Lanette walks us outside and around the side of the inn where crushed white seashells cover a large square lot. At the far end, facing the water, sits some kind of vehicle.
Not a trailer.
Not a camper.
Not like anything I’ve seen before.
“It’s okay if you freak out,” Lanette says, walking toward the structure on wheels.
“Why would I freak out?”
“You’ll see.”
The seashells crunch under our feet. Lanette climbs up on the trailer bed and pulls me up behind her. She takes out a key. The front door is painted like a rainbow. She opens it and says, “This is my house.”
I step inside. “This is . . .”
“Weird, right?”
“I . . . don’t know.” The room’s about eight feet wide. Braided rug on the floor, orange couch against the wall. Two windows, which are facing the ocean, and at the back, ten feet away, a kitchen. Stainless steel sink, small refrigerator. “It’s like a real house that got shrunk.”
“Or a doll house that expanded.” Lanette walks over to a ladder. It leads up to some kind of loft, but she reaches under it and taps the wood-panel wall. A cabinet pops open, with a shelf. A microscope is strapped to it.
“I only have one, so we’ll need to decide who goes first.”
“Me.”
“Well.” She pushes the glasses. “That was quick.”
“Your stuff stinks.”
“Point taken.”
I walk over to a counter under the window, sliding the pack from my shoulder, while Lanette opens another hidden cabinet. Shelves of glass beakers. Pipettes. Even a Bunsen burner. All strapped down for road travel.
“Why do you—”
“Cricket gets restless. She wants to ‘experience the world.’ I want to study. This way, we’re both happy. She drives, I work.”
I take out the correct bags of sand. “Do you have any plain white paper?”
“Of course.” Another hidden cabinet opens under the ladder. A tiny printer with paper in the plastic tray. “How many sheets?”
“Four.”
I lay them on the narrow kitchen counter. My eyes want to wander. Every nook holds stuff. Large feathers on the windowsill. Sand dollars on a shelf by the coffee maker. Beads gathered in a bowl, with pebbles and buttons and dried flowers thrown in. No wonder Lanette hates clutter.
I use one sheet of paper for the beige sand, another for the dark sand. The third sheet is for notes. I fold the fourth into quarters.
Lanette watches me. “We have one advantage over the guys,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“Let me preface that by saying, as a homeschooled Asian who likes being alone, my experience with guys is far from extensive. But I have noticed guys usually are not as observant as girls. That should help us.”
“I hope so.”
“Except Tex.”
I look up.
“He notices you.”
I dig a pen from my pack. There’s a blush trying to creep up my throat. “How long did you observe those predator fish?”
“They’re not fish.”
“Starfish. That’s not a fish? Okay, animal?”
“I take it back.” She pushes the glasses. “We have no advantage over the boys.”
With the pen, I spread the sand grains across the white paper, making sure my hands don’t transfer any sweat or oil. I write down the color, grain size, any clumping tendencies and, yes, even the smell. But the only smell is the sea. Briny, but clean. Salt water cycled through the earth’s water filter—sand.
I point to the sink. “The water is good?”
She nods.
I twist the faucet, dip my head, and drink from the stream.
“We are civilized enough to have glasses,” Lanette says.
“Sorry.” I wipe my wrist over my mouth. “I just needed to check the taste.”
“For what?”
“For what’s in the water. If I could taste any chlorine. Or iron. Or salt.”
“Cricket’s into distilled water.”
“Perfect.” I take two beakers from the shelf, add half an inch of water to each, and swirl the grains into a slurry texture.
“Can I guess?” Lanette asks. “Salt is sodium chloride. NaCl. So you’re washing the beach sand with fresh water to get rid of the salt from the ocean.”
“Correct. Salt’s also known as halite. That’s the mineral classification. Halite crystals can interfere with what I see under the microscope.”
“Good thinking.”
One minor compliment. But man, does it send a rush through me.
“Except,” she adds, “I really don’t see what this has to do with dying dune grass.”
Praise. My dad says praise is like chewing gum. Enjoy the flavor, but don’t swallow it. Life’s always going to take you down a notch.
I lift the beaker. “In its purest form, quartz is white. This sand is not white. It’s almost black.”
“Oregon has gray sand. Sometimes kind of black.”
“And probably not as fine-grained as this sand on these beaches.”
“Correct.” A push to the glasses. “Sometimes it’s more like gravel.”
“Oregon’s beaches are younger. Geologically speaking.”
“So less time for erosion.”
“Right. If your mom gets restless after this competition, have her drive you south to Georgia. Those beaches are super fine-grained and almost pure white. Like sugar.”
“So pure quartz.”
I nod. My partner is not just smart but quick. And there is a real difference.
I drain the water from the beakers, shaking out as much as possible, and place the containers on the window ledge. Sunshine pours through the glass. Solar energy will work almost as well as the heat lamp I normally use back in Richmond.
Lanette taps her wrist watch. “Is this going to take much longer?”
“Fine.” I move my stuff. “Bring out the stink.”
“Be warned.” She’s brought her own backpack and sets it on a table that folds out of the wall. “When this bryozoan dries, it smells even worse.”
“How is that possible?”
“It smells like a dead animal.”
“Because, despite looking like a pile of sauerkraut, it is an animal.”
“You remembered.” She smiles. “You might like biology. Every single organism is connected to every other organism. This animal—” she lays the gunk on the kitchen counter, “can affect what washes up with the tide, which affects the beach, which affects how the grass is fed, which affects how the grass grows—”
“The hip bone’s connected to the leg bone?”
“Joke all you want. But this animal hasn’t shown up in any recent records. I have to ask, Why is it appearing now? What’s causing its sudden appearance? Maybe it’s salinity rates. Or changing ocean temperatures.”
“Tex’s project?”
“Or maybe it’s from increased sewage.”
“Cady’s theory.”
“Yes. And personally, I think Cady was striking at the root of things. Pun intended. But somebody wanted to stop her.”
I poke the grains in the beaker, pretending casual. “You don’t think Tex had something to do with it, do you?”
“Tex.” She removes a scalpel from another drawer. The sharp triangular blade glistens in the sun. “You want to talk about Tex?”
“No.”
She slices a piece off the sea-vomit creature, then gazes at me over her slipping glasses. The stink coats the back of my throat. She transfers the specimen piece into a petri dish and sets it in the window sill, baking in the sun.
“Mine needs to dry, too. In the meantime, I’m going to conduct some more research, down at the marina. What are you going to do?”
What am I going to do?
I claw my mind for an answer and grab the first one that comes up.
“Yeah, I need to do some more research too.”
I follow her outside, and fill my lungs with clean ocean air.