My heart stutters. It’s Morgan, Quint’s friend from the other night.
I drop my bike against a tree and prepare to race across the road to help her, but a car has pulled up to the curb and a woman is already running, cell phone in hand. Oh my god, are you okay? I’ll call an ambulance!
I swallow and take a step back. I still feel sick to my stomach. Cold sweat has beaded on the back of my neck and my bike helmet feels too heavy, too confining. I ignore the sensation and slide my leg over my bike seat.
I turn and pedal as fast as I can the other way.
THIRTEEN
I ride to a nearby park and drop my bike before collapsing onto a wooden bench. Ripping off my helmet, I press my forehead into my hands. I keep seeing it again and again—that moment when her foot slipped. When she lost purchase. When she cried out and fell.
I did that. I did that.
I could have killed her.
It takes a long time to calm myself down. A long time before my heart stops palpitating and I can think rationally about what just happened.
It’s an even longer time before I convince myself that, no, of course I didn’t do that.
The punishments I’ve been doling out have not come from me. I may have thought that something should happen to all those people, but the universe has been deciding what those punishments should be. I never would have made someone fall off a ladder, whether they were breaking the law or not. That was all the universe’s doing.
Besides, if anyone’s to blame, it’s Morgan herself. She put herself in danger by climbing up there. She probably didn’t think to secure it. Or maybe she’s naturally clumsy.
Besides, she must have deserved it. She was harming someone else through her actions. The livelihood of a local business owner. The beauty of our quaint coastal town. Plus, she was so snotty when we met at Encanto, the way she wouldn’t stop staring at her phone, even when people were performing.
The universe knows what it’s doing. It has to. It’s the universe.
Gradually, my hands stop shaking.
I know I’m trying to justify what happened, but what else can I do? I have to believe the universe has my back in this.
Finally, after a few mindful breaths in which I try to exhale all my negative energy, I climb back on my bike.
I’m closer to the rescue center than I realized, and the rest of the ride is merely coasting down a two-lane street lined with cypress trees and overgrown blackberry bushes. Not only do I not see anyone behaving badly, I don’t see anyone at all. This is a quiet road, one I don’t think I’ve ever been on. Far enough from Main Street and the beach to not attract tourists. I can see evidence of a handful of houses tucked back among the trees—farmsteads with chickens and goats and acreage.
I almost ride right past the center. At the last minute I squeeze the handbrake and drop my feet onto the pavement.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting until the building fails to meet those expectations. It’s suddenly clear why Quint didn’t bother to include any pictures of this real-world animal-saving “tourist” destination in the report. I guess I’d been picturing an aquarium. Something sleek and modern, with copious amounts of parking that could cater to busloads of kids arriving for school field trips. I was picturing an educational center, with plaques expounding on the delicate ecosystems in our oceans and how humans can help by drinking less bottled water and choosing to eat sustainably caught fish. I’ve been picturing great glass tanks full of tropical fish and the occasional chortling sea lion, or maybe even gigantic enclosures for whales and dolphins. And also a petting pool where you could slide your knuckle down the rough backs of starfish or let the urchins wrap their spiny needles around your finger.
I realize then, as I turn into the gravel parking lot, that I’ve been picturing the conservation center in Pixar’s Finding Dory. High-tech. Fancy. With educational messages from Sigourney Weaver piped through the speakers every couple of minutes.
Which might have been an unrealistic expectation. After all, if Fortuna Beach had an institution like that, I would have known about it before today.
But the reality of the Fortuna Beach Sea Animal Rescue Center is that … it’s small. And, on the outside at least, entirely unremarkable.
The stench of dead fish hits me before I’ve stopped pedaling. There’s no bike rack, so I set it against a stair rail near the entrance. I take off my helmet, hang it on the handlebar, and scan the small two-story building. It’s long but narrow, with a flat roof and concrete walls. Very industrial. Very utilitarian. Very unwelcoming. At least someone has made an attempt to brighten the facade with a coat of coral-colored paint.
Two white vans in the gravel parking lot have the name and phone number of the center printed on the side, encouraging people to call if they see a stranded or hurt animal. There’s a stack of crates against the fence, alongside a row of kennels, like something you’d see at the dog pound. A couple of temporary plastic storage sheds stand nearby, their doors padlocked shut. I can hear barking, and it takes me a moment to remember I’m not at a dog pound at all. It must be seals making the noise, or maybe sea lions.
