“There’s nothing to say,” I tell her again. “Honestly. She didn’t want to say it. She had to. It’s true.”
“Honey, no.”
“Mom, I didn’t even make it past barre. They don’t want me. No one does. It’s true.”
“It isn’t. Stop saying that.”
I blink through stinging tears. “I’m scared,” I whisper.
“Of what?”
“Everything. What have I done?”
I lay my head in her lap. She pulls the pins from my bun. Carefully, one by one, because they’re in so tight. She pulls my ponytail loose, unwinds the elastic, pulls off the hairnet. She massages my head and combs her fingers through the long, straight strands, and I soak her pajamas with my tears. I can’t breathe; I can’t stop crying. Until finally I do. She rubs my head, and after a long while, I stop choke-breathing and just breathe. I close my swollen eyes.
“I knew practically from birth,” Mom says, “that I would be a mermaid when I grew up. I had to face facts, but marine biology is at least in the mermaid ballpark. Grandma could barely yank me out of the tide pools. So when I met Dad at State, I thought, Oh my God, my soul mate! Because he knew he was, too. He was obsessed with whale migration.”
“Who was?” I ask.
“Dad.”
“My dad?”
“Your father.”
“He was not.”
“He was. He wanted to work at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and his apartment was wallpapered with posters of sea stars and elephant seals and every known species of whale. I mean, he…Oh, I was smitten.”
I cannot imagine Dad obsessed with anything not involving dough and an oven.
“Don’t make stuff up.”
“I’m not. But our sophomore year, of course, I got knocked up with your brother. Grandma and Grandpa let Dad move in with us. We lived in my bedroom…and he took extended leave from school to work so I could finish. He had to find a night job so I could be at school during the day once Luke was born. That meant janitorial work, or baking.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“I wish you could have known him then. I’m telling you—the ocean was his life. It was. But after, like, two weeks at the bakery, he had forgotten about whales.”
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You don’t need to make stuff up.”
“I’m not! This is the absolute God’s honest.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Ask him! Wake him up right now! I’m just saying, you know…you never know. You just don’t.”
“I do.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“No. It’s not the same. I’m not anything anymore. I’m nothing.”
She pulls my head to her shoulder, finds the remote, and turns her documentary back on.
A calm, meditative guy is talking about ice worms. In Antarctica. The soundtrack of my toddler and elementary-school years.
The continent is plunged into six months of darkness, silence, and temperatures consistently near a hundred degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
Mom is putting the Antarctic marine life unit she was teaching when I was little back in rotation. The documentaries we watched again and again when I refused to sleep, the stories of our Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen racing to the South Pole that lulled me finally to dream night after night of their ships moored in ice, studying penguins, eating their dogs.
As I am in Mom’s arms, curled on her lap, my heart unclenches. I sit up. She makes room for me beside her, covers me with her blanket, and we watch the rest of this film and then one more. And another.
Aut moriere percipietis conantur.
The answer comes as abruptly as the end of the only life I’ve ever known. And the answer is a relief.
I need time to stop. I need to take a breath and be still and think, just let me think and figure out what is going on. Let me navigate this sea change. I need to be alone in the dark and quiet. I need to be frozen.
- - -
I don’t go to ballet Monday. Monday is the Golden Gate Bridge’s eighty-second birthday, my seventeenth. This magical January 5, which, I have learned from the books about Scott I’ve borrowed from Mom, is also the date in 1922 when Ernest Shackleton died. Who tried, and failed, to reach the South Pole first. Or at all. But while he and his crew waited for the ice to swallow the Endurance, he got some major thinking done. And figured some shit out.
Mom has filled Dad in on my “situation.” Luke, too, I suspect, because everyone’s being extra super nice to me, and to be honest, they’re all generally really nice already, so it’s pretty obvious and kind of suffocating even though I appreciate that they want to help and that they feel bad—so I plan an escape.
“On your birthday? Let me call her. This is ridiculous!” Mom says.
