The Icarus Project

by Laura Quimby

  I was getting ditched for another discovery.

  “That was weird,” Zoey said.

  “Not like Dad at all.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Want to have dinner at my house? You could use some pizza therapy right now.”

  I didn’t know what to think, but at least Zoey was there with me. We headed out of the office. Tilda’s head was down and she was writing furiously on a piece of paper, her glittery red nails sparkling in the halo of light from the desk lamp.

  Words I never thought I would utter sprang from my mouth. “I’m going to Canada,” I declared. “I’m going to the Arctic.”

  I purposely stayed late at Zoey’s house. I went on her computer after dinner, my fingers flying across the keys as I searched for information online about the mysterious benefactor who had called my dad. I clicked on a link that took me to a recent article about Randal Clark. A photo of a dashing businessman with his hair windblown and his eyes sparkling came up on the screen.

  I scanned the column. “It says Randal was a daredevil in his youth with the heart of an explorer.”

  “It looks like Mr. Clark comes from old money, like from back in the days when railroads were being built,” Zoey said, pulling a bag of gummy bears out of her top desk drawer.

  “He’s driven, that’s for sure.” The article said that Randal had taken his family fortune and turned it into a bigger fortune. He could have hung out all day and counted his money if he wanted to, but he worked really hard instead.

  Green gummy-bear parts were stuck in Zoey’s braces. “It says Clark Expeditions is part scientific exploration and part ecotourism. It sounds cool. Your dad is lucky.”

  “We’re both lucky,” I said. “Because I’m going with him.”

  Zoey leaned back into a pile of clothes, stretching her arms out and flapping them up and down like she was trying to make a snow angel. “You’d better text me. I want to be the first to hear about the mammoth when you find it.”

  I plopped down on the bed, and from my backpack I pulled out one of Mom’s old cameras. I tended to get the hand-me-down electronics. “I’ve got my camera with the video recorder, so I’ll take some video messages for you and post them.”

  “Great. And I want to see a live polar bear and a dead mammoth up close and personal. Oh, and don’t forget the tusks. Get a shot of the tusks.” She picked a gummy bear out of her teeth and proceeded to eat it.

  “I’ll make a mental note. ‘Zoey wants to see some tusks.’”

  Zoey’s mom had come in about three times, prompting me to get ready to go home. Finally, she stood in the doorway in all her Germanness, with her hands on her hips and a look that needed no explanation. The car was in the driveway with the engine running. No more avoiding it.

  Even though I wanted to hear about what happened after I left Dad’s office, I was still mad at him for the push. Once I was through the front door, I headed straight for my bedroom.

  “Maya, is that you?” Dad called from the family room.

  He must have literally jumped up from the sofa and run to intercept me, because I didn’t even make it to the hall before he was standing right in front of me. I stared at the floor, the wall, and the gigantic dust bunny that was collecting in a corner. I examined every inch of the hallway, looking everywhere but at Dad. Silent as a mollusk, lips pursed shut in defiance. Let Dad do all the talking. Let him try to talk his way out of leaving me behind.

  “Did you have fun at Zoey’s house? I was about to send out the cavalry.”

  I glanced up momentarily. He had a big goofy smile on his face. He probably didn’t even remember the push.

  I shrugged. Technically, a shrug could be considered a silent response. It was body language.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  I did a mental eye roll. A physical eye roll was beneath me.

  “Come into the family room. We need to talk.”

  I followed him and plopped down on the sofa. I hugged a throw pillow and pulled at the fringe. I had no plans to talk, but if he wanted to chat, that was fine by me. Dad sat on the arm of a worn leather chair.

  “About today at the office. I know you were a little shocked with all the excitement.” He took his glasses off and cleaned them with his T-shirt. “I’m sure you’re bursting with questions. I know I was.”

  I punched at the pillow’s soft insides. Maybe I was bursting with questions, just a little. But he wasn’t getting the mad part. I wasn’t in shock. I was angry. I was red, and not hungry red or sparkly red. I was old-fashioned angry red.