For a moment, I wonder what I’m doing here. I have to write a report—a better report, something that will win over Mr. Chavez and his inane rules—and this morning I was convinced that this place was my ticket to doing just that. I would figure out Quint’s tie to the center and redo my portion of the presentation to align with the paper he wrote. If I play my cards right, I may even be able to submit the revised project without Mr. Chavez knowing that Quint wasn’t involved. Because … he is involved. In a roundabout way.
I think I can make it work.
I study the building again, my nose wrinkling as a new waft of spoiled seafood overtakes the first rush of salt and fish.
But I haven’t committed to anything yet. I’ll just go in and check it out, talk to them, figure out who Rosa Erickson is, and who she is to Quint, and glean whatever I can to use in my revised project. Then I’ll be out of here, nothing to it. As for what I’ll tell my parents about my new volunteer position … well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I swipe on a coat of lipstick, smooth the creases from my shirt, and make my way to the entrance—a faded yellow door with a mail slot near the bottom. I hesitate, wondering whether I should knock. It’s a place of business, but as far as I can tell, it isn’t open for the public to visit.
I go ahead and rap my knuckles against the door. I wait, but all I hear are the continued yelpings from whatever sea animal is making all that racket.
After a few seconds, I check the knob. It opens and I peek my head into a small room, which I suppose might pass for a lobby, though it’s smaller than my bedroom at home. A collection of houseflies are buzzing around a single wooden desk that is overflowing with paperwork. One wall is covered in fake wood paneling, almost identical to the stuff in our basement that was remodeled in the seventies. There’s a collection of framed photographs showing men and women holding hoses and push broom and grinning at the camera, or linked arm in arm on the beach, or examining a sea turtle on a metal table.
On the opposite wall is an open door that leads to a long, narrow hallway. A quick glance makes me think of a horse stable, with a series of low walls divided into sections—separate rooms for the animals. But instead of hay, this stable has linoleum-tiled flooring, and it reeks of fish instead of fertilizer.
Next to the door is a framed movie poster—the iconic Jaws poster, of all things.
But no, on closer inspection I see that it’s a spoof. The giant shark head looming up from the depths is actually a gray speedboat seen from above, and the swimming girl has been replaced with a harmless-looking shark. The title, Laws, has a caption: HUMANS KILL 11,400 SHARKS PER HOUR. SHARKS KILL 12 HUMANS PER YEAR. PETITION TO CHANGE SHARK-CULLING LAWS.
“Per hour?” I mutter. Can that statistic possibly be real?
I also can’t help but shudder at the second number. The idea of being snagged in the ocean by a great white has literally kept me up at night, and I’ve never even seen Jaws.
A single sheet of white office paper catches my eye. Someone has printed another Jaws spoof poster and taped it next to the poster. This time, the title reads Straws, the swimming girl has been replaced by a sea turtle, and the “monster” coming out of the deep to devour it is nothing but a bunch of plastic straws in the shape of a shark’s head.
I chuckle. That’s actually pretty clever.
The barking of sea animals suddenly increases and I turn toward a screened-in back door. Beyond it is a large courtyard full of chain-link fences and blue plastic pools and … well, I’ve found the noisemakers.
I inch my way around the desk, careful not to bump any of the teetering paper stacks, and approach the screen door.
The courtyard has no fancy tanks. No giant aquariums. But a heck of a lot of seals. Or maybe sea lions. Or otters? I don’t know, but they’re shiny and relatively cute and taking turns splashing through the plastic pools or chasing one another around the concrete that shines with puddles of water everywhere.
I notice that, while some of the pools are small plastic kiddie pools like I’d buy at the variety store on Main Street, there are other larger pools built into the ground along the far side of the courtyard. An array of awnings and pop-up tents and tarps tied to the tops of the chain-link fences offer mottled shade as the sun tops the side of the building. A tangle of hoses wind their way from platform to platform, and there is equipment piled up in every corner: coolers and pool nets and scrubbing brushes and more plastic buckets than you’d see at the local hardware store.
A door bangs off to my right, making me jump. Two women, wearing identical yellow T-shirts, emerge from the far end of the building. They approach one of the kiddie pools, which is housing a solitary animal. It watches the women approach, its whiskers twitching around its nose.
“Excuse me?” I say, pushing open the screen door. It screams on its hinges.
The women spin toward me. One of them looks to be about my mom’s age, with wispy black hair pulled back into a messy braid. The other is older and stockier—seventies, maybe—with white hair curled in a bob and a strand of pearls around her neck that don’t go with the basic T-shirt at all.