by Tess Sharpe
And really shiny. The mother-of-pearl handle sparkles iridescent in the light. It reminds me of the old Formica table my grandparents had.
“We’ll buy it,” Karen says to the clerk, who smiles and takes the knife away to box it up for us. “It’s my treat.” She turns to look at me. “I know taking this internship is kind of out of your comfort zone. I’m really proud of you for choosing to do something you feel so passionate about versus the more practical law firm route. You’ve always loved animals so much, I figured you’d become a vet when you were little.”
It’s an offhand comment, and she’s distracted almost immediately by the clerk calling her over to ring up the purchase. But it sticks with me, roots me to my spot for a moment.
There was a time when I thought I’d become a vet too. Before I got Earhart, even before I started working at the rescue, I learned how cruel people could be to animals. When I was twelve, a man who owned the empty, run-down warehouse down the street from school started keeping a dog, a scrubby Pyrenees mix with sweet eyes, on a five-foot chain to guard the yard. Day and night, that dog had no one and no space to roam. Just a crude shelter under an old rusted-out truck bed and enough food and water to keep Animal Control from creating trouble.
To the man who owned that property, the dog was a tool, not a living being. That man didn’t care that the dog suffered in the summer and almost froze in the winter. He didn’t care that he couldn’t exercise. All he cared about was the dog scaring off squatters. And if the dog died? Well, he could always get another.
I had to do something. So I went to the library and I read up on all the laws and I made a plan. I bought disposable cameras with my allowance and I took pictures of the dog each day. I filled a notebook with daily observations. On weekends, Dad drove me over so I could keep track of the dog then, too.
He was chained too far in the yard for me to touch. So instead, I talked to him a lot. He’d always stare at me, riveted, like he craved any kind of contact he could get.
It took patience. It took time. But finally, there were two weeks where the warehouse owner didn’t show up to give the dog water or food. And I was able to prove it with my logs and my photos, and Animal Control finally took the dog away from him. My mom had arranged for the rescue I started working for in high school to take him, and he got to go live with a family out on a farm in Maine. They still send me pictures of him at Christmas. His name is Roo now. He looks like a totally different dog. No more sad eyes. Every photo I get, he’s smiling.
It took six months to get Animal Control to do something. Every few weeks, I would call them, and I would hear it in the workers’ voices: that they understood how frustrated I was, that they knew it was unfair, that they agreed with me.
Their hands were tied. The law was the law.
I decided that I would grow up to be the kind of woman who could make laws and enact the kind of sweeping change that was needed. I’ve never wavered from that choice, and I’ve never regretted it.
But I know I’ll have to sacrifice for it. I can feel myself teetering on the brink of that point with each decision I make lately. I’m swaying back and forth along an edge, and I know the fall will be hard. I only pray that it’ll leave me bruised, not broken.
But I learned one thing from saving Roo: even if you’re broken, you can always be put back together.
My dad is the one who drives me to the airport. Mom…if she’d come with us, I think she might not have let me go. Mom hugged me a long time on the porch while Earhart knocked against our legs, whining, because she’s always been sensitive to other people’s moods. When Mom finally pulled back, she cupped my face in her palms and stared at me like she was trying to memorize the moment, burning the lines of my face, every freckle, every strand of red hair, into her memory.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mama,” I said, and it was all for her, because I didn’t need any reassurance.
She cried as Dad pulled the truck out of the driveway. And now Dad and I are an hour into the four-hour drive to the airport. This whole last week, he hasn’t said anything about what he thinks about all this.
I’m kind of afraid to ask.
My dad is someone who likes to fix things, too. Trucks, washing machines, tractors—anything mechanical. He built me a telescope when I was twelve. It’s still in the back shed, and I take it out every winter, to track the stars in the night sky.
But he likes things that are solid and real, things he can hold in his hands, see with his eyes. He once told me he never saw the point in asking What if?
But that’s the only thing that ever truly quieted my mind…to ask myself that. Over and over. About so many things.
I mean, that’s the reason I’m in a truck right now, my arm aching from all the vaccinations I had to get. It’s the reason I’m heading to the airport, getting on a plane, and then going to an island full of the kind of wonder most of us couldn’t dream up.
But Dr. Hammond did. He asked What if?
If you ask yourself enough questions, the right one might lead you down a rarefied path…the kind that leaves your names in the history books.
One Christmas I got this book about historical women. Stories about women like Ada Lovelace and Ida B. Wells and Phyllis Wheatley. I was just starting to understand that the history books…the science texts I loved so…they weren’t as full of women who changed the world as they should be. So I loved this book. It was proof, but it was also a lesson.
We have to work so much harder, because we’re underestimated and undervalued and dismissed. And it sucks. It’s just harder for girls. And there are so many different kinds of girls, and that means there are lots of different kinds of hard. Even though it’s hard, I have it easier than a lot of girls. I’ve gotten opportunities that others more qualified didn’t even get considered for because they’re not as feminine or they speak uncomfortable truths or they’re not the “right” color.
