Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

  Her mother sat down on the step.

  “I’d be angry too,” she said. “I’d be furious. I would have been slamming doors and running out of the house. I think you’re taking this really well. I’m proud of you.”

  Nothing was more annoying than your mom giving you credit. It was a total angst diffuser.

  “What’s he doing this time?” Clio said. “What kind of freaks does he have with him on his boat? Is it a pirate society? Do I have to bring a parrot? Eye patch?”

  “He just said bathing suits and shoes with rubber soles.”

  “It’s going to be something weird,” Clio said, looking her in the eye. “And you know it.”

  Her mother sighed, a long, painful sigh.

  “I know you don’t believe me right now,” she said. “But this could be really good for you, Clio.”

  Clio just looked at her mom for a moment.

  “There’s something I have to do first,” she said, holding up the name tag from Galaxy. “I have to return this since I’m not going to be working there.”

  “So, I can call your father? Tell him yes?” her mom asked. There was a horribly perky note in her voice.

  “Yeah,” Clio said. “You might as well.”

  The store was dead, so they were pumping Johnny Cash over the speakers. When Clio had first started coming here, Johnny Cash was just some very old, very annoying singer tormenting her as she picked up her supplies. But she had come to love the deep voice and the simple guitar because they were the backdrop to some of her best conversations with Ollie, when the store was quiet. He liked the music, and she found she was able to like it too.

  Ollie wasn’t up front. Clio scanned the registers. The newest girl was working at one of them. She had short black hair and wore a silver mesh drape over a white T-shirt with a tag that said Janine. Clio suddenly hated art store girls, even though at this moment, she technically was one. Art store girls would do anything. They would be all over Ollie in her absence. This Janine girl in particular would go after him. She was new—he was nice. He would end up showing her something she didn’t understand, some trick with the cash register, and that would be that.

  Clio shook her head. This sudden paranoia…not good.

  She firmly held the theory that everyone gets at least one very stupid superpower. Hers was a weak kind of homing beacon. She could find people or things really easily. If she was looking for Suki, for instance, she always seemed to know exactly where he’d be. And she also seemed to know when Ollie was in Galaxy and where exactly in the store he could be found. It wasn’t that impressive. The store wasn’t that big.

  She cast out her senses to find him. He was here. Somewhere off to the side of the store. What hadn’t been supplied for a while? She headed for aisle two, Turpentine and Solvents, one of the darker and less pleasant aisles.

  “Back already,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Clio opened her mouth but was unwilling to speak. She didn’t want this to be true. She wanted her phone to ring and her mother to tell her that it was all off. But there was no ring. Now the stupid phone was silent.

  “I can’t take the job,” she said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story,” Clio said. “My dad…he’s got visitation rights. I have to go and see him.”

  “Is he far?” Ollie asked. “Different state or something?”

  “Italy,” Clio said.

  “Oh. That’s far. But…nice for you, huh?”

  Once again, her father’s magical ability to make things suck was shining through.

  “It’s not quite what it sounds like,” Clio said. “But yeah, it’s far.”

  He let out a deep sigh.

  “This is no good,” he said.

  “Maybe I can escape,” she responded, looking at his eyes, hoping he understood what she was feeling.

  “It doesn’t sound like something you’d want to escape from,” he said. “What? To come back here?”

  Had she given away too much?

  “No,” she said quickly. “I guess you’re right. I’m not coming back. I mean, I’m coming back home, but…”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I’ll tell Daphne if you want,” he said. “It’s a shame.”

  She put out her fist, which held the name tag. He put his hand on it.

  “Why don’t you keep it?” he said. “Maybe you’ll need it.”

  “Or forget my name,” she said. “Always good to have a name tag. In case I forget who I am.”

  “I’ll remember for you,” he said. “Promise.”

