Cry of the Sea (13 page)

“Otters are so furry,” he said, clearly
fascinated by the animal. “There is more hair per square inch on a
sea otter than the entire coat of a Golden Retriever.”

I stepped up beside him. “It’s so cute.”

“And all that hair makes it hard to clean.
Oil is very dangerous to otters.” He darted his eyes at Waller,
hoping the man got his point.

“How does it look?” I asked, wanting to know
how I could help.

“Oddly, not bad,” Carter said. “This little
fellow looks like he barely has anything on him.” Carter carried
the scared otter like a baby over to a larger tank that already had
another otter in it, and let the animal slip out of his arms into
the water. An oil sheen came off its fur and sparkled in the water.
“It won’t take much to get that guy back to normal.”

He moved on to one of the birds in a carrier.
Schneider asked me to take one of the plastic bags of fish from him
and dump it into an aquarium behind me. None of them looked bad to
me either. They could breathe with a fair amount of ease, from what
I could tell, and they swam around to check out their new home
without any visible difficulty. What was going on?

I sneaked a peak at Waller, who stood at the
end of the tables shaking his head as if very dissatisfied with
what we were doing. Suddenly, he brushed past me and headed for the
large tank. I elbowed Carter hard in his back, and he jumped,
dropping the poor seagull on the table. The bird squawked, and that
got Schneider’s attention.

“Carter, careful!”

But Carter wasn’t listening. He dashed to
Waller’s side. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Yes, actually,” he said. “I need to see this
tank and find out what’s wrong with it.”

“I told you. It’s broken.”

Schneider came over to the two of them. “What
is your concern, Mr. Waller?”

“Your small tanks are too crowded,” Waller
said. “The animals are going to fight. They’re going to go crazy
with this little space.” Boyle, the silent cohort, nodded, although
I felt pretty sure that guy had no idea if the animals might fight
or not. I didn’t get a sense that guy knew much at all except how
to drive the van. And judging by his parking job out front, he
probably wasn’t too good at that either.

“There’s nothing we can do about that right
at this moment,” Carter said. “As soon as we get that tank cleaned
and repaired, we’ll transfer some of the larger animals over. Until
then, we’re just out of luck.”

Dr. Schneider added, “It was just bad timing
for us, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, who would have
expected Affron to send out a ship that leaks oil into the
ocean?”

“June,” Dad warned.

I rolled my eyes at him. For an activist he
was being mighty low-key all of a sudden.

“This isn’t the time, and these aren’t the
people who matter,” he whispered in my ear as if he knew what I was
thinking.

Waller reached for the tarp, “Let me look at
the tank. Maybe it’s not as bad off as you think. Some adjustments?
I can do that for you.”

I chewed on the insides of my cheeks to keep
from squealing.

Schneider waved his hands as he said, “No! No
thanks. We have it under control.”

My dad tried a distraction, letting go of the
seagull he’d caught and been holding and then chasing it
ineffectively around the table. It caught the attention of the
Affron men, but neither moved to help him.

Carter, as always, the only one to keep his
cool, leaned against the tarp with his arms crossed. “I appreciate
the fact that you might have some insight, sir,” he said. “I’m sure
your help would be invaluable, but I really do know how to fix
this. I won’t be able to get to it until I get these animals
accounted for and put up safely. There’s a protocol we have to
follow.”

“I’d still like...” the man started, way too
insistently

“We know,” Dr. Schneider said. “We’d all like
it to work out better.” He placed a hand on the man’s back and
gestured toward the double doors. “Tomorrow. It should all be fixed
by tomorrow.”

Carter grinned and did a melodramatic sigh.
“Even if I have to stay all night.”

Ah, clever. Not only did the guy get the clue
that he wasn’t going to get to see the tank, but he couldn’t come
back in a couple hours and try again. Waller grunted some kind of
compliance. I’m pretty sure he didn’t like being told by a
nineteen-year-old what he could and couldn’t do.

