Fathom

by L. L. Standage

  I tried not to laugh. “Where did you get that thing?”

  “I made it. I’ve had this fish scale fabric forever. Remember that dance we went to freshman year? That under-the-sea thing?”

  “We were fourteen!”

  “I know, I know. Forever ago. Anyway, the fabric was too fabulous to throw away, so I used some to make a mermaid tail. I even put sheets of plastic inside the fin so it would look more realistic. Isn’t it cool?” She gave the fish tail a little wave. “We can put a starfish in your hair, maybe find some driftwood—”

  “Wait, what do you mean me?”

  “Because I’m the photographer. And you look way more like a mermaid than I do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You have the hair. Long blonde waves will look amazing! I mean, come on, whoever heard of a brunette mermaid with short hair?” She tugged on the ends of her brown bob.

  I laughed and shook my head. “I’ll look stupid.”

  “Please, Liv? You’re always studying those little fishies out there. Now’s your chance to become one.”

  “I study marine life, not fairy tales. And the last time you made me be a subject in one of your photoshoots, I got glitter in my eye and ended up with conjunctivitis for a week.”

  “Okay, no glitter this time. Come on, please? Think of it as a challenge: Can I make a passable mermaid?” She asked the question with her hand raised in front of her, as if it were a dramatic headline in a newspaper.

  “Okay, fine. But only if we’re the only ones out there. I don’t want a bunch of weird beach bums ogling me.”

  “Yay!” She clapped and squealed, then took the fish tail and walked out. “Oh, I forgot to ask,” she called from down the hall. “How were the tide pools?”

  I rubbed my face. I couldn’t tell her. It would freak her out. “Um…fine, I guess. I accidentally dropped my phone in the ocean. That’s why I didn’t answer your second call.”

  She ran back. Her face reflected a level of horror equal to reporting the death of a loved one. Wow, if she freaked out this much over a phone, then I was definitely not telling her everything that happened at the tide pools.

  “Can you get another one?”

  “Not right away. I don’t have the money—wait, are you crying?” I asked with an incredulous laugh. She shut her misting eyes and shook her head.

  “Losing a phone is like losing your arm! Or part of your brain!”

  “I’ll be fine. You do enough social media for the both of us, and the only people who are going to call me are my parents and Aunt Shannon. They can use her landline. It just sucks that I can’t use a phone for research until I get a new one.”

  She lunged a few steps forward, grabbed my hand and pulled me to sit up. “Come on, mermaid girl. We’re going to the beach. Sunnies and hunnies. Dr. Sammie Ka-blammie’s orders.”

  I sighed and moved my feet to the floor. Out the window, the sun shone on a cloudless day. It made it hard to believe anything weird happened just a few hours ago or that any danger could still be waiting. Had those men ever gone to La Jolla Beach? Had anything happened? A burning curiosity sprang inside me. I wanted to know. And in the light of day, with loads of people on the beach and my bold best friend at my side, nothing bad could happen. The thirst to see for myself surged all the more. I stood and went to get my suitcase.

  Fifteen minutes later, we headed toward the front door. On the entryway table sat the landline. A red blinking light on the phone’s dock caught my eye. I pushed the button next to the light.

  “You have one unheard message,” said the electronic female voice. Sam paused and waited. The phone beeped and my Aunt Shannon’s perky voice came over the speaker.

  “Hi Olivia! I tried to call your cell, but there must have been a bad connection. It wouldn’t go through. Anyway, I just landed here in Amsterdam. It’s probably the middle of the night back home. I just wanted to let you know I got here safely. It’s gorgeous here. You wouldn’t believe it. Anyway, I gotta get going. My group’s about to leave. I hope you and Samantha are settled in okay. And don’t forget, no wild parties. Or if you do have wild parties, at least clean up and make sure I never find out.” She laughed. “Love you, sweetie. Thanks again for keeping an eye on things for me!” The line clicked. I smiled.

  “She’s so cool,” said Samantha as she opened the front door. “I want to travel the world when I’m an adult.”

  “Technically, you are an adult.”