  Your Kind of Crowd

  For Clio, getting off the plane at the Rome airport was like being thrown directly into an Olympic relay event. There was a marathon line to the passport control, in which she was moved, shuffled, butted in front of, and pushed. Then there was a scramble for the bags and a run for customs, which all led to the final release into the airport proper, where everything became a total free-for-all.

  At least she had her speedy suitcase.

  Back before, when they had lots of money and were traveling a lot, Clio had purchased an incredibly expensive pink suitcase with a pattern of rose and green circles. She bought it with the very first Dive! check that arrived in her name. It was made of some advanced kind of lightweight plastic and had better wheels on it than a Mercedes. It was just one of those things in life that gave her tremendous satisfaction every time she looked at it. No matter what happened to her, she had a great suitcase. A light, fast suitcase. She could outrun anyone with this suitcase, no matter how heavily it was packed.

  Running seemed like a very good idea. With every step Clio took in the direction of her father—getting off the plane, getting her passport stamped, getting her bag—she felt her heartbeat become heavier and faster.

  And then, finally, there he was in the throng of people just outside the arrival doors. Her father was always easy to spot. He was the blond one that some woman was slyly eyeing. It was always a little weird to know that you had a handsome dad. His hair was sandy, always a little too long. He was (it pained her to think it) fairly built. He looked perpetually thirty, even though he had long passed that age.

  Today he was easier to spot than normal. He wore somewhat tight, ragged jeans cut off bizarrely at the meridian of the kneecap, a deep blue dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, black Converse sneakers, and, most disturbingly, a white fisherman’s cap, one size too snug.

  “Oh dear God,” Clio said to herself, stopping in her tracks.

  She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. A boat. A tiny fisherman’s cap. No. No, she had to turn around.

  It was the crowd that forced her on. Only fifty paces and a glass wall separated them now. The suitcase glided along the floor with the grace and speed of an Olympic skater.

  Come on! it seemed to be saying. Let’s just keep going. Hop on me and I’ll get you out of here.

  I can’t, Clio’s mind replied.

  Why not?

  Because there’s nowhere else to go.

  The world’s a big place, Clio. We’re in an Italian airport. We could pull out your credit card, get on another plane, go anywhere.

  My credit limit is way too low.

  You know things are pretty bad when your mind is having crisis talks with your suitcase. Clio soldiered on, and with every step, her father’s grin grew wider. He had a huge mouth too. His smile was practically as big as her foot.

  “Please,” Clio said, maneuvering the pink suitcase through the crowd, “please let him be kind of normal.”

  “Hey, kiddo!” he yelled. “Ciao! Italy, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Clio said, bracing herself for the huge embrace that enveloped her. “It’s Italy.”

  “Our flight to Naples is in an hour and a half, so there’s time to grab a bite. Give me that, kiddo.”

  He reached for the suitcase.

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  “You must be exhausted. Let me have it.”

&nbs
p; “I’m fine.” She tightened her hold.

  Something in her refused to give over control of the suitcase. It was hers. Her suitcase, her stuff, her life. She would have insisted even if her hand was broken. Even if she was dead. Her zombie would pull the suitcase before she would let her dad have it.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let me help you with that, kiddo. You relax.”

  Clio had already skittered ahead a few feet, taking the pink suitcase with her. Victory.

  “We all just flew down from London,” her dad said breezily as he followed her along.

  “Who is we?” Clio asked.

  “You’ll love them. This is your kind of crowd.”

  She seriously doubted that the “we” was “her kind of crowd.” She didn’t have a crowd. Or if she did, it was the crowd called normal human beings. And her name wasn’t kiddo. That was the newest annoying thing, just developed at his secret annoyance labs.

  “We have a table at one of the restaurants in the concourse. There’s just enough time for some dinner. Everyone is dying to meet you. They know all about you. From Naples, there’s a car to take us all to Sorrento, which is down the coast about an hour. Your backpack’s open.”

