Saturday morning my alarm goes off in my dreams, but I don’t wake up at first, I just dream about a jackhammer going off on the basement floor. When I do finally wake up I slam my hand into my alarm and realize I have five minutes to get ready for class and my interview. I race upstairs, throwing on lights and opening drawers in the bathroom. Melyssa stumbles into the bathroom scowling.
She hangs on to the door frame to steady herself. “You have got to be the noisiest human being in the world.”
“Sorry. I’m late.”
“Why are you doing your makeup then? To impress Prince Charming? Like he’s going to care. Look at you. You’re anorexic.”
“Did you borrow my new lipstick?”
“He’s a self-centered, hypocritical weasel.”
I brush by her into the hall. “I’ve been saving it.”
Mel wanders back to her room. Over her shoulder she says, “You’re pathetic.”
“I have an interview,” I say, but she isn’t listening. Her door is already shut.
I am late to class, but so is Pete.
There are a lot fewer kids than the last time we met. The Galápagos cheer must not have been enough to inspire all the other geniuses to get out of bed and do more unassigned homework. Or maybe the competition seemed too steep. My guess is the really smart kids are the ones home in bed. We’re down to me, Erik, Pritchett (the pain), Dawn (the goth), Ho-Bong and Ho-Jun (the superconductor twins), and one Megan. We all stand out in the cold under the streetlight, rubbing our hands, waiting for Pete to show up. I stand alone and look down. Then I see Erik’s shiny white tennis shoes practically on top of my black flats. I can smell the soap on his skin.
“You’re looking nice,” Erik says. The sarcasm is so faint it’s hard to be sure of.
I look up at his face and he smiles. Even at an obscene hour my stomach reflexively flips at that stupid smile. Maybe I shouldn’t have exploded his stuff on the curb.
“Hi,” I say. I guess I can pretend he didn’t throw the DVD under my dad’s car too.
He smiles again. I almost believe he means it. It must be the glare from his teeth.
“So you going somewhere today?” he says.
“I have a job interview.” Everyone can hear what we’re saying, so I don’t exactly want to talk about it.
“At the harbor?” He laughs softly. “Doing what?”
I say, “I’m applying for secretary.” My words snap on the end of my tongue.
“Oh yeah? That’ll be perfect for you.” Erik’s genius is keeping his own hands clean while he gets everyone else’s dirty. Or maybe his genius is being a genius and being dirty is just a hobby.
“Thanks,” I say. Maybe I go a little overboard on the bitter tone in my voice.
Everyone is listening now. To the sound of hate-your-guts silence. Until Pete steps into the ring and says, “Good morning, everyone. Sorry I’m late.”
No one talks.
Pete says, “Did I miss something?”
When we get inside Pete says, “What do you geniuses know about Darwin?”
Nobody moves. It’s a trick question.
Finally Pritchett says, “He spent a few weeks in the Galápagos and then he spent the rest of his life making bank on it. Cha-ching.”
I’m starting to think this kid is a plant for a reality TV show.
Pete moves to the back of the room and sets up a projector with his laptop. He shoots a picture onto the wall and hits the lights. The photo is of a white one-story building in a tropical location. Once he gets everything in focus we can see that it’s the Charles Darwin Research Center, and Pete is standing out in front of the center with a tall man, probably in his fifties, and a blonde woman in red shorts. Pritchett whistles through his teeth—at the woman, I’m assuming. Pete’s hair is longer and his skin is dark brown. He looks more like a surfer than a biologist. I get the funny feeling again.
“This is the building where we rendezvous with other biologists on the trip.”
“How come you aren’t going this time?” says Dawn.
“The committee decided it was better the grad students took turns going. I’ll get down there again soon.”
For some reason it blows me away to see someone who I kind of know standing in this place. To me it’s like somebody showing a slide show of their road trip to heaven, and then talking about going back and forth like it’s a trip to the car wash.
“Sweet tan,” says Erik.
“Believe me, the tan is the least of things that are sweet in the Galápagos, but let’s get back to Darwin and the project. Everything is hypercontrolled on the islands now. The Ecuadorians don’t want people coming in and raiding the place like the bad old days.”
Ho-Bong says, “Why is their research center named after an Englishman then?”
“Great question,” says Pete. “The center isn’t named after Darwin because he was the only person who ever discovered anything important on the Galápagos, or because he was the first guy to put his mitts on the theory of evolution. The center is named after him because he wasn’t about ‘cha-ching,’ for the most part. Like many men of his age—sorry, ladies, women mostly weren’t included back then—he was a scientist, with human flaws that kept getting in his way. But Darwin was in it for the long haul, even if he didn’t know it when he came to the islands. In fact, I think it’s safe to say he had no idea what he’d found until he was on the boat home.
“Darwin was there to look at volcanoes and funky rocks. But he couldn’t leave the animals alone. So he started collecting all kinds of stuff out of sheer curiosity. Among other things he collected four birds on four islands. On his way home he started to realize that the birds were more important than he’d assumed. Each bird could be identified by its island, its origin. That’s when the homework started.”
Pete flashes a quote on the wall: “It is the fate of every voyager, when he has just discovered what object in any place is more particularly worthy of his attention, to be hurried from it. Charles Darwin.”
“I don’t get it,” says Dawn.
“That’s good,” says Pete. “That means you’re actually thinking about it.”
Ho-Bong and Ho-Jun speak in Korean to each other, but everyone else is quiet. It seems like they talk a long time.
Finally Pete says, “So guys, wanna share your opinions with the class?”