“No, please,” I beg. “I’ll be back soon. She just needs me for a couple of hours. Last-minute. I want to help her.”
Mom gives in and lets me go to Hannah’s, who does not need me to babysit. And who will be surprised to see me, but desperation calls. I promise Mom I’ll be back in time for my birthday dinner, and I race to Hannah’s and knock. Willa is thrilled.
“Are you staying? Are you going to ballet today? Can I come with you?” she yelps, jumping and yipping around my legs.
We bribe her with television and a Popsicle, and I get Hannah alone to ask, “Who do you know in Antarctica. At McMurdo. Right now?”
She blinks.
“Honey,” she says, her hands on my gaunt cheeks. “How are you? You feeling any better?”
The whole world knows. Thanks, Mom.
“No,” I sigh. “I’m not. I need help.”
“Of course. Anything. What can I do?”
“Antarctica. Who do you know?”
“What do you mean? Like, people? Working there?”
“Yes.”
She frowns. “I don’t understand.”
I heft my backpack to the kitchen counter and pull out Mom’s NSF books, the books I’ve borrowed from the library, and piles of printed Wiki pages. “What do you know about the NSF Senior Winter Over Grant? Do you know anyone who can get me in?”
Hannah sits at the table. “Harp,” she says, “you can’t go to Antarctica. You don’t just hop on a plane—that senior program only offers two spots and they’ve been filled for months. Plus, it’s for students going into college for science and research majors, and the thing is, Winter Over is…harsh. It’s intense. I know you’ve had a horrible time lately, but I’m pretty sure Antarctica’s not your answer. Have your parents talked to Simone?”
I’m about to cry. Again. I feel it in my chest, crawling up to squeeze my throat, and I fight it back, like I’ve fought the nausea that keeps creeping in when I think about Kate, and Simone, and the studio I miss so much it physically aches, about the kids I’m ditching, who now must have class with impatient, scary Simone.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say for the millionth time, straining not to break, “and it would be incredibly humiliating to have my parents go talk to her about…what? Tell her to make my genetics different? Tell her to change my anatomy and toss me in a time machine so I can go back and relearn everything from the past fourteen years except this time do it the correct way with the right body? Hannah, I need help. Please.”
She sighs. “Harp, people totally overqualified for the jobs there apply year after year and never get hired. It’s a thing; it’s on people’s stupid bucket lists.”
“I know.”
She looks me up and down. My hair in a sloppy ponytail, unwashed for days, skanky old hair gel residue still left from my San Francisco audition bun. The deep shadows and creases beneath my tired eyes, matching the never-thinner rest of me. I can’t eat. My stomach burns. I can’t sleep.
“All right,” she says. “There may be someone—I don’t know for sure, but—”
“Who?”
“I’m not promising anything. Okay?”
“Her. I’ll try. I’ll push the ‘Scott’ thing, see if that works.”
I throw my arms around her, nearly knocking her off her chair. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
“I’m not promising.”
“For trying. Thank you for even trying.”
“Your mom will hate me forever.”
“She loves you. She’s never hated anyone, ever. I’d figure out a way with or without you. This isn’t your fault.”
She shakes her head. Encircles my wrist with her thumb and pinkie. “I’ll tell you one thing right now: Winter Over requirements are unforgiving. No matter who you are or who I know or who they know, no one is setting foot on that ice in poor health. Physical or mental. Gets Shining-esque down there pretty quick. Isolation. Freezing. The darkness.”
“Sounds like heaven.” I hug her hard. “Thank you.”
There comes a special time in a young lady’s life when, constant darkness messing the hell out of her circadian rhythms, she stumbles at five in the morning straight from the shower, wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt, and no makeup, all T3-screwy and blinking in the fluorescent lights of an Antarctic science station dining hall to find an Irish guy in an ill-fitting tuxedo kneeling before the oatmeal pot, offering her a bouquet of dusty silk flowers, and his hand.
The other kitchen guys are crowding around near the ovens to watch.
