Girl at Sea (24 page)

“Not quite,” Elsa said. “I had to play with him a little more.

You know. Give him a little view down the shirt. Not much—

just a little. You know what I mean.”

Nope. Clio really didn’t have a clue. That was not something (a) that she had ever done or (b) that would have occurred to her to do. Because she was very, very stupid when it came to boys.

That much was proven.

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“Sure,” she lied.

“And I leaned in close. Talked to him a little. It was
fun
, Clio.

The windup was fun. And the kissing was better.”

“So he kissed you?” Clio asked, trying not to sound too urgent or demanding. This fact had to be established, though.

“Mmmm,” Elsa purred.

Clio swallowed hard.

“Today was different,” Elsa went on. “We didn’t make out. He was being shy. He’s worried about my mum finding out. But I can work on that. It will all be taken care of. Now, something more serious.”

Elsa jumped off the bed and opened one of the drawers of her dresser. She shuffled through some stuff and produced a single photograph from the bottom.

“I lied to you,” she said to Clio. “I told you I shredded all the photos. I didn’t—I kept one. Sometimes I take it out when you’re not here.”

She passed the photo over. Elsa and Alex were sitting on a bed with a deep gray duvet over it and a car poster on the wall. Alex’s room. Elsa was her usual glowing self, hugging him tight and looking happy. Alex wore a soccer uniform—a maroon V-necked shirt and long black shorts. He was a smirker. He had a long face, a thick, strong neck, and muscular legs. His hair was almost black and was spiked up along the midline of his head. He wasn’t looking at the camera. His smirk was directed toward something just next to whoever was taking the picture. Everything about him said asshole. With a capital
A
.

Strangely, it occurred to Clio that Aidan didn’t say asshole. He said something else. Seeing this picture made the difference clear.

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“Good-bye, Alex,” Elsa said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.
Wanker
. It’s time for that to go. Give it here.”

Clio passed it back. Elsa tore it up, then gathered the pieces and pushed them out of the window.

“That little boy caused me a lot of grief. But as they say . . .”

She turned from the window and grinned. “Living well is the best revenge. I have a new man now. And I have you.”

203

Temptations and Voices

The prospect of release changed Clio. For the next week, she forced herself to conform, keeping herself on a rigid schedule.

She rose very early, getting together breakfast before the morning meeting at eight. She helped move and prepare the diving equipment. She also became the official topside person during the daily dives, waiting on the deck after her dad and Martin had gone under. She forced herself to sit and draw for four hours each day, training her arm to hold steady when the boat lurched. She planned menus and had dinner on the table on time each night. While she prepared these meals, she rehearsed different versions of what she’d say to Ollie when she returned.

She tried to recall her beach fantasy, but it was fading, so she threw herself into inventing new ones. The welts on her body gradually went down, leaving spidery traces of red. They itched like crazy for a few days, but she got used to it. In short, she had finally achieved a state of near Zen.

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What helped in this was ignoring Aidan. It had become totally, totally clear that Aidan made everything go all weird in her head, like something that messes with the reception of a radio. Her incredibly brilliant solution was a little game called You Do Not Exist.

When Aidan came into the kitchen to get on her case about dinner, she smiled pleasantly and forced her head to repeat the words “you do not exist” over anything else it tried to tell her.

When he passed by and leaned over her drawings of Ollie and made more comments about his ironic fashion choices, she thanked him and ignored him. Because he did not exist.

Of course, he did exist. And she felt her pulse race when he sat too close. He was making her nervous. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She noticed he tended to avoid Elsa too, choosing instead to hide in the workroom and play video games on his computer all night. She knew that was what he was doing because she had listened at the door. (Yes, yes, listened at the door. It’s best to know where the source of your irritation is lingering.)

Elsa was the restless one now. Since the day onshore with Aidan, nothing had happened between them, as far as Clio could tell. The calm that she had exhibited in the early days gave way to frayed nerves.

“I need to do somethng about this,” she said to Clio one morning after coming downstairs. She stood around in the galley as Clio cleaned up and picked at the leftovers of breakfast.

“You need to what?” Clio asked.

“There must be kissing,” she said. “There must be bodily contact. But it’s impossible to do anything on this bloody boat.

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We’re all on top of one another. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing.”

Clio scrubbed away at a particularly sticky bit of egg and nodded sympathetically.

“What I don’t understand,” Elsa went on, “is the fact that he says nothing. He runs off and hides. Every once in a while he looks at me, but that’s it. I mean, this is good to look at, right?”

She stepped back and presented herself for inspection.

“
I’d
date you,” Clio answered. “But I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s always seemed weird to me.”

“It’s dive time,” her father called as he passed by. “Can you come give us a hand?”

Martin was changing into his wet suit out on the deck, stumbling as he tried to get his leg into the skintight rubber.

Clio turned her head as Julia helped her dad do the same.

“I think I’ve gained a little weight out here,” Martin said to her. “You cook too well. Oh, would you mind?”

He nodded to his shirt and a key on a lariat.

“Don’t lose that,” he said with a smile. “It’s a master key.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Clio said, slipping the key around her neck.

Aidan joined them, mumbling something about iron. When Martin and her dad had gone in the water, Aidan lingered, slouching down in the corner of the deck with his laptop. He didn’t bother to say good morning or look up at Clio.