I can’t see Ho-Bong’s face in the dark, but his voice is suddenly flat and American. “We never know what we’re looking for until we aren’t there anymore.”
After class I go out in the hall. For some reason Darwin’s quote is stuck in my head, like some sort of philosophical earworm. I look up from my deep thoughts to see a heavyset woman wearing a shirt that has the insignia DNR on the arm, which I’m hoping stands for “Division of Natural Resources,” not “Do Not Resuscitate.” She’s sitting at the front desk, checking her watch. The interview. I totally forgot.
She has red hair bobbed at her ears and freckles everywhere, even on her eyelids, but she looks all business, which is not how the rest of the room looks. The desk is buried in papers. The surrounding room is dusty and has a noticeable scent of mold.
I walk to the front desk. “Are you Ms. Hunsaker?”
“You must be Myra. Just call me Ranger Bobbie.”
She has long arms for a woman. I try to be mature and stick my hand out to shake hers.
She grabs my hand and squeezes the blood out of it. “Are you honest?”
“Yes.”
“Are you organized?”
“Yes.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how reliable are you?”
“Nine.”
“Really? How did you like my handshake?”
I look her right in the freckles. “It hurt.”
She smiles. “You’ll do.”
“I’ll do what?” I ask.
Ranger Bobbie hands me a bright orange piece of paper. “You’re hired.”
I look at the paper. It’s an employment application. “I don’t even know what the job is.”
“Well, sure. I’m sorry I’m in a bit of a rush today so I’ll make this quick. Some joker tried to get his boat out of the dock when the water was too low in the launch and now we’re going to have to tow him. Anyway, your end of it is I need this whole place organized. Files, supplies, everything. Answer the phone. Tell people to go to the Web site for prices on boat slips, that kind of thing. We’re closed at five every day. Mainly I want you to clean this place up. We’re a year-round facility, but in the wintertime everything goes to pot.” Her face is tight and worn. She sighs. “I cover everything from the west desert, the whole stinking lake, all the way to the city limits. I barely have time to overeat.” She pats her well-padded waist.
I stand there looking stupid, but I like her.
“Anyway, this is a poorly paid part-time position. But Peter says you’re desperate.”
“I am.” Pete thinks I’m
desperate
? I hand her a list of the times I can work if I drop out of sewing and get early release. “But these are the only hours I can work while I’m still in school.”
She reads over my sheet. “This will be fine for a few months.”
“Don’t you want to see my résumé?”
“Your dad hired a nephew of mine at the plant. My nephew says he’s never seen a man who is more fair and hardworking. Does the apple fall far from that tree?”
“Which apple?”
“Are you a hard worker, like your dad?”
“Yes.”
“I trust you can file in alphabetical order and run a computer better than I can.”
I nod, trying to keep up.
“Are you good on a computer?”
“I’m okay.”
“Fine. This desk is your first item of business. The guy running this office right now is a total slob. And there he is now.” She stands to go.
Pete walks toward us. “That’s a little harsh.”
Ranger Bobbie says, “Good grief, Pete. Can’t you even throw junk mail away? This place is a disgrace.”
“I was getting around to it.”
She points a long finger at my job description. “Okay, enough. So here are the things I want you to do. Here’s the filing cabinet. Here’s the computer. Pete can tell you the passwords. Every once in a while they’ll need you as a spare body for some search-and-rescue stuff.”
“Search and rescue?”
“Oh, people are always falling in the icy water at the most inconvenient times and places. But don’t worry. We have Pete and a few other crusty types to help us with that.”
“Okay,” I say.
“We’ll start you at minimum and begrudgingly give you a raise about the time you find something better to do with your life. If you do a good job for us, you can work more after you graduate. Summer gets busy. You have any questions?”
“What am I doing again?”
“You’ll figure it out. Don’t let Pete con you into doing his laundry, if he has any. Don’t be a doormat to him. He’ll just walk all over you, if you know what I mean?”
I nod. Doormat. Sheez. Do I have WELCOME written on my forehead?
“One more thing,” says Ranger Bobbie. “Nobody eats the mocha almond fudge out of the freezer.” She glares at Pete. I almost laugh, but she looks serious.
“I don’t know who’d do that,” says Pete.
“I mean it,” says Bobbie. “Things have been known to happen out on that lake to employees caught stealing.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” says Pete.
19
Incubation:
Sitting on an egg so the bird inside stays warm enough to keep growing.
When I get home I hear the cement mixer in the backyard. My mother’s concrete dreams are coming true. Who said there isn’t fun after forty?
My brothers are waiting at the door. “You gotta get us to hoops right now. Mom’s mad.”
I walk into the backyard. Dad and Mom are hard at work pouring. Danny is off getting covered in mud in the corner of the yard.
Dad is lost in a world of perfect measurements and standards of engineering excellence. Mom straightens up her back slowly and comes over, away from the mixer. She has a glob of wet cement in her hair that blends with her gray. She yells over the noise, “Where’ve you been?”
I yell back, “I got a new job.”
“I thought you were studying for a test.”
I yell, “I’m going to be a secretary at the marina.”
“The marina?” Mom motions me farther away from the cement mixer so we can talk normally, or as normally as my mother and I ever talk. She says, “You got a job at the lake? They found a woman who’d been set on fire down there two weeks ago.”
“They did?” I say. “I didn’t hear about that.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t hear about when you’re in high school. I’m glad you got a job, but how are you going to be a secretary when you’re in class all day?”