Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

  “One more time,” her dad said to Aidan.

  Aidan pulled out the plans and held them down against the breeze.

  “Okay. Your access point is here, this doorway under the intact funnel. It appears to be an open passage, nothing you have to work to get through. It leads to stairs that go down to the passenger cabins. There’s one bend in the staircase, after the fourth step. It’s not really wide, but I think you should be able to get through without too much trouble. From there, you have a hall with a series of six doorways. Magwell’s cabin was likely along this hall. If you follow this hall all the way back, you’ll end up in the dining room.”

  “Nice and simple,” her dad said. “But even simple things can look confusing underwater.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “First sign of trouble, you give me the up signal and we come back.”

  “I know.”

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  Clio took the one big step. Being so much heavier, she went down much more quickly. It took her a moment to stabilize herself, then get over to her father. She was light now. Free. Physical reality changed in an instant.

  They slowly descended along the anchor line. The visibility was good, with the sun cutting down through the water and making everything glow. But at about ten feet, it started to get darker. At thirty, they switched on their lights.

  At about forty feet, she saw it clearly—a massive, tilted thing below her. Things that have been underwater a long time cease to look normal. There are no straight edges on the bottom of the sea, just undulating forms with puffs and fronds coming off them. You could get some sense of the boat’s shape, but it was squashed and confused.

  They went down farther, making regular stops to check the monitor that was connected to her tanks, which told her when she had to stop for a few minutes and let her body get used to the pressure.

  At fifty feet, she was looking at a rusted smokestack. They kept going.

  Clio hung, suspended, just a few feet above the deck of the boat and watched her father inflate a lift bag—a kind of underwater balloon. He released it and it gently floated to the surface, trailing a rope that he had already tied to the bow. He was marking their position so that the Sea Butterfly could guard them from any boats in the area. Then he tied the anchor to the wreck, securing everyone above, and attached a strobing light to the line. It winked at her, like the hazard light on a car. It seemed to have a repetitive message for her: Warning, warning, scary, scary, death boat, death boat.

  A strange, to-the-bone fear made her want to shoot right back up to the surface, rip the gear from her body, and cower in her bed, as if the duvet could protect her from the weight of eternity. Her breath was catching in her chest. She had to keep it even. She couldn’t breathe through her nose—she had only the respirator to suck from, and it was up to her to drink in the air evenly.

  She closed her eyes and allowed herself to hang there, standing on nothing. Just floating. She imagined that the cool hiss of air was a drink, a slow, refreshing drink. She was drinking life. One sip of life. Swallow. Relax. Two sips of life…

  Someone was slapping her arm.

  Her father gave her the “are you okay?” underwater signal. She’d forgotten about the hand signals. She indicated that she was.

  They went farther. Now she was at eye level with the top part of the ship, peering in the encrusted windows into the utter blackness. That was where she was going—into rooms that had been the property of the sea for more than a hundred years.

  Her father waved her along, down what had been the deck, to a pitch-black opening. He secured another line just outside this and tested it for strength. That would be their guide if they lost their way. Inside the opening was the staircase.

  In normal life, staircases weren’t something that Clio gave a lot of thought to. This staircase, in addition to being filled with water, was incredibly narrow. And she was not so narrow, with all of these tanks on her body. There was no turning in this staircase, only moving forward. And there was no stepping, because her finned feet were too large for the steps. She had to hover with one hand on each wall, carefully working her way down, turning, and going down farther. It was too much work for her even to be frightened.

  There was more tying of rope and signaling okay once they were in the hallway. At least she assumed it was a hallway. It didn’t look like much of anything, and it felt small. At least here, though, she and her father could face each other. There were, as reported, six doors. Three of them were closed. They started with the three open ones. The rooms felt a bit different. They were scrambled, but she could see that they had been bedrooms. There was a light fixture, a bit of chair, a piece of glass. There was a dark form that had probably been a bed. Someone had stayed here, and this was where they had died.

  She had a huge worry that she would see a spooky doll’s head. She had seen pictures of the Titanic, and there was a spooky doll’s head in one of them. But the worst she saw here was a comb that had been permanently stuck to the floor under some kind of rust formation.

  These three rooms produced nothing. Back in the hall, her father signaled that he was going to work at one of the doors and pointed Clio toward another.

  She looked down into the impenetrable darkness at the end of the hall. In her light, it looked like the view of a snowstorm by car headlights, with mysterious flecks. The water was very full. Every part of it sustained smaller and smaller forms of life.

  She turned back into the first room—the broken, rusty mess that surrounded her. Running her light along the walls, she was just able to make out a small lamp on the wall. It was twisted to the side, but the glass shade was still intact. That was the only familiar object. But where there was a light, there was likely to be a bed. That could have been the lumpy mass next to her. She worked her way around, trying to mentally place objects and make sense of this world.

  Clio didn’t know how she saw it. Something with just a little bit of shine to it. A tiny circle of white. A tiny circle of white that didn’t belong in the composition around her.

