When a writer with only a BA degree in history decides to tackle a subject as wonderful and complicated as the sea, she needs LOTS of help. I’m grateful to the many people who gave generously of their time, ideas, and knowledge to help me depict the fascinating underwater world of The Neptune Project. First of all, I would like to thank Sue Manion, Fishery Biologist (NOAA), for answering my countless questions about fish and the sea; and her husband, Captain John Manion (NOAA), who made sure I got most of the boat parts right. Ron Dotson, Fishery Biologist (NOAA), graciously helped to explain what would and wouldn’t grow on the borders of the sunlit zone in the Channel Islands.
I’m likewise grateful to my science consultants, Cindy and Jamie Gay, who patiently taught me genetics, starting with mitosis and meiosis, and had great ideas about Neptune nutrition. Kristin Gonzalez cheerfully answered a dozen phone calls and e-mails on a crazy variety of science topics, and she helped to dream up c-plankton. Her son Ian Straehley gave me some excellent ideas as to how telepathy would really work. Bill Burton was a brilliant help hypothesizing how lasers would react with water. Thanks to Joe Champ for being my lifetime dive buddy and for gamely sampling with me a daunting range of raw seafood, from eel to sea urchins. Josephie Jackson, thank you for your enthusiasm for the whole Neptune premise; and Dr. David Jackson, thanks for the virus-shot vector and so many good suggestions about Neptune biology. Corinne McCarthy, I so appreciate your making sure I got all the medical stuff right. Sharon Trent, thank you for being such a wonderful listener.
To my readers Lou Ann Bode, Jane Champ, Nolan Crosson, Corinne McCarthy, Bobby and Toby Wright, Sue, John, and Kevin Manion; Alyson, Katie, and Jake McFarland; Pacia Wojcik, Ned Ryan, and Hema Penmetsa—your feedback and enthusiasm kept me going during the nerve-racking wait before the book was acquired. Of course I need to thank the most supportive ole critique group south of the Red River: Robert Eilers, Pam McWilliams, Hillary Ralles, and Joe Chicoskie—your insights made this a much, much better book. Here’s a special shout-out to Brenda Quinn, freelance editor extraordinaire, who keeps trying to teach me to use em dashes properly and has hugely improved every story she’s edited for me. And thank you, Maria Isabell Cruz, for all your help with Spanish translations.
I’m indebted to the wonderful staff at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Robert Schwemmer, Cultural Resources Coordinator, was terrific about sharing his incredible dive photographs and knowledge; and Laura Francis, Education Coordinator, thank you for answering my questions about the marine life that grows on and in wrecks. Thank you both for the great work you do to protect such a unique natural gem.
I’m grateful to the following women for answering my many questions about dolphin behavior: Mary Stella, Director of Media and Marketing at the Dolphin Research Center; and Julie Richardson and Holli Byerly at Dolphins Plus.
To Cyrus Ghaznavi, emergency software consultant—thank you for being there when I needed you!
I’m grateful to Seth Fishman for his excellent taste in literature, and even more so to my fabulous and kind agent, Doug Stewart. He made my dream of writing for kids come true and manages my energy and enthusiasm with great diplomacy. I’m indebted to Lisa Yoskowitz, my brilliant editor, who probably now knows more about dolphins and giant squid than she ever really wanted to know.
And to the members of my tolerant and loving family, who understand that my cooking gets even worse when I’m writing: you guys are the best!
I wake to an urgent tap at my window. My heart thudding, I sit bolt upright in bed. The night is hot and still. I push my sweaty hair away from my face and try to ignore the twist of fear in my gut. No one brings good news at this late hour. I slip from my bed and peer cautiously through my window.
Cam is standing outside, his dark eyes shadowed. “The Marine Guard just sank Jac’s boat. We need the dolphins to look for survivors. Are you in?”
“Gillian will kill me if she finds out.” My mother hates smugglers, but some of them are Cam’s friends.
“Please? They might still be alive.”
“Fine.” I sigh. “Just a minute.” I step into my boat shoes but don’t bother to change out of my faded black shorts and my brother’s old brown shirt. Dark clothes are good for tonight’s work. I wiggle through the small window headfirst. When I get stuck, Cam pulls me the rest of the way.
