Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

  “Do we have the key to the wheelhouse to call this in?” Aidan asked Martin.

  “No. Ben has it. Clio?”

  “She can talk,” Aidan said. “But I think she’s in a lot of pain.”

  Clio groaned another, slightly higher-pitched affirmative.

  “This is useless,” Martin said, clicking off his com. “They’re out of range. We can get her to land, but then we’d have to figure out what to do from there, and it doesn’t look like she can move much. I’ll go and try to find a doctor or someone.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Elsa said. “I can do the talking.”

  “You’ll stay with her?” Martin said to Aidan.

  “I’ll take care of her,” he answered.

  “We’ll be right back, Clio,” Elsa said, taking her hand. “Don’t be scared, okay? We’ll bring help.”

  They hurried off. She looked up at Aidan. His head was blocking out the moon, but his crazy haircut had picked up the white glow.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, his voice sounding uncertain. “You’re shivering. Hang on.”

  He was right. She was shivering. Aidan vanished for a moment, returning with a white chenille blanket that had been decoratively draped over the end of the sofa. He also had a cushion for her head.

  “Listen,” he said, tucking the blanket around her, “I’m going to find out what to do. I’ll be gone for a few minutes. Will you be okay?”

  She blinked. The blanket made things just a shade better. At least it felt like she wasn’t alone and exposed. In some ways, though, it made the pain even more clear.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  Clio lay there on the wet deck, cocooned in her little throw blanket, staring up at the sky. The air suddenly stank of fish. Aidan soon returned with the biggest kettle from the galley. He was carrying it carefully by the handle.

  “This is hot water,” he said, setting it down. “It’s really hot, but it should take away some of the immediate pain. I’m going to pour this on you, okay? I’m going to start with your legs.”

  She looked at him and nodded slightly. He peeled off the blanket and threw it to the side. Clio felt the scalding water dumping over her, starting around the waist and going right down to her feet. It pooled around her, soaking the cushion under her head. After the first burn, she noticed that it did help. She heard a strange sound and realized that she was making a low wailing noise.

  “I’m going to get some more,” he said.

  He returned with another potful and rolled her over. She put her face down into the pooled water. It gurgled up her nose. She felt her shirt being pulled up a little and the water dropping onto the small of her back.

  “God,” he said. “They really got you. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Can I go inside?” she asked. Her voice sounded small and weak. Kind of pathetic.

  “Sure,” he said. “Can you get up? Forget it. Here.”

  Before she could even try, his arms were underneath her. She was deadweight, but he picked her up without too much difficulty and got her through the glass doors. In her miserable state, the random thought that passed through Clio’s head was, I guess this is my turn to get picked up.

  It was way too cold and dark in the living room, and the leather sofa he set her on felt like ice. Her skin stuck to it. She felt welts popping up all over her body.

  “Blanket,” she mumbled. She didn’t mean to sound so blunt, but it was all she could really manage. She couldn’t be subtle and conversational. She had been reduced to a Franken-Clio level of speech. He rushed back out and got the blanket.

  “It’s all wet,” he said. “I’ll go get the one off your bed.”

  He brought Elsa’s, which struck her as odd. But it wasn’t like he should have known which of the two was hers. It smelled like Elsa too, an herbal smell, kind of like chamomile. He put it over her and switched on some of the lights.

  Her body was coming back to life now. The pain was still strong, but the warm blanket that smelled of Elsa, the light—it all made her feel more human. A wellspring of emotion and fear, something huge that she hadn’t felt since she was little, suddenly blossomed inside her. She wanted her father. She wanted her mom. She wanted her cat.

  She tried not to let it happen, but it was useless. There was way too much inside her—too many thoughts, too much fear, too much jellyfish. It was about to come out whether she wanted it to or not. She pressed herself hard into the crease of the sofa in the hopes that it might swallow her. Maybe there was a secret room in there where she could quietly die on her own. She could not lose it in front of Aidan. Enough was going wrong at this moment.

  “Clio?” he asked.

  This, apparently, was the cue for the crying to begin. In a second, she was going all out, her face adhering to the leather.

  There was no movement from Aidan for a moment or two, then Clio felt him sit down on the sofa a few inches away from her head. Clio balled up one of her fists and managed to stick it into her eyes, as if that might make them dry.

  “I’m…fine,” she gasped.

  “Yeah,” he said, in his usual Aidan tone. “I can see that.”

  Clio took in a huge breath and tried to hold it. She managed to stop the tears for a few seconds and pull up her head.

  “Fine…” she mumbled again.

  He moved over so when she put her head down, it landed in his lap, just above the knees.

  “Don’t you ever give up?” he said, more quietly this time. “You’re hurt. Just cry, okay?”

  It was so soft and matter-of-fact, so not Aidan-like, that it caught her off guard. So she did. In big, gasping sobs. She soaked his thick khaki shorts. All the while, Aidan kept one hand on the back of her head, moving it just a little, in a tiny circle. He didn’t say anything. He just kept her there until she had run out of the big stuff and was reduced to some dribbling and hiccups.

  When she felt like she had gained a little control over herself, she looked up cautiously. He was leaning against the armrest and looking down at her, his sharp features still.

