Before We Go Extinct

by Karen Rivers

  The King died.

  The King died.

  The King died.

  The other day I was out rowing this little wooden dinghy that Dad has. I rowed as far out into the Salish Sea as I dared. I mean, you really wouldn’t want to be in that little half-rotted thing when the waves came up, that’s the truth. I rowed all the way out there and then I lay down in the hull and felt the waves slapping against the keel, and imagined that shark down there beneath me, the imaginary shark that I dreamed up, the one I wanted to see, I guess. And while the boat rocked, this seagull landed on the bow. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking out toward Vancouver, and he just started calling in this really rhythmic chant and it sounded just like that to me, “The King died, The King died, The King died.”

  Then he crapped, narrowly missing my face by a few inches, and flew off.

  Which has got to be a metaphor for something, right?

  I don’t know what you’re doing right now or if you’re even in New York, or if you’re in LA and getting an agent and befriending starlets or rock stars or whatever the next steps are for you in becoming famous and being someone else.

  You know, just this second, as I typed that, I forgave you.

  Weird, right?

  Forgive is a word that’s made of tissue paper and folded into a flower and just as you hand it to the other person it bursts into flame and singes their skin. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway.

  Enjoy the movies! I have someone else I have to hand a rose to, too. Two, too, to.

  I wish I could see you. Remember the Alamo.

  Love,

  JC

  40

  “Look,” Kelby says. “Pretend we never kissed and get over it. You are the worst. You make such a big deal about everything! It isn’t a big deal. We kissed, it was dumb, we are moving on. So. It’s not a big deal, you want to dive today or not? We’re going to dive the pass because the current is so small today. There are, like, octopuses. Octopi. Whatever. And it’s nice out. So whatever, come. Don’t come. I don’t care.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s quite the invitation.” I grin. It’s hard to pretend I’m not glad to see her. “Yes.”

  “Great,” she says. “Get your stuff and I’ll meet you in an hour, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  I go into the cabin to find Dad, to give him back his chapter.

  He practically leaps out of his chair, tripping over the dogs, who are taking their afternoon nap on the cool tile floor of the living room. “So?” he says. “Whadja think?”

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Really good, Dad. Wow. Totally the next Harry Potter.”

  “You think?” he says. “But it’s not paranormal. Paranormal is so hot right now. Maybe I could make it paranormal.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” I say. I can’t believe he’s buying it. “You could do that, but this is already fine. Fantastic. Really great.”

  “I am so relieved,” he said. “I thought maybe it was garbage and I was wasting my life!” He laughs a little too hard. I think about those two pieces of paper, the typing squashed together, single-spaced, and how they blew into the pass, and landed on the surface, the water slowly seeping into the paper and ink, swirling it into nothing, the tide pools sucking them down into the murk. Maybe I’ll find them today. Maybe an octopus will be reading them thoughtfully, slowly nodding his approval at Dad’s massive overuse of adverbs. SUDDENLY, HE THOUGHTFULLY TAPPED HIS PEN TO HIS DEEPLY WRINKLED BROW.

  “Dad,” I say.

  But he looks so stupidly happy and I am such a jerk.

  “Yeah?” he says.

  “I’m going out,” I tell him. “We’re going to see the octopuses.”

  “Great,” he says happily. “They are seriously amazing. You know, we have the biggest ones in the world here? Wave to me! I’ll be right here. I’m so fired up now, I may even finish the next chapter for you to read when you get back. Steak tonight?”

  “Sure, Dad,” I say. “We’ll check the traps for prawns.”

  We drop these prawn traps down every time we go out and then pull them up the next time. Last time, they were empty—someone else must have gotten there first—but maybe today they’ll be full. Mrs. S. would be so proud of me, I think. Mrs. S. would love these prawns and scallops. She’d hold the fan shell of the scallop up to her cheek and she’d coo like she was talking to a baby, So beautiful, she’d say. So miraculous, no? And so expensive! Florida, here we come! Then she’d give me some for free.

  I don’t know if Mrs. S. will ever get to Florida. She gives too much away.