  Oh no, her brain said. It’s the eye of a doll.

  Maybe it was her own fearful disgust that made her look, to assure herself that it wasn’t the lone, staring eye of a doll peering out at her from watery darkness. Whatever it was, it was under a pile of half-rotted wood. She picked up the remnants of a metal pole whose original function was a total mystery and poked deep into the pile, dragging at the white spot. A few small fish skittered out, causing her to jolt. But the massive eel or toothy fish she’d been expecting never came. She smacked at the wood a bit, shoving some of it away. It was hard to maneuver the tiny object with the clumsy pole.

  She was obsessed now. Whatever little piece of junk this thing was, she was going to get it. She pulled out her ankle knife and speared at it, knocking it closer. She got closer to the floor and shone her light down.

  It was then that she saw something slightly larger but also white. It was about three inches thick but clearly smooth. It could have been many things. It could have been the collapsed marble top of the table that this appeared to be. But it was under the rotted wood. It couldn’t be the tabletop.

  She picked up the pole again and poked farther, not caring about any potential critters she was going to stir up. She moved the rotting wood away.

  Whatever it was, it was about two feet long. And it was oval.

  The Stone

  The Sea Butterfly barely rocked as they sat in the Mediterranean. The Marguerite stone sat out on the back of the deck in its tub of water. Like a newborn, it had emerged covered in goop. The goop, in this case, was partially alive and couldn’t just be scraped off. It would have to be done carefully, by an expert.

  There had been some screaming, some jumping, and a lot of enthusiastic hugging from Clio’s dad. Clio even managed to stand a Julia-dad kissing moment. She was feeling generous for not wanting to barf. A bottle of wine was found and opened, and everyone
on deck had a glass. Even Clio got a little. Martin was sleeping, so the good news would have to wait. Elsa didn’t emerge. They would have to join in later.

  The cameo sat on the table, its creamy peach alabaster background standing out against the white lacquer. Clio studied it.

  “This,” she said. “This face. It’s Marguerite.”

  Julia came over and had a look for herself.

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “He must have had this with him when he died.”

  “Then it only makes sense that the person who found the stone should get to wear this,” Clio’s father said, coming around. The chain was badly blackened, but it held as Clio’s father slipped it over her head carefully. The cameo landed right in the center of Clio’s chest and stuck to her skin.

  “We have to consider that more might be down there,” he went on. “We need to at least look to see if Magwell brought anything back that he didn’t mention. We need to go back to land first, though. I think Martin should get checked out by a doctor. And we need refills for the tanks.”

  “We’re on our way to Civitavecchia,” Julia confirmed. “We might as well go there.”

  Clio was starting to feel the effects of a sleepless night, on top of her dive. She collapsed in a chair in the living room, but never quite fell asleep. She just let herself be lulled by the movement of the boat as it headed to the shore. She had just nodded off when they stopped, having reached the town.

  “Bad news,” her father said, stepping back in after a consultation on the dock. “This place is full. There’s no slip available for us. We’re going to have to anchor farther out. A few of us can disembark here. We can get a doctor to give Martin a once-over, and we can pick up the things we need.”

  “Come on now, Ben,” Julia said. “We all need to celebrate. We can all ferry in on the raft. Proper dinner. Champagne.”

  Clio looked over in surprise. There was an odd look in Julia’s eyes as she suggested this. Julia wanted them all to go ashore…to have fun. There was definitely something strange about this, but Clio was too tired to think it through.

  “No,” her dad replied, shaking his head. “We can’t leave the boat unattended. It’s a good idea, but someone is going to have to stay behind. Aidan? Do you mind? You could drop us off and take the boat out.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “Okay. Everyone else can get out here. We’ll need Elsa too, to help us find the doctor. I’m going to get the tanks ready. Some guys here will help me move them over to a dive shop.”

  Clio followed her dad out onto the deck.

  “Can I stay?” she asked groggily. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Aidan’s staying,” he said. “You’re coming.”

  “I didn’t really sleep last night. And the dive today was so amazing…I’m crashing. Please.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Clio,” he said. “And I haven’t forgotten last night.”

  “Does that mean you’re still sending me back?”

  “Don’t you want to go back?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Especially since you’re going to need me.”

  “Clio—”

  “Anything I’ve done that you really disagree with—it was only because you wouldn’t tell me what was happening. I only swam because you stranded me. I went into Julia’s room to find out what was going on.”

  He picked up a tank and lifted it off onto the dock. Clio kept at his heels.

  “Okay,” she said. “I need to say this. I’m seventeen. I’m a girl. Which means that yes, Dad, there may be dating involved. You do it. And you know Mom does it. I get to do it too. It’s reality. I grew up. But tonight? I’m really, seriously just tired. Please, can you please trust me enough to be alone with a member of the male species for a few hours? And it’s Aidan. You have to trust him too.”

  He said nothing, but she could see there was some confusion in his mind now.

