Before We Go Extinct (22 page)

“THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY FILM!” he yells. “YOU ARE NOT ROB WHAT'S-HIS-NAME! THIS IS NOT A GODDAMN MOVIE!” Apollo yelps and disappears under the deck of the cabin, which is where he goes to escape drama and the sun. Zeus follows, looking depressed. He casts a glance back at me. I shrug. “I'd run, too,” I whisper.

“DAD,” I yell back. “YOU ARE SCARING THE DOGS!”

“YOU ARE!” he yells. “GODDAMNIT, SHARKY.”

“Hey,” I say. “I'm not the bad guy here! I'm—”

“You're not…,” he says. “You're not a
shark
.”

“Dad,” I say. “I know. But it is only passing through. It's just off course. It's not eating people. You would have heard if it was. There are a million seals! If it's hungry, which I doubt, it will eat a seal. It probably already has. It won't eat again now for ages.”

“No one goes in the water,” he says. “Until I've talked to someone. Until I know what to do.”

“But I am someone,” I say. “And I've told you. He's not going to bite anyone. He's probably already a hundred miles away. Are you just never going in the water again? I mean, I saw him a while ago and no one—”

“WHAT?” he yells. “What? You SAW him? You SAW him and you went back in the water? You let Charlie back in the water? Kelby? Darcy? ME? You SAW THE SHARK AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION IT?”

“Dad,” I say. “I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure what I saw. I thought maybe I was imagining … and … I don't know. I thought it was kind of like a sign, maybe. I thought it was like a sign for me. From The King. I'm sure that sounds stupid to you—”

“JESUS,” he swears. “Not everything is about your friend killing himself! NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU. You put other people at risk! You … idiot. You're an idiot. I don't even know…”

But I don't hear the rest, because I'm off and running, my feet hardly hitting the ground, and I'm going so fast that I'm outrunning the shadows, it's only me and the sun blurring into one beam of white-hot light, running with all the rage and pain and hurt churning around inside me like chum on the surface of the sea, calling the shark to slaughter.

 

43

Dad and Darcy are sitting on the front porch couch when I get back, spent and sweaty. I can hear the conversation before they can see me.

“Without a picture, they don't believe me anyway,” Dad is saying. “They think I'd make it up! Can you imagine? Like I mistook a mud shark for a dangerous shark or something?”

“But he's probably right,” Darcy says. “It's probably long gone. Anyway, I agree with him that nothing would happen. God has us covered. He knows that we…”

“… that he didn't tell us sooner,” says Dad. “Putting our
lives
at risk.”

I stomp heavily up the steps and their conversation slams to a stop as effectively as if I ran a train into it.

“Where's Charlie?” I say. “I told him I'd teach him parkour.”

“What?” says Darcy. “I think he's too young for that.”

I shrug. “He doesn't think so. I'm not going to let him fall off a building or anything. I'm only going to teach him the first things you have to know, like jumping high in place. That kind of thing. So he can jump over stuff. It's no big deal, but if you don't want me to—”

“I didn't say that,” says Darcy. “Just be careful, okay? He kind of worships you, you know.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “I'm sure. Anyway, where is he?”

“Tide pool,” calls Kelby. She's in the hammock. I didn't see her before because she's so small and it's folded so that she's basically been swallowed by it.

“Hey,” I say. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess. More interesting than lying here listening to these two plot to kill a shark that's as big as the boat. I'm just mad we didn't see it. We must have been looking at the herring.”

“Yep,” I say, heading down toward the tide pool. “I guess we were.”

“Sometimes you have to really look to see a thing,” she says. “I know
that
feeling.”

“Kelby,” I say. “What's your book about? Can I read it?”

She stops in her tracks. She looks at me carefully, up and down, like she's measuring me up. Then a flash of teeth, and she's smiling.

“Okay,” she says. “Whatever. Maybe.
Charlie! Let's go!
”

Charlie comes darting up the steps toward us, like he'd been hanging there the whole time, waiting for us to show up.

