The Evolution of Claire

by Tess Sharpe

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three…

  Her head whips back to the meat—she’s decided I’m not interesting enough, I think—and she stomps forward, her tail swaying back and forth as she bends down, grasping a mouthful of goat in her jaws. Without another look at us, she disappears into her jungle.

  “What do you think?” Bertie asks next to me.

  I sound breathless even to my own ears when I speak. “You were right, what you said about her when we first met,” I say. “She’s beautiful.”

  * * *

  I still feel shaky after Bertie drops me off at the hotel, with strict instructions not to tell my fellow interns that I got to see Rexy already. Apparently Mr. Masrani has a whole reveal planned for our eight-week anniversary here.

  When I get up to my room, it takes me two tries to open the door. I can hear voices inside, and when I finally get the door open, I see Eric and Tanya on her bed, looking at a video on her laptop together.

  “Claire!” Tanya snaps the laptop shut fast. “Where’ve you been?”

  “I was just helping Bertie with some inventory,” I say. “What’s up with you two?”

  “Not much,” Eric says, getting up, taking the laptop from Tanya, and shoving it into his bag quickly. “I was just getting Tanya’s opinion on some cuts I did of our first few weeks. We’re gonna head down early for dinner. You want to come?”

  “I’ll catch up,” I say. “I want to take a shower.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but you kind of smell like…” Tanya leans forward, her nose wrinkling. “Is that goat?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was helping Bertie inventory. Goat meat. So not glamorous.” I feel kind of bad about lying, especially because I really want to share with someone the glory of what I just saw, but I’ll save it for my journal until all of us interns get to share in the same experience.

  “Ew,” Tanya says. “We’ll save you a seat at dinner, okay?”

  “I’ll be there,” I say.

  But instead of jumping in the shower immediately after they leave, I grab my bag and pull out my tablet. Even in my T. rex–induced excitement, I haven’t forgotten about the list I got from Wyatt. Is Izzie on it?

  I pull up the screenshot of the list of names and scan it eagerly.

  There she is. Third from the bottom.

  Isobel James, biochem major.

  I plug her name into a search engine, my heart hammering as the page takes a second to load. There are a quite few Isobel Jameses. So I add her major and Yale to the search terms, waiting again as sweat crawls down my back.

  When the page loads and I see the second link, my stomach sinks.

  It’s an obituary.

  Izzie’s obituary.

  I grab Izzie’s notebook and set it next to my tablet on the thick comforter spread across the mattress. Taking a deep breath, I read through her obituary.

  Isobel James, age nineteen, passed away Sunday morning at the home of her parents. A promising student at Yale and a member of the Yale chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, she is survived by her loving family: her parents, Bill and Kathy, and her brother, Donnelly. There will be a private, closed service, and the family asks for donations to the Mighty Girl Initiative in lieu of flowers.

  I check the date on the obituary again, just to be sure. March 5. Which would put Izzie in Boston at her parents’ house on March 4.

  Except she wasn’t in Boston on March 4. I flip through Izzie’s notebook until I find the rows and rows of food and waste stats for Olive and Agnes, and sure enough, there it is:

  3/4

  Olive (still recovering from surgery): 100 lb. consumed, 20 lb. waste (bring up fluid retention w/ Tim)

  Agnes: 130 lb. consumed, 30 lb. waste.

  My heart hammering, I sit back against my pillows, trying not to freak out too much.

  Because all the clues are telling me that the most unbelievable parts of Wyatt’s story about the intern who got left behind maybe—even probably—happened.

  Izzie wasn’t in Boston on March 4. Did she die that day? Was that the day of the big storm?

  Next, I pull up weather data, because I’m going to need all the details to figure this out. I type in the weeks before and after the fourth, and there it is: more confirmation. A giant storm front moving right toward the island and then enveloping it—on the night of March 4.

  Sickness churns inside me as I trace the inked words in Izzie’s journal. Did she leave this behind that morning as she headed out on her rounds, not knowing she wouldn’t be coming back? Not knowing that her thoughts, her notes, her valuable research would just be lost…until I found it?

  What happened that day? Was it human error? A mistake in the chaos of the storm?

  Or was it something more sinister?

  Or did the sinister happen later…after…when they realized they’d left someone behind? I shudder. When had they realized she’d died, scared and alone on this island, with only the creatures of the jungle—dinosaur and other—as company? Did they already know as they headed away? Or did they hear after they arrived safely in Costa Rica? Is that when they started their cover-up? And how did they get Izzie’s parents to go along with it?

  That last question is what keeps snagging me, like a thorny branch. Wyatt’s right—the company could have easily bought off the other interns’ silence: Money, jobs, prestige—Mr. Masrani could deliver all that without blinking an eye. And people are craven. They want to get ahead.

  But Izzie’s parents—this obituary, probably written by them…the lie about her dying at home…that’s what keeps hanging me up. Because my parents would never let that happen. They’d never let themselves get bought off. And I want to think that all parents are like that. But they aren’t, are they?

