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 table tops at Zoe’s Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that is still open downtown today. My mom has her blond locks up in a ponytail and in her hand is a vanilla ice cream cone topped with 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 goes down past her shoulders. In her left hand, she’s holding a chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone. She’s laughing too but looking at 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, as is the result of spending too much time in my hands. A corner of it 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 and anything else related to her at all. She didn’t succeed in destroying this one, which I stole, and after ten years Georgia still doesn’t know I have.
They look so alike, in that picture. 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 am 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.
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 story, as well as the fact 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 told me and that she 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. 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, 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. It gives you an incredible feeling. The ocean is so huge; you feel just like, one cloud in the sky, one little grain of sand on the beach. Tiny, but important to the whole.
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 only a hundred or so people – 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 is 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.
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^^ So that's what I have so far. Actually, there's 78 pages typed, but this is the only part I've gone through and edited to make it satisfactory. Anyway, this is just a little bit of exposition in the beginning. Part Two of Chapter One coming soon!
Lots of constructive criticism wanted!! Also, I'm not quite sure what to do with paragraphs 2 and 14 - I really don't like them. Help? 
Thanks so much! ^^
