by D. G. Driver
I giggled in spite of myself. He grinned and shook his head.
“I know. Pathetic, right?”
“You could say that.”
“You’re different from them. You don’t care how you look. You’ll wake up before dawn and throw on whatever you’ve got ‘cause you know you’re going to get dirty with the fish and oil. I’ve never met a girl like you.”
“Oh,” I said, and continued toward the front door. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. I think he was trying to compliment me, but it didn’t really work. All he did was remind me of how terrible I looked at the moment. Thanks for that. And why were all these girls coming to the rehabilitation center in their sundresses and make-up anyway? Ummmm, let me guess. It probably wasn’t to look at jellyfish and sand sharks.
Outside, I unlatched the back of the pick-up and pulled the blankets off the mermaids. Carter took a step back. The smell of the bodies had ripened. They gave off a distinct dead fish odor mixed with sulfur that I knew would be in my pores and hair for days. I reached for the first body.
“They’re heavier than they look,” I said.
Carter got my hint and quickly stepped to my side to pull the torso out of the truck bed. I wrapped my arms around the tail. “I’ve heard your dad’s name at school, too,” Carter said, his voice almost too cheery. It seemed like he was trying to keep a light conversation going to avoid thinking about the grim thing we were doing. “My professor of Geology at Washington State is a friend of his. He’s mentioned your dad a time or two during lab.”
“You’re in college?”
Dumb question. Of course he was in college.
“Aren’t you?” he came back.
I felt my lips pull up into a wry grin. Well, that was something. I may have looked like Hell, but at least he thought I was older. That was cool. I kept my eyes diverted from his tan face.
“Well, actually, no,” I said. “I’m a senior at West Olympia.”
“That makes you even more unique, then. I can’t imagine any high school girl doing anything but playing with her cell phone and shopping at the mall.”
I had to look up at him then. Just a glance. I wanted to know if he was smiling, and he was. Maybe unique was something he could like in a girl.
I wasn’t good at flirting. No guy had ever shown any interest in me, and I wasn’t sure if Carter was or if he was just being polite. It was also really hard to be all that when holding a dead mermaid tail with both arms. So, in response, all I said was, “Yeah, well, when you’re raised by activists it gets in the blood.”
I couldn’t help but notice the muscles in Carter’s arms when he shifted the weight of the mermaid so that he could open the door. They flexed beneath his blue T-shirt and the weight of the mermaid bundle.
“How’d you get a job working for Dr. Schneider?” I asked him.
“School,” Carter answered. “They have listings in the Student Center of places that need interns and apprentices. I thought an internship here would look good on my resume when I graduate.”
“What year are you?” I found it hard to believe that this guy was close to graduating college. He didn’t look much older than me. In fact, he even had a couple bright red pimples on his otherwise perfect nose.
“Oh, I’m just a Freshman,” he said. “I’ve got a long way to go. But who knows what can happen? Maybe this internship will turn into a paying gig before too long.” He nodded to the mermaid in his arms, her head tucked against his chest and arms crossed over her torso between his arms. “After a discovery like this, maybe I won’t even have to graduate. The National Geographic Society will give us all huge grants and make us all successful. How would that be?”
I didn’t say anything. It was a nice thought, being rich and successful, but I knew it wasn’t reality. My parents were not about becoming rich. They would find a purpose for this find that would benefit some cause. I didn’t know what that would be yet, but my parents would uncover it. I also knew that I really didn’t want to skip college. I needed college to get away from my parents, and I needed a degree to do what I wanted with my life. Carter seemed like a pretty motivated guy, so I felt pretty sure he wouldn’t quit college either, no matter what happened next.
Without any more small talk, we got both of the bodies inside and spread out on the metal table behind where my father and Dr. Schneider were still animatedly discussing the mermaid in the tank. As soon as we were finished, the men turned their attention away from the tank and onto the corpses.
“Remarkable,” Dr. Schneider said. “Astounding.”
Dr. Schneider put on some latex gloves and began running his fingers along the deep blue skin of the mermaids, which was drying out quickly. He poked at them and plucked scales off their tails, all the while speaking aloud his thoughts about the skin tissue and biology of the creatures. I knew that I should be paying more attention, like Carter and my dad were. They nodded their heads and said “uh huh” after every sentence Dr. Schneider uttered. But I wasn’t following what the scientist was talking about; all the tech talk bored me. While I knew that I’d have to take tests and write essays about this kind of stuff when I went to school, it wasn’t the reason I wanted to be a Marine Biologist. It was the actual physical involvement with the animals that intrigued me.
Halfway listening to Dr. Schneider’s monotonous scrutinizing, I stepped away from the table to watch the living mermaid. She had stopped thrashing about and appeared to be actively observing the men and the dead bodies with her hands pressed against the glass. She winced every time the scientist prodded at her sisters. Again, her eyes revealed emotions that were anything but happy. They conveyed loss, loneliness, and pain all at once. I was positive she could comprehend that the other mermaids were dead.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the mermaid, touching the glass softly. “We weren’t fast enough.”
