Cry of the Sea (14 page)

“June? Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Is Haley here? She’s not answering her phone
or emails, and I wanted to talk to her.”

“She’s here,” Haley’s mom said. “I think she
might be in bed already.”

“She’s not,” I told her. “Her light’s still
on.”

“Oh.” But her mom didn’t offer to go get
her.

“Mrs. Dunlap? Could I see her?”

Her mom scrunched up her face as though
really confused. Was it really that weird for me to show up like
this? I mean, just because neither of us had ever done it before?
“Of course. I’ll go get her.”

She left me standing at the front door while
she disappeared into the depths of her house, calling for Haley. A
couple minutes later she came back. “June, she can’t come to the
door right now. She told me she’s taking a bath.”

“A bath? Really?” That was a new one. I love
Haley, but honestly the usual dingy cast to her hair suggested only
occasional showers at best. Plus, her twitchy thumbs were always a
little too eager to be holding a game, cell phone or remote control
to allow her to sit still in a tub of water for long.

“That’s what she said.”

I offered Haley’s mom a polite smile. “Okay.
Well, tell her to call me when she gets out.”

I walked back to my house. My dad was
standing in the living room when I came back in. “Where have you
been?”

“Next door,” I said. “Trying to see my best
friend, who doesn’t want to see
me
.”

“You went to her house?” he asked. Apparently
this was strange to him too.

“I don’t have a cell phone, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

I went back upstairs and kicked off my shoes.
Guess I had a lot of making up to do with Haley. I didn’t realize
I’d upset her as much as I did. I wasn’t even really sure why I’d
upset her. Honestly, it was me the kids were making fun of, not
her. If anything, she should be upset for me and by my side
defending me. But she was acting like I’d just embarrassed her and
ruined her life by wearing Carter’s sweatshirt.

Haley was a great girl. She wouldn’t be my
best friend if she weren’t. She was really deep and cared about the
environment and always rooted for the underdog. She cried at movies
and sometimes when reading books. A real softie. If she knew
everything that was going on with me today, what I’d been through
with my parents and what had happened at the beach. If she knew
about the mermaid...

That was it. I’d fill her in on all of it.
She might not be responding to my emails, but that didn’t mean she
wasn’t reading them. I got on the computer and wrote for half an
hour telling her everything about my dad, including finding the
mermaids and how Carter and I cleaned her up. When I was done, I
uploaded the video to my computer and attached it to the email and
zipped the whole thing off to her.

The video made it a huge file, and it took
forever to send and would probably take just as long to open on her
end. Odds were that Haley might not even see it until morning, so I
got into bed with
Moby Dick
and promptly fell asleep,
certain I’d be riding to school with my best friend, Carter would
be caring for the mermaid and everything would be fine.

Yeah, well, a few hours of blissful ignorance
was about all I got.

Chapter
Nine

For a fleeting moment I hoped Haley would be
taking me to school. We’d cut up about how awful I looked in the
video, and then she’d get serious and ask what was really going on.
The story would make her a little teary-eyed. We’d bond again and
all would be well with the world. But, like I said, it was a
fleeting moment, because as soon as I got out of bed I checked my
computer and there was no response from her. Her shades were drawn
in her room so we couldn’t compare outfits through the windows like
we normally did to make sure we didn’t overtly match or clash with
each other. Clearly, she was still avoiding me.

I dressed and headed downstairs to choke down
a bowl of the awful granola my parents always have on hand as
cereal. It tastes okay, but some Trix or Cocoa Puffs wouldn’t hurt
once in a while. The newspaper was on the table, but the oil spill
didn’t make the first page. I was curious to know how far back the
editors ranked that news item, but I was too lazy to deal with
flipping those large pages. Dad stumbled into the room, and caught
me with the folded up paper in my hand.

“It’s on page ten,” he said. “No pictures or
anything.”

I shook my head slowly but kept my eyes on
the headline, which was something about a congressman—in another
state, mind you—caught cheating on his wife. Yeah, I could see how
that was more important than an oil spill on our very own
coastline. Affron had some power, that was for sure.