Sometimes the unfairness of it swamps me—it’s one of those things that should be staggering but isn’t. Because it’s the way it is. We chip away at it the best we can and hope to pull up others along with us, until there are enough of us to force real change.
“What are you thinking about, sweetie?” my dad asks.
I look from the window to him. “Just…history,” I say.
“You excited about your trip?”
“I don’t think that’s a big enough word,” I answer, and he smiles.
“You’re going to impress them all,” he says, with the kind of surety that comes only from being my father.
“I hope so,” I reply, wishing I had the kind of faith in myself that he has in me.
“I know so,” he says. “From the very start, Claire-bear, I knew you were destined for big things. Great things. This is just the start for you.”
What if the start for me means the end of everything else that’s safe and familiar and home, though? That’s the what-if that keeps spinning in my head. I try to push it down, but it’s hard. Especially now that I know my parents are having problems.
I look at my father out of the corner of my eye, wondering what he’d do if I asked him, if I let him know that I know. But I push down that urge too. I remind myself that my father likes to fix things. That means he’ll find a way to fix whatever’s broken in their marriage.
Right?
* * *
When we get to the airport and to the security check-in, Dad does the same thing Mom did on the porch: he hugs me for a long time and cups my face with his palms, his eyes shining with pride.
“Remember to follow all the orders the adults give you,” he says. “And if you somehow get lost on that island, think back to Girl Scouts and all our camping trips, okay?”
“Sun rises in the east, sets in the west,” I remark, and it makes him smile. “I won’t get lost,” I assure him. “It’s an entire theme park. It’s
not like all wild jungle. And the parts that are, there’s fences and signs everywhere, I’m sure.”
“Still, I want you to keep water on you, and a knife, and…use the buddy system. Make friends and stick with them, and if you get in trouble…”
“I won’t. And Karen already had me pack the bear repellent she bought me.”
“That was smart of your sister,” he says. “Okay. I don’t want to make you late.” He smiles again, but it’s tighter this time, like he’s trying not to worry. “Go show them what you’re made of, Claire,” he says. “You’ll blow them all away.”
I hug him one more time before going through the line for international travel. After I finally get through security, I walk away toward my gate and I don’t look back. I don’t have to. I know he’s still standing there. He’ll stand there long after he loses sight of me. Because that’s what good fathers do.
I got to the airport early—of course. But the check-in for international travel took longer than I expected, and by the time I find my gate, passengers are already starting to board. Tucking my blanket scarf a little tighter around my neck and making sure the cicada pin is still secure, I get in line behind an older man and woman. I pull my boarding pass out of my blue canvas satchel and hand it to the attendant, who scans it and nods me on.
I have to stow my carry-on a few aisles away from my seat, but I have everything I need in my bag. I sit in my window seat and unhook the pin from my blanket scarf, letting the ends fall free. I rearrange the soft plaid cashmere—a sixteenth-birthday present from Karen—around my shoulders. Out of my bag, I pull a bottle of water, a granola bar, and my travel pillow. I flip the tray table down and grab my latest read and my science magazines, a thick stack that I’m going to spend the entire plane ride catching up on. I can’t wait.
As the passengers take their seats, I leaf through the Journal of Avocational Paleontology. The flight attendants are checking the overhead bins, getting ready to give the all clear, when I hear someone calling, “Wait, wait! I’m coming!”
I look up from my magazine—and from the fascinating article about the discovery of the fossil Pneumodesmus newmeni—to see who’s so late.
“Sorry!” I hear his apology before I see him. He hands off his suitcase to the flight attendant to stow below and turns. He’s a cute white boy, with floppy dark hair and neat black-framed glasses, which are slipping down his long nose. When he pauses in front of the empty seat next to me, I look up to meet his blue eyes.
“Hey,” he says, sitting down next to me. “I’m Justin. I solemnly promise not to man-spread my legs all over the place and give you no room.”
Startled, I laugh. He smiles back. My stomach does that swooping thing that’s all about smart, cute boys and a fizzy kind of connection.
“I’m Claire,” I say.
“Nice to meet you.” He smiles again and then turns his attention to his bag, giving me some breathing room in case I don’t want to talk.
It’s nice—respectful—and I appreciate it, because as the flight attendants secure the plane and the Fasten Seat Belts light goes on, my stomach drops for reasons that have nothing to do with Justin’s smile.
It’s not really the plane itself that gets to me. It’s the being-up-high part. I hate heights.
As soon as I got into my seat, I’d closed the shade on the window firmly because looking out the window makes me all kinds of panicky. As we taxi onto the runway, I breathe in and out slowly through my nose, and it takes me a few minutes to realize that my seatmate is doing the same thing.
He doesn’t like flying either.
When he tenses up as we lift off, I feel a flash of familiarity—it almost distracts me from the way my own heart’s thumping in my chest like an animal slamming against a cage.
As we’re climbing into the sky, we hit a rough patch. The plane rocks back and forth, and I suck in a sharp breath. A hand closes around mine tight, and as the plane levels out, I look down at the same time he does.
“Sorry,” he says, snatching his hand away. “Sorry,” he repeats, meeting my eyes. “I get really nervous flying, but I didn’t mean to invade your space.”
