How to Make Friends with the Sea

by Tanya Guerrero

  I opened my eyes.

  Munch. Crunch. Munch. Crunch.

  Chiqui was there with me. She was at the foot of my bed with a pack of cookies in her grasp. There were crumbs everywhere. I gasped. It was like stumbling across a bloody crime scene. That’s what it seemed like in my head, in my heart, in my stomach. I didn’t scream. I wanted to. But I didn’t.

  The bed bounced as Chiqui crept closer, her bare feet smashing cookie crumbs along the way. I winced. She bit into another cookie and then handed me the rest of it. “Pabo,” she mumbled. For a moment I thought I saw the beginnings of an impish smile. But then she covered her mouth with her hand.

  The cookie dangled under my chin. I thought about her saliva and the germs under her nails. The cookie. That particular cookie was the last thing I wanted to eat.

  My stomach grumbled.

  I was hungry.

  She mumbled again, “Pabo,” nudging the cookie toward me.

  I took it. I didn’t pause. I didn’t think. I just stuffed it into my mouth and swallowed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Mamá kept on yawning. There were shadows under her eyes and her hair was flat on one side and frizzy on the other. Her silk robe swayed as she poured herself a cup of strong Spanish coffee.

  “Cereal?” She held up the box of Cheerios.

  I didn’t really feel like eating cereal but I shrugged and took the box anyway. Maybe I could escape into a bowl of perfect little circles. Chiqui stared while I poured the cereal, pointing her finger like she wanted to spear the falling Os. I grabbed a bowl and gave her some, and then she proceeded to do just that.

  “So…,” Mamá said.

  I held my spoon in midair. I didn’t like it when her sentences started with “So.”

  “Miguel and I were talking last night. About summer break—”

  “What about summer break?” I said, putting my spoon down.

  She sipped her coffee, avoiding my eyes. “It’s just that you … I mean, we. We’re always cooped up in this house. We haven’t even gone anywhere since we’ve been here. And now that Chiqui’s with us, it might be nice to take a trip so we can all get to know one another. Have some fresh air and do something fun together.”

  Fresh air? Fun? What was she talking about? She knew I hated traveling—road trips, airports, airplanes, buses, trains. She knew I wasn’t exactly the let’s-go-on-an-adventure kind of guy.

  But what she didn’t know … what I’d been keeping from her … was how triggered I really was by travel. Just the idea of it made my skin crawl. There were endless amounts of chaos, dirt, and germs involved. And the sleeping somewhere new was the worst. What if the sheets were scratchy? What if there were bedbugs? What if the bathroom wasn’t clean enough?

  “Is it really necessary?” I finally replied.

  “No. It’s not really necessary. But I think it would be nice. Miguel’s friend is hosting a surf competition in Baler over the weekend. It might be exciting. Don’t you think?”

  Surfing. That meant the sea would be right there, near me. My face burned. If I stared at my cereal any harder, my eyeballs might actually plop into the bowl. “In … in two days?” I said with a high-pitched voice.

  “Yes. There’s a nice resort there. It’s brand-new. Miguel already booked us some rooms. You’ll be fine, Pablo. I promise.” Mamá tried to reassure me with a smile.

  But there was nothing she could do to reassure me.

  My mind was elsewhere.

  The sea.

  The beach.

  California.

  I was zapped back in time.

  To the aquarium. My father looked straight at me. He blinked. The color in his irises sort of faded, as if I were watching a green leaf drying out, curling, and then turning into a crunchy brown. It was the color of disappointment. I’d seen it so many times. I didn’t want to disappoint Mamá too.

  I inhaled and stared at my cereal again. It was already soggy. Heavy. Drowning in milk.

  “Okay. I’ll go.”

  * * *

  I was curled up on the couch, sulking. My body felt heavy—so heavy that every time I breathed, it was like I was sinking, like I was being swallowed up by a piece of furniture. I’d been there since after breakfast, trying not to think about the upcoming beach trip, trying not to kick myself for not speaking up. Why was it so hard for me to say something? Anything?

