Thirteen Plus One (19 page)

Mischief flashed in Cinnamon’s eyes. “Actually, we just
think
it was Mountain Dew. For all we know, it
could
have been Mellow Yellow.” She chortled. “Bottled at the source.”

“Ew!” Dinah said.

“They’re the same color,” Cinnamon said. “Mountain Dew and Mellow Yellow
and”
—Cinnamon waggled her eyebrows at the commode—“the fine specimen we have here.”

“I wonder if we’ll all get to know each other by the color of our pee,” I mused. “Like if I’ll go to the bathroom and say, ‘Why look, Brooklyn must have just stopped by.’ ”

Dinah, her eyes big and round, pushed us out.

“Don’t forget—no flushing!” I called through the door.

“Unless you poop,” Cinnamon said. Her voice reverberated in the hall. “Are you pooping in there, Dinah?”

The lock clicked.

Cinnamon and I grinned at each other.

“She’s going to flush,” Cinnamon said.

“I know—even if she doesn’t poop.”

“Go
away!
Dinah cried.

“It’s probably for environmental reasons,” Cinnamon reflected. “You think that’s the deal? Virginia wants us to be green?”

“Virginia wants us to be
yellow
,” I clarified.

“I mean it! ” Dinah said. “I can’t do”—there was a pause loaded with frustration—
“anything
with the two of you standing there! ”

“You can’t pee
or
poop?” Cinnamon queried, just to make sure anyone within hearing range understood. “Are you constipated, Dinah?”

Down the hall, a door opened, and footsteps sounded. Footsteps which were coming our way.

“Oh no,” Cinnamon said. We huddled close. I clutched the sleeve of Cinnamon’s shirt.

“Here,” Ryan said, tossing us a small box. Cinnamon fumbled, but managed to catch it, which impressed me mightily. If it had come my way? It would have hit my body and ricocheted to the floor. “Dem marshmallows can gum up the works.”

Cinnamon blinked. Other than that, her face was motionless and betrayed very little.

“Um ... thanks?” I said.

“Duffenetly,” Ryan said, all Mafia-like. He sauntered back down the hall. “Night, ladies.”

As soon as he was out of sight, we looked at the box. DULCOLAX STOOL SOFTENER, it said. GENTLE, SOFTENING RELIEF.

“Why?!”
I whispered, meaning
Why would Ryan have such a thing?

“Winnie?” Dinah said from within the bathroom. “Cinnamon?”

In a hushed, almost reverential tone, Cinnamon read the fine print. “It doesn’t make you go, it makes it easier to go.” She lifted her eyes to mine.

I took the box from her hand. I placed it outside the bathroom door and gave it a quick pat. “We’ll just leave it here for her.”

“Excellent idea.”

Our whispers didn’t sit well with Dinah, who said, “Who’s out there? For
real, y’all!
”

Cinnamon tiptoed back to our room. I followed. Two minutes later we heard the toilet flush (of course).

Cinnamon held up her index finger. “Wait for it ...”

Seconds ticked by. Dinah was washing her hands. Dinah was drying her hands. Dinah was unlocking the door and stepping into the hall ...

A yelp pierced the air, then cut off abruptly and was replaced by the pounding of feet on the stairs. She was flushed when she appeared in the doorway.

“You
guys
!” she exclaimed, giggling wildly.

She cocked her arm and let the box of stool softeners fly, aiming for some reason at me instead of Cinnamon. I squeaked and tried to shield myself, but she missed me by a mile.

 

That was last night. Now here it was the next morning, and the toilet was full of my pee. Anyone on this floor of the house—Cinnamon, Dinah, Mark, Ryan, Erika, and Brooklyn—could easily figure out that it was my pee, since I was the one on pre-sunrise turtle crawl duty.

Did I really want that? To let my pee “mellow,” at the possible expense of my dignity?

But ... it was a house rule. Virginia had taken the time to
needlepoint
it, for heaven’s sake. And if I was all,
Ooo, I’m too un-wimpy to squat, squatting is for girly-girls who wrinkle their noses and never go barefoot and worry about their hair getting windblown
... Well, if I was bold enough to be a seat-sitter, shouldn’t I be willing to throw dignity out the window and follow the when-to-flush rule?

