Can’t say how I managed to get into the truck and put my seatbelt on. I don’t remember any of that. Next thing I knew I was there, beside my father, with a plan to follow Carter up the road into town. My dad started the engine and backed out of the parking lot. He sported a goofy little smile, his first smile of the day.
“Looks like someone’s got a crush.”
I tried to be nonchalant about it, but instead I sputtered out a totally fake, “What are you talking about?” As if I didn’t know.
“He’s going to drive you all the way to Olympia,” Dad pointed out. “He doesn’t have to do that.”
I blushed a little and rolled my eyes. “No. That’s not it. He wants to impress you, that’s all. He knows about you from his professor at school. He thinks you’re some kind of idol probably, and he’ll get extra credit for knowing you.”
My dad shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so.”
As much as what I said to my dad made sense, I couldn’t help but hope my dad was right about Carter. Maybe his graciousness was a little about me too. Everything about him was turning out to be wonderful.
Dad clicked on the news as we rode along. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and the local stations had now received word of the oil spill. So far the reports weren’t anything but headlines, not offering a lot of information. Within an hour that would change. Affron leaked news as much as it did oil, only their version would be skewed to express that no real damage had been done. ‘Nothing for the public to worry about,’ their report would attest. The news anchors across the country would soon be reporting that the oil spill was just a small one and easily cleaned up. Then it would be forgotten.
No one would mention how many animals, including two apparent mermaids, had died—or would continue to die for the next few years.
That was my father’s job. He’d be on the Internet all week, trying to get reporters to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. With his buddy, Randy, they’d add new statistics and the photographic evidence to his web site and make sure that all of the politicians on the West Coast were aware of crisis. Most of all, he’d be working closely with Mom to make sure Affron was punished for sending out that leaky vessel.
Carter turned into a gated neighborhood of houses with matching red tile roofs and procured a parking pass for us. We followed him down a couple winding streets and ended up in front of a beautiful house that was angled on a hill to have a view of the ocean from the upstairs bedroom windows. Each bedroom had its own balcony. I envisioned myself leaning over one, a glass of cool iced tea in my hand, a wide summer hat on my head and a silk scarf fluttering off my neck in the warm salt-water breeze. Dressed in a white silk button down shirt and slacks, a very tan Carter stepped up behind me and put his hand on my waist...
A honk pulled me out of my reverie. Carter waved us over to the circular driveway where he’d stopped his car. But my dad parked along the curb in the street, regardless. Our ugly, old pickup did not belong anywhere on that lovely property.
We got out of the truck and met Carter at the front door.
“You live here?” I asked. “You don’t have your own place?”
“Don’t be too disappointed,” he said, pretending to pout.
“Oh, I’m not,” I said, eager to see what the house looked like on the inside.
“This is my parents’ house,” Carter explained, unlocking the door. “I have a dorm room at school, but I stay here on weekends and when I don’t have early classes. It’s too noisy at the dorm, and I have a hard time sleeping without the sound of the waves.” Once inside, he typed in a code into the security box on the wall.
“You know,” I said. “They have those white noise machines now. You can set them to ocean waves or streams or whatever.”
“It’s not the same,” Carter said.
“Yeah, I guess not. Listening to something like that would probably just make me want to pee all night.”
Did I say that? I felt my face heat up.
I walked through the doors into his world of white décor, pivoted and stepped right back outside. My nasty boots weren’t allowed to enter this perfect domain, so I slipped them off and left them on the porch. Truth be told, I felt like I should remove every article of my clothing, because I was afraid to bump up against anything.
Carter laughed at me. “My mother thanks you.”
My dad had finished getting out of his boots and stepped inside behind me, lugging the camera tote bag over his shoulder. “This is very nice, Carter. Tell your mother she has done a beautiful job with the place.”
Carter grinned. “Actually, it’s my dad who’s the stylist. Mom is an accountant. Go figure.”
We all laughed.
“And the shower?” I asked. “I must take one now before I accidentally sit on something.”
“Follow me.” Carter turned to my dad. “Why don’t you go sit in the kitchen down that hall, Mr. Sawfeather. I’ll get some coffee going and pull out the computer.”
“Sounds great.” My dad shuffled down the shiny wood floor in his socks.
Carter grabbed my hand and led me upstairs.
It turned out that there were three bedrooms upstairs, a laundry room, and an entertainment room with a huge flat screen TV and all the gadgets one could wish for. Haley would be in tech-geek heaven if she saw this place. I hoped I’d have a chance to bring her here sometime.
“I can see why the dorm wouldn’t compare,” I told him.
“You think?” he said.
