Cry of the Sea (25 page)

Carter tilted his head toward me just a
touch, flicking his eyes at me for a moment before looking back at
the road. “Because you are a terrible activist.”

“What?” I hit him in the shoulder.

He laughed. “I’m serious. You are awful. I
watched you on TV this morning. Stiff. Uncomfortable. Almost
impossible to hear. I mean, seriously. Your mom hasn’t taught you
form.”

“She just takes over,” I said. “She never
gives me a chance.”

“Well, that’s probably a good thing,” Carter
said, “because you’d muck it up.”

“You are so not nice right now.”

Then I watched his grin slowly fade as his
thoughts changed direction. “You know what you are good at? I mean,
really good at?”

“Making an ass out of myself?” I asked.

Carter turned onto the main highway. He
checked through the rearview window to see if the others followed.
Then he said, “You’re good with the animals. The way you handled
the porpoise just now was perfect. You weren’t squeamish at all.
You helped put away all those animals the Affron guys brought
without needing any help. And then there was the way you handled
being in the tank with the mermaid. You’re a natural.
That’s
what you should do.”

I swallowed hard at the compliment. “Thanks,”
I whispered. I was quiet for a moment. “I don’t suppose they could
start having a Marine Biology major at your school?”

His expression didn’t change. His hands
stayed on the wheel. Not a sound rose from his lips, and his
breathing stayed the same. But there was just the slightest, almost
imperceptible nod of his head. Was that a “Yes, we could push for a
Marine Biology program,” nod, or a “Yes, you’re interested in
sticking around?” nod? Either way, I took it as a good sign.

Carter changed lanes. The others
followed.

I couldn’t leave the conversation dangling on
that edge, so I rambled, “It doesn’t really matter right now,
though. I mean, I haven’t even applied to colleges yet, let alone
been accepted anywhere. I’ve still got most of my senior year ahead
me. That’s a whole lot of time to... to...” To what? Build a
relationship with Carter? I couldn’t say that. I didn’t know how to
finish what I was saying.

Carter did it for me. “To find out.”

Yes. To find out.

Chapter
Sixteen

Up ahead was the parking lot for the center.
Carter put on his signal and slowly pushed through the crowd of
people gathered there. There weren’t any parking spaces, so he just
pulled up in front of the door and popped out. He guided Regina to
stop right behind him and Ted to pull up behind her. The moment I
got out of the car, cameras started flashing in my face. People
recognized me from the video. They shouted questions at me about
the mermaid and what we were doing while Carter and I rushed to the
truck and climbed into the bed.

I lifted up the tail before he had a handle
on the torso. This was a mistake, because the sight of that thin,
long tail sent the crowd into a frenzy. They pushed up to the truck
with their cameras and made it impossible for us to move. Ted and
Gary couldn’t even open their doors to get out of the cab.

Ted rolled down his window and yelled, “Come
on! Back off!”

Regina’s high voice screamed over the crowd,
“It’s not a mermaid! Calm down and back up! It’s not a mermaid!”
Marlee and Haley joined in. I saw them jumping up and down on the
periphery of the crowd. “It’s not a mermaid! It’s NOT a
mermaid!”

Carter lifted up the porpoise’s head as high
as he could so everyone had a clear visual of it. A collective
“aw!” of disappointment rose up, and the cameras lowered.

“Let us through,” Carter said. “We need to
get it inside.”

This mob was a mixture of mermaid watchers
and press. They wanted inside the building, so they didn’t give up
space easily. We had to lift the porpoise up over our heads as we
squeezed through the wall of people. Ted and Gary had finally
managed to get out of the truck, and they pushed their way toward
us. We let them take the porpoise while Carter unlocked the door.
The girls were having a heck of a time getting through, and I
didn’t want to hold the door open long enough for them to make
it.

“Don’t close it,” Regina shouted at me as I
stepped inside the building.

“Hurry up!” I shouted.

“We can’t get through,” Marlee screamed back
at me.