The mermaid looked into my eyes. She understood me. Maybe not my words so much, but she recognized the sincerity behind them. Ridiculous as it was, a part of me expected her to talk back to me. If it were a SyFy Channel movie, she’d have a snippy English accent and would tell me important secrets in riddles. In a Disney film, she might even sing. However, she wasn’t really partly human with some uncanny ability to talk beautifully in my language even though she’d never heard it before. She was mostly some kind of fish with an upper half that looked vaguely like a woman who lived under water where people don’t talk or watch cable TV. So, instead of talking with words, the mermaid simply let out a squeaking noise similar to the sound of a dolphin.
The men heard it and stopped what they were doing to gather around me.
“Did she just make that sound?” Dr. Schneider asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I think she was talking to me.”
“That’s impossible,” Dr. Schneider said. “That would mean she was sentient, able to think and communicate.”
“Well, why not?” my dad said. “With a humanish head, why couldn’t she have a brain similar to ours too?”
The mermaid made that squeaking noise again, much more urgently this time. She was definitely trying to tell me something.
I turned to Carter. “We should move the dead mermaids out of her sight,” I said. “It’s upsetting her to see them like that.” My dad and Dr. Schneider stared at me like I was crazy. “Would you be okay to look at the dead bodies of your sisters while people poked at them and talked about them?”
My dad scrunched up his face. “Come on, June. I agree she might be aware of her surroundings and trying to reach out to us, but I don’t believe she thinks that clearly.”
I stared at him hard. “Imagine standing there and having to watch the autopsy of my dead body. How would you feel?”
My dad blinked and shot a look back at the mermaid. The creature squealed again.
Carter didn’t need any more convincing. He responded to that third cry right away by picking up one of the bodies and carrying it down the hall to the examination room. The two grown m
en were a bit slower to understand that I was serious, so I lifted the other body by myself until Carter came back to help me. When we came back, I could tell the mermaid was still trying to see what was happening by the way she swam back and forth along the glass, but she seemed a bit more relieved.
“Thank you,” I said to Carter quietly.
He did the sweetest little half smile. “Not a problem.”
The men discussed possibilities of origin and the likelihood of there being more creatures like this in the ocean for another fifteen minutes or so before my dad looked at his watch.
“Oh boy,” he said. “We’ve got to run. If the pictures we took this morning are going to do us any good, we’ve got to rush them to the papers and television news stations. You’ll take care of the, um, creatures, then?”
Dr. Schneider nodded, but I thought I could see his fingers twitching.
“Please don’t dissect them,” I said. “Not until we have a better understanding of what they are. Please.”
Dr. Schneider’s eyes went dark. “We can’t understand them without dissecting them,” he told me.
My father stepped in at that point. “I think June is right on this one,” he said. “We should hold off from cutting them open just yet. I’ll give you a call later on and we’ll discuss a plan of action.”
“We don’t have long, Peter,” Dr. Schneider said. "The smell is only going to get worse, and you know there will be more animals coming as soon as the oil spill is reported.”
“I’m aware of that,” my dad said. “I just need a couple hours, and I’ll be back.”
I followed my dad out to the truck.
“Dad,” I said. “You won’t have time to drive all the way home, do business, and get back here in a couple of hours. It’ll take two hours round trip just to drive.”
He sighed and put his hand on the hood of the truck. “No. You’re right. And I really need to get back to the beach, too.” He looked up at the sun well above the horizon. “I left my laptop at home.”
“I’ve got one,” came Carter’s voice from the door. He had followed us out.
My dad straightened up at the sight of the college intern. “With Internet?”
Carter laughed. “Are you kidding me?”
I had to laugh too. My dad could be so outdated sometimes. I still could hardly believe his stories about going through high school with only an electric typewriter. Half my assignments at school require work done on computers and research from the Internet. I had to do a presentation in PowerPoint just last week for English.
I groaned slightly. School. I kind of forgot it was a school day.
“You okay, June?” Dad asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just remembered something.”
I let my dad and Carter figure out the details of going to Carter’s place and using his computer while I walked away from them and called Haley on my cell.
She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” Haley said. “I had to leave without you.”
Haley had her own car. She usually drove us to school.
“Sorry. I should have called earlier, but I lost track of time. We’re doing work for the good of all mankind this morning.”
“Oh. Well that’s a surprise.” With a tone like that, I could imagine the frown on her face. Or was it a scowl?
I tried to ignore her frustration and continued explaining. “So, I’m kind of gross and very far from school. There’s no way I can make it to school today.”
“Unh-uh,” Haley snapped. “Not today. I need you today. We’re making our case before Student Council at lunch.”
“Oh crap!” I shouted too loudly. Dad and Carter turned their heads my way. I walked further away from them. “Today is not a good day. I’ll never make it.”
