Aurora and the Popcorn Dolphin

by Sarah Webb

  “I would have made it back to Dolphin Harbour, safe and sound.”

  “Without a paddle?”

  “Click would have towed me.”

  Dad gives a dry laugh. “Get a grip, Rory. You’re not living in a storybook. You would have died of hypothermia or been smashed against the cliffs.”

  I stare at him, shocked. It’s not like Dad to be so graphic, so brutal. I must really have worried him. “But it didn’t happen, you found me,” I say. “I’m fine.” Then I don’t know if it’s tiredness, or stress, or panic about what might have happened, but I suddenly lose my temper. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. I’m sorry I’m such a bad daughter. I’m just sorry, OK?”

  “You’re not a bad daughter, Rory,” Dad says. “Or a mess. You just do incredibly stupid things sometimes and there have to be consequences. I won’t let you endanger your life.”

  “What life?” I say. “Right now, I don’t have a life. Not one I want, anyway. Not without Mom.”

  Dad’s eyes soften. “Don’t say things like that, Rory, please. I know you’re finding things hard, but it will get easier.”

  “People keep saying that, but it’s not true. Every day I wake up and it’s just one more day without Mom.”

  Dad seems lost for words. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again.

  “I have to go down to the cafe and apologize to Cal and the others,” I say, filling the long silence. “Mattie says they’re all down there. Not that they’ll want to see me. I’ve probably ruined their summer. But I want to get it over with. And you’re not coming with me. That would be way too embarrassing.”

  Dad nods. “It’s a good idea to say sorry, Rory. How long are you going to be?” He looks at his dive watch.

  “Are you timing me?”

  “Yes. It’s almost seven. If you’re not back by seven thirty, I’m coming down to find you, friends or no friends. You need to go to bed and rest. We’ve both had a difficult day.”

  “Fine. I won’t be long.” I don’t bother correcting his use of the word “friends”. There’s no way they’ll want anything to do with me, not now.

  “And I really am sorry,” I add.

  Dad sighs deeply. “I know, kiddo. I know.”

  As soon as I walk in the door of the cafe, I instantly regret my apology plan. Cal, Mollie, Sunny and Landy are all sitting together in front of the window. Cal looks angry. He’s saying something to the rest of the gang and I’m sure it’s about me. Then Mollie spots me and looks a little panicked. She talks to Cal, who turns round and gives me a dark scowl. “You’re not welcome here,” he says.

  Mollie gasps. “Cal!”

  “What?” he says. “She’s wrecked my whole summer.”

  “It’s not her fault,” Sunny says.

  Cal isn’t budging. “Yes, it is. If she hadn’t taken that kayak and nearly got herself killed, I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my summer working with Mum. For free − she’s not even paying me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, really embarrassed. He’s being so loud everyone in the cafe has turned round to see what’s going on.

  He snorts. “Yeah, right. And saying all that stuff about Mum’s work, unbelievable. She was so excited about meeting you and your dad. Talk about ungrateful. And you’ve got the others in trouble too.”

  “Really?” I ask, horrified.

  “Yeah,” Landy says glumly. “I haven’t told my parents yet, but I’ll probably be grounded when they find out.”

  “They’ve probably already found out,” Mollie says. “Nothing stays secret on Little Bird. Nan’s going to kill me. And your parents will be mad too, won’t they, Sunny?”

  Sunny gives a little shrug and I know she’s trying not to make me feel worse.

  “Happy now, Rory?” Cal asks. “You’ve ruined everyone’s summer. Come on, guys, let’s go. I don’t want to hang around if she’s here.” He jumps to his feet and walks towards the door.

  Mollie gives me a shrug and says, “Sorry, Rory. He’s a bit upset. We’d better keep him company. I’m sure he’ll calm down soon.”

  I nod. “That’s OK. See you. And I really am sorry.”

  Sunny gives me a gentle smile. “Take care, Rory,” she whispers before following the others out of the door.

  I’m left there standing on my own, feeling like a complete loser.

  “What can I get you?” someone asks. It’s Alanna.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I’m just going.”

