by D. G. Driver
“Carter, careful!”
But Carter wasn’t listening. He dashed to Waller’s side. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Yes, actually,” he said. “I need to see this tank and find out what’s wrong with it.”
“I told you. It’s broken.”
Schneider came over to the two of them. “What is your concern, Mr. Waller?”
“Your small tanks are too crowded,” Waller said. “The animals are going to fight. They’re going to go crazy with this little space.” Boyle, the silent cohort, nodded, although I felt pretty sure that guy had no idea if the animals might fight or not. I didn’t get a sense that guy knew much at all except how to drive the van. And judging by his parking job out front, he probably wasn’t too good at that either.
“There’s nothing we can do about that right at this moment,” Carter said. “As soon as we get that tank cleaned and repaired, we’ll transfer some of the larger animals over. Until then, we’re just out of luck.”
Dr. Schneider added, “It was just bad timing for us, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, who would have expected Affron to send out a ship that leaks oil into the ocean?”
“June,” Dad warned.
I rolled my eyes at him. For an activist he was being mighty low-key all of a sudden.
“This isn’t the time, and these aren’t the people who matter,” he whispered in my ear as if he knew what I was thinking.
Waller reached for the tarp, “Let me look at the tank. Maybe it’s not as bad off as you think. Some adjustments? I can do that for you.”
I chewed on the insides of my cheeks to keep from squealing.
Schneider waved his hands as he said, “No! No thanks. We have it under control.”
My dad tried a distraction, letting go of the seagull he’d caught and been holding and then chasing it ineffectively around the table. It caught the attention of the Affron men, but neither moved to help him.
Carter, as always, the only one to keep his cool, leaned against the tarp with his arms crossed. “I appreciate the fact that you might have some insight, sir,” he said. “I’m sure your help would be invaluable, but I really do know how to fix this. I won’t be able to get to it until I get these animals accounted for and put up safely. There’s a protocol we have to follow.”
“I’d still like...” the man started, way too insistently
“We know,” Dr. Schneider said. “We’d all like it to work out better.” He placed a hand on the man’s back and gestured toward the double doors. “Tomorrow. It should all be fixed by tomorrow.”
Carter grinned and did a melodramatic sigh. “Even if I have to stay all night.”
Ah, clever. Not only did the guy get the clue that he wasn’t going to get to see the tank, but he couldn’t come back in a couple hours and try again. Waller grunted some kind of compliance. I’m pretty sure he didn’t like being told by a nineteen-year-old what he could and couldn’t do.
Dad finally wrangled the seagull now that the drama was over, and he plopped it into the hands of Boyle, who juggled the poor bird like he didn’t have a clue how to handle it. I dashed over to him and gently took the poor creature and put it into the cage my dad had opened for it. Boyle looked visibly relieved, though he was kind of frantically looking around for a sink to wash off the bird crap all over his hands. It was a huge effort not to laugh at him.
Carter nodded at me and crooked a finger for me to come over to him. “Let’s get started on this.” He made a big show of flipping pages in a folder for me to look at, and I nodded my head a whole bunch and added some “mmm hmmms” for good measure. While we did this, Dad got busy finding a mop and cleaning up the floor.
Dr. Schneider led Waller to the double doors. “I imagine you have more work to do down at the beach.”
“Not really. The spill was very minor. I doubt we’ll have anything else to bring over.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Dr. Schneider said. “That’s very good.”
Boyle joined them at the double doors, wiping his wet hands on his pants. “Need a shower,” he moaned.
“Yes,” Dr. Schneider said, patting the man on the back. “Well, you go have a pleasant evening.”
“We’ll do that,” Waller said. He took one more glimpse over at us. I waved at him, but I knew he was looking over my head at the tarps hanging over the big tank.
Dr. Schneider opened a door and held it open. “Mr. Waller,” he said, and then waited for both men to walk through before following them out.
