The Line Tender: Chapters 1–13

“HUGE SHARK!”
The hard k sound bounced off the ceiling. I watched the boys and waited for the rest of the story.
“What?” Little Brother’s eyes were as wide as peanut butter cups.
Fred walked over to the boys. “Where?”
“At the wharf! A fisherman dragged it in,” said Big Brother.

I made the turn onto Dock Square, past the candy store with the taffy pull in the window, and then the asphalt turned to granite slabs as I made my way onto T Wharf.

The smell was strong—not Gloucester Harbor strong, but fishy. It wasn’t just the herring for the traps or the catch itself. There was an earthy smell that came from the algae-green wood and the water that stood still inside the breakwall.

I moved beside Fred, budging my way into the front row to see the shark’s body being pulled by the hoist from just below the dock. As the mouth came closer, my eyes went straight to the huge, serrated teeth, gnarly and sticking out at different angles.

Fred did the writing. All I had to do was provide the illustrations, and I could draw as well as Fred could explain taxonomy.

To my right, we passed the bookstore and art galleries. Gaps between the buildings revealed alleyways that led right to the ocean. The flashes of blue on our walk were subliminal reminders of the sea that circled the shops and houses in town.

I was about to suggest we head down to the wharf in the morning when I noticed my dad in my peripheral vision...

“I’m going to head down to Back Beach for a bit before dinner.”
“You’re going in the water?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He was oblivious.
Fred translated for me. “She means because of Sookie’s shark.”

If, for some chance, the shark swam out of sight, there would be no way of knowing how close it remained. It would be difficult for my dad to spot the position of his buoy in the murky water, and great whites attack their prey from beneath. I had to shake off the thought.

I turned to Fred. My gut was churning.

“Get in the car, guys,” said Officer Parrelli, popping the trunk of the cruiser.
I zipped up my backpack, just as the rain started pelting us.
“You could fit like four bodies in there,” I said, as Officer Parrelli hefted my bike into the trunk.
He gave me a look.
“It was a joke,” I said.

I looked at Officer Parrelli. “What happened? I thought you were watching the shark?”
“There was a break-in on Marmion Way. People take precedence over dead sharks, Lucy.”

Officer Parrelli walked over to his cruiser and sat in the front seat with the door open, scrawling something in a notebook.

I could tell that Sookie was in a mood, and while I wanted to bombard him with questions, I figured it was the wrong time.

Fred often chose albums with interesting artwork, but this one was different. My eyes moved immediately from a flaming pink flower in the bottom left to a strange storm brewing in the top right. There were three African people on the cover: a woman with a serene face and two other people hugging in the bottom center. Then I realized they were looking out at a storm with fierce lightning in the distance. The artwork was colorful and surreal, and it left me feeling uneasy.

Fred often chose albums with interesting artwork, but this one was different. My eyes moved immediately from a flaming pink flower in the bottom left to a strange storm brewing in the top right. There were three African people on the cover: a woman with a serene face and two other people hugging in the bottom center. Then I realized they were looking out at a storm with fierce lightning in the distance. The artwork was colorful and surreal, and it left me feeling uneasy.

Fred was still plucking imaginary strings to the looping rhythm. His hair flopped around and he danced like a robot that had been left out in the rain. Fred unrestrained was a good sight. He looked sort of disheveled and less uptight.

The aquarium looked more like a swamp than one of those pristine tanks at the dentist’s office, but it made a nice temporary home for some of the field guide critters until I could get around to drawing them.

“Hold on, you’ve got something in your hair,” he said, scooting his bike a little closer. He zeroed in on my scalp and pinched a group of hairs at the root, sliding mysterious debris to the end and setting off a ripple of chills from my shoulders to my face. I looked into his palm.
“Just a leaf,” he said. There was still junk falling out of the trees from the storm. I didn’t care if it was a caterpillar or a bramble or lice. I just wanted him to do it again.

“Hold on, you’ve got something in your hair,” he said, scooting his bike a little closer. He zeroed in on my scalp and pinched a group of hairs at the root, sliding mysterious debris to the end and setting off a ripple of chills from my shoulders to my face. I looked into his palm.
“Just a leaf,” he said. There was still junk falling out of the trees from the storm. I didn’t care if it was a caterpillar or a bramble or lice. I just wanted him to do it again.

We passed the gazebo at the end of our street where the American Legion band played every Saturday night of the summer and we crossed Beach Street.

We coasted by the entrance to Halibut Point State Park where, some nights, Fred’s sisters swam in the quarries.

We ditched our bikes and started the trek to the big rocks at the edge of the tide, egg-shaped hunks of granite banging together underfoot. Offshore, an unfinished break wall was home to kelp beds and invertebrates. Divers loved that place too.

He pulled his sunglasses down from his head and they settled on his face.
“What? They look cool,” he said.
I looked skeptical.
The only thing cool was Fred’s confidence that he looked cool.

Fred sprawled himself on the floor and began working on a new page in our field guide.

“Listen to this,” Fred said, reading from his book. “‘White sharks are warm-blooded, but their hearts and gills keep the temperature of the water.’”
“What? Why?” I asked.
“‘The elevated visceral temperature also helps the shark digest food and increase the developmental processes of the babies in a warm uterus.’”

He started unconsciously tapping his toe on my toe while he scrawled more notes onto the paper. Then this buzz radiated up my calves like a spark climbing a long fuse up my gangly legs, tripping off a series of flashes in my thighs and shoulders.

Sometime after lunch, she developed a terrible headache and started vomiting. The scientists knew something was very wrong. They didn’t know an aneurysm had ruptured in the network of blood vessels at the bottom of her brain called the circle of Willis.

If I knew what I was doing, I could have put together four complete outfits from all of the clothing and jewelry strewn on the hallway floor.

“Hi, Lu,” said Bridget, dipping her brush into the polish, blowing like an oscillating fan over her nails.

Fiona swabbed my eyelids with a tiny foam brush rolled in apricot powder and drew on top of my lash line with a brown pencil.
“Hold still.”
Every time she moved toward the tear ducts my eyeballs went spastic. When Fiona came near me with the mascara wand, it was like having a mini-blackout, this dark clot closing in before my eyes shut.

She plunged into the quarry and resurfaced, spitting and slicking her hair back, all that work down the drain as makeup and hair gel dissolved into the stagnant water.

I had a flashback to fifth grade, when Officer Parrelli came to health class as a guest speaker. I remember roleplaying what you’re supposed to say if someone offers you a drink and you feel like you’re in over your head. But in every scenario at school, it had been a fifth grader, who’d been pretending to be a bully, that had tried to get me to drink. It was never a group of people I loved who were handing me pink wine that smelled like fruit.

Our faces broke apart. I thought I might be sick. Immediately I stood up, forcing Fred to move away. I needed to find my sea legs. My foot pressed into Fiona’s hand, as she and Simon carried on a conversation. She was so enraptured that she didn’t flinch.

In the daylight, the water was clear enough to see fathoms beneath the surface. This gave the illusion there was a bottom that might be safely reached, when really the quarry was so deep even a strong swimmer should consider it bottomless.