  “You sure?” Her eyes are warm and kind. “I could use some help closing up. I can pay you in chocolate brownies.”

  I’m in no rush to get back to Mattie’s house, where I’m everyone’s least-favourite person, and I have half an hour until Dad enacts his one-man search party, so I shrug. “All right,” I say. “What do I have to do?”

  After telling the remaining customers that she’s about to close, Alanna shows me how to clear the tables, wipe them down and lift the chairs off the floor so we can sweep up. After that, we stretch Saran Wrap (she calls it “clingfilm”) over the bowls of salad and put them in the fridge. She cleans all the kitchen counters with bleach while I box up the biscuits and cakes.

  “Don’t forget to put aside some of those brownies for yourself,” she reminds me.

  “You’re a good worker,” she says when we’ve finished. We flop down on the sofa in front of the window, where Cal and his friends had been sitting. “You must have been a real help to your mum,” she adds.

  I give a laugh. “Mom was so messy. She hated cleaning and vacuuming. Said it gave her hives. We have a housekeeper, Magda. She cooks, too. We’re pretty lucky. She’s kind of like part of the family.” I wonder what Magda’s up to back home. I miss her funny expressions and her strong hugs. I could do with one of her bone-crunching hugs right now.

  Alanna smiles. “You sure are lucky. I’m not a big fan of cleaning either. But when you run a cafe, it has to be done. My mum always said that a tidy house was the sign of a wasted life.”

  “My mom would have agreed with that! What happened to your mom?” I ask. “You said she died.”

  Alanna stares out of the window, her eyes focusing on the water. After a moment, she says in a low voice, “She was driving to Limerick with Dad to collect me from my auntie’s house. It was icy and a truck skidded into them. They were both killed instantly.”

  I wince. Poor Alanna. “That’s awful,” I say. “Who looked after you?”

  She’s still gazing out of the window. “I lived with my aunt and uncle for a while. But I missed the island, so I moved here and stayed with my nan.” She looks at me. “This is her place, in fact. Nan left it to me when she passed away. There’s an apartment above us.”

  “You live here on your own?”

  “Yes. But I’m never lonely. There’s always someone popping in to say hi. And my aunt and uncle and my cousins come every year for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It’s a family tradition. Mum was big into family traditions and festivals. She’d celebrate anything.”

  “Even American holidays like Fourth of July?”

  She smiles. “Yes. Any excuse for a get-together or a party.”

  “Sounds like my mom,” I tell her. “She loved Fourth of July. And Thanksgiving. And St Patrick’s Day, of course, being Irish. St Patrick’s Day is big in New York.”

  “Tell me more about her,” Alanna says. “What was she like?”

  Mom’s face appears in front of my eyes. She’s laughing, her head thrown back, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “She looked a lot like Mattie,” I say. “Curly blonde hair and dark brown eyes. She was funny. She used to make me laugh all the time. She liked telling me stories about the island and what she and Mattie used to get up to. And about Click. She played with him when she was a girl. She loved him so much.”

  Alanna looks amazed. “The same Click? Can dolphins really live that long?”

  “Yes, they can live up to forty in the wild.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.
”

  “Mom became a marine biologist because of Click,” I add. “He’s pretty special.”

  “Sounds like your mum was a pretty special too,” she says.

  “She was.” It’s the first time I’ve talked at any length about Mom since she died and I’m starting to get a little upset now, but there’s one more thing I want to tell Alanna. She shared her story with me, so I want to share mine with her, all of it. I take a deep breath, then say, “She slipped on ice on the way back from the store and hit her head. She died before the ambulance arrived. Dad was with her, but I wish I had been too. Maybe if I’d been carrying the groceries instead of Mom… Or, at least, I’d have got to say goodbye.” I’m crying now, so I have to stop talking.

  “Oh, pet,” Alanna says. “It’s not your fault. It was just a terrible, horrible accident. If you have to blame something, blame the ice. It took my parents too. Stupid frozen water.”