“Thanks, Nere. I owe you one,” Cam says as he steadies me on my feet. His hands are rough from hauling lines and nets on his father’s fishing boat. The silver light from a slim crescent moon highlights his black curly hair and the strong planes of his face.
I want to tell him he doesn’t owe me anything, but already he’s turning away and jogging down the steep winding path that leads to the dolphin dock and fishing pier in the harbor below. I can feel the day’s relentless heat radiating from the dirt and gravel beneath my feet.
“Let’s take Gillian’s zode,” I tell Cam breathlessly as I hurry to catch up with him. He looks back at me like I’m crazy.
“There’s no wind tonight,” I explain. “It’ll take forever to get there in your sailboat.”
“Gillian will kill us if she finds out.” Cam flashes me a grin.
“Well,” I say, panting, “it’s nice to know I’ll have company when my mother murders me.”
At the next turn in the path, my chest starts to tighten and burn. Please, not now. This is the worst possible moment for my useless lungs to fail me.
“I’m sorry. I need to go slower,” I have to admit after three more steps.
Cam stops and looks at me searchingly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I grit my teeth. “I just have to walk this last stretch.”
“I’ll run ahead and get the zode ready.”
“I need to call Mariah. Where did Jac’s boat go down?”
“Just off Reynard Point.” Then Cam’s away, racing down the final switchback with a healthy speed that makes me jealous. I breathe slowly and carefully, trying to relax the muscles in my chest. I have an inhaler in my pocket that I can use if I have a full-scale lung attack, but I only have three doses of the precious lung med left.
I reach out with my mind to contact the dolphins. I hope they aren’t too far away.
:Mariah, a boat just sank. The crew may need our help.:
Mariah’s mind stirs at my touch. :we heard the explosions up the coast from us.:
:Their boat went down near the point where the bat rays like to feed.:
:we will meet you on the way there,: she promises me.
Walking as fast as my burning lungs will allow, I finally reach the dolphin dock. My heart pounds even faster as I study the harbor. I see no sign of movement on the fishing boats tied up at the pier. The stone cottages on the hillside above us are dark and still. The hardworking fisher folk of Goleta obey our government’s curfew. Only smugglers—and desperate friends of smugglers—are reckless enough to defy it.
Stepping down into my mother’s zode, I see Cam has already disconnected its electric motor from the solar panels on the dock. The batteries should give us plenty of juice to reach Reynard Point and get back safely—assuming we don’t run into an armed Marine Guard vessel somewhere along the way.
Cam switches on the silent motor. Just as we pull away from the dock, a small shape hurtles through the air to land in the middle of the boat. The zode rocks from the weight of our new passenger.
Cam’s little brother, Robry, grins at me, his teeth a flash of white in the moonlight. “Hi, Nere.”
“Hi yourself,” I say.
Cam points the boat back toward the dock. “Nuh-uh. This is not happening, squid-face. There’s no way you’re coming with us.”
“I can handle the boat while you two look for survivors with the dolphins. You know you can use an extra hand, especially if someone’s hurt.”
Robry’s right, and Cam knows it.
“All right,” he agrees after a long moment. “But if we see any sign of the Marine Guard, you’re going to jump overboard, head for shore, and hide until this is over.”
“I promise,” Robry says with uncustomary meekness, but he grins at me again as he crawls forward. He perches himself on the bow pontoon, his big feet just skimming the surface of the water. I settle myself on the middle pontoon, facing backward so I can talk to Cam.
I relax a little as we leave the harbor and surge ahead across the smooth sea. The only sound I hear is the slap of small waves against the side of the zode. I love being on the water. The burning in my lungs eases as I breathe in the damp sea air. Despite the light from the crescent moon, the stars shine like bits of precious ice in the clear black sky.
“Tell me exactly what happened to Jac,” I say to Cam.
“He and his crew were coming in to unload their cargo at the sea cave just beyond the point,” Cam replies, even as he keeps an eye out for other vessels. “The Marine Guard was waiting for them and blew their boat right out of the water. Jac barely had time to tell me their location before his radio went dead.”
I can hear how worried he is about his friend. They haven’t been as close since Jac fell in with smugglers, but Cam is one of the most loyal people I know.
“He’s probably fine. Jac has more lives than a cat, and he knows this coast as well as anyone,” I say, trying to comfort him.