“Hey!” he says, trying to sound cool. “Is it time? Is it time now? Wasn't that shark cool? What did you think, Sharky? Because, like, did you even think that you'd see anything like that here? Did you? Did you? I mean, Mum is
freaking out!
But that's dumb, right? Sharks don't bite people, you said. Not much, anyway. Sharky? Are we going? Now?”

Kelby laughs. “Slow down, sport. Take a breath.”

“I
am
breathing!” he says. “Am I breathing right for parkour, Sharky? Am I?”

“You know what?” I say. “Call me JC.”

“Okay,” he says. “JC. Can we go? Now?”

I whistle for the dogs and they come running and we head up to Hotel Neverwas for the first lesson. It's the first part that's the hardest. That's the part where you learn how to jump. How high you can go. Where you have to trust that even though it seems impossible, if you believe you can fly, then you really can.

Not far. Not from the forty-second floor. But far enough to get from this log to that one. Far enough to clear the beam.

Charlie is a good student. He jumps and jumps and jumps and jumps, over and over again. Never giving up, not even when his skinned knees are bleeding and his arms are bruised. I remember being like that, I guess. I just don't know if I still am, or if that part of me jumped off the building at the same time as The King did. Maybe it was never me, after all. Maybe it was just him, reflecting on me.

Anyway, I teach Charlie how to jump. That's always the first thing. And I guess I do it the right way, because on the way back down the path, Kelby's hand finds mine and holds on tight. I try not to squeeze it. It feels like a bird, resting there, just waiting to take flight.

 

44

I'm running.

It feels good. Hot, sweaty, hard work. The rocks are on such an angle that it makes it harder, which feels right.

I'm about a mile down the beach from the cabin when I run out of steam. My legs are cramping up and I'm thirsty but I didn't bring a drink.

I take off my shoes and socks and stick my feet in a tide pool. An anemone opens and closes near my big toe. A small fish tickles my ankles before darting for safety under a crack. I try to simply
be
. It's really quiet. I lie back on the warmed stone and stare up at the sky. At the edge of my view are the tops of the trees, leaning out of the forest for a better view of the sea. The tide is low, so rocks encrusted with bladder wrack—this brownish seaweed that is covered with “popping balloons” as Charlie calls them—are basking in the sun. Out on the reef, there is a distinct absence of seals, but I can see an otter fishing in the small shell-sand bay about a hundred feet south of me. Behind me, up a yellow grassy hill, an A-frame cabin sits empty and unfinished, like the owner ran out of energy for completing it, returned to Vancouver or wherever he was from, and didn't look back. I can hear grasshoppers on the hill. The call of gulls diving into the water, probably still looking for herring for lunch. Kingfishers screech at each other and skim low over the surface of the water. At the tide line, a heron stands on one foot, stock-still, staring out to sea.

And suddenly, I miss Daff.

I miss her with an ache that cramps my guts.

“Daff,” I say out loud.

I mean, it's one thing to be here, but then, if you start thinking about it, it's also like you're trapped here.

I sit up and stare at the calm sea, willing a dorsal fin to appear. Waiting for something to happen.

From a long way away, I can hear the whine of boat engines. When it's calm like this, sounds travel like crazy across the water, magnified. The whine comes closer. I look in the direction of the sound, not for any reason, but because it's a sound and the day is so quiet it feels like it's compressing me into stone.

In the distance, I see a flotilla of whale-watching boats. You can tell that's what they are, because they're bright yellow and orange and emblazoned with company names. I stand up to see better. If there are whale-watching boats, well, duh, there are obviously whales.

I make my way down to the point. It's covered with bladder wrack and green seaweed and millions and millions of blue mussel shells and barnacles, which give my feet something to grip on to, so that I don't slip. I go out as far as I can, and then I see them.

The whales are amazing.

There are dozens of them, fins rising out of the sea, leaping and breaching and spyhopping and flying above and through the water. The whale-watching boats push closer, like they do, but the whales ignore them, moving on together.

And the sound.

