Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

  “Eat up,” she said. “I’ll bring you more if you want. Just call me on the com.”

  “Clio,” he said. “Your dad was really down after the divorce. Really down.”

  “We all were,” she said.

  “I know. But he took it all very personally. I was worried about him. He’s like a younger brother to me. I know you don’t like Julia. I wouldn’t expect you to. I know you think this is all a bit extreme—but that’s your dad. This is the first time since it all happened that I’ve seen him really acting like his old self. I came to make sure he stayed that way. I’m on your side. Both of your sides. I’m not going to let anything happen to him.”

  This was reassuring, though Clio couldn’t help but bristle a little. The divorce should have hurt her dad. It was his fault, after all. She was the innocent one.

  “I’ll bring your key back,” she said.

  She walked over to Julia’s door, put the key in the lock, and then paused. Putting the letter back made sense. It meant that there would be no trouble. But on some level she knew that she couldn’t give this letter back, not until she really got to the bottom of it.

  She slipped the letter under her shirt as she went to return the key.

  A General Malfunction

  The next day was Mental and Physical Breakdown Day on the Sea Butterfly. There was no real sense of time to the day, either in the sky or in their activity. It seemed to be permanently stuck at a miserable four o’clock. The failures were adding up. That much was palpable.

  They didn’t go anywhere. They stayed anchored between nowhere and nowhere. No one told Clio why, but she guessed they were planning again, trying to reassess which sites to dive. Not that they really could dive with Martin down. Diving was something that always had to be done in pairs.

  The weather was terrible to boot. It didn’t storm, but there was a miserable drizzle that made the sky and the water gray and going outside unappealing. The inside of the boat was too cold in the air-conditioning, but when they turned it off, became much too humid.

  Martin remained in bed that morning, and Elsa kept to her usual sleeping habits. Clio’s father, Aidan, and Julia holed up in the wheelhouse. Clio put in her earphones and tried to brighten her own mood, but it was useless. Her brain was still churning over the conversation of the night before. She knew the what now, but the why still wasn’t clear. Why the big secret mission for an old rock? Why couldn’t anyone know about it? How had Julia gotten the letter?

  Clio was in the middle of considering these questions and reheating the strew for lunch when there was a clang, a grinding noise, and the unmistakable sound of water going somewhere that it wasn’t supposed to. She looked out in the hall to see soap foam spitting out of the Butterfly’s compact washer-dryer.

  She picked up her com slowly.

  “This is Number Five,” she said into it. “The washing machine just mutinied. I think we’re about to get kind of wet.”

  Whatever their plans were for the rest of the afternoon were quickly dropped. The water supply had to be shut down to stop the flow of water, which had gotten foam all through the hall and slightly into the dining room, making the carpet squish.

  Her father was getting short-tempered, snapping at the machine and throwing down parts in disgust. Aidan handled it very calmly, sending him up to the wheelhouse and taking over. It was actually kind of impressive, watching Aidan sit on the wet carpet, taking apart the machine. He actually seemed to have some idea of what he was doing.

  “How do you know what to do?” Clio asked.

  “It’s just a washing machine,” he said. “It’s not that complicated.”

  “Yeah, if you’ve fixed one before.”

  “Appliances are usually pretty basic,” he said, looking at a small rubber knob with a puzzled expression.

  There was a loud step on the stairs, and Julia came up from below. Aidan was blocking her path into the living room, and she stepped directly into the wet carpet.

  “What is this?” she asked. “Is this why there’s no water?”

  “Yes,” Aidan said. “Working on that.”

  “That’s not your job. Let Ben do it.”

  “Ben tried,” Aidan said. “He was losing his patience.”

  “I’m losing my patience too,” Julia said. “We have serious work to do. Get done with that and meet me downstairs.”

  “She’s pissed about something,” Aidan said when she was gone. “Really pissed.”

  “Do you know about what?” Clio asked.

  “Yup,” Aidan said, sticking his head back into the barrel of the machine. Clio found herself staring at his legs and butt as they extended out. Then she shook her head quickly and rubbed her eyes. God, maybe she really was desperate.

  Up in the Champagne Suite, Elsa was sitting in the bed, writing something on a long pad of paper.

  “Know what this is?” she said.

  “No,” Clio answered.

  “It’s a letter to Alex. I know I shouldn’t be writing letters to Alex, even if I don’t send them, but I just wanted to let him know I was better. I wanted to gloat a little. It’s eleven pages long. And this one?”

  She held up another pile of paper.

  “This is a letter to Aidan. This one is nine pages long. I think I’m losing it again, Clio. I don’t feel cured anymore.”

  Clio sat down next to her and put her hand on her arm.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” Elsa said, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m so sick of this boat. I’m so sick of Alex. And I want something to happen with Aidan. I don’t even know if he likes me. I’m just a mess.”

  Tears started dribbling down her face. She sniffed and wiped them away with her hand. Clio sat up on the pillows and put her arm around her.

  “It’s okay!” Clio said. “Believe me. I know how crazy you feel out here.”

  Elsa dropped her head onto Clio’s shoulder and burrowed into her neck. Her hair tickled under Clio’s chin.