It was a test of character, that’s what it was. So ... fine. I pulled back my hand from the toilet’s handle.
I did not flush.
It was hard, but I did it, and as I washed up, I very briefly identified with my own urine, idling brazenly in the pot.

I am Winnie’s pee!
I thought.
Hear me roar!

It was times like these when I wondered if everyone really was as strange as I was, or if I was just a special case.

I went downstairs and found Alphonse in the kitchen, rinsing out a glass. He had his long hair held back, I noticed, but I wasn’t sure it would classify as a ponytail. Even if it did, I
knew
it didn’t jounce, because his dreads were so thick. I liked the leather cord he used instead of an elastic.

“I made you some peanut butter toast,” he said. He went to the toaster oven and opened it. “You want?”

“Sure,” I said, although my stomach wasn’t awake yet. “Thanks.”

“Good protein boost.”

“Okay. Uh ... cool.”

Nobody else was up. Outside the big kitchen picture window, the marsh was dark and ghostly looking, thanks to a low ribbon of fog. Alligator eyes, half-submerged, could be watching me and I wouldn’t even know it.

“You can eat it on the way,” Alphonse said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him through the back of the kitchen, which connected to the green staircase, which, like the blue staircase, led both up and down. Going up would take us first to a screened-in porch, then to the level where the den was, and finally to the Crow’s Nest. Going down, as Alphonse now did, took us to the bathhouse, where people could shower and change after coming in from the beach. Cutting through the bathhouse was another way to get outside.

“So ... what do we do?” I asked Alphonse, after we took the short trail to the beach.

“Well, first we take a moment to enjoy,” he said in a tone just sanctimonious enough to rub me the wrong way.

Oh, please,
I thought.
You’ve been here, what? One whole week longer than I have? That doesn’t make you Mr. Ocean-Appreciator-Extraordinaire.

But it
was
lovely. The first rays of the sun were creeping over the horizon, way out at the impossible-to-discern end of the ocean. Seagulls swooped through the sky, crying
“Ahhahh!”
in lonely bird voices. The surf advanced. The surf retreated. The foamy dregs of the waves reminded me of lace.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Alphonse said.

“Yeah,” I said.

Not another human was visible in either direction. It felt like we were the only people in the world.

Alphonse started walking, heading north toward the undeveloped stretch of beach I’d spotted from the Crow’s Nest.

“When turtles lay their eggs, they’re more likely to do it away from the houses,” he explained. He pointed to the dunes, where a strip of fluorescent orange tape fluttered in the breeze. “See up there? That’s a nest we’ve already marked.”

“Can we go look?” I said. “Is that allowed?”

He veered right. I followed him up into the brambles. We reached the slim wooden stake marked with the orange tape, and he knelt beside it. I knelt, too, but all I saw was normal old ... normalness. Sand, sticks, reeds. Bracken, which wasn’t a word I used often (if I’d ever used it at all), but which seemed like the right term for what was before me.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

Alphonse carefully dug down. The pale sand coated his skin like cinnamon-sugar, and the muscles of his forearm were ropey and lean.

“There,” he said, shifting his weight and shaking the sand from his arm. He lifted his head to see my reaction. Only he was so close, and his gaze so warm and steady, that instead of looking at the nest, I found myself sucked into his brown, brown eyes. It wasn’t a boy-girl flirty moment. At least, I didn’t think it was. Even though things between Lars and me were slightly ... complicated, we were still together. We were
totally
together.

And yet, maybe guys and girls couldn’t help it sometimes? Couldn’t help the quickening heartbeats, or the way the air grew charged, as if molecules of me were bridging the gap to Alphonse, while molecules of him did the same thing in reverse? Like circus fleas, or static electricity. Or maybe just biology.

I tore my eyes from his. I looked down, and in the sand I saw a hundred eggs, maybe more, all the size of Ping-Pong balls.

“Whoa,” I said. “There’s so many,” I said.

“A mama sea turtle can hold five hundred eggs inside her,” Alphonse said. “That’s called a clutch. She lays them in batches of a hundred or so. She lays them in different spots to increase their chances of survival.”

“Why does that help?”