  She tilted her head in thought. “True. Next summer, then. We’re backpacking Europe like Shannon.”

  I laughed again, my fear from last night gone. Whatever had occurred at the tide pools, or even on the beach last night, I was so ready to get out there and forget about it all—or if I was lucky, find out if anything crazy happened.

  Crowds of families scattered in little multicolored umbrella camps across La Jolla Beach. People walked, swam, and played Frisbee as I scanned the coastline for unusual activity. The normality of it all left me strangely disappointed. I should be glad for normal, shouldn’t I? No men in suits or Padres sweatshirts. No police sirens or caution tape. Before me lay an ocean—fishy-salty air in my lungs, sand at my feet, and the crash of waves in my ears. Paradise. Sanctuary. A break from the crap of the last few months.

  “You’re thinking about plankton, aren’t you?” Samantha said next to me. I turned. She lifted her camera to her eye and snapped a couple pictures of the ocean.

  “No.” I laughed a little, not admitting to her that my thoughts had crept back to the divorce for a moment. “Why?”

  She lowered the camera. “Because we’re standing in front of an ocean. And you have a look on your face that says”—she swooned—“ah, plankton. Or whatever stuff is in there.”

  Smiling, I brushed windswept strands of hair from my face. “Well, plankton is an important part of the ocean’s ecosystem.”

  Sam snorted and took a few more pictures. “You’re such a geek.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  She shrugged and took off running with a great, wild, “Wahoo!”

  My smile grew as I followed. My feet sank into deep, warm sand. I bent to take off my sandals and walked toward Samantha, who kicked her feet in the shallow tide.

  “This is going to be the best summer ever!” she proclaimed to the sky and danced in a circle. The best summer ever. Part of my heart—the part that still grieved my parents breaking our family into pieces—withered a bit. No. I reset my shoulders and lifted my head. This would be the best summer ever. I had my best friend to keep me laughing—and an ocean to explore.

  Sam stopped dancing. “Now, where’s the eye candy?” A group of guys tossing a football in the distance caught her gaze. She nodded toward them. “Do you know any of them?”

  “Really?” I said, my eyebrows high. She shrugged.

  “Just asking. Your aunt lives here, after all.”

  “I doubt she’s making friends with dudes half her age.”

  “I meant you, you dork. It’s okay to get out there, you know.”

  “It’s okay for you to not always get out there, you know. Except it’s hilarious to watch, so I’m not going to stop you.”

  She giggled. “A girl can have a little fun. A little harmless flirting. A little—” She cut herself off with a gasp, stopped walking, and gave a low whistle. A sudden gleam appeared in her eyes and an eager half-grin twitched at her mouth.

  “A little what?” I asked, even though I knew that look. Prey had been spotted.

  “A lot of hottie.”

  “Okay, which one is he?” I scanned the guys with the football.

  “Over there.” Samantha pointed in the other direction, toward a guy who knelt in the sand, his head bent and examining something. My heart dropped for a second. Could it be? I didn’t know what either of the men looked like from last night. And this guy definitely stood out, kneeling in the sand and wearing a tee shirt and jeans instead of a swimsuit. I racked my brain. The two men from the tide
pools definitely seemed older than this guy, who looked to be in his early twenties. I cast him a side eye and wondered what he was doing. Despite the alarming possibilities, a weird blip went off in my long-suppressed attraction radar. Something could be said about a guy studying sand instead of throwing around a football.

  I shrugged it off. Maybe he did have something to do with those men. Maybe he didn’t. The odds were insane. I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out. And yet…

  I shook my head as though to flick away any fascination I may or may not have had so Sam could have her go at him.

  “Yeah, he’s cute, I guess. Have fun.” I waited for her to saunter off. Sam looked at him, then at me, and then back and forth again. She grasped my arm.

  “No, wait. You’re going to go talk to him.”

  Talk? Did she mean flirt? With that guy? I stiffened. “What? No.”

  “I saw that look on your face, babe. You’re going.” She grabbed my arms from behind and marched me closer to the guy still kneeling in the sand. “Maybe he’s a marine bio nerd like you.”