“Harper Scott.” Aiden’s voice reverberates around the hall, leaning heavily on his already distinct Irish accent for effect. “Most prized maiden in all the village, would you do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to the festivities this midwinter eve?”
I nearly drop the three paper cups of hot tea I’m juggling.
Scientists and mechanics and every random person getting breakfast at this ungodly hour stop to watch and whisper. Every single pair of eyes, Aiden’s included, is on me and waiting for what I’ll say.
Through a frozen smile, I whisper, “What festivities are we talking about?”
“The dance!” Aiden whispers back. “Midwinter Formal. You know this, come on!”
“When?”
“Harper! Tonight!”
My entire life spent dancing, and I’ve never been to a dance. No one has ever asked me, but I couldn’t have gone if I wanted to, always rehearsal or performance.
I turn to look at everyone watching, smiling expectantly at this ridiculous situation—it’s laundry day, and I’m wearing my dumbest work clothes while the good ones are in line for the washer. This sucks so much.
But look at him—all dark hair and green eyes and smiling….
“Where did you find a tuxedo?” I ask. “Did you bring that with you on the plane?”
“Hey!” a familiar voice calls from the assembled audience. “We’ve got places to be. Get on with it!”
And then someone else yells, “Shut up, Ben!”
Oh, good. Beard.
Aiden smiles hopefully up at me. “The floor is killing my knee, Scott,” he says. “Help me out here….”
“Okay, jeez, give me a second….” I can’t tell if I’m mortified or flattered. But I set the hot cups on the nearest table and do my best to announce, loud, “Uh, kind sir, I…shall…”
“You can just say yes,” he whispers. “That’ll do just as well.”
“Oh, okay—Yes! Let us prithee…”
“Take the flowers!”
I do, and he stands and raises one arm triumphantly, using the other to pull me into a close embrace while the crowd cheers. “You’re the loveliest, most awkward girl I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “I think I need to marry you.”
Again, the rush of Is this humiliating, or am I swooning? It’s a joke—he’s tossed it off lightly—but his arm around me, his focused attention on me, he’s so…
Charming, Shackleton sighs in my mind. Charm and sincerity—do not confuse the two.
Okay, but this is the first time a boy has asked me, ever, to go somewhere with him—
Not true. Owen did. He did, and we spent a whole day together. He asked me. Just not like this.
I slip from Aiden’s embrace as the crowd rushes in to congratulate him, shake his hand, and I gather the tea cups and cinnamon rolls for Charlotte and Vivian. At the door I catch Aiden’s eye and wave. “Eight o’clock,” he calls above the din. “Be ready!”
- - -
In the lab, Charlotte is half asleep, forehead on her arms, beside the lab table sink. Vivian’s sitting there, watching her.
“Hey,” Charlotte says, pulling her head up. “Is it just me, or is your sleep all screwed up?”
“I’m going to the dance,” I blurt, still standing in the doorway with tea cups and cinnamon rolls clutched in my arms. “Aiden asked me to go, and I said yes and so we’re going. Together. To the dance.” I sound like I’m twelve.
Vivian takes the bag and a cup from my hand. “This is lukewarm,” she sighs, and fires up a Bunsen burner.
“Harp, really?” Charlotte says, brightening. “Hooray! I’ve already got a roped-off nonbooze section set up for you three!”
“What three?” Vivian says. “I’ll be in bed, asleep.”
“Vivian, you’re going. Don’t be ridiculous.” Charlotte sighs. “Harp, when did he ask you?”
“Just now! Right now, in the dining hall!”
“Oh…” Charlotte smiles dreamily. “That’s so romantic!”
“Is that what you were wearing?” Vivian says.
“I know,” I groan, finally surrendering the tea and slumping on a lab stool. “And in front of about a million people. Beard was there. It was…”
“Humiliating?” Vivian chirps, and pops her earbuds in for the day.
“Romantic,” Charlotte repeats, shooting Vivian a look. “You look beautiful just like every day. He’s lucky to have you for his date.”
