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

I ordered a piña colada and my mom ordered a bottle of wine for her and Martin.

I looked at the menu and didn't know what any of the fish were except for camarones, and I hate shrimp. "I don't know what to get," I said in English.

"The pulpo, it is very good," said Martin. "This is octopus."

"A ella no le gusta comer pulpo," said my mom. "Mija, te encantaría el pargo de piedra."

"Okay," I said.

While we were waiting for our food, Martin asked me what I was studying in school. I gave him the speech I give strangers about my research—how there's so much information about lead poisoning in paint, but almost none about lead in soil, and kids are so much more likely to eat soil, and the community where I'm doing research relies on its gardens for food.

"This is very interesting," said Martin. "Your mother has not told me about this."

"Te lo he dicho," said my mom. "Pero es tan complicado y ella es tan inteligente."

They talked to each other in Spanish for the rest of the dinner, about me and stuff that I did when I was a kid, like one time in San Francisco when I kept catching fish and no one else caught any and they thought I could talk to animals. My mom said she knew I was going to be a doctor or a scientist. I tried to laugh at the right times but I had trouble following what they were saying.

After dinner we said good-bye to Martin and he walked in the other direction. On the way back to the motel, my mom told me that Martin didn't know about Grandpa or Grandma or that she had lived in the States with me and Dad. She thought he wouldn't think she was interesting if he knew that Grandpa was rich and not Mexican, and that Grandma came from a government family and was legally Mexican, but genetically at least fifty percent Spanish, and emotionally one hundred percent white. My mom didn't want Martin to know that she spoke English and went to Berkeley and lived in California for fourteen years and drove a Mercedes and then a Range Rover, so she told him she lived in Mexico City the whole time and drove her old VW the whole time, and I went to live with my dad in the States so I could go to a good school. My mom said the first time they met, Martin told her he loved her simple life, and she didn't want to tell him about me at all, but then she had to because I was coming.

When we got back to the apartment my mom kept her sandals on.

"Baby, you're just going to go to sleep, right? Would you mind if I went to Martin's apartment to say good night, and I'll come right back?"

"Sure," I said.

"Are you just going to go to sleep?"

"I think so," I said. "I'm exhausted."

"Okay baby, you go to bed then. Do you have everything you need?"

"Yeah."

My mom left and I took off my dress and put on a tank top. I washed my feet in the shower and brushed my teeth with her toothbrush. I got into bed with my book but when I put my head on the pillow it was all I could do to reach over and turn off the light before I fell asleep.

• • •

When I woke up it was early. The light coming into the room was white but not hot. I looked at the clock and it was seven twenty. I didn't want to wake up my mom so I read in bed until seven forty. Then I really had to pee, so I left the room quietly and was about to turn into the bathroom when I realized there was no one on the couch.

"Mom?" I said.

She wasn't in the bathroom and she wasn't in the kitchen, and I figured she must be in the office doing an early checkout or something. I peed and put on shorts and a T-shirt and went downstairs, hoping that no one would see me.

She wasn't in the office and she wasn't outside the office and I didn't see her going in or out of any of the guest rooms. I went back up to the apartment. I had a feeling she was still at Martin's, but what if she wasn't? I started to feel sick. I sat down in one of the chairs in the kitchen. What if something happened to her when she was walking back from Martin's? There was this town in Maine where I went with my dad and his girlfriend a couple of summers in high school, and every year when we got there, there had just been a murder on the beach. The murders were never premeditated; they just happened because drunk people got knives, or people with knives got drunk.

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.