At that, his eyes fly to mine.
I turn away, grabbing one of the bikes, and clear my throat. “I saw Beatriz,” I say. “She says things are … ?good.”
Gabriel looks at me for a long moment before he grabs the handlebars of the second bike. “Okay,” he says softly, nodding to himself, as if he recognizes that I am signaling what we will talk about and what we won’t. He starts walking the bike toward the main road, telling me how Beatriz schooled him on the 123 baby tortoises that were stolen from the breeding center in 2018, and how he’s fighting a losing battle trying to explain to Abuela that she can’t go play lotería at church, even if she wears a mask. As we pedal down dusty dirt paths, he tells me that he’s almost finished building the second bedroom at his house—which is good, because Beatriz will be staying with him even after her school on Santa Cruz reopens.
For a half hour or so, we bike in silence.
“The first girl I fell for was Luz,” Gabriel says suddenly. “She sat in front of me in class, alphabetically, and I stared at three freckles on her neck for months before I got the courage to speak to her.” He glances at me. “Do you remember your first crush?”
“Of course. His name was Jared and he was a vegetarian, and I didn’t eat meat for a month so that he’d notice me.”
Gabriel laughs. “Do you remember before that, when you made the decision to like boys?”
I look at him quizzically. “No …”
“Exactly,” he says, and his jaw sets. “No one gets to break her heart again.”
Oh, this man. “Who would dare, with you in her corner?”
His gaze catches mine and I can’t look away and I nearly crash into a tree, but Gabriel hops off his bike and interrupts the moment. “We have to hide these,” he tells me. “If the rangers see them, they’ll come after us.”
He drags his bike into a tangle of brush and rearranges the leaves to cover the rusty metal, then takes my bike and does the same. “Now what?”
“Now we walk the rest of the way,” he says. “It’s another forty-five minutes.”
As we hike, he retreats into safe space—telling me about his childhood. His father used to read Moby-Dick to him before he went to bed, because Melville learned about whaling while on a ship in the Galápagos. He says Melville called the Galápagos “The Enchanted Islands.” He tells me that the last time he was at Barahona, he was with a group called Amigos de las Tortugas—Friends of the Tortoises—a bunch of kids who went with the Charles Darwin Research Station to count sea turtle nests there. There were volunteers from all over the world who came to help, and one—a tourist from the United States—taught Gabriel how to surf.
When we finally crest a dune and see the beach spread below us, I catch my breath. It is beautiful in the way wild things are beautiful—with roaring sea and ungroomed sand, bordered by cacti and brush. Gabriel offers his hand, and after only a moment of hesitation I take it so that he can help me scuffle my way through the hillock to land on the beach. “Careful,” he says, tugging me to the left so that I do not step on a tiny hole in the sand, like a bubble caught underground. “There,” Gabriel says. “That’s a sea turtle nest.”
I look around, and with careful eyes spy another twenty little divots in the sand. “Really?”
“Yeah. And no matter how far they swim in the ocean, turtles come back to the same beach to lay their eggs.”
“How do they find it?”
“Magnetic field. Each part of the coast has its own special fingerprint, basically, and the babies learn it and use memory as a compass.”
“That’s really cool,” I say.
“That’s not why I wanted you to see it,” Gabriel says. He points to a wriggling line in the sand that tracks down to the water. “After the female turtles lay their eggs—around a hundred at a time—they leave.” He looks at me. “They never come back to take care of those eggs.”
I think of how the strongest memory I have of my mother is watching her pull a small carry-on out of our house.
“Here’s the incredible thing,” Gabriel says. “Two months later, those sea turtle babies hatch at night. They’ve got to get to the ocean before hawks and crabs and frigate birds can get to them. The only guide they have is the reflection of the moon on the water.” I feel him standing behind me, a wall of heat. “Not all of them make it. But, Diana … ?the strongest ones do.”
When my eyes sting with tears, I turn away, stumbling forward only to have Gabriel yank me back by my arm. “Cuidado,” he says, and I follow his gaze to the tree I nearly crashed into, a manchineel laden with poisoned apples.
I laugh, but it may just be a sob.
Gabriel’s hand gentles on my arm. “Are we ever going to talk about it?”