  It’s such a funny thing to say that I give a laugh and rub the tears from the corners of my eyes. Alanna puts her hand over mine, and we stay there for a while, staring out at the harbour. Sitting with Alanna makes me a little calmer until I remember about Cal and the others. Maybe Alanna will understand. I need to talk to someone about it or I think I’ll crack up. Before I chicken out, I say, “Alanna, I’ve made a mess of everything.”

  She looks at me curiously. “What do you mean, pet?”

  I tell her about the rapids and how I paddled off on my own. Then I explain what I’d said about Mattie’s sea safari to Cal. “Cal doesn’t want anything to do with me now,” I say. “Neither do the others. I don’t blame them. I’ve ruined their whole summer.”

  For a long while, Alanna is quiet. Finally she says, “Life can be tough, Rory. And we all make mistakes. Give Cal some time. He’ll come around, they all will. Maybe you just need to talk to them, open up. Tell them what you told me about your mum when you feel able. In the meantime, I’m always here if you need a friend.”

  “Thanks, Alanna,” I say. It’s nice to know I have one friend on the island. Two, in fact: Alanna and Click.

  It’s the next day and we’ve taken the RIB down to the harbour. I’m now sitting in it in my dive suit, watching Dad check the equipment for the hundredth time. First, he tests the air cylinders – we each wear one, a big yellow metal tank that’s strapped to our backs. Mom always said that with the yellow cylinders and our black diving wetsuits, we look like underwater bumble-bees.

  Next, Dad checks each regulator – the mouthpiece and tube attached to the cylinder. You breathe air in through the mouthpiece when you’re underwater. There’s a depth gauge on the regulator too, and also a gauge showing you how much air you have left in the cylinders.

  Then Dad studies the masks, the buoyancy-control devices − or BCDs − which are basically vests that hold our tanks and also help us to control our depth underwater. Finally he presses some numbers into the dive computer on his wrist, which looks like a large watch.

  “All set,” he tells me. “And before you say it, yes, it did have to take so long. Safety is important, you know that. I’ve seen too many dive accidents to take short cuts.”

  “That’s OK, I don’t exactly have anywhere else to be.” I sigh deeply.

  “Less of the attitude, Rory. Let’s try and enjoy ourselves today, yeah? Did you remember to pick up the food?”

  “Oops.”

  Dad gives me a look.

  “I’ll go over for it now,” I say. Dad asked Alanna to make us a picnic lunch. I was supposed to collect it earlier, while Dad was buying water in the shop.

  “Did someone say food?” I look towards the harbour wall, where the voice came from, and there’s Alanna, a large cool box in her hand.

  “Careful, it’s heavy,” she says. The RIB is low in the water, so she has to bend down to pass the box to me.

  “What’s in there?” I ask, almost stumbling under the weight.

  “Cake, sandwiches, fruit, lemonade, cookies, chocolate brownies. And a few other treats.”

  “Perfect,” Dad says. “Is the cafe busy today, Alanna? Hope this wasn’t too much trouble for you.”

  “No trouble at all,” she says. “Mondays are usually quiet enough. I’ve taken the day off, in fact. Mollie and her nan are holding the fort. I need to collect some seaweed.”

  “For cooking?” I ask.

  “You can cook with seaweed, all right, but, no, this time it’s to make a natural face mask. Kelp and bladderwrack are great for detoxing the skin.”

  I look at her blankly.

  She smiles and explains. “Kelp is a red seaweed and bladderwrack is brown, with air bubbles in it that keep it afloat,” she says. “They’re both full of fantastic oils and minerals that are great for the skin.”

  “But your skin’s amazing already,” I say.

  “Thanks. It’s not for me. I make herbal remedies for people and sell them over the Internet. Anyway, where are you guys off to? Looks like a pretty serious trip,” she says, taking in Dad’s underwater sound-recording equipment.

  “I’m helping research a paper for a colleague at the moment,” Dad says. “Measuring the echolocation range of bottlenose dolphins in the wild. So we thought we’d head out to Seafire Bay, see if we can’t find ourselves a dolphin pod. Mattie says she spotted one out there yesterday. Or maybe we’ll meet that Click fellow who helped us find you, Rory. Let’s see who shows us their melon first.”