The second they men were gone, Carter dropped to the floor like he’d deflated. “Wow.” Dad and I laughed, and then he joined in too.
“It takes a lot to be that cool,” my dad said. “I’m thoroughly impressed.”
“Thanks, Mr. Sawfeather,” Carter said. “Coming from you, that’s huge.”
“No, I’m serious. We were all ridiculous, and you were the only one with his wits about him.”
I picked up two bottles of dish soap. “We didn’t even use these.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Carter said, pulling himself back up to his feet. “Interesting huh?”
Dad watched the otters getting to know each other in their too-small tank. “Yeah. This guy should have probably been near death. We should still be cleaning him. I’ve seen animals today so coated with oil we couldn’t do anything about them. And there will be more tomorrow as the oil continues to spread.”
“I heard on the news that they’ve already put dispersants in the ocean,” Carter said.
“They have,” Dad said. “And that’ll help the top layer, but a lot of that oil is going to sink. This spill is not as bad as that one back at the Gulf, but it’s still going to cause some serious long term damage.”
“So, why wasn’t this van-load more affected?” I asked.
“You know what I think?” Carter said. “I think they just smeared some oil on these animals to make it look like they were part of the spill to give them access here. I think they were after something else.”
“Not the mermaid!” I said. “They couldn’t possibly know about that.”
Carter shook his head. “No, it’s not that. That’s way too far-fetched. I mean, how could anyone possibly suspect...?”
“It’s not the mermaid,” Dad said. “Those men clearly weren’t scientists. Just Affron spies. I’ve run into those types before. They’re trying to see how bad the spill really was, so they know how much they have to cover up.”
“Well, they couldn’t have been more obvious,” said Carter.
Dr. Schneider came back in the room and nodded for my dad to follow him to his office.
All of a sudden Carter laughed. “What would that guy have done if I said, ‘Sure go ahead and try to fix the tank’? Would he have had the slightest clue?”
“I seriously doubt it,” I said, handing Carter the dish soap. At the slightest brush of our hands against each other, I felt my face turn instantly hot. Praying the blush wasn’t visible, I slid past him and pulled back the edge of the tarp to look at the mermaid instead of him. The mermaid wriggled toward me, a feeling of relief flooded through me, and I wasn’t sure if it was me feeling relieved to see she was still okay or her feeling relieved that I was okay. “Should we leave these tarps on here? Will it be too dark?”
“I think we should leave them on for now,” Carter said. “You never know who’s going to pop in here. I don’t think this was the last we’ll see of those Affron men.” He came up behind me and put a hand against the glass over my head, his body awfully close behind mine. “I’ll be here a while tonight taking care of things around here, and I’ll be sure to leave some lights on. She’s used to living in the deep ocean, so darkness shouldn’t scare her. I wouldn’t think, anyway.”
“This is a different kind of darkness,” I said, “and a very different kind of environment.”
He was silent a moment before he finally said in a very serious tone, “I know.” He turned me around to look r
ight in his face. “I’ll take care of her. I promise.”
It was suddenly really hard to breathe, but somehow I managed to whisper, “I could stay here too. And help some more.”
“Don’t you have homework?”
From across the room I heard the click of Dr. Schneider’s door and my father tease, “Yes, June. Don’t you have some homework? Some high school homework?”
My breath came back. I sighed and rolled my eyes and moved away from Carter enough to be dad-approved. “Ugh.”
“Ah, there’s that American Indian in you, Miss Sawfeather,” Carter laughed.
I smacked him. “That is so inappropriate. I take away your coolness points.”
“Sorry,” he said, but he was still snickering.
“Don’t you have homework too, college boy?” I flung back at him.
“I do, but it’s not as interesting as all this. I’ll get it done between classes tomorrow.”
“I wish I could do that. I just felt a massive wave of tiredness wash over me.” Now that the adrenaline rush of cleaning the mermaid and distracting the Affron dudes was over, I suddenly felt like I was going to drop. It occurred to me that I’d been awake since three in the morning and it was now eight p.m. Well, if you didn’t count falling asleep in English class this afternoon, but that was hardly a satisfying snooze.