  Some parents are not good. Some people are downright evil, so that means some parents are too. It’s just a logical conclusion, even if the idea is strange to me.

  Or…an even worse idea strikes me, making me shiver. What if Izzie’s parents did hold strong? What if whoever covered this up threatened them?

  I page through the notebook, searching for the final entry. They grow sparse right around the time Olive got sick—Izzie was probably working around the clock monitoring her. Finally, I spot it, near the very back, next to a sketch of a waterfall. Dated just three days before her death, if the obituary date is correct.

  3/1

  Did some work in Sector C. I’m still not sure what I’m looking for, but I had to dodge Oscar and his cronies. They’re test-driving those sphere things all over the valley and would’ve freaked if they knew I’d snuck in.

  I got what I needed and snuck out undetected, though. I’ll start testing tomorrow. I know it’s a long shot, but what else am I supposed to do?

  What if they keep getting sick?

  “Way to be vague, Izzie,” I mutter, flipping through the rest of the notebook, hoping to see another entry I somehow missed during my first skim-through. In the empty final twenty pages or so, my thumb brushes against a page that feels a little too thick. I frown and look closer.

  The pages are stuck together.

  I peel them apart.

  “What the…”

  A scrap of paper is tucked between the pages. It looks like it was torn from a yellow legal pad. In big black letters, it says Watch your back.

  It’s definitely not Izzie’s handwriting.

  A threat? Or a warning? A shiver goes through me as my eyes fall on the pages that I unstuck, and my curiosity grows as I set the yellow paper aside.

  It’s a list, with rows and rows of plant and animal species followed by the letters AC/AK, one set of those letters circled each time. There are X’s next to each entry.

  I trace my finger down the page…What do the X’s mean? Are they related to the o
nes on the map Izzie drew in her second month here?

  There’s a knock on my door, and I’m so deep in thought, I jump what feels like a foot off the bed.

  “Claire?”

  That’s Justin. I look at the clock on the bedside table and realize I’m late for dinner. I want to keep looking through Izzie’s notebook and putting the pieces together, but I need to eat.

  I haven’t even showered yet, though. Ew.

  “Just a second,” I call. I scramble to shove Izzie’s notebook and my tablet back into my bag, swing it over my shoulder, and hurry to the door.

  “Hey.” He smiles when he sees me. “Tanya sent me up here to find you. She and the rest of the girls want to talk about painting the Gyrospheres with Bertie tomorrow.”

  “I totally lost track of time,” I say. “Thanks for coming and getting me.”

  He smiles. “Any time.”

  * * *

  The next day, Justin and I drive over together to the valley, where Bertie’s asked to meet us for our Gyrosphere painting session.

  “So, are you ever going to tell me what you’re doing in Dr. Wu’s labs every morning?” he asks as I take a right away from the hotel and toward the valley.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I promised not to.”

  He sighs. “So unfair,” he says.

  “Would you really risk the wrath of Dr. Wu if you were in the same position?” I ask, slowing down as we get stuck behind a truck full of bricks heading to Main Street.

  “He really is intimidating,” Justin admits. “I read this great profile about him; it must’ve been a few years ago.”

  “The one in the New York Times?” I ask.

  “Yeah, that one,” he says. “What he said about life’s work, how if you have a calling, it shapes you just as much as you shape it—it stuck with me.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” I ask.

  “Don’t you?” he asks. “Do you feel like politics is your calling?”

  I concentrate on the road, the question hanging between us. A few months ago, I could have answered that with a surety I’d felt for ages. Changing the laws that needed to be changed was the quickest way to reach my goal of protecting animals. But now…

  Politics is a ruthless game. That’s what Mr. Masrani said at dinner that first night at Jurassic World. And I had told him that maybe I’m a ruthless girl.

  But I think about Izzie. About the mystery surrounding her death. Without power, without ruthlessness, that cover-up would never have happened.

  To reveal it would be righteous, wouldn’t it?

  But the righteous hardly ever win. And the ruthless do.

  “What about you?” I ask, still avoiding Justin’s question. “What’s your calling?”

  “Not sure yet,” he says as we pull up to the training center.

  “Not business?” I ask.

  “That’s such a vague term,” he complains good-naturedly, unbuckling his seat belt. I slide out of the jeep.

  “I do have some other news, other than what’s going on in the labs,” I tell him as we walk up the dirt road that leads to the training center.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Next week they’re transporting a Raptor from Sorna back to the island.”

  His eyes widen, like he’s a kid in a candy store. “Really?”

  “Apparently we’re going to be asked to stay in our rooms,” I say—or more like complain—and it makes him smile.

  “You want to observe, I take it?”

  “Don’t you?” I ask.

  “From a healthy distance,” he says.

  “But a close-up view means you get to see all the teeth!” I grin, and he shakes his head as we reach the training center’s main building.

  Bertie has stuff set up out back, in the unused—for now, at least—training area. I wonder if this is where they’ll keep the Raptor for quarantine, or if they have a special, more secure place tucked away.

  There are two Gyrospheres—empty of seats and tech, just the shells—set in the dirt training area, the steel fence separating it from the jungle beyond.

