Cry of the Sea

by D. G. Driver

  “What?” I hit him in the shoulder.

  He laughed. “I’m serious. You are awful. I watched you on TV this morning. Stiff. Uncomfortable. Almost impossible to hear. I mean, seriously. Your mom hasn’t taught you form.”

  “She just takes over,” I said. “She never gives me a chance.”

  “Well, that’s probably a good thing,” Carter said, “because you’d muck it up.”

  “You are so not nice right now.”

  Then I watched his grin slowly fade as his thoughts changed direction. “You know what you are good at? I mean, really good at?”

  “Making an ass out of myself?” I asked.

  Carter turned onto the main highway. He checked through the rearview window to see if the others followed. Then he said, “You’re good with the animals. The way you handled the porpoise just now was perfect. You weren’t squeamish at all. You helped put away all those animals the Affron guys brought without needing any help. And then there was the way you handled being in the tank with the mermaid. You’re a natural. That’s what you should do.”

  I swallowed hard at the compliment. “Thanks,” I whispered. I was quiet for a moment. “I don’t suppose they could start having a Marine Biology major at your school?”

  His expression didn’t change. His hands stayed on the wheel. Not a sound rose from his lips, and his breathing stayed the same. But there was just the slightest, almost imperceptible nod of his head. Was that a “Yes, we could push for a Marine Biology program,” nod, or a “Yes, you’re interested in sticking around?” nod? Either way, I took it as a good sign.

  Carter changed lanes. The others followed.

  I couldn’t leave the conversation dangling on that edge, so I rambled, “It doesn’t really matter right now, though. I mean, I haven’t even applied to colleges yet, let alone been accepted anywhere. I’ve still got most of my senior year ahead me. That’s a whole lot of time to... to...” To what? Build a relationship with Carter? I couldn’t say that. I didn’t know how to finish what I was saying.

  Carter did it for me. “To find out.”

  Yes. To find out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Up ahead was the parking lot for the center. Carter put on his signal and slowly pushed through the crowd of people gathered there. There weren’t any parking spaces, so he just pulled up in front of the door and popped out. He guided Regina to stop right behind him and Ted to pull up behind her. The moment I got out of the car, cameras started flashing in my face. People recognized me from the video. They shouted questions at me about the mermaid and what we were doing while Carter and I rushed to the truck and climbed into the bed.

  I lifted up the tail before he had a handle on the torso. This was a mistake, because the sight of that thin, long tail sent the crowd into a frenzy. They pushed up to the truck with their cameras and made it impossible for us to move. Ted and Gary couldn’t even open their doors to get out of the cab.

  Ted rolled down his window and yelled, “Come on! Back off!”

  Regina’s high voice screamed over the crowd, “It’s not a mermaid! Calm down and back up! It’s not a mermaid!” Marlee and Haley joined in. I saw them jumping up and down on the periphery of the crowd. “It’s not a mermaid! It’s NOT a mermaid!”

  Carter lifted up the porpoise’s head as high as he could so everyone had a clear visual of it. A collective “aw!” of disappointment rose up, and the cameras lowered.

  “Let us through,” Carter said. “We need to get it inside.”

  This mob was a mixture of mermaid watchers and press. They wanted inside the building, so they didn’t give up space easily. We had to lift the porpoise up over our heads as we squeezed through the wall of people. Ted and Gary had finally managed to get out of the truck, and they pushed their way toward us. We let them take the porpoise while Carter unlocked the door. The girls were having a heck of a time getting through, and I didn’t want to hold the door open long enough for them to make it.

  “Don’t close it,” Regina shouted at me as I stepped inside the building.

  “Hurry up!” I shouted.

  “We can’t get through,” Marlee screamed back at me.

  I only had the door open a couple inches, just enough to see the girls. People tried to yank the door out of my grip to get inside. Some money was thrown in my direction. Finally I yelled back at Regina, “I’ve got to close the door!”

  “No, June. Don’t do it.” The fire in her eyes was intense.

