Cry of the Sea (22 page)

“Yeah, I feel like that too,” he said. “I
think we’ve all lost sight of what’s important.”

I knew he was talking about the oil. I knew
he was blaming me—again. I stifled my defensiveness and sat up on
my knees.

“Dad, listen to me. Hear me. I’m going to
tell
you
a story. It goes like this. Our people have lived
on this land for thousands of years, right? We lived in harmony
with the cedar tree, the whale, the elk, and raven. Less than three
hundred years ago white men came here and took our land from us.
They killed us when they couldn’t understand us, and they put us to
work for them when they could. They chopped down our cedar trees,
massacred our whales, shot our elk, and captured our ravens. Now
we’re just ghosts walking in a desolate world. Do you recognize
that story, Dad?”

Dad nodded. “Of course. I taught you
that.”

“Yes,” I said. “Over and over again.”

“What’s your point?” Dad asked. It surprised
me that he didn’t see the connection.

“My point is,” I said slowly, “just because
people have learned about the tragedy that befell the American
Indians doesn’t mean they’ll remember it when confronted with
mermaids.” I leaned forward. “Protecting the rights of our people
has been your most important cause. Are the mermaids any different?
Do they deserve this exploitation? If we don’t stop this madness,
all that will be left of the mermaids are just their echoing cries
from the sea.”

Dad stood up and walked to the window. He
angled himself so he could see a bit of the street between Haley’s
house and ours, observing the number of news vans and reporters
milling about outside. “You’re right,” he said at last. “We have
started the very kind of insanity that I would normally stand
against.”

I stood up and joined him at the window.
“Well, I started it,” I confessed.

“Maybe. But your mother and I propagated it.”
He turned away from the window and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll talk to your mother and try to convince her to hold off on
any more comments about the mermaids. We’ll contact a couple
reporters who might do a piece on how we need the water traffic to
stop until the oil is cleared up. That might give the mermaids some
room to hide, if they’re out there at all. I don’t know what else
we can do.” He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.

I figured I wouldn’t see either of them for a
while. He would have to get Mom away from the phones, and then it
would be a long discussion before she would be convinced to give up
project “Mermaid News Release”.

But I don’t think Dad got out much more than
one sentence before I heard my mom shout, “Absolutely not!” Two
seconds later she banged my bedroom door open so hard I jumped to
my feet.

“I don’t think either of you understand the
gravity of what is happening here,” she started as Dad stepped in
behind her. “Yes, we want the oil cleaned. Yes, we want the
mermaids protected. But none of that will make a difference if
Affron spills oil again and kills more mermaids, will it? We need
to milk this attention for every ounce that we can get, because we
will never get an opportunity like this again. All eyes and ears
are on us now. We will use this platform to our advantage. I don’t
want to hear another word about it. Tomorrow you can help me or you
can stay home and do nothing. Got it?”

I swallowed hard. “How do you want me to
help?”

“Get some sleep. We’re going with your father
to Grayland Beach in the morning. You will need to be made-up, so
you look good on camera. I’m going to get you on TV showing the
damage from the oil, where the mermaids were found, and you’re
going to make it clear who the culprit is. You want responsibility?
You got it.”

Mom turned on her heel and left the room. I
heard her muttering to herself down the hall as she walked to her
room as if she couldn’t stop the ranting machine she’d turned on.
Dad had this pained expression on his face, and I’m not sure if it
was because his wife disagreed with him or because he’d failed me.
Maybe it was a combination of both. If I were younger, I think I’d
have rushed over and hugged him. He kind of looked like he needed
one. I didn’t do that, though. Instead I just pulled my pajamas out
of my dresser to let him know I was ready to be alone.

“I’ll see you in the morning. Set your alarm
for 5:30,” he said before he left, closing the door behind him.

