The Girls Who Grew Big

The morning after Luck’s injury, a frustrated Emory prepares sandwiches for Lion and Kai at her grandparents’ house, while her fiancé, Jayden, plays with the baby. Because Jayden is not allowed in the house, he intends to leave before Emory’s grandfather comes home, but Pawpaw returns early. When he sees Jayden and Lion there, he uses the sand on the carpet as an excuse to launch into a tirade that soon grows explicitly racist. When Jayden responds by announcing his and Emory’s engagement, Pawpaw maliciously evicts Emory from the house. As he berates her, he tosses groceries at her as mocking gifts, ordering her and Kai to leave. Emory quickly packs her things and leaves with Jayden, Kai, and Lion. As she looks back at Pawpaw’s red, angry face, she can no longer recognize the man who raised her.

The narrative shifts back to the night of Luck’s injury. At Chris’s house, Adela squirms in anguish in the aftermath of the confrontation at the hospital and reluctantly watches over a frightened Lion, who refuses to go to sleep unless he can bed down in a closet with a flashlight. Adela lies on the bed and listens to the boy whispering anxiously in the dark, weaving a story for himself and telling himself that Simone will come soon and will take him and Luck on an airplane. 

In the morning, Adela refuses to take care of Lion, citing Simone’s fury, so Chris agrees to take Lion to Emory and Jayden. Later, when he returns, he tells Adela that he lied to the social worker and claimed that he, Simone, and the twins all live together. Furious, Adela observes that he doesn’t want to take care of his children with Simone, and she realizes that she has been tricking herself into believing her own lie: that her baby is Chris’s. When he tells her, “Keep complaining and you’ll end up all shriveled up and alone like Simone” (259), she throws the flashlight at him and walks out.

Heartbroken, she finds the Girls by their truck near the beach. Simone is there with Luck and Lion, and all the other Girls are huddled around her. Adela tries to complain to them about how badly Chris is treating her, only to behold Emory’s expression “leaking disgust, Simone’s blank stare, [and] Crystal’s sneer” (261). Simone and Emory reject her and order her to leave. Humiliated, Adela returns home, gets into the bathtub, and sits there, overwhelmed by shame.

Simone reflects on Lion’s keen desire to ride in an airplane. Four weeks after Luck’s hospital stay, Simone, who is still heavy with guilt over her daughter’s injuries, asks April and Crystal to find another place to stay for a few days so that she can take the truck and spend some time alone with her children. She takes Luck to the hospital to have her cast removed. At first, Luck stares at her newly freed, weak arm and hesitates to use it, but Simone encourages her, and Luck is soon wiggling her fingers and moving her arm without fear.

To keep her promise to Lion and create a special memory for her children, Simone drives the twins to the National Naval Aviation Museum and basks in the twins’ delight as they wander among the massive planes When Luck climbs into a Blue Angels display, Simone watches their awe and realizes that she did “something right” as a mother. She feels a renewed sense of hope.

About two weeks after DCF closes Simone’s case, Emory finds herself floundering, feeling numb and detached from her former ambitions to succeed academically in high school. Although she has gained entrance into a number of prestigious universities, she sees no point now in going to college. With only a few weeks left of high school, she starts skipping classes entirely, and she is also indifferent to her wedding plans. One day, the dean of students, Mrs. Simmons, approaches her and offers her the chance to pick up her final exams on Friday, take them, and turn them back in; if she does so, she will be allowed to graduate as valedictorian despite her recent absences. 

Later, Crystal arrives in tears and explains to the Girls that the other mothers at a local park conspired together to force their children to ostracize her daughter, Cece, who had recently misbehaved by biting. Furious, the Girls—Emory, Simone, April, and Jamilah—go to the park and confront the judgmental mothers, who quickly leave. They glory in the fact that have reclaimed the playground for their children and reaffirmed their bond.

Adela lets Chris drive her to a sonogram appointment in Tallahassee, despite Noni’s objections to her relationship with him. In the exam room, a nurse casually mentions that Adela is 38 weeks along in her pregnancy, and Chris quickly realizes that he cannot be the father of her baby. He confronts Adela, who initially tries to deny the truth, then pleads with him to stay with her. He erupts in anger, renounces any responsibility toward her child, and storms out, leaving Adela stranded hours from home.

Simone gets a call from Adela and drives with Luck and Lion to Tallahassee to pick her up, reflecting on how much she herself has grown in recent years. On the way back to Padua Beach, as the twins are lulled to sleep by the motion of the vehicle, Simone breaks the awkward silence and urges Adela to cry. Adela sobs and then complains about Chris’s indifference toward her, admitting that she hates him for leaving her. Simone listens, then tells Adela to be honest with herself, stating, “This won't be the first or last time this week or month or year you push him away only to let him pull you into his tide again” (292). She then explains that she needs Adela to talk to Emory. She reveals that Emory loves Adela and is about to give up her future by marrying Jayden out of fear. Simone tells Adela, “You don't gotta love her back […]. Just make her think twice” (294).

Adela resists, but Simone pushes back, using the origin story of the local white sand to talk about love and history. The twins wake and make innocent remarks about skin color, and as they speculate on what Adela’s baby might look like, their chatter breaks the tension, making Adela laugh and finally relax.

On a Sunday, Emory walks alone on the beach. When Adela finds her there, Emory states that Adela never loved her. She means the term romantically, but Adela insists that she loves Emory as her friend. She then insists that Emory is making a “mistake” in marrying Jayden, and she urges Emory not to do something that will inevitably make her unhappy. Emory insists that she is marrying Jayden for Kai’s sake.

Adela comforts her, gives her a brief, gentle kiss that feels like a farewell, and tells her to “stop running from being alone” (301) and says that she will need Emory’s help when her baby is born. As she leaves Emory at the shoreline, Emory recognizes the kiss as solace, not a form of romance, and this realization clarifies her next steps.