“When is Mom coming home?” I asked. I didn’t
like the idea that she was still up there in Alaska dealing with
them.

“Soon, I hope. There’s not much else she can
do up there now.” He grabbed his coffee tumbler and shoved his
wallet in his back pocket. “You going to school today?” he
asked.

I cocked my head and squinted at him. “Don’t
I sort of have to?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

I think he was hinting that I could go with
him and do some more work. It was really tempting. However, I
figured there were some things I needed to hammer out with Haley at
school, and I didn’t want Vice Principal Slater giving me crap
again. Oh, and speaking of her, I needed to get my freakin’ phone
back.

“Yeah, and I need you to drive me, so you can
help me reclaim my phone from the clutches of the evil warden.”

He grinned at me. “I guess that would come in
handy, wouldn’t it?”

“A little.”

He was in a good mood. Mom must not have
ticked him off on the phone, and I imagine he slept as hard as I
did after that long day. His eyes were bright, and most of all he
seemed to have completely forgotten that he was royally finished
with me twenty-four hours ago. Dad drove me to school and argued
with Slater in the front office for a good twenty minutes before
Spike-head finally gave over the phone. Part of me was surprised it
still existed. I envisioned her eating things like that for dinner.
Or maybe she threw all the gadgets she confiscated from kids in a
big pile out in the back parking lot and drove back and forth over
them with her car while screeching our alma mater like it was a
punk rock song.

“If I see her using it on campus, it will be
taken from her until school is out for the summer,” she warned as
her claw grip on the thing loosened enough for Dad to wrangle it
from her.

“I’m sure Juniper understands the rules,” my
dad replied as calmly as he could, flipping the phone to me.

“Hmmm,” was all Slater said before slinking
back into her office and shutting the door in our faces.

Dad patted me on the back. “Don’t get
caught.”

“Gotcha.”

Then we walked out of the office, and in the
grand hallway of my school were about two hundred teenagers. I
think it’s safe to say that every single one of them either had a
cell phone in their hand or to their ear. My dad and I started
laughing so hard tears filled our eyes.

“Well, okay then,” he said with a snort.
“Have a great day. Uh, call me on your
illegal
phone, and
let me know what your plans are this afternoon. I’ll be at the
beach.”

He headed out to the parking lot still
chuckling to himself over the absurdity. I turned my phone on, but
there weren’t any messages on it. With only a couple minutes to
spare, I jammed the phone in my back pocket and dashed for my first
period class. I’d only gotten a couple steps when I heard someone
shout at me. It caught me off guard, and I tripped and fell to my
knee. When I looked up Regina and Marlee were standing over me.

“Why are you running, June?” Regina said with
that nasty teasing voice that popular girls perfect. “Did you get
dropped off late by your boyfriend again?”

“Yeah,” Marlee joined in. “Was that him?” She
pointed toward the front doors.

“That was my dad.”

Regina gave her the “duh” look, but Marlee
just shrugged. “You said he was older.”

“Not like gross older.” Regina turned back on
me again. “Did you have another all-nighter this time? Did Daddy
come to find you in the middle of the night and threaten to shoot
the guy with his bow and arrow?”

They both snickered. I can’t think of another
word for it. It wasn’t a laugh, and it was kind of similar to the
sound snakes would make if they could laugh.

I looked from one to the other as I stood up,
trying to put together what they could possibly be saying to me
because none of it made any sense. There were so many insults
twined together, and they were all ridiculous.

“I’m going to be late,” I finally said, and I
walked away from them.

“We’re talking to you, Juniper!” Regina
shouted, aghast that someone would dare to walk away from her.

Was I supposed to stay and argue? Defend
myself? Cry because the popular girl was insulting me? I didn’t
feel like doing any of those things. I saved a mermaid’s life the
day before. I was a hero in my own mind. Regina should have been in
awe of me. Maybe someday it would all come out, and she would know.
Someday when she was thirty or so, when she got tired of hocking
beauty products at a department store counter at the mall and
realized that I was making a living doing things like helping
Killer Whales give birth, she’d think of this day and wonder why
she ever thought she was better than me.