  “It’s just that nothing like this has ever happened to me before. You know how hard it’s been.”

  I looked up at him. I remembered the envelope with the latest rejection letter, the one I had been sure was filled with good news. But it hadn’t been. He was right—I did know how hard it had been. The anger started to drain away.

  “No one ever thinks of me when they need a mammoth expert. Oh, sure I get called to give speeches and give tours, but the real stuff, the fieldwork, always goes to some other guy with more experience or more degrees. Not me—I never get the real work that matters.”

  I felt terrible. He had worked for this for years—no, decades—ever since he was in college. And finally he was so close to having his dreams come true, and all I was thinking about was myself.

  I made myself smile. “Well, what happened? What’s different this time?” I asked.

  His face brightened. “Randal Clark needs someone fast. He was out with a group of ecotourists and stumbled upon some mammoth tusks up in the Canadian Arctic. Mr. Clark owns the operation and runs the business. He decided to check out the discovery with his nephew, who is an amateur filmmaker.”

  “That sounds cool.”

  “They took video of the tusks, and while they were trying to dig them up, something stuck, and it looks like there may be something buried in the permafrost.”

  “Can’t they just dig it up and see what it is?”

  “Thankfully, they didn’t. Mr. Clark didn’t want to ruin the find in case it’s worth a lot of money. Which is actually smart of him, even though he’s only thinking of his bottom line. If it is mammoth remains and they dig it up, the carcass could thaw and be attacked and eaten by animals, or poachers could steal the ivory.”

  “It has tusks?”

  “Yes!” Dad jumped to his feet. “Can you believe it? That’s why they called us! The tusks breached the ice.”

  “This is big. And they want you to come to the Arctic to check it out.”

  “Basically, yes. Mr. Clark is willing to fund the whole expedition. And it won’t even cost him that much since he already has camps established. Apparently, the guy is a real Arctic buff and lives year-round in the compound.”

  “That’s great! When do we leave?” The Arctic wasn’t my top choice for my first real expedition. But luck was a funny thing, and this mammoth had just fallen in our laps. I would brave the snow and ice for science’s sake.

  “About that…” Now it was Dad’s turn to stare at the floor. He eased down on the sofa next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll have to skip this one. I was thinking you could stay at Zoey’s house. I was hoping to speak with her parents tomorrow after we talked. Won’t that be fun, a whole month just the two of you?”

  “A month! And you’re just going to leave me here?” My emotions flared. I was sick of being left behind.

  “I’m not leaving you. The time will go by in a flash.” He squeezed my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.

  “Mom leaves all the time and I have to deal with it. I have to be mature and do my homework and pretend that it’s fine. But it’s not fair.”

  “I know it’s not fair. But you’ll hardly know that I’m gone. This is a big opportunity that I can’t pass up.”

  “I know it’s your big chance. That’s why I’m going with you. It’s our big chance.”

  Dad shook his he
ad. “You have school. And should stay home.”

  I had to think fast. “The expedition will be educational. What kid gets to go to the Arctic to watch real fieldwork in action?” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow. “Plus, spring break is coming up.”

  “No, Maya. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

  The danger card was the last play of a parent on the edge of caving in. I knew I was close. “I can handle it,” I said. “I’m not afraid. And you’ll be there.”

  “The Arctic can be treacherous, and I won’t be able to watch you all the time.”

  “Watch me!” I scoffed. “I’m old enough to babysit myself. Thirteen is not a kid. And you said that the mammoth was found by tourists, so how dangerous can it be if people are traveling there for vacation?”

  Dad paused. “That’s a good point.”

  “You said the billionaire had a compound and lived in the Arctic year-round, so I could stay there. And I promise to keep out of the way. Please, Dad.”

  He started to waver. “OK … Let me make some calls. It’s not entirely up to me.”

  “Yes!”