“It’s okay.” I smile. “I don’t like flying either.”
“Some trips make it worth it, though,” he says.
“We can agree on that, too,” I say. My magazines and book slip off the tray table as the plane encounters some turbulence, and he bends down and scoops them up for me.
“Thanks,” I say when he hands them back.
“Reading about the Bone Wars, huh?” he asks, nodding to the book.
“I am,” I say.
During the late 1800s, there was a time when fossils were in high regard. Fossil hunting and discovering new species created a scientific war between two prominent collectors, Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh. Their egotistical competitiveness led them to discover more than 120 new species—but during their pursuit, they also destroyed smaller fossils and dig sites so the other wouldn’t discover them, wrote deceptive scientific papers, and even named and renamed the same species over and over again.
They were scientists, yes, but they were shady—to the max.
“So, whose side do you fall on?” Justin asks me. “The wealthy, connected Edward Cope or the poorer, better educated Marsh?”
“Neither,” I say, and I see a flicker of surprise in his face. “This isn’t a cut-and-dried situation like Edison and Tesla,” I say. “There’s a clear villain in the AC/DC war, right?”
“Edison,” he says instantly, and I feel relieved, because it may have been a bit of a test. You never want to be attracted to a guy who takes Edison’s side in the AC/DC war.
“With Cope and Marsh…they’re both kind of terrible people. Marsh totally screwed over Chief Red Cloud and the Sioux people by promising them payment for digging on their lands. He also said he’d speak on their behalf to the government. But he ended up skipping out on them in the dead of the night—without paying, and right before an attack!” The thought of it makes me feel sick.
“I didn’t know that,” Justin says, his eyebrows snapping together. “That’s horrifying. He shouldn’t be lauded the way he is if he contributed to the suffering and death of indigenous people.”
I agree,” I say. “It’s disgusting. Both he and Cope laid waste to sacred lands in their scientific pursuits. It’ll never be okay, what they did, how they treated those lands and the tribes. Cope was a huge exploiter too. He’s the one who played the long game and kept detailed journals for years about his enemy’s every move. When Marsh got a cushy government job, Cope publicly accused him of plagiarism and all sorts of other shadowy activity and destroyed his reputation. And, in an ultimate act of scientific rivalry, Cope had his head preserved after he died, issuing a challenge to Marsh to have his brain pickled and measured too so they could face off in the Big Brain competition—because back then, brain size was thought to be the measure of intelligence.”
“Now, I did know that,” Justin says. He shakes his head. “Can you imagine having that fierce a rivalry with someone?”
“Science,” I say. “It makes some of us a little…intense.”
“But they still made massive contributions to our understanding of the past,” Justin points out. “Over a hundred and twenty species, and Marsh discovered some of the most famous ones.”
“But do their contributions erase their misdeeds? The hurt they caused?” I ask. “That’s the question, isn’t it, outside of the fascination of such a heated rivalry. When discovery—advancement—comes at a cost, where do you draw the line? Marsh hurt entire tribes while promising to help them. Both men destroyed smaller fossils so the other wouldn’t identify them—who knows if they got rid of fossils that we’ll never find again? So how much did they hold science back? As much as they moved it forward?”
He tilts his head, looking at me, his e
yes sparking beneath his glasses. Heat crawls across my cheeks as I realize I’ve been talking a lot.
“You’re not a science student, are you?” he asks.
“Poli-sci,” I admit. “I just like paleontology.”
His eyes crinkle, and it’s like drinking champagne; I can feel the fizziness to the tips of my toes. “So, you’re a bleeding heart,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like a criticism…almost like a question.
“I’m someone who likes the scales to be balanced,” I say. “It seems like a lot of the time, the bad guys don’t just win, they get extra rewards.”
“Hmmm,” he says.
“And what about you?” I ask. “Are you a bleeding heart?”
“I’m a business major,” he says, with a self-deprecating grin.
“Oh, so you’re a capitalist—no heart at all. I thought you said you were on Tesla’s side of the AC/DC war,” I add lightly, hoping he’ll know it’s a joke.
To my relief, he laughs. “A good businessperson would’ve recognized Tesla’s value. You get better results from your employees when you empower them…or at least, that’s what my mom says. I went into business because of her. She started a vegan cosmetics company when I was a kid. It was cool, seeing her fill a spot in the market that was needed. Plus, that’s how I got into chemistry.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
“Ivy Rose Cosmetics…ever heard of it?’ he asks.
“I have a bunch of their lip glosses.”
“That’s Mom,” Justin says proudly. “She started out in my grandma’s basement, and now her stuff is stocked in hundreds of stores.”
“That’s so cool,” I say. “Do you want to go work for her after college?”
“Oh God, no,” he says. “Her company’s great, but she’d hover and I’d get all smothered.”
“My mother likes to hover too.”
“It’s the mom talent, I swear,” he says. “It’s weird, right, coming home after being away at school?” he asks. “I was only back for a few weeks before I had to leave again, but the entire time, I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode where everyone was treating me like I was a child, but I knew I was an adult.”