  “Get yourself on TV,” I shouted. “You guys are my best friends, after all.” I really milked that. I saw reporters’ heads snap back at the girls and a murmur of “best friends?” rumbled through the crowd. I felt a little guilty, like I’d just hung meat in a piranha tank. I closed the door and locked it behind me as the savage crowd, hungry for whatever fresh news it could get, devoured the girls.

  All the lights were off in the front room. Carter flipped a switch so the guys wouldn’t walk into the tide pool tank in the middle of the room and led them toward the double doors. Ted shook his head like a dog to get some of the rain water off. “Are they going to be okay out there?”

  “Regina can handle herself,” I told him.

  He didn’t argue, so I figured he knew I was right. He hefted the porpoise up a little higher and led Gary through the double doors into the main room of the center. All the lights were off in there, too, and it was strangely deja-vu-ish.

  “Where’s Schneider?” I asked Carter. He took the porpoise from the guys and put it on one of the metal tables.

  “I was just wondering that myself.” He threw a few towels over the porpoise and then gestured to the bathroom in the back hall. “You guys can clean up back there.”

  Gary and Ted headed back, grumbling about how they’d never get the stink out of their shirts. On any other day I might have laughed, but I wasn’t finding anything funny at the moment.

  “Do you think something happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Carter said, exasperated. “He was here yesterday. I mean, he just stayed in his office all day with the door closed. When I tried to talk to him he told me to finish up with the care of the animals so I could leave. I stayed longer than I had to hoping I might get him to discuss what to do about finding the mermaid. After a couple hours, though, he came out of his office and ordered me to go home. ‘There’s nothing for you to do!’ he shouted at me.” Carter sighed. “I could tell he was really stressed, but what could I do about it? I left.”

  Meek fidgety Dr. Schneider yelled at Carter? The guy who couldn’t keep up with a truck on the freeway because he probably couldn’t drive past fifty miles an hour? This nerdy, wiry old guy who sort of apologized to us, a couple of kids, that he let his phone battery die out the other day? This was not a guy who yelled. What was going on?

  I walked over to his office. Over my shoulder I said, “You ought to put that thing on ice or it’s going to stink.”

  Carter scooped up the porpoise by himself and started toward the examination room where the mermaid cadavers had been just days ago. “What are you going to do?”

  “Poke around some more. We found something last time. Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

  Loud banging started at the front door of the building. Ted and Gary burst from the restroom, drying their hands on their shirts.

  “You think that’s Regina?” Ted asked. “Can we let her in?”

  I held off responding to that question. I really liked not having her in here.

  Ted looked past me and called after Carter. “Dude? Can we?”

  Carter swung around with the porpoise and the guys backed away a couple feet to avoid it. “I’m about to cut this thing up into pieces. If you don’t want to see that, then maybe you should go out there with them.”

  “Uh,” Ted said, trying and failing not to look grossed out. “I think we’ll skip that. Just got cleaned up and all.”

  Gary had already started toward the double doors when suddenly he stopped and looked a
round at all the tanks lining the walls. “Where are the mermaids?”

  Carter shot a fast look at the big tank and then gasped in mock surprise. “They’re not here! Oh no! June! The mermaids aren’t here!”

  Gary frowned. “I knew there never were any mermaids. You’re such a liar, June.”

  “Oh, there were mermaids,” Carter said. “They’re just missing. You ought to go tell Regina. That’ll be something she can tell the reporters. Get her face on camera, right?”

  “Whatever,” Gary said. He stomped away.

  Ted followed, looking back at us with a very confused expression. He tapped his buddy on the shoulder and said, “So which is it? There never were mermaids or that they’re missing?”

  Gary shoved his friend away. “I knew I should have stayed at school. I missed a cool pep rally for this.”

  Then there was an explosion of noise as they opened the front door and pushed out into the crowd. The door closed behind them, and the noise was blocked again.