  For years, I’d rehearsed it in my head—exactly what I was going to say.

  “Mamá, I have something to tell you.”

  “What is it, mi amor?”

  Long pause.

  “Ever since we started moving around so much … things have just gotten worse for me. It’s not only the forks and spoons and knives, and how my food is, and how my clothes need to be. There’s so much more that bothers me now. Dirt and germs. All the bacteria everywhere. The air and the dust that’s in it. The noises and smells and crowds make me want to stay in my room. All the time … And sometimes I’m scared. I’m scared of the sea, of what’s in it, and what’s underneath it. I’m scared of losing you, just like I lost Dad … I’m sorry, Mamá. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It’s just … I was embarrassed. Ashamed.”

  “Oh, Pablito. There is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of! I’ll help you. I’ll help you get through this. Okay? I’m your mother. I love you no matter what.”

  Mamá would embrace me. I would be relieved. Everything would be fine.

  That’s how I’d envisioned it. I knew all the words. I knew what we would wear, how our bodies would move, how our facial expressions would change with every emotion.

  But no matter how hard I tried. I just couldn’t say those words in real life. They’d been bottled up for too long. How was I supposed to get them out?

  I mean, a kid should be able to confide in his parents, right?

  Yet I couldn’t.

  My father was Cal Jones, world-famous marine biologist. He was all about being a man, being adventurous, being brave. There was no way I was spilling my guts out to him.

  Mamá. She loved me. I knew she loved me. But she was just too busy saving every living creature on the planet. And when she wasn’t busy, she was all about positive energy and natural healing and crystals. Crystals wouldn’t help me one bit. There was no way I was spilling my guts out to her.

  Then there was that time in Spain, right after my father left us. We were staying with Abuelita. She lived on a hillside fishing village in Asturias. All the houses were white with terra-cotta-tiled roofs and window shutters in different colors—Abuelita’s were green, with bloodred geraniums in planters. Thankfully, hers was one of the houses closer to the top of the hill, so it wasn’t too near the sea. Almost every day, Mamá would walk to the beach to swim, or go boating with Tío Ricardo, her brother. Almost every day, I would stay inside, reading book after book, taking nap after nap, helping Abuelita with the cooking and cleaning.

  It was on one of those days in her rustic wood-and-stone kitchen that I sort of, kind of, almost confessed. I had been shucking fava beans for the stew. Abuelita was seated next to me cracking walnuts with an ancient-looking nutcracker.

  Snap.

  Crack.

  She had pulled the shell apart and tossed the walnut in a bowl. Then she leaned over, squinted one eye, and stared at me with the other, as if she were looking into a crystal ball. “Pablito, escúchame. I want to tell you something,” she said in Spanglish, which for whatever reason, she insisted on speaking.

  I cringed and braced myself. Surely, it was going to be one of her rambling stories about the olden days.

  “Sabes qué? I tell you secrets … Your tío Ricardo, he very scare of spiders. Even small ones!” She held up her thumb and index finger and pressed them together. “And your mamá … when she was una niñita, she cry every night because she think there is un monstruo under her bed!” She laughed. “And you remember Tía Emita? She believe the vampiros kill her! Por dios! She hang many garlic in her house, qué peste!” She held her nose
and made a stinky face. “And por supuesto, there was bisabuelo, your great-grandfather Jorge. He like everything VERY clean. Todo muy limpio! Even his food. Todo perfecto!” She widened her pale green eyes.

  I gulped and then fake-smiled. I wasn’t quite sure I liked the direction she was heading. Abuelita squeezed my cheek and grinned. “Pero sabes qué, Pablito? Everyone scare of something. Everyone act strange sometime. Es normal! In España, we accept a todo el mundo! Everyone welcome … Okay?”

  There was this echoing silence. Empty. As if it were desperate to be filled with words. I shifted in my seat.

  Should I say something?

  Was she expecting me to fess up?

  But the more I thought about what she’d said, the more my insides shriveled. She was telling me, in a not-so-direct way, that I was normal. There was nothing wrong with me. Yet that wasn’t how I felt at all. In fact, it was the complete opposite of everything I was feeling.