I only had the door open a couple inches,
just enough to see the girls. People tried to yank the door out of
my grip to get inside. Some money was thrown in my direction.
Finally I yelled back at Regina, “I’ve got to close the door!”

“No, June. Don’t do it.” The fire in her eyes
was intense.

“Get yourself on TV,” I shouted. “
You guys
are my best friends
, after all.” I really milked that. I saw
reporters’ heads snap back at the girls and a murmur of “best
friends?” rumbled through the crowd. I felt a little guilty, like
I’d just hung meat in a piranha tank. I closed the door and locked
it behind me as the savage crowd, hungry for whatever fresh news it
could get, devoured the girls.

All the lights were off in the front room.
Carter flipped a switch so the guys wouldn’t walk into the tide
pool tank in the middle of the room and led them toward the double
doors. Ted shook his head like a dog to get some of the rain water
off. “Are they going to be okay out there?”

“Regina can handle herself,” I told him.

He didn’t argue, so I figured he knew I was
right. He hefted the porpoise up a little higher and led Gary
through the double doors into the main room of the center. All the
lights were off in there, too, and it was strangely
deja-vu-ish.

“Where’s Schneider?” I asked Carter. He took
the porpoise from the guys and put it on one of the metal
tables.

“I was just wondering that myself.” He threw
a few towels over the porpoise and then gestured to the bathroom in
the back hall. “You guys can clean up back there.”

Gary and Ted headed back, grumbling about how
they’d never get the stink out of their shirts. On any other day I
might have laughed, but I wasn’t finding anything funny at the
moment.

“Do you think something happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” Carter said, exasperated. “He
was here yesterday. I mean, he just stayed in his office all day
with the door closed. When I tried to talk to him he told me to
finish up with the care of the animals so I could leave. I stayed
longer than I had to hoping I might get him to discuss what to do
about finding the mermaid. After a couple hours, though, he came
out of his office and ordered me to go home. ‘There’s nothing for
you to do!’ he shouted at me.” Carter sighed. “I could tell he was
really stressed, but what could I do about it? I left.”

Meek fidgety Dr. Schneider yelled at Carter?
The guy who couldn’t keep up with a truck on the freeway because he
probably couldn’t drive past fifty miles an hour? This nerdy, wiry
old guy who sort of apologized to us, a couple of kids, that he let
his phone battery die out the other day? This was not a guy who
yelled. What was going on?

I walked over to his office. Over my shoulder
I said, “You ought to put that thing on ice or it’s going to
stink.”

Carter scooped up the porpoise by himself and
started toward the examination room where the mermaid cadavers had
been just days ago. “What are you going to do?”

“Poke around some more. We found something
last time. Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

Loud banging started at the front door of the
building. Ted and Gary burst from the restroom, drying their hands
on their shirts.

“You think that’s Regina?” Ted asked. “Can we
let her in?”

I held off responding to that question. I
really liked
not
having her in here.

Ted looked past me and called after Carter.
“Dude? Can we?”

Carter swung around with the porpoise and the
guys backed away a couple feet to avoid it. “I’m about to cut this
thing up into pieces. If you don’t want to see that, then maybe you
should go out there with them.”

“Uh,” Ted said, trying and failing not to
look grossed out. “I think we’ll skip that. Just got cleaned up and
all.”

Gary had already started toward the double
doors when suddenly he stopped and looked around at all the tanks
lining the walls. “Where are the mermaids?”

Carter shot a fast look at the big tank and
then gasped in mock surprise. “They’re not here! Oh no! June! The
mermaids aren’t here!”

Gary frowned. “I knew there never were any
mermaids. You’re such a liar, June.”

“Oh, there were mermaids,” Carter said.
“They’re just missing. You ought to go tell Regina. That’ll be
something she can tell the reporters. Get her face on camera,
right?”

“Whatever,” Gary said. He stomped away.

Ted followed, looking back at us with a very
confused expression. He tapped his buddy on the shoulder and said,
“So which is it? There never were mermaids or that they’re
missing?”

Gary shoved his friend away. “I knew I should
have stayed at school. I missed a cool pep rally for this.”