  “No, that’s not a yes.” He pointed at me as he stood. “It’s a possible, a maybe. I don’t know if your principal will allow you to miss school. We’ll just have to see.”

  “Please don’t make me stay at home. I really want to go.”

  “I’ll try.”

  There was no way I would hear tonight. It was late. I ran to my room and jumped on the computer. Maybe I could convince Dad that I was serious about going by doing some mammoth homework, even though I already knew more about mammoths than any other thirteen-year-old on the planet. Dad had been telling me bedtime stories about the hairy beasts since I was a kid. Mammoths had dark gray skin with reddish-black woolly hair and stood ten to twelve feet high.

  I read through a few websites, picking up more details. As I was scrolling through a web page on the National Geographic site, Dad knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He sat on the side of my bed. “I don’t want you to think that I am punishing you or that I don’t want you to come with me. We’re pals, and there is no one I would rather have by my side at the dig site than you. It’s just that I don’t want anything to happen to you. Your safety means everything to me.”

  “You mean like baby Lyuba?” I asked. I sat down next to Dad. Baby Lyuba was an important mammoth discovered on the permafrost of the Siberian steppe. She had been caught in a mudflow and had suffocated. Sediment had been found in her tiny lungs. I was trying to impress Dad with my mammoth knowledge, which was really not mammoth at all, but puny in comparison.

  “What do you know about Lyuba?” he asked.

  “That the scientists don’t think her mother left her, but that she was too small and got stuck in the mud during migration. She drowned or suffocated in the mud.”

  He stared at his hands. “I couldn’t forgive myself if anything bad happened to you. This is real. It’s not a movie or a TV show. I will have high expectations put on me, and I won’t be able to spend a lot of time with you.”

  “I know. But I’ll be good. I promise. I won’t get in the way. Plus, Mom is always saying how responsible and mature I am.”

  “Well, she’s right about that. Let me see what your principal says tomorrow, and we’ll decide from there. If she approves the trip, then we’ll talk. Deal?”

  I jumped up and threw my arms around Dad in a bear hug. “Deal!”

  Dad drove me to school, and we walked to the principal’s office together. It turned out that the expedition was starting immediately, so if I was going to go with him, we needed to get permission right away. I sat on a dingy orange chair in the waiting room outside the office and stared out the window. Pale green daffodil stems poked through the soggy spring dirt. Pale green was the color of potential, of “maybe.”

  Dad was taking forever. I hoped he was convincing. Finally, he emerged from the office and headed right out the front door. I followed quick on his heels.

  “What did Mrs. Pettyfield say?” I asked, my pulse racing as we headed across the parking lot toward the car.

  He stared at his shoes, fumbled with his keys. Dad was a terrible liar. I knew by the way he was trying to suppress a smile that I was going.

  “Yes!” I yelled. “How did you convince her?”

  We climbed into the car.

  “Well, the fact that you have a week off for spring break helped. But the clincher was that Mrs. Pettyfield owes me big-time after that night-at-the-museum fiasco from three years back.” Dad put on his seat belt and wrinkled his nose.

  “I had forgotten about that.” I cringed at the memory.

  “How could you forget?” He shuddered.

  A few years back he had done a favor for the principal by setting up a night-at-the-museum slumber party at the Natural History Museum for the entire fourth grade. We had a tour of the museum, followed by watching short films and playing dinosaur games, and everything was going great, except that one of the parent chaperones had brought along her famous pork pockets as snacks. Everyone who had a pork pocket got food poisoning. It wasn’t pretty, and it smelled even worse.

  “They should’ve known better. That pork looked a little gray. And besides, who eats pork that late at night?”

  “Twenty of the kids and three of the chaperones, that’s who. It was a nightmare. The janitor resigned the very next day.” He shook his head to clear it, then looked at me seriously. “Now, there are conditions in allowing you to go on this trip. You have to stay caught up on all your schoolwork, and you have to write your own field report and do an oral presentation when you get back, sharing everything you learned on the expedition with the other students.”

