The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  “Norman?”

  “Yeah, he’s a loggerhead. You have to be a little bit careful of him, because one time he bit someone, but you just push him away and he gets the idea.”

  Lily looks at me. “Are you suggesting I go swimming in there,” she points at the giant pool. “With sharks?”

  “I thought you might like to. It’s really nice and warm.” It’s actually so warm in the water that the atmosphere up here, out of the water, is uncomfortably hot.

  “Are you serious?”

  In response I go to the storeroom door. You wouldn’t really notice it if you didn’t know it was there, and I key in the security code to open it. Inside there’s a few diving masks hanging on hooks. I grab a couple. “You can get changed in here if you like. Out here is all on the CCTV, so the security guy might be watching.”

  “Oh my God. You are serious.” She doesn’t go inside, but walks back to the pool and half-way out across the bridge. She looks down, and I join her, seeing all the fish cruising around. Mostly the different species act pretty much the same here as in the wild. The open ocean fish cruise the tank, and the reef fish guard their holes and nests on the fake corals. A large black tip shark comes near to the bridge, its dorsal fin just breaking through the surface.

  “I can’t swim there. Not with sharks.”

  “They’re only small sharks.” I say. “Come on, it’s fun.” I let her watch for a while, then lead her away to the storeroom.

  I let her get changed in private. It seems more proper that way, then when she’s done I quickly change too. When I get out she’s still staring down at the sharks.

  “Are you sure about this?” She asks, biting her lip. “Have you done it before?”

  I’ve done it loads before, the animals here are completely used to the aquarium staff and volunteers snorkeling in this pool – that’s why I’m allowed to do it tonight. But I decide to play a trick on her. I just shrug a bit, and I see how much she tenses up.

  “You haven’t?! Then I’m not.”

  “Relax, just watch out for Norman.” I climb the barrier of the bridge, and lean out over the water. Then I fix the mask over my face and let go.

  It’s lovely, being engulfed by warm water, it always is. I let myself sink down, to the bottom of the pool. With the splash I made, all the fish initially keep away, but after a few moments they come back, inquisitive to see what has just joined them. But I don’t stay long. I surface to see Lily still on the bridge.

  “Come on!” I call.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake.” She slowly climbs over the barrier too, but holds on tight to the railings.

  “Come on!”

  She lets go, and screams as she hits the water.

  I can see how panicked she is at first, she won’t even put her face in the water, even though that’s the best way to calm down, by seeing what it is that’s scaring you. But slowly, when nothing attacks her, I manage to persuade her to put the mask on properly, and first to look down, and then to take little dives under the water and around the tank. The fish are very good at not coming too close, except for some of the sharks that don’t seem to care. They actually brush against us as we’re swimming, and we can feel how rough their skin is. Norman comes to see us too, but he’s not in a nippy mood.

  We swim around the strange glass bubble that is the tunnel. It’s weird how it always looks distorted and odd from when you’re inside it, looking up into the water, and it always looks really limiting and small when you’re in the water. There are other viewing ports too, and we swim around them all, looking out at the public spaces like the fish do. Finally we swim circuits of the whole pool, along with the mixed shoal of fish, and then with Norman, holding onto the rim of his shell, and letting him pull us through the water. Then – because it’s nearly midnight – I say we should probably get out of the water now.

  We both get changed in the storeroom this time – only because I forgot to suggest we should bring any towels, but they have some in there. And I look away from Lily as she peels down the swimsuit, but she’s going on and on about how amazing it was to feel the sharks, and she notices me looking away, and tells me to look back, and then she can’t stop giggling at my reaction. And I have to remind her, again, that they have CCTV in the main part of the aquarium.

  And then we get let out, back into the street, and we decide to walk home, because it’s a nice night. And when we finally get back to Lily’s house, and Lily starts kissing me the moment we get inside, I don’t stop her this time.

