Seaglass Summer (12 page)

“There, look!” They’re silver and shiny in the sun, arching through the ocean.

“Whoa, cool,” Hawk says. “I’ll have to check with the research center and see if this is J-pod. I can’t tell by looking.”

Toni’s lashes flutter. She closes her eyes and sways. I wonder if she is reading the thoughts of orcas.

The sky brightens. The orcas weave in close to the shore, and then they head north. The sounds of nature flood into me—the chatter of birds, the rustle of leaves, the whistle of the wind. The sea stretches away, and I
think of everything that hides in its depths. Octopuses, sharks, sea urchins, shipwrecks—all the secrets that live and die underneath the water, never stepping on land, never looking a human in the eye.

On the way home, we’re all tired, and my skin smells like sea salt. The ocean, so full of life, calmed me. Maybe somewhere, Marmalade really is playing. I still feel his warmth, his fur.

“Hey, Poppy,” Hawk says. He taps his finger on the window control. “Wanna, um, go bike riding with me tomorrow? I gotta put up flyers for my mom. She’s selling her old beat-up car.”

“I don’t have a bike.”

“Oh, come on. I bet your uncle has one. Doc!”

Uncle Sanjay turns around, his cheeks flushed, his hair blown back by the wind. “I’ve got a bicycle, my dear niece. Just for you.”

Chapter Twenty-four
LITTLE CHICK

U
ncle Sanjay’s bike belongs in a museum display of ancient wheeled contraptions from the dawn of time. I’m surprised the wobbly seat doesn’t fall off. Rust is munching away at the metal, and I have only one gear. First gear for going uphill, first gear for going downhill, first gear for flat ground.

“I haven’t ridden this hump of tin since my earliest days in Virginia,” Uncle Sanjay says, patting the seat. At least the tires aren’t flat, and there’s a basket attached to the handlebars.

“This will be fine,” I say. Fine if you lived about a thousand years ago. I drop a bottle of water into the basket. “Do the brakes work? I don’t want to crash.”

“I’ve checked. And wear the helmet. Don’t get lost, all right?”

He holds Stu’s leash while I pedal away. I wish I could take Stu with me, but he has a mild case of garbage gut. He threw up last night after eating something rotten in the street. He’s okay, but Uncle Sanjay wants to keep an eye on him.

Stu whines, and I wave a sad goodbye as I ride down the road. “Stu, I’ll miss you!” I blow him kisses, and Stu wags his tail and barks—a high-pitched,
how dare you leave me?
yelp. He’ll have to go to the clinic without me today. Poor Stu.

In a moment, I’m around the corner, and Uncle Sanjay’s house disappears from sight. I memorized the directions to Hawk’s place, five blocks down, two blocks left, three blocks right.

I didn’t think any house could be smaller than Uncle Sanjay’s. But Hawk’s house is barely a garage with windows. A bunch of flowerpots are scattered around the overgrown front yard. A calico cat trots through the grass and disappears around the side of the house.

I lay Uncle Sanjay’s rust heap in the grass, since there’s no kickstand on the bike, and knock on the front door. A
dog barks inside. Hawk shows up at the screen, next to a yapping little black pug with a smashed-in face. Hawk picks up the pug, kisses him, and puts him down. “Stay here for a little while, Gilligan,” he says. “I’ll be home soon.” He steps outside with a pack strapped to his back and shuts the door. “Ready to go? I got the goods. I also have tape and a stapler.”

“How many pets do you have?” I ask as I get on my bike.

“Just Gilligan and my cat, Skipper.”

“The calico cat?”

Hawk nods. “They get along really well.”

I pedal hard to keep up with him on my antique bike. We stop at the Trading Post and staple flyers on the bulletin boards. Hawk’s mom is selling her old blue Honda hatchback. We put flyers all over town.

On the way home, we stop for lunch at the Witless Cove Pizzeria. The restaurant buzzes with local people and tourists with cameras slung over their shoulders. We order veggie pizza and cranberry juice and sit at a picnic table outside, next to a bright garden full of flowers and chirping birds. The sun sprinkles through the trees.

“This place has been around forever,” Hawk says. “My dad used to bring me here when I was little.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

“My parents divorced five years ago. He lives in New
Mexico. I fly down to stay with him sometimes.”

“Do you ever think about living with him?”

He takes a bite of pizza and talks with his mouth full. “Sometimes I do, but as soon as I’m old enough, I wanna be a technician at Furry Friends. Or a dog whisperer, maybe, like that guy on TV. I dunno. How about you? You still wanna be a vet?”

A brilliant green-blue hummingbird hovers in midair, wings whirring; then it is gone. “Of course I do.” But the words come out shaky. Nothing has changed. Nothing at all. But it has. Everything has changed. I’ll have to help old kitties die. How many mummified fetuses will I find? But I’ll get to save ducks and help puppies be born.

“That’s cool,” Hawk says. “So you’re getting used to the gross stuff.”

“Some of it, I guess.”

A group of three boys, all about Hawk’s age, show up at a nearby picnic table. They’re laughing and punching each other in the arm. They’re wearing baseball caps backward, and their pants are falling down.

Hawk ducks his head, as if he’s trying to avoid them.

“You know those boys?” I ask.

“Kids from town.” Hawk turns away from them and shields his eyes against the sun.

“Are they your friends?”

“They were all at summer camp. Guess they’re back now.”

“Didn’t you want to go to camp?”

Hawk tears off his pizza crust. “More fun to help at the clinic. Gotta prepare for my future.”

“Hey, Hawk!” one of the boys calls out.

Hawk turns around, his face red. “Hey, Johnny!”