  Marine bio nerd or not, I’d rather get pricked by a sea urchin than talk to some random guy. Sea urchins are dependable. Sea urchins understand.

  “Sam, no.”

  She came around and looked me in the eye. “If you try this, just once, I’ll take you to the aquarium. My treat. You can tell me everything you know about starfish and plankton and all the slimy things.”

  “They’re called sea stars. And I’m not going to talk to him.” I turned around. She grabbed my arms again, whirled me in a circle, and pushed me closer to where the guy knelt. “Stop,” I hissed, “he’ll hear us.” Any second now, he might look up. He’d notice our struggle.

  “Then go.”

  “Fine,” I said through clenched teeth, my face on fire. “I’ll do it. But we’re going to the aquarium and Sea World.”

  “Deal. Now go make me proud.” She slapped me on the butt.

  I fiddled with a strand of my hair as I stepped closer to the guy. When was the last time I’d just gone up to some guy I didn’t know and talked to him? My days of unabashed flirting had ended a long time ago. I took a deep breath and another step. Maybe I could ask him if anything weird happened here last night. This didn’t have to be about chatting him up. I could find out information. I took a few more steps. He had a black case sitting in the sand next to him. He held a test tube and scooped some bits of sand into it. Why? What was it for? Environmental impact study? Was he from the nearby Birch Aquarium? The thought sent a ripple of interest through me.

  He capped the test tube and put it in his case, then looked around the sand. I gulped. His eyes searching the ground stopped at my feet. He looked up. Whoa.

  He was beautiful. Not teenage-heartthrob-cute like most of the guys that drew Samantha’s eye but not less attractive either. Just different—a sturdy jaw with a hint of shadow, messy chestnut hair with unkempt sideburns, and a firm brow.

  For a second, I stood there like an idiot, staring. I couldn’t tell his eye color from several feet away but being rimmed with dark lashes, the color didn’t matter. I opened my mouth. Then closed it. I looked away, gave my head a shake, and turned to go.

  Samantha caught my arm from behind and turned me back, hauling me toward the gorgeous guy in the sand.

  “Hi,” she said. “My friend is a little shy and she was just wondering what you’re up to. She’s totally into the ocean and stuff.”

  My face burned. His expression didn’t budge. Only his eyes, which I could now see were ocean gray, roved from me to Samantha. He looked back down at his things.

  “I’m only passing through,” he said. Did I detect yet another accent?

  “That’s so cool,” Sam said. “What for?” He didn’t look up.

  “Sorry, but I’m rather busy at the moment,” he said. No mistaking it this time; he had a small trill to his “r’s” and a bent intonation to his vowels. Scottish or Irish by the sound of it.

  “Olivia, maybe you could help?” Samantha said keenly. “She knows more about the ocean than anyone.”

  He looked up at me again. I shut my eyes in humiliation.

  “Look, Miss, I hate to be rude, but I have work—”

  “Oooh, where are you from?” she asked. I opened my eyes again.

  “Edinburgh,” he mumbled, fiddling with the contents in his black case.

  “Oh. I just thought you sounded Scottish. My mistake.”

  “You don’t know much about Scotland, do you?” Amusement coated his words.

  “Sam—” I began, wanting to give her a little geography lesson, but the guy looked back at me and I clammed up again.

  “I’ll just be over here, Olivia,” said Samantha with a wink. She walked away. I rubbed my temples.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. I yearned to know his name and more about his work. “Can I ask what you’re doing?”

  I shut my eyes after saying it. Holy crap, could I be any more awkward?

  “Collecting samples,” he replied. Okay. Samples. I could work with that.

  “Samples of what?”

  He paused and looked up at me but didn’t say anything. Then he bent back down and gathered a few test tubes with small bits of crusty sand inside them.

  “Blood,” he replied.

  “Blood?” I whispered, part in horror and part in macabre fascination. He finished packing up his things and stood.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Nice to have met you.” He gave me a swift, closed-lip smile and walked away.