  “You know,” Lily says the next morning, when I wake up. I’m late actually – I ought to be at a class, but it’s not one I really have to go to. Lily draws the drapes back to let the daylight in. She’s already been downstairs and I can smell the coffee. “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday. About how we’ve been hiding away here.” I kind of struggle up onto one of my elbows, and rub my eyes with the other hand.

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. I have. And you’re right. We can’t go on like this, hiding away, as you put it.” She smiles to show she’s not mad. “We need to open up to the world. Beyond Eric I mean. Be brave.”

  “A bit like before. When we did lots of things. That was fun.”

  “Yeah. So…” She takes a deep breath. “I was thinking that, before we do, before we tell the whole world, we should get everyone back together first. To clear the air. You know, Eric and Jennifer and Oscar and… …and James.” She looks at me for a second as she says the last name, then looks away again.

  “Oh.” I say.

  “He’s part of the group Billy. And Eric says he knows about us anyway. But he’s OK with it. I mean – he ought to be. He’s the one who broke up with me.” She smiles again, but it’s a little more forced this time. “And I heard that he’s got a new girlfriend. Some cheerleader called Brooke.” She screws up her nose, as if this is a really stupid name. “I guess we could invite her too.”

  “Invite her? Invite her where?”

  “Round here. Before we – you know – before we get seen out. I was thinking I could invite them all on Saturday. Would that be OK with you?

  It wasn’t what I meant really, about going out more. But I guess it’s a step in the right direction. “OK. I guess.”

  Lily smiles. “There’s coffee downstairs. But then I have to go to class. But you can stay. Have a shower, let yourself out.”

  So that’s what I do.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Billy? Lily’s dating Billy?”

  “No. Not…” James looked away, still driving slowly through the night-time streets. “They’re not dating. At least, it’s not gonna last, it’s just a…”

  “A what?” Oscar pressed him, the shadow of a grin on his lips.

  “I don’t know what. That’s the problem. She’s never done this before. Much less with….”

  “Hey come on,” Oscar turned to his friend. “There’s no way she’s gonna choose a runt like that over you!”

  James didn’t answer.

  “Oh my God,” Oscar went on. “That explains everything. Your dumb ass behavior tonight. Picking on those nerd types.” He chuckled, then when he spoke again his voice was serious. “So what are you gonna do?”

  “Do? What am I gonna do?” James drove on silently, as if this was the first time he’d been able to think clearly about the issue. “I’m going to get her back, that’s what. And I’m going to fuck that little prick right up, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I don’t go over to Lily’s on the Friday night, because I have to work, an essay (The Meaning of Biology and Its Different Fields – so still really basic stuff). Then, just as I’m about to leave my house on Saturday afternoon, I get an email from back home. It sort of throws me. It’s like two worlds crashing together.

  I can’t tell you who the email comes from because I set up the system to be anonymous. I thought it wo
uld encourage more people to use it, but now someone has, it’s actually a bit annoying since I can’t contact them to ask more questions. I guess I should explain. The email came through my website against the expansion of the Fonchem site in the north of Lornea Island. After I discovered that the bay just to the south – which Fonchem wants to take over – is an important breeding ground for Lornea Island sea-dragons, I was worried about them being so close to a site where they make all these horrible chemicals, so I set up an anonymous tip line, where people could email through reports of chemical spills or environmental damage. And then – well to be honest, then I forgot about it, because no one emailed, and most of the time I didn’t even remember to put the anonymous tip email address on the posters. But I did put it on some of the posters, and now someone’s emailed me.

  Whoever it is has included photos, and they’re sitting on my computer now. They’re pictures of the high tide line, you can’t see where exactly, but I looked at the metadata from the photos – that’s additional information most cameras capture when they record images, it tells you the date, and what equipment was being used, and on cameras with built in GPS it also includes location data – so I know it’s in the bay south of the Fonchem site. And there, dried up and dead, and looking almost identical to pieces of seaweed, are three little corpses of sea-dragons, their tails curled up. But I still want to ask questions, like how many there actually are, and whether there’s been any strong winds there in the last few days, that might have thrown up unusually large waves and washed them ashore. Or, whether there’s been any residue on the water surface, or on the sand, that would indicate a spillage, or some other reason why they might have died. But I can’t do any of that, because I don’t know who sent the email. So instead, I just study it for a while, and then I’m in a rush because I said I’d get to Lily’s house in time to help her get things ready for tonight. So you can see why I’m a bit conflicted. One half of me is campaigning against a chemical giant probably poisoning the sea, the other half of me is sort of in love with the daughter of the CEO of the exact same company.

