Dolphin Summer Page 2

  Then I switched back to phone mode. “Whoa,” she said when I came on the line. “Hang on, I’ll be right out.”

  Soon both of us were hanging on the fence, watching and waiting for the dolphin’s next appearance. “What do we do?” I asked her.

  Nia always knew what to do. This turned out to be no exception. “We need to contact the authorities,” she said. “It shouldn’t be here. The canal isn’t healthy for any living thing.”

  “No kidding.” I glanced at the nearest clump of floating trash. “She must have swum in and got lost. Or maybe she’s sick—or hurt!” I clutched the railing harder as horrible possibilities raced through my head. “What if she’s dying?”

  Just then the dolphin surfaced again, this time floating there looking at us for a moment before diving down. “Looks like she’s still kicking right now.” Nia was scrolling through her phone. “Don’t panic, okay? Let me just make a call …”

  It turned out to take more than one call. Nia ended up explaining the situation to at least three different people before she wandered far enough away that I couldn’t hear her clearly anymore. I stayed by the inlet fence watching for the dolphin.

  Then I heard voices behind me. I ignored them at first, figuring it was just customers from the hardware store heading back to their cars or something. But then they got even closer, and I turned around and saw three boys from my neighborhood coming my way.

  In the lead was my friend Amber’s cousin Zach, who was two years older than us and lived in the other half of their brownstone. I recognized his friends from seeing them around the neighborhood, though I wasn’t sure of their names.

  “Hey, check it out—it’s Lily Left-Behind,” Zach said with a smirk.

  “Huh?” said one of his friends, a skinny kid with white-blond hair and a sunburned nose. He was kicking a stone back and forth between his feet like a soccer ball.

  “Lily’s friends with my cousin Amber,” Zach told the other boys. “But she and their other friend went off to summer camp without her.” He pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “Boo-hoo, hope you’re not too upset, Lily Left-Behind.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying not to let his obnoxiousness bother me. What did he really know about that whole situation? Probably nothing.

  “Whatever, Zach,” I said, trying to sound bored and cool and unimpressed, like Olivia Choi or Nia might. “If you don’t have anything useful to say—”

  “Hey, check it out!” Zach’s other friend was at the inlet fence pointing into the water. “I just saw, like, a shark or something out there!”

  “Yeah, right,” the blond kid said with a snort.

  “It’s a dolphin,” I corrected him before I could stop myself.

  Zach looked surprised. “For real? In the canal?”

  Soon all three boys were leaning so far over the fence that I was half fearing and half hoping they’d fall in. When the dolphin surfaced for breath, they let out a whoop.

  “It’s for real!” the blond kid shouted. “How’d that thing get in here?”

  The third boy pulled out his phone and snapped a photo, even though the dolphin was back underwater by then. “This is wild! Hey, get it to come up here again so I can get a good shot.”

  Zach scooped up a handful of gravel from the drainage ditch leading under the fence. “Here, dolphin dolphin dolphin!” he called, tossing the gravel at the last spot where the dolphin had surfaced.

  “Stop that!” I cried.

  He barely spared me a disdainful glance before scooping up more gravel. “Make me, Lily Left-Behind.” Then he tossed that gravel into the water, too.

  My heart thumped in my chest. How was I going to stop them? They were bigger than me, and meaner, and there were three of them …

  “Hey, what are you hooligans doing over here?” Suddenly Nia was back, larger than life as usual, glaring at the boys. “Did you throw something at that poor dolphin?”

  Zach and his friends stared at her, seeming mesmerized by her tallness, her anger, her general awesomeness. “Uh …” the blond kid said.

  “We were just trying to get its attention,” Zach whined.

  Nia frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, maybe it doesn’t think you’re worth paying attention to,” she said. “Ever think of that, baby boy?”

  Zach glared at her, clearly not liking the nickname. “Whatever. It’s no big deal.”

  “Not yet, maybe,” Nia replied warningly. “Just test me, honey …”

  They grumbled and swore a little, but they were already backing away, looking nervous. I hid my relieved smile until they’d turned and hightailed it across the parking lot toward Ninth Street, banging on the hoods of parked cars as they went.

  Nia seemed to forget about the boys instantly, all smiles again as she turned to face me. “I finally found the right people to talk to,” she reported. “Someone from the aquarium is coming out right now to see the dolphin.”

  After that we waited, watching the dolphin and speculating about how she’d gotten there and what would happen next. Nia pulled a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil out of her backpack and started outlining a dolphin leaping from the water.

