by Liz Kessler
All I had were questions. I stared back at her, my own face reflected in the glass of the porthole beside hers. I looked almost as panicked as she did.
As I watched, something started to change. The water was moving again. Something was brushing past me. Feathery, long hair covering my face, getting in my eyes. I pulled it away, but it kept on coming. Then it was on my body, my tail. An arm grabbed me around my waist, pulling me down, snatching me away. Cold fingers stabbed me in the side.
No! Please, no!
I shut my eyes and screamed.
The hands were still on me. Grabbing my elbow, shaking me.
“Emily!”
I kept my eyes closed as tightly as I could. I wasn’t going to look. I didn’t want to see it. A sea monster, a servant of Neptune’s sent to kidnap me. I’d been through that before. I couldn’t face it happening again.
“Emily!”
Wait. I knew that voice. I opened my eyes. When I did, I saw three things. They registered slowly, one by one, as my brain took each of them in.
Thing one: The person who had called my name was Shona.
Thing two: The hands and monsters grabbing at me were in fact long trails of seaweed that I’d somehow gotten caught up in.
Thing three: The enormous, mysterious, nonmoving ship — that a moment ago had practically filled the entire valley — was gone.
“What . . . ? Where . . . ? Where is it?” I stammered.
“Where’s what?” Shona replied. “Em, are you OK?”
I looked at her. “Am I OK?” I echoed numbly.
“You’re shaking.”
I held out an arm. Shona was right. My hand was wobbling like a jellyfish. “I . . . The ship,” I said. “Where’d it go?”
Shona stared at me. “What ship?”
I laughed. Out of nerves, maybe. “The huge, great, massive ship that was right here!”
Shona shook her head. “Em, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been here the whole time and there hasn’t been any ship in sight, I can tell you.”
I took a second, tried to calm myself down.
“In fact, I was actually going to ask what had happened to you,” Shona went on.
“What do you mean?”
“Just, well, you were acting a bit funny.”
“Funny?”
Shona shrugged. “Yeah, like, you were here but kind of weren’t at the same time. You were swimming along as though you were looking at something,” she said. “You darted up to the surface, so I followed you. I was behind you, but you were facing away from me the whole time, just staring. I called you, but it was like you didn’t even hear me.”
“You followed me up?”
“Yes, and I —”
“Then you must have seen the ship!” I insisted. I jabbed my finger at the empty space in front of us. “It was right there! The only thing you could see for miles around — an enormous thing with three masts and ragged sails and . . .”
I stopped. Shona was looking at me with an expression on her face that seemed to say, I really think this person could do with some help, but I’m not professionally qualified to provide it.
I stopped trying to explain. What was the point? “You didn’t see the ship,” I said flatly.
“There was no ship,” Shona insisted.
I nodded. Resigned to the weirdness. I mean, it had to happen at some point, didn’t it? After everything I’d been through in the last year, it was only ever going to be a matter of time before I started losing it completely.
Then Shona said, more gently, “At least, I didn’t see a ship. But maybe I missed it. I guess I could have been looking the other way.”
I laughed. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could have missed. “Look,” I said. “Just tell me this. You’re my best friend, right?”
“Of course I am.”
“And you trust me?”
“With my life.”
“So, OK, I know it doesn’t make sense, but believe me, please. There was a ship. It was right here. I saw it with my own eyes. I know it doesn’t make sense, and I have no idea how come you didn’t see it, but I swear that I did.”
Shona held my gaze for a moment. “I believe you,” she said. “You’re right; it doesn’t make sense; it isn’t really possible. But I know you wouldn’t make something like that up. You never have before, and I can tell you’ve seen something weird by how shaky you are. I promise I didn’t see anything, but I do believe that you did.”
I smiled a wobbly smile at her. “Thank you,” I said. OK, so I might be completely cracking up, but at least I had Shona to catch the pieces.
And then I realized who else I had: Aaron! He saw the ship, too. At least . . . he did see it, didn’t he? He hadn’t just pretended to see it to keep me happy? I had to know.
I started swimming back the way we’d come. “Let’s get to Sandy Bay,” I said. “We’ll be the last ones there at this rate.”
As we swam, one thought propelled me forward: Aaron is the only one who can tell me I’m not going completely crazy.
“Well done, children. You’ve all done a great job.” Miss Platt was sitting on the sand at the water’s edge, smiling around at us. I wondered if her super-bright smile had anything to do with her special getting-to-know-you time with Mr. Finsplash.
The Brightport kids were sitting on the sand, too. The Shiprock merchildren were mostly lying in the shallows at the water’s edge, leaning on their elbows and flapping their tails in the waves.
I’d gotten out of the water when we’d arrived, and my tail had fizzled away as my legs had reappeared. Now I sat nervously on the sand, my toes on the edge of the soft waves that brushed my feet.
“Who’d like to tell us about what they learned on this assignment?” Miss Platt asked.
One of the Shiprock girls put her hand up.
Mr. Finsplash nodded at her. “Thank you, Izela. Who did you pair up with?”
“Brooke,” she replied.