The sound of them huffing through their blowholes. The sound of their tails smashing down on the water. It's like they are putting on a show for us, but a real show, not one that's been choreographed by an employee of some crappy marine park somewhere. This is a show of strength, of what they can do, and I'm not going to lie, it takes my breath away.

I watch until they vanish in the distance, the boats stuck to them like magnets. I watch until even the boats disappear into the late-afternoon haze that rises off Vancouver, an exhalation of exhaust and filth into the sky.

Heading back, I see Kelby on the beach. Sitting where I was sitting, her feet in the same tide pool.

I raise my hand in greeting. She waves.

I make my way over to where she is.

“Hey,” she says. “Some whales, huh.”

“Yep,” I say. “Some whales.”

And then—don't ask me how or why—suddenly we're making out, she lying down on the rock and me above her, her lips pulling me down and in and over and under and oh my god, I mean, seriously, oh my god, it's like I'm falling through space, through the ocean floor, through the galaxy, through everything everything everything and it's amazing.

I don't know what

I think that I'm

I think it was because the whales were so beautiful or because summer was ending and the sky was a perfect blue and the rock was exactly the right amount of warm and we were alone on this island and out there, in the strait, was a shark and some whales, but seriously

Well, it was

I mean, I don't even really have words for how it was. How it is.

How we walk back to the cabin holding hands, her hand perfectly fitting into mine, the sun making her hair look like platinum silk, the air cooling on our skin like water slipping off the perfectly taut black-and-white skin of an orca in a full dive, vanishing under the bottle-green glassy surface of the Salish Sea.

 

45

In the morning, Kelby is gone.

“Back to Vancouver,” Dad says.

“What?” I say. I am balancing a bowl of Cheerios in one hand, fending off Apollo with the other. He is jumping on my leg again and again. He wants to go for his morning run, which I usually take the dogs on before it gets too hot. His claws scratch my skin and I push him off, maybe a bit too hard.

“Watch it,” Dad says. “Don't push them around. These dogs have been through enough.”

“Dad,”
I say. “Please don't tell me their sad rescue story again. I want to know where Kelby is—what happened?”

“You were asleep,” he says. “I don't know how you slept through that.”

I shrug. “I'm a heavy sleeper,” I say. It's true. Our apartment is really noisy. I've learned to sleep through anything.

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess, well, I mean the truth is that Darcy and I had a … fight.”

“What?” I say. “A fight?”

“They left,” he said. “They'll be back. But Darcy is pretty terrified about the shark, JC. Everyone is scared. It's a big deal. I've called fisheries and they said we shouldn't swim. And she's … I think at first she was mostly on your side. But now that she knows what the risks are, well, she's angry with you. I guess. I don't know. I stuck up for you, even though … well, you're my son! And now, I think we broke up.” His voice catches in his throat and he lets out a sob. “We broke up. We did.”

The bowl of Cheerios falls out of my hand and we both watch it splash to the floor.

“Dad,” I mumble. “I'm sorry. I tried to tell everyone. When I first saw it, I really didn't think it was real. Then I
did
think it was. Then I thought it wasn't. No one wanted to hear me. Or believe me. Then I wasn't sure either. I was confused.”

He holds up his hand. “Come on,” he says. “I'm your dad. I get it. I don't think Darcy gets it, but you don't have to explain it to me.”

“So they left?” I say. “Without saying goodbye?”

“I think she'll come back,” he says. “I think they'll come back. It's … she's not like your mom. She doesn't mean it when she says she hates me.”

“Neither did Mom!” I say.

“Oh, man,” he says. “JC. She did mean it. With her everything was so fatal. So final. You know? You know how she is. But with Darcy.” He sighs, runs his fingers through his hair. “I got her a ring,” he tells me. “But who marries the underemployed-writer guy? What kind of influence would I be as a dad to those kids? Who would want that?”

“Hey,” I say. “Dad. Come on. You're a good dad. You'd be great. Charlie loves you, and Kelby—” I think about it. “Well, she writes, too. You should read her book. Maybe you could help her. Or, I don't know, she could help you.”