Other kids stared at me as I continued down
the hallway away from Regina and Marlee’s calls. A couple of them
gestured that I should turn around. A lot of them laughed when they
saw me, and I heard some whispered, “That’s the one I told you
about” type comments. I ignored them all, turned a corner where I
couldn’t hear the girls anymore. I actually couldn’t believe they
hollered after me that long. How embarrassing. For them.

I was just about to slip into my homeroom,
when I saw Haley across the hall. She had her cell phone out and
was watching something on it. Probably a music video or that
internet joke site. I couldn’t tell, but she was really focused on
it

“Haley!” I shouted. “Did you get my
email?”

She looked up at me and said simply, “Yeah,”
like it was no big deal. Like I had sent her a message as simple
as, “I’m going to school tomorrow, see you there.” Then her
attention went right back to her phone. She walked on, disappearing
into her own homeroom a couple doors down the hall.

I stood dazed for a second, unsure about what
had just happened. Maybe my message got messed up somehow and the
whole thing didn’t go through. Maybe the attached video didn’t
open. Something must have gone wrong, because her response didn’t
match the gravity of the email I’d sent. I thought about grabbing
her out of class and making her talk to me, but as I took a step
that direction I heard Mrs. Leapfer, my homeroom teacher, call my
name. I knew I couldn’t be late again, so I ducked into my room
like a good little girl and tried to think of how I could get Haley
to talk to me at lunch.

The first three periods went so slow. I
didn’t see Haley at all as I passed from one class to the other,
which was weird, because we usually saw each other all the time. I
knew where all her classes were, and for the first time I realized
how much she used to walk out of her way just to bump into me in
the hall. What could I do to get her to stop being so mad at
me?

Advanced Photography was my fourth period. It
was my only elective this semester. The rest of my schedule was
jammed with college prep classes so I could get ahead. Smart, said
my parents. Stupid, said I. However, I love photography, and I
usually enjoy the class. But that day we had a sub, and all she was
having us do was look at a PowerPoint slideshow of famous photos
projected on a screen. Boring. All around the room I heard the
familiar dying cow moo of vibrating cell phones. It seemed like
every kid in the class had at least three messages or more come in
within five minutes’ time. Kids were checking texts by holding
their phones inside their open backpacks under their desks, like
the sub really cared or would do anything about it.

My phone didn’t moo. Mine was the only one
that remained silent. It was just as well, because I couldn’t have
checked it anyway. I promised to have good cell phone behavior—at
least for a day.

Whatever was happening in the cellular world
was apparently very exciting. Fingers frantically tapped messages.
People started leaning over desks to whisper in other kids’ ears.
This had to be about more than where they were meeting up for
lunch. At first I guessed there was a fight being held somewhere on
campus. That usually got a buzz going. But then I began to notice
that after each exchange whisper or rapid fire of texting fingers,
glances shot my way. Oh, they tried to be subtle at first, but they
quickly became super obvious. I got it. Regina was spreading more
rumors about me.

The thing I didn’t get was why anyone cared.
I wasn’t popular. No one really knew me well. And it wasn’t like
kids getting it on was a new thing around the high school. It
happened all the time, so they say—I didn’t really know this for
sure. But it happened enough to know that every girl who had sex
with a boy did not became an instant headline. Lord knew Regina
wasn’t a virgin. So what was the big deal?

And what really sucked about it all was that
I hadn’t done what I was getting a rep about. I wasn’t sure if
Carter even liked me.

I sat there, getting madder and madder about
the whole thing as the clock ticked as slowly as it could toward
twelve o’clock. All I wanted at that moment was to go sock Regina
in the face and call her a hypocrite. I began to cringe at the
sound of each cell phone moo and was about ready to pop out of my
seat and say a thing or two to this class of people I’d been
teaming up with for projects for the past three years. If anybody
knew me, it was this group. They were mostly nerdy, yearbook staff
types. Not your typical top of the list kids. How dare they look
down on me? Shoot, if I had really made it with a college boy, they
should all worship me. Like, they
wish
!