Carter smiled at me and put a hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t that charming smile he faked the Affron men with, but a sweet, genuine one that made his green eyes twinkle. How did he keep smiling throughout all this work and stress? “You should go home. We’ll catch up tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’ll pick you up after school again,” he said. Then he added, snidely, “That is if it’s convenient for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh nothing, Miss San Diego State.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, which was probably unladylike, and I kind of regretted it ten minutes later because it was the last thing he saw me do before grabbing my dad and pulling him out the door. “Come on, Dad,” I said. “You need sleep as much as I do.”
Dad tried to veer me back inside before we got past the tide-pool aquarium up front, but I kept my grip firm on his arm.
“I mean it, Dad. It’s pizza, a shower, and night-night.”
“Oh, fine, Mom,” he said, laughing. “Speaking of which, I need to get home and call your mom. I’m way overdue for a check in, and she’s probably ready to throttle me.”
During the drive home, I forced him to listen to a classic rock station instead of the news, any talk shows, or NPR. It was tough for him, but when we got into singing some Queen at full volume, it helped keep us both awake enough to make it home without crashing or running off the road.
We gobbled up the cheese pizza as soon as we got home, and I listened to relentless advice about how to handle a nineteen-year-old boyfriend even though I kept explaining to him that Carter was not my boyfriend and probably never would be. All the tension from the night before was gone, and I was glad that he didn’t bring up any of it. At least for the moment I could enjoy being with my dad, even if he did tell ridiculous stories about mermaids singing to killer whales.
After dinner, I showered for the second time that day and put on some sweats. Then I went up to my room to plow through my homework. I decided to save reading the Moby Dick chapters for bedtime, since I was sure it would knock me out for the night. I called Haley a few times from our home line, but she didn’t answer. Her parents didn’t have a home line, just cell phones, and I felt kind of weird about calling her mom’s number, even though I had it. I saw the light on in her room, but her shades were closed. I wasn’t sure if she was in there or not. I leaned out my window and yelled across the divide between our houses. That didn’t work either.
I got on my computer and I.M.’d her. Nothing. I emailed her and waited for a response. Nothing.
I knew she was mad at me, but I really didn’t think she was mad enough to be ignoring me like this. Maybe she was into a really great episode of 100 Most Shocking Videos. There was nothing else to do except the old fashioned thing. I slipped into some shoes, headed downstairs and out the door, and walked over to knock at her front door. Her mom answered, a little confused to have me at her front door at ten p.m.
“June? Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Is Haley here? She’s not answering her phone or emails, and I wanted to talk to her.”
“She’s here,” Haley’s mom said. “I think she might be in bed already.”
“She’s not,” I told her. “Her light’s still on.”
“Oh.” But her mom didn’t offer to go get her.
“Mrs. Dunlap? Could I see her?”
Her mom scrunched up her face as though really confused. Was it really that weird for me to show up like this? I mean, just because neither of us had ever done it before? “Of course. I’ll go get her.”
She left me standing at the front door while she disappeared into the depths of her house, calling for Haley. A couple minutes later she came back. “June, she can’t come to the door right now. She told me she’s taking a bath.”
“A bath? Really?” That was a new one. I love Haley, but honestly the usual dingy cast to her hair suggested only occasional showers at best. Plus, her twitchy thumbs were always a little too eager to be holding a game, cell phone or remote control to allow her to sit still in a tub of water for long.
“That’s what she said.”
I offered Haley’s mom a polite smile. “Okay. Well, tell her to call me when she gets out.”
I walked back to my house. My dad was standing in the living room when I came back in. “Where have you been?”
“Next door,” I said. “Trying to see my best friend, who doesn’t want to see me.”
“You went to her house?” he asked. Apparently this was strange to him too.