  “Can I ask you something?” Elsa said.

  “Yeah,” Clio said reassuringly. “Sure.”

  “You and Aidan,” Elsa said slowly. “You don’t…”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Do you like him?”

  “What?” Clio said. “Aidan? No. I…no.”

  “It’s just that you two are so alike,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like you two should be together.”

  “Aidan?” Clio asked, her heart pounding. “And me? God, no. Elsa, no.”

  The denials were coming out of her mouth much, much faster than her brain was moving. But even hearing Elsa make the suggestion was intoxicating. Disturbing. Very, very unsettling. It made no sense!

  “Good!” Elsa let out a massive sigh. “You have no idea how I was stressing over asking you that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I have an idea. I wanted to ask you a massive, massive favor. And you can say no. Really.”

  She was talking quickly now, in one gush of relief. She sat up and faced Clio.

  “What?” Clio asked, her mind still reeling. Elsa thought Clio and Aidan were alike? That they should be together?

  “Well,” she said. “Clearly, I think something needs to happen. And I feel like we have no chance, you know, for anything to happen stuck on the boat like this. So I was thinking, maybe, would you kind of…switch?”

  “Switch?”

  “Rooms. Just for one night. And it’s not like that—I don’t want to just sleep with him. Well…what I mean is, I just want to have him over. For, like, a date. And there’s nowhere else to go but here. I didn’t want to ask him until I asked you first.”

  This landed Clio back in reality. She saw her room, her bed, the coffee-colored rug, the view into the magical bathroom. Things that now seemed like home. Her little universe.

  And her friend, who wanted just this one favor. Which was strangely turning her stomach. No, actually. She didn’t want Aidan in her bed, sleeping with Elsa. Doing anything with Elsa.

  “What?” Cl
io said. “Tonight?”

  “No, no!” Elsa said. “Tomorrow. I need a chance to plan. I mean it. It’s like a date. Really. Feel free to say no. It’s so much to ask.”

  “Of course,” Clio heard herself saying. “Sure.”

  “That’s what this is,” Elsa said, holding up the smaller of the two letters. “The invitation.”

  “That’s a long invitation,” Clio said.

  “Long but very interesting,” Elsa said. “I don’t think he’ll mind. But here’s the other favor I need to ask. Could you give it to him? I think he would feel better about it if he knew you were completely okay with it. We’ll have to be sneaky, switching around carefully. So it’ll really be all three of us conspiring.”

  “Right,” Clio said, a million confused feelings firing off inside her at once. “No problem. No problem at all.”

  The Exchange

  The washing machine repairs went on for hours, being interrupted for a short time when Aidan switched on the water so she could make dinner that night. Clio was sitting in the living room, curled on the leather sofa, pretending to read a book. She had two letters in the pocket of her hoodie. Her nerves were making the remnants of her stings itch.

  Elsa was deliberately staying back. The problem was Clio’s father and Julia, who simply refused to go to bed as early as they normally did. Clio had to sit through hours of washing machine and archeology talk—which was as bad a mix as anything she had ever heard in her life.

  Finally, Aidan gave the all-clear for the water to be switched back on for good, and Julia said she needed to take a shower. The moment her father floated off, Clio went to find Aidan by the washer.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Outside.”

  He looked up from his spot on the floor. Up close, Clio could see that his face was lightly glazed with sweat and his eyes looked tired.

  “Outside?” he asked.

  “Yes. Now. Come on.”

  He pulled himself up by grabbing the machine. His butt was completely soaked from sitting on the soggy carpet. She couldn’t help but crack a smile. It was all so absurd.

  She took him out to the back of the deck, as far away as she could get from everyone else. She knew that Elsa could see them from the vestibule if she was looking out. She didn’t seem to be.

  “Going swimming again?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I want to know what you know about the Marguerite stone.”

  He slumped against the side and met her eyes, the darkness shadowing his face, making his eyes brighter. Just looking at him, his hand resting on the rail of the boat, made her heart do that rapid-beating thing again.

  “Did your dad mention this to you?” he asked.

  She held up the letter. It flapped in the wind. She gripped it hard. Aidan’s eyes zeroed in on it.

  “How in hell did you get that?” he said.

  “Things get misplaced,” she said.

  “That doesn’t.”

  “Oh no? Then how did it accidentally get out of the British Museum and onto this boat with us? It sounds like this letter has a long history of being misplaced.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and looked toward the sky, letting out a long sigh.

  “Julia is not happy,” he said. “I didn’t think it was you, though. I thought it got misplaced. If she finds out you have that—”

  “She won’t,” Clio said. “It will reappear. But not before I find out what this all means. I know we’re looking for the Bell Star. I know we’re trying to get the Marguerite stone. What I want to know is why. Why is it so important?”

  “Clio—”

  “Don’t ‘Clio’ me. I have a right to know, and no one is talking. If someone doesn’t explain all of this to me, I am going to lose my mind. Do you get that? I haven’t been trusted from day one, but for no reason.”

  “So why are you asking me?” he said.

