“No. That stuff—I just knew it. The way you know what up or down means, but it’s hard to describe them without using the words up or down. See what I’m saying?”
“Kind of,” said Cara uncertainly.
She half wished Max or Hayley were here, to make Jax explain things in a more basic way. Or just so she didn’t feel like she was the only one whose head was spinning.
“It doesn’t seem empirically verifiable,” said Jax. “Any of it. I realize that.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Cara.
“But Car, I promise you. It’s real.”
He said this softly. He’d sat back down on his bed, opposite her, and his scrawny legs were crossed in front of him. Jax always managed to have scabs on his knees and bruises on his shins.
“I guess, if I’m gonna go with this,” she said slowly, “I have to stop second-guessing you. It’s kind of like I have to either believe it all or believe none of it. Otherwise I’ll just keep feeling like my head is going to explode.”
“Like the posters from that old TV show,” said Jax, and nodded solemnly. “Remember? I Want to Believe.”
“Mmm,” murmured Cara. Actually it was more like she had to suspend disbelief—a term from English class. “But what does he have to do with her? I mean, how could Mom be connected to a scary—whatever he is? And why is he looking for her?”
“I don’t have those answers yet,” said Jax, and shook his head. “But I did remember something. The leatherback? In the writing on your driftwood?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“They have one at Woods Hole—at the Aquarium. They got it recently. It hasn’t been there for long. Mom was telling me about it though, how she wanted me to come see it. But then she….”
He trailed off. Then she vanished.
After a second Cara spoke.
“You think that could be the one in the message?”
“I don’t have any other ideas,” said Jax. “I mean, how many leatherbacks can there be on the Cape? Unless we want to head for the open ocean, that is.”
“Then we need to come up with an excuse to get Dad to drive us there,” she said.
It was Jax who invented the pretext: a flash drive he claimed must have been left in their mother’s desk, with some of his data. Their dad wasn’t happy about it, but Jax played on his heartstrings. Cara suggested they could combine it with a trip to the Aquarium, which was in the building next door.
At the last minute, as they were getting into the car, Max appeared on his skateboard, flipping it up into his hand right before he hit the sandy stretch of their street. He jumped into the backseat next to Jax, his board tucked under his arm.
It was a new one, Cara noticed—flames and a grinning skull. Really cute.
“Slide over,” he ordered him. “I got long legs.”
“You’re coming?” asked Cara.
“You kidding? Miss the dogfish swimming around in the dirty water? And the quahogs that look so yummy? Forget it.”
Cara didn’t like to eat quahogs, or anything slimy that came from the sea. When she had to watch people slurping oysters in restaurants, she felt like throwing up.
Maybe she shouldn’t plan on bussing tables after all.
“Didn’t expect you back so soon,” said their dad to Max as they pulled away from the house.
“This scuffle broke out at the park,” said Max mildly.
He meant the skatepark, near the pier.
“You were fighting?” asked their dad.
“Not me,” said Max. “I had to break it up, sorta.”
Max was hardly ever on one side or the other. He was the kind of guy who got along with all the groups at school but wasn’t really a part of any of them: the jocks, the geeks, the stoner types. He was kind of a free agent, which was hard to carry off if you also wanted to be popular. But somehow Max did it.
“What happened?” asked their dad, flicking on his right-turn signal as they reached Route 6.
“Oh, you know,” said Max, shrugging. “What always happens. Nothing much. Two guys with supersized egos. Name-calling, whatever. It wasn’t too bad, maybe a sprained wrist was all that happened. Anyway, I just wasn’t in the mood after, so I figured I’d cut out. No biggie.”
Cara glanced back at Jax, who was looking at Max admiringly. Max was a hero of Jax’s but had no idea his little brother worshiped him. In fact, Max thought Jax thought he was stupid. Which made him come down hard on Jax sometimes. Especially lately.
“That’s cool,” said Jax, trying to sound cool himself.
Max shrugged again, settled back in his seat and stuck in his buds.
When they finally got to Woods Hole, Cara was relieved: her dad had taken advantage of the long car ride to deliver a lecture on the Protestant Reformation—mostly to her, since Jax was typing on his smartphoneand Max was listening to London Calling (with the volume cranked up so high that she was practically listening to London Calling too). Her dad tried to spice up the lesson with details about how Martin Luther got married to a nun he smuggled out of her nunnery in a stinky fish barrel, but that part sounded made up and the rest was a bit on the snoozy side.
They drove through hilly, tree-lined neighborhoods and out into the town, which was arranged around a harborfront, with restaurants and bars built right onto the pilings and a big salt pond set back from the shore in the middle of the ocean institute’s buildings.
“Let’s do the Aquarium thing first,” said Max when they’d all climbed out of the car and stretched.
Jax and Cara exchanged looks.
“There’s no rush on the thumb drive, I guess,” said Jax.
“How about I’ll go check the office for you, Jax,” said Cara. “I’m better at finding things. You guys can hang with the seals or whatever.”
Jax nodded. “OK with me.”
“I’ll let you in, Cara,” said their dad from the driver’s seat. “I’ve