Dad finally wrangled the seagull now that the
drama was over, and he plopped it into the hands of Boyle, who
juggled the poor bird like he didn’t have a clue how to handle it.
I dashed over to him and gently took the poor creature and put it
into the cage my dad had opened for it. Boyle looked visibly
relieved, though he was kind of frantically looking around for a
sink to wash off the bird crap all over his hands. It was a huge
effort not to laugh at him.

Carter nodded at me and crooked a finger for
me to come over to him. “Let’s get started on this.” He made a big
show of flipping pages in a folder for me to look at, and I nodded
my head a whole bunch and added some “mmm hmmms” for good measure.
While we did this, Dad got busy finding a mop and cleaning up the
floor.

Dr. Schneider led Waller to the double doors.
“I imagine you have more work to do down at the beach.”

“Not really. The spill was very minor. I
doubt we’ll have anything else to bring over.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Dr. Schneider said.
“That’s very good.”

Boyle joined them at the double doors, wiping
his wet hands on his pants. “Need a shower,” he moaned.

“Yes,” Dr. Schneider said, patting the man on
the back. “Well, you go have a pleasant evening.”

“We’ll do that,” Waller said. He took one
more glimpse over at us. I waved at him, but I knew he was looking
over my head at the tarps hanging over the big tank.

Dr. Schneider opened a door and held it open.
“Mr. Waller,” he said, and then waited for both men to walk through
before following them out.

The second they men were gone, Carter dropped
to the floor like he’d deflated. “Wow.” Dad and I laughed, and then
he joined in too.

“It takes a lot to be that cool,” my dad
said. “I’m thoroughly impressed.”

“Thanks, Mr. Sawfeather,” Carter said.
“Coming from you, that’s huge.”

“No, I’m serious. We were all ridiculous, and
you were the only one with his wits about him.”

I picked up two bottles of dish soap. “We
didn’t even use these.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Carter said, pulling
himself back up to his feet. “Interesting huh?”

Dad watched the otters getting to know each
other in their too-small tank. “Yeah. This guy should have probably
been near death. We should
still
be cleaning him. I’ve seen
animals today so coated with oil we couldn’t do anything about
them. And there will be more tomorrow as the oil continues to
spread.”

“I heard on the news that they’ve already put
dispersants in the ocean,” Carter said.

“They have,” Dad said. “And that’ll help the
top layer, but a lot of that oil is going to sink. This spill is
not as bad as that one back at the Gulf, but it’s still going to
cause some serious long term damage.”

“So, why wasn’t this van-load more affected?”
I asked.

“You know what I think?” Carter said. “I
think they just smeared some oil on these animals to make it look
like they were part of the spill to give them access here. I think
they were after something else.”

“Not the mermaid!” I said. “They couldn’t
possibly know about that.”

Carter shook his head. “No, it’s not that.
That’s way too far-fetched. I mean, how could anyone possibly
suspect...?”

“It’s not the mermaid,” Dad said. “Those men
clearly weren’t scientists. Just Affron spies. I’ve run into those
types before. They’re trying to see how bad the spill really was,
so they know how much they have to cover up.”

“Well, they couldn’t have been more obvious,”
said Carter.

Dr. Schneider came back in the room and
nodded for my dad to follow him to his office.

All of a sudden Carter laughed. “What would
that guy have done if I said, ‘Sure go ahead and try to fix the
tank’? Would he have had the slightest clue?”

“I seriously doubt it,” I said, handing
Carter the dish soap. At the slightest brush of our hands against
each other, I felt my face turn instantly hot. Praying the blush
wasn’t visible, I slid past him and pulled back the edge of the
tarp to look at the mermaid instead of him. The mermaid wriggled
toward me, a feeling of relief flooded through me, and I wasn’t
sure if it was me feeling relieved to see she was still okay or her
feeling relieved that I was okay. “Should we leave these tarps on
here? Will it be too dark?”

“I think we should leave them on for now,”
Carter said. “You never know who’s going to pop in here. I don’t
think this was the last we’ll see of those Affron men.” He came up
behind me and put a hand against the glass over my head, his body
awfully close behind mine. “I’ll be here a while tonight taking
care of things around here, and I’ll be sure to leave some lights
on. She’s used to living in the deep ocean, so darkness shouldn’t
scare her. I wouldn’t think, anyway.”