  “There you are!” Amanda says when she spots us.

  “I’m sorry, I lost track of time.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “We’re just sorting out the paint.”

  “Are these the patterns?” I ask.

  “Yeah—come look!” She waves us over.

  Bertie is standing in front of two hologram projectors, each beaming a patterned sphere: one with a dozen or so large red dots placed strategically on a white background; the other with an intricate hexagon pattern of red and an eye-popping neon yellow.

  “So, simple versus complex?” Justin asks Bertie. “Or round versus angular?”

  “She responded best to circles and hexagons when we did her neuro-scan,” Bertie explains. “So we figured this would be our baseline.”

  “And the bright colors?” Ronnie asks from behind me, where she’s standing with Tanya. “I thought they might be green, so she’d associate them with food?”

  “Actually, they’re red and orange, to do the opposite,” Bertie says. “She registers certain colors, from what we can surmise. But I thought making them a color she doesn’t typically associate with the terrain or food or other dinosaur stuff might be more of an attraction.”

  “Like a bee’s attracted to bright things,” Tanya pipes up.

  “Yes,” Bertie says. “So what we’ll do is project the holograms onto the Gyrosphere shells as an outline for us to paint. Like so.” She hits a button on the remote in her hand, the head of one projector swivels, and the holograms soar across us to light up the actual Gyrospheres with patterns. It’s a neat trick, and way easier than the old-school blue painter’s tape.

  We get to work, Justin, Tanya, and I, painting the hexagon patterns on one sphere while Amanda and Ronnie paint circles on the other. Bertie’s on her tablet, and when she passes by, I see that she’s watching video footage of Pearl. From the crashing and crowing sounds I hear, it’s likely one of her earlier escapades.

  My heart shrivels in my chest at the thought of her being taken away from the valley—what kind of a life would she have in isolation? Or worse…would they euthanize her as a failed specimen? The idea horrifies me. Our science brought the dinosaurs here, which means we owe it to them to give them good lives. They are our responsibility.

  If these toy spheres can prevent that, I suddenly realize, even with all the other problems swirling around me, then my presence here will be worth it. And that’s what matters, isn’t it?

  I turn back to filling in the hexagons while Justin traces them with sure, precise strokes of his paintbrush. We work well as a team, though every few minutes, Bertie makes us duck out of the spheres because of the paint fumes.

  “Are you afraid we’re going to get the giggles or something, Bertie?” Tanya asks, grinning.

  “I’m afraid you’ll get headaches,” Bertie says. “This paint is safe for humans and dinosaurs, but it’s smelly. We opened the cans this morning to mix them, and Tim got a migraine.”

  Tanya winces in sympathy. “No headaches here so far,” she says.

  It takes about two hours to finish the hexagon Gyrosphere as well as the doors that will be fused shut to create a seamless ball for Pearl to play with. My shoulders are aching by the time we finally stand back to survey our work.

  “Well done,” Bertie says. “We’ll hoist them up so they dry evenly tonight. In the morning, we’ll fuse the doors on, and we’ll do a test run in the afternoon with Pearl.”

  “Can we come?” Amanda asks.

  “Of course,” Bertie says. “This was you girls’ idea. You deserve to be there. The boys can come too,” she adds, when Justin and Art look disappointed. “I’ll let Beverly know that I need you tomorrow afternoon…say, one o’clock
?”

  “We’ll be there,” Ronnie promises.

  “We’ll be early,” Tanya adds eagerly.

  “Good job today.” Bertie smiles. “Go back to your rooms. Clean up. Get your dinner and your rest. Big day tomorrow!”

  We shower her with thanks and goodbyes, leaving her to her videos and Pearl’s new toys.

  Tanya tilts her head back and forth, her neck popping at the movement. “Ow,” she groans. “I should’ve stretched before I spent two hours with my arms in the air.”

  “I told you so,” Ronnie scolds, making me smile as we load into the jeep.

  “I hope she likes ours the best,” Justin says in a low voice as Ronnie pulls away from the training center and heads back to the hotel.

  “No way—Pearl’s a polka-dot girl,” Ronnie says, overhearing him. “Bet you ten bucks.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” Justin says. “She’s all about the six-sided life.”

  Tanya laughs. “I don’t care which—let’s just hope she likes at least one of them!”

  * * *

  When we get to the hotel, I tell Tanya to go on to dinner without me. “I’ve got to make a quick call to my parents,” I say.

  But when she leaves to join Ronnie in the hall, I don’t make any calls. Instead, I go right back to Izzie’s journal and the plant lists.

  Ceiba pentandra AC/AK X

  Heliconia collinsiana AC/AK X

  Gunnera insignis AC/AK X

  “AC/AK,” I say to myself, tapping the letters, trying to think. Ac in the periodic table is Actinium, but there isn’t an Ak. So it has to be some other sort of abbreviation. I trace my finger down the rows of circled ACs and AKs. They’re always together—no AC/ACs or AK/AKs in any one entry. So it’s something that has to be one or the other…A and A…acidic and alkaline!