The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook (10 page)

“So? What’d you find out?” asked Jax.

“No luck yet with the Whydahlee,” said Max. “I did some research on fires in the ocean, though. It could be volcanoes, for one. Like submarine volcanoes, right? That’s fire under the ocean. Right?”

“Magma, technically,” said Jax.

“Problem is, there aren’t that many active ones near here. The nearest might be too far for us to get to.”

“Like where?” asked Cara.

“Um, the Caribbean,” said Max.

“Big help,” said Jax.

“Yeah, so I figured that’s probably not it,” said Max. “So then I figured maybe it’s something that hasn’t happened yet, you know? Like say a tanker has an oil spill or something, and that catches fire.”

“But that wouldn’t be under the sea,” objected Jax. “It would be on top of it. On the surface.”

“True, my man,” Max conceded. “I also thought, maybe it’s the mid-Atlantic ridge, you know? I guess lava comes up there, from the rift or whatever. But that’s a bit of a hike too. Kind of beyond our travel budget.”

“Anyway,” said Jax, “we know the general area now, and that’s not it. It’s not going to be too far offshore.”

Cara felt disappointed; she’d thought Max would be more help.

“You guys play golf, I’m going to ride down the street,” she said. “To buy some fries. Be back in fifteen.”

If you cut back down the road behind some buildings there was a greasy spoon/convenience store, one of the mom-and-pop operations off Route 6 that was only open in summer. Their fries were skinny and crunchy. Cara stood in line behind a couple of fishermen, waiting to order; one of them she thought might be Zee’s father, a bearded guy who was always sunburnt on his nose, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

He was talking to the other guy about work—something about a red tide, which she knew was a bad thing because it meant the shellfishery had to be closed, at least while the red tide lasted. It was bad for business; it hurt the fishermen and in the restaurants it irritated the tourons.

“Chris was saying it’s polluted runoff that causes it,” said the one who might be Zee’s dad.

“No way. It’s a natural deal,” said the other. “It’s algal bloom, man.”

At that Cara started and edged closer. Algal bloom … She thought she remembered something about them. They could be phosphorescent, sometimes; they might be poison, but sometimes they were beautiful.

“But pollution can make that stuff happen. They had one in China last month.”

She was almost sure it was Zee’s dad. Should she ask him? Ask him where the next one was supposed to be?

“You seen one when it’s glowing? A few years back there was one like that … glowing all over the bay at night. Friend of mine saw it, I didn’t. They didn’t shut down the beds that year though.”

“In ’05 that one came down from Canada, right? But that one didn’t glow.… Yeah, hey, Lynn, I’d just like a burger.”

“Hi, Lynn, I’ll take a burger and a Coke .… Yeah, looks amazing. Kind of this greenish blue on the waves. Those little critters turn bright green, and there are billions of ’em….”

They moved away from the window as Cara stood there, frozen. This was it.

“Just fries, please,” she said, distracted.

She had her fries in one hand and was holding her handlebar with the other, bumping slowly back through the gravelly lots behind the row of buildings, when she stopped and whispered it to herself.

“The fires. Green fires beneath the sea.”

“No,” said their dad at dinner, which was frozen lasagna since Lolly didn’t cook for them on Sundays. “I haven’t heard of a red tide this year. Not around here, anyway, or not yet. Why do you ask, Cara?”

“I heard some men talking about it, is all,” she said.

“Speaking of men talking,” said their dad, “I have to be away tomorrow, and the next night, too. Now, I’ve been thinking about it, and I can certainly ask Lolly to stay here with you at night, if you’d like. Or one of your old babysitters. But the thing is, most of the ones that are still around are barely older than Max—the older ones have gone off to college. And I was thinking we might try it without a sitter, because I’ve been impressed lately with your maturity. All three of you, actually. Now, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be nervous. And I’d need you to check in by phone frequently. This would be a first time for us, and it’s been a tough summer. But I do know Max is perfectly capable of watching Jax, and Cara, for the most part, can take of herself. Still, if you have any doubt about going it alone, I’d feel better if there was a grownup here with you.”

“What are you going away for?” asked Jax.

“I’m supposed to give a paper in Chicago,” said their dad. “It was scheduled way back, before … you know. They plan these academic conferences for years in advance. And actually, if any of you don’t want me to go—I mean, given the situation, I was thinking of canceling anyway.”

“No way,” said Max and put down his glass of water. “I can watch Jax. We’ll be fine. Really.”

“Go,” said Cara. “We’ll be OK.”

“Definitely,” said Jax.

“What’s the forecast?” asked Cara suddenly.

It had struck her: the three of them alone in the house, at night.

With rain falling.

“I haven’t checked,” said her dad with a quizzical look. “Why so meteorological?”

“Oh, nothing,” she mumbled and stuck her fork into the remains of her lasagna.

Rain again. The rain that brought
him
.

“Lolly will come to make you dinner, anyway,” their dad went on. “That much I planned with her already. Both nights, on Monday and Tuesday. But if you’re comfortable with Max as a babysitter, she’ll just go home after that.”

“I promise,” said Max and raised his hands like he was surrendering. “No wild parties.”

“And no girls over,” said their dad, and then coughed discreetly.

Usually he didn’t even go there; it was their mother’s job to have the embarrassing conversations with them about safe sex and responsibility. She’d just had one with Cara this spring. Even though she was pretty easy to talk to, it still made Cara cringe to think about it. Ugh. Why did they even bother?

