Just as the last shadow reached out with desperate hands towards the edge of Gran’s white fence, I pulled up in front of the porch and gently leaned the bike up against the house. Checking my bag and clothes for traces of sand, I hurried inside.
“Gran?” I called out as I walked in the door.
“Oh, Alexandria, how are you? Did you have fun at your friend’s house?” replied Gran, appearing at the end of the small hallway leading to the kitchen. On her shoulder draped a white kitchen towel, a stirring spoon clutched in her right hand.
“Yes, I did. What are you cooking?” I sniffed the air. A delicious aroma greeted my nose. Absentmindedly, I thought of OVRR and wondered if it could perfectly capture this scent.
“Spaghetti. It’s one of your favorites, isn’t it?”
I nodded and said, “Yes, it is.”
Letting my bag slide off my shoulder onto the floor, I followed the smell of spaghetti to Gran’s kitchen. Small in size, the table took up most of the space in front of the only counter not occupied by a kitchen appliance. Shuffling with tired legs over to the plain wooden table, I plopped down with a thud and rested my elbows on the table. Creating a bridge with my hands folded over each other, I laid my chin on them and stared across the kitchen at the yellow walls hiding beneath the cabinets. “Gran?”
“Hmm?” She didn’t turn toward me but merely kept stirring the spaghetti in the pot.
“Do you know why the Navy left this town?”
“Yes…they left because of a big disaster.”
“Oh.” That contrasted to what Dylan had said to me. Beneath the table, I crossed my ankles. “What kind of disaster?”
“A pollution incident. Something very toxic leaked into the waters. It killed a lot of the wildlife and polluted the beach irrevocably. Environmental groups lashed out and eventually ran the Navy out of the area. It was unfortunate because a lot of jobs were lost over the incident.”
“Really? Interesting.”
Gran turned toward me with one gray eyebrow raised. “What made you ask?”
“Oh, just wondering. I was biking with my friend today and noticed that none of the beaches here has any people on them. I thought it was odd since it’s summertime. I’m used to beaches being heavily crowded—not deserted.”
“Well, you just stay away from those beaches. They’re dangerous and bound to make you sick if you go there. Rumors say that whatever was wasted there was radioactive and possibly nuclear in origin, so it could still cause damage today.” Gran wiggled her forefinger in my direction, her eyes turning serious. “I mean it, Allie. Stay away from there.”
I grinned at Gran’s use of my nickname and nodded at her. Behind my back, I made a “not” sign as I nodded my head. Staying away from the beaches was exactly what I wasn’t going to do.
. . .
For weeks, Dylan and I met at the restricted beach every morning, traveling beneath the waves to his hidden city in the deep. Each day, I further explored Oceania, never getting bored with the new things I discovered. Oceania was a city of its own, so far removed from my land world I could have been on Neptune instead of Earth. From the food I ate to the people I met, all were so foreign—so alien to me. Their ways of life were somehow simpler, yet complex at the same time. Everyone in Oceania was bound by limitless rules, but they didn’t seem to care. No matter who they were, everyone in the city seemed to be obsessed with education and knowledge. I guess that’s what happens when your ancestors were geniuses.
Dylan kept his word and obtained tickets to an Aquaball game between the Narwhals and the Barracudas for today. I was eager to see how this game would be played. Unable to contain my excitement, I kept fidgeting as we waited in the long line that wrapped around the stadium.
“Have your holotickets ready, please! The game is scheduled to start in twenty minutes and we want everyone seated by then,” announced a loudspeaker in a computerized feminine voice.
A second set of doors opened as the line parted in two and finally began moving. A high-tech machine scanned our tickets as we meandered past it into the long corridor that led to the seating areas. Once out of the dimly lit corridor, the bright blue shining lights backlit by the bubble-shaped aqua pool spread out across the entire arena. The edges of the water bubble threatened to gush over the sides of the barriers at the bottom containing them. Only two rows of seats sat close behind the barriers with VIP written on the backs of them.
We found our seats squashed in the dead center of the stadium on the left side of the court. Sitting down, the cushioned seats conformed to my body just like every cushioned place in Oceania. I still hadn’t gotten used to that.
“Are you ready for the game we’ve all been waiting for? The Narwhals against the Barracudas! North of the city against the east of the city! Here are your teams!” came the announcement as the lights above the stands dimmed to black and the lights refocused on the interior of the aquadome.
On the right side of the arena came the Barracudas dressed in blue and black skintight suits with masks obscuring the lower part of their faces. On the left, the Narwhals donned in gray and yellow swam to the center to face off against their opponents. Each player wore the masks obscuring the lower part of their faces that Dr. Wilcox had recently developed.
A water cannon shot out the ball, a bright yellow orb with
