by Liz Kessler
But the protestors had different views on the agreement. Local resident Mandy Rushton is one of the protest organizers. She said they would take their protest to the courts if necessary.
“Like many others in our town, my family lost everything when visitors to Brightport fell off to a level that could no longer sustain our business. Midas is a corrupt, money-hungry shark that doesn’t care about anything except lining its own pockets, even if it means driving our town into the ground.”
The Brightport Times put these claims to Mr. Whittaker, and he said: “Midas Enterprises responded to a law that was put into effect almost twenty years ago, banning anyone from disposing of waste in the ocean. But in order to keep the oceans clean, we have to accept a bit of discomfort here and there. We understand that people are upset, but these protests have a ‘Not in my backyard’ flavor about them. People will always create waste — and it has to go somewhere.”
Mr. Whittaker added: “We at Midas have brought more money into this town than any other business for almost two decades. It’s time people stopped complaining and got behind our attempts to save Brightport.”
Meanwhile, the Times can report that another seven local firms went out of business in the last month. Brightport’s newly elected mayor, Councillor Windsnap, told the Times: “Midas has once again twisted laws that were set up for the good of everyone and turned them into opportunities to line its own pockets. Things can’t go on like this. We have to stop Midas. We have to save our town — before there is no town to save.” She added: “Everyone must get involved. Come to our public meeting next week. Save Brightport. Save our planet!”
See the letter from our editor on page 12: Brightport, City of Waste — Where Will It End?
I folded the newspaper and put it back down on the table. My mind was racing — and so was my heart. It was pumping with fury.
Midas hadn’t built glitzy hotels in this version of the future, so it had found another way to make itself filthy rich.
My wish had come true. I wished that we wouldn’t destroy the ocean, so Midas was destroying the land instead!
In spite of my anger, I couldn’t help feeling proud — Mandy was at the heart of the protests. And despite living in a ramshackle little plastic tub, my mom was the mayor of Brightport! Still, I couldn’t help wondering where I was in all of this. It seemed as though I had a busy job from what Mom said about me finally having a day off.
Mom was still outside. I looked around the boat to see if there was anything else that might give me clues about life today. There was a dresser along the side of the saloon with three framed photos on it.
I went over to look. I recognized the first picture. It had been taken a few weeks ago on our vacation to Forgotten Island. There we were, Mom, Dad, and I, smiling and hugging one another. The photo was worn and faded. In this world, it was a couple of decades old.
The second photo was of Mom and Millie. I guessed that one was more recent. They were standing on the pier together. Still smiling, but you could see that joy wasn’t filling them up in the same way. Their smiles seemed forced and tired.
I picked up the third photo. Dad. At first sight, he looked barely older than I knew him to be in my old life. He had the same twinkle in his eye he always had — but, yes, he had a few wrinkles too, especially around his eyes. He seemed to be upright in the water, as I couldn’t see his tail. His graying hair was wet, and he was smiling and saluting the camera. He seemed to be wearing a uniform of some sort. What was it? I held the photo nearer and studied it harder.
Just then, I heard Mom on the jetty outside the boat. Still holding the photo, I turned to see her climb back through the hatch door. She came over and put an arm around my shoulders.
“I miss him so much,” she said.
Miss him? Had they divorced in this world too? Was Dad even alive?
My eyes filled with tears and my throat had almost closed up completely when she added, “At least we get to see him once a month, though. You’re all set for tonight?”
I swiped my arm across my eye. “Tonight?”
“Yes! You haven’t forgotten? It’s a new moon and I think it’s high tide just before ten p.m. I live for that one hour of the month. And it’s even better when I can share it with you. You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m coming!” I said. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cheer. Instead I grabbed Mom and pulled her to me. “I’m so glad you’re still together,” I said.
Mom laughed. “Of course we’re still together, silly goose. Nothing could come between me and your dad!”
I didn’t tell her that there was another version of our lives where that wasn’t true. Instead I said a silent prayer of thanks that at least in this version it was.
“I just wish we didn’t have to have such long stretches apart,” Mom said. “But in his position, he can’t be seen to be breaking the rules.” She pulled me close to kiss the top of my head. “Still, I couldn’t be prouder,” she went on. “Between my husband being Neptune’s new Officer in Charge of Cleanliness, and my daughter being the youngest ever mayor of Brightport, I’m thinking we might finally be able to beat those Midas crooks.”
I nearly dropped the photo I was still holding. I put it back down on the dresser before it slipped out of my hands.
What had she said?
Mom sat down and patted the seat next to her. “Now, come and sit down and let’s catch up before that phone of yours starts ringing. We’ve got lots to talk about. I feel as though I’ve barely seen you since you were appointed.”
I sat down, opening my mouth and trying to make words come out, but they wouldn’t. The words simply weren’t there. I’d interpreted the newspaper article incorrectly. Mom wasn’t the mayor of Brightport.
I was.
