The Girls Who Grew Big

After Emory flees, Simone decides that the orca needs a burial. She and Jayden dig a grave on the beach, move the body into it, and cover it with sand. As Simone digs, she contemplates her choice to terminate her pregnancy, which she made so that she and her children could find a way to move forward in life, free of Tooth. She also realizes that as the “founder” of the Girls, she works hard to guide them but feels intensely lonely, and she considers her desire to reconnect with her estranged parents, who cut her off after her pregnancy. Jayden offers a brief eulogy for the orca. They and the twins light a fire on the beach and eat, and as Simone contemplates the orca, she cries, sadden as she thinks, “Somewhere out there was a mother circling the sea for a child who had taken its last breath and I just didn’t think it was right to have to die lonely too” (166). Emory returns briefly to feed Kai, then leaves with Jayden.

While walking home, Adela considers her confusion over the conversation with Emory, who “ruminated and ranted about regrets and miracles but never seemed to really say what she meant” (169). Suddenly, she runs into Chris, the lifeguard, whom she has been avoiding ever since her pregnancy began showing a week ago. (Chris does not yet know that she is pregnant, as she lied and claimed that she had never had sex with anyone before him.) When he sees her now, he assumes that the baby is his, and Adela doesn’t correct him. When he says, “Aight, then. We’re having a baby, I guess. God, Simone’s gonna kill me” (171), Adela suddenly realizes that Chris is the same person as “Tooth,” the father of Simone’s twins. 

Overwhelmed, she flees from Chris and runs to her grandmother, who holds her as she cries. Noni then shares a story about her own difficult marriage and describes her experience of being pregnant with Adela’s father. She warns Adela that men often disappoint. Adela steadies herself and privately decides to maintain the deception that the baby is Chris’s, as she wants to keep Chris in her life.

Weeks later, Emory meets Adela, ready to share her college acceptances. She is still desperately hoping that Adela will reciprocate her romantic feelings, but instead, Adela says that she loves a man and has let him believe that her baby is his. Devastated to realize that her secret love for Adela is unrequited, Emory leaves abruptly with Kai.

A flashback takes Emory to her first friendship with a girl named Sylvia. During a sleepover, a young Emory engaged in a tentative sexual exploration with Sylvia by sharing her discovery of masturbation. When Sylvia later told her mother about the incident, Sylvia’s mother told Emory’s grandmother, who shamed and severely punished Emory. Now, the memory of the incident sharpens Emory’s current isolation. At home, she breaks down, holding Kai as her thoughts cycle back to the dead orca.

During spring break, out-of-town visitors and college students flood into the Padua Beach area, inciting resentment from the locals, who nonetheless appreciate the outsiders’ business. Adela proposes that the Girls sell a homemade alcoholic concoction called “jungle juice” on the beach, reasoning that the spring-break partygoers will be willing to pay top dollar for the beverage. Emory, Tori, Crystal, Jamilah, and April band together to mix the drinks and sell them to the crowds, eventually charging as much as $10 a glass, simply because they can get away with it. They sell out of jungle juice quickly, making several hundred dollars in just a few hours. Later, they realize that if they sell jungle juice every weekend during spring break, they might make several thousands of dollars. They plan to do so, and the Girls all agree to give the cash earnings to Adela to hold until they can divide it among themselves, as she alone has no real need of the money.

Later, Simone overhears a woman’s judgmental conversation and recalls being 15 and pregnant at the Padua Pregnancy Resource Center. At that time, the woman on the staff revealed that Simone would be having twins, then used religious guilt to dissuade her from considering an pregnancy termination and refused to provide any information on the topic. Simone left the resource center that day feeling betrayed and trapped.

Adela reflects on her longtime strategy of using lies to win social acceptance. A flashback details moments from her high school experience, when she lied and told everyone at school that her father was from France. 

The flashback is interrupted by a present-moment scene in which Chris gives Adela a revealing red bikini and pressures her to swim at the community pool where he works. Self-conscious, she enters the water and feels a brief sense of freedom.