Alphonse shrugged. “A fox could find the nest, or a raccoon. Even a dog’ll dig up a nest for the fun of it. A dog won’t eat the eggs, but it could crush them, or leave them exposed to predators.”

“So it’s like hiding treasure,” I said. “Hide it in lots of different spots, and it’s less likely to all get found.”

“Yeah.” He lifted an egg from the nest. It wasn’t oval like a chicken’s egg, but perfectly round. Its shell was the color of cream. Alphonse brushed off most of the sand and held it out to me.

I was nervous, but I cupped my palms and accepted it so very carefully. A teeny life was in my hands. A teeny, growing, unborn sea turtle.

“It’s warm,” I marveled.

“The sand acts as insulation,” Alphonse explained.

I lifted the egg to my ear. I listened.

Alphonse regarded me as if I were odd, but amusing. “Hear anything?”

I adopted a teeny turtle voice and made the egg talk.
“Put me back! I miss my brothers and sister
! Then I placed the egg with the others. I helped Alphonse cover them up with sand.

“I get how marking the nest protects it from people, and maybe dogs if their owners are with them,” I said. “How does it help with raccoons and foxes?”

“It doesn’t,” Alphonse said, rising to his feet. “That’s why Erika’s making cages.”

I stood up and brushed the sand off my shorts. “You put the cages over the nests?”

“Yeah. They’re made out of metal, and we plant them deep enough that a fox can’t dig under it.”

“So this nest’ll be safe? Once a cage is over it?”

He started down the dune. “Safer than it would have been.”

“That’s awesome,” I said. I took skittering steps behind him, hopping over sticks and brambles. “I mean, that’s
a lot
of turtles.”

“Do you know how many’ll survive to adulthood?”

“Uh ...” I’d assumed all of them would, if they didn’t get eaten or crushed while they were still in their eggs. But his tone suggested otherwise. “Seventy-five?”

“Guess again.”

“Fifty?”

We cleared the dune, and walking grew easier.

“Two,” Alphonse said.

“Two?
Out of a hundred babies, only two will survive?”

“And that’s if we’re lucky. Could be one, could be zero.”

Watching Alphonse by the nest, it was clear he cared about the turtles. I sensed he enjoyed being the bearer of this bad news, though.

“Why?” I demanded. “What happens to the other ninety-eight?”

“The hatchlings are born with a built-in mapping system. They know to follow the moon to the water. But if there’s another source of light, they could head for that instead of the moon.”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Or a predator could get them as they make their way across the sand. Seagulls will swoop down and get them, too.”

I winced. What a terrible way to go, snatched up and carried off before you were a day old.

“And the turtles that
do
make it to the water ...” Alphonse shrugged. “A lot of them will end up as shark food.”

“Shark
food!” I shuddered. “DeBordieu has sharks?!”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, as if I were being stupid. “It’s the ocean.”

“I don’t like sharks,” I stated. “Sharks are mean.”

He shook his head, smiling. He was acting totally condescending, and it made him so much less cute.

Well. That wasn’t true; it actually didn’t take away from his cuteness at all. But it did make me appreciate Lars, who would never make fun of me for saying sharks were mean.

“My boyfriend’s going to flip out,” I said. “He already wants me to come home. And when he hears there’s sharks? That I’ll be
swimming
with
sharhs?!
I let out a low whistle to say those sharks better watch out—and then felt immediately fake-ish, like I was playing a role and not being the real me.

Maybe I just wanted to get the boyfriend bit out in the open?

I slid my eyes sideways to see how Alphonse was taking it.

“If I had a girlfriend, I’d want her to do more than sit around and look pretty,” he said.

What?!
I made a face, which—if he chose to notice— would tell him how ridiculous his comment was. Like Lars just wanted me to sit around and look pretty. Whatever.

Wait. Was Alphonse saying he thought I was pretty?

“If
I
had a girlfriend ...” he went on. He paused, glancing at me. Then he gazed deliberately into the distance and kicked a shell.

Oh good grief.
Another difference between boys and girls was how boys operated under the misapprehension that the start-a-sentence-but-not-finish-it ploy was, like, clever and cool. Alphonse wanted me to beg and plead and care soooooo much about this hypothetical girlfriend of his, but I was not going to give him that satisfaction.