  When I get there, Lily’s decided we’re going to have a games night. She thinks that will give everyone something to focus on. So they’re not all thinking how weird it is that she’s with me now, and not James. While she’s cooking, I follow her instructions, going into the library and bringing out all the games they have in the house. I like the library in Lily’s house. It’s not a massive room but all the walls are just bookshelves, from the floor to the ceiling. There’s even a ladder on rails, that you can slide left and right to get at the books which are too high to reach, and I spend a bit of time climbing up and down and looking over the books. But I find the games in the end, they’re in a cupboard made of really dark wood, and there’s pretty much every game you could think of. There’s Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, various different types of charades-type games – I don’t really have a preference for which one we play, so I yank them all out and take them through to the dining room table. Then I make a fire in there, because it’s a cold room, and the weather is turning now it’s the fall.

  Eric is the first to arrive, and he gets all over-excited when he learns we’re playing games. But I can tell Lily is more like me, still nervous about how tonight’s going to go. And when the others arrive –Jennifer and Oscar and James all come together in his big SUV – I have to take a deep breath before I open the door to them. But pretty soon I can tell it’s going to be alright after all. Oscar has a bunch of flowers he’s brought for Lily, and Jennifer gives me a kiss on both cheeks, like she might have done before me and Lily got together, and when James sees me, his face lights up into a big friendly smile, and he slaps me on the back. There is a bit of a moment though, when he sees Lily.

  “Hello,” James says to her, when she steps out of the kitchen to greet everyone. And everyone kind of freezes, like they’re watching to see how each of them reacts, but it doesn’t last long, and they have a sort of half-hearted embrace.

  “Hello James,” Lily says. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “It’s nice to see you too. You look well.”

  “Is your new girlfriend not here?” I ask, because I remember that Lily said she would invite her, and then I regret saying it, because it’s – well it’s not the right thing to say, is it? But I’ve said it now. “Brooke isn’t it?”

  James turns to me, and his smile is a bit forced at first, but then he relaxes again, and almost laughs. He shakes his head.

  “I wouldn’t say she was a new girlfriend, Billy,” he replies. “We went on a couple of dates, but it wasn’t really working.” There’s a silence, but James keeps on, and breaks it. “But hey, no need to talk about that. Let’s keep things happy. I hear we’re here to play a games marathon, and I intend to destroy you all.”

  “I don’t think so,” Oscar interrupts, and they’re both being playful, and Lily has to stop them by saying we have to eat first.

  Dinner is delicious. Lily has really made an effort, and I learn a bunch of new Italian words like ‘bruschetta’, which is a kind of toast with garlic and tomatoes and olive oil, and ‘crostini’, which is sort of the same thing, only with smoked salmon and watercress – but either way they both taste amazing, and there’s these little goat’s cheese tarts that I can’t stop eating. And everyone compliments her on how good everything is, which she seems to like. James sort of dominates the conversation, but not in a bad way. He’s actually much funnier than I ever thought before. He tells us a story about how he found a goat in his dorm rooms, which sounds bizarre, but it turns out it belonged to a friend of his who was trying to get into one of the ‘final’ clubs they have at Harvard university. I didn’t know anything about them, but James explained, they’re these private society clubs that are really exclusive, and even if you get invited into them you have to do an initiation test. And for James’ friend he had to keep a goat for a week, only he left his door open and it wandered off. They all had to search the whole building for it, and only when they’d all given up did James come back to his room, and find it was in his bathroom, eating the shower mat. Everyone laughs at this, except for Eric, because for some reason he’s not in a very good mood.

