could, call whenever she got a chance, and come get me when she settled down.
Well, my birthday is in two days and as of then, I will have been in Epsilon for sixteen years. Until I was three, she visited often. Georgia tells me we appeared to have so close a bond she felt like she was intruding on something whenever she was in the room. I don’t know if that’s true or if she made it up to appease me. After a while, those visits ceased, and she essentially dropped off the face of the earth.
I know she is still there, because once a month, Georgia gets an envelope in the mail filled with money without a return address. But always there is a note inside, and every time it says the same thing: ‘Georgia – for things for Katie. – Rebecca.’ That’s it, only it, and always it. A long time ago, I stopped trying to find hidden meaning in the messages. I used to think that maybe she was a hostage and she was leaving clues to where she was for us somehow for us to find her, but I gave up on that.
I figure if she really cared about what I needed at all, even the slightest bit, she would contact me somehow. She’s missed all those precious birthdays and Christmases, and my first words, my first day of school, and, soon, me getting my driver’s license. She doesn’t really care about me. And that money? It’s just a weak form of child support. I think that if she didn’t legally have to send it, it would never show up.
Georgia always gives that money Mom sends to her to me instead. I never buy anything with it. To me, spending it would be like relying on her, needing her – which is something I’ve taught myself not to do.
Actually, once I had to help buy myself a new pair of flippers for scuba diving, but that wasn’t optional, and the cost was so high to get good ones that I chipped in to split the cost with Georgia, so it doesn’t really count. I left them on the boat deck before a big storm and in the gale-force winds, they blew into the ocean and have been lost at sea ever since.
Scuba diving is my thing. Like how some people run, or play baseball, or paint, mine is scuba diving. The feeling I get is incredible, incomprehensible, indescribable. The ocean is so huge; I feel just like one cloud in the sky, one little grain of sand on the beach. Tiny, but still important.
I’m part of a squad of five divers. We’re all going to be high school sophomores, and we’re lead by Joe Hendrickson, who is apparently supposed to be in charge of us but more often than not it feels like we’re in charge of him.
It’s our – me, Colette, Brenna, Pablo, and Kylar – job to check up on Kohana Reef, which is about a mile or two off the northwestern coast of Cielorojo Key. Cielorojo, and, specifically, Epsilon, its biggest and only city – which isn’t saying much since there’s less than a hundred people on the whole island – used to be a super vacation spot for tourists, before consumerist places like Miami started popping up all over the place, offering resorts that don’t let you see Florida for what it really is.
Back when Epsilon was thriving, scuba diving was offered to the public at Kohana. That was before people started trying to smuggle chunks of coral out of the reef to take home as souvenirs. Not long after that became a common act, Kohana Reef nearly died out because of bleaching, something that keeps the coral from getting food to survive, and then it closed to people altogether.
Now, about twenty years after the bleaching episode, the reef has nearly returned to its full glory. This doesn’t matter though, because it won’t ever be open for the public to visit again. When the bleaching started, the state of Florida made Kohana its own little reservation. People, other than us, because it’s our job to dive weekly and report on the condition of the coral, are not allowed within a half of a mile radius of it. The fishing charters, some of the only businesses left here in Epsilon, aren’t too happy about this, because I guess it’d be a shorter distance, and therefore less gas and money spent, if they’d just be allowed to go through the reef to where they fish. But rules are rules, and crossing into the preserve would easily lead to prosecution.
We dive Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It’s not like the reef changes a whole lot from day to day but it’s just so we have more data from a short time span if something happened in the long run. I guess then we’d be able to tell when something started, if it ever did.
Every Sunday after diving Joe treats all of us to ice cream at Zoe’s, which is right between the church (its real name is something long and complicated, so everyone just calls it ‘the church,’ since it’s the only church on Cielorojo anyway.) and the Seven-Eleven. The sign in front of Zoe’s: ‘Best Ice Cream on Cielorojo!’ It’s from years ago, when Zoe’s used to not be the only ice cream place here. Now it’s kind of a joke – of course it’s the best; it’s the only. I think that even if there were a thousand other ice cream parlors, Zoe’s would still be the best. Seriously, where else can you get lime soft serve?
I hate the fact that my mom was here. I love Zoe’s, but the fact that Mom sat on one of their picnic tables pollutes it all for me. Because of that picture I have, and Georgia’s rare stories, I know that she and her sister visited Zoe’s frequently as kids. Going to Zoe’s is the closest I’ve gotten to her presence in thirteen years. My conscience tells me to go on with my life, to not hang around thinking about my mother. I listen; if I never went to Zoe’s just because my mom went there, what kind of person would I be? I can’t let her mistakes overshadow the rest of my life.
One thing I try to follow her example of: ignorance. If she can pretend I don’t exist, I should be able to pretend she doesn’t exist either.
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So this is the entire exposition part of chapter one! After this, there's the little stars, and it goes on to the beginning of the actual story.
I had this uploaded before and it got rave reviews, but I have since edited it MORE (I have seriously lost count of how many times I've done that - LOL!). So I'm looking for painfully honest critiques on this new version. Thanks in advance, guys!
I guess you can sort of ignore my above rant 