by Julia Drake
I switched my phone fully off, and poof, I was gone.
ASK ME HOW I’M SAVING MANATEES
With a single phone call, my parents had gotten me a volunteer position at the Lyric Aquarium, one of the more traditional tourist attractions in town. Apparently, if your great-great-great-grandparents once helped found a local aquarium, you will be hired more than a century later, even if you have no experience and just as much interest in fish. “Nepotism at its finest,” I’d said to my dad.
“Maybe you’ll learn something,” my dad had replied.
“You do realize Sam is the one who loved the aquarium.”
My dad had rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Violet, I know this may come as a shock to you, but we’re doing the best that we can. Just give the fish a chance, okay?”
“I just meant—” I didn’t know what I’d meant. I’d just wanted to say Sam’s name out loud.
My first day there was Tuesday, two days after my arrival in Lyric. In the dim kitchen that morning, I found a cinnamon bun and a note that read, they’re lucky to have you, xo, a ghost. ps toby’s day starts at 5 but he says what’s up. pps call your mother! The icing was cream cheese and so freaking good that I licked the plate clean.
The aquarium was a fifteen-minute bike ride away, through and past the center of town. I pedaled slowly at first, grateful that I could breathe in my dad’s jeans, even if they were too short. I gained speed and was so relieved to be rid of heavy earrings and jangling bracelets, free from raccoon eyeliner and long, long hair. I pulled that whole look off, sure, but I’d never felt exactly myself in those clothes. At their best, they were a costume that made me the sort of girl you wanted at your party, and at their worst, my clothes were wrong. Case in point: I’d been underdressed for my brother’s suicide attempt. I’d been wearing my tiniest pair of shorts, denim cutoffs, a nip of butt cheek visible when I ascended a staircase. A flimsy cotton tank top and no bra, nipples perky in the harsh hospital cold. I’d ached for a sweater, for a parka, for something that felt more right.
Something, it turned out, like men’s jeans and a shaved head.
I was on the edge of town now, zipping past the outdoor store, Toby’s bakery, the hot dog joint; the lobster shack, the movie theater, the Korean restaurant. The one grungy bar, the Lyric Pub, with its perpetually drawn shades. Then the gift shops, and tucked up on a side street, I knew, was Treasures of Atlantis, the so-called “Wonder Emporium” that Sam and I used to visit on rainy days. Once, I’d made him shoplift tiger’s eye, and when he later confessed to Mom, I didn’t speak to him for days.
Like that, the shops were gone, and I was at the docks, where I stopped to raise the height on my bike seat. Far off, a group of dudes in waders and beanies were unloading from a fishing trip—their boat was called Sheila. Sam and I used to invent boat names, and we’d finally settled on HMS Promise and Discipline. We were six and seven and Mom had just about died laughing when she heard it. “Gotta learn to sail before you name the boat,” she’d said, and Dad’d said: “I dunno, I like the idea that they’re the only kids in Maine who can’t.”
Seat fixed and almost there now, I was starting to get nervous. What would I do in an aquarium? I knew nothing about the ocean. Not like Sam. His favorite place in the whole world, besides the shore behind my grandmother’s house, was the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life at the Museum of Natural History (countless visits meant that the exact, interminable name was forever in my memory). When Sam was thirteen, he sent a poem he’d written about a jellyfish to a curator there, and she was so moved that she invited us for a private behind-the-scenes tour. I was fourteen and I remember, more than anything else, my hangover.
Sam reminded me of a jellyfish, actually: porous, wispy, faintly luminous. He was a city kid not equipped to handle the city, unable to stand the pace, the traffic, the crush. I thrived and he floundered. As a fifteen-year-old, he’d choose to walk an hour rather than take a fifteen-minute train ride. As a five-year-old, he’d hurl himself on the sidewalk in front of the subway entrance, deadweight and screaming. Passing strangers covered their ears or shot my mom looks; I remember studying salt scatter on the sidewalk and singing “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” under my breath to pass the time. Once a tantrum started, Sam couldn’t be reasoned with; we’d just wait until he screamed himself exhausted. Then my mom would scoop him up and load us into a cab, late for whatever birthday party/movie/child-psychology appointment we were headed toward.
Sam’s official diagnosis was complicated. Depression, anxiety, and patterns of disordered eating that, his shrink believed, existed concurrently with certain aspects of obsessive-compulsive disorder. That mouthful, I felt, barely scratched the surface.
What about the way Sam seemed to flicker like a fluorescent light? Or how he occasionally hid in weird places—under a table, for example, or an out-of-the-way bathroom. And then there was the fact that, in spite of all this, he was perfect in school, every teacher’s favorite.
At home, though, he was always the problem. Except for this past year, when I was.
The Lyric Aquarium had been imposing in my memory, but when I saw it that morning, the first word that came to mind was rinky-dink. The building was octagonal, once painted blue but now weathered the pale gray color of vitamins I’d gagged on as a kid. Inside, the foyer smelled of salt water and rot, and the ticket desk, a cheap folding table, was coated in a fine layer of dust. The main room’s focal point was a touch tank that housed nurse sharks and sea cucumbers; another circular tank held rays and skates doing slow, morose laps. A marine skeleton hung from the ceiling, its bones suspended by fishing line. A sickly whale? An extra-large tuna? It was a little embarrassing that I didn’t have a clue.
“Violet?”
A white-haired white lady in a black fleece and tall brown rain boots was striding toward me, trailed by a wolfish dog. This must have been Joan, the aquarium’s director. She broke into a huge smile as she reached for my hand.
“Oh my goodness, hello! You’re so tall! So grown-up!” she told me, pumping my arm so hard my bicep shook. “I know it’s been a few years, but wow!”
“I’m sorry. Have we met?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t remember, you were just a kid.”
I looked between the dog and Joan and realized I had met them. I mean, I’d only been thirteen, and more focused on the hot volunteer than her, but—
“How’re your folks? And your brother! You know I still have a poem he wrote during one of our Critters of the Deep workshops? It’s hanging in my office. From the small sea snail to the great blue whale, everyone has feelings.”
Apparently, I walked in Sam’s intellectual shadow in not one state, but two.
“We’re so happy to have you. Our very own Rudolph! Your grandmother was such a lovely woman. She helped me with research from time to time.”
“My last name’s actually Larkin. My dad’s.”
“You’ll always be a Rudolph here. You’re the closest thing we have to a local celebrity.”
The dog barked. “Oh, hush, Boris, life isn’t a zero-sum game. He gets jealous,” she whispered conspiratorially. I offered her a weak smile. Boris could totally have the local celebrity title.
Joan handed me an informational packet labeled LYRIC AQUARIUM AND OCEANOGRAPHIC EDUCATION CENTER TRAINING MANUAL and two electric-teal T-shirts with ASK ME HOW I’M SAVING MANATEES printed on the back. Before I could follow the shirts’ instructions, Joan said, “Orion should be here any minute. He’s our star employee—works here year-round—and he’ll train you. Really, this is just so exciting. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your ancestors!”
“Neither would I. Though maybe that’d be better for everyone.”
She blinked, then burst out laughing. “What a card you are!” She chattered away about my schedule—“Just part-time, Tuesday through Friday, mostly be dealing with summer camp field trips, though we haven’t had a lot going on, I’m sorry to say.…Frankly it’
s been a dead zone, there’s a flashier aquarium about thirty minutes south and they just built a penguin exhibit, so…”
I flipped through the packet, skimming paragraphs on marine biomes, longshore drift, and thermohaline circulation. An entire section was devoted to “Maine’s Natural Wonders” and listed the limestone cliffs of Fabian’s Bluff; Old Sow Whirlpool, the largest whirlpool in the western hemisphere; the Desert of Maine. (Not a true desert, but a tract of glacial silt!) Did I really have to learn all this?
“Do you guys still do tide-pooling classes?” I asked. “I remember liking those with my brother.”
“Weellll.” Joan’s voice grew squeaky. “There’ve been some cuts to programming in the past few years. We’ve lost some funding, sadly, and a few of our educational programs have fallen by the wayside as a result. That’s why we’re closed on Mondays, you see.”
“Oh.” For the best, maybe. The last thing I needed on my conscience was a child banana-peeling on a sea star and cracking her head open on a rock. “What about the lobster demonstrations?”
“Good memory!” she said. “But, no, we don’t do those anymore either. There was an…incident.” She made pincers with her hands and chomped at the air. “I maintain our lobster was provoked, but…” She shrugged. “We’re a little light on the programming this year. But. So happy to have you on board. You’re going to do great work here.”
Boris raised his wolf-doggy eyebrows. He had me all figured out.
“I’ve got to go track down your paperwork, but please poke around! Explore. That’s what we’re here for.”
Joan disappeared upstairs, Boris jingling after her. My poking around left me underwhelmed. The aquarium’s star attraction was an (admittedly awesome) mammoth blue lobster named Louise, but otherwise, the exhibits were grim. Along one wall, a three-foot-long box of soil and scraggly grass was labeled REEDS AND PLANT LIFE OF THE MAINE COAST. There was an outdated chart of coral reef death titled HELP SAVE OUR ECOSYSTEM, a fairly standard exhibit on the Gulf of Maine, and beside that, SEA MONSTERS OF OLD, which featured some seriously bad artists’ renderings of Cassie, the Casco Bay Sea Serpent. Even the small nook of a gift shop was depressing. It sold, along with china Cassies and Lyric Lobsterfest T-shirts, unconscionably phallic stuffed sea cucumbers with googly eyes, no less.
The only exhibit that I lingered over was the History of Lyric display, and that’s because it featured my ancestors, the town’s founders. A model Lyric steamship sat behind glass, gathering dust on its miniature deck. Beside it, a computerized map charted the ship’s course by red dotted line—technology ripped from The Muppet Movie—across the Atlantic, until the line exploded a few miles off the coast of Maine. Tiny animated stick figures bobbed in the water. One flailed for shore. The screen flickered, then rebooted, sending stick-figure Fidelia swimming on an endless loop toward safety.
Sisyphean was the SAT word I was looking for.
I turned to a picture of my great-great-great-grandparents, Fidelia and Ransome, on their wedding day. A copy of this same photograph sat on the cluttered mantel in our living room, but I’d never really studied it. Now I leaned in close. Fidelia was covered in head-to-toe lace, long veil, high-necked dress, a bouquet of flowers spilling over her unseen hands, leaves dangling almost to her knees. Ransome stood beside her, top hat tucked under his arm. It wasn’t in fashion to smile for photographs in those days, but his lips curled upward anyway—delighted, I guessed, at his good fortune. I didn’t blame him. Even with all the lace, my great-great-great-grandmother was kind of a dish.
The informational plaque dated the photo at five years after the shipwreck. THEIR LOVE WAS OUR BEGINNING, read the caption.
I’d forgotten this was the unofficial town motto. Really great place to turn off the romance channel, Mom.
I was staring at the photograph and trying to figure out if I’d ever look that happy, let alone actually be that happy, when someone tapped my shoulder and said, “Hey, man.”
I turned and two things happened at once:
1. The tapper realized I was, in fact, not a man;
2. I realized the tapper was, in fact, a man. Not just any man: the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Though beautiful man hardly does him justice. Because the tapper was so much more than that. He was a Certifiable Smokeshow and Knee Buckler to End All Knee Bucklers.
He had shaggy brown bedhead, clear olive skin, and green-gray eyes; chapped pink lips, broad shoulders, and a full chest that stretched the cotton of his teal aquarium T-shirt. His eyebrows were truly gorgeous in a way I did not know eyebrows could be: slightly arched and polished, drawing his whole face into focus. A tattoo on his inner arm caught my eye, but he shifted to readjust a large purple lunch box he had over his shoulder, hiding the design before I could make it out. An eco-conscious tattooed eyebrow god? Yes, please.
The Knee-Bucklingest: he was even taller than I was.
Yes, I know. Didn’t I just literally shave my head so that everyone would stay away? Hadn’t I dedicated myself to turning off the romance channel? Hadn’t I been so blinded by lust that I wasn’t even able to see what my younger brother was going through, not even in the actual hospital?
But, but, but. If you had seen Orion Lewis’s eyebrows. Born witness to their majesty. I’m telling you: you would have understood.
“Oh,” he said, arching his glorious you-know-whats. “Shoot.”
“Fake-out,” I said.
He looked perplexed. “Are you…?”
An excellent kisser? On birth control?
“Female?” I suggested.
“Working here.”
I reminded myself of my priorities. Celibacy. Disappearing.
“Yes. I’m Violet.”
“Ah. You’re—wow. I thought…” He fumbled for words, and the strap of his lunch box strap pulled at his T-shirt, exposing a tanned, smooth shoulder. In another life, I would have sunk my teeth into that very space.
He gestured toward his hair. “Sorry. I thought you were a guy.”
“Whatever.” I shrugged. “I thought you were one, too, so.”
He laughed a stammering laugh, revealing a gap between his teeth. It suited him, and I was glad it hadn’t been fixed.
“If you’re Orion, I hear you’re the star employee,” I said.
“I’m sort of the only employee. We’d be in trouble if I weren’t the star.”
“It’s just you and me?”
“And Joan and Boris,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
He led me upstairs to a very fishy-smelling break room with a wobbly table, an industrial-size freezer, and a fat maroon sofa upon which the dignified Boris reclined, front paws neatly crossed. Aquatically fetal blobs floated in jars of green juice on the counter; the shelves were scattered with dried bits of coral and the crusty shell of a horseshoe crab. Orion weaved among cardboard boxes full of aquarium merch to rub the dog’s ears, and Boris, that smug bastard, yawned at me in triumph.
Orion opened the freezer next and pulled loose a silver bucket labeled FEED. The smell of days-old fish filled the room. I shuddered, thinking of poor Louise’s insides.
“Are you a bio major or something?” I asked him as he placed the bucket on the table.
“Nah.” Orion took a folded paper napkin from his pocket and tucked it under the wobbly table before placing the bucket on top. “I’ll be a senior. In high school. You?”
“Junior.”
“The height tends to throw people. You probably know that.”
I nodded. He unzipped his lunch box and removed a plastic bag filled with pearly-gray critters. Their heads were still attached, jelly black eyes peering at me through the plastic.
“Late breakfast?”
“Good stuff for the fish. I try to get them something special when I can swing it. You can leave the heads and legs on.” He pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and when he passed it to me, his fingers didn’t linger on mine. Good—no funny business on his end either. I turne
d to the plastic bag.
“Um. Orion. What are these guys, exactly?”
He looked at me strangely. “They’re shrimp.”
Huh. Shrimp were usually pink and peeled, curled and dipped in cocktail sauce. I poked at the bag, as if to test for shrimpiness.
“I didn’t know shrimp had legs.”
“Really?”
“Sorry. I mean, I must’ve known that. I’m not really a fish person.”
He looked at me sideways. “You do know we’re working in an aquarium, right?”
“Yes. I know.”
“So there are lots of fish here,” he said slowly.
“Yes.”
“So why did you get a job working at an aquarium if you’re not a fish person?”
“Oh, well. I didn’t exactly want to work here.”
“You didn’t?” He looked confused. This was going all wrong. Goddamn this shipwreck gene. I could never say anything right.
“My parents got me the job.” Even I could hear how spoiled that sounded.
“Ah,” Orion said. “So you’re summer folk.” He zipped his lunch box closed and shouldered it.
“No! Well. My mom grew up here. I used to come here as a kid. I’m from the city. But I’m not like a tourist.”
“Portland? Boston?”
“Er. New York City?”
“The Big Apple, huh. I’ve never been.”
“Really? Oh my God, you’d love it. Like—if you like the ocean—at the natural history museum alone, there’s the great blue whale model, and the pearl diver exhibit, and the squid and the whale….”
“Whereas here we just have the ocean.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Though, come on, you do have to admit,” I said, gesturing at the feed bucket, the jarred specimens, and the dog-hair-covered couch. Boris lifted his head. Why was I still talking? Why couldn’t I stop? The words were bubbling up, unstoppable and ugly: “This place used to be great, but it’s kind of depressing now, isn’t it?”