He opened the door to his own bedroom and led me inside. It was fairly neat, which surprised me a little. I won’t say everything was in its perfect place, but nothing was lying where it shouldn’t. No underwear on the floor or socks on the pillowcases. I was also surprised to find that he didn’t have any posters on his wall of models, sports players, or even rock-and-roll bands. Instead, he had some really interesting abstract splatter color paintings in frames. Like fake Pollock pieces.
“Did your dad decorate your room, too?” I asked.
Carter laughed. “No,” he said. “I actually put all this together. The paintings are all by animals. There are two painted by a dolphin down in Florida and one is painted by an elephant.”
“You’re kidding!” I said.
“Not one bit,” he told me, straightening one. “I got them on vacations. I thought they were really cool. I still do, actually. I can’t even paint that well, and I have hands.” He pointed to a door on the far side of the double bed. “The bathroom’s there. It’s between the two bedrooms. There are clean towels in the cabinet.” I must have looked uncomfortable, because he headed for his dresser drawers and kept talking. “Is your school dress code or wear-anything-you-want?”
“Dress code, actually,” I said and winced. “It’s not a strict uniform, but we have to wear collared shirts and either tan or navy pants or skirts. I suppose I could just wear a pair of your sweats, and you could swing me by my house on the way...”
“Nah!” Carter said. “I’ve got what you need. These are a little snug on me.” Carter pulled out a collar shirt and a plain navy-colored sweatshirt to go over it. “No need to rush more than we have to.” As he handed the clothes to me, he added, “I’m sure my mom’s got a skirt or some pants that’ll fit you. She’s tall like you. Not quite as thin, but she tries. Yoga and Pilates once a week.”
“She won’t mind?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You’re not going to rescue any more mythical creatures covered in oil, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m just tackling the Student Council at school. A totally different kind of messy situation.”
“I know what you’re talking about.”
Sure he did, I thought. His looks. His house. Carter had probably been president of his school’s Student Council.
“Khaki would be best, if she has it,” I suggested.
“I’ll see what I can find.” He led me to the bathroom. “Steam it up real good so I can come in here to drop the clothes off.”
I tried to laugh in a relaxed way, but it came out a little choked as he closed the door behind him. The bathroom was as lovely as everything else in the house, and I had to take a minute to touch all the pretty handles before turning on the water faucet in the shower. As the water heated up, I glanced at myself in the mirror. Oh, Heavens! Is that what I’d looked like all morning? Well, that ruled out his wink as being anything other than pity.
I quickly let down my hair and shed my clothes. I balled everything up as tight as I could and placed it on a tile by the toilet where the oil and sand that rubbed off it could be cleaned up easily.
He showered with Axe shampoo and soap, so I’d smell like a boy all day. It didn’t bother me too much. I was going to smell like a really hot, exceptionally cool college guy. And that was way better than smelling like fish and oil. The hot water stung the scrape on my leg that I’d all but forgotten about. It took a fair bit of scrubbing to get the oil off my arms and face, too.
At some point he snuck in to put some slacks on the sink counter, but I didn’t hear or see him. He must have been very fast. It was possible that he only reached his arm in and didn’t come in the bathroom at all. I know it was another act of his amazing chivalry, but I couldn’t help feeling slightly bummed out that he didn’t try to peek.
Twenty minutes later I was clean, dressed in a combination of his and his mother’s clothes, and headed back down the stairs to find Carter and my dad in the kitchen. All the digital pictures had been uploaded, and they had figured out how to upload the video footage too. They put the video in two separate files. One for the regular oil spill information, another for the mermaid discovery. Now Dad was typing up a press release statement.
He was talking to Carter when I walked in. “My only problem now is that all my contacts are on my computer at home. How do I get these sent out?”
Since the mermaid rescue had taken so long, they had precious little time left to get these images e-mailed to every news correspondent they could think of before Affron got its own press releases out debunking everything Dad wanted them to know.
“Let’s call Mom,” I suggested. “Have her email the contacts. She has them all with her on her laptop.”
“Of course, Genius,” he said. “I suppose I would have thought of that eventually, but it’s nice to have you young, brainy people around to think for me.”
He got out his cell phone and dialed my mom. I gestured to the coffee cups on the table. “Any of that left? I’m not a big coffee fan, but I think it might help.”
“I’ll pour you a cup,” Carter said and dashed over to the coffee machine. “Did you enjoy your shower? You look great.”
I smiled. I sure felt a whole lot better than I had. I’d like to really clean up for him sometime: put on some make-up and a dress, clips in my hair. However, just letting him know that I don’t always stink and look like I’ve been dragged under a boat was good for the moment.
“Hey, honey, hi!” my dad said into the phone, his voice betraying his energy level.
Carter gestured to the creamer and sugar. I nodded, and he sweetened my coffee up for me.