Then there was an explosion of noise as they
opened the front door and pushed out into the crowd. The door
closed behind them, and the noise was blocked again.

I dashed into the office while Carter set the
porpoise in the right place to be taken care of later. Dr.
Schneider’s office was in shambles, much worse than it was two days
ago. Folders stuck up and papers spilled out of open file cabinets.
Scribbled-on notepads and opened mail covered his desk. Wads of
paper filled the trashcan to the brim and spilled over. What had he
been investigating in here?

I shifted through all the papers on his desk
and found a number of printed Internet pages about mermaids. I
recognized some of them as sites that I looked at the other night.
They hadn’t been any more helpful to him than me, apparently. I
turned on his computer and logged online. The past couple sites
he’d visited were also about mermaids. Why was a scientist like him
looking at this stuff? Was he hoping it might clue him in to where
he might find more of the creatures?

I was about to give up, figuring he’d come
back in a little while, frazzled and holding a coffee cup from
Starbucks, and wondering why there was a crowd out front. It was
silly to think anything had happened to him. Affron already had the
mermaids, what would they want with Dr. Schneider?

I stood up to leave and something white
caught the corner of my eye. Hanging on a hook by the door was the
lab coat Dr. Schneider always wore. Instinctively, I reached for
the coat. I rifled through the pockets and at last found something
that might help: a phone number with an unfamiliar area code
scribbled on a scrap of paper. Without a pause that would give me
time to doubt, I sat down at the desk and dialed the phone number
on the Center’s landline.

“North Shore Rehabilitation Aquarium,” the
receptionist’s voice answered. “How may I direct your call?”

“Hi. Yes,” I stammered, my mind desperately
trying to catch up with my voice. I didn’t actually expect a person
to answer, nor did I have any idea who I was calling, so I hadn’t
thought through what I would say. “I am a student at Washington
State University, and I am interested in doing some intern work
with sea animals. I was wondering where you were located so I could
send in my resume.”

“We aren’t in need of any interns at this
time,” the receptionist answered crisply. “I can recommend another
aquarium.”

“Oh,” I said.
Think. Think
. “You are a
facility operating under Affron Oil’s philanthropic plan, aren’t
you? I was told by my professors that Affron was very open to
volunteer interns.”

“We are funded by Affron, yes,” she said,
rather snippily. I pictured this little woman with a tiny nose and
a bob haircut, sweater buttoned up to her neck and irritated that
she couldn’t get back to her Facebook newsfeed update. “But we are
a small research facility, and we don’t use interns or volunteers
here.”

Okay. That was something, but I needed more
information. I bit my lower lip and tried to come up with
something.

“Is there anything else?” Snippy Secretary
asked.

I took a sharp breath. “Well, I’m surprised
you say that because Dr. Carl Schneider called me yesterday
afternoon and told me that he’d keep a position open for me
there.”

There was a pause on the other end. Now I was
making her think of what to say. Why? What was it about Dr.
Schneider’s name that kept her from ticking out another edgy
comment?

“Ma’am?” I asked. “Did you hear me about Dr.
Schneider?”

Without an ounce of her former snippiness,
the receptionist spoke in a very quiet, almost respectful voice. It
was almost like she wasn’t sure if she should be saying anything at
all but her mouth was unable to stop itself. “Would you like to be
transferred so you can speak to Dr. Schneider himself?”

He was there! That turncoat! That creep! He
ran off to go work for Affron. I bet he was with the mermaid. I
felt the heat rise to my face, but I tried not to convey it in my
voice.

“No, I don’t want to bother him at this
moment. I need to send him my resume. He requested it, but he left
before I could deliver it to him personally. Could you please give
me an address?”

“Oh no,” the receptionist said too quickly.
“I think it would be fine if you wanted to fax it to us. Here is
the number.”

I wrote it down, but that didn’t do me any
good at all. I thanked her for the information. She asked for my
name, but I hung up instead. I’m sure it was a last ditch effort to
save herself from having given away too much information. She would
have told Schneider I called, and then he’d know I was on to him.
Can’t have that.