Chapter 1
“Olivia!” I called down the beach. “Over here!” I shook out my beach towel and spread it on white sand as fine as baby powder.
In front of us, the ocean stretched out to the horizon. When I first moved here to Charleston, I had no idea an ocean could be so calm—or so warm.
Olivia fussed with her towel, laying it out and fidgeting with the edges until it was perfectly flat. “I can’t believe you found this place!” she said, finally lowering herself to her towel and closing her eyes against the sun.
“I know—it’s like having our own private beach.” I’d been on a hike the week before when I spotted a pathway near the end of a string of cottages not far from Seaside Sanctuary. I’d followed it through waist-high thickets of palmetto scrub before it ended on this totally deserted stretch of sand. You couldn’t get to it from a street, which must be why it was so deserted—and perfect for Olivia and me.
The day was perfect for the beach too—blue sky, blazing Charleston sun, a few puffy white clouds skating by. I lay on my back, closed my eyes, and listened to the shush-shushing of the water. I inhaled the familiar salt smell—and something else. There was another smell today—something acrid.
I inhaled again and sat up. “Olivia, do you smell something weird?”
“No.” She had her arm crooked over her eyes. Then she sat up too. “Yeah, actually.” She sniffed. “It smells bad.”
“I think it’s the water.” I got up and squatted down by the tide line. I touched the water’s surface with my fingers. My fingers came away coated with a brown film. “There’s something on it.”
I studied my fingers, rubbing them together. They felt greasy. Then, in an instant, I realized why, and my insides contracted. “It’s oil.”
Olivia gasped. “Oh no. Oil in the ocean is bad, no matter what.”
I nodded. I might be new to coastal living, but I even I knew that much. I shaded my eyes and gazed out to the flat horizon as if I might see some answers. But there was nothing.
“Elsa?” Olivia said behind me. “Look at that pelican.”
I turned around. The large bird was squatting on the sand a few yards away from where we stood. But it wasn’t the right color for a pelican. Pelicans are usually a beautiful white-gray. This pelican was chocolate brown all over. It looked sick too.
I walked slowly toward it. “Hey, bird,” I said softly. The pelican squawked and waddled away, but it didn’t spread its wings and take off the way a normal bird would have. It didn’t seem able to fly.
“Something’s wrong with him.” I squatted down and eyed the bird carefully. He had a big chunk missing out of the web on his right foot. But I wasn’t focusing on his feet. It was his feathers that were the problem. “It’s like he’s covered in …”
I stopped and looked at Olivia. We realized at the same time what that something was.
“Oil,” we both said at once.
Olivia and I quickly straightened back up.
“We have to tell someone,” I said. “My parents. Or your sister.” The first stirrings of panic were creeping up my chest. The dirty pelican squatted miserably on the sand. He looked sick. I felt sick when I looked at him.
“Can we take him with us?” Olivia asked. I knew just how she felt. I couldn’t stand to see the sick, bewildered bird left all alone either.
“I don’t see how,” I told her. “We don’t have any way to carry him. And I don’t want to hurt him by accident if we pick him up wrong.”
Olivia nodded. “You’re right. Let’s just go get help and get back here—fast.”
We packed up our towels and left the beach as quickly as we could. Just before we reached the head of the trail, I looked back at the deserted stretch of sand. The pelican still sat there, just above the tide line, the dark, filmy water lapping at his feet.
* * *
Something was wrong when we got back to Seaside Sanctuary—I could tell right away. There were no volunteers scrubbing tanks or carrying buckets of fish to the animals. In fact, all of the paths and pens were deserted, except for the animals inside.
I stumbled over a broom in the middle of the center path, lying there as if someone had dropped it suddenly. An overturned bucket lay beside it. Olivia and I looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Where is everyone?” she said, clearly as worried as I was.
I didn’t have an answer. The place was eerily quiet. The only sounds were the hum of the air conditioner, the soft lapping of the ocean waves nearby, and the occasional squeak of our dolphins in their coastal sea pen.
Then I noticed my mom’s red backpack sitting outside the door to the office. She was here.
Olivia and I ran up and opened the door. Mom, Dad, and Abby, Olivia’s older sister and the sanctuary vet, turned around. A man I didn’t recognize was there with them. Mom’s face was pale, and my first thought was that an animal had died.
“Oh, Elsa, Olivia. We’ve had terrible news,” Mom said.
“We saw something terrible too!” I burst out. “On the beach. There’s a pelican covered in oil.”
Mom’s face grew even paler. “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” she said. “There’s been an oil spill.”
I gasped. Olivia grabbed my arm. Oil spills were a disaster—I knew that, even if I’d never actually been near one. Oil would spill out of a ship or an underwater pipeline, because of an accident of some kind. It would spew out onto the water and float on the surface. The oil would kill fish and crabs and coral and seaweed and dolphins and seals and birds. And it would stay and stay until someone cleaned it up, which was hard—and expensive—to do.
Dad put his arm around my shoulders. “This is Chris Hauser. He’s a wildlife biologist with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. He came to give us the news. Apparently a tanker carrying oil collided with another ship not far from shore. No one was hurt, but a huge hole was ripped in the side of the tanker. We can expect oil coming ashore here on Sullivan’s Island within the next few hours.”
“Dad, it’s already here.” Quickly, I detailed what Olivia and I had seen.
When I finished, the adults nodded. Their faces were lined with worry.
“Seaside Sanctuary has volunteered to be a cleaning station for oiled pelicans,” Abby told us. “There are probably going to be hundreds affected by the spill, and they’ll all need to be fed, watered, warmed up, and cleaned before they can be released again. It’s a big job, but since we’re right on the coast we’re the most logical option.”
“What can we do to help?” I asked.
“Chris is going to advise us and work with us,” Abby continued. “This afternoon, workers will set up a temporary building at the edge of the property. The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will organize volunteers to work with the birds.”
Chris nodded. He was a middle-aged man with the kind of rough skin that signaled years spent outdoors. “We’re really grateful to Seaside Sanctuary for volunteering all your space and resources. We’re going to need them.”
He looked right at Olivia and me. “These pelicans will die without help—and they’ll suffer. The oil will poison their skin, they’ll swallow it when they try to preen their feathers, and then it will poison their insides. They can’t keep warm with oil covering them, and they’ll become too cold to live. They can’t fly, so they can’t hunt for fish. They’ll starve.”
“Stop!” I cried suddenly. I couldn’t stand to hear that terrible list of sufferings anymore. “We’ll do everything we can! We’ll clean them.”
“Good.” Mom squeezed my shoulder. “We’re going to need every pair of hands we can find. The pelicans are depending on us.”
I thought back to the sad, oiled bird on the beach. He needed us. They all did. I was so glad we could do something to help them.