  And suddenly, I’m rooted to the spot, tears in my eyes, thinking about those free shrimp. I clear my throat. “Yeah, we’ll get some prawns today, I bet.” Then, “Dad, have you talked to Mom? It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything.”

  He looks surprised. “No,” he says. “I never talk to her. She hasn’t texted?”

  “I—” I say. “Um, I sort of broke my phone. I might have missed—anyway, I’ll send her an e-mail later. It’s no big deal.”

  Dad nods, his glasses sliding down his nose, his fingers tapping the table like he’s already typing the next chapter in his head. He’s got all the crazy of a real writer, but none of the skill. That cringing feeling that I get sometimes when I look at him washes over me. “Dad,” I say. “I’m—I’ll see you later, okay?”

  I whistle for the dogs and grab the diving stuff and make my way down to the beach to wait for Kelby. On my way, I see Charlie at his usual position at the tide pool. “Hey,” I say. “Are you coming diving?”

  He shakes his head, won’t look at me.

  “I’ll teach you,” I tell him. “Come on, don’t be mad.”

  He still won’t look at me. I crouch down next to him and nudge him with my arm.

  “Pleeeeease forgive me?” I say. “C’mon, buddy. There are basically no people on the island except for us and you guys, and if you’re mad at me, it’s effectively like 25 percent of the population hates me. I can’t take it!” I grab my chest in mock horror and roll back onto the sandstone rock. “Nooooo!”

  Then suddenly he’s grinning. “After dinner?” he says. “After dinner. Right? Right? Okay?”

  And I go, “Yeah, okay. You coming on the boat?”

  And Charlie says, “Yeah, I’m coming, dummy. ’Course I’m coming. I’m always on the boat. I’m in charge of the flag, remember? Duh.”

  Together we run down the path, the three panting dogs, the kid, and me, the sun beating down on the trees throwing cool shade on us, protecting us from the afternoon heat, our feet slipping on the arbutus leaves that are starting to drop onto the path, signaling that summer is thinking about coming to a close before I’m really ready for fall.

  41

  We come up from the dive without having seen an octopus. Not that it matters. The sea was so clear today it was like floating in air, crystal clear. Jellyfish moved by on the current and a large school of herring darted around us. On the surface, we could see birds diving for the fish, their beaks puncturing the protective bubble of the surface water, hungry mouths grabbing for more.

  I’ve got to be honest, I felt lucky. Lucky to be on this weird island, lucky to be in this sea, lucky to be seeing the stuff I was seeing.

  I didn’t even realize I was thinking about sharks, but I was, because I was thinking about how perfectly it works, with the fish and the birds, the exchange of life for life, which made me think of death, which made me think of The King and made me wonder, What was the trade? What did the world get out of the deal? Space for one more person? It was the first time I thought about The King without feeling nauseated, so that was progress, but maybe that’s because I had my mouthpiece in and was breathing through my mouth. Through the long stems of kelp, I could see a few rock cod lying on the seafloor, almost perfectly disguised. A dogfish darted by. It was so freaking magical and alive and perfect, that’s all I was thinking.

  I think I was just happy.

  Plain old happy. />
  Like I was before, pretty often, hanging with The King and Daff, doing the crazy stuff we did, there were lots of times I felt like that, like I was a part of everything. I was where I was meant to be.

  So when Kelby signals that it’s time to go up, I rise slowly to the surface, not wanting this to end. The last flicker of the silver fish vanishing beyond the point where I can see them, the sun at first too bright, the boat bobbing a short distance away. By the time I get my mask off though, I know something is wrong because Darcy looks worried and Charlie is trying so hard to say something that nothing is coming out of his mouth.

  I climb up the ladder onto the boat and say, “Whoa, kid, what?”

  And Kelby is saying, “What happened? What happened?”

  And Darcy is shaking her head.

  And Charlie is stuttering, “Sh-sh-sh-shark.”

  And Darcy guns the engine and roars in to shore.

  42

  No one wants to hear about how sharks are really unlikely to bite a person. No one seems to care that shark bites are pretty much unheard of in the Pacific Northwest. No one cares about any of what I’m saying about protecting the sharks and balance in the oceans and the oxygen and the plankton and the food chain. It’s like a horror movie of hysterical reactions, which I guess is predictable but also totally disappointing.