“This is a different kind of darkness,” I
said, “and a very different kind of environment.”

He was silent a moment before he finally said
in a very serious tone, “I know.” He turned me around to look right
in his face. “I’ll take care of her. I promise.”

It was suddenly really hard to breathe, but
somehow I managed to whisper, “I could stay here too. And help some
more.”

“Don’t you have homework?”

From across the room I heard the click of Dr.
Schneider’s door and my father tease, “Yes, June. Don’t you have
some homework? Some
high school
homework?”

My breath came back. I sighed and rolled my
eyes and moved away from Carter enough to be dad-approved.
“Ugh.”

“Ah, there’s that American Indian in you,
Miss Sawfeather,” Carter laughed.

I smacked him. “That is so inappropriate. I
take away your coolness points.”

“Sorry,” he said, but he was still
snickering.

“Don’t you have homework too, college boy?” I
flung back at him.

“I do, but it’s not as interesting as all
this. I’ll get it done between classes tomorrow.”

“I wish I could do that. I just felt a
massive wave of tiredness wash over me.” Now that the adrenaline
rush of cleaning the mermaid and distracting the Affron dudes was
over, I suddenly felt like I was going to drop. It occurred to me
that I’d been awake since three in the morning and it was now eight
p.m. Well, if you didn’t count falling asleep in English class this
afternoon, but that was hardly a satisfying snooze.

Carter smiled at me and put a hand on my
shoulder. It wasn’t that charming smile he faked the Affron men
with, but a sweet, genuine one that made his green eyes twinkle.
How did he keep smiling throughout all this work and stress? “You
should go home. We’ll catch up tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’ll pick you up after school again,” he
said. Then he added, snidely, “That is if it’s convenient for
you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh nothing, Miss San Diego State.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, which was
probably unladylike, and I kind of regretted it ten minutes later
because it was the last thing he saw me do before grabbing my dad
and pulling him out the door. “Come on, Dad,” I said. “You need
sleep as much as I do.”

Dad tried to veer me back inside before we
got past the tide-pool aquarium up front, but I kept my grip firm
on his arm.

“I mean it, Dad. It’s pizza, a shower, and
night-night.”

“Oh, fine,
Mom
,” he said, laughing.
“Speaking of which, I need to get home and call your mom. I’m way
overdue for a check in, and she’s probably ready to throttle
me.”

During the drive home, I forced him to listen
to a classic rock station instead of the news, any talk shows, or
NPR. It was tough for him, but when we got into singing some Queen
at full volume, it helped keep us both awake enough to make it home
without crashing or running off the road.

We gobbled up the cheese pizza as soon as we
got home, and I listened to relentless advice about how to handle a
nineteen-year-old boyfriend even though I kept explaining to him
that Carter was not my boyfriend and probably never would be. All
the tension from the night before was gone, and I was glad that he
didn’t bring up any of it. At least for the moment I could enjoy
being with my dad, even if he did tell ridiculous stories about
mermaids singing to killer whales.

After dinner, I showered for the second time
that day and put on some sweats. Then I went up to my room to plow
through my homework. I decided to save reading the
Moby Dick
chapters for bedtime, since I was sure it would knock me out for
the night. I called Haley a few times from our home line, but she
didn’t answer. Her parents didn’t have a home line, just cell
phones, and I felt kind of weird about calling her mom’s number,
even though I had it. I saw the light on in her room, but her
shades were closed. I wasn’t sure if she was in there or not. I
leaned out my window and yelled across the divide between our
houses. That didn’t work either.

I got on my computer and I.M.’d her. Nothing.
I emailed her and waited for a response. Nothing.

I knew she was mad at me, but I really didn’t
think she was mad enough to be ignoring me like this. Maybe she was
into a really great episode of
100 Most Shocking Videos
.
There was nothing else to do except the old fashioned thing. I
slipped into some shoes, headed downstairs and out the door, and
walked over to knock at her front door. Her mom answered, a little
confused to have me at her front door at ten p.m.