Heart Bones

The next morning Beyah goes onto her balcony to watch the sunrise and finds Samson waiting for her—he jumped from his balcony to hers. He prepares to leave, but she persuades him to walk downstairs.

Her father, standing in the kitchen, sees them, and they explain he did not spend the night. After Samson leaves, her father says he does not want boys spending the night. Baya says she has no intention of having a boyfriend because she is going to Pennsylvania in August, and she realizes she must tell her father about her scholarship. Beyah tells Brian that her mother was lying about the need for money because she did not know about the scholarship either. Beyah says, “I can guarantee whatever you sent her for tuition was never meant for me to begin with” (172). While Brian expresses pride, Beyah is bitter that Brian has not been part of her life until now.

After lunch, Beyah falls asleep in a lawn chair at the beach. She wakes to see Samson, who has fallen asleep with his head facing her, wearing sunglasses. As she studies him at length, he suddenly speaks to her and tells her he hasn’t been asleep at all. He has been watching her. She asks him questions about his past again, finally getting him to admit he attended boarding school in New York. Sara and Marcos bring their paddleboards in from the water and announce that the four will double-date for supper that evening. Sara tells Beyah she is going to help her with her makeup.

At a seafood restaurant, Beyah sits with Samson, Sara, and Marcos. They watch as Beyah tries shrimp. When she likes it, Samson orders them shrimp platters. A stranger approaches the table, a tall, very thin young man with tattoos on his arms. He addresses Samson as Shawn and asks Samson when he got out. Samson rises and walks the man away. This causes Sara to ask probing questions when Samson returns. She says, “I’m trying to set my stepsister up with him, I think we deserve to know if he’s some kind of criminal” (185). Samson says he went to a New York boarding school with the man. Beyah quickly changes the subject. Soon the intrusion is forgotten, and Samson squeezes Beyah’s hand to thank her.

That night, the four sit around the fire at the beach. Beyah is annoyed when Beau sits beside her. As they talk, Cadence joins, and she flirts with Samson. He walks away from the fire with her, causing Beyah to feel jealous. She turns away so as not to watch; then Marcos tells her that Cadence slapped Samson, who is walking back toward them. Beau asks why Samson did not go with Cadence, and he expresses his interest in being with Beyah. Beyah tells him that will not happen, which Beau ignores. Samson tells Beau to leave. Beau rises and punches Samson. Samson rises but does not strike Beau. Marcos comes between them, telling Beau to leave.

Beyah takes Samson to his house to find a bandage for the cut on his face. In his kitchen, she wipes the blood from his mouth and asks him who the stranger was at supper. Samson refuses to tell her, saying that he has done wrong things and that if Beyah knew what they were, she might not want to be around him. He wants their relationship to endure through the summer. Because he promised not to be forward with her, Samson waits for her to kiss him, which she does. Samson expresses concern that they will fall for each other and not want to be separated at the end of the summer. Beyah walks home and, having promised Sara she would say if she and Samson kissed, interrupts Marcos and Sara as they are kissing in Sara’s bedroom to give her a high five, to which Sara says, “Hell yes” (200).

Beyah and Samson develop a routine: He climbs to her balcony and they watch the sunrise. Beyah is particularly happy, thinking, “I’m overdosing on good things, which only means I’ll eventually have to go through withdrawal when summer ends” (201). One morning, she feeds him grapes as they discuss taking a golf cart to a secluded beach. As they drive along, with P. J. in the cart, Samson describes the way Hurricane Ike destroyed the houses along this area of the beach. They park in a secluded place and walk into the water. They embrace and talk about what makes them happy as opposed to what most people think brings happiness. As they grow more intimate, they hear a truck approach and decide it is time to ride the golf cart home. When they do not find P. J., they discover him among the dunes, digging something up. They realize it is a human skeleton. Samson becomes quite upset, saying these bones belong to Rake, the sailor who was lost in Hurricane Ike. He persuades Beyah to take the dog and golf cart home so that he can deal with the skeleton, which he says would not be treated with respect by the authorities. Beyah drives the cart home alone with the dog.

