keep playing, though,” Max said. Cleo just smiled and shook her head.
They went to retrieve Martha from the slot machines, and she printed out her slot ticket and went to get the rest of her money. “I lost forty dollars,” she said on the way home. “But I know if I could’ve kept playing, I would have won big.”
That night, as Claire tried to fall asleep, she heard the sounds of the casino in her head—cards being flipped, people cheering or groaning, and the bing of the slots as they rolled around and around.
SATURDAY AT THE SHORE WAS cloudy and cool, but Claire and Martha went down to the beach anyway, bundled up in sweatshirts and pants. They were leaving the next day, so they figured they would try to get as much out of the end of their trip as they could. They sat on beach chairs and watched the wind chop up the water. A storm was coming in, and the dark clouds were getting closer.
Both of the girls held books in their laps, but neither of them made a move to open them. Martha took in a deep breath and let out an audible sigh, which Claire knew was a sign that she wanted to say something.
“What?” Claire asked her.
Martha shook her head and sighed again. “It’s just watching the ocean like this, right before a storm, it makes me think of the tsunami in Thailand, and how all of those people were just minding their own business, living their lives, and the ocean just swallowed them.”
“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Claire asked. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she still was. Claire had been thinking about how she still had to tell Weezy everything, and how maybe it was a good idea to go back to New York first and do it over the phone, because then she could just hang up right after and be done with it. Yes, that made more sense. And so she was wondering what she was thinking before, planning to tell Weezy in person, and Martha was thinking about a natural disaster that had happened six years earlier. She wasn’t sure whether she should be annoyed at Martha or ashamed of herself for thinking only about her problems.
“I think our brains work differently,” Claire finally said.
“Yeah,” Martha said. “I think they do.”
The two of them sat there for another hour, books on their laps, watching the storm crawl closer and closer, witnessing the waves getting bigger and angrier, until they felt drops hit their faces and heads, and were forced to pick up their chairs and walk back to the house in the rain.
WHEN CLAIRE OPENED THE DOOR to her apartment, she was hit with a wall of hot air. This was always how it was when she got back from a trip; the air seemed unbreathable, like no one would ever be able to survive living here. She saw the rent envelope slipped under her door and her stomach twisted. She moved it aside with her foot, dragged her suitcase inside, and went to sit on the couch.
All the years that she’d lived in New York, Claire always felt giddy when she returned after a trip. It was nice to get away, to get out of the crowded city, but she always had the sense that when she got back, she was where she belonged. But now, looking around at the dusty old apartment that she couldn’t afford, she didn’t feel that. She just felt dread. She didn’t belong here anymore, in this apartment. And it didn’t even matter if she did, because she was going to be kicked out soon anyway.
And so, she took out her cell phone and called Weezy, who was still at the shore. There was no time like the present, especially if you were totally out of options.
CHAPTER 6
When you live in a house your whole life, you know all of its noises. You know that two short buzzes is the end of the dryer cycle, that one short buzz is the back doorbell. You know that when the furnace kicks up, it starts with a clank, waits about thirty seconds, and then you hear the air coming out of the vents. You know every corner and twist in the house, that it takes sixteen steps to get up the stairs, three large leaps to get down the hall. You could find your way around the whole place blindfolded if you had