Elsa trailed out with one of her textbooks and mouthed Italian phrases toward the sun.

And Clio watched. And did some mental math.

Two people on the deck. Julia had gone up to the wheelhouse.

Two people in the ocean.

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And one key around her neck. A key that lay on top of her heart.

Just because she had been well behaved all week didn’t mean that she was any less interested in what was behind this trip—it was just that she had chosen not to act on it.

Being given a shiny key is a temptation. Keys open things.

And from the moment it was around her neck, her senses were tingling. The same senses that told her what aisle to find Ollie in or what chair Suki was crouched under—these were the senses telling her to take this key and do something with it.

But the place her brain was telling her to go was simply not right.

“I have to go get something,” she said to Elsa and Aidan.

“Can you keep an eye on them for me? Call me on the com if anyone signals.”

“Sure!” Elsa said. Her sunny smile meant that she thought Clio was doing her another favor by leaving her alone with Aidan.

Clio hurried inside. On the one hand, her brain was telling her
no
. No, she was not allowed to do this. This was a serious breach.

The other side was forcing her downstairs quickly because there wasn’t a lot of time for this, if she was going to do it.

She found herself standing in front of Julia’s door, not breathing, holding the key in front of the lock. This was where the answers on this boat were. This was where anything of real interest was going to be found. Something told her that this was absolutely necessary.

But if she got caught, there would be no recovery. It was just an insane whim.

207

She felt the key slipping into the lock, as if some force was putting it in there and not her hand.

Julia’s room was small but very tidy. It looked fairly unused, except for storage. Clio started by just glancing around, but she soon gave it up and started opening drawers. In the small bedside cabinet, there was a baby blue pack of birth control pills.

Clio cringed. It sat on a clear plastic box, which Clio could see was full of stones. She gingerly moved the pills aside and took the box. The stones were all different, though most of them looked like they had been chipped off larger surfaces. All were covered in symbols, the same symbols—a bunch of lines crossing each other in meaningless ways. Some were carved deeply, some just scratched. A few bore deep impressions that had probably been made in wet clay and allowed to dry. One was a tiny piece of jade that had been chiseled precisely. The symbols were obviously writing. They repeated, and they were in clean lines.

Clio turned the stone around several times. She had seen Greek characters, and Julia knew lots of Greek. But these definitely didn’t look like Greek characters.

She set the box back, replaced the pills, and kept looking.

There were piles of paper around the room, mostly thick folders filled with printed-out academic articles about languages or translations, a few dissertations. Lots of photocopies of Greek documents. Julia’s personal belongings were fairly simple. She had neatly folded clothes, a collection of exotic jewelry, a few thick, very literary-looking novels that Clio had never heard of.

Nothing interesting, really. And she had to be running out of time.

She was about to turn and go when she noticed a black travel 208

file on the floor. She reached down and opened it up. It spread open, accordion style, revealing a few papers. Mostly it was empty. Clio shuffled through the pockets. In the back were many more photocopies of the strange symbols on all kinds of surfaces. It looked like the front pockets were empty until Clio spread them open and had a good look at each one. In the very front was a small piece of paper in a plastic sleeve.

The thing that first caught her eye was the round rubber stamp mark in the corner that read: ARCHIVED, 17 MARCH 1926.

The paper was old, and the letter had been written with a loose ink pen that dripped along the page, soaking it in spots, running dry in the middle of some sentences. Clio could see where the writer had had to re-dip the pen and renew the ink. The scrawl was quick but elegant.

My dearest Marguerite,

I write this from Naples, where I am to

board the Bell Star in only a few moments.

I’m not sure which will get to you first, this letter or me. Even so, I take the chance. My excitement compels me to write to you and deliver this news.

In the villa in which I have been working in Pompeii, there is a library. But there is something else, something quite extraordinary.

209

On one of the walls, there is mounted a piece of elegantly engraved marble. Unless my eyes very much deceive me, it is written in that strange script we have been discussing for so long.

Here is the extraordinary bit—the writing is then translated into Latin. I believe the owner of this villa had works written in the script and this was a translation tool. I have found more scraps of the papyrus. It could be that this is a library full of works more ancient and more important than any we have ever known. And now, with the aid of this stone, we can read them.

The marble is white, oval in shape, and

twenty-six inches from top to bottom. The craftsmanship is exquisite. Because it is so vital, so lovely, and the key to so much understanding, I have given it the only name that matches it. It is now called the Marguerite stone.

I obtained permission to take it with me.

When I reach London, we will take it directly 210

to Hill and begin our work. Until then, I think only of you.

Your loving father

Obviously, this letter was important. It was old. It had a plastic sleeve and its own pocket at the front of the file.

Important things always go in the front. But unlike the paperwork that was out and around the room, it didn’t look like this was frequently needed.

She stood there, reading the letter over and over. A few things stood out. There was a ship in this—the
Bell Star
. They were looking for a ship. There was something important on the
Bell
Star
—a stone from Pompeii, a stone that would enable its finder to translate unknown languages.

This was exactly the kind of thing that Julia would want.

Especially considering the box of stones with letters on them.

Letters that weren’t Greek. But the phrase that Clio couldn’t get out of her mind was:
It could be that this is a library full of
works more ancient and more important than any we have ever
known.