Heart Bones

Beyah arrives in Houston, Texas, late the next afternoon. Her father, Brian Grim, waits for her. When she graduated high school two weeks earlier, he communicated that he could not attend graduation because he had broken his leg, which Beyah now realizes was clearly a lie.

Beyah lies to Brian and tells him that she has three red suitcases that the airline has lost, because she does not want him to know that everything she has of importance is in her backpack. He informs her that he is married now to a woman named Alana, who has a daughter, Sara, a year older than Beyah, who is at their beach house after completing her first year of college. When her father asks how her mother is, Beyah says, “She’s better than she’s been in a long time” (27).

Riding with her father in his Jaguar, Beyah wakes as they pull onto a ferry headed to Bolivar Peninsula on the south Texas coast. She realizes her father is now a person with money, not only because of his job as an investor but also because he married a successful dentist. Beyah steps out of the car. She looks at and smells the ocean for the first time. She thinks, “If clear had a smell, this would be it” (31).

Standing by herself, Beyah sees a partial loaf of bread people used to feed seagulls. She takes a single slice and slowly eats it. She realizes someone on the upper deck with a camera has been taking her picture. Though he is a very attractive, interesting-looking young man, Beyah suspects he has bad intentions. Beyah heads to the restroom to straighten herself up. When she comes out, she finds the “Camera Guy” standing before her. He holds out his hand to offer her money. Instead, she grabs the camera and removes the memory card. Jostled, the young man drops the camera, which comes apart. His friend, whom he calls Marcos, asks what’s happening, and the Camera Guy apologizes as he tries to reassemble the camera. Alone again, the cameraman asks for the memory card back, which Beyah refuses. Conversing with her father afterward, Beyah realizes that the Camera Guy’s friend, Marcos, is Sara’s boyfriend.

Arriving at her father’s beach house, built up on stilts, she meets her stepmother, Alana, and Beyah describes her, saying, “She’s exactly how I pictured her. Bright, like a popsicle, with white teeth and pink manicured nails and blonde hair that looks expensively maintained” (43). Alana summons the equally bubbly Sara from her bedroom upstairs, and she seems happy to see Beyah.

Sara takes Beyah up to her new, large bedroom. It has the best view of the ocean, and Sara points out that Samson’s house is next door. Beyah realizes Samson is actually Camera Guy, and they watch him kissing another girl in his house. Sara goes to her closet and pulls out clothes for Beyah to wear until her luggage arrives.

Left alone to get ready for supper, Beyah stands in the window and cries, and then realizes that Samson sees her. Beyah frets because in the two times he’s seen her, she was stealing a piece of bread and crying like a child.

Beyah describes her first kiss, which came unwanted from one of her mother’s lovers. She encountered him when she was making herself breakfast. He forced a kiss on her, and she hit him in the head with a plate of eggs to defend herself. Since then, she detests the taste of eggs, which she smells Alana cooking. Sara comes to get her, saying Marcos and Samson are coming for a Sunday night “baptismal supper.” She explains, “It’s our way of celebrating the end of the influx of renters. We eat together and wash away the weekenders” (55). When she comes down the stairs Beyah sees Marcos and Samson, who ignores her until they’re introduced. Beyah finds it difficult to eat. She notices that Sara only takes a bite when Beyah takes a bite.

As they talk, Brian produces several hundred-dollar bills and gives them to Beyah to buy clothes. Sara wants to take her to a nice store in Houston, but Beyah insists Walmart will be just fine. The four young people decide to go to Walmart, which means taking the ferry. Once on the ferry, Beyah and Samson agree they are not interested in hooking up, despite Sara’s matchmaking efforts.

At Walmart, the guys leave Sara and Beyah to shop on their own. Beyah explains that she needs all the necessities. She never had enough money to pay for everything she needed when she lived in Kentucky. Sara asks if she didn’t get child support from Brian. Beyah explains that her mother was an addict and skimmed the child support for herself.

As they shop for clothes, Sara says, “I’d kill to have a body like yours” (67). This bothers Beyah, who has spent her entire life being hungry. She puts her necessities in the shopping cart, then leads Sara to the grocery section. They pick up chocolate donuts and cartons of chocolate milk, and they sit on the floor and eat. This is a new, joyous experience for Sara. Marcos and Samson are surprised to see them sitting on the floor, laughing.

Riding home, Samson takes Beyah’s new cell phone and sets it up for her. She asks why he was taking pictures of her on the ferry. He replies it was because she looked like she had never seen the ocean. She tells him she came from Kentucky, though he refuses to tell her where he is from.