  Alanna looks at him curiously.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly. “It’s a geeky in-joke. Dolphins have this special lump of tissue in their forehead called a melon. It controls their echolocation clicks.”

  “Echolocation, that’s using sound to locate stuff, right?” Alanna says.

  Dad nods eagerly. “A dolphin emits a click and it bounces off the object and then back to the dolphin, telling them if there are fish, or other dolphins, near by. Just like bats, only hundreds of times more complex. Did you know beluga whales can change the shape of their melon at will?”

  Alanna smiles. “No, I didn’t. Sounds fascinating.”

  “Oh, it is,” Dad says, gabbling a little. He loves talking about his work. I’d find it annoying if I wasn’t such a dolphin freak myself. “We,” he continues, “marine biologists, that is, think cetaceans − sorry, sea mammals, like whales and dolphins – use the echolocation clicks to create images in their brains. Like the kind of pictures parents get of babies before they are born.”

  “The black-and-white pictures?” Alanna asks.

  “Exactly,” Dad says.

  “Wow,” Alanna says.

  “They’re amazing creatures,” he says. “Tell me if I’m overloading you with information, Alanna. Dolphins are kind of our thing in this family, aren’t they, Rory?”

  I nod. That’s an understatement. “Dolphins were Mom’s life,” I say to Alanna. “She was making this amazing dolphin dictionary. It meant everything to her.” I’m hoping Dad is listening carefully. Maybe he’ll change his mind about not working on it today. “Mom was determined to prove how smart dolphins really are, and how they have words for things just like we do. Dolphins’ brains are actually way bigger than human ones.”

  “Rory’s right,” Dad says. “Margo was passionate about her research.”

  “That’s why we have to finish it and publish it as soon as possible,” I say.

  “And we will,” Dad says.

  “Can’t we try the D-com out today then? I’d love to see how it works underwater,” I say.

  “D-com?” asks Alanna.

  “It’s a computer Dad has been developing.” I explain how Dad first made it to record dolphin sounds, but now we think we could play whistles back to them underwater. “It would be almost like we were talking to them.” I turn back to Dad. “I know you haven’t got it working yet, but don’t give up! You have to keep trying. Maybe the computer is changing the dolphins’ whistle frequency or something. That’s why they don’t understand the sounds.”

  Dad nods at me. “Sm
art, Rory. I think you may be right.”

  “Is the frequency really important then?” Alanna asks, looking a little confused.

  “Sorry, Alanna,” Dad says, “this really is nerdy science talk now. I hope we’re not boring you. Want to fill her in, Rory, or will I?”

  “You’re the professor,” I say.

  “OK then, class,” he begins with a smile. “Dolphins use different frequencies − the number of times that a sound is produced in a second – for different purposes. Lower frequencies – fewer repetitions per second – for social communication, and the higher-pitched noises for echolocation, so for finding fish and telling what shape or size a predator is.”

  “Their sonar,” Alanna says. “Which comes from their melon, right?”

  “You got it,” Dad says. “And as Rory says, the D-Com may be distorting the frequency slightly, so the dolphins can’t interpret the whistle we’re playing them.”

  “Almost like we’re not speaking the same language or something,” I add. I think about this for a second. “Maybe you need to find a really smart dolphin who can work it out,” I suggest.

  “The Einstein of dolphins,” Alanna says.

  “Exactly!” I say.

  Dad’s quiet for a moment. “It’s possible,” he says finally. “The right dolphin might be able to translate the noise regardless of the frequency.”

  “You know what Einstein once said,” Alanna says thoughtfully. “‘Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.’ That was one of my dad’s favourite quotes. He was a big Einstein fan. Maybe you need to make more mistakes, Aidan, not less. Maybe you need to try again. And keep trying until you prove your wife’s theory.”

  Dad swallows. “That’s a lot of maybes, Alanna.” He blows out his breath in a rush, lifting his hair, and then stares out to sea. “Hey,” he says, pointing at a dark shape on the horizon. “I think we’ve found our first bottlenose of the day. Hopefully he’ll follow us out to the bay so we can dive with him.”