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of them. Not to mention just
the testing and prodding they might do on these two cadavers.
    “Sorry, Dad. I’m just feeling overwhelmed,
you know.”
    “I understand,” my dad said. “Now hurry. We
still have a chance of saving the one in the truck. So, come on and
help. Fast.” He hefted a mermaid out of the sand and practically
ran with it back to the truck.
    I tried to be helpful by using all my
strength and picking up the remaining mermaid by myself. Only, I
quickly found out that was impossible. Although the mermaid
appeared as thin and as slight as a supermodel, she must have
weighed close to one hundred fifty pounds. With that being at least
thirty pounds more than my own weight, all I could do was lift her
up behind me and drag her over my shoulders by her arms. Dad came
back after unloading the other body onto the truck and met me only
a few yards from where I’d started. He took her upper body off my
shoulders and helped me carry the mermaid the rest of the way. We
put the two dead mermaids in the truck bed next to the barely
surviving one.
    “I hope she doesn’t get creeped out by this,”
I said.
    “Like she isn’t creeped out already?” my dad
pointed out. “C’mon.”
    We got into the truck and sped off. As we
drove away from the beach, we passed four white SUVs with the
Affron Oil logo painted on the sides heading the opposite
direction. I don’t know why I ever doubt my dad. When it comes to
this business, he knows his stuff. We couldn’t have stayed a breath
longer without our mermaids being discovered.
    No more than five minutes later Dad veered
off the highway and pulled the truck into the nearly empty parking
lot of the Aberdeen Sea Mammal Rescue Center, a large
warehouse-looking place tucked between a pine forest and shore
cliff. Dad had driven like the truck was on fire, and the center
was only a few miles down the road from Grayland Beach. I jumped
out of the truck before it had completely stopped and ran up to the
door. At the same moment, a young man stepped out of a beat-up,
used Civic and approached the door.
    “You Sawfeather?” he asked me.
    “Yes,” I said. “I’m June. And that’s Peter,
my dad.” I pointed back at the truck where my dad was still turning
off the ignition.
    The guy stood there, fumbling with the keys
to the front door for an interminable amount of time. Did he even
know which key opened the door? He didn’t look much older than me,
and the sight of this blond, shaggy-headed kid in his sweatshirt
and jeans didn’t impress me. Where were the marine biologists who
were supposed to meet us? What good was this guy going to do me? He
had to be too young to be of any real use.
    “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you actually work
here?”
    “Yeah,” he said, not a drop of
self-consciousness in his voice. “I’m an intern here. Name’s Carter
Crowe. I just got a call to come in for an emergency. You it?”
    He finally got the door open.
    “Well, not me personally,” I said. “But we do
have an extreme emergency in the truck and we need to get it
into water fast. Is anyone else coming? Like someone who can
actually help?”
    Carter smiled at me. Straight, clean teeth.
His eyes were bright. He’d had his caffeine on the way over, and it
was working. I have to admit, his was the most dazzling smile I’ve
ever seen. It made me slightly dizzy.
    “No worries,” he assured me. “I can
help.”
    I can’t say why, but all of a sudden I was
absolutely sure that he could.
    He flipped on the lights to the center,
revealing a neat little room with a sign attached to the front of
the information desk that denoted the space Visitor’s Center .
    I’d been to the Sea Mammal Rescue Center
before, on a field trip in grade school and for a rescue I’d done
with my dad after a construction crew left so much litter when
building a new beachfront condo that it was killing the animals
that relied on the water there. This place was a non-profit
organization with some small