  “That’s good,” I said, peering at the drawing over her shoulder. “But the dorsal fin is too far forward—see? It should be here.”

  “Thanks.” She rubbed out the fin and redrew it. “Better?”

  “Perfect.” As she continued to sketch, I stepped closer to the fence again. The dolphin poked her head out right away, as if she’d been waiting for me. Shooting a quick look back at Nia, who seemed focused on her sketch, I sucked in a breath and then let out a soft whistle.

  The dolphin reacted, lifting her head higher. Then she dived back underwater.

  I waited. When she resurfaced, I was ready with a series of clicks with another whistle at the end.

  “Hey.” I didn’t realize Nia had come closer until I heard her voice right at my ear. “That’s pretty good. When did you learn to speak Dolphin?”

  I turned to face her, blushing. “I didn’t think you were listening.”

  “I was.” She gestured toward the dolphin, whose nose and eyes were just poking up from the dark water. “So was he, looks like.”

  “Yeah. Except I think she’s a she, not a he,” I said. “Female dolphins are smaller and slimmer than males, and this one looks fairly small.”

  Nia nodded. “Sorry, girl,” she called to the dolphin. “Hey, Lily, how do you say sorry in Dolphinese?”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure. But let me try …”

  With Nia egging me on, I ran through my entire repertoire of dolphin sounds. I even made up a few new ones. The dolphin appeared to enjoy it or at least be intrigued. She stayed at the surface for longer and longer, seeming to listen and even letting out an occasional chirp or whistle herself.

  I was teaching Nia how to make a few of the sounds when a car pulled up to the edge of the parking lot closest to us. Three people climbed out—a man and two women. “Is the dolphin still here?” one of the women asked, hurrying toward us.

  “Right down there.” Nia pointed. “I’m Nia Watts, and this is Lily Giordano. She’s the one who spotted the dolphin.”

  “Nice to meet you both.” The man had a nice smile, and didn’t seem fazed at all to be talking to a kid and a wild-haired artist. “I’m Dr. Hernandez, one of the research biologists from the aquarium. This is my colleague Dr. Gallagher.” He gestured at one of the women, then the other. “And that’s Ms. Khan.”

  “I’m just a lab tech,” Ms. Khan said cheerfully. “I’m mostly here because my car was handy and had a full tank of gas.”

  Dr. Hernandez chuckled. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he told her with a wink. “You’ve got the best camera on your phone, too.”

  The others chuckled along with him, including Nia. But I was too nervous to laugh.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” I asked. “She shouldn’t be in the canal, should she?”

  “No, she should
n’t.” Dr. Gallagher shook her head. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we need to see what we’re working with here.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. But I stood back as the aquarium crew lined up at the fence. It wasn’t long before the dolphin surfaced again.

  Ms. Khan gasped. “Oh, she’s lovely!”

  “Yes.” Dr. Hernandez pulled out his phone and tapped something into it. “Looks healthier than I was expecting.”

  Nia and I traded a look. I guess she read the worry on my face, because she cleared her throat. “What were you expecting?”

  “You never know.” Dr. Gallagher was watching Ms. Khan, who was snapping photos with her phone. “Make sure you get some of it surfacing,” she told the other woman. “Maybe some video?”

  Ms. Khan nodded. “On it.”

  “Come on.” Nia tugged gently on my arm. “Let’s give them some space.”

  We backed away, perching on one of the picnic tables set up in the shady part of the grass. The three aquarium people spent a few more minutes observing the dolphin, taking more pictures, and talking to one another in low voices.

  Finally Dr. Hernandez came toward us. “Thanks for calling us, young ladies,” he said with a kind smile. “The dolphin looks relatively healthy at this point. We’re going to give her a chance to find her way back out to sea on her own.”

  “What?” I blurted out. “You mean you’re just going to leave her here, in the stinky canal?”

  The scientist stuck his hands in his pockets. “For a little while, yes,” he said, meeting my eye in a serious way that few adults bothered to do. As if he was talking to me as an equal, instead of a kid. I may not have liked what he was saying, but I found myself liking him.

  “But what if she can’t find her way out?” I asked. “She can’t just stay here, can she?”

  “No, she can’t stay indefinitely.” Dr. Hernandez glanced toward the water, then back at me. “But we can give her a day or two to figure things out. If that doesn’t happen, then we’ll intervene.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly. But something about Dr. Hernandez made me think I could trust him. So I just nodded and watched as the aquarium people climbed back in their car and drove away.