  Clio stopped to pull off her backpack before her dad reached it, only to find that she’d been tricked. He triumphantly grabbed the handle of the suitcase and raced ahead. Clio watched her precious pink luggage running ahead.

  “Gotcha!” her dad said over his shoulder.

  Clio looked at her large red watch. Four minutes. That’s how long it had taken for her to want to go home. Ollie, Ollie, save me! a frantic voice cried in her head. But there was no time to dwell on this, as her father was rushing ahead and rapidly slipping out of sight in the throng of travelers and picker-uppers and car drivers that flocked by the arrivals gate. He dipped into a restaurant with a front display made of Chianti bottles.

  “There they are,” he said.

  He nodded at a small table at the back. Three people sat there. Clio recognized one of them instantly. He was already standing up and coming over to greet her.

  “Martin’s here?” she asked.

  Martin she could take. That was a good sign. Martin had been her father’s colleague back when her father worked for a software company as a writer. He was a short man, older than middle-aged, with a salt-and-pepper beard. He had never married or had any kids, so he spent his time doing whatever he liked. Martin also had two PhDs and had retired early, simply because he could.

  “Clio!” he said, hugging her. “You managed to get here.”

  “Just about,” Clio said. “You look a little different.”

  “I’ve lost weight,” he said. “All the swimming I’ve been doing.”

  The other two people were female, and they were strangers. They looked almost nothing alike, yet Clio could tell they were related. The younger of the two was a girl with very thick, long blond hair knotted at the top of her head. She had a full body, very curvy, in a Marilyn Monroe kind of way. She wore a deep blue tank top and tiny white shorts that showed off her apricoty tan. Her eyes were absolutely massive and sea blue, but her mouth was tiny. She was gorgeous and glowing. No makeup. Clio had the strange flash that this was what the person who invented cheese must have been like—a blond dairy goddess.

  Clio suddenly felt very overdressed in her jeans (thready though they were) and her oversized blue hooded sweatshirt, covered in stars and Japanese letter patches. She’d done that herself—cutting them out of old T-shirts and sewing them on by hand. Her clothes, ordinarily a source of pride, seemed out of place here. The sweatshirt had felt good on the cold plane, but now she was in Italy, where it was quite hot, even in the airport. Taking it off would mean revealing the normally acceptable pink tank top she was wearing underneath. (Unfortunately, there had been a salad dressing incident when they hit an air pocket somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. She had cleaned herself up as best she could, but she was still just a little too ranch-dressingy for her own liking.)

  Off it went, though. Maybe no one would notice.

  Next to the cheese girl was a woman who wasn’t blond at all. Her hair was red and cropped short in a perfect pixie cut. She wore a snug one-piece black shirtdress that showed off her bone structure and a string of African beads around her neck, with a fairly alarming miniature mask set in the middle. It glowered at Clio when the woman stood to greet her, as if warning her not to come any closer. Aside from that, there was one empty chair at the table with a blue messenger bag slung across the back of it. One more person was coming. This was the group.

  “Clio,” her dad began, “this is Dr. Julia Woodward of Cambridge University and her daughter, Elsa Åkerlund-Woodward. Julia is a professor of archeology.”

  Julia was the redhead. Elsa was the cheese goddess. And she had a different last name from her mother.

  “Hello,” Julia said politely.

  “You’re Clio!” Elsa said. “We heard so much about you!”

  Julia’s accent was crisp and English. Elsa’s was sort of English, occasionally lapsing into something Clio couldn’t quite place.

  “Have you taken care of the ordering?” her dad asked Elsa.

  “It’s all sorted. I just got you a pizza, Clio. And a Coke. I thought that would be okay.”

  There was a niceness about this girl. Clio could tell that she’d really tried to pick something that Clio would like, even though she didn’t know her yet.

  “Pizza and Coke is great, thanks,” Clio said.

  “Elsa speaks Italian,” her father said. “She handles the talking for us.”