Date. I think of Owen, of sitting beside him at the ocean, and my stomach burns. All the kissing and making out I’ve been up to with Aiden, but it’s date that plummets me into guilt—what is wrong with me?
“Do we have to be roped off? Can’t I just sit near you?” I whine, already freaking out.
“Oh God, I’m not going,” Charlotte says, tearing into the center of a roll.
“You have to! You said we have to!”
“Babe, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m exhausted.”
“So am I!”
“Yeah, but I’m…I can’t fit into any of my clothes other than sweatpants, I’m cranky and preoccupied…I can’t do it. I’m going to wash my hair and crawl into bed.”
“Wash your hair? Like that’s an all-night event?”
“It is!” she cries piteously, and drops into her recliner. “I’m black and so is my hair, it’s a whole big production!”
“I cannot believe you,” I say. “What am I supposed to do at this thing?”
“You’re supposed to hang out with your date!”
“And what the—what am I supposed to wear?”
“We’ll find something you can wear. Get a hold of yourself. Did you freak out like this before your school dances, too?”
I shake my head.
“Well, it’s no different from those, just—fewer teenagers and no one’s spiking the punch, because they’ll be drunk already. We’ll go to costume storage at lunch and find something that fits you.”
“Costume storage?”
“For when people do plays,” Charlotte says. “The maintenance crew put on a horrible production of Pippin last year, but the costumes were pretty great, so don’t worry.”
The tuxedo.
“Pippin? What am I going to wear, circus pants?”
“What are circus pants?”
“I don’t know! But I don’t think this is a good idea. At all.”
“Harp,” she says, “calm down. Go. Have fun. For me?” She glances over at Vivian. “And work on her, will you? See if you can get her to at least go to the dinner part?”
“There’s a dinner, too?” My head drops to the lab table.
- - -
“Maidin mhaith, Antarctica! Aiden Pot-o-Gold-Riverdance-Soda-Bread Kelly with you on June twentieth, this glorious midwinter eve! From this day forward, we’re nearer every moment to seeing our dear old sun rise above the Transantarctic Mountains, but until then, here’s hoping you’re all preemptively hydrating and got your fancy pants pressed for an evening of drunken abandon, fine cuisine, disco dancing, and the treasured Midwinter Plunge. I’m off to pick up my own lovely lady for the festivities, so I’ll see you all. Welcome to midwinter!”
Aiden’s coming to get me at eight. Which gives me two hours to persuade Vivian to put on a dress and join us—or to nap.
Or I can just sit in front of this computer while Vivian naps and dare myself not to open any more Owen mail.
I’ve gotten off my ass and read and answered all of Mom’s, and Dad’s, and Mom and Dad’s. Which were nearly all variations on the theme of: How much they love me. And miss me. And hope I am okay. They do not bring up ballet. Or Simone. They do not ask if I am dancing, and it makes me love them more. And so every week I try to be an adult about it, and I write them to tell them, truthfully, how much I love them back. And miss them, too. And that I hope they are okay, and then untruthfully I say I am okay, and then I talk about working with Charlotte and how super fun my co–grant student Vivian is.
I resist Owen by opening the most recent of Luke’s.
>>>Harp,
Mom says you’re getting all this mail but that if you don’t answer it’s not a thing. You’re just there to do stuff like not answer mail. And I’ve got a whole long list of things I’m not supposed to write about. Which I’m sure is obvious. But maybe not.
You seriously can’t call? Because this feels like when a person’s in a coma and you have to sit there and talk to them like they’re awake so they know they’re alive. Makes me kind of worry you’re not okay. But maybe you are. I hope you are.
Also they say telling you about my stuff is good, so here’s some stuff: LucasArts is AMAZING. I’m in a cube with three other guys, I’m finding a crap ton of bugs in every level of this game I’m testing. Last week I surpassed the previous record for number of legit bugs found. They got me a cake with a Stormtrooper on it. From Dad, haha! For a second, I was like, “Noooo…worlds colliding!” But it was good, so I ate some and just went back to work, like a BALLER.
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