She took a job at the cage in the casino, where she counted out chips and cash all day. The polyester uniform made her sweat. She hated the tuxedo shirt she had to button to her chin, the horrible little paisley bow tie cinched around her neck. The mildewed smell of old dollar bills always on her hands. The dim light threw dark circles under her eyes. Her tan faded by Labor Day. The blonde streaks in her hair from the sun grew back dark, and before she knew it, she was unremarkable. In December she ran into the boy who had been Homecoming King her year, who had been hanging drywall since they graduated. She felt such contempt for his ordinariness that for days the thought of him filled her with rage. But then she realized, he could look at her and feel the same. She was so disgusted with herself, so bored when she looked out at her future, flat, her days filled with counting other people’s money, nothing to call her own. She was mortified by how often she got her counts wrong, and how everything started to remind her of work: the sun and the moon nothing but dull coins in the sky. Meeting men was what made her feel something, her only chance at being admired, at pleasing people again. And at least they were something she couldn’t predict, the one thing in her life that wasn’t going to be the same. Even the last one had seemed intriguing, mysterious. As they drove to the Sunset Motel she noticed the ways his eyes caught on the outline of the ballpark, the banks of lights that had gone dark years ago. What was that about?

The tall reeds shutter and shush in the breeze around them. #2’s mother always said it wasn’t truly summer until the marsh changed from heather to green. It’s a brilliant green now, fertile, thriving. This place is feeding off of her, growing strong off of her body, off of what she gives. The more she breaks down, the better it grows. Her family has been here for centuries. Her father told her that they were the descendants of the sea captain whose house still stands in Somers Point. Her grandfather helped run liquor during the Prohibition, told her stories of lowering crates of rum into the hatch at the back of Nucky Johnson’s house in Ventnor in the middle of the night. But the stories about her grandmother were always her favorite. Her grandmother had been one of the diving girls.