The New England episode of Whale Heroes had finally aired. Loo had tuned in, hoping to see Marshall on television, but all she got was his stepfather, the wiry, ex-hippie captain of the Athena, who cursed a salty mean streak that was bleeped for audiences, and maintained a beard that reached the middle of his chest. Flanked by a crew of large-chested coeds, Captain Titus discussed the decline of the codfish next to the carcass of a beached whale. He then conducted a dissection of the whale, pulling out the contents of the stomach and matching them to a chart demonstrating the collapse of the local ecosystem. A marine sanctuary, he said, would not only reinvigorate the North Atlantic cod population. It would also provide a vital feeding ground for migrating humpback whales. He called three senators on a satellite phone to demand an investigation into overfishing near the Bitter Banks, then he chased down a trawler that was dragging for cod and dove into the water to cut their net with a bowie knife, sending a mountain of skates and flounder and seaweed and crabs spilling back into the ocean. The episode ended with the captain and his team being pelted with water cannons by a flotilla of local fishermen. Loo had recognized many of the same ruddy faces that morning at the Sawtooth, eating bacon and eggs.
Agnes waved Loo down at the coffee station. Her stomach pushed against her muumuu. Her body had swollen so much she’d had to remove her piercings. Without the stud in her lip she looked much older, even with the pink hair and eyeliner. She gestured with a packet of Sweet’N Low.
“That boy looks hungry.”
“I’m trying to get rid of him.”
“He’s here for you?” Agnes tore the paper in half. “You better hope his mother doesn’t find out.”
“She already knows,” said Loo.
Agnes raised her painted eyebrows. “Mary said you got him arrested. And then your father beat him up.”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“You seem to have a lot of those.” She rubbed her belly with the palm of her hand. “You know Gunderson’s brothers want to fire her.”
“Because of us?”
“Because of that,” said Agnes, pointing across the restaurant.
Over in Loo’s section, Jeremy Strand and Pauly Fisk, Jr. were standing at Marshall’s table. Jeremy still smelled of sauerkraut, and Pauly junior still thought he was going to be a rock star. Since graduation they’d been working as fishermen, but now, with the catch limits, they had been laid off and were living in their fathers’ basements. The boys were talking low and Marshall shook his head. Then Jeremy knocked the meat lover’s special into the boy’s lap. Two old-timers sitting at the counter glanced up from their plates. Another set down his newspaper and coffee. The rest of the customers stared at Marshall Hicks while Jeremy and Pauly junior walked out the door and got into their fathers’ cars and drove away.
Agnes snatched Marshall’s ticket out of Loo’s hands.
“I’ll drop the check,” she said. “I know how to make men disappear.”
But Marshall didn’t leave, despite the food in his lap and despite Agnes’s lousy service. He cleaned up in the bathroom and returned to his seat. He waited out all of the dirty looks from the fishermen. He ordered French toast. He ate every last bite. And when the breakfast rush subsided and Loo’s shift was over, he followed her outside.
“What do you want?” Loo asked.
“I want you to invite me over,” he said.
She spun the dial on her bike chain. “I’m too tired to talk.”
Marshall scanned the parking lot, as if he expected someone to come charging out from behind one of the cars. “I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” said Loo.
“You’re not?”
“My dad is actually kind of happy about it.”
“God,” Marshall said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Oh,” said Loo. “No. He’s not happy about that. He’s not happy about you at all.”
Marshall brushed cornbread crumbs off his tie. “I’ll add him to the list.”
“What did Pauly and Jeremy say?”
“They wanted to make sure I knew they were assholes.”
Loo pulled her bike free of the rack. For a moment she thought of the old yellow bicycle that Hawley had bought her, that had been stolen outside of Dogtown. This one was black and more rugged, with tires thick enough for mountain trails. She’d bought it with her own money. She knew that she should climb on and ride away but she didn’t.
“I saw Whale Heroes. Your mom must be happy.”
“They cut the scene she was in.”
“But it got everyone’s attention.”
“My stepfather took all the credit for her work. But she’s trying to make the most of the publicity before the show moves back to Antarctica.”
“So you still need the petition.”
“I need you,” said Marshall.
The August sun was beating down, the heat reflecting off the roofs of the cars. It was like staring through the bubbled edge of a camera lens, a circle of emptiness coming into focus. Nothing—and then something. Marshall’s pants were covered in stains, his tie askew, his hair as shaggy as ever. He smelled like maple sugar candy.
“My dad’s out fishing,” Loo said.
Marshall took hold of the handlebars. “That’s all I needed to know.”
They rode together. Loo sat on the bicycle seat and Marshall stood, pumping the pedals, the frame bobbling whenever they slowed. She wrapped her arms around his waist. Kept the tips of her toes on the axle. She hoped no one would see them. She hoped that everyone would.
As soon as they got inside her house he started kissing her. His hands clutched at her shoulders, her hair, the sides of her face.
“I smell like food,” she said.
“So do I.”
It was different, being indoors. There were sheets, and she felt less self-conscious twisting underneath them in her darkened room. More willing to try. She pushed off her sneakers. She undid his belt. There was sweat and dirt on Marshall’s neck, and he tore at her clothing like he was searching for something she had stolen from him. He felt the same. He felt like a stranger. She pulled his shirt up and the collar got stuck on his chin and for a moment he was headless and flopping like a fish in a net and she had his arms caught tight and then the shirt fell loose in her hands and there was nothing left to take from him—there was only skin and there was so much of it.
When they were finished, every pillow and blanket was on the floor. The fitted sheet had pulled up from the corners, exposing the hidden buttons of her mattress and the plastic tag’s wrinkled warning. All that was left was their slick and salted bodies and a thread of a blanket that Loo pulled from their ankles and drew across her chest. Marshall had gone so still that she was certain he was asleep. At least she hoped he was, because she was afraid that if she opened her mouth now the truth might spill out: that she missed him, even though he was right there in the room.
When his voice came, it was muffled by the pillow. “Your planets are gone.”
“I had to scrub for days.”
Marshall sat up and looked around Loo’s room, his eyes resting on each piece of furniture and item on her bureau. A bowl of shells, a strip of Skee-Ball tickets from the county fair, a pile of comic books, novels and astronomy guides, some half-melted candles from a power outage, a wad of balled-up tissues from her last cold, a small batch of cormorant feathers that she’d found and kept, because she liked their iridescent black color. Loo watched him puzzle over each object. It was as if he was measuring her life.
“My mom thinks you’re crazy. You and your dad.”