I dressed for bed and then went to the
window. The lights were on in Haley’s room. For a moment I thought
about calling her, but then I decided against it. She wasn’t my
friend anymore. I couldn’t call Carter, because he clearly didn’t
like me anymore either. My parents were impossible to talk to. I
had no one.

Or did I?

I sat at my desk and got on the Internet.
After searching my own name, I found thousands of entries. Late
into the night I read posts from people who thought the mermaids
talked and lived in magical lands under the sea. I saw drawings
that people had made based on my video that turned the mermaids
into something much more glamorous than what was real. I laughed
out loud a couple times at blogs that suggested I could communicate
with the mermaids and knew where they lived. A few times I got
really interested in the comparisons of the features of my mermaids
to ones from ancient legends. People were so strange, from the
bizarre fanatics to the ultra-scientific. Even the naysayers caught
my attention as they worked so hard to debunk my video as a fake by
explaining all kinds of photography techniques I’d never even heard
of that could be used to alter the images.

All of it was interesting, and most of it
seemed pretty harmless. My mind reeled that so many people were
stirred by my video. That something I’d done could cause so much
commotion. However, not one of the thousand links had it right.
None of them captured the uniqueness of my silver mermaid, her
shiny skin, bald head, and straight flat teeth. None of them had a
clue that she wore a mysterious shell necklace or that she had had
a dimple in her cheek when she smiled. Most of all, they were
missing all the emotion in those large midnight blue eyes of hers.
How I longed to see them again.

5:30 came before I’d even bothered to get
into bed. I’d been up all night. I heard my parents stirring in
their room, and I switched off the computer to get ready. I didn’t
know what was in store for the day, but I was determined to get a
few things straightened out. I wanted Haley on my side again. I
wanted Carter to speak to me again. Most of all, I wanted people to
know my mermaid was missing and needed to be found.

Chapter
Fourteen

There are a lot of places where you could go
to a beach in October and have a glorious time. Hawaii stands out
in my mind. Jamaica probably. The Florida and Gulf Shore beaches
were supposed to still be great for Fall Break. I’ve even heard
that the Southern California beaches could be a destination because
it wasn’t too cold yet. But the beaches in Washington State on a
Friday morning, at dawn, in the rain, weren’t usually vacation hot
spots. Dismally cold, moist and a little foggy, I couldn’t think of
many less pleasant places to spend my time. However, thanks to my
video, Grayland Beach was packed with people like it was a hot
summer day, and the sun hadn’t even fully risen yet. The campground
around the beach was filled with trailers and tents. People stood
around in the sticky sand in their rain gear, holding umbrellas
over friends with cameras.

What were they hoping to see in the dark,
cold rainy morning? I couldn’t imagine being so fascinated with the
idea of something that I would purposely drag myself out on a
morning like this. I was only here because my parents insisted. My
warm bed at home beckoned me, “Come back home, you silly, stupid
girl. You can’t do anything there, but you can come here and
sleep.”

I drank more coffee and tried to shut that
thought out.

It didn’t take long for people to recognize
the three of us. We were who they had been waiting for, after all.
My dad and I had a pretty distinctive look with our long, black
hair and dark skin. Not too many American Indian dads and daughters
in the news on a regular basis. I made a point of not wearing a
hat, but I’d pulled my hair into a long ponytail to keep it out of
my face. I wore a good sweater and jeans without holes in case the
rain ever stopped long enough for me to take off my slicker and
pose for a few pictures. Dad had work clothes on, not planning to
be on camera at all. Mom, though, she was dressed as well as she
could manage despite the weather. Her brown hair was pinned back
neatly in a French twist so it wouldn’t frizz in the rain, and she
wore a dress suit under her fitted raincoat. Her high-heeled
leather boots sank in the sand, but they prevented her from ruining
her nylons. All around us people looked like the rain falling on
them was the closest thing they’d had to a bath in a couple days,
and my mom looked like a super model. God bless her.

“We’ll be right with all of you,” my mom
insisted, as we pushed through the crowd. “We just need to survey
the situation here first and make sure the animals are safe. That
is our first priority.”