  Dad is going crazy. “You could have been killed! You could have been killed! You could have died! Don’t you get it? You’d be dead. Even if he’d just taken a bite, you would have bled out. There’s no hospital here. You’d be dead. Dead.”

  Stop, I want to tell him. Stop. But he keeps saying it, that word, dead, over and over again and I can’t breathe and my voice is leaking out of me and I can’t do this and I can’t listen to this and what is he proposing anyway, it’s a shark that’s out of its migratory path, for sure, but it isn’t interested in us when there are so many seals, it has probably already had a meal that may feed it for weeks or even months, it can’t be hungry with all this life and stop. Stop.

  “No,” I manage. “It’s not Jaws, Dad. It’s not going to—”

  “What if it bit Charlie? Or Kelby? Or Darcy? We have to call someone. We have to tell someone. What do they do in these cases? What do they do? Is there a ‘they’?”

  His eyes are wild and he’s basically freaking out, so I say, “God, Dad, the water is full of sharks and none have ever eaten Charlie or Kelby or Darcy or anyone else except in really rare cases and—”

  “THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY FILM!” he yells. “YOU ARE NOT ROB WHAT’S-HIS-NAME! THIS IS NOT A GODDAMN MOVIE!” Apollo yelps and disappears under the deck of the cabin, which is where he goes to escape drama and the sun. Zeus follows, looking depressed. He casts a glance back at me. I shrug. “I’d run, too,” I whisper.

  “DAD,” I yell back. “YOU ARE SCARING THE DOGS!”

  “YOU ARE!” he yells. “GODDAMNIT, SHARKY.”

  “Hey,” I say. “I’m not the bad guy here! I’m—”

  “You’re not…,” he says. “You’re not a shark.”

  “Dad,” I say. “I know. But it is only passing through. It’s just off course. It’s not eating people. You would have heard if it was. There are a million seals! If it’s hungry, which I doubt, it will eat a seal. It probably already has. It won’t eat again now for ages.”

  “No one goes in the water,” he says. “Until I’ve talked to someone. Until I know what to do.”

  “But I am someone,” I say. “And I’ve told you. He’s not going to bite anyone. He’s probably already a hundred miles away. Are you just never going in the water again? I mean, I saw him a while ago and no one—”

  “WHAT?” he yells. “What? You SAW him? You SAW him and you went back in the water? You let Charlie back in the water? Kelby? Darcy? ME? You SAW THE SHARK AND YOU DIDN’T MENTION IT?”

  “Dad,” I say. “I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure what I saw. I thought maybe I was imagining … and … I don’t know. I thought it was kind of like a sign, maybe. I thought it was like a sign for me. From The King. I’m sure that sounds stupid to you—”

  “JESUS,” he swears. “Not everything is about your friend killing himself! NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU. You put other people at risk! You … idiot. You’re an idiot. I don’t even know…”

  But I don’t hear the rest, because I’m off and running, my feet hardly hitting the ground, and I’m going so fast that I’m outrunning the shadows, it’s only me and the sun blurring into one beam of white-hot light, running with all the rage and pain and hurt churning around inside me like chum on the surface of the sea, calling the shark to slaughter.

  43

  Dad and Darcy are sitting on the front porch couch when I get back, spent and sweaty. I can hear the conversation before they can see me.

  “Without a picture, they don’t believe me anyway,” Dad is saying. “They think I’d make it up! Can you imagine? Like I mistook a mud shark for a dangerous shark or something?”

  “But he’s probably right,” Darcy says. “It’s probably long gone. Anyway, I agree with him that nothing would happen. God has us covered. He knows that we…”

  “… that he didn’t tell us sooner,” says Dad. “Putting our lives at risk.”

  I stomp heavily up the steps and their conversation slams to a stop as effectively as if I ran a train into it.

  “Where’s Charlie?” I say. “I told him I’d teach him parkour.”

  “What?” says Darcy. “I think he’s too young for that.”

