Page 23 of The Dead of Summer
The teen room wobbles with candlelight as Elisa, Sam, Bash, and I lean over the spread-out contents of Elisa’s fifth-grade binder.
“Sorry, but what does all this mean to you guys?” Sam asks.
Elisa and I whisper over each other, trying to explain the complicated history on the island with the now-defunct Easter facility, and Sam does his best to repeat it back to us.
“Okay. So, in the sixties there was a chemical spill from the power plant, but it was allegedly cleaned up. And you think that the spill at the Easter place somehow resulted in … all that crazy shit outside? And as a result, townies have been getting sick with stuff like cancer, because the island is contaminated, and somehow this has all been covered up by a science center I used to visit as a kid called …”
“AMIOS,” we say in unison.
“Right. You think that AMIOS has been in Easter’s pocket this entire time, hiding everything for them? Why would they do that?”
“Hiding, or studying,” I say. “The researchers at AMIOS study all kinds of marine life. Sharks and whales, but also algae blooms, arthropods, and mollusks. Maybe even coral. But I think Elisa’s point is that AMIOS was monitoring Mercy’s water and the surrounding ecosystems after the spill, and if anyone knew something was wrong, it was them. ”
Elisa sighs. “And my mom created this report with all these findings she claimed AMIOS was denying. People thought she was nuts, so she hid it somewhere. I only ever found a few notes stuffed into the books she was reading, but they don’t make much sense.”
The last thing from Elisa’s binder are random scraps of paper. The way Elisa holds on to them, I’m positive the cramped handwriting on them is her mom’s.
“You think her report proves that Easter created the coral that’s eating everybody?”
“On accident or on purpose, they for sure created something horrible and tried to hide it,” Elisa says.
She flattens one of the notes out next to the candle.
It’s a torn-out page from a journal, and it reads: THEY DON’T WANT IT TO GROW BACK.
THEY TRIED TO KILL IT. THEY KILLED US INSTEAD. WE ARE MAGGOTS UPON A POISONED CORPSE.
Elisa folds the paper back up, and now I don’t read her gentle touch as loving. She fears these artifacts. “I have tried not to think about any of this for years,” she says. “But now I wish I knew where my mom hid her report. I’ve looked everywhere in our house. It’s not there.”
“What good would her data do us?” Sam asks. “We’re not scientists.”
That can’t be argued. I almost suggest we bring the report to an actual scientist, like Imogen Pfaff in her makeshift lab downstairs, but now I see Dr. Pfaff through Elisa’s grudge.
Even if AMIOS was established to rid the island of the freaky flesh-eating coral, Pfaff is still implicated in the cover-up, and maybe even the murder of Elisa’s mom.
“Trust me. We need my mom’s report. Her data could prove something here is wrong,” Elisa states.
Bash is studying the photos in the book. “No shade, Elisa, but I think we pretty much know something is very wrong.”
“But if we got off the island, we could do something with the report, right? Ollie, you know doctors on the mainland. Your mom’s medical records are beyond Pfaff’s reach. They could corroborate my mom’s findings.”
I’m nodding, but then I’m shaking my head. The obstacles are too huge. How would we get to the mainland? There are boats in the harbor, but without keys or a crew, we’d be dead in the water. Literally. And the tides are notoriously hard to escape around the island.
Sam sits up suddenly.
“Maybe we don’t need to go get help. Maybe it can come to us. Wendy’s been trying to signal to that big boat on the horizon. She needs a radio, though. Where can we get a radio?”
We discuss our options. Clearly, there isn’t a working radio in the library, so we’d need to look in town. The wharf is the obvious answer, but it’s infested with weepers. We need to find something closer.
“Scuttlebutt’s,” Bash says. “Wendy’s got all those vintage radios behind the DJ booth.”
Now I’m sitting up, too. I just saw those with my own eyes, days ago.
Elisa launches into out-loud thinking of how we’d get in and out of Scuttlebutt’s, but Sam and I are there to temper her ideas with the unfortunate reality that there’s no way we make it through the nightly fog.
Plus, we have no idea what’s hidden inside the nightclub.
Bash is back to zoning out, and I notice him rip a page from the history book. He folds it and pockets it. I let him.
We sit in silence, and the eerie noise of the night fades through the papered windows.
Weepers are babbling in the distance, but there’s a new sound that tickles the inside of my ears.
A harmonious din that I think must rise from the coral itself, like a vibration just at the edge of my hearing.
I try not to think of it as singing, but my mind can’t help but find the cadence in the song’s swells.
“What I want to know,” Bash says after a long time, “is how do we kill this shit.”
All eyes turn to me, the only person here who’s taken care of an aquarium.
“Actual coral bleaches when the water is too warm for the algae that feeds it. So maybe we could try heat?”
“Great. Maybe Scuttlebutt’s has flamethrowers, too,” Elisa says. “What else?”
I go through the chemistry of my tank in my head, but it’s been so long and I can’t remember the actual names. “Acid would do the trick. Anyone got any acid?”
Bash raises his hand. “There’s lemon juice downstairs. We could mix it into water and put it into water guns or something.”
“Bash. Bashar. Come on now.” Elisa is already laughing through her scolding. “Are you seriously suggesting we save the world with lemonade?”
Bash shrugs. “When life gives you lemon concentrate …”
It’s his lilting smile that sets me off laughing, too, and once I’ve started I can’t stop.
Laughing this hard feels insane, like choking on light, but this is a breath I am glad to give up.
For the first time in a week I feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes, and I let them tumble down my temples as I lay my head in Bash’s lap.
The others aren’t handling the absurd suggestion any better.
Our laughing even earns us a testy shhhh from the nearby stacks, causing us to blow out our candle and bury our faces into our bundled clothing.
I fall asleep in Bash’s lap, one hand holding on to Elisa, the other on to Sam. I fall asleep with salt on my tongue. I fall asleep still smiling, with tears on my teeth.