Surprisingly, the people backed off and let
us do our job. Right at the shoreline, we found a few more dead
fish and birds, but nothing like the devastation of three days ago.
I could still feel the slick oil in the water when I dipped my hand
in it, and balls of it were scattered all over the sand in the tide
line, mixed with the algae and shells. I gathered up the dead
creatures in trash bags, and dad put what was living in some
buckets full of ocean water.

Mom, naturally, did not touch anything that
would make her dirty. She sought out a great little spot near the
rocks at the far end of the beach. She spread out a blanket and set
up a couple director chairs on them. A couple male reporters helped
her assemble a gazebo tent over it to keep the rain off of her (and
their cameras). This would be her station for the day, where she
would conduct her business. By the time she was done with her
set-up, she had made the interview spot look like a small movie
set.

Mom settled into one of the chairs and
crooked a finger at me to come join her. After a quick wash of my
hands with some sanitizer, I sat next to her. From where Dad stood,
a foot deep in the ocean, I saw him shake his head in disgust. I’m
pretty sure that head shake was about my mom and I, not what he was
seeing in the foamy waves. Mom tugged the ponytail holder out and
spread my hair around my shoulders. Then she gave me a smile and
sang, “Here we go.”

The local news teams closed in first to get
some shots for those people who mostly watch the news in the
morning to see if they needed to grab their umbrellas before
heading out to work. These reporters weren’t looking for a lot of
detail and they didn’t ask many questions. Mostly I heard things
like, “It’s a cold, rainy morning here at Grayland Beach with
Internet sensation Juniper Sawfeather. It might not be the best day
to go mermaid watching, because the clouds are not going to clear
up at all today. What do you think, Trudy?” And then they’d shoot
it right back to the weather girl and the traffic guy at the
station.

Once the sun came up, the local news teams
took off and made room for the more invested journalists who took
turns talking to us about what we had found, what Dad was still
doing out there in the water, and what we were planning to do next.
I wanted to tell them that my next plan was to get off this beach
and go in search of my lost mermaid, but Mom wouldn’t let me say
that the mermaid was missing. Instead, she took over and made up a
whole story that none of us discussed ahead of time.

“Naturally we are hoping to find more
mermaids from whom we can study and learn. We’d like to know more
about the way they think and feel. If they are organized into
family structures or communities. We’d like to know how they
communicate. When we have that information, we will then know if
they are to be considered animals or people. Dr. Carl Schneider at
the Marine Animal Rescue Center right here in Aberdeen has already
begun research on the three mermaids found the other morning and
I’m sure is making all kinds of amazing discoveries that could
change the world.”

“Like what?” asked one reporter after
another.

Each time my mom would look at me first
before saying more, a small warning that I should not
interrupt.

“I’m told that while being cleaned of oil,
the mermaids were able to communicate pleasure at the touch of the
cloth on their skin through smiling and expressing some kind of
relief and gratitude. Clearly, they are not just oversized fish if
they are able to express those kinds of emotions. These are
creatures with hearts and minds, creatures that should have rights
and be protected from environmental hazards, like Affron’s leaky
oil vessels.”

The first time it flabbergasted me that she
was giving all the credit to Dr. Schneider. When she kept repeating
it over and over again, the lie burned right through me. Did she
really hate me so much that she had to steer all the attention away
from me and give it to that whiny scientist? He didn’t do anything
with the mermaid except lose her. What was so wrong about admitting
to the press that I was the one who discovered the mermaid had
feelings and had tried to communicate with her? I sat beside Mom
with my arms crossed and fumed. I didn’t care if the reporters
noticed.

They
did
try to get me to talk. I was
the story after all, not my mother. “Juniper Sawfeather, is this
true about Dr. Carl Schneider’s work? Were you witness to this
phenomenon after rescuing the mermaids from the oil spill?”