  “Can I have water?” she croaked.

  He slid back down so that he could go to the galley and get her a glass. She tried to wipe off her face. She was a mess—tears dripping down her chin, her nose running. She took the glass looking down so that he couldn’t see all of this, but he sat down on the floor next to her, just at eye level.

  “Here,” he said, passing her a paper towel.

  She wiped at her nose quickly, but that just made it run more. It was like a busted pipe of goo. There had to be a way of recovering from this.

  “I got smacked,” she said, keeping her face in the towel. “Fifty points.”

  “Smacked?”

  “A group of jellyfish is called a smack,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “You know, in Dive!? If you go into one, you get smacked. It costs you fifty points.”

  Silence. She finished wiping as best she could and sipped her water.

  “Why are you being so nice?” she said.

  “Don’t sound so shocked,” he said with a smirk. “Hasn’t my natural charm rubbed off on you yet?”

  “That was charm?” she asked. “I thought it was a sun rash.”

  He let out a sigh and shook his head. “Would you stop?” he said. “I know you’re tough. I know you think I’m an asshole. But can we just let it go for a minute?”

  Again his directness put her to shame. She felt her face flush. It was impossible to tell if it was embarrassment or if it was just falling in line with the rest of her body.

  “Sorry,” she finally said. “I thought I was going to drown. I don’t know how I made it back.”

  “Stubbornness,” he answered, a little too quickly. “Or adrenaline. I think some people would have drowned.”

  A few leftover tears trickled down her face. He rubbed them off with his thumb.

  “Thanks,” she finally said.

  “Don’t worry abo
ut it.”

  He sat there, hugging his knees, looking at her. It was strangely calming. There was no need to say anything. His high cheekbones and bright, quick eyes didn’t look hard or searching, like they normally did. They just looked…good. Reassuring.

  “So,” he said. “I guess you didn’t have a good call to your boyfriend. Is that why you decided to swim?”

  “I didn’t call my boyfriend,” she said quickly.

  This was true. She had no boyfriend. And it had been an e-mail anyway.

  “So what were you doing?” he asked. “Or is it a secret?”

  “Yeah. I’m on a secret mission, just like the rest of you. I was calling headquarters and getting my orders.”

  He reached out and peeled a piece of hair that had been sticking too close to her eye and set it back in place. A shock went through her body. Maybe it was jellyfish venom, or adrenaline, or maybe an electric eel had gotten her too…but it practically crackled. Suddenly, she was very aware that under the comforter, she was lying there in only her underwear and a very wet tank top. And that he had already seen this.

  “Whoever this guy is,” Aidan said, “he must be a piece of work to put up with you.”

  He left his hand resting lightly against her head, just one finger lightly running along her hairline. Such a small movement, but Clio had never felt anything like it. It blocked out all the pain or at least made her stop caring about it. Nerves that she didn’t even know she had, ones that had never been stimulated before, shot to life.

  “I never said—” she began.

  “What?”

  He was leaning in just a bit. They shared a little pool of yellowy light from the lamp on the end table. At that second, Clio knew that she could have just leaned farther over on the sofa and that Aidan would have kissed her. It was absolute knowledge of a variety she had never encountered before.

  The other thing was…she wanted him to. Very, very badly.

  This theory had to be tested. She inched herself slightly toward the edge of the sofa. He leaned just a fraction of an inch closer.

  It was amazing. It was like a magnetic field between their faces.

  And then, just as she was sliding closer, she caught a whiff of Elsa from the comforter. Friend, her brain said. That smells of friend.

  It did. It smelled of friend. A friend who was getting her help at this very second.

  She couldn’t pull back from this. He was looking at her. This was her moment. This was what she had waited for so long.

  “Never said what?” he asked.

  The smell of Elsa was overwhelming her now. She hadn’t even known there was an Elsa smell before.

  “You and Elsa,” she blurted.

  He pulled his hand back but stayed where he was.

  “Me and Elsa what?” he asked.

  But she could see he knew what she meant. She wanted to take the statement back, to make the feeling return, but that was impossible.

  “I’m not feeling so good,” she said, closing her eyes. “I think I’m…”

  She couldn’t say what she was.

  “Yeah,” he said. There was an odd note to his voice. It sounded like he was laughing, but at himself. Grimly.

  “Yeah,” he said again. “You were right about me. I am an asshole. Sometimes you just do things…because you can.”

  She heard him sigh. Another tear trickled out of her eye, but he didn’t remove it.

  “I’m going to see if they’re coming,” he said. Then he got up, opened up the glass doors, and stepped out onto the deck.

  The Venom

  The doctor was a small, polite man in a tan gabardine suit. He sat on the white leather armchair, sweating and making notes on a pad. Then he made a proclamation in Italian, waving his pen like a magic wand.

  “He says they have a bad jellyfish problem around here,” Elsa translated. “No one should swim outside the swimming area.”

  “No,” Clio mumbled into the sofa. “Really?”

  Clio’s examination was over. It had taken place right there in the living room. The doctor had flipped back the comforter, revealing Clio in her underwear. Martin and Aidan retreated to the deck while this was going on, but Elsa leaned over, like a helpful nurse, translating away.