  “I’m the translator,” Elsa said with a smile. She had large, rounded teeth. Clio could tell that she’d never had braces because her teeth were just a little unevenly spaced, a few of them slightly crooked. But they were naturally nice and real. Unwhitened. Unfussed with. Dairy goddess teeth.

  “We have everything we need,” her dad said, looking at Julia. “Translator. Artist.”

  “We don’t actually need an artist,” Julia answered. “Not that we don’t want to have one along.”

  There was something lurking at the back of this remark, something in the limp smile—something that told Clio that Julia hadn’t been too excited when she heard Clio was coming along. She was grateful when her little glass bottle of Coke arrived. It was kind of warm, and the glass that came with it only had two ice cubes in it, but it was still liquid, and it gave her something to do. She reached for it.

  “That’s quite a tattoo,” Elsa said.

  Clio winced. She hadn’t been paying attention. She was usually conscious of her tattoo and careful about how she first presented it to people. Everybody always made a big deal about it. Except for Ollie. He had simply admired it and moved on.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s…bright. I know.”

  “It’s really nice,” Elsa said. “Is it new?”

  “No. I’ve had it for a few years.”

  “A few years?” This was Julia. It was so obvious when one parent was judging another.

  “There’s a very interesting story behind that,” Clio’s dad said. “Clio was in a bit of an accide—oh. What’s up?”

  He was addressing someone right behind Clio.

  “I had to stand out in the taxi lane to get wireless connection,” said a male voice behind them. “We’re all set to go. Everything will be waiting for us to load in at the dock.”

  A guy had appeared by the side of the table. He noticed Clio and stopped. Cold. Just stared at her. He had to have been expecting her, but her arrival seemed to startle him.

  “This is Clio,” her father explained. “Clio, this is Aidan Cross. He’s Julia’s assistant.”

  This was an interesting development. There was a guy in her father’s gang. He wasn’t massive, redwood-tall like Ollie. Compared to Ollie, no guy could ever really look tall again. He was just a few inches taller than Clio. All of his clothes were just a few sizes too large. His red polo shirt hung loose and free. His jeans were
slightly too big at the waist and knees, and they spilled down over his ankles onto his Chuck Taylors, also red. He had matched his shirt and shoes, whether or not he meant to. His hair was light brown, and his haircut had either been incredibly expensive or done for free by some drunk friend with scissors and a misguided sense of his own talent. With the right styling products in it, it would have looked like one of those cutting-edge magazine cuts that go in about nine directions. But it didn’t have any of those in it, so it traveled in its many directions without any support.

  But none of those things were really striking about Aidan. What was striking was his face. It wasn’t exceptionally handsome. It wasn’t warm and welcoming like Ollie’s. It was just slightly oval, kind of bony and severe, and it looked to her like it required a bit of an effort to keep itself still—like it might do things without his knowledge or consent. His eyes were round, dark green, and extremely bright, almost hard at the center. Those eyes didn’t miss a thing. She was sure of it.

  Those eyes were taking in Clio now, and it put her on her guard.

  “So…” he said, shifting his focus to her father. “We got the—”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” her dad said quickly.

  “Got the what?” Clio asked.

  “Oh,” her dad said, trying too hard to sound casual. “Just some things for the boat. Your mom told you about the boat, right? Just boat stuff.”

  Now that the introductions were over, the real awkwardness could begin. Julia’s eyes lingered on the spot where the ranch dressing had been. Aidan’s gaze landed on her tattoo.

  The realization was settling in—they were all about to get on a plane and then a boat together. Clio watched as everyone looked around quickly, unsure of what to do next. There were varying levels of familiarity. She and her dad. Her dad and Martin. Her dad and Julia. Her dad was the common denominator in all of this, and that was some bad math.

  A waiter came and started setting down plates. Most of them contained pasta or small pizzas. There was one exception. Elsa’s plate was ringed with oysters still in their rough shells. The shells clinked daintily as they were set down.