“I think he’s already used up most of those lives,” Cam says shortly. “The Marine Guard almost caught him last month. I tried to tell Jac he would be headed for a prison camp if they arrested him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
I hear the gust of a dolphin breathing through its blowhole. The next moment, Sokya leaps out of the air beside the zode, the water cascading off her back in a shimmering silver arc. She lands a little ahead of us on her side, sending up a big splash that douses both Robry and me. The night is so hot, I relish the feel of the cool seawater on my skin.
“She’s such a show-off.” Robry grins and wipes the water out of his eyes.
Sokya circles around to swim beside us. :a shark came and we scared it away,: she informs me smugly. :I chased an octopus from the rocks, and it tasted delicious.:
Sokya is Mariah’s youngest daughter. She’s only five, which means she’s still a dolphin teenager. Sometimes I think she’s more like a demanding sister to me than a marine mammal I’m supposed to be training.
One by one the rest of the pod catches up with us until twelve Pacific white-sided dolphins are coursing through the sea beside the zode. They bombard my mind with happy images of what they’ve been doing since I swam with them this afternoon, but only Sokya, her brother Densil, and their mother, Mariah, seem to possess the ability to use human speech to communicate with me.
:Do you hear any boat engines?: I ask Mariah.
:the sea is quiet,: she reassures me.
Still, we stay close to shore, where we might be able to find a hiding place quickly if we stumble across the Marine Guard.
An hour later, Cam slows the zode as the dark mass of Reynard Point looms over us. I’m aware of a sudden dryness in my mouth.
“You’re sure the Marine Guard isn’t out here, waiting for someone to come and pick up survivors?”
“I can’t be positive,” Cam says with a shrug, “but Scarn said he and his men were going to lead the Marine Guard away from here so that we could try to help. Smugglers look after their own.”
I hate that Cam’s been talking to the head of the most daring smuggling gang along this coast. He’s risked getting sent away to one of those awful inland work camps, but I don’t have time right now to yell at him.
Seconds can make all the difference when a person is drowning.
Quickly, I reach out to Mariah again. :Please start looking for the crew.:
I’ve practiced this drill with the pod many times. Their ability to echolocate makes dolphins amazing searchers. “How many were on board?” I think to ask Cam as Mariah and the dolphins go streaking away from us.
“Scarn thought there should have been four.”
“The Marine Guard already caught the two who were unloading cargo in the sea cave,” Robry chimes in.
“Just how do you know that?” Cam frowns at Robry.
“I picked up a Marine Guard transmission on my short-wave after I heard you sneak out to get Nere.”
Cam’s face tightens, but he doesn’t say anything more. He knows he’s in no position to give his brilliant little brother a tough time about listening to his homemade illegal radio. What we are doing right now is ten times more illegal and a hundred times more dangerous.
“Tell Mariah she’s looking for two men, then.”
I relay his message to Mariah.
Shortly, she reports back to me. :we have found their boat. it is sitting upside down on the bottom below you, but we have not found the men yet.:
I glance at my mother’s depth finder. Sure enough, I can see the outline of the sunken boat. It lies in forty feet of water right beneath us. I close my eyes and concentrate on the images the dolphins are relaying back to me.
“The dolphins have spread out all around Reynard’s Point,” I tell Cam. “But they can’t find the last two smugglers anywhere.”
“Maybe the Marine Guard caught them all,” he says bleakly.
“Wait … I think maybe Densil’s found a person,” I say, sensing Densil’s rising excitement. Densil is Sokya’s older brother, but their personalities are totally different. Cool, calm, and dependable, Densil would only be feeling this excited if he’d actually found someone.
:there are two people inside the boat,: Densil reports to me, :and their hearts still beat.:
I relay Densil’s message that he’s found two people alive in the boat. Cam looks at me, his face strained. “Can you use your telepathy to find out if one of them is Jac?” he asks.
I draw in a breath. Cam and Robry both know I can call the pod without using the sonar signal other dolphin trainers use, but we rarely talk about it. I inherited my telepathy from my mother. She was abandoned as a baby in the chaos following the Eugenics Wars, and we’ve always assumed one of her parents must have been a genetically engineered supersoldier. If anyone in the government ever found out my mother and I are telepaths, we’d both end up in a Western Collective work camp, or worse.
Cam clears his throat. “I mean, can you read his mind without his knowing?”