My hometown was crumbling in front of my eyes; my mom lived on a boat that was barely floating; her best friend was homeless; Mandy’s family was ruined. And I was the person in charge. I was the one they were all looking at to fix it.
I’d faced bad things before. I’d fought off a kraken. I’d swum past hammerhead sharks to rescue my dad from prison. I’d survived an earthquake that had nearly torn an island in two! But, for once, I had to admit something I really didn’t want to face up to.
I had no idea how to get out of this one.
I walked along the pier, thinking everything over. I’d told Mom I’d meet her in an hour and we’d go down to the river together. In the meantime, I needed some air. I needed some thinking time. I needed to be alone.
I paced slowly, trying to take in everything that had happened.
But I couldn’t. My brain just couldn’t process it. Every time I tried to make things right, all I’d done was somehow create a world of horrific inequality. I began to wish I’d never set eyes on that stupid stone.
Except I didn’t even dare think about the word wish right now. Who knew what it might lead to?
So instead, I looked down at the wooden boards of the rickety pier as I walked. I hardly even realized where I was going until I reached the end of the pier.
Before I could stop myself, I was knocking on the front door. I shuddered as I remembered what had happened the last time I was here. Some girl I’d never seen in my life had answered. She’d been wearing a hoodie with a Midas logo on it. It was no longer Mandy’s home. It was no longer anyone’s home.
I shuddered even more when I thought about my last exchange with Mandy. The one in school this morning.
Had we made up over the years? Had we grown apart?
I had nothing but questions. Questions and a boarded-up door that clearly no one was answering.
I was about to turn away when I heard the sound of footsteps behind the door. Then a voice. “Who is it?”
“It’s Emily,” I said. Was that Mandy in there?
“Emily?”
“Emily Windsnap,” I said.
“Well, which other Emily is it going to be?” the voice said. A sarcastic reply that could
only belong to one person.
The door opened.
“Mandy!” I exclaimed. I tried hard not to show how shocked I was. Mandy looked like an old lady. Her hair was completely gray. Her clothes looked dirty. Her top had at least a couple of holes in it. But I didn’t care. It was Mandy, and I was more pleased to see her than I could express.
I guessed by her scowl, however, that the feeling wasn’t exactly mutual.
“What do you want?” she asked, holding the door open a fraction as she screwed up her nose and stared at me.
“I wanted to see you,” I said simply.
“Not too busy, then?” she asked.
“I’m never too busy to see my friends.”
Mandy snorted in reply. But she didn’t turn me away. “I thought you city council folk would be in bed with the Midas crooks by now,” she said. “Have you not received your kickbacks yet?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You know what I’m talking about, Emily. I’m talking about years and years of having everything you love taken away from you. I’m talking about relying on people who aren’t there for you. I’m talking about wondering where your next meal is coming from, wondering who will be next to stab you in the back, who you can trust, and who will let you down, over and over again.”
I stared at Mandy. Her words felt like arrows, all aimed at me. I couldn’t speak. I could barely think.
“Mandy, have I really done those things?” I whispered eventually.
Mandy ran a hand through her ragged hair and looked away.
“I — look, I should never have come,” I said. “I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.” I turned and started to stumble away.
“Wait!” Mandy called after me.
I stopped and turned around.
A single tear was running down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not you. I know you’ve done everything you could. You’ve probably tried harder than most. It’s unfair of me to take it out on you. Just — I’m desperate, you know?”
I closed the gap between us. Standing in front of her, I said, “Yeah, I know.” And the weird thing was that even though I actually didn’t know what Mandy was referring to — didn’t know anything that had happened to her for two decades, didn’t know what had happened to our friendship — I did know what despair felt like. I knew that really well.
“I miss you,” she said, wiping the tear off her cheek.
I smiled at her. “I miss you too,” I said. “I never wanted us to fight,” I said.
“Me neither.”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help laughing. I had no idea what had happened to Mandy to make her say these things — but she had no idea how much I meant what I was saying in reply.
She opened the door a bit wider. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.
“I — I can’t.”
Mandy’s face closed up. “Figured,” she said tightly. “Too busy?”
“No. It’s not that. I mean, it’s not you. It’s — I promised my mom I’d go to the river.”
Mandy nodded. “Oh, yes. It’s the new moon. Spring tide. Are you going to see Shona?”
“I’m going to see my —” I began. Then I remembered Shona mentioning the new moon earlier. Of course. That must have been what she was referring to.
“Mandy, come with me!” I said. “Come to the river with me.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Come to see Shona. I’m sure she’d love to see you. She’s going to be there. At least, I think she is.”
“She won’t want to see me. No one from Shiprock cares about us anymore.”
“Mandy, this is Shona we’re talking about. Come on. When’s the last time the three of us hung out together?”
Mandy let out a bitter laugh. “You’re joking, right? The three of us haven’t been together for . . . I don’t know . . . years. Lots of years.”
“So come with me. Just this once. Let’s have tonight. Let’s pretend we’re all friends, like we used to be. Please.”
Mandy let out a long, rattling breath. Then she seemed to make up her mind.
