Heat and Teeth

The skin on my neck felt hot and sticky. The smell of teen body odor and years of lingering lunches all melded together to create one giant wall of public high school funk. The overload hit me hard, and I blacked out for a second in the school hallway.

People think southern California can’t get hot because it’s close to the ocean, but it can. We’re not all ocean breezeway adjacent, so when the Santa Ana winds come in, and you’re surrounded by asphalt, concrete and poverty, it gets hot. And it’s even hotter in overcrowded, underfunded city schools that need better ventilation, or air conditioning, or both. So yeah, my vision blurred for a second until Tyler Decker shoved me aside to protect his precious locker and shouted, “Bruh! Dude, watch it!”

Now, it could have been just “teen talk,” or it could have been that Tyler’s eyes were bloodshot and his flannel reeked of weed, but after five-plus years locked in alphabetical locker lineup with this guy, I didn’t think it was either of those things. I wanted to shout at him—Rylie. My name is Rylie, you idiot. I was right here. I’d always been right here. But I didn’t yell because Tyler Decker probably didn’t even know I was a girl—a girl he had grown up with, had seen multiple times a day, almost every day since junior fucking high. I didn’t think Tyler Decker could have come up with my name, not even with a cheat sheet in front of him and a gun to his oversized head.

But I wasn’t surprised. This was what neglect looked like. So I just stayed where his violent hands had left me and rested my cheek against the cool steel of the lockers and watched him walk away. People saw abuse; bruises drew the eye. Neglect blended into the woodwork—or the locker face, as the case may have be.

But morning was only the warm up-both for the hurt and for the rising heat. In my midafternoon math class, the heat pressed down on me like a weight; I had to concentrate on not throwing up. Poverty didn’t care that it was hot. I didn’t have the luxury of cooler clothing to wear for days that burned. I had one pair of jeans, a few t-shirts, and dirty, old converse. Everyday, all year, no matter what. That was my entire wardrobe.

The droning box fan in Ms. Overdean’s portable classroom did nothing to help sweltering temperatures or the weight pressing on my chest. At one point, I felt a large droplet of sweat run down my chest; I looked around-sure others had seen the sweat that had just rolled between my breasts, had seen my embarrassment, seen my poverty, seen the poor white-girl bra showing under my clothes. But of course, I was wrong. No one sees you Rylie, remember? You’re invisible. Neglect is invisible. It doesn’t matter if you’re here or not, so why be here and suffer? I had already been fed lunch that day. That was the real reason I came to school, so my stomach would stay quiet, at least for a while.

I couldn’t hold myself together any longer. I knew I needed to go. I needed the one place that always noticed me, and because I was a ghost among the living at school and at home, I grabbed my backpack and slipped, unnoticed, out of the classroom. I usually tried to make it through the entire school day because after the last period, I was allowed to stop by the counselor’s office and pick up a paper grocery bag for the backpack program. It had cheap food packed in it so I could have a can of Spaghetti for dinner and a granola bar for breakfast. It was a part of the food bank outreach in the San Jacinto Valley for the poorest of the poor, but I just couldn’t make it. I crashed through the stubborn school doors and ran a few blocks, just to get close enough so I could hear the surf crash to shore. Then, even though I was still a good mile away, I could start to relax. All I needed was that faint breath of breeze on my sweaty skin.

The beach was still there, lovely, and of course deserted. The yellow warning signs looked cheerful clinging to the chain-link fence. Their large zip ties stuck up at all angles like a failed spike haircut. Why did shark attacks in the bay make people shun the adjacent sand as well? Cowards. I never understood it. Sharks were better than humans; they noticed everyone. If there was a shark in my classroom, I could not have remained invisible. Sharks noticed me, I didn’t have to fight to get their attention, so I came every day to feel noticed.

I stepped into the dark sand and picked up my dad’s hand-me-down surfboard—no lock needed—and brushed the sand away. This was the only piece of him I ever wanted. The surf was only okay, but I wasn’t actually there to surf. I didn’t even know how. My dad had never bothered to teach me.

My faded black Converse sank into the sea foam—not exactly quality gear, but it was all I had. All I’d ever had, and I plunged forward into the waves. My jeans were so heavy as they soaked in the cold sea water of the Pacific, but I kept paddling out. I loved the feeling, loved feeling pulled downward toward the abyss, heavy, weighted, like it matched the weight in my chest. The salt water lapped against my faded surfboard and ticked my thighs hanging off the sides. The ocean water cooled me, clung to me, and I could finally breathe. A thousand crystals shimmered like stars across the water’s surface. My long hair was stiff, crusty with salt, and it pressed stiffly against my neck. The waters of Coleta Beach were beautiful, perfect.

And then, I felt it, what I had come for. I wasn’t alone. This was the only place I wasn’t alone. My friend was here. I didn’t turn around; I didn’t need to. I knew he was here for me. A great white glided gently along in the shadow of my small wake. Noiselessly stalking, waiting, investigating. But he had noticed me; that was what counted. It was all up to him. He was in control. It was his watery playground—not my dad’s, not Tyler’s, not the teachers who nodded past me in the hallways. The shark was king here, the salt waters’ apex predator. I was small and patient, and everyday he noticed I was here, and I was glad. I wanted to be with him.

The sides of the old surfboard were slippery in my hands. I dangled my legs off the sides. Russian Roulette with a great white. I really hoped he would take me along today. I wanted someone to want me for keeps. I looked out over the ocean and noticed movement on the shore. Hands waving, voices shouting—people. My heart skipped. No one ever noticed me, so I looked around and behind myself. But they kept waving and yelling. They couldn’t possibly be waving at me. Were they? What, just because I was out here, swimming on a closed beach, with a shark? If my dad didn’t care, neither should they. If Tyler never learned my name, neither should they.

I looked away from them. Humans only disappointed me, only hurt me. I focused back on the ocean, and tried to track the surface of the waves for my shark. I waited patiently. Waited for him to decide about me. Would he come from the depths underneath? Would he strike fast and from behind? Would he follow along in my wake for a while, or would he just silently slip away? With that thought I panicked and tried to breathe through the hurt. The skin on my neck felt hot and sticky.