My parents have told me I’m never, ever supposed to use my telepathy with other humans. But Cam’s been my best friend ever since I can remember.
I swallow hard. “I can try.”
I close my eyes and extend my senses outward. I push past the emotional static from Cam’s worry and Robry’s excitement. Suddenly I can hear scared and angry thoughts coming from someplace close by.
“It’s Jac, all right,” I tell Cam. “And he’s wondering why you’re taking so long to find him. I think he’s helping another smuggler who’s injured. They’re running out of air down there.”
Cam pulls two compact aqua-breathers out of his pocket and starts peeling off his shirt. “Guess it’s time for a swim. You coming?”
My cheeks burn. “I’d better not,” I admit. “The last time I used an aqua-breather, I had a bad lung attack.”
“I’ll come,” Robry offers eagerly.
“I think he’s a better swimmer than I am, anyway,” I tell Cam, trying to hide my embarrassment. Robry often helps me train the dolphins now that Cam has to work on the fishing boat with his father.
“All right, then.” Cam nods to his little brother, and Robry is beside him in a flash.
“I’ll keep the zode in position right here,” I promise. “Mariah and Densil can pull you down to Jac’s boat. I’ll ask the rest of the pod to keep an eye out for sharks. Someone might be bleeding down there.”
Cam and Robry pull on face masks and fins and place the breathers in their mouths. They slip over the side. Mariah and Densil are waiting for them, with Mariah’s calf, Tisi, swimming in excited circles nearby. The dolphins let Cam and Robry take hold of their dorsal fins. Moments later, they all slip beneath the surface.
I keep the zode over Jac’s sunken boat while I scan the sea for any sign of the Marine Guard. A few years ago I could have easily made a dive to forty feet with a breather, but my lungs seem to be getting worse and worse. With a shudder, I wonder what will happen after I use up my last lung meds. I know Gillian has been trying desperately to find me more, but meds are hard to come by in the Western Collective these days.
I’m startled when Jac suddenly surfaces next to the zode. I search the water all around, but there’s no sign of Cam or Robry yet.
“They’re on their way up with my crewmate,” Jac reassures me. “That big dolphin is giving them a tow. Your pod is amazing. I knew they’d find us.”
“Thanks.” I put the ladder down off the stern so that Jac can climb aboard.
He holds out a hand, expecting me to help him, but I turn away, willing Cam and Robry to surface soon. Jac shoots me a cocky smile, oblivious to the fact that I don’t like him. At least he didn’t leave his injured crewmate to drown.
I let out a long breath when Densil, Robry, and Cam break the surface a minute later, towing an injured boy who has Cam’s breather clamped between his teeth. With Jac helping me, we soon get the shaking, wounded smuggler on board. Slumped against the center pontoon, he bleeds from deep gashes on his forehead and leg. The boy is younger than Cam and so painfully thin that I wonder if he joined the smugglers just to get three real meals a day.
I peer over the side to check on Robry. “There’s something else I need to fetch from down there,” he takes his breather out of his mouth long enough to tell me. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Before I can protest, Robry dives beneath the surface, quick as a dartling.
:Mariah, please keep an eye on Robry, will you?: I ask her. I’m still worried about sharks.
:we always do,: Mariah says. :he and Tisi are too good at finding trouble.:
:We’re going to be lucky if we don’t all end up in trouble before this night’s over,: I say.
I go forward and find the first-aid kit. I’m no medic, but my mother’s made sure I know basic emergency care. I’m in the midst of bandaging the gash on the smuggler’s forehead when Robry climbs into the zode, holding a large, angry lobster.
“I can’t believe you’re thinking about your breakfast at a time like this.” Cam shakes his head while Robry tosses the lobster into the specimen tank that Gillian keeps strapped against the center pontoon.
“Actually, I was thinking if we ran into the Marine Guard, we could at least say we were out looking for food,” Robry says as he struggles to pull the dive fins off his big feet.
“Good thinking,” Jac tells Robry with a grin. “You’d make a fine smuggler.”
“Over my dead body,” Cam says grimly, and points the zode straight out to sea.
“Where’re we headed?” I ask him.
“We’re going to rendezvous with Scarn.”
“The chief will probably take me across the border to hide out in the Southern Republic for a while,” Jac boasts. “Unfortunately, the Marine Guard got a good look at my handsome mug.”