  After dinner is cleared away we get the games out. There’s a mini argument about what to play, Oscar says we should play Risk, but James wants to play Monopoly, so the pair of them end up having a vote. I vote for Risk but neither Jennifer nor Lily know how to play Risk though, so we decide on Monopoly.

  I read an article on Monopoly in Science magazine. About how odd it is that it’s become a cultural institution, even though it’s essentially just a game of chance. You can only move to the place where the dice tell you, and then the only choice you have is whether to buy that property or not, and only then if you happen to be the first one to land there. You might as well just take it in turns to roll the dice a dozen times and see who has the highest score at the end. It would be quicker, and there’d be fewer arguments too.

  It’s funny how it sucks you in though. I follow the only tactic that makes sense – to buy everything I can at the start, and hope I get lucky. Which is pretty much what everyone else does too. So after a while all the properties have been bought, but no one has a full set, which you need in order to build houses or hotels, and push the rents really high – I’m sure you know the rules. So then the bargaining starts. Eric has gone for the stations (which is a very poor tactic by the way) and practically bankrupts himself getting Lily to sell him the last one. She’s then got the money to buy from Jennifer and James and get two full sets. I have two of the yellow properties and one red one, and James has the opposite, so we do a deal. And meanwhile Oscar gets a set of the dark yellow properties, after doing a deal with Jennifer, who gets the light blue. Then we all start building houses. Pretty soon we’re split into three different levels of power. There’s Lily and Oscar, who are both the most powerful with two sets each. Statistically speaking, it’s almost certain that one of them is going to
win. Then there’s Eric and Jennifer. Eric only has the stations, and Jennifer only has one low value set, so it’s just a matter of time before they both get wiped out. And then there’s James and I, who are sort in the middle – we’ve each got one, mid-value set. We’re unlikely to win, but we’ve got enough money and other property to stay in the game for ages.

  At this point you could make a mathematical model of the game, using a random number generator as the dice. You could run it a few thousand times, and work out the exact percentage chance we’d each have of winning. Of course it wouldn’t give the exact same outcome every time, because the dice rolls are random, but it would be interesting to do.

  But actually it might not work, because it would miss out something important to Monopoly. It would miss out how you can gang up on people. I don’t know how you’d build that into the model.

  After we’ve been playing about two hours, Jennifer has a really unlucky run. She throws a double, which makes her land on Lily’s second most expensive property, and then she has to throw again, and lands on Lily’s most expensive one – which also happens to be the most expensive property on the whole board. And even though it’s not Lily’s fault at all, everyone blames her, and keeps blaming her when Jennifer doesn’t have enough money or property to pay the rent due. So Jennifer’s the first to go out. She pretends to be really upset about it, but actually you can tell she’s only half-pretending, like she’s pretending to pretend, to cover up that she really is a bit pissed.

  Eric goes out next, also after landing on one of Lily’s properties, so she gets the stations back. He gets a little bitter too, and even makes a comment about how she must have learned to be so ruthless from her father. Everyone laughs, everyone except Lily that is. She’s now isolated, but still kind-of enjoying herself because she can’t really lose the game now. So then, when it’s James’ go, he thinks for a long while, as he’s holding the dice, but then doesn’t throw them. Instead he suggests that he and I do a merger. We’re the two weakest players left, and he says it’s the only way we stand any chance of surviving. We’ll remove his character, the car, and just keep my boat. He’s right, of course, that is a good tactic, but then there’s a bit of a row over whether it’s legal to do this. Only it’s an old box and the rules book is missing some pages, so we take a vote to decide it, and it’s only Lily who’s against it. So after that James and I are about the same strength as Oscar, with Lily still way out in front. So the only real question is whether James and I, or Oscar, is the next to get unlucky and land on an expensive property. It’s a bit tense for a while, but then we squeak through the toughest bit of the board, and hand the dice to Oscar, and he gets whacked by Lily’s hotel. After that it’s only a matter of time before Oscar is toast.