  I’d cleared my throat and uttered the most casual reply I could muster. “Sabes demasiados secretos, Abuelita…”

  You know too many secrets, Grandma …

  She cackled and squeezed my cheek again. “Es verdad, Pablito! Is the truth.”

  I’d gone back to shucking the fava beans. And she went back to cracking walnuts. She meant well. That much I knew. But as I shucked bean after bean after bean, my insides continued to shrivel.

  I was disappointed. Deep down, I’d wanted Abuelita’s affirmation.

  I’d wanted for her to tell me that there was something wrong with me.

  And that she would help me fix it.

  After that, I made the decision. Only I could fix myself.

  I just needed to figure out how.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Pablo!”

  I jumped. Or rather, I flew off the couch as if it had just spit me out.

  “Uh. What … what happened?” I said in a daze.

  Ms. Grace stood there, looking at me with her head cocked to the side. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.

  Chiqui ran past the doorway with a bubble machine in her grasp.

  One bubble.

  Two bubbles.

  Three bubbles.

  Four …

  “Anyway,” Ms. Grace said with a sigh. “I think Chiqui needs to get out of the house. I’m running out of things for her to do.”

  “Oh,” I replied, still not sure what she wanted from me.

  “You want to come with us to the sanctuary? It would help if I had an extra set of hands and eyes … Chiqui is pretty fast these days.”

  “Sure.”

  Truth was, I really didn’t want to go. What I really wanted was to sink into the couch again. But I could tell just by the sweat on her forehead, by the way her hair swished across her jaw, that she was flustered.

  Thankfully, though, by the time we got to the sanctuary, Ms. Grace was back to her calm, composed self, even though Chiqui was bouncing around like a Ping-Pong ball. Maybe it was because I was the one doing all the chasing. No wonder Ms. Grace wanted me to go.

  “Chiqui!” I shouted as she zoomed down a fern-lined path. “Slow down!”

  I ran after her, spotting a blur here and there of her yellow dress. I ran past the too-big trees and the too-colorful flowers. I ran past the conceited peacocks and the muddy beasts and the hairy-fruit-eating monkeys. Once in a while, Chiqui would halt and gasp at something cool, or shriek at something amazing. But then as soon as she saw me, she would zoom off again.

  “Chiqui! C’mon! Give me a break, will you?” I shouted in between labored breaths.

  After a while I gave up trying to catch up to her. I stumbled along, watching the dirt smudge my shoes. The path narrowed and the trees and foliage tangled in such a way that I couldn’t tell which leaf or stalk or branch belonged where.

  “Pablo! Where are you?” Ms. Grace hollered from somewhere.

  “Here!”

  “Is Chiqui with you?”

  “No.” I stopped. “I mean, yes…”

  Chiqui materialized in front of me. Completely still. Pale. Her eyes popping from their sockets.

  I heard Ms. Grace gasp beside me. Then she said something in a hushed voice. “Susmaryosep…”

  For a moment it was silent.

  I stepped back and gazed higher and higher and higher.

  At a giant.

  Oh my god. Run!

  I bolted.

  But then the giant spoke. “Wait!”

  Chiqui ran and hid behind Ms. Grace’s legs.

  I froze and stared at it again. Maybe it wasn’t a giant. It sounded more like a woman—a gigantic woman with brown fabric over her head and chest. There were holes cut out where her eyes blinked through. And the weirdest part of all was that her forearms and hands were covered with brown feathers.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you all,” the feminine-sounding voice said. The giant removed the brown fabric from its head. It actually was a woman. She must have been well over six feet tall. Her caramel-colored irises, the ones that had looked scary at first, were actually soft and kind.

  “Um. It’s okay. I guess,” I said.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Chiqui covering her face with her hands, except there was a slit between her forefinger and her middle finger where she was peeking through. Ms. Grace stepped ahead of us looking like a miniature action figure. “Do you work here?” she asked suspiciously.