“Excellent. Why don’t you both start us off?” Miss Platt said with a smile. “Tell us what you learned about each other’s worlds and about Fivebays Island.”
I half listened as each pair recounted what they’d learned. And I smiled gratefully when it was our turn and Shona piped up with how we’d discovered a variety of seaweed that she had never encountered before.
But I was only half there. The other half of me couldn’t stop thinking about the ship. Aaron was sitting beside me. As we’d expected, Shona and I had been the last pair back, so I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him yet. Mandy was sitting on my other side.
“Well, we’re very pleased with your first joint assignment. I think it’s going to be a swishy week,” Mr. Finsplash said when all the pairs had reported back. “Now, it’s getting late, so we’ll break for dinner. But just before that, Mr. Waters is going to tell you a bit about what we’ll be doing tomorrow.”
Lyle cleared his throat. “Do call me Lyle,” he said.
Mr. Finsplash gave him a curt nod. “Lyle, then,” he said awkwardly. “Listen up, all of you, and Lyle will tell us what’s in store for us next.”
Lyle pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “So, tomorrow’s task . . . Let’s see, now . . . Tomorrow is Monday . . .” he muttered as he looked down at the page.
“Great,” Mandy muttered. “He hasn’t even bothered to prepare.”
“Ah. Here we are. OK. Tomorrow is . . .” Lyle stopped, cleared his throat, glanced up at us all, and opened his mouth like a fish silently trying to get oxygen.
His face had turned gray. He swallowed hard before looking back down at the piece of paper.
“What is his problem?” Mandy whispered in my ear.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe he can’t read,” I whispered back.
“Or maybe he needs glasses,” Mandy offered.
Lyle was talking again. “Sorry,” he said. “As I was saying, tomorrow’s activity is . . .” He paused again. “It�
��s . . . um . . . It’s called Shallows and Shipwrecks.”
Something cold grabbed my middle.
“The, um, the island is, as you know, surrounded by reefs and rocks and is in one of the most beautiful and varied parts of the ocean,” Lyle went on. His voice sounded mechanical, a bit like a recording made by a machine rather than an actual person talking. It was flat, toneless. “That is why it is so rife with the sea life we have here, and why the island is such a rich source of knowledge and research.”
Lyle paused again. He wiped his forehead. He was sweating. What was up with him? Maybe he was sick.
“But there is another side to this,” he went on, “which is that the island is also in one of the most hazardous parts of the ocean. Only the very skillful and the very experienced can navigate these waters.”
Lyle paused — for dramatic effect? Then, in a quieter voice, so quiet we found ourselves leaning forward to hear him, he added, “And that is why we have more shipwrecks in this area than in almost any other stretch of water in all of the oceans.”
Something seemed to change when he said this. Was it just me or did the air feel a bit stiller, a bit thinner, a bit less easy to breathe?
His words were dancing around in my brain, teasing my thoughts. Was it a shipwreck that I’d seen? Was that what it was?
Lyle was still talking. “So, tomorrow, you will be studying some of these wrecks. The Shiprock team will be given a map that will take them on a trail of the shipwrecks themselves. The Brightport group will join me in the Watchtower, where you will be given a presentation and you can study an array of books, maps, and photographs. In the afternoon, we will come together to compare notes.” Lyle looked up. “Any questions?”
I stared at him. Could I? Should I? Could it wait till tomorrow?
Before my brain had formulated an answer to the questions swimming around in my head, my hand had made up its mind and shot into the air.
Miss Platt looked at me. “Emily, you have a question for Lyle?”
My mouth opened and closed, unsure whose side to take — brain or hand. It chose the latter. “Are any of the shipwrecks, like, totally intact?” I asked.
Lyle frowned at me. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
I gulped. “I mean, as in, do any of them look more ship, and less wreck?”
Lyle nodded. “Oh, yes. There is an enormous variety. Some are little more than a rusty, algaecovered engine. Others are practically entire ships that you would almost imagine could set sail and return home, were they not filled with water.”
“Any tall ships?” I asked, my voice coming out like a croak.
Lyle looked at me. “Any what?” he asked sharply.
“Tall. Like big. With, maybe, say, three masts — really tall wooden things with dirty, torn sails. Long, shiny front deck. Maybe slightly above the water. Um. Anything like that at all . . . ?”
What was I doing? What was I saying? Everyone had turned to stare at me. Even Aaron was looking at me as if I’d lost my mind and gone running off a cliff and out to sea to find it.
In the tightened air, Lyle held my eyes for one more second. Then he breathed in sharply through his nose and snapped, “No. None like that.”
Before I had the chance to respond, he’d turned away and was addressing the whole group again. “Right. Enough questions. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving us to stare after him and wonder what on earth had just happened.
Miss Platt was the first to recover. She clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “OK, children, you heard what Lyle said. Tomorrow morning, we’ll meet back here at nine sharp for Shallows and Shipwrecks. Now then, Brightport, back to the cabin with me. Let’s get cleaned up for dinner.”
I stood up and looked out at the Shiprock group, gathering around Mr. Finsplash. Shona waved at me from the water as they turned away.
“See you in the morning,” I mouthed, and she smiled before darting under the waves with the rest of the Shiprock kids.
