Oracle--Fire Island
Page 9
“Wait,” Ret interrupted. “What do you mean ‘in Stone’s possession’?”
“I mean it was at his house,” said Coy, clarifying as little as possible.
“You went to his house?” Ret asked with great intrigue. “What was it like? Did you find anything else? How did you—”
Mr. Coy held up his hand to stop Ret. “I am going to run some tests on this rock. In the mean time, why don’t you concentrate on figuring out the squatting gummy bear man, hmm?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ana interjected. “We’ve got to get going anyway; don’t want to be late for our big game today. Mom’s been texting me, wondering where we are.” Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Yo, big P—let’s go!”
Paige was still clinging to Pluto, looking like a sloth wrapped around a limb. Her planet moseyed along, in no rush to return its passenger. Paige replied, “Coming.”
As they waited for Paige to return from orbit, Ret could hear the faint rushing of the seawater that was cascading down the tube in the stairwell. He figured now was a good time to get some answers and finally put his curiosity at ease.
“Sir,” he addressed Mr. Coy, who was standing at the edge of the platform and removing used harnesses as the planets came by, “what exactly is the purpose of that pipe full of water?”
“It spins the turbine to power the generator,” he answered, with no intention of expounding.
“Turbine,” Ret whispered to himself. “Generator—Lionel talked about those.”
“Lionel did what now?” Mr. Coy probed, his curiosity piqued.
“Lionel—he mentioned something about a turbine and a generator when he gave me a tour of the power plant,” Ret explained.
“Oh he did, did he?” Mr. Coy suddenly became very defensive. “Well, did Lionel also tell you how the high-velocity water strikes the turbine’s blades enough to spin a copper coil which rotates between magnets within the generator, and that the magnets give off a magnetic field full of electrons that the wire scoops up and conducts to a network of circuits? And does Lionel have an in-home system that recycles seawater to generate electricity and store it in his own sun—enough to power his own house and be completely self-reliant? Eh?! Did Lionel tell you that?!”
Silence ensued. Ret and Ana were speechless. Mr. Coy, realizing his rashness, exhaled and then stubbornly stomped off. They listened until the sound of his footsteps up the stairs could no longer be heard. Paige arrived and dismounted but, noticing the disquieted expressions on her friends’ faces, said nothing.
“What does Mr. Coy have against Lionel?” Ana asked Ret soberly.
“He’s jealous,” Ret said, obviously bothered. Inwardly, it angered Ret how much Mr. Coy loathed Lionel, a person who thus far had been nothing but helpful and friendly to them.
“Jealous of what?” Ana wondered softly.
“Jealous that Lionel is everything that he isn’t.”
Ret started for the stairs. Ana shrugged and followed. But Paige lingered, stung by Ret’s cold words.
* * * * *
It was fortunate that Ana and Paige had to report to the game early since Tybee High’s gymnasium was already nearing capacity when they arrived. The two of them ran off to join their teammates while Pauline, with Ret contemplatively trailing a few steps behind, scaled the bleachers and found a spot for the two of them several rows behind the home team’s bench. As the girls warmed up on the court, Pauline waved repeatedly until her daughter located her in the stands. Ana replied with a flamboyant wave of her own while Paige scarcely fluttered her fingers, obviously nervous to be in front of so many people.
Ret sat hunched and learning forward, his elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. He didn’t bother to even pretend that he was at all interested in the big playoff championship tournament final game—or whatever Ana had called it. He could think about nothing except collecting the next element, which obviously was fire. Over the last few weeks, he had begun to see the world in a different light; indeed, in a more flammable guise. The more he thought about it, the more he came to realize the pervasiveness of fire. In just the last several hours, some degree of fire had been called upon to start the car, warm the bath water, and heat the stove. Even at the game, it was a flame that was cooking the hot dogs at the concession stand.
