I can’t decipher what the look on his face means from down here. I don’t know how to read people my age very well because I’ve honestly never had many friends, but I definitely don’t know how to read the expressions of rich people my age.

I look down at my clothes. My wrinkled, faded sundress. My flip-flops that I’ve managed to keep intact for two years. The half slice of bread remaining in my hand.

I look back up at the guy with the camera that’s still pointed in my direction and suddenly feel embarrassed.

How long has he been taking pictures of me?

Did he take a picture of me stealing the slice of discarded bread? Did he photograph me eating it?

Is he planning on posting the pictures online in hopes they go viral like those heartless People of Walmart posts?

Trust and love and attraction and disappointment are just many of the things I’ve learned to protect myself from, but embarrassment is still one I’m working on, apparently. It envelops me in a wave of heat from head to toe.

I glance nervously around me, recognizing the mixture of people on this ferry. The vacationers in their Jeeps, wearing flip-flops and sunscreen. The business people still sitting in their cars in their business suits.

And then there’s me. The girl who can’t afford a car or a vacation.

I don’t belong on this ferry, transporting these fancy cars full of fancy people who hold cameras like they’re as cheap as a MoonPie.

I look back up at the guy with the camera and he’s still staring at me, probably wondering what I’m doing on this ferry with all his people while I wear my faded clothes and sport my split ends and dirty fingernails and nasty secrets.

I look in front of me and see a door that leads to an enclosed area of the ferry. I dart for the door and duck inside. There’s a bathroom to my immediate right, so I retreat into it and lock the door behind me.

I stare at myself in the mirror. My face is flushed and I don’t know if it’s from the embarrassment or from this intense Texas heat.

I pull the rubber band out of my hair and try to comb through the messy strands with my fingers.

I can’t believe I look like this and I’m about to meet my father’s new family for the first time. They’re probably the type of women who go to salons to get their hair and nails done, and to doctors to smooth out their imperfections. They’re probably well-spoken and smell like gardenia.

I’m pasty and sweaty and smell like a mixture of mildew and grease from a McDonald’s deep fryer.

I toss the rest of my bread in the bathroom trash can.

I stare back at the mirror, but all I see is the saddest version of myself. Maybe losing my mother last night is affecting me more than I want to admit. Maybe my decision to call my father was made in haste, because I don’t want to be here.

But I don’t want to be there, either.

Right now, it’s just hard to be.

Period.

I pull my hair back up, sigh, and push open the door to the bathroom. It’s a heavy door made of thick steel, so it slams when it shuts behind me. I’m not even two steps from the bathroom when I pause because someone pushes off the wall of the tiny corridor and blocks my way to the exit.

I find myself looking into the impenetrable eyes of the guy with the camera. He’s looking back at me like he knew I was in the bathroom and he’s here with a purpose.

Now that I’m much closer to him, I think I was wrong about him being my age. He may be a few years older than me. Or maybe being rich just makes you seem older. There’s an air of confidence that surrounds him, and I swear it smells like money.

I don’t even know this guy, but I already know I dislike him.

I dislike him as much as I dislike the rest of them. This guy thinks it’s okay to take pictures of a poor girl during a slightly vulnerable and embarrassing moment, all the while holding his camera like a careless douchebag.

I try to take a step around him to get to the exit door, but he sidesteps and remains in front of me.

His eyes (they’re light blue and striking, sadly) scroll over my face and I hate that he’s this close to me. He glances over his shoulder as if to ensure our privacy, then he discreetly slips something into the palm of my hand. I look down and see a folded up twenty-dollar bill.

I look from the money, back up to him, realizing what he’s offering. We’re near a bathroom. He knows I’m poor.

He assumes I’m desperate enough to hopefully drag him into the bathroom and earn the twenty bucks he just slipped into my hand.

What is it about me that makes guys think this? What vibe am I putting off?

It infuriates me so much, I wad up the money and throw it toward him. I was aiming for his face, but he’s graceful and leans out of the way.

I grab his camera out of his hand. I flip it over until I find the slot for the memory card. I open it and pull out the card, then toss the camera back at him. He doesn’t catch it. It falls to the floor with a crash and a piece of it breaks off and flies at my feet.

“What the hell?” he says, bending to pick it up.

I turn around, prepared to rush away from him, but I bump into someone else. As if being trapped in a tiny corridor with a guy who just offered me twenty bucks for a blow job wasn’t bad enough, now I’m trapped by two guys. This new guy isn’t quite as tall as the guy with the camera, but they smell the same. Like golf. Is golf a smell? It should be. I could bottle it up and sell it to pricks like these.

This second guy is wearing a black shirt with the word Hispanic on it, but his and panic are in two separate fonts. I take a moment to respect the shirt because it really is clever, but then I attempt to step out of the way.

“Sorry, Marcos,” the guy with the camera says as he tries to piece it back together.

“What happened?” the guy named Marcos asks.

For a fleeting moment, I thought maybe this Marcos guy might have seen our interaction and came to my rescue, but he looks more concerned about the camera than me. I feel a little bad about tossing the camera now that I know it didn’t belong to the guy who was using it.

I press my back against the wall, hoping to squeeze past them unnoticed.

The guy holding the camera waves a flippant hand in my direction. “I accidentally bumped into her and dropped it.”

Marcos looks at me and then back at Douchebag Blue Eyes. There’s something in the way they look at each other—something unspoken. It’s as if they’re communicating in a silent language I don’t understand.

Marcos squeezes past us and opens the bathroom door. “I’ll meet you in the car, we’re about to dock.”

I find myself alone with camera guy again, but all I want to do is escape and go back to my father’s car. The guy is focusing on Marcos’s camera, attempting to piece it back together when he says, “I wasn’t propositioning you. I saw you take the bread and thought you could use the help.”

I tilt my head when he makes eye contact with me, studying his expression as I search for the telling lie. I don’t know what’s worse—him propositioning me, or him feeling sorry for me.

I want to respond with something clever, or anything at all really, but I just stand frozen as we stare at each other. Something about this guy is digging into me, like his aura has claws.

There’s a heaviness behind his reflective eyes that I assumed only people like me were familiar with. What could possibly be so terrible about this guy’s life that would lead me to believe he’s damaged?