I joined the others heading back to the cabin and tried not to think too much about the amount of weird that the last hour had contained. It would all make sense at some point. Surely it would.
I fell into step with Aaron and Mandy.
“Shallows and Shipwrecks, eh?” Aaron said. “Sounds like this week could be really fun.”
“Mmm,” I said unenthusiastically.
“What’s up?” Mandy asked. “Don’t you think it sounds good?”
“Yeah, of course . . .” I said.
“But?” Mandy pushed.
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
Aaron nudged me. “Yes, you do. I know you. Come on, what’s wrong? And what were all those weird questions about?”
“Not to mention Lyle’s even weirder answer,” Mandy added. “Did you see him? It was like he completely shut down.”
I stopped walking, and they did the same. “Look, just hang back from the others a minute and I’ll tell you,” I said in a low voice.
We waited for everyone else to come past us before setting off again at a slower pace.
“Can I trust you?” I asked, glancing from one to the other as we walked.
“Of course you can!” Aaron blurted out right away. “How can you even ask me that after everything we’ve —”
“She’s not asking you,” Mandy interrupted. “She’s asking me.”
I didn’t reply.
Mandy pulled on my arm. “Emily,” she said as the three of us stopped and hung back even farther, “look at me.”
I met her eyes.
“Making friends with you again, and meeting your new friends”— she nodded toward Aaron —“has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Right?”
I held her eyes for a moment, wondering if there was a punch line coming. Something like, Yeah, it was the best way to remind me what a bunch of losers you are! I couldn’t help it. Expecting Mandy to say something mean was a habit left over from the days when she and I had been sworn enemies.
“There’s no punch line coming,” Mandy said, spooking me out completely by how accurately she’d read my mind.
“I mean it,” Mandy went on as we started walking again. “These last few months have been . . . They’ve been . . .” She laughed and shook her head. “Yeah, OK, I feel like a dork for saying it, but they’ve been swishy!”
I laughed, too. Hearing Mandy use that word was like, well, a bit like having a boiled egg with ice cream on top. It didn’t quite go. I still liked it, though.
“I think she’s trying to say you can trust her,” Aaron put in.
Mandy laughed again. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. And you’d better get on with whatever it is you need to get off your chest because we’ll be back at the cabin soon. So, come on. Spill.”
“OK,” I said. “If you’re ready for a whole lot of weird, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Aaron and Mandy listened while I told them what had happened out at sea.
“You said you thought it was a shipwreck,” Mandy pointed out when I’d finished. “It sounds more like a ghost ship — especially with that scary woman. That is some kind of spooky!”
“I know. I don’t know why I asked Lyle about shipwrecks. I think I was just desperate to find a way of looking at it that might make sense — that might make me not feel like some kind of freak who’s seeing things.”
“You’re not any kind of freak,” Aaron said. “Or at least if you are, then I am as well.”
Mandy scratched her head. “Huh? Why’s that?”
“Because I saw the ship, too.”
Mandy turned back to me. “I thought you said you were with Shona.”
“I was.”
“Not just now,” Aaron explained. “I saw it earlier. We saw it together.”
“You did see it?” I checked. “You didn’t just pretend to see it to make me feel better?”
“What? Why would I do that? Of course I saw it. Big
ship, three huge masts, torn sails. Yeah, Em, I saw it.”
I let out a breath that I felt as if I’d been holding for the last hour.
“And you think it’s the same ship?” Mandy asked.
I nodded. “It looked the same to me. It even did the same disappearing act. I watched it for a while — maybe ten, fifteen minutes at most — and then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.”
“It’s got to be a ghost ship,” Mandy said. “No other explanation for it. Cool! I hope it comes back again!”
I bit my lip as I thought about this. “Yeah, but that’s the thing. Even if it does, I don’t know if you’ll see it.”
“True, we might be asleep or on the other side of the island,” she agreed.
“No, not just that,” I insisted. “Look. I was with Shona. She was right there — and she didn’t see it. No one else has seen it.”
“Except me,” Aaron reminded me.
“Exactly. Just the two of us. Like, now, when I mentioned it in front of everyone. Don’t you think that if anyone else had seen it, they’d have said something?”
Mandy let out a low whistle. “So you think it’s only you guys who can even see this thing?”
I raised a shoulder. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“But it’s certainly looking that way,” Aaron finished.
We walked along in silence for a bit. We were nearly back at the cabin, and everyone else had gone inside.
Mandy stopped at the door. “Look, let’s keep this between ourselves,” she said. “You’ll be teased rotten if you go around saying you’ve seen a disappearing ghost ship. You know what . . . people . . . can be like.”
I knew what she meant. She meant I knew what she had been like, before we’d become friends again. And she was right. I didn’t want anyone to make me feel like I was a freak like that ever again.
“I agree. Just us and Shona,” I said. “She’s already part of this.”
“And Seth,” Aaron added.
I looked at him. “You’re sure? He works for Neptune.”
Aaron nodded. “I’m sure. He’s not going to tell Neptune anything. He’s here because he’s our friend, and he’s as loyal and trustworthy as you could get.”