  It was impossible to count the jellyfish stings—they were long, tentacle stings, tangled up on each other. It looked like someone had dropped a knotty mess of unraveled red thread all over Clio’s legs and back. They slashed right through the tattoo. The doctor explained that if Clio had been allergic, she would already be dead. So her being alive was a very good sign. Still, he had gone on to say, and Elsa had gone on to translate, it was never advisable to get so many jellyfish stings.

  He opened his bag and shook some pills out into a glass tumbler. Then he injected Clio in the arm, set his card on the chair, and left.

  Elsa tried to put some clothes on Clio, but the process was much too painful. So Clio was wrapped back in her cocoon of comforter.

  “How did you guys get back?” Clio asked.

  “We went looking for you. We bumped into Martin on the way. He was about to take the raft back. My mom and your dad were staying out a bit longer.”

  Nice. Not only were they just left behind—they were left behind so that her dad could go on a date. She had a feeling that this should make her very angry, but the anger didn’t really come.

  “I think he gave me something…interesting in that shot,” she said.

  “Rest,” Elsa said. “Okay? I’ll stay right here with you.”

  She felt Elsa slip her hand under the blanket and find Clio’s hand. Aidan stood in the middle of the room and looked at her, then left.

  “You know, when I first met you, you sort of seemed like a cheese goddess,” Clio mumbled to Elsa. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  “I am a cheese goddess,” Elsa said.

  She stroked back Clio’s hair.

  “You’re quite mental,” Elsa said. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah,” Clio said.

  “Why did you run out?” Elsa said. “We were so worried about you.”

  “It’s complicated,” Clio mumbled. But her thoughts were getting soft and heavy, like big, sopping-wet bags. Wet bags of thoughts that glowed on the inside like jellyfish, like trapped lightning. She saw Aidan come in from the deck and look at her over Elsa’s shoulder, and then she shut her eyes.

  When she opened them again, she felt gummy and heavy. Outside, the sky was light and lavender. It was morning, very early. One of the fat armchairs had been pulled up close to the sofa and her father was sitting in it, looking out the glass doors at the sunrise. Clio watched him for a moment, then, unable to hold her eyes open, she drifted back to sleep.

  When she woke up again, it was much brighter. The chair was back in its place and her father was gone. Elsa sat in it instead, her knees tucked up under her chin and a magazine balanced on her feet.

  Clio was sure she had seen her father there during the night.

  It was time for a body check. She lifted the blanket a little and looked down at herself. What looked like red thread the night before had puffed up to the size of yarn. From her ankles straight on up, she looked like some kind of insane road map. She flipped the blanket back over quickly.

  “I’m deformed,” she said to Elsa. “Hideously deformed.”

  Elsa looked up and let the magazine slip from her feet as she stood. She lifted a corner of the blanket and looked under. Her eyes widened, and she lowered the blanket softly.

  “It’s just a little swelling,” she said quickly. “It’ll go away. Here. Do you want your pajamas and sweatshirt?”

  Clio could sit up now, and she accepted the clothes. The tank top hadn’t exactly dried during the night. It felt sticky and swampy, but she didn’t care. The damage was too extensive to worry about something as minor as a humid shirt. She managed to slip on the polka-dot pajama bottoms and pulled on the sweatshirt.

  It was time to try to stand. Her legs hurt an
d they were stiff, but she could support herself. She lumbered over to the glass doors and looked out. She was surprised to find that they were docked.

  “We’re staying at least another day,” Elsa explained. “Your dad doesn’t want to leave port until he’s sure you’re all right, in case you need a doctor again.”

  “Was my dad here?” Clio asked.

  “They went to get some breakfast,” Elsa said. “He and Martin. They’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “I guess they can’t survive without me, huh?” Clio said. “They couldn’t make breakfast?”

  “Not as good as yours,” Elsa said.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you last night,” Clio said. “I came back, but…”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You know?”

  “I saw you,” Elsa said. “You came back to the club. You left because you were trying to help. And you did.”

  Help? She had been trying to help?

  “You saw what happened,” Elsa said, unable to contain her smile. “It was good. He’s not as useless as he seems. He doesn’t do any of the annoying stuff. He’s not grabby, and he doesn’t force his tongue down your throat. It’s just the right amount of pressure. The boy is good.”

  Clio decided it was time to sit down again, now. Elsa sat next to her.

  “For the first night in a long while, I didn’t dream about Alex at all,” she said. “I think I’m cured. Cured, Clio. Cured.”

  “That’s…great,” Clio said.

  Someone was coming up the steps. It was Aidan, freshly showered, with still-wet multidirectional hair.

  “What’s up, moron?” he asked.

  It was the normal Aidan voice. She looked for a hint of the madness of last night, but it wasn’t there. It was the old, snarky, arrogant voice. It fact, it was slightly more snarky and arrogant.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just sitting around, swelling. You know. Like any other morning.”

  “I’m going to go get my bag,” Elsa said.

  He nodded and went into the galley, emerging a minute later with a can of soda. Clio searched his face for what she had seen last night, but there was nothing there.