The boys look at me and grin, and Johnny waves Hawk over.

Hawk turns into a different person as he strolls over; he swings his arms and hunches his shoulders, trying to be cool, like he doesn’t care about a thing in the world.

“Hey, Hawk. How’s it goin’?” Johnny says. I catch snippets of their conversation. “Camp” and “movie” and “girls” and “baseball.” And “Who’s the little chick?”

I’m guessing Johnny is talking about me. I want to tell him I’m not a “little chick,” I’m a girl with a name. But I sit quietly, eating my pizza.

“Just a kid …,” Hawk says, then lowers his voice. He keeps his back to me, but he doesn’t know I have excellent ears. “… Doc at the clinic … My mom said … I gotta babysit her … from L.A….”

The boys laugh.

I nearly spit out my pizza. My face is hot.

Hawk shrugs in my direction, waving an arm, erasing me.

Just a kid
.

I gotta babysit her
.

I get up from the table and throw my paper plate into the garbage. Then I slip around to the front of the pizza parlor, where Hawk and I locked up our bikes. I let the air out of his front tire.

“Hey, Poppy!” Hawk calls out behind me. I don’t turn around. I hop onto my bike and ride away, pedaling as fast as I can.

Chapter Twenty-five
THE BEACH

I
hide in my room, and when I know Hawk is working, I stay away from the clinic. Stu and I take many walks on the beach. Two evenings later, the doorbell rings. Uncle Sanjay answers the door.

I hear Hawk’s mumbling voice. Maybe his mom sent him.

“Poppy!” Uncle Sanjay calls.

“I’m busy!” I’m under the covers in bed, reading
James Herriot’s Cat Stories
by flashlight. I would sit in the closet,
but it’s too small. Stu is lying on my feet, farting.

“He says it’s urgent,” Uncle Sanjay says.

“Tell him to go away.” I don’t know what could be so important if I’m just a kid he was stuck babysitting.

Uncle Sanjay speaks to Hawk in a low voice; then the front door clicks shut, and Uncle Sanjay comes into my room. “You’ve had an argument with Hawk, have you? What’s going on?”

I pull off the covers, switch off the flashlight, and close my book. “He thinks I’m too young. He wasn’t really my friend. He was only pretending. He was
babysitting
me. That’s what he told his friends.”

Uncle Sanjay sits next to me. “Perhaps he was just showing off. Boys will do that.”

“But it was mean.” Outside, a sparrow splashes in the birdbath and flies away. There’s a new hairline crack in the ceramic bowl.

“I’m sorry, Poppy. Each of us has a dark side, and sometimes we accidentally reveal that dark side to others. Hawk must feel guilty. He apologized.”

Stu jumps off the bed and stretches out on the floor.

“I’m not a child anymore. I don’t need babysitting.”

“No, you don’t. You’ve learned to do so much here already.”

“I can weigh a cat by myself, and take a temperature, and walk Stu. I bet I can take the ferry by myself. Pretty
soon, I’ll be able to fly in a plane by myself, to come back and visit you. Mom and Dad won’t have to hold my hand.”

Uncle Sanjay reaches down to rub Stu’s belly. “That’s true, but sometimes it’s nice to have other people help you, and it’s good to have family and friends who care about you. Hawk appreciates your friendship. He likes you very much, Poppy.”

“I don’t need him. I have you, and my mom and dad, and Emma and Anna and my other friends back home. And Duff and Stu and the other animals. And I have myself.”

“But it’s nice to make new friends, nah? Hawk showed you around the clinic. He has helped you, hasn’t he?”

“I don’t need his help. I’m fine on my own. Pretty soon, his friends won’t call me a little chick, because I’ll be taller and older. I’ll be grown up.”

“What’s the hurry? Your youth will pass quickly enough. Look at Stu. He’s only eight years old, but that’s already about forty-five years old in human years. I remember when he was a puppy. Seems as though it was only yesterday.”

Stu still acts like a puppy, bouncy and happy.

I pull on a sweater and take him to the beach. The tide is low, the air thick and damp. The shadows of clouds stretch across the sea. A few people are strolling along
the waterfront, and here and there, a dog dashes through the surf.

I let Stu off the leash, and he trots along, his nose following invisible scent trails. I find a 1968 penny and a perfect pink cockleshell in the sand. We wander farther and farther, following a curve in the shoreline toward the forest, until we’re alone with the seagulls. On a rock that sticks out of the water, an elegant blue heron sits perfectly still. Its long body and beak form curved shadows against the sky.

This is the farthest I’ve walked on this beach. How long have we been out here? I look back the way we came. I imagine Hawk running toward me, waving his arms, then falling flat on his face at my feet. He’ll apologize, and I will turn away.

But nobody’s coming. Stu ambles off, climbing across the rocks. I crouch by a tide pool and watch the crabs scuttle through the water. A red starfish clings to a stone.
Look, you can see a whole world in there
, I hear Hawk say. The sky is turning a soft pink at sunset.

“Stu!” I call. “We’d better head back.”

He doesn’t come. “Stu! Come!” Nothing.

I climb across the rocks. No sign of Stu. I call him again. Where is he? Suddenly, the boulders look jagged. They tumble away for miles along the shoreline.

We wandered too far. It’s getting dark. What if Stu is
lost? I keep calling for him, searching, and finally, there he is, clambering toward me.

I sigh with relief. “Stu, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” But something is wrong. Stu is limping, holding up his left forepaw. “What happened?”

As the heron takes off with a harsh croak, flapping enormous wings, Stu comes nearer. His paw is covered in blood.

Chapter Twenty-six
SAVING STU