How It Feels To Float

It is 3:00am, and Biz cannot sleep. She thinks about different kinds of hearts—candy hearts, hearts carved in trees, her own heart—and the “rhythm inside us we don’t get to choose” (3). She is not alone: Her father, dead now nearly 10 years, sits at the edge of her bed and gently urges her to try to sleep.

The next morning, Biz heads to school. Now approaching the end of high school, Biz understands she needs to get serious about her education. She lives with her mother, a dental assistant, and her two younger stepsiblings, who are twin brothers. At school, she struggles with how, just days before, she kissed her longtime best friend, Grace, at her house after they swam in her backyard pool.

In school, Biz’s English teacher asks the class to write an essay on their alter ego, i.e., who they are inside. In her essay, which is fragmented and more like a poem, Biz dismisses the idea of having a “matterless self” (15) as something beyond her ability to imagine. At lunch, she sits with her usual friends, whom she calls The Posse; among them is Grace.

In gym class, Biz meets up with Grace. Grace is Biz’s oldest friend. They like the same things—The Great Gatsby, The Beatles’ White Album, and the mobiles of Alexander Calder. Their kiss was Biz’s first. Awkwardly, Biz now apologizes for the kiss, but Grace assures her it was OK and that Biz was actually a good kisser. Grace asks whether Biz is bisexual or gay. Biz, feeling the “pistons of her heart moving” (21), is unsure. Then, Grace asks about how Biz feels about Lucas Werry, a classmate who likes Grace, and Biz thinks: “I realize nothing would appeal to me less than Lucas pressing any part of his body against mine” (25).

When Grace sends Biz a text in English class, the teacher confiscates Biz’s phone and gives Biz detention. When Biz gets home, her mother is upset because Biz does not usually get in trouble at school.

Biz recalls one of her mother’s favorite films, Sliding Doors, a 1998 romance/sci fi drama, in which Gwyneth Paltrow’s character experiences two separates lives that hinge on whether her character catches or misses a train. The premise and the idea of parallel universes intrigue Biz, and she thinks of how her father, a ghost who now watches the movie with her, can be both dead and still part of her world.

Biz meets a new kid in school, Jasper Alessio. He is standoffish and walks with a limp. The Posse sizes him up, deciding he is kind of creepy, but Biz is intrigued by his limp and what might have caused it. After school, Biz waits for Jasper, and after some awkward conversation (during which Biz stumbles and actually twists her ankle), Jasper rides off on his motorcycle. At dinner, Biz thinks about Jasper: “Maybe his limp is fake. Maybe Jasper is a lie” (41). She searches online but finds little about Jasper. She tags his Facebook account and sends a friend request.

At a beach party later that week, Biz watches as Grace make out with Suryan, a kid from school. It is night, and Biz leaves and walks alone along the ocean. The waves beckon her, telling her that the world is killing the seas with pollution. She wades in up to her hips while waves pull at her arms and legs. Suddenly, Jasper is there, dragging her to shore as she heaves and chokes. When the two return to the group, their friends think that Jasper and Biz have been making out. Biz tries to tell them about the talking waves, but The Posse does not listen. Along the shore, she sees her father’s ghost, silently standing by the waves. Biz thinks back on how often during her childhood she nearly died from silly accidents. “I am dead in infinite alternate universes...all doors opening. All doors closed” (50).

Grace tells Biz she and Suryan had sex on the beach and that now they are “the real deal, boyfriend and girlfriend” (54). At the news, Biz feels Grace slipping away. She feels like one of those balloons that “people let go even though the balloon is going to fall into the ocean and kill a turtle” (56).

Biz shares that her parents met in Sydney and that her father was a free spirit, an accomplished surfer who loved poetry and The Beatles. Her mother told her that when Biz was born, her father “had a softness inside him that went all gooey” (58), her way of suggesting her father did not respond well to the demands of marriage and parenthood. He tried to commit himself to working, to providing for his new family, but the pressure of being a father weighed on him. He had dreams that when he tried to change her diaper, Biz disintegrated in his hands “like water” (59).

Three weeks later, when the gang goes to the beach with beer and vodka, a classmate named Tim tries to make out with Biz, putting his hands inside her underwear. She resists and ends up throwing up on him. Afterward, she fears Tim will lie and say that had sex. As the night closes in, she sees her father running along the beach.

For three days, Biz gets out of going to school by telling her mother she has her menstrual cramps. On the fourth day, she heads to school but ends up walking to the beach instead, sitting at the water’s edge and crying. Her father appears next to her while Biz thinks about the man her mother dated after her father’s death; she did not love him but got pregnant with the twins. She wants to ask her dad about heartbreak, but before she can, he vanishes.

A text message from Grace confirms Biz’s worst fears—Tim has told everyone he and Biz had sex, and now The Posse wants nothing to do with her. Biz feels bile rising in her stomach and heads home.