  I dashed into the office while Carter set the porpoise in the right place to be taken care of later. Dr. Schneider’s office was in shambles, much worse than it was two days ago. Folders stuck up and papers spilled out of open file cabinets. Scribbled-on notepads and opened mail covered his desk. Wads of paper filled the trashcan to the brim and spilled over. What had he been investigating in here?

  I shifted through all the papers on his desk and found a number of printed Internet pages about mermaids. I recognized some of them as sites that I looked at the other night. They hadn’t been any more helpful to him than me, apparently. I turned on his computer and logged online. The past couple sites he’d visited were also about mermaids. Why was a scientist like him looking at this stuff? Was he hoping it might clue him in to where he might find more of the creatures?

  I was about to give up, figuring he’d come back in a little while, frazzled and holding a coffee cup from Starbucks, and wondering why there was a crowd out front. It was silly to think anything had happened to him. Affron already had the mermaids, what would they want with Dr. Schneider?

  I stood up to leave and something white caught the corner of my eye. Hanging on a hook by the door was the lab coat Dr. Schneider always wore. Instinctively, I reached for the coat. I rifled through the pockets and at last found something that might help: a phone number with an unfamiliar area code scribbled on a scrap of paper. Without a pause that would give me time to doubt, I sat down at the desk and dialed the phone number on the Center’s landline.

  “North Shore Rehabilitation Aquarium,” the receptionist’s voice answered. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Hi. Yes,” I stammered, my mind desperately trying to catch up with my voice. I didn’t actually expect a person to answer, nor did I have any idea who I was calling, so I hadn’t thought through what I would say. “I am a student at Washington State University, and I am interested in doing some intern work with sea animals. I was wondering where you were located so I could send in my resume.”

  “We aren’t in need of any interns at this time,” the receptionist answered crisply. “I can recommend another aquarium.”

  “Oh,” I said. Think. Think. “You are a facility operating under Affron Oil’s philanthropic plan, aren’t you? I was told by my professors that Affron was very open to volunteer interns.”

  “We are funded by Affron, yes,” she said, rather snippily. I pictured this little woman with a tiny nose and a bob haircut, sweater buttoned up to her neck and irritated that she couldn’t get back to her Facebook newsfeed update. “But we are a small research facility, and we don’t use interns or volunteers here.”

  Okay. That was something, but I needed more information. I bit my lower lip and tried to come up with something.

  “Is there anything else?” Snippy Secretary asked.

  I took a sharp breath. “Well, I’m surprised you say that because Dr. Carl Schneider called me yesterday afternoon and told me that he’d keep a position open for me there.”

  There was a pause on the other end. Now I was making her think of what to say. Why? What was it about Dr. Schneider’s name that kept her from ticking out another edgy comment?

  “Ma’am?” I asked. “Did you hear me about Dr. Schneider?”

  Without an ounce of her former snippiness, the receptionist spoke in a very quiet, almost respectful voice. It was almost like she wasn’t sure if she should be saying anything at all but her mouth was unable to stop itself. “Would you like to be transferred so you can speak to Dr. Schneider himself?”

  He was there! That turncoat! That creep! He ran off to go work for Affron. I bet he was with the mermaid. I felt the heat rise to my face, but I tried not to convey it in my voice.

  “No, I don’t want to bother him at this moment. I need to send him my resume. He requested it, but he left before I could deliver it to him personally. Could you please give me an address?”

  “Oh no,” the receptionist said too quickly. “I think it would be fine if you wanted to fax it to us. Here is the number.”

  I wrote it down, but that didn’t do me any good at all. I thanked her for the information. She asked for my name, but I hung up instead. I’m sure it was a last ditch effort to save herself from having given away too much information. She would have told Schneider I called, and then he’d know I was on to him. Can’t have that.

  I flipped on the computer as Carter walked into the office.

  “Whatcha looking up now?” he asked.