Yet this was to be expected; the very fact that he was to collect the six, most basic elements in nature portended that they would be ever-present. As such, it wasn’t so much the identification of the element that was the crux of the mystery as it was the interpretation of the scar. But the scar might as well have never lit up, so unknowable was its design. At least the earth element’s symbol had given them the unmistakable clue of a triangle. But this—this gorilla shrine, this ancient hunchback—Ret wondered if anyone could decipher it.
But, then he thought, maybe Lionel could? The idea flowed into Ret’s mind like pure intelligence and blazed into an inferno, fanned by his hopes and optimism. Yes, Lionel might know. As soon as possible after the game, Ret would write him a letter.
Ret lost his focus when the gymnasium erupted into a frenzy of band playing and whistle blowing. The game had commenced, with Ana poised on the court and Paige contentedly on the bench.
After the initial fanfare, Ret’s gaze quickly shifted from the floor to the stands. Crowd surfing with his eyes, he laughed at the petty rivalries, cringed at the competitiveness, and salivated over the buttery popcorn. Every fan seemed enveloped by the here and now—hurrah for the spike, boo for the miss. Was he the only person who wished to “fill the Oracle”? Did no one else care to “cure the world”?
It was during these moments of scanning the gym when Ret noticed a curious mark on Miss Carmen’s back. Not very large, it was just below the nape of her neck but above her shoulder blades. Perhaps a tattoo, it was quite easy to spot since her hair was pinned up. It had the same general shape as his scar. Now very intrigued, Ret wanted to get a closer look.
Slowly, Ret inched closer to Miss Carmen. She was standing on the floor, of course, overseeing the game and straddling the sideline where the rest of her team was seated. Imperceptibly, Ret slithered from one bleacher to the next, moving longer distances during chaotic moments when the crowd jumped to their feet in applause. Unbeknownst to him, it was a very close and intense game, which allowed him to creep along without drawing much attention to himself.
Even though Ret had wormed his way to the first bench behind the team, Miss Carmen was moving around too much for him to make out the details of the mark. He thought they may have made eye contact for a brief moment, but he wasn’t sure. One person who certainly was watching him, however, was Paige, still sitting in the same seat on the bench as when the game started. Silently, she wondered why Ret was so interested in Miss Carmen.
Suddenly, the entire crowd rushed onto the court. The game must have ended. Uninterested in which team was victorious, Ret utilized the sea of fans to secure an even closer view of Miss Carmen’s tattoo.
Ret wiggled among the teeming celebrators, keeping his head down except when he occasionally looked up to learn the exact location of Miss Carmen. When he had at last forced himself immediately behind her, he couldn’t believe what he saw. Her mark was more of a branding than a tattoo, about the size of a golf ball, and it was the same exact image as the scar on Ret’s hand. He carefully studied this magnified version of his scar, and he noticed a detail that he hadn’t seen before: on the lower abdomen of the squatting man—or whatever it was—there was a jagged semicircle. It resembled a rough, unfilled dot with one very pointed tip pointing upward. Ret glanced down at his own scar, and there indeed was a tiny speck inside the body of the symbol.
When Ret looked up from his hand to further analyze Miss Carmen’s mark, he was mortified to find she had turned around. Ret returned her satisfied smirk with his dropped jaw. Many of the bystanders, most of whom were young men who merely desired close proximity to Miss Carmen, began to watch what they were doing.
When Ret turned from watching her, he found Paige and Ana standing nearby, having witnessed the whole thing.
“Shouldn’t you be following Miss Carmen?” Paige sneered.
“Paige!” Ana gasped, surprised by her friend’s words.
“What?” she snapped back. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off her the whole game.”
“Paige, look,” Ret began, trying to defend himself, “I can explain—”
“Really, Ret?” Ana asked, shocked by Paige’s accusation.
“It’s not what it seems,” Ret petitioned.
“So now you’re checking out my coach, are you?” Ana surmised, crossing her arms.