“You near your computer?” my dad asked my mom while Carter handed me the hot mug. “I need you to email me our press contact list.” There was a long pause, and I could hear Mom’s voice coming out of the phone. “Look, something happened this morning that slowed us up a bit.” Another long pause. “I know it’s important to get this out right away, honey,” my dad said patiently. “I’ve been doing this a while too.” Pause. “Yes, she’s with me.” Pause. Dad got up then and moved away from us. I could still hear the sharpness of my mom’s voice from across the room. “Let’s not get into that right now,” Dad said as calmly as he could. “There are other things to discuss.”
My dad put the phone on his shoulder and gestured to the laptop. “Hey Carter, can you help June email the video to her mother?”
This only took a moment for us to accomplish on his high-speed computer. It gave me a silly thrill to see it zip off so fast. I’d been begging my dad to let us get high speed, but he insists on dial-up. When I actually need to do stuff online I either go to Haley’s house or take my laptop down to a coffee house and work off their WiFi.
Apparently Mom was badgering Dad with a bunch of questions about the oil spill. He was giving her all kinds of non-committal responses as he waited for her to get the video. When she finally got the video a couple minutes later, my dad went silent as he let her watch it.
A couple minutes clicked past.
Then my dad said simply to her, “I know.”
All we could hear were excited chirps from my mother’s voice as she went through her own version of the shock phase everyone else had experienced. Finally Dad interrupted her to say, “One of them is still alive, down at the rescue center. The other two died.”
I couldn’t take this one-sided conversation anymore. I had to hear what my mother was saying, so I got up and grabbed the phone. I clicked the speakerphone button and put the phone on the kitchen table. My mom was going on about what an amazing discovery this was and how it could change everything.
“How, Mom? How could it change everything?” I asked.
I heard her take in a sharp breath. It couldn’t have been clearer to my ears that Mom didn’t want to talk to me right then. Still, she answered. “Because, June, if people know that there are people living in the ocean, they will be more interested in protecting them.”
“But they aren’t people, Mom,” I said. “They’re fish that look kind of, remotely, like people. They don’t even seem to be mammals. They don’t breathe air. They don’t talk.”
“Do they think?” my mom asked. “Could you tell if they think?”
I hesitated. My mom was so worked up about all this that she might blow everything out of proportion. I thought the mermaid was trying to communicate with me, but I’m not convinced that meant she had clear thoughts like a person does.
My father told her his thoughts on it. “The mermaid seemed to make sounds in response to June’s talking to her. Her eyes expressed emotions. I’m not sure she could think any more than a dog or a cat, but she seemed desirous of expressing herself.”
“Well, there you go,” my mom said. “Sentient life in the ocean that happen to look like beautiful silver women. We’ve got the key to bringing the world together to save ocean life. Affron won’t have a chance against this. Everyone will see them as the inhumane bastards they are. We’ve got to let the public know.”
That’s when Carter cleared his throat and said, “No.”
“Who’s that?” Mom asked.
“That’s Carter,” I said. “He’s letting us use his computer.”
“He knows all about this?”
“Mrs. Sawfeather,” Carter said, “I work at the marine rescue center with Dr. Schneider. I helped with the rescue this morning.”
My mom sounded impatient. “How many people know about this?”
My dad answered. “Just us and Carl.”
That seemed to appease my mom, because she didn’t say anything else about that. “What were you trying to say, Carter?”
He cleared his throat again. I guess my mom made him nervous. She has a way of doing that. It’s part of her magical lawyer powers.
“We don’t know enough about the mermaids yet. We might cause more damage to them if we leak information too soon. We’ve got to wait.”
“Wait for what?” my mom asked. “Wait for more of them to wash up on the beaches, dying from oil spills?”
“I agree, Mom. I just don’t think it’s the right move yet, either.”
My dad spoke then. “Actually, Natalie, I think the kids are right. Let’s hold off a little on this. Let’s wait until Carl can tell us more about them.”
Mom let out a long sigh over the phone line. “I don’t want to sit on this too long.”
“Understood,” my dad said.
“I’ll be home in a couple days. June? You still there?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“You are not off the hook. We will be talking as soon as I get home.”
“Yes, Mom.”
My eyes shot over to Carter, and he politely glanced away. Thanks to Mom, he probably figured I was in trouble for something. I reached over and clicked off the speakerphone then handed the phone back to Dad. I had nothing left to say to my mother at that point. Why bother? Everything I said from now on was going to go in one ear and out the other. My mom had decided that I was a lost cause. After all the work I’d done that morning, you’d think I’d get some forgiveness. Why did I even bother?
Carter sensed my agitation. “You about ready to go?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, sitting down in front of the laptop. “Just let me get these pictures attached to the email, so my dad can send them out while we’re gone.”
“I’ve already done it,” Carter said. “Get your stuff and let’s get rolling. With any luck you could still make third period.”
And in a flash, all the wonder and excitement of this morning evaporated into another ordinary day.