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She stilled.
Her eyes never left mine.
And ever so quietly, she murmured, “Oh.”
I turned my back on her.
Yes, oh.
It was such a common phrase back home. But to me? Saying it to her?
It meant far more than it should.
“Enough, Neri,” I said over my shoulder. “Get back to work.”
* * * * *
Placing the hatch back over the engine bay after completing the weekly inspection, I wiped my oil-black hands on the rag set aside for such a thing. I’d become more than just a kid paid under the table; I was pretty fucking handy now, if I did say so myself.
Jack and Anna continued to attract research projects, and I slowly learned every task there was to being a marine biologist’s assistant. Every gizmo, gadget, and expensive piece of technology I’d mastered, and knew more about the ocean than most eighty-year-olds, let alone teenagers.
Every day, Jack would try to convince me to swim, and every day, he failed. Because of his annoyance and my stubbornness, he’d put me in charge of literally everything else.
I became the skipper, the fuel filler, and the equipment checker. I was left to my own devices to improve computer programs and tracking software.
On the days where we had to hunt down a whale’s location, using its already-tagged tracker to gather fresh data, Jack would leave me to scan the depths with sonar and radar, teaching me, but making me complete every step.
Every menial and important job somehow became my responsibility.
And I worked my ass off to be the best damn help the Taylors could ever ask for.
I never forgot where they’d found me or where I would be if they hadn’t.
I never once complained.
Days off were rare.
Evenings were cut short in favour of sleep for predawn starts.
And mornings were full of discussions about migration, breeding patterns, and anger at yet another human contamination that had threatened the livelihood of some mollusc, fish, or crab.
When a storm blew in last year and kept us landlocked for a few days, Jack had sat me down at the dining room table and gone over every part of the engine, using the thick manual to coach me, then drill me, forcing me to memorise how to fix it if we were ever stranded at sea.
Once he’d crowded my head with theory, he took me to The Fluke where it bobbed on churny seas, and made me huddle in the engine bay, repeating every bolt and gear, regardless of my seasickness from the storm’s fading waves.
Ever since the first six months passed—when Jack and Anna said we’d trial me living and working with them—life had become...perhaps not easy, but definitely not hard.
I stopped looking over my shoulder when Jack would drag me into town to run errands. I let my guard down a little with Geoff who filled the oxygen tanks and ran the local dive shop. I grew comfortable driving the Taylors’ old Wrangler to the supermarket and to pick up specialist equipment that sea scientists require.
I’d even agreed to a few days of volunteering at the local aquarium that focused on rehabbing and releasing.
That was Neri’s fault.
She still had a bleeding heart where animals were concerned and I’d somehow been roped into dropping her off (on the rare instances that Anna couldn’t) and ended up staying while she cleaned tanks, tested waters, and monitored healing aquatic life.
I’d ended up helping her; our hands slimy and our shoulders touching as we scrubbed old habitats.
When I’d driven Neri home, she’d demanded words in my language for every creature in the aquarium, keeping my mind on her and not on the whisper of fear that if I was pulled over, I could be deported.
It was risky to drive without a license or identification.
Risky to go into the supermarket or downtown or literally anywhere.
But...thanks to Jack and Anna (everything I was, was thanks to them), most of the locals had accepted me as part of them now.
No one questioned where I’d come from because Jack told the same exact story every time: I was a distant family friend here to learn the trade. “I hope he stays for years.” He’d laugh. “He’s a part of our family now.” He’d chuckle.
I quickly learned that Jack was savvy when it came to using the truth to hide the lies, and slowly, I sank into his confidence that no one saw me as different or illegal as long as I didn’t act like it.
Cutting through the captain’s cabin, I glanced at the weathered clock.
Almost forty minutes had passed since Jack and Anna went below, which meant they should be almost done. Grabbing a spare hat from the cupboard where flip-flops and suncream lived, I jammed it on my head, wishing for a reprieve from the sun.
My eyes fell to the table.
I froze.
No Neri.
Her workbooks were all tidied away, her chair back in the stack to be locked into position for sailing.