  “Dr. Schneider’s at a place called the North Shore Rehabilitation Aquarium. You heard of it? It’s funded by Affron.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  I typed the name into the search engine but got nothing. I looked up the Affron web page again but couldn’t find it on their list of charities. I then looked up the area code of the phone number and got the northeast corner of Washington State.

  “There’s nothing up there but a national park and the islands,” Carter said. “I can’t think where there would be an aquarium. Not a substantial one, anyway.”

  Islands? I flipped around to Carter. “Which islands?”

  “The San Juan Islands.”

  My heart started to race. Juarez Peña had talked about those islands yesterday. He grew up there with legends about mermaids and killer whales. They had that Potlach event where they threw shell jewelry into the sea during the summer. My mermaid was wearing a shell necklace when we found her.

  “That’s where the mermaids are from,” I nearly shouted. I told Carter all about Peña’s stories. He nodded more enthusiastically with each detail I remembered. “There is an aquarium up there somewhere on one of those islands. There has to be.” I felt my eyes grow wide and my heart lurched right up into my throat. “Oh my God, Carter.”

  He nodded at me, his eyes as large as mine felt. He knew what I was going to say. “They know all about the mermaids,” he choked out. “They’re collecting them.”

  “You don’t think Schneider knew about this, do you?”

  Carter winced and then shook his head. “No. I don’t. He’s been genuinely surprised at every turn since you guys showed up with those mermaids on Tuesday morning.”

  “Well, he’s caught up in it now,” I said. “I wonder what they’ve got him there for.”

  We heard a loud bang come from the front room of the center. Carter and I both dashed out of the office and toward the double doors to make sure no one had snuck in and knocked over something. Coming from the other direction was Regina and her crew. Her blond hair was snagged out of its barrettes, and her lipstick had been licked away. Marlee and Haley looked equally frazzled. The boys came in behind them, slouched and beaten.

  “They. Are. Gone,” Regina announced dramatically as we skidded to a stop in front of her. “Please tell me you have a Coke machine and a chair.”

  “We have a chair,” Carter returned.

  She rolled her eyes and followed him to a folding chair by the large cabinets. “All the reporters and weird
os have left.”

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t go too,” Marlee said. “There aren’t any mermaids here.”

  Gary snorted, “And there never were.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “There are no mermaids here. So you guys can head on back to Olympia and not worry about it anymore.”

  Regina sneered at me but didn’t say anything. The boys sat on the big tables while Marlee walked around and looked at fish in the aquariums. Haley approached me just as Marlee squealed “It’s so cute!” over the sight of the sea otter. “It’s like a puppy!”

  “What are you going to do now?” Haley asked. “Go back to the beach?”

  What I wanted to do was call Juarez Peña and ask him if he knew where we might find an aquarium in the San Juan Islands. However, I couldn’t do that with Miss Nosy and the Nosettes around.

  “I don’t know, Haley,” I told her. “I’m kind of done with the interviews today. I think I might just go home.”

  “But where are the mermaids? Do you know?”

  I grabbed her elbow and led her toward the office door. I whispered, “Look, Haley, I have some suspicions, but I don’t know anything for sure. I don’t mean to sound rude, but it would really be a lot easier for me to find them and take care of all this without you and your friends around.”

  “I can get rid of them if you’ll let me stay.”

  I flashed my eyes over to Regina who was staring at the two of us, clearly unhappy about being left out of a conversation. We had seconds before Her Highness interrupted, so I tugged Haley into the office and closed the door. “Do you really think that Regina will do what you ask?” I paused, trying not to say it, but it blurted out anyway. “I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around.”

  The hurt in Haley’s eyes was instant, but it was brief before the anger chased it out. “You don’t understand anything. If you want to be unpopular and picked on for the rest of your life, go right ahead.”

  “I’m not going to be unpopular for the rest of my life. Only for eight more months. Then guess what? I’ll be out of high school. Hopefully, I’ll take off halfway through the summer for California and get ready to start college. Regina won’t be popular there. No one will have ever heard of her. So, I don’t really care if she likes me or not.”