The narrative returns to Adela’s high school flashback. The lie about her father’s heritage held up for a few years but eventually fell apart during a party. When her father came to pick her up, the well-meaning hosts asked him about his hometown in France. Although he did not reveal Adela’s lie in public, he later admonished her, saying, “You are only what you believe yourself to be. When you are ashamed, you become shameful. […] I didn’t raise a liar, Adela. I raised a winner” (202). 

In the present, Adela reflects, “Every time I lied after that, I made sure it was in the pursuit of winning” (202). Now, she continues to maintain the fiction that Chris is the father of her baby. After the pool closes, Chris holds her in the water and tells her he wants her. They leave in his car.

Still upset by the revelation that Adela loves a man, not her, Emory recalls the time when she first met Jayden and then pursued him and initiated a sexual relationship with him. However, her infatuation with him didn’t last, and she does not truly love him. Now, she meets Jayden at the marsh by the bayou, seeking him out selfishly for momentary comfort after her conversation with Adela. They have sex while Kai sleeps nearby. Afterward, Jayden asks her why she will not let him into her house, and Emory reluctantly admits that her grandfather, Pawpaw, is racist and forbids Jayden from entering. Jayden is angry, but after a moment of thought, he suddenly braids a ring from marsh grass and proposes to her.

When Simone puts honey in her son’s milk to make it taste better, she recalls her mother once doing the same thing for her, and the thought prompts a sudden nostalgia that compels her to take the twins to visit her estranged mother for the first time. She arrives unannounced to find her mother alone in the house. Seeing the children, her mother invites her in out of a compulsive need to be polite and offers to make the children a meal of hush puppies. However, the visit soon turns tense when her mother rejects Simone’s plea for reconciliation. In the middle of the fight, an unsupervised Luck falls from a bed, suffering a severe head injury and a broken arm. While her mother makes no move to help, Simone grabs her children and drives to the ER, leaving the truck in a no-parking zone. She then uses a tip from Adela and tells the nurse that Luck has chest pains in order to ensure that a doctor will see the girl more quickly.

At the hospital, Simone calls Chris to meet them. As she waits, memories of her mother’s conditional love surface, and she bitterly regrets visiting her family’s home, blaming Luck’s accident on what Simone sees as her own moment of weakness. Hospital staff begin tests while Simone tries to calm Lion and focus on Luck.

After their time at the pool, Adela and Chris are in his car, and Adela is giving him a hand job when Simone calls. Adela pauses, but Chris gestures for her to keep going as he talks to Simone. When he learns about Luck’s accident, he slaps Adela’s hand away and says that they have to get to the hospital. Chris speeds to the hospital, refusing to drop Adela at home or let her wait in the car. He does not understand why she is resisting and insists that she come with him, saying that she has to meet the mother of his children eventually. When Adela panics at the door of the hospital and tries to leave, he physically pulls her toward the ER.

She breaks free just as the automatic doors open, revealing Simone inside. Simone sees Adela with Chris, a.k.a. “Tooth,” and the truth of their connection is revealed.

Emory is incredulous at Jayden’s proposal, believing that a marriage between them could never work. Before she can answer him, Simone texts Emory to say that Luck is in the hospital. Emory tells Jayden to drive her there immediately. They arrive at the hospital and walk into a furious confrontation between Simone and Adela. A sputtering Adela protests that she wasn’t aware of the connection between Chris and Simone, but Simone does not believe her. A doctor interrupts reports that Luck has a skull fracture and a brain bleed. Her quarrel momentarily forgotten in the middle of the crisis, Simone goes with her daughter as the hospital staff preps the girl for an MRI.

In the quiet that follows, Emory faces Adela’s betrayal and is forced once again to confront the fact that Adela never loved her. She then considers Jayden’s steadiness and dedication to his son and to her. She accepts his proposal, choosing a future with him and Kai.