Excerpt from Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She opened the door and we went inside. It was cool in there and I wondered if she was the only person in Pie de la Cuesta with air-conditioning. Her apartment was above the office, and we walked up the stairs. It looked like no one lived there—there were no plants or pictures or glasses of water, just a couch and a wooden chair in the living room, and a square table and two more chairs in the kitchen. In the bedroom she put my suitcase down. There was a bed with no frame and another chair. But the bed had her same white sheets on it, these sheets that cost a million dollars and feel like clouds and smell like clouds.

My mom got into the bed and I got in with her. She traced the spot on my forehead where she said I had a swirl of hair as a baby. Every muscle in my body relaxed. She stroked my head and then I was ten years old and we were lying in the cloud sheets in Los Angeles and I was crying because we had to put our dog Maria von Trapp to sleep. That night my mom had stroked my head until I fell asleep. I don't know where my dad was—he was there when we put Maria to sleep but then not there later.

After a while my mom said, "Are you hungry, baby?" and it brought me back to the present and being twenty and I felt embarrassed to be in bed with my mom. I wanted to sit up but I was too weak. I tried to open my eyes and my mom laughed at me.

"I'm starving," I said.

She went to the kitchen and made me an egg sandwich, which is one of my favorite things, with Oaxacan cheese, which is another one of my favorite things. She cut up a papaya and two bananas and she ate the fruit while I ate the sandwich.

After breakfast I asked my mom if I could make a phone call.

"Of course, baby, who do you want to call?"

"I want to tell Dad I got in safe."

"Oh," she said. She said that the phone in the office didn't make long distance calls, but she gave me a phone card and told me there was a pay phone to the left of the hotel.

When I got to the phone I dialed Dana's number. I had told her I would call her every day but now that I was here I didn't really feel like it.

"Hey it's me," I said when she picked up.

"Hi!" she said. "I was so worried about you."

"Why?" I said. "I told you I would call you when I got here."

"I know, but I was worried. How's your mom?"

"She's fine. How are you?"

"I'm really great. I haven't eaten or used an animal product in forty-two days."

"Oh right," I said. "That's good."

"Did you come out to your mom yet?"

"No. I've only been here for like an hour."

"I can't wait for you to tell her. I'm so proud of you."

I told her I would call her the next day and then I hung up by accident.

Then I called my dad and made the mistake of telling him about the buses.

"You got in in the middle of the night," he said, "and your mother couldn't pick you up?"

"It's safer to take the buses at night," I said.

"This is not what we agreed," he said. "I'm going to call her."

"Dad. Please don't call her. I'm fine. I want to have a good time."

He said he would wait until I was back to call her, and I said okay and hoped he would forget by then. He told me to call Dana because she had called the house twice. He made me promise to wear sunscreen and to not go swimming. He said he was reading about Pie de la Cuesta on the internet and the undertow was deadly.

• • •

When I got back to the apartment my mom said, "Ready to go to the beach?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Do you have the underwear?" she said.

"Yeah." I opened my suitcase and took out the underwear and my bathing suit.

"Did you get the bags?" said my mom.

I was supposed to get fifty striped bags to go with the fifty pairs of underwear.

Excerpted from Barbara the Slut and Other People by Richard Holmes. Copyright © 2015 by Richard Holmes. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.