“OK,” she said. “Wait there. I’ll get my coat.”
We crept along the bank in the darkness. It was odd. I’d probably been to this end of town about five times in my whole life — and two of them had been in the future. How was I supposed to keep my head straight when it was full of thoughts like that?
“Have you come to the river for the new moon before?” I asked Mandy as we walked.
She stopped and looked at me. My eyes had started to get used to the darkness, but not enough for me to read her expression.
“What?” I asked as she set off again.
“We used to come together,” she said, “before you were important.”
I pretended I didn’t hear the sarcasm in her last word.
“Have you changed so much that you don’t even remember?”
For a moment I considered telling her everything. Just letting it all out — the stone, the wishes, the traveling in time — all of it. What did I have to lose?
Answer: I had a friendship that was hanging by a thread. That was what I had to lose. And it was one of the very small number of things I could claim at the moment, so I wasn’t prepared to risk it. Besides, I was pretty sure I could safely say that there wasn’t the remotest chance Mandy would believe a word of it.
No, it would only make things worse.
“Of course I remember,” I said instead, covering my confusion with a wave of my hand. “I meant, have you been lately. Since we haven’t — seen each other as much.”
Mandy shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “There are only two types of people who come here.”
“Two types?” I asked, not looking at her as we walked, hoping she’d fill in the gaps for me.
“Those with someone to meet, and those rich enough for the black-market goods,” Mandy replied, adding bitterly, “and as you know, I don’t fit into either category.”
We walked in silence for a bit. What was there to say? I didn’t know what she meant by black-market goods, and I couldn’t keep asking questions that she expected me to know the answers to. Instead, I watched my feet, plodding along the high riverbank in the darkness.
We soon rounded a bend and I could see a familiar sight ahead of us: the bridge that I’d walked across the last time I was here. Mom had already told me that the bridge was near where the meetings took place. We’d agreed to meet there.
As we got closer, I could see two groups of people. One looked to be mostly men, mostly in suits, standing in a circle talking rapidly at one another. The other group was made up of individuals, all thin, mostly wearing rags, mostly on their own, looking out to sea, none of them saying much. I noticed a couple of them nudge each other and point to me. As they turned to look at me, a few of them gave me a half smile and a wave. I awkwardly smiled back. A couple of them pulled their ragged coats more tightly around their frail bodies and gave me the kind of look you give to someone who you hold responsible for the fact that your life has fallen to pieces.
“Emily!” A figure from the second group called to me and waved. Mom.
I waved back. “You coming?” I said to Mandy.
She nodded and we made our way down to the riverside. As we walked, I said hello to a few people I had never seen before in my life. I guess they knew me — and if I were supposedly the mayor of Brightport, I ought to act as though I knew them too.
The river was completely different from last time I’d been here. It was barely a trickle. I could see a tiny thread of water glinting in the darkness. Other than that, the bed looked hard and dry.
We joined Mom and she reached out to hug me. Then she saw Mandy. She paused for a second, then said, “Come here,” and pulled Mandy in for a hug as well.
Mandy’s arms hung by her sides for a moment. Then she put them loosely around Mom’s waist.
As they drew apart, Mom studied Mand
y’s face in the darkness. “It’s nice to see you,” she said. “Don’t make yourself such a stranger. We all need each other in times like these.”
Mandy didn’t reply. She looked down at her feet.
Mom put an arm around her, then reached out to put her other arm around me. “Look at me,” she said. “Down here at this dried-up river with you two like this. It barely feels like weeks ago that you girls used to play in the water together. What happened to those days, eh?”
I couldn’t reply. She had no idea how much I wanted to ask the same thing.
The three of us waited in an awkward silence for a bit. And then it happened.
It started with a sound. A low rumbling, like thunder in the distance.
“Here it comes,” Mom said.
We all moved back to the edges of the river and watched the water flow in.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. At first it came in stages, flowing in gradually like a tide normally does, but within minutes the speed increased. It was as if someone had turned on a giant tap to fill the bowl of the riverbed. Water flooded in, raising the level so fast we had to scramble up the bank.
“Still surprises me every time,” Mom said, laughing.
I forced myself to laugh back. It seemed like the correct response. But I didn’t feel like laughing. I just felt like staring.
Mom saw me watching. “Never get used to it, do you? The river’s spring tide on a new moon. Nature at its most wondrous.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “It’s incredible.”
In and in it came, flooding in faster than I had ever seen water move. It filled the space so quickly it was like watching someone pour water from a giant jug.
Gradually the river swelled. It reached up the bank, and the flow rate began to slow down.
Mandy pointed farther up the river. “They’re coming,” she said.
Mom clapped her hands together. “I see him! I’m going down. You coming, girls?”
I looked at Mandy. She shrugged.
“Sure,” I said.
We scrambled to the water’s edge. Farther up the river the men in suits were bartering with people in the water. They called to each other, shouting out prices, haggling and jeering, while those in the water held up different items.