“I don’t have a cell phone, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right.”
I went back upstairs and kicked off my shoes. Guess I had a lot of making up to do with Haley. I didn’t realize I’d upset her as much as I did. I wasn’t even really sure why I’d upset her. Honestly, it was me the kids were making fun of, not her. If anything, she should be upset for me and by my side defending me. But she was acting like I’d just embarrassed her and ruined her life by wearing Carter’s sweatshirt.
Haley was a great girl. She wouldn’t be my best friend if she weren’t. She was really deep and cared about the environment and always rooted for the underdog. She cried at movies and sometimes when reading books. A real softie. If she knew everything that was going on with me today, what I’d been through with my parents and what had happened at the beach. If she knew about the mermaid...
That was it. I’d fill her in on all of it. She might not be responding to my emails, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t reading them. I got on the computer and wrote for half an hour telling her everything about my dad, including finding the mermaids and how Carter and I cleaned her up. When I was done, I uploaded the video to my computer and attached it to the email and zipped the whole thing off to her.
The video made it a huge file, and it took forever to send and would probably take just as long to open on her end. Odds were that Haley might not even see it until morning, so I got into bed with Moby Dick and promptly fell asleep, certain I’d be riding to school with my best friend, Carter would be caring for the mermaid and everything would be fine.
Yeah, well, a few hours of blissful ignorance was about all I got.
Chapter Nine
For a fleeting moment I hoped Haley would be taking me to school. We’d cut up about how awful I looked in the video, and then she’d get serious and ask what was really going on. The story would make her a little teary-eyed. We’d bond again and all would be well with the world. But, like I said, it was a fleeting moment, because as soon as I got out of bed I checked my computer and there was no response from her. Her shades w
ere drawn in her room so we couldn’t compare outfits through the windows like we normally did to make sure we didn’t overtly match or clash with each other. Clearly, she was still avoiding me.
I dressed and headed downstairs to choke down a bowl of the awful granola my parents always have on hand as cereal. It tastes okay, but some Trix or Cocoa Puffs wouldn’t hurt once in a while. The newspaper was on the table, but the oil spill didn’t make the first page. I was curious to know how far back the editors ranked that news item, but I was too lazy to deal with flipping those large pages. Dad stumbled into the room, and caught me with the folded up paper in my hand.
“It’s on page ten,” he said. “No pictures or anything.”
I shook my head slowly but kept my eyes on the headline, which was something about a congressman—in another state, mind you—caught cheating on his wife. Yeah, I could see how that was more important than an oil spill on our very own coastline. Affron had some power, that was for sure.
“When is Mom coming home?” I asked. I didn’t like the idea that she was still up there in Alaska dealing with them.
“Soon, I hope. There’s not much else she can do up there now.” He grabbed his coffee tumbler and shoved his wallet in his back pocket. “You going to school today?” he asked.
I cocked my head and squinted at him. “Don’t I sort of have to?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
I think he was hinting that I could go with him and do some more work. It was really tempting. However, I figured there were some things I needed to hammer out with Haley at school, and I didn’t want Vice Principal Slater giving me crap again. Oh, and speaking of her, I needed to get my freakin’ phone back.
“Yeah, and I need you to drive me, so you can help me reclaim my phone from the clutches of the evil warden.”
He grinned at me. “I guess that would come in handy, wouldn’t it?”
“A little.”
He was in a good mood. Mom must not have ticked him off on the phone, and I imagine he slept as hard as I did after that long day. His eyes were bright, and most of all he seemed to have completely forgotten that he was royally finished with me twenty-four hours ago. Dad drove me to school and argued with Slater in the front office for a good twenty minutes before Spike-head finally gave over the phone. Part of me was surprised it still existed. I envisioned her eating things like that for dinner. Or maybe she threw all the gadgets she confiscated from kids in a big pile out in the back parking lot and drove back and forth over them with her car while screeching our alma mater like it was a punk rock song.