  I shrug. “He doesn’t think so. I’m not going to let him fall off a building or anything. I’m only going to teach him the first things you have to know, like jumping high in place. That kind of thing. So he can jump over stuff. It’s no big deal, but if you don’t want me to—”

  “I didn’t say that,” says Darcy. “Just be careful, okay? He kind of worships you, you know.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “I’m sure. Anyway, where is he?”

  “Tide pool,” calls Kelby. She’s in the hammock. I didn’t see her before because she’s so small and it’s folded so that she’s basically been swallowed by it.

  “Hey,” I say. “Are you coming?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I guess. More interesting than lying here listening to these two plot to kill a shark that’s as big as the boat. I’m just mad we didn’t see it. We must have been looking at the herring.”

  “Yep,” I say, heading down toward the tide pool. “I guess we were.”

  “Sometimes you have to really look to see a thing,” she says. “I know that feeling.”

  “Kelby,” I say. “What’s your book about? Can I read it?”

  She stops in her tracks. She looks at me carefully, up and down, like she’s measuring me up. Then a flash of teeth, and she’s smiling.

  “Okay,” she says. “Whatever. Maybe. Charlie! Let’s go!”

  Charlie comes darting up the steps toward us, like he’d been hanging there the whole time, waiting for us to show up.

  “Hey!” he says, trying to sound cool. “Is it time? Is it time now? Wasn’t that shark cool? What did you think, Sharky? Because, like, did you even think that you’d see anything like that here? Did you? Did you? I mean, Mum is freaking out! But that’s dumb, right? Sharks don’t bite people, you said. Not much, anyway. Sharky? Are we going? Now?”

  Kelby laughs. “Slow down, sport. Take a breath.”

  “I am breathing!” he says. “Am I breathing right for parkour, Sharky? Am I?”

  “You know what?” I say. “Call me JC.”

  “Okay,” he says. “JC. Can we go? Now?”

  I whistle for the dogs and they come running and we head up to Hotel Neverwas for the first lesson. It’s the first part that’s the hardest. That’s the part where you learn how to jump. How high you can go. Where you have to trust that even though it seems impossible, if you believe you can fly, then you really can.

  Not far. Not from the forty-second floor. But far enough to get from this log to
that one. Far enough to clear the beam.

  Charlie is a good student. He jumps and jumps and jumps and jumps, over and over again. Never giving up, not even when his skinned knees are bleeding and his arms are bruised. I remember being like that, I guess. I just don’t know if I still am, or if that part of me jumped off the building at the same time as The King did. Maybe it was never me, after all. Maybe it was just him, reflecting on me.

  Anyway, I teach Charlie how to jump. That’s always the first thing. And I guess I do it the right way, because on the way back down the path, Kelby’s hand finds mine and holds on tight. I try not to squeeze it. It feels like a bird, resting there, just waiting to take flight.

  44

  I’m running.

  It feels good. Hot, sweaty, hard work. The rocks are on such an angle that it makes it harder, which feels right.

  I’m about a mile down the beach from the cabin when I run out of steam. My legs are cramping up and I’m thirsty but I didn’t bring a drink.

  I take off my shoes and socks and stick my feet in a tide pool. An anemone opens and closes near my big toe. A small fish tickles my ankles before darting for safety under a crack. I try to simply be. It’s really quiet. I lie back on the warmed stone and stare up at the sky. At the edge of my view are the tops of the trees, leaning out of the forest for a better view of the sea. The tide is low, so rocks encrusted with bladder wrack—this brownish seaweed that is covered with “popping balloons” as Charlie calls them—are basking in the sun. Out on the reef, there is a distinct absence of seals, but I can see an otter fishing in the small shell-sand bay about a hundred feet south of me. Behind me, up a yellow grassy hill, an A-frame cabin sits empty and unfinished, like the owner ran out of energy for completing it, returned to Vancouver or wherever he was from, and didn’t look back. I can hear grasshoppers on the hill. The call of gulls diving into the water, probably still looking for herring for lunch. Kingfishers screech at each other and skim low over the surface of the water. At the tide line, a heron stands on one foot, stock-still, staring out to sea.