“You have to make it,” Haley insisted. “You know they won’t reschedule it, because they hate us and want to make our lives miserable. If we don’t appear today, our club is not going to happen.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try to be there by lunch. I don’t know how right now, but I’ll try.” I got off the phone and went back to Carter and my dad. “I’ve got a problem, Dad.”
“What is it?”
“I need to get to school by 11:30.” I paused, but when my dad didn’t act like that was a big deal, I added, “and I can’t go looking like this.”
He woke up. “Oh!”
Carter, my new hero, stepped up again with his chivalry. “How about you both come over to my house? June can clean up while I get you started on the computer, Mr. Sawfeather. Then I’ll drive June to school.”
My dad nodded. “Sounds perfect.”
“Clothes?” I asked, gesturing to my stained and smelly outfit.
Carter winked. “I’m sure we can come up with something.”
It could have been a tease or a flirt. Winking was a deceptive thing. My mind argued that it was just an innocent eye twitch to let me know he had things in control. The hot lava rushing through my veins and my heavy pulse led me to hope that wink was code for something much more romantically devious.
Chapter Five
Can’t say how I managed to get into the truck and put my seatbelt on. I don’t remember any of that. Next thing I knew I was there, beside my father, with a plan to follow Carter up the road into town. My dad started the engine and backed out of the parking lot. He sported a goofy little smile, his first smile of the day.
“Looks like someone’s got a crush.”
I tried to be nonchalant about it, but instead I sputtered out a totally fake, “What are you talking about?” As if I didn’t know.
“He’s going to drive you all the way to Olympia,” Dad pointed out. “He doesn’t have to do that.”
I blushed a little and rolled my eyes. “No. That’s not it. He wants to impress you, that’s all. He knows about you from his professor at school. He thinks you’re some kind of idol probably, and he’ll get extra credit for knowing you.”
My dad shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so.”
As much as what I said to my dad made sense, I couldn’t help but hope my dad was right about Carter. Maybe his graciousness was a little about me too. Everything about him was turning out to be wonderful.
Dad clicked on the news as we rode along. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and the local stations had now received word of the oil spill. So far the reports weren’t anything but headlines, not offering a lot of information. Within an hour that would change. Affron leaked news as much as it did oil, only their version would be skewed to express that no real damage had been done. ‘Nothing for the public to worry about,’ their report would attest. The news anchors across the country would soon be reporting that the oil spill was just a small one and easily cleaned up. Then it would be forgotten.
No one would mention how many animals, including two apparent mermaids, had died—or would continue to die for the next few years.
That was my father’s job. He’d be on the Internet all week, trying to get reporters to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. With his buddy, Randy, they’d add new statistics and the photographic evidence to his web site and make sure that all of the politicians on the West Coast were aware of crisis. Most of all, he’d be working closely with Mom to make sure Affron was punished for sending out that leaky vessel.
Carter turned into a gated neighborhood of houses with matching red tile roofs and procured a parking pass for us. We followed him down a couple winding streets and ended up in front of a beautiful house that was angled on a hill to have a view of the ocean from the upstairs bedroom windows. Each bedroom had its own balcony. I envisioned myself leaning over one, a glass of cool iced tea in my hand, a wide summer hat on my head and a silk scarf fluttering off my neck in the warm salt-water breeze. Dressed in a white silk button down shirt and slacks, a very tan Carter stepped up behind me and put his hand on my waist...
A honk pulled me out of my reverie. Carter waved us over to the circular driveway
where he’d stopped his car. But my dad parked along the curb in the street, regardless. Our ugly, old pickup did not belong anywhere on that lovely property.
We got out of the truck and met Carter at the front door.
“You live here?” I asked. “You don’t have your own place?”
“Don’t be too disappointed,” he said, pretending to pout.
“Oh, I’m not,” I said, eager to see what the house looked like on the inside.
“This is my parents’ house,” Carter explained, unlocking the door. “I have a dorm room at school, but I stay here on weekends and when I don’t have early classes. It’s too noisy at the dorm, and I have a hard time sleeping without the sound of the waves.” Once inside, he typed in a code into the security box on the wall.
“You know,” I said. “They have those white noise machines now. You can set them to ocean waves or streams or whatever.”
“It’s not the same,” Carter said.
“Yeah, I guess not. Listening to something like that would probably just make me want to pee all night.”
Did I say that? I felt my face heat up.
I walked through the doors into his world of white décor, pivoted and stepped right back outside. My nasty boots weren’t allowed to enter this perfect domain, so I slipped them off and left them on the porch. Truth be told, I felt like I should remove every article of my clothing, because I was afraid to bump up against anything.
Carter laughed at me. “My mother thanks you.”
My dad had finished getting out of his boots and stepped inside behind me, lugging the camera tote bag over his shoulder. “This is very nice, Carter. Tell your mother she has done a beautiful job with the place.”
Carter grinned. “Actually, it’s my dad who’s the stylist. Mom is an accountant. Go figure.”