  “I can do that! I can bring my camera and record videos and e-mail them to my science and history classes.” I didn’t tell him I was already planning on doing that for Zoey. “It can be a serious expedition, not a vacation. I’ll have a field notebook and do reports.” My mind raced with plans for the trip.

  “Good idea. Once I finalize it with Randal Clark and OK it with your mom, we’ll be all set. As long as they don’t have a problem with you joining the team, then you can go.” He ruffled my hair. “But be warned, it’s going to get cold up there.”

  “I can handle the cold. No problem.” I beamed.

  It was really going to happen—my first expedition.

  I clutched the shoulder strap of my backpack and glued myself to Dad’s side. I wasn’t exactly afraid to fly, but the nerves and excitement had kicked in. We were flying to Montreal, Canada, and then on to Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, which was in the northern part of Quebec. Once up there, we’d take a helicopter to the base camp.

  The first flight was uneventful, smooth as silk. Not the second flight. We were crammed inside a small commuter plane, and my whole body rumbled along with the engine and my teeth rattled in my head. The plane glided over the earth like a silver bird, and I watched the world float beneath my feet, rough as cement.

  Wisps of torn white clouds drifted by my window.

  White was the color of an open door. We had come to a frozen place of sky and ice. Seeing the pale surface, I realized I was entering a world that was almost colorless. My theories seemed shallow up here, hovering above the real world. Mom had said digging was a family trait, but colors were just surface traits. In the Arctic, if I wanted to find something, I was going to have to dig.

  When I stepped onto the runway to catch the helicopter, a stinging coldness slapped me in the face, a wake-up cold. My nose started to run. Dad and I prepared to board the helicopter. The pilot’s name was Justice, and he was an Inuit guide who also took care of Randal Clark’s sled dogs. He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, a black jumpsuit, and black lace-up boots.

  “How long have you worked for Randal?” Dad asked him as our gear was being loaded into the back of the chopper.

  “About four years. Since he came up here and set up s
hop. He’s put a lot into his place. Living the dream.” Justice smiled a big white toothy grin. White was now the color of charismatic pilot smiles.

  “It’s a big investment. Never know if it’s going to pay off,” Dad said.

  “That’s right.” Justice handed me a piece of peppermint candy. “Ready to head out? You’re gonna love it.”

  Two other passengers made their way over to the helicopter. While passing out headphones, Justice introduced them as Dr. Katsu Takahashi and Dr. Ivan Petrov. More scientists. Randal must be spending a fortune on this expedition.

  Dad was going to sit up front with Justice, while I would be squeezed into the backseat between the two strangers. Dr. Petrov was Russian. He told us to call him Ivan. He had a peppery beard and a cracked front tooth, and there was a star-shaped scar next to his eye. I wondered if science was a rough profession in Russia. He slid into the chopper first and immediately buckled his seat belt. He clutched the armrest so hard, his knuckles turned white. And I thought I was the nervous one.

  Dr. Takahashi was from Japan. He wore thick, round black glasses and nodded politely when our eyes met. After buckling his belt, he pulled off his gloves, took a tiny bottle of antibacterial gel out of his pocket, and squeezed a drop in his palm before he shook my hand. The sharp smell of alcohol tickled my nose.

  Dad waved from the front seat. “Nice to meet you, Doctor Takahashi.”

  “Please call me Katsu. We will be friends and colleagues.” His smile was kind, but his eyes dissected me like a surgical knife. He held a silver briefcase on his lap. He fiddled with the combination lock on the side. He saw me watching him. He patted the case. “The instruments of my trade are safe inside.” I knew when he said instruments, he wasn’t referring to an innocent flute or clarinet, but something sharper.

  I shifted uncomfortably in the stiff seat, and our nylon coats rubbed together. My backpack weighed heavily on my lap. It was stuffed full of reference books on the Arctic. I had probably brought too many, but I wanted to be prepared. Books were my anchors.