  The giant woman didn’t seem at all fazed by Ms. Grace’s tone. She simply smiled and held up her feather-covered hand. “Not technically. But I am a volunteer. In fact, I’m on my way to feed the owls if you want to tag along.”

  Ms. Grace was suddenly delighted. “Oh sure! Why not? It might be a good educational experience. What do you think, Pablo?”

  “Okay,” I answered with a shrug.

  How bad could it be, right? I mean feeding owls couldn’t possibly be that gross.

  So we followed the giant woman as she blabbered nonstop. “Anywho … So you must be Carmen’s Pablo. She told me I might run into you one of these days. And here you are! I’m Francesca, but everyone around here just calls me Frannie. I’m what you call a birder. Not a bird-watcher, but a birder. And technically, what I’m doing here is a big secret. So you won’t go and tell anyone, will you?”

  I shook my head, because to be honest, part of me was still scared. Her eyes might have been kind, but she looked like the sort of woman who wrestled grown men with her pinkie finger. She gave me the thumbs-up with her feathery hand, and then she halted in front of a huge—a really, really huge—enclosure. It was high enough to stand in, and there were trees growing inside it, jutting from the top through strategically placed holes.

  Hoohoo! Hoohoo! Hoohoo!

  Chiqui swept the hair from her face, and then she stood on her tippy-toes, searching for the owls. Clearly, she was fascinated. But she wasn’t the only one who was fascinated. For a split second Frannie observed Chiqui as her gaze moved from bird to bird to bird.

  I panicked.

  Was she going to say something about Chiqui’s cleft lip?

  Was she going to make an icky face?

  Was she going to make some stupid excuse and run away from us?

  Frannie did none of those things, though. She just grinned real wide and spoke to Chiqui in the gentlest of voices. “Ang ganda ng ibon, diba?”

  “Ganda.” I remembered Zeus telling me it meant “beautiful” in Tagalog when he pointed out a ginormous double rainbow as we were driving down the highway one day.

  I had no idea what else Frannie had said. But whatever it was made Chiqui nod ever so slightly. Her eyes were still wide, but they were wide from amazement, rather than fear.

  Phew.

  “Anywho … It’s best you guys keep a distance since you’re in plainclothes,” said Frannie, gesturing at our outfits. “You see, this disguise of mine serves a purpose. The owls in this enclosure are being rehabili
tated to go back into the wild. That’s the big secret. Technically, we should be turning these birds over to the government. Shh … But they don’t really have the birds’ best interest at heart. So instead we keep them here. Part of my job is to teach them how to hunt for food … This outfit is so they don’t get used to humans. We want them to be wary of people. That way they won’t get caught or hurt after we release them.”

  I nodded and kept on nodding, trying to absorb everything she was telling us.

  “Well, okay then. I hope none of you are squeamish,” said Frannie, placing the brown disguise back on. She stuck her hand under the fabric of her costume and pulled something out—a clear plastic box attached to a bungee cord.

  Ms. Grace squeaked and sucked her breath in. Her skin turned into a sickening shade of puke green.

  What was she getting so freaked out about?

  Then I saw something squirming in the box. There were at least a dozen little white mice, the kind with beady red eyes.

  Frannie quickly hid the box out of sight. “I’m sorry. It’s the only way to teach them. I’ll understand if you don’t want to watch.” She grinned crookedly and then lumbered off toward the enclosure.

  The part of me that was horrified wanted to hightail it out of there. But there was this other part, the maybe 1 percent of my brain that wanted to stay. My muscles twitched. My nerves rattled. Yet I didn’t budge. Even Ms. Grace, who was still kind of green, stood there, gripping the fabric of her shorts until her knuckles turned white.

  We watched Frannie sneak into the enclosure. She kneeled on the hay-covered ground and released the mice one by one. Slowly, she retreated, glancing at us with her finger to where her lips would have been. At first the fluffy gray owls didn’t seem to react. I inhaled and exhaled, watching and waiting. And then the mice scattered. The owls became more alert. They twisted their heads around, stalking the rodents as they moved.