  “Dad,” she said, “we dove together today. We found it.”

  Usually, repeated attempts to convince her parents of something failed. But this time, the logic was inescapable, the day simply too good. He paused midway to reaching for the next tank.

  “Come on,” he said.

  She followed him back inside, where Julia was leading Elsa down from the Champagne Suite. She didn’t look at Aidan or Clio. Her bearing wasn’t mean. It was embarrassed and sad. Clio wanted to talk to her so much, to explain herself, to make her feel better.

  The keys were passed over to Aidan.

  “Aidan and Clio are saying here,” he said.

  Elsa looked down at the floor. Clio felt a pang in her chest. There was so much to be repaired between them.

  “Aidan,” Julia said as she prepared to go, “if you’re going to be here, please write up a report of what happened today. We’ll want a record. Have something ready by the time I get back. And maybe prep some of the video footage.”

  “It’s like it would kill her to give me a night off,” Aidan said after the boat had pushed off, “even after we find the stone.”

  “How come you get to drive the boat?” she asked.

  “Because they showed me how to do it,” he said.

  “Well, then you can show me,” she said.

  Up in the wheelhouse, the turn of a single key brought to life all of the little panels. Clio wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention as Aidan explained what they did, and she could tell his mind wasn’t exactly on the task. He was comfortable around machines and didn’t have to think very hard when discussing them. There wasn’t very far to go, but he let her take the steering wheel for a few seconds. It felt like a steering wheel.

  They reached a spot not too far out, yet away from any traffic that might be going along the shore. Aidan flipped some switches to release the anchor, then killed the engine, and the lights on the panels went off. The wheelhouse was silent.

  “This isn’t right,” he said, looking out of the tinted glass.

  “What isn’t right?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s just something really eerie about getting what you’re looking for.”

  “Eerie as in bad?” she asked.

  “Just, you don’t expect it,” he said.

  He drummed his finger on the panel, examined his shoes, then looked at Clio.

  “I thought you were tired,” he said.

  “I woke up.”

  Neither of them moved. They stood in the middle of the wheelhouse, looking at the panel. Something had to happen. Clio could feel the space between them. It was practically throbbing. One of them would have to do something. Even a large pile of dynamite needs a little spark to set it off.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving.”

  They left the wheelhouse and went back down and inside, leaving the glass doors open to catch the evening breeze. In the galley, they gathered up whatever leftovers they could find. Aidan’s plate ended up being entirely filled with meat, while Clio’s held a strange arrangement of small items—tiny marinated mushrooms, squares of cheese, ends of bread loaves, bunches of salad.

  “Since you’re here,” he said, “you can help me work. Come on.”

  It was almost like a game they had silently agreed to play: a test to see how long they could draw this out. A few minutes later, they had settled themselves in the small room downstairs, each on one side of the table.

  “You were down there,” he said, pushing a pad in her direction. “Give us an account. I’m going to put together some of this data.”

  He flipped open his computer and set to work.

  “So,” Aidan said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “What happens next with you?”

  “Maybe I stay a few days. Maybe go back home. Maybe we all go back to England.”

  “You have a lot of maybes in there,” he said.

  “I guess life is full of maybes.”

  Clio looked at her com. She switched it off very carefully and quietly pushed it across the
table.

  “What was that for?” Aidan said, his green eyes flashing over the top of the screen.

  “Just moving it out of the way.”

  He looked over at his own com out of the corner of his eye, then continued typing. He rocked forward on his chair, and his knees bumped against hers under the table, quickly, once. And then again. Clio drilled her eyes into the pad of paper, willed her hand to stay steady. She leaned in slightly and kneed him back.

  He never even blinked. She heard him typing away. But his foot reached out and hooked her ankle, drawing her slightly closer.

  One of them would have to look up. One of them had to act. Slowly—very, very slowly—she unwound her foot.

  “Do you want to see what I wrote?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  She turned the pad upside down to face him but didn’t move it any closer. He lowered the screen of his laptop.

  “What did you promise your dad?” he asked, smiling slowly.

  “That I would lock my bedroom door,” she said. “And that I wouldn’t pull any funny stunts.”

  “Define ‘funny stunts’,” he said.

  It was unbearable now. She leaned into the table just a bit. He pushed his laptop over. Then he half stood, leaning in. He draped himself over the table, leaning on his elbows. And then he did something that Clio couldn’t quite recover from—he reached out and, just with the tips of his fingers, touched her right under the chin.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s really hard to say the words ‘you’re pretty’ without sounding like a mental patient. But you’re pretty.”

  He brought his face closer, just touching his lips against hers but not pressing. Just touching. And then…

  And then something happened that wasn’t quite what Clio was expecting.

  The boat lurched to life and started moving backward at a high rate of speed, throwing them both backward. Clio grabbed the edge of the table, but Aidan couldn’t secure a hold on anything fast enough. He was tossed back into his chair and then back against the wall, where his head landed solidly with a thud.