Beyah sits with Marcos and Sara at the beach four hours later when a filthy, weary Samson returns. Sara had asked where Samson was and Beyah had simply said he was helping someone. As he passes, Samson motions for Beyah to follow. She follows a moment later and finds him in the exterior shower room of his beach house. She enters the shower with him and helps him to wash off the dirt and sand. He apologizes for putting her in the position of keeping one of his secrets. She tells him that she is accustomed to it, thinking, “It’s not that hard for me to keep secrets. I’m a pro at it” (220). Beyah asks if Samson is certain that the body was Rake, and Samson confirms that it was. She tells him she senses there is much more to the story about Rake than Samson has revealed and makes him promise that on August 2 he will reveal it to her, just as he has promised to reveal everything else. Standing beneath the water in the shower, Samson becomes aroused, and Beyah brings him to climax.

On July 4, the four friends have supper with Marcos’s family, then climb to Marjorie’s roof to watch the fireworks over Galveston Bay. As they watch, Samson remarks that he has never seen Darya look so beautiful, and he explains that Darya is his name for the ocean. This makes Beyah realize it was not a girl but rather the ocean that broke his heart. She puts this on the list of questions that he must answer for her on August 2. She asks how many girls he has been with, and he says that she is the only girl he really cares about. Samson says, “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who would probably like me more if I were poor” (230).

Beyah blames her new birth-control pills for becoming more emotional each day. She begins to miss her mother and to enjoy her father.

As she waits for Samson to come home in the late afternoon, she sees three young men setting up a volleyball net on the beach. She joins them as a fourth player, making certain to take the least athletic boy as her teammate. She surprises them with her athletic ability, and Beyah realizes that she misses volleyball. As the game proceeds, Samson appears with a chair and sits down to watch. Beyah is astounded when he shouts encouragement. She thinks, “He came out here to cheer for me” (235). This persuades her to throw herself into the game, which she wins.

For the first time, she allows Samson to give her an actual hug. He carries her back to his shower room and helps her to wash the sand away. Holding her from behind, he uses his hands to bring her to climax. Impulsively, they decide to get tattoos.

Because he cannot find his driver’s license, Samson borrows the license of a friend. Brian tries to persuade Beyah to think for some time about getting a permanent tattoo. She responds, “Trust me, Dad. I’ll have much bigger regrets in life than a tattoo” (244).

The tattoo artist accepts the fake driver’s license without a word. Beyah chooses a tattoo for Samson that is a depiction of Hurricane Ike on a radar screen. He does not look at it until the artist is finished. For Beyah, Samson chooses a tattoo of a pinwheel, symbolizing changing bad fortune to good luck. When at last he sees his tattoo in the mirror at the little bathroom of the tattoo parlor, Samson picks up Beyah and kisses her powerfully.

Beyah and Samson decide the day has come for them to make love. Beyah tries to persuade Brian to accept this at the dinner table. Alana supports Beyah, pointing out that Sara and Marcos also spend the night together. Beyah tells her father, “I was more or less telling you I’m staying at Samson’s house tonight as a courtesy because this is your house and I’m trying to be respectful. But it would make this a lot easier if you would just say okay” (251). Brian reluctantly accepts this inevitability.

Beyah takes her backpack and promises to tell Sara everything that happens. Beyah finds Samson waiting for her, and sitting on Samson’s bed, the two converse about whether it is fair for Samson to make love to Beyah when he knows so much about her while so much about him is still concealed. They discuss how they will feel at the end of the summer when they have to go their separate ways. They acknowledge they have acquired deep feelings, “heart bones,” for one another. Samson admits that he is not going into the Air Force, and he says there are things he must keep from her. For Beyah, the feeling is completely different than it was with Dakota, because she feels respected and loved.