  “Because for some reason, I trust you,” she said. “I think you’re honest. And I’m promising you I won’t tell anyone that you ever told me anything. I already know the what, anyway. I need to know the why. I’m asking how we all ended up here together. You, me, Elsa, my dad, this letter. Tell me what it means. No one said you couldn’t do that.”

  He took a long, deep breath.

  “If we’re going to do this,” he said, “we’re going to need to establish a trust bond.”

  “Okay,” Clio said. “That’s fair, whatever it means. How do we do that?”

  “I ask you some questions, and you answer them honestly. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “How?”

  “Because I’m good at spotting liars.”

  “Is that your superpower?” she asked. “We all have at least one.”

  “It’s one of them,” he said. “Let’s get out of public view a little.”

  “And go where?”

  “Down there,” he said, nodding toward the back of the deck, toward the water.

  “You want to swim? I think I’ll pass.”

  “The platform, genius,” he said.

  They stepped down the back stairs to the platform. It was just even with the water, occasionally dipping down an inch or two below the surface. They actually had to sit in the orange raft, which was lashed to it. He was already wet, so he didn’t care. Clio sat down in the water, making sure both letters were dry.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” Clio said uncertainly. “What do you want to know?”

  “Most girls I know can’t stop talking about their boyfriends. You never mention yours. Why not?”

  “Why would I tell you about him?” she asked defensively. Why was he asking her about that?

  “You don’t tell Elsa either. You’re very mysterious about him. Where did you two meet?”

  “Why does this matter?” she said. “We came down here to talk about this stone.”

  “I’m not saying it does. I said I wanted to establish some trust. His name is Ollie, right?”

  Clio nodded slowly.

  “So where did you meet this Ollie?”

  “In an art store,” Clio said.

  “The famous art store. Where you were going to work.”

  “Right,” Clio said.

  “So, he’s an…artist?”

  “He’s a painter,” she said.

  “Do you have one of his paintings?” he asked, coming a little closer as his end of the platform dipped.

  “With me?” Clio said.

  “At all.”

  He was leveling a gaze at her now as he squatted just a few inches away.

  “No,” she said. “But lots of painters don’t just give out their work.”

  “Not even to their girlfriends?”

  “No,” Clio said firmly. “Not when they’re building their portfolios. Now it’s your turn.”

  That much was true about painters. She hadn’t lied about any of this.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here goes. Everything develops, right? Modern humans have been around for about two hundred thousand years. We can account for about five or six thousand of those years in terms of civilization. We know a little about the activity before that—people were planting seeds and sharpening sticks. But actual civilization doesn’t pop up until around 3500 BC. So, a hundred and ninety-five thousand years of chasing deer and living in caves with very little progress, and then suddenly, we have the Sumerians and the Egyptians. Sumerians came first, Egyptians a few hundred years later. Basically, the biggest, smartest, oldest civilization is the Egyptian civilization. Everybody knows they gave us mummies and hieroglyphics and pyramids. Everybody loves them. Following so far?”

  Clio nodded. He was getting back into his “I go to Yale and Cambridge” voice a little, but it was strangely bearable this time. Maybe because she was interested in what he had to say for once. Or maybe because it was hard to get too obnoxious when you were crouching in an inch of water in the dark. Clio thought back to the night of her jellyfish smackdown. How Aidan h
ad poured the water all over her body. She shivered.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Every year, technology gets a little better. Think about how far we’ve come in just a hundred years. Whole different world, right? Now, let’s look at the Great Pyramid of Giza. It’s one of the architectural wonders of the world. Most historians date it to around 2560 BC. That’s pretty early in human history. And you know what? We still don’t know how they built it, and we still don’t quite know what it does.”

  “It doesn’t do anything,” she said. “It just sits there. It’s a tomb.”

  “It’s way too complex to just be a tomb,” he said. “For a start, it’s at the place where the longest meridian and the east-west axis meet. It marks the exact center of the world—something humans couldn’t even begin to identify until a few hundred years ago. It’s about five hundred feet high; it’s made up of more than two million blocks that weigh between two and fifteen tons each. They’re placed so perfectly that the sides are never off by more than eight inches. The inside is engineered and constructed so perfectly that you can’t even get your nails in the joins of the blocks. Plus the whole thing was planned out and built with astonishing geometrical harmony. And it’s aligned to true north, south, east, and west. How? Why? We have no clue.”

  “What’s that got to do with us now?” Clio asked. “I mean, I’m impressed that you know all of this, but we’re not talking about Egypt.”

  “You asked me to explain,” he said. “I am explaining. Imagine a little kid going into kindergarten. The kid has to learn his numbers and letters and how to tie his shoelaces because he’s five. Now imagine that little kid starts scribbling advanced linear algebra equations in his coloring book, then draws up a complete set of architectural plans for a skyscraper. And then builds that skyscraper. You would probably think something strange was going on. That’s how weird and out of nowhere the Egyptians are. They’re so weird that there are people out there who believe space aliens taught them.”

  “So…how did they learn all of that stuff?”

  “You want to know the answer to that, you have to tell me a little more about the mysterious boyfriend.”