Katelyn doesn’t want second chances. She’s smoking herself to death. I can smell the residue on her. Clinging to her pink, dyed hair. Her splotchy skin, tainted with various tattoos: shadows and shapes and sizes that are haunting, murderous, savage and cold. Katelyn could already be dead. She doesn’t talk much. Except when I ask her a question. Then, she doesn’t stop talking. Until she needs to breathe in a cigarette. Deep drags. One after another.

I saw her tatted ink. Everywhere I looked. Up, down. Both arms. Legs. A trail on her forehead and neck. All of it a message. Warning others to stay away.

She finished her smoke in less than a minute. Opened the American Spirit box for another. Empty. She crushed the box in her fist. A twitch of her angry fingers, then she pulled on my arm and said, “I’ll give you a blow job if you drive me to the nearest liquor store.”

I spun my keys in my hand. A cool and confident Quick Draw McGraw. I slit a smile across my face. “Listen. We’re friends. Give me ten bucks. For gas.”

Katelyn frowned. She didn’t trust guys like me. Choosing money over her mouth wrenched on my dripping piece. But I didn’t want to tell her the truth. So we didn’t speak. She clammed up, and I faded my sights on the vast ocean in front of us. The sand, silty and soft, beneath her and me. Sand, our makeshift chairs. Like always, we looked into the future from the farthest edge of our world. Denying how and why we got here.

I wanted to put my arm around Katelyn. Tell her she’s gonna be a’right. Almost a year she’s been here. Only twenty-two. A runaway from a bad husband. Hooked up too early after high school. Too many bruises and too much alcohol told her to leave. She stashed enough money from the a-hole’s direct deposits into their shared bank account, along with a wad of cash

from his wallet, to get as far away as she could without a passport. She started smokin’ last fall. She doesn’t plan to reach the ripe age of thirty. Nobody does when they ain’t got a thing but the earth blistering their feet.

Some say the homeless population is out of control. They’re probably right. But I see that there’s more to it. More Katelyns than ever before.

I ain’t no expert but I can see Katelyn trembling from withdrawals. Twenty minutes sittin’ on the beach, facing the sunset, and she can’t keep herself together. She’s twitchin. Sweat rolls off her chin. Down her neck. Down, down where I don’t want to look.

I got up. Stretched my arms over my head. I smiled at her. “Let’s go get what you need. C’mon. Ain’t gotta pay me with nothing. I’ll drive you. For free.”

Katelyn didn’t bother with a reply. My words weren’t a question. She stood up. Wiped the sand from her scraggly denim shorts. Her thin tee shirt. Her tattooed body. She’d been living next to the pier for eight months but couldn’t seem to tan the way I have. Creamy chocolate brown. My parents own a place near this beach. Lived there since they married over twenty-five years ago. I live there, too. Come outside all hours of the day. Sitting myself under the sun. Otherwise, I’d be as pale as this girl next to me. Pale as the sand and the broken coral that washes up along this shoreline.

If Katelyn were a mermaid, I swear she’d be smokin’ the broken coral. Wishing for the ocean to wash her away. Wishing for an oyster with a pearl inside. Something to tell her sure, she’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.

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