“That’s it?” Most of my life I’ve thought this stupid bead actually meant something. I can’t believe it was just a trinket to pacify a pair of demanding four-year-olds.
She laughs. “They’re not magic or anything. It’s just an Old World superstition. But how cool is it that we both still have them?” Kat plucks mine from my palm. “I’ll string it for you. Then we’ll match again.”
It feels strange letting it go, but I don’t take it back. “Theo says we’re supposed to go on the eleven o’clock tour. He wants me to familiarize myself with sponging.”
Kat rolls her eyes and fishes her cell phone from the pocket of her shorts. “Wonderful.” She texts someone as she talks. “We’ll have front-row seats for the Alex Kosta show.”
A trio of older women come into the store to buy tickets for the tour, followed by a group of German high school students with a couple of adult chaperones. While I ring up the tickets and some T-shirts for the Germans, Kat tries to sell a chunky bar of honey-almond soap to the older ladies.
“It’s magic. I swear,” I hear her say, with the same outgoing charm Theo uses. “I might look seventeen, but really? I’m thirty-five.”
One woman nudges her friend and says, “If this soap could make me look seventeen again, I’d go after that Greek boy outside. He’s a hunk.” As the trio giggle, Kat turns toward me and makes a face as if she’s gagging. She also makes the sale.
Theo returns right before the tour, and Kat and I head outside to wait for the boat to board. Alex is getting his picture taken with his arm around the woman who called him a hunk, which makes Kat groan. “God, he’s so annoying.”
Her cell phone buzzes. She looks at the screen and smiles. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Nick and Connor to go with us. I figured if we had company, it would be less lame.”
I really don’t want to see Connor, but it’s too late. I spot his floppy hair above the crowd of German teens as he and Nick make their way toward us.
“Hello there, Kit Kat.” Nick greets her with a kiss, while Connor hangs back. He offers me a tentative smile and I counter with one of my own, but neither of us speak.
A couple of men move a boarding ramp up alongside the boat, which is a replica of the original boats from when they first started diving for sponges in Tarpon Springs. Or at least that’s what it says in the brochures we keep on the desk in the shop. The boat is lined with benches for passengers and the deck is covered by a canvas canopy for shade. Alex stands in the middle, his casual Greek outfit replaced by an old-fashioned one-piece dive suit with a heavy brass collar and weighted shoes strapped to his feet. Kat chooses a stretch of bench for us near the stern of the boat—as far away from Alex as we can be—and Connor sits beside me.
All around us, tourists are snapping photos with their cameras and phones of the Anclote River, of the sponge docks from the boat, and of Alex. It’s so odd that he’s a tourist attraction, but he is—and he makes the most of it, flashing his knee-weakening grin at every female on the boat, posing for pictures, and answering questions even though the tour hasn’t even started yet. He leans in to listen as if their questions are special and intimate, and the stupidity of my thinking I might be something more makes my face hot.
“About the party—” Connor interrupts my embarrassment.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I keep my voice low. “I’d rather forget it ever happened.”
“Oh, um—okay.”
Alex glances up from talking to a little boy, taking in the sight of me sitting beside Connor. I don’t think he heard me, but he looks away before I can read the expression in his eyes.
“So, how’s the new job going?” Connor asks.
“The first two hours have been good,” I say. “But I might need the rest of the day to know for sure.”
I realize I’m being rude to him at the same time that Kat elbows me. I start to apologize, but the captain cuts me off, welcoming everyone to the boat. He begins his practiced spiel about the origins of sponge diving and how experienced Greek divers were brought from the Dodecanese Islands to Tarpon Springs more than a century ago, after sponges were discovered on the floor of the Gulf. As the boat motors down the river, he describes the different types of sponges, handing out samples of each variety for the tourists to examine. Alex and I make eye contact, and the corner of his mouth twitches in a tiny grin. I drop my head, letting my hair fall forward, hiding my smile from Connor and Kat.
When we reach a bend in the river, the captain puts the boat in neutral and another old man wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap helps Alex put on the bell-shaped windowed helmet, locking it to the collar around his neck with large brass wing nuts. To the back of the helmet, he attaches a hose connected to an air compressor. Like an astronaut walking on the moon, Alex takes heavy steps to the bow of the boat. Armed with a small rake-like tool and a mesh bag, he descends a wooden ladder into the water and floats for a moment as the captain explains that he has to release the air in the suit to sink to the bottom.
All the tourists stand and move to one side of the boat so they can watch. Their camera shutters click and one guy is even videotaping as Alex waves for the cameras, then slowly disappears below the surface. The water is murky, so we can’t see him, but the captain tells us Alex is walking along the bottom of the river.
“This is totally fake,” Kat whispers. “Sponges don’t even grow in the river, so the ones he brings up have already been harvested.”
Right after she says it, the captain repeats the same fact to everyone, adding that real sponges grow too far offshore for a proper tour, and that the old-fashioned suit has been retired in favor of wetsuits and dive masks. Still, the passengers cheer when Alex comes up with a preharvested sponge at the end of his rake. He puts it in the mesh bag, then makes his way back to the boat. The old man with the Greek hat helps him on board the boat and immediately removes the helmet. Alex wasn’t in the water very long, but his curls are damp with sweat.
The captain turns the boat back in the direction of the sponge docks and Alex is swallowed up by a crowd of people who want to take his picture and get his autograph.
“So, Callie,” Kat says. “Since you’re grounded, how about if Nick, Connor, and I come over and watch movies at your place? Nick has a portable DVD player we can hook to your little TV.”
“I’ll have to check with Greg.”
“Text him,” she urges.
I take out my phone and type: Kat wants to come over tonight with Nick and Connor to watch movies. Please say no. I feel guilty, but I’m not interested in spending my evening with Kat trying to fix me up with Connor. A moment later, Greg replies: Maybe next weekend. Kat has school tomorrow.
I turn the screen in her direction and she groans. “Gah! It’s as if he’s in league with my mom. You’re so lucky you don’t have to go to school.”
The boat returns to the dock and we’re the first ones off. As Kat kisses Nick good-bye, Connor touches my arm.
“I know things are weird,” he says. “But do you think maybe we could go out sometime … on a date?”
My brain says “no” and the word is there in my mouth, waiting to be set free, but his eyes are so hopeful and I don’t want to be rude to him again. “I’ll think about it,” I say. He gives me a wide smile and I wish I’d just said no. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“So how’d it go?” Theo asks, as I come into the store.
I give him a thumbs-up. “Wool, grass, yellow, wire, and finger.”
“You’re a champ,” he says.
I buy hummus and a Coke from the restaurant next door and take my lunch break on my favorite bench, sitting on the back the way my mom used to do it when we waited for the school bus. Alex walks over and climbs up beside me. I offer him a torn-off piece of pita, which he dredges through the hummus.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Sure,” I say. “Your sponge-dive thing is impressive.”
He shrugs. “It’s money. How are you liking the shop so far?”
“It’s money.”