“Scout’s honor,” said Max, nodding.

Jax had pulled out his phone and was typing away on it. His fingers were small, and he could go incredibly fast, even over the miniscule buttons. Cara could tell he was on the Web; the house had wireless. Then he put it away again.

“The forecast,” he told them, “is for storms.”

They’d waved their dad off to catch the boat for Boston; Max had gone with him on the twenty-minute drive to the ferry dock and would bring the car back. Then they’d headed out on their morning dogwalk, toward the general store that was beside the small post office. The store carried donuts sometimes, which were baked fresh at the beginning of the day. Jax had a thing for their bear claws.

“… basically, a whole bunch of microorganisms thrown together,” said Jax, in lecture mode. “And the phytoplankton that make up these kind of blooms are often dinoflagellates. One species in particular has been noted for its bioluminescence:
Lingulodinium polyedrum
.”

Dino
-whatever-it-was rang a bell—she’d heard the word recently. Maybe at her mother’s office—Roger talking about her mother’s research. Which meant this obscure—algae?—had cropped up twice in just a couple of days. That seemed like a strange coincidence.

“So, once we know where to look,” said Jax, “that’s what we’ll be looking for. A kind of light on the waves.”

“You think that’s really it? The fires beneath the sea?”

“I do,” said Jax. “You saw it, Cara. You really did.”

She felt a small surge of satisfaction.

“You know,” she said slowly, as they waited to cross Route 6, “I didn’t tell you what I heard Dad and Roger talking about when I went into Mom’s office.”

“What?” said Jax quickly.

She saw his look and winced.
That
was why she hadn’t told him—he was ten, and he missed their mother, and maybe, just maybe, their mother was missing because she’d been … what had their dad said?

Taken
.

But she should have told him before. She had to tell him things, even if he was young—even if, sometimes, he looked into her brain when he wasn’t supposed to.

“There was a break-in at her office,” she said haltingly. She found she was still pretty reluctant to talk about it. “And Roger, you know, her boss?—he was telling Dad that they stole her work off her computer.”

“
Stole
it?” asked Jax.

“The data, he said? Or dataset, something like that.”

The light had changed, but Jax was just standing still, holding onto Rufus’s leash, looking up at her.

“They took her data?” he asked.

Cara nodded. She felt guilty: she really should have told him, and Max, too.

There was just something about all of them, at the moment, that had made her not want to say it out loud … life in their house seemed so delicately balanced lately, as though—even before the Pouring Man—things were barely holding together, a kind of imitation of their old life. They kept to the same routine, her dad doing his research, Max working his job at the restaurant and hanging out at the courts or the skatepark, Jax trekking off to daycamp or doing his databases … but through it all they were just going through the motions.

And waiting.

They were on hold until real life began again.

Her mother
was
real life, she thought.

Also, if you didn’t let yourself talk about something, it stayed a little unreal. It stayed an arm’s length away. Once it was mentioned, there was a kind of concreteness to it.

“This was the numbers on ocean pH and shellfish?” prodded Jax.

“I don’t—it kind of went over my head. They said ‘CO2’ a lot, but that’s all I know.”

“Dad was talking to me about that project on the drive home that day,” said Jax, nodding as he made the connection. “But he didn’t say anything about information theft or hackers….”

“Let’s go,” said Cara, because the light was blinking DON’T WALK already.

“I’m tired of being treated like an infant,” said Jax suddenly, more loudly than usual. “I don’t deserve it. Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t
you
?”

She looked at him, then at the DON’T WALK sign again. Jax wasn’t budging.

The sign froze, and cars started speeding by them again.

“I guess—”

“What? You have to tell me
everything
. We’re in this together!”

“Then you have to
promise
not to ping me again without asking. Ever,” she said, with a loudness that matched his own. “Or else I can’t trust you, either!”

They looked at each other.

“OK,” said Jax, more quietly. “I promise if you do. I’ll always ask before I read you.”

“And I’ll tell you what I know,” she said.

They stood there for another minute, waiting for the light to change back, and finally crossed, a little awkward, with Rufus loping beside them.

“She was supposed to go to Washington and tell Congress what her study said,” she added when they reached the opposite sidewalk. “Maybe so they could pass a new law about it or something? And then …” She trailed off. “And then she disappeared, Jaxy.”

“But ocean acidification is common knowledge,” said Jax. “At least, in the scientific community. I mean, it’s not like she’s cornered the market on marine pH dropping. Lots of people are studying it.”

There was the general store, with a bakery beside it and the small post office. A few feet behind the row of shops, past a thin screen of trees, the bike path ran almost the whole length of the Outer Cape—along the edge of the strip of forest that gave way to cliffs and dune grass and sand, and then the surging Atlantic.

She wished she could just ride again, the way she used to—coast along the smooth path, warmed by the sun.… It was what she’d always loved to do, every summer since she first started taking off by herself. She coasted with her hands free, the seashore on her right with its pine and oak-tree woods, creeks with frogs splashing and silver fish flashing through them, marshes with herons, ponds with water lilies. There were the soft-looking deer that ambled through the patchwork shade of the trees, where the old dirt roads wound through the cool forest and came out on the bright cliffs in the sun with their wild roses trembling as the breeze swept over them … on her left side were the distant sounds of a steady river of traffic, the long row of shabby, cozy motels on Route 6. There were the seafood restaurants with their ocean themes, round windows like portholes, and old rusty-orange life preservers hanging in nets on the walls.