Overcome with a deep sense of disappointment, I sit on a rock to catch my breath. The tide pools are teeming with a rich array of marine life, including a lined chiton, an otherworldly little marine mollusk clinging to a rock, feeding on algae.
What is that little alien? Aiden says, crouching beside me. I see him as if he’s here with me now, examining the chiton, which resembles an armor-plated, oversized caterpillar. I hear his breathing, smell his scents of soap and pine. He’s looking at the chiton with a focused sense of wonder.
Tonicella lineata, I say. A subtidal mollusk.
Could you say that in English?
It has eight overlapping plates or dorsals, you see? They’re bilaterally symmetrical.
Like humans.
Only the chiton sticks to rocks with a suction cup foot. And they’re herbivores. Animalia: Mollusca: Polyplacophora.
Poly what?
Sorry, I say.
Don’t be sorry. You’re amazing. He’s looking at me with admiration.
You’re not bored out of your mind?
Are you kidding? I’m fascinated. We should go diving. I bet you would see a whole lot more. He takes my hand and we clamber across the rocks into another cove, where we find more tide pools. We’re not on Mystic Island. But we’re close, maybe on a nearby island. We’re careful not to step on the numerous fragile anemones. I recite the scientific names for the species we see. He tries to pronounce the words. We come upon a jellyfish in the sand, a flat puddle of amber.
Strange to see jellyfish motionless, I say. They move twenty-four hours a day in the sea.
He kneels next to me, looking at me, not the jellyfish. You’re sad, he says.
No I’m not, I say, but I am. Washing ashore is a natural part of the jellyfish life cycle.
Can we put it back in the water?
I smile at him. You’re so sweet, but the tide will only bring it right back again.
Then what can we do? His dark eyes register concern—for me, for the jellyfish, for everything I have ever worried about. He wants to protect me from pain, from grief, but it is too late for that. There are some things in this world from which we can’t be protected.
Nothing, I say. There’s nothing we can do.
Hell, if we can’t save the damned jellyfish, let’s have a funeral.
A funeral? I say, in disbelief.
Memorial service, whatever. To honor the life of the jellyfish.
I laugh as we arrange seashells around the jellyfish. I used to do stuff like this when I was a kid. But it’s been a long time.
Never give up being a kid, he says. I’ll give the eulogy. ‘All good jellyfish go to the great Sea in the Sky.’
Even bad ones get to go there, I say. I feel as though I’m a child again, doing childish things, but happiness is suffusing me like filtered sunlight.
“Kyra!” Jacob calls to me from far away. I’m no longer in my memory of Aiden. The jellyfish is gone. I’m crouching in the cold water, my pants wet to the knees; my feet soaked in my running shoes. Jacob’s rounding the bend in his Spandex jogging pants, windbreaker, and fluorescent green running shoes.
“I’m here!” I wade out of the icy water onto dry sand.
“What are you doing way the hell down here?”
“I found a lined chiton. They’re abundant up the coast, or at least they were four years ago. But this is the first time I’ve seen one here. They—”
“You’re shivering. Come on, let’s get you home.”
“I’m fine.” But my teeth are chattering now, and my toes are going numb.
“The telephone woke me up, and I saw you weren’t there.” He takes my arm and steers me back toward the house.
“Who called?” I say. Aiden’s smile stays in my mind. His dark eyes, so sincere, so interested.
“It was Nancy, reminding us about dinner Saturday night. We should make something to bring with us.”
“Okay, you’re the cook,” I say. I want to go back to that protected cove. How many more moments did Aiden and I share, peering into tide pools on that rocky shore, holding solemn funerals for the dead creatures coughed up by the sea?
We’re in the pass again—the dream takes me back to the rock wall, to the anemones swaying gently in the current. Another diver hovers a few yards off, filming a congregation of urchins. The current is too strong—stronger than it should be. Is it possible we didn’t time the dive correctly? Could we have made a mistake? A wave of anxiety washes through me. I begin to hyperventilate. I count, One, breathe in, two. Breathe out. Three. Why am I here? I’m not ready to dive here. The waters are too rough. Where are we? In Deception Pass? Somewhere else?