Strong Like the Sea, стр. 15
I grab a towel to wipe off my lenses, but jump as thunder cracks overhead. Gray mists churn and boil beneath a low ceiling of clouds, their ghostly tendrils reaching down as if grasping for lost raindrops.
Just in case the downpour decides to flood us again, I move the slippers up a step and bring my bowler hat inside to dry. As I climb the steps, I try to ignore the high-water mark Dad painted on the stilts below our front door. My fingers tap one to the next, and I take a deep breath to still the rising tide of anxiety inside.
“It’s not a flood. It’s only rain, relax.” I roll my neck and grasp the doorknob. What did Malia call the storm? Cranky. Just a regular storm with its cranky-pants all in a bunch. Nothing to worry about.
A flash of lightning starts me counting. On “six-one-thousand,” thunder rumbles through the house, and I close the door with a satisfying click.
Water pools around my feet as I set my bowler hat on a chair to dry, drop my backpack onto one of Auntie’s woven mats, and towel off. A couple minutes later and a lot drier, I flip the desk lamp on and peer through the bottle at the light.
With the bright glow right behind it, the hidden symbol shines through with fine lines. Painted, I think, not etched.
What if I hadn’t looked in there? Wouldn’t that have been a great conversation—Um, no, Mom, I never did do the obvious thing and look inside, but I did paint the bottom of the bottle and squish it onto paper before rubbing pencils across it. I groan.
Mom would never laugh at me, but then again, she wouldn’t have to. I’d die of embarrassment long before she had the chance. She sees patterns everywhere, and a change in sequence hits her brain like a big red stop sign. I see the patterns too, but I don’t always know what they mean. Sometimes when I see something off, it gets stuck in my head. My thoughts worm back to it again and again, the answer staying just out of reach behind swirling mists like our mountaintop; I know it’s there, and I could find it if I had to, but I can’t quite see it from where I am.
I open the translator app and hold the phone’s camera up to the mouth of the bottle, but it can’t quite focus right no matter which angle I try. Okay, fine. Time for plan B.
I copy the lines into my notebook and triple check that it’s right before scanning the image with my phone. Possible translations pop up:
Rescue. Relief. Aid.
“Rescue what?” I roll back from the desk and stand to scan it again from right over top, but the answer comes back the same. I slump back into the chair and stare up at my paper flock as if one of them might hold the answer, but nothing new pops in my head. My stomach growls; break time.
Leaving both notebook and bottle on my desk, I pad to the kitchen for a snack and flip the light switch. In the middle of the counter sits a bowl filled with the most beautiful fruit known to humankind.
Rambutan.
Okay, they’re more like weird, round, red things with tiny little tentacles all over, sort of like wonky sea urchins, or maybe furry alien golf balls. But inside them is the most delicious fruit ever. They’re like lychee—but way better. Kind of like a giant grape inside.
“Thank you, Auntie!” It’s possible that Dad found time to grocery shop, but I doubt it.
I grab a knife and cut all the way around the center and pull the two red halves apart, revealing the pale, translucent center of sweetness. The second one disappears almost as fast as the first one, but I lean against the counter and take my time with the third. So, so good.
Across the kitchen, under the pots and pans that hang from a metal rack, the rice cooker’s little orange light glows steady on “keep warm.”
Something darts past the rice cooker and slithers off the edge of the counter. A blur of orange and gray too fast to see.
Was that a centipede?
Nope, nope, nope! My toes curl and I jump to the center of the tile floor, eyes straining to check each shadow beneath the cupboards. The knife still in my hand, I squat to peer under the fridge for slithering bodies, rippling legs, or slicing pincers. Centipedes are the worst.
Fist tight around the knife, I wait for a shadow to move, but nothing does. Not under the cupboards, and not on the counters.
It’s not that I want to see one, but I saw something, and the scar on my ankle prickles with remembered warnings. If it’s here in the house, and I can’t find it, it might find me first—and I never want that to happen again. I lean over the counter, set the knife down, and pull scissors out of a drawer.
Dad would do it if he were home, but if it slips past me, we could lose it for weeks. I can’t risk it.
Fingers tight around the scissors, I take another step toward the wall. The blur headed that way, didn’t it?
My gaze slides up the wall toward the picture frames—and it moves.
I suck a breath as a tiny head shifts, bright eyes staring back at me.
A lucky house gecko.
Gray-blue with orange spots, he clings to a picture frame of Grandma and Grandpa Force and lifts his chin as if to scold me for interrupting his bug hunt.
The little guy is on a mission, and I’m blowing his cover.
With legs wobblier than seaweed, I lean against the counter and drop the scissors as the gecko strolls across the