“No—”
“Come on, Paige,” Ana said with closure. “Let’s find my mom.” Together they stalked off, leaving Ret alone in the dispersing crowd.
Across the gym, through a gap in the blinds of her office window, Miss Carmen grinned.
Chapter 7
Parental Persuasions
Ret dreaded the end of the calendar year. Though he found the first month or two of winter to be the dullest of all, the last several weeks of fall were somewhat more unpleasant to endure because each day reminded him that colder days were around the corner. There was little reason for him to venture outside, a sad sentiment that may have been different if he lived in a place that actually saw snow. Instead, he tried his best to appreciate the nip in the air; the chill in the water; and, perhaps worst of all, the growing brevity of daylight.
From his favorite retreat on the southern tip of Tybee’s coast, Ret watched the sun dip even further south than it had yesterday along its ever-changing path in the increasingly grayer skies. As much as he preferred the warm seasons of the year, he remembered there was the whole southern half of the world that needed its turn to bask in the life-giving rays of the sun. He smiled, wondering what it would be like to live in that hemisphere, celebrating the winter holidays in summertime heat or shoveling fresh snow in July.
But his playful smile soon faded in contemplation of the earth’s sheer enormity and vast diversity. How was he ever going to “cure the world”? He hardly knew anything about it! He possessed neither a degree in global affairs nor a well-used passport. He was a self-taught homebody who could count the number of times he had left the island on one hand—insofar as he could remember, of course.
Still, perhaps a more baffling question was why “cure the world.” Was it sick? Yes, apparently so, but in what way? Would it soon fall ill to some pandemic plague? Was it already now diseased by some civil and cultural cancer? Could it be that filling the Oracle would rid the globe’s inhabitants of their most distressing social ailments? Such thinking didn’t seem logical, given the geographical nature of the Oracle.
As such, maybe filling the Oracle would bring about the cessation of natural disasters, which atrocities, as explained by the Guardian, had been introduced by the ancient scattering of the elements. Did the Oracle mean for Ret to erase fault lines and raise flood plains? Halt tempests and refreeze icecaps? Snuff out fires and shore up mudslides? Although these conjectures sounded more reasonable, they hardly seemed plausible after the natural disaster Ret caused when he collected the earth element.
Ret’s head started to hurt. Obviously, he had no idea, and it was driving him mad! But who could blame him? He was like a stranded astronaut, lost in space, desperately trying to maneuver himself toward his unseen destination but lacking the one, all-important, do-or-die provision that fatally distinguishes a once-cosmically marooned survivor from an eternally galactic drifter: a push in the right direction.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ret saw someone walking towards him. It was Pauline, bundled up in a light jacket against the late afternoon’s strengthening sea breeze. Without saying a word, she sat next to him in the sand.
“A letter came for you today,” she informed Ret, extending a small envelope toward him. Ret’s heart leapt with excitement. Pauline asked, “Is it from who I think it’s from?”
“Lionel!” Ret replied enthusiastically, noticing the familiar handwriting and lack of return address that were becoming characteristic of Lionel’s letters. With great eagerness, Ret tore open the envelope. He had written his letter to Lionel weeks ago, reporting on recent events with as much detail as possible: his control over fire both on the football field and in Mr. Coy’s planetarium, the curious rock that Coy had retrieved from Stone’s trunk, and the mark on Miss Carmen’s back that was identical to the scar on his hand. Ret even included a photograph of the new scar, finding his written description to be quite unhelpful.
Anxious, Ret read the letter aloud:
Dear Ret,
Thank you for your letter. I’m afraid your scar doesn’t strike a chord with me; however, your description of Mr. Coy’s rock matches one of my own. It’s the only rock I’ve ever come across that emits heat. I found it years ago on a research expedition in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru, where I think we might find some answers. If it’s okay with Pauline, I’d like to take you there during the winter holidays. Let me know.
Your friend,
Lionel Zarbock
P.S. I’ve included a small piece of my rock with this letter.