Once alone on the deck of the ferry, she calls her friend Natalie to tell her where she is. In describing Sara, Beyah says she thinks Sara might be a “locker room girl” (78), a term for girls who act nice to people’s faces but are mean behind their backs. Samson overhears this and asks what a locker-room girl is. When Beyah explains, Samson tells her that Sara gave up her bedroom so that Beyah could have it during the summer. Beyah thinks, “I have never made an ass of myself in front of one person so much in my life, and I’ve only known him for half a day” (78).

Back home, Beyah puts away her purchases and comes downstairs for a snack. Her father, on his laptop in the kitchen, apologizes for not coming to her graduation. He says he wasn’t trying to avoid her but that he felt she did not want to see him.

Sara arrives and tells Beyah they are going to the beach. There she finds Marcos and Samson sitting around a fire. Another couple, Beau and Cadence, are in the water. Cadence is the girl Samson had kissed earlier. Sara and Marcos go into the water, leaving Samson and Beyah to talk by the fire. They discuss the distinction between the rich and poor, and Beyah describes the deprivation of her childhood, telling Samson he would not understand because he’s rich.

Cadence and Beau introduce themselves to Beyah, who takes an immediate dislike to both. Sara drags Beyah from Beau toward their house. As Beyah goes upstairs, she is surprised and pleased to hear Sara say, “I’m glad you’re here, Beyah” (89).

Beyah wakes to the sound of a strange noise just before six a.m. She realizes Samson set the alarm on her new cell phone so she could see the sunrise over the ocean. From her balcony, she sees Samson on his balcony, drinking coffee, looking at her. She wonders, “Maybe he actually appreciates the sunrise. Is he one of the few who doesn’t take this view for granted?” (93)

For the next three days, Beyah pretends she isn’t feeling well so that she can stay in her bedroom and watch TV. She realizes she has to get out or her father might send her to a doctor. Sara comes into her bedroom, and they talk about how Beyah enjoys the island.

Beyah walks on the beach after lunch. She sees two young men using a hamburger to taunt a hungry dog. When they cover the dog’s eyes, Beyah rips off the blindfold and takes the hamburger from them. She follows the dog and feeds it the burger, after which the dog follows her home. She gives it more food.

Someone calls her name from the roof of a house catty-corner to hers. She sees Samson on the roof fixing shingles. He tells her to climb up. When she says she is afraid of heights, he replies, “You aren’t scared of anything, get up here” (104). The house is taller than all the surrounding houses. It has a spiral staircase that allows a 360-degree view. From atop the roof, the bay is beautiful. Beyah watches Samson fixing shingles on the roof, struck by how good-looking he is. She asks him questions about his life, which he does not answer. He tells her about a sailor named Rake who used to sail the Texas coast, write poetry, and give it to random people he met. The sailor and his boat were lost in Hurricane Ike, though no one went to search for them. Samson made a necklace for himself out of a fragment of Rake’s boat. Descending from the rooftop, Beyah meets Marjorie, the owner of the house, who gives her a sack of pecans that she has cracked and tells her she should name her new dog Pepper Jack Cheese.

Beyah reflects on the few friends she had growing up. She went from a small elementary school where no one cared about money to larger middle and high schools where financial status made all the difference. Beyah spent six years feeling completely isolated. She thinks of this as she sits around a beach campfire where she knows only Sara and Marcos.

Beyah goes for a walk with her dog and sees a half-finished sandcastle that she decides to finish. She thinks to herself, “Life is weird. One day you’re staring at your dead mother and a few days later you’re building a sandcastle on the beach by yourself in the dark with a dog named after a cheese” (119).

Samson appears and persuades her to walk into the ocean for the first time. They talk about how they are really alike. Both are damaged and have secrets they are not willing to share. Though more talkative, Samson does not fully answer her questions. As they talk in the water, they progressively get closer to one another, which excites Beyah. She decides she must learn about all the different layers of Samson. She thinks, “We watch each other for a moment and it’s almost like looking into a broken mirror” (130).

As they are about to kiss, a jellyfish stings Beyah. Samson carries her to the outside shower at Sara’s house, where there is vinegar to spray on the burn. She cries out for him to stop. Suddenly Samson flies backward out of the shower. Beyah sees her father punching Samson and shouting at him that Beyah told him to stop. With Sara’s help, they calm her father enough to hear that Samson was trying to help her with a burn and was not being sexual.