I bite back a retort. I can’t believe we’re risking our lives to help this idiot. With Robry’s help, I finish bandaging the young smuggler and cover him with a blanket. A half hour later, we rendezvous with a sleek, fast, dark boat.
“Try not to look at their faces,” Cam warns me and Robry quietly, as the boat pulls up beside us. “You’ll be safer if you can’t recognize them.”
We toss the crew mooring lines. Two smugglers step down into the zode and lift the boy. He thanks me weakly before they help him aboard their vessel. Jac climbs up after the others.
“That’s a good-looking zode you have there,” one of the men says in a deep, gravelly voice, and shivers skitter down my back. He can’t take the zode from us! My mother needs it to conduct her research, and the fish we caught from it kept us alive during the last famine.
Despite Cam’s warning, I glance up. I can’t help staring at the smuggler’s craggy face because it’s pockmarked with tyrox scars. I gulp when I realize he must be one of the survivors of the tyrox outbreak that killed most of the population of LA forty years ago.
“It is a good zode, Scarn, and you are not going to steal it from the Hansons after what they did for you tonight,” Cam tells him sternly.
Scarn chuckles. “Cam Cruz, you’ve got guts; I have to give you credit for that. You can have a job with me whenever you want.”
“I’ll stick to fishing. I might live longer.”
Scarn nods to his crew and they toss the mooring lines back into the zode. Without another word, Cam powers up the motor and we head toward home.
We’re quiet on the way back to Goleta. I carefully pack away our med kit while Robry washes down the zode thoroughly, making sure there are no telltale signs of blood. When we’re finally finished, I sit beside Robry on the bow, the sea wind cool on my face. The dolphins keep pace beside us, leaping and playing in our bow wake. Laki and Mali show off by performing flips. Robry leans off the side of the zode and holds out his hand. We laugh when little Tisi tries to jump over it.
I wish we could keep the zode out all night. But every minute we stay on the water increases our chances of encountering a Marine Guard vessel.
Just before we reach the harbor entrance, Mariah contacts me.
:you are safe now?: she asks.
:We should be fine.:
:then we go to rest.:
:Thank you for your help tonight,: I say.
“Tell Mariah I’ll save her any squid we take in the next few days,” Cam promises. I relay his message to her. Mariah slaps a wave of water at Cam with her tail.
“I guess she likes that idea.” I grin at Cam as he wipes the seawater from his eyes.
It’s dark and quiet when we enter the harbor. I check my marine watch. It will be dawn in another two hours. Cam will have to hurry to be ready to head out fishing with his father before the sun rises.
Suddenly, Cam starts swearing under his breath.
I glance up and see that Hycault, the tall, lanky fishmaster, is waiting for us at the end of the dolphin dock. I bite my lip. Hycault is the most important government official in Goleta. We’ve broken his curfew and left the harbor without his permission.
Both offenses are serious enough to land us in a world of hurt.
My night vision is freakishly good, but right now I wish it wasn’t. I can clearly see the gleeful expression on the fishmaster’s face, and it makes my stomach churn.
“I’ve finally caught you,” Hycault says to Cam. “I knew your friend Jac was a smuggler, but I wasn’t sure about you until tonight.”
“I’m no smuggler,” Cam says bitterly as he brings the zode up beside the dock.
“The Marine Guard sank Jac’s boat five miles north of here,” Hycault continues, as if Cam hadn’t spoken, “and I spotted you entering the harbor from the north. That can hardly be a coincidence.”
“You have no proof I smuggled anything tonight.”
“I don’t need any proof except what my eyes tell me right now,” Hycault says, growing more strident by the moment. “You took this boat out without my permission, and you broke the curfew—”
“Actually, Fishmaster”—my mother’s cool voice interrupts him—“my daughter and her crew members don’t need your permission if she’s out on the water doing research for me or training our dolphins. I believe we’ve discussed this issue several times before.”
I’ve never been so glad to see Gillian. She is standing beside Hycault now, her expression amazingly composed.
“Boys, you can tie up the zode and hurry home,” she continues on. “Cam needs to eat a good breakfast before he heads out with the fleet. Thanks for helping Nere tonight.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. Hanson,” Cam says as he and Robry tie up the zode. Cam sends me a quick grateful look, and then he and Robry slip away. I, in the meantime, stand in the middle of the zode, wishing I could just disappear.