Given the several random burn marks on the paper, Ret looked inside the envelope to locate the small rock Lionel had included. Fortunately, Lionel had astutely sent the letter in a decorative envelope—the kind with a semi-metallic liner—thus preventing the rock from burning through and getting lost in transit. Ret held the sliver in his hand and watched it come alive, similar to what Mr. Coy’s rock had done but to a lesser degree. It even caused his scar to faintly glow.
Meanwhile, Pauline watched in silence, sitting patiently with an amused smile on her face. She was waiting for Ret to remember her presence. When he finally did, he looked down with a tad of embarrassment, realizing how foreign and alarming all of this must have appeared to her.
“When are you going to start telling me about these things, Ret?” she asked, employing her special tone that demanded respect but in the gentlest of ways. Ret sighed, trying to hide how glad he felt that someone was actually coming to him and asking for his take on things. “All I ever hear is what Ana tells me,” she explained. “I want to hear your side, too.”
Ret obliged. Not only was it a topic that he was happy to discuss but he also knew he needed to pour out his heart if he was ever going to win over Pauline (and convince her to allow him to travel to Peru!). Even after all they had witnessed together, Pauline was still not a full supporter of the Oracle. It was too adventurous for her blood; too at odds with her upbringing; too out-of-the-ordinary for her inside-the-box mentality. Had it been, say, more of a hobby—a weekend pastime—maybe then she could get behind it. But, instead, it was to her a time-consuming escapade that disrupted the norm and disregarded her comfort zone. She was perfectly content to live and die in Tybee—cooking meals, cleaning house, and raising a virtuous posterity.
And, in just about any other situation, Pauline would have been right. But not this time. It was the reality of this real-world fantasy that she couldn’t quite convince her mind to accept.
“I know it all sounds so…so bizarre,” Ret admitted, having summarized his perspective on the events of late, “but when I hold this rock, I feel happy—I feel at peace.” He held Lionel’s rock in his hand, outstretched toward Pauline, hoping its miniature fireworks show would further prove his point.
“So you weren’t flirting with Miss Carmen at the game?” Pauline put forth, wanting to revisit the subject just to make sure.
“Of course not,” Ret reaffirmed. “I just wanted a closer look at
the mark on her back.”
“Oh, good,” she sighed, though she was never really worried. “You might want to let the girls know. They’re still pretty shaken up by the whole thing.”
“I’ve tried,” said Ret, “but they always leave when I try to tell them. And then, when I do tell them, they pretend not to hear me.”
“You can tell them until you’re blue in the face, Ret,” Pauline said in a matter-of-fact tone, “but until you show them, they’re still going to be upset.”
Ret gave her a confused stare.
“Paige adores you,” Pauline blurted out. “Surely you’ve noticed—”
“I know, I know,” said Ret, more annoyed than flattered.
“Well, do you have feelings for her?”
“She’s a…well…,” Ret said uncomfortably.
“Oh, Ret,” Pauline said with a defeated chuckle. “Maybe while the girls are in Chile, you’ll come to appreciate them a little more. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.”
“Chile?” Ret questioned astonishingly. “Ana and Paige are going to Chile?”
“Didn’t they tell you?” said Pauline, surprised that Ret had not been informed. “Miss Carmen is playing in some fancy volleyball tournament during winter break, back in her hometown in Chile, and she invited Ana to go with her. Ana told her she wouldn’t go without Paige, and Miss Carmen acquiesced.”
“And they both want to go?”
“Personally, I think Paige couldn’t care less, but Ana? Does she ever!” Pauline continued. “She agreed before she even thought to ask me. Of course, I was not exactly gung-ho about the idea. We had quite the talk, she and I—you know how stubborn that girl can be sometimes.” Ret thought Pauline was one to talk. “In the end, I told her the only way I would allow her to go running off to some exotic land with that wanton coach of hers was if I went with them.”
“I bet she loved hearing that,” Ret remarked, rolling his eyes.