  Keep talking, said a voice in my head that sounded like Samantha. Ask him if anything weird happened here last night. No! What if he had nothing to do with it? Or worse, what if he did? Just say something.

  Nothing came out. He stepped over the low concrete wall dividing the sand from the sidewalk along the beach and headed toward the parking lot. All my breath rushed from my lungs. My face burned.

  At least it was over. And Sam owed me. I turned to go find her, only to be nearly knocked over as she threaded her arm through mine. She beamed and giggled and practically skipped as her questions fired like bottle rockets.

  “So? How’d it go? What’s his name? Did he ask for your number?”

  “No,” I replied, dizzy from the whole dumb experience. “I don’t have a phone, remember?”

  She swore and slapped her forehead. “I can’t believe I forgot! We should have asked for his number. So what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liv! You had your chance!”

  A chance? I never wanted a chance. “I can’t do it. I’m not like that anymore, Sam,” I said numbly, thankful the ordeal was over. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter anyway; he’s not from here and neither are we. We’ll probably never see him again.”

  She frowned, a tiny crease appearing between her sculpted eyebrows. “Well, it was worth a shot though, wasn’t it? Your first time getting back out there and you did great!”

  I huffed. “I barely said two words to him.”

  “That’s okay! We’ll try again another time.”

  I sighed. There wouldn’t be another time because I wasn’t going to hit on any more random strangers. But she didn’t need to know that.

  “Also,” I said, “just so you know, Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland.”

  She waved her hand. “Like I’m supposed to know that.” She looked back toward the place where the guy had been kneeling in the sand. “Mmm…Hottie McScottie,” she murmured.

  “If you like him so much, you should’ve gone after him.”

  She laughed. “Let’s go get sunburned, mermaid girl.”

  The next morning, I sat in an alcove where the sea had worn the rock away, hidden from the public beach a few hundred feet down the shore. Seaweed lay around me in matted clumps. Early morning fog shrouded the horizon, blurring the sea and the sky together. The tide ebbed low, the lonely spit of bouldery beach deserted except for the jutting rocks a
nd a few seagulls. Sam picked up the jeans I’d worn before changing into the costume and crammed them into her camera bag. Then she set the bag on a rock and walked over to me.

  “This is so gross,” Sam said, rearranging the seaweed as if it were a dead body. I laughed at her revulsion.

  “It’s just kelp.”

  “Whatever. It’s disgusting. And it smells like fish.”

  “You’re the one who wanted it in the picture, you wimp.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me, cleared her throat, and pulled something from her pocket. “Let’s put this in your hair.” It was a small, white sea star. “I found a whole bowl of them in my room back at the house.”

  I tilted my head so she could fasten the sea star into my hair, near the side of my temple, with a clear rubber band and a bobby pin. I looked down at my legs, bound together in the shiny green fabric. A wide strip of matching fabric covered my boobs like a tube top—not a difficult feat since the ladies weren’t exactly on the voluptuous side.

  I had to give Samantha credit. The costume was brilliant, and it fit me like a glove. The fabric caught the misty, pale light just like fish scales would have done and the seams were almost invisible. The tail at the end was long, like the elegant tail of a betta fish. If I pointed my toes, no one would be able to tell I had feet. I got an eerie feeling seeing the mermaid tail on my own body.

  “Okay.” Samantha stepped back. She looked me over with a huge smile. “You. Look. Fabulous! Oh, this is going to be so good. Okay, lie down like you’ve just been washed ashore, and let me arrange your hair.” I lay back so Samantha could fluff and position my blonde waves around my head. She then moved some seaweed around my tail.

  “Perfect!” She stood again, held up her camera, and took a few shots. “Wow. You look so real! This rock makes an incredible backdrop. Okay, look at me. Don’t smile.” Click, click, click. “I said don’t smile.”

  I snorted and burst out laughing.

  “Liv.”

  “I’m sorry!” I pressed my lips together, took a deep breath, and tried to make my expression neutral.

  “Now close your eyes.” Sam continued to click away while I struggled not to smile. I could hear the camera click around me as she moved for different angles.