  At dinner that night I picked at my food, distracted by thoughts of the dolphin. Nia and I had stayed for a couple of hours after the aquarium people left. Nia had said that was okay as long as I read my book and she worked on sketching ideas for her next sculpture. I’d sat on the grass right by the fence, not wanting to miss any movements by the dolphin.

  But finally we’d had to leave. Nia had Dr. Hernandez’s e-mail and phone number from when she’d called, and she’d promised to let me know right away if she heard anything from the aquarium.

  Thinking of that, I carefully slid my phone out of my pocket, keeping it below the edge of the table so my family wouldn’t see. We weren’t supposed to have phones on at dinner, though Ozzy broke that rule all the time so he could text with his girlfriend.

  There were no new messages from Nia, but there was one from Amber:

  Check it out—tuna casserole for dinner at the mess hall tonight! Jules almost barfed, lol!

  I grimaced and clicked off the phone without bothering to look at the photo Amber had included. My mom glanced over just in time to see my expression.

  “You okay, Lily?” she asked with concern. “Something wrong with the manicotti?”

  “No—it’s good.” I quickly took a big bite, hoping to avoid further questions by chewing.

  No such luck. Dad and Ozzy had turned to look at me now, too. “Yeah, you look depressed,” Ozzy observed in his usual know-it-all way. “Still bummed out about your friends going off to camp without you, huh?”

  “No,” I said quickly, not wanting that whole topic to start up again. “Actually, I was just thinking about this dolphin I saw in the canal today.”

  My father’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “The canal?” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on the tablecloth and his fork halfway to his mouth. “Thought I told you to stay away from that cesspool.”

  “A dolphin?” my mother said at the same time. “Really?”

  “Yeah, right, sure you saw a dolphin.” Ricky had been shoveling food steadily into his mouth, but now he finally looked up just long enough to roll his eyes at me. My oldest brother was practically a carbon copy of our father—square jaw, thick, wavy dark hair, broad shoulders. With a few more pounds on Ricky and a little less gray around my dad’s temples, they could be mistaken for identical twins.

  “No, I’m serious.” I hadn’t meant to tell them about the dolphin at all—it wasn’t the type of thing that would interest them—but now I was determined to make them believe me. “Nia saw it, too—she’s the one who called the aquarium.” I quickly ran through the gist of the story, leaving out the part where Nia let me wait alone outside the store.

  That didn’t stop my dad’s expression from growing darker. “That Nia should know better than to let you near the canal,” he growled.

  With effort, I managed not to grimace. “That Nia” might as well be her name as far as my father was concerned.

  “Your father is right,” my mother said, standing up to dish out more salad to Ricky and Dad. “It’s better to stay away from that filthy canal.”

  “It’s better for dolphins to stay away from it, too,” I pointed out. “That’s why Nia and I wanted to help.”

  “It’s all your fault, Ma, you know,” Ozzy said with a grin. “It’s that salt water in your veins that polluted Lily’s mind when she was born. That’s why she’s so crazy about dolphins and stuff.”

  “Yeah. Good thing we were immune.” Ricky raised his arm from his dinner just long enough to bump fists with Ozzy.

  It was a familiar family joke, and even my father chuckled. While he’d been born and raised within six blocks of this very house, my mother wasn’t from here. She’d grown up in a beach town in New Jersey, but she’d gone to college in Manhattan and met Dad at a house party right here in Brooklyn. Within months they were married—a true romance, according to all my aunts and uncles.

  So maybe my family was right. Maybe I’d inherited my love of the sea from my mother.

  And maybe it had been a mistake to mention the dolphin, I thought as my brothers started joking around about Mom’s past and she smiled and shook her head. They already seemed to have forgotten about what I’d just told them, or maybe they just didn’t think it was important. Either way, I should have known they wouldn’t understand.

  A couple of hours later, I was alone in my tiny room at the back of the apartment. It was hardly bigger than a broom closet, but I loved it because it was all mine and nobody was allowed to come in without knocking. Every inch of wall space was plastered with interesting things—what Mom jokingly called “Lily’s wallpaper.” There was a chart of Atlantic Ocean fish, a decorated crab shell that I’d bought on the Coney Island boardwalk, pictures torn from magazines or printed off the Internet of dolphins, whales, jellyfish, and more. And of course there was my favorite poster, which hung in the place of honor right over my bed. It featured a pod of dolphins leaping out of the water at sunset