“You’ve no right to send them out without consulting me first,” Hycault says furiously.
“You can check with the Department of Fisheries. I have the right to send my boat out whenever I want to do research. The Western Collective needs more protein for its citizens, and the Department of Fisheries values the work I do,” my mother replies.
“Just you wait,” Hycault says with such menace, I tremble. “In a few days you’ll be sorry for all the times you dared to challenge my authority here.” With that, he stalks up the dock.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Gillian says to his retreating back. She steps down into the zode and reconnects the boat batteries to the solar array. From her tight expression, I know I’m in deep trouble. Wordlessly, she retrieves the lobster from the specimen bin, kills it with a deft knock against a dock piling, and strides quickly toward home.
I follow her up the path toward our stone cottage. I stop at the little spring where Cam rigged a pipe so that we have a shower we can use to rinse off seawater after a swim. I stay under the cold trickle for as long as I dare.
The instant I close our front door behind me, my mother asks, “What on earth were you thinking? You just risked your life and your freedom, all for some fool of a smuggler!”
“I thought the point of our dolphin program is to save human lives,” I make myself say. I hate arguing with my mother. She’s so brilliant, she always wins.
“I’d rather see our dolphins save worthwhile human lives. You may have saved Jac’s life tonight, but that idiotic boy will be risking it again tomorrow for nothing more than a few dollarns and some thrills.”
“You’ve said yourself if it weren’t for smugglers who brought in meds from the Southern Republic, I’d have died long ago.”
“Well, those were principled smugglers, not like Scarn and his gang, who just traffic in black-market luxuries. They’re little more than scum.” She pauses and seems to collect herself. “Do you have any idea how I felt when I saw that your bed was empty, and then that the zode was missing?”
I look at her set face, and I feel my eyes burn with tears. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Her tight expression eases. She crosses the room and gathers me into her arms. “I know you didn’t mean to, sweetling,” she says in a gentler tone, and smooths a lock of hair away from my face. “And I know Cam probably asked you to help. I’ll have a talk with his mother. Alicia’s probably going to be angrier about this than I am.” She gives me a quick kiss on my forehead and steps away.
“What happened tonight will never happen again,” she says, returning to her usual cool, brisk scientist mode. “Do I make myself clear?”
I nod quickly. Then I can’t help yawning.
“Well, it’s obvious you won’t get much out of school today,” she declares. “You might as well go back to bed. I’ll figure out your punishment later. I think the dolphin dock pilings need scraping again.”
After I close my bedroom door behind me, I make a face. Even though I hate scraping the dock pilings, I’m getting off pretty lightly. Shortly after I lie down on my bed, I fall fast asleep.
When I wake up, I’m surprised to hear voices. I check my watch. It’s already two in the afternoon, and I’m starving. I open my door quietly and peer around it. Ben Reece, a dolphin trainer from down the coast, is sitting at our kitchen table talking with my mother. Their expressions are tense and serious.
“Rumor has it they’re going to make a big announcement tomorrow,” Ben is telling her. “The smuggling incident last night may be the last straw. This could be the crackdown we’ve all been dreading.”
My mother glances up and notices me. I see her make an effort to smile. “Good afternoon, sweetling. I left a fish bar and some of Alicia’s bread for you on the counter.”
“Hi, Nere.” Ben gives me a nod. “I saw you working with the pod last week. Your dolphins look sharp. Maybe your mother will let me borrow you to work with my pod one of these days.”
I have a hunch that Ben would much rather borrow my mother. But the one time I was brave enough to ask Gillian about Ben, she only laughed and said she was a one-man woman, and her man was gone. What I saw in her eyes then has kept me from asking her that question again.
Pain twists inside me when I realize that my father has been dead for over two years now. He was washed overboard during a sudden wild storm, and even our dolphins couldn’t find his body. Some nights before supper, I catch myself listening for his footsteps and his whistling as he hurries up our path from the harbor.
Although I want my mother to be happy, another part of me is relieved that she’s not interested in Ben. But men like him will keep trying. Despite her years spent in the sun and on the sea, she is still beautiful.
Every day I wish I’d inherited more of her looks. I have her pale skin and blond hair, but they look weird on me. Some days I think my blue eyes are almost pretty, but barely anyone sees them because I have to wear huge, blocky, dark glasses to keep my weak eyes from tearing in bright sunlight. I’ll never be curvy like the town girls because I spend so much time swimming with the dolphins.
