Cry of the Sea (30 page)

Cortlandt laughed his fake, eely laugh. His
secretary joined him, and I decided she was similar to a barracuda.
“A hundred mermaids in a tank that size and then extracted in a
just a few short minutes? Does that even seem plausible?”

The reporters muttered about how this didn’t
make any sense at all. A profound disappointment crossed Peña’s
face too.

“We all saw them!” Haley shouted out. “Some
were dead, even.”

Marlee screeched, “You saw the mermaids?”

Regina pushed toward Haley. “A loser like you
gets to see the mermaids while I’m stuck up in the lobby with all
these stupid reporters and this ugly, weird man.”

Ted grabbed his girlfriend’s arm and yanked
her back so that she lost her balance and fell back into a desk
chair. “Leave her alone, Regina. You’re just embarrassing
yourself.”

I stepped between Haley and Regina as the
popularity queen struggled to regain her balance with no help at
all from Ted, who had moved over to his snickering best friend. “I
let Haley come see them because she’s my best friend. You are the
loser today.”

Regina’s eyes turned to thin little beads. If
they could shoot lasers, they would have. “I think this whole thing
was a hoax, June. And I’m going to make sure everyone at school
knows you’re a fake.”

“Fine!”

She grabbed Marlee’s hand and pulled her out
of the laboratory. Gary followed while shouting, “I told you it was
fake. I can’t believe you made me miss practice for this.” Ted
lingered an extra moment, passing a final apologetic glance at
Haley before walking out too.

Cortlandt stepped up to me, gesturing to the
empty tank. “So, now you’ve lost your popularity and your
credibility. Anything else you want to say, Miss Sawfeather?”

“Yeah.” I faced the reporters. “I wish you
all had gotten here faster. You let Affron win again.”

At that, I pushed through them and headed for
the door with Haley and Carter close behind.

Chapter
Nineteen

College catalogs and application forms
littered the living room. My mom and I pored through each one that
looked interesting. So far (and we’d been at this for forty-five
minutes) neither of us had raised our voices or looked cross-eyed
at each other. It was truly a miracle.

“Now, what about San Diego?” Mom finally
asked. I know she’d been avoiding it. “Isn’t that where you said
you wanted to go?”

“I’ve thought about it,” I confessed. “I
thought really hard. Part of me still wants to go there because I
know they have the best program, but another part of me thinks I
should stay in this area.”

Mom grinned as she ran her fingers through my
long, black hair. “Could it have anything to do with a young
college student majoring in Biology?”

I felt my cheeks get hot. “Maybe,” I
answered. “It also has to do with something else.”

Mom nodded, but the grin changed to something
more sincere. “You know the chances of seeing another mermaid are
slim.”

“Oh, I know,” I said too quickly to fool her.
“If they’ve got any brains at all they’re probably far, far away
from here.” I knew that wasn’t true, though. They’ve lived out
there in our waters for hundreds of years, and I didn’t believe
they would abandon their homes or their killer whales. Every couple
weeks I headed out to Grayland Beach to see if maybe my mermaid
friend was swimming around by the buoys keeping an eye out for
me.

I flipped through the pages of a Humboldt
University catalog slowly, but I wasn’t looking at the pictures. I
remembered all the effort it took to get the reporters to finally
stop harassing our family and go away. There hadn’t been much point
in defending my story any longer. No one believed me anyway. Plus,
someone at Affron nicely retouched my video for me, messing with
the image, brightening it too much and setting the contrast way
off. It looked ridiculous. Not even worthy of the tabloid rags.
Somehow, when this new image got spread around the Internet, the
old one was forgotten.

Haley was angrier about it than me. She came
over on Saturday afternoon, the day after our adventure, to show me
what had happened and how quickly. “I worked hard on that
video.”

“I know,” I said. “I think that Boyle guy
wiped out all Schneider’s research, too. Carter said he was messing
with the computer the whole time Regina was wigging out. So,
there’s no proof of anything.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say
no
proof,” Haley
said. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a flash
drive. “A good nerd always has one handy.”

I grabbed her up for a big hug. “You’re the
best.”

“I’ll keep it safe. Who knows when it might
come in handy?”

Over the next few weeks, Haley and I
gradually went from being teased and hassled around campus to being
ignored and forgotten once again. Glad to know things could get
back to normal. We did manage to recruit six members to our
Recycling Club, and we were already making a difference around
campus. I promise that I wasn’t hijacking backpacks for water
bottles. Actually, most of the support came from the many friends
of the newly single Ted Cowley, who had become our most
enthusiastic member and attended every meeting.

The stories about the whole mermaid sighting
being a scam made all the crowds disappear. All that remained were
the die-hard conspiracy freaks. There’s not much you can do to stop
them once they get a hint that something supernatural is out there.
My parents had to do a lot of work explaining how their daughter
had tricked them as well—the only way to save their reputations. It
hurt to hear them bash me, but none of it was how they truly felt
and we’d all agreed telling lies was the only option.

Eventually though, the whole thing went away.
Just another urban legend.

I had worried that disregarding the mermaids
would wind up helping Affron. Luckily, my parents, the world’s
greatest environmental activists, knew what to do. They used the
footage my dad and I shot of the oil-coated sea life (absent of
mermaids) and took it right to the governments of both countries.
Armed with laws about oil tanker retrofitting and signed promises
from Affron not to roll that fateful night, my mother had a case
that knocked Affron on its butt.

According to legislation in both Canada and
the United States, Affron had to cease operation until all their
tankers were redesigned and inspected by government officials. On
top of that, they were hit with heavy fines and forced to put a
much larger percentage of their profits into the condition and
staffing of their rehabilitation centers.

I raised my eyes over the college catalog and
gazed at my mom with admiration. She really was a powerful and
wonderful person.

“The other reason I was thinking of staying
close to home is that I think I kind of got a taste for this
activist stuff,” I told her. “I thought I’d stick around and help
you and Dad out.”

Mom pulled me in for a squeeze and tossed the
Humboldt catalog on the floor. “You can do whatever you want,
June,” she said. “I’ll be proud of you no matter what you choose or
where you choose to do it. I’ve raised the strongest, most
incredible girl in the world.”

We decided to call it quits for the night.
Too many decisions to make with Dad out of the house. So, while Mom
made dinner, I headed up to my room.

I dropped a bit of food into the goldfish
bowl on my dresser and watched the tiny creature swim around and
gobble up the flakes. Then, as slowly as I could, I dipped my
finger into the bowl. At first the fish backed away from me, but I
was persistent. I held my finger absolutely still and waited.
Curious, the goldfish approached my finger and seemed to be
sniffing it. After a moment the goldfish must have sensed that the
finger would cause it no harm, so it swam around, pressing its
little body against the finger, enjoying the sensation of
touch.

The phone rang. Wiping my wet finger on my
jeans, I picked it up. “Hello? Dad? Are you okay?”

The line was scratchy, but I was pretty sure
I heard my dad say, “Plantation Lumber is creeping into Chinook
protected land. They want to rip down the cedar trees here and use
them for rabbit cage linings. We could use some people to stand
with us out here. You and your mom want to join us?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll be there as soon as we
can.”

I hung up the phone and shouted. “Mom! Cedar
trees falling! Dad needs us right away!”

Not waiting for my mom to answer, I jumped
into gear. As I changed my clothes into more rugged attire and
gathered up the necessary tools, I found myself feeling happier
than I had in weeks.

Anything could happen
, I thought
giddily.
I saw a mermaid on my last mission. Maybe today I’ll
see a unicorn or a dragon.

And if not, if a certain college freshman
could be persuaded to come along (and I felt confident that might
be the case), I would at the very least have a night of holding
hands, chanting in protest together, and cuddling close to stay
warm. It could be as romantic as my dad had hinted once upon a
time. That delicious thought in mind, I followed my mom out the
door and headed toward another adventure.

Acknowledgements

This novel would not have happened if not for
the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators-Midsouth
Region group. I’m particularly grateful for the editor critique
session I had at their annual Fall Conference five years ago and
the novel revision workshop led by author Helen Hemphill, events
that helped me figure out how to get this novel going in the right
direction. It is a great group of people. I also really appreciate
the members of the Teen Lit Authors listserv who all are ready with
advice and support.

I’m immensely thankful to the group here at
Fire and Ice Young Adult Novels. Thank you to Nancy Schumacher and
Denise Meinstad for accepting my novel. Caroline Andrus, I couldn’t
imagine a better cover design. Megan Orsini, your editing and
advice were perfect, and I appreciate the great care you gave to my
story.

Above all, I want to thank my family and
friends. It has been over a decade since this story began in my
brain, and deciding to start the whole thing over again from
scratch three years ago was hard to do. You kept me from quitting
and are there for me still.

About the Author

D. G. Driver is a
member of SCBWI and Author's Guild. Along with
Cry of the
Sea
, she has recently had a short story called
“The Jamaican
Dragon”
published in an anthology of pirate stories titled
A
Tall Ship, A Sail, and Plunder
from Dark Oak Press. She grew up
in Southern California only 30 minutes from the beach. As a girl,
she used to dream that magic would change her overnight into a
beautiful mermaid. Alas, that never happened, but her love of the
ocean never diminished. Even though she is landlocked in Tennessee
now, she still only needs one whiff of sunscreen to bring her
imagination alive. Thanks to the support of her husband and a sweet
drawing of a mermaid done by her daughter that was taped on the
wall above her desk to keep her motivated to finish,
Cry of the
Sea
is her first published Young Adult novel. A dragon picture
hangs there now, so we’ll see what happens...

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