“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he says gently. Mr. Harris has eyes that make you want to tell him the truth. I scowl at them.
I tell him a lot of it. Most of it. Some of it. And he nods his head.
“How did Mom and Dad react?” He stops writing and looks me straight in the eye. I squirm.
“They don’t know,” I lie. I lift my chin to stop myself from crying. “So I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell them.” My tears are real, even if my words are not.
“You know I have to follow up with them.”
“Yes.” Social workers always check to see if your stories match. I’m sure my mother will pretend like she didn’t know.
“And how did you hurt your eye?” He doesn’t look at me, only the desk with his papers.
“What?” I whisper.
“Your eye, Mary.”
He says it like he already knows. Someone told him. Who? Sister Eu? Betty? I haven’t even seen her. Kip? Lydia’s family?
I squeeze my knees together. Someone told on me. The mutiny stings as much as my bruise. “I fell.”
Mr. Harris writes instead of talking, then looks up. “I hear that one a lot. Lots of clumsy people in the county.” His voice drops. “Your dad’s on probation for assault? Just released from prison?”
“Yes, but not for assaulting me.” I am a rockfish refusing to bite, and frustration is leaking off the waterman.
“Mary, I want you to know that you’re in a position to help yourself. You can tell me anything, and I can help. That’s my job.”
“Right.” What if the truth did come out? What if it unraveled like a rope?
“I’m serious. I’m here for you.” He packs up his nylon bag and pulls a card out of his wallet, the edges curved. He hands it to me.
My throat aches. My brain hurts. My eyes commit treason. “Are we done, Mr. Harris? I’m missing my final.”
“One last thing, Mary. I know you’re not telling me everything. And you know I can’t do anything unless you do. But if you don’t want to talk to me, I suggest talking to someone, an adult you can trust.”
I don’t wait for a pass from Mrs. Rivers, and I don’t stop when Sister Eu calls my name. Instead, I hurry, trying not to sprint like a weirdo down the hallway back to class. I need to take that test.
I burst back into the room, and everyone looks up from their exams. My noise is much louder than the classroom noise, and I panic, stepping back into the hall.
I slump against the wall, my feet tucked neatly underneath me. When the doorknob turns, I lift my head. Mr. Fen is standing over me, his shoes inches from me.
His body halfway in the door, Mr. Fen scolds the other students. “What are you looking at? You have a test to take. I swear, if you even think about cheating, I will give you a zero.” His face is growly. “Not that any of you think anyway.”
Then he crouches down, the door open a crack. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Kip would know what fine means, but I’m not sure he even likes me anymore.
“Well, from that entrance, I’m thinking perhaps you’re not.”
“Mr. Fen, sir, I am fine,” I insist. I stand, and now it’s weird again because I’m standing and he’s kneeling.
“Because if you want to take the test later, I understand.”
Was it him? Did Mr. Fen tell on me? Doesn’t he know this just makes everything worse? “I want to take the test now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mr. Fen.” My voice is too loud. “I appreciate your concern, but yes, I would like to be normal and take my test with the rest of the class. Stop feeling sorry for me.” I brush past him, and that feels weird too. I keep doing all this weird stuff, when all I want to do is take my test like a regular eighth grader.
I sit back down next to Kathleen, rearrange my pencils, and try to ease the pounding in my chest. Three questions in, I peek at Fen. My cheeks fall. He was being nice.
With the last thirty minutes of class, I finish the test with no time to worry about the visit from Mr. Harris.
I see Kip in my classes, but we don’t sit close enough to talk. And after school, I can’t find him, so I head to the marina before my meeting with Ford Wallace. I would rather be doing anything else. Does Kip want to help still? Does he still like me? What does he think of me now that he knows?
I don’t know if I want the answers to any of those.
Mrs. Dwyer smiles when I walk in the shop and tells me Kip’s out on gas duty while Monica yanks on her arm. I brace myself as I walk out toward Back Creek and the dock. I’m going to tell him about Ford Wallace. I’m going to tell him and let him decide what he wants to do. I squeeze my fingers into fists.
This time, he is alone at the gas pump, sitting on an overturned bucket that’s probably used for chum. I’m so quiet, he doesn’t see me until I’m standing right in front of him. When he does, he shoots up. He’s a lot taller than I am, and I swear he’s grown in the last two months. Inches. Feet. A few docks down, a boat motor starts, and Kip looks behind him.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hey, Mary.”
I shake my head. Mary doesn’t sound right. It’s the Kip Dwyer kiss of death. “I’m going to the retreat right now. Ford Wallace said he’d help me.” I try to make my voice normal.
“Are you sure you . . .” Kip keeps looking at my eye. And at my cheek. And out at the water so he doesn’t have to look at my eye or cheek. It’s awful. It’s embarrassing. I am very sick of my eyes burning and people feeling sorry for me. Pity is the worst. I would gladly replace it with almost anything.
I cross my arms. “Yes, I am going to build this sub, and you can help me or not.”
Kip puts his hand on the back of his neck where the sun has made it red. “If I didn’t bring you across the bridge. If I didn’t get us in trouble, he wouldn’t have . . . I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“It is not because of you.”
“But what if he . . .?” Kip frowns, which I’ve never seen, I don’t think. Not a real frown. It must be because he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t. That’s why he doesn’t want to help.
“You don’t like me anymore, I get it,” I say. “I understand.” But I don’t want it to be true. I ball my hands even tighter and jam them in my pockets.
“What?” he asks. “Murphy, that’s the most. . . Are you serious? I’m pretty sure I’ve made my affection very clear.” He laughs, which is a nice sound to hear, even if he is laughing at me. “Fen said too clear! I know I shouldn’t be taking advice from him, but my dad, he’s a little too good with the ladies.”
I don’t laugh along with him, so his freckles get serious again.
“I feel like it’s my fault.” Kip watches me very carefully while he talks. “I don’t want him to hurt you again.”
Before, I wanted to build the sub for selfish reasons. To spend time with Kip. To build something with my hands like we built the remote-controlled version. To escape, at least in stolen moments. For minutes, for hours, I could forget about my dad. I could forget about the damage he’s caused.
But now I want those minutes to extend. To expand like a bubble. To turn into something else.
I stick out my chin and look up at Kip. “What’s the worst he could do?”
“I don’t know,” Kip says. His face isn’t as carefree as usual. It’s too serious. “But if you’re in, I’m in.”
Dedicated to fighting for France’s freedom, Joan sought out a French captain who knew the dauphin, Charles. Once he’d decided Joan wasn’t a witch, the captain gave her a sword, an expensive horse, and four soldiers to guard her as she traveled to the dauphin. For protection on the dangerous roads, she cut her hair short and dressed like the male soldiers. At night, she slept on the ground in armor.
When she met Charles, she curtsied and whispered a secret God had told her. A secret no one but the dauphin knew.
The dauphin accepted her pledge to help him be crowned.
Destiny w
as coming true.
Joan trained alongside the soldiers. The voices told her she would find a sword, lost for hundreds of years, at Saint Catherine’s tomb. At her saint’s place of rest, the sword appeared, five crosses engraved in its metal.
And then she was ready for battle.
Her tale spread across France. How she was gifted and fast. Able to ride a horse and fight. Hundreds of men came to fight for her. And then thousands.
Joan wore a suit of gleaming armor. Into battle, she carried a banner, a beautiful painting of Jesus and Mary and the fleur-de-lis.
The saints told her she would not last the year, so she was impatient for victory. Joan ignored the advice of the military leaders and rallied the troops to victories in Orleans first, and then along the Loire River.
And then it was time. Charles was ready to be crowned. At his coronation, Joan stood by his side as he was anointed.
She had done it. She had gotten France their king.
My side hurts less, and I ride my bike to the Cliffs without Kip. He has to work until dark. When Wallace opens the door, he says, “Hi, dear” with a drawl and a smile. I like the nice Ford Wallace.
He ushers me in and points to the couch.
“Can I get you anything to eat or drink?” he asks, busying himself in the kitchen. It’s the only uncluttered spot in the house. When I shake my head, he says, “I’m just going to get myself some coffee. I have a bit of a problem with caffeine. Drink too much of it.” He hurries over with his coffee, the syrupy smell following him, and moves a pile of books off a chair.
“Now, what is the goal? Where is your sub going to take you?”
Away. “Across the Bay.”
Ford rummages around in a pile in the corner and spreads out a contour map of the water on the coffee table. My dad has the same map; the black lines show the depth of the Bay.
“If you leave from the marina, it’ll be about seven miles. That’s conceivable as far as oxygen and the supplies we can get.” He rubs his knuckle along the hair on his jaw. “You read my book?”
I nod. A chunk of it. Some of Kip’s and my earlier ideas were wrong, and I’m glad I didn’t trust us on our own.
“Building a submersible today is a lot like when I wrote the book in 1976, only technology is better now. But the science is the same.” He pats my hand. “We’re going to get creative. Mix a little old with the new to save money.”
I tell him about the propane tank at Dwyer’s Marina, and he squeals.
“We’ll draft out a plan on a program today. How much do you know about CAD?”
Nothing. “What’s CAD?”
“We are going to make a 3-D design of your submersible on my computer.”
We stack the papers on his desk and move away the books, then he opens a blank white project on his screen and makes me sit. For three hours, and with his help, I figure out how to build a model of the submersible.
I start with the hull, the sub’s body. If I were rich, or working for a lab or STEM program, we could make it out of plastic, designing and building the body from scratch. But like Ford Wallace said, we are mixing old and new.
I look up the measurements of the kind of propane tank they have at the marina—six feet long and two and a half feet high—and plug them into the software. I add another five inches to the top of the sub, right in the middle. A bubble that will become the hatch. A 3-D image of my sub appears, and I hide a smile behind my hand.
“We need to include the hatch,” I tell Ford, who wants me to call him by his first name. “And a porthole.” I count the parts out on my fingers. “Oh, a ballast, a battery, lights, and a motor.” All things I’ve talked about with Kip.
How are we going to power it? In the book, in the section titled “Power Distribution,” I read my options. When we weigh them out, we settle on marine batteries. I can get them at Dwyer’s. I just need to save up some money.
When I leave the Scientists’ Retreat, I ride my bike home, the sun shining, blaring, trumpeting above me. My face is probably doing the same.
Two days later is my last day of school. I tell Mr. Fen good-bye and thank him for the project. I still haven’t told him about the real sub that I’m working on with Ford. But that feels like a wonderful secret to keep mostly to myself. When it’s real, I’ll tell. Well, I’ll tell some people. Trustworthy people.
Mr. Dwyer drives the propane tank up to Ford’s cottage that afternoon, and Kip and Ford and I work on the computer, making alterations to our design.
Friday, the first morning of break, I leave Lydia’s and hope that everything has blown over at home. I get ready early for the library, and he’s already gone out on the water. Betty drives down to Bournes and picks me up in her hybrid to take me to North Beach in the middle of the county. I start my first job. My first real job that pays actual money.
My hair down, I sit next to her. I like her car. I like the leather seats and the long drive. The smell of the Bay. The old tobacco barns, the paint stripped off. NPR on the radio. She never complains about the drive either.
But today she doesn’t start the car like usual. Instead, she says, “Let me see you.”
I move really fast to face her, then cover myself.
“I told you we were going to be honest with each other,” she says. “I don’t operate any other way.”
I turn my head but don’t meet her eyes.
“Did he do that?”
I don’t say anything. I like Betty, I really do. I just don’t know her all that well yet.
“Is he here?”
I shake my head.
She fixes her glasses and backs out of the driveway.
For the rest of the day, she teaches me what is expected of an assistant at the library. I will work in the computer lab. Technically, I’m not old enough for working papers, so Betty will pay me in cash until my birthday in a few weeks. Once I turn fourteen, I will get a real paycheck.
Over the shelves of books, she watches me with her eyebrows pushed down. A mirror to mine when I’m distressed. But she says nothing about my face. It makes me squirm. Worse than when I’m with Sister Eu. I wait the entire time for the other shoe to drop.
When her hours are done, Betty drives me back down. The pickup truck with the dented bumper is not parked at my house when I go to open the car door.
“Oh no,” she says. “We’re going to make another stop.”
I put my hands in my lap. Where? She turns down Bleecker Street, and at the roundabout, she takes the first turn, down toward the bars on the end of the island. I put my hand against my jean pocket, where Joan lays hidden.
At the Tavern, Betty stops. Two men are walking in the door, men I’ve seen before. Why are we at the Tavern? I squint while she gets out and shakes her hair back. My father’s truck is parked at the end.
“You stay right here,” she says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I fixate on the black door of my dad’s favorite place. She comes out five minutes later, her face red. “If he ever does that again, you call me. You call me or the police. Or you run to a neighbor’s house and call me.” She buckles her seat belt, her fingers shaking. “I’m buying you a phone. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. The shoe drops. But she doesn’t mention a social worker.
In the morning, she hands me a phone, and I tuck it in my backpack. I’ve never had one before.
At the library, I work in the adult computer lab. Mostly I help old people use Google and close browsers. I print off recipes and pictures of their grandchildren for them. Only a few people come in a day. The kid computer lab, on the other hand, is a bunch of frenzied fish going after bait. Chaos. But Betty’s in charge of that.
We eat in the staff room together at lunch. Betty brings rice and beans and roasted vegetables from her garden. She packs a nut butter sandwich and pretzels for me with two glass bottles of water, but she sneaks purple soda from the vending machine every day and says, “Just this once.”
I watch a researching team find new organisms never discovered before on the floor of waterways. And teenagers constructing submersibles and tanks.
I ask Betty for a notebook, and when she hands me one, I bring it into the lab and write “Ford Project” in neat letters on the blue cardboard cover. I draw waves underneath the letters and smile.
But it’s not like Kathleen drawing unicorns. I’m really going to pilot a sub.
At the library and home, I finish Ford’s book. The section on water accidents explains why Ford wanted me to have a lawyer. One small wave can flood a sub when it’s exposed to the surface. Lots of people have died that way. And all the chemicals reacting in such a small area can cause fires and explosions.
Oxygen levels are another worry. Every thirty minutes, an alarm will go off, reminding me to open the oxygen valve. Too much, and I explode. Too little, and I choke. I pull my hair tight against my scalp at the nape and try to ignore the idea that I might not survive the trip.
The propane tank sits in Ford’s driveway, the paint peeling off, a long white pill ready to transform. When it’s quiet at the library, I daydream about the voyage. I’ll be undetectable under the waves.
Two weeks into summer break, we work on the welding. Ford’s neighbor, Mr. Jack, will do it for free. He just wants me and Kip to bring him shark teeth when we find them. He sells them along Route 4. That’s easy. Kip brought him six yesterday.
“Go get Mr. Jack if you’re ready,” Ford shouts from the kitchen.
At cottage number ten, I knock. Mr. Jack, an old man with big gray hair and light brown skin, answers. He’s wearing coveralls, even though it’s a million degrees out, that protect his arms and legs. Tiny glasses sit on his nose.
Mary Underwater Page 7