No wonder I only have two friends. Robry and Cam don’t seem to mind my freaky coloring or the fact that I’m as skinny and strong as most fisher boys. But I mind.
I linger in the main room and start in on my lunch, hoping to find out more about the big government announcement Ben had mentioned.
“Let’s head down to your boat,” Gillian says to Ben. “After you finish your lunch, Nere, please start on your lessons for this afternoon.” She motions to my learning pad and a long list of articles she’s left for me on the table.
As she leaves, I yank out a chair. Usually the lessons my mother teaches me about marine biology and oceanography are more interesting than those I have to learn at school about the rise of the Western Collective and the devastation created around the world by global warming. But over the past few months, her lessons have been getting longer and harder.
When she comes inside a short time later, I gesture to her list. “I don’t see why I have to learn about giant squid and how to treat lionfish stings. I’m not going to run into a lionfish working as a coastal dolphin trainer.”
“Your oceanography lessons are more important than ever.” I’m surprised by the strain I hear in my mother’s voice. “What I teach you now might save your life someday.”
I open my mouth to argue, but something in her face stops me. She’s been looking haunted for months now—it’s even worse than when my father died or when my big brother, James, disappeared last year. She stays up late, working and pacing the cottage long into the night. I’ve tried to ask what’s bothering her, but Gillian has always had her secrets.
I bend my head and go back to reading while she chops vegetables and stirs the lobster stew we’ll be eating later. When she’s finished cooking, she quizzes me on my navigation skills and assigns one final article on ocean vents. I keep reading the article while we have an early dinner. A couple of times Gillian looks like she wants to say something, but then she doesn’t. Even for my mother, she’s acting strange.
When the silence gets too awkward, I decide to break it. “Has Ben heard anything about James?”
Her expression goes from distracted to closed. “No,” she says.
I stare hard at my plate. One morning we woke up to find that James had disappeared with the sailboat he’d made by himself. I know he’d been in fights at school, and he’d had some awful arguments with my mother, but I still can’t believe he just left us. The secret police came looking for him because James had cut out his locator chip, but we couldn’t tell them where he’d gone.
He’s always loved the Channel Islands, though, and I think he’s hiding out there.
I look up from my plate. “Why can’t we take the zode out to the islands and look for him?” I ask, even though I’ve already asked her this question a dozen times.
“Sweetling, I know you miss him. I miss him, too,” she says with a catch in her voice. “I promise we’ll both go look for him soon, but now is not the right time,” she adds, with such finality I know there’s no point in arguing with her.
I stand up and blink back my tears before she can see them. James can be grumpy and impatient sometimes, but still, he’s my big brother, and I wonder all the time if he’s okay. Now our cottage seems twice as empty and quiet, with both him and my father gone.
After dinner, I go down to the dolphin dock for a long swim with the pod. When I’m ready for sleep, Gillian comes to sit beside me on my bed.
“Ben really was impressed with the dolphins last week. You’ve done a wonderful job since you took over their training on your own.”
“Thanks,” is all I can think to say. I wish we weren’t so awkward together. James made everything easier. He knew how to make her smile and laugh.
“Well, sweetling, you get some rest. Tomorrow’s likely to be a hard day. I’m going to be up late tonight.” She kisses me on the forehead and blows out my lamp.
I’m just starting to doze when I hear a sound I dread. She’s dragging our table across the floor, and I swear to myself. Then I hear her roll our rug back and pull the trapdoor open. I know Gillian is about to climb down the wooden ladder that leads to her secret, forbidden lab full of secret, forbidden lab equipment and computers that we speak of even more rarely than we speak of James or my father.
I get out of bed and stalk to the top of the ladder.
“Knock when you want to come back up,” is all I say. After she climbs down the ladder, I slam the trapdoor shut and roll the rug back into place. I drag the table over the rug, taking care to make sure it all looks normal. I even leave a dirty plate and mug on the table. The secret police can search a house at any time, looking for illegal technology like computers or radios. Gillian has all of those things and more in her lab.
I hate it that she takes these risks. I hate it that she does the kind of research that gets people arrested and taken away.
We’re already a family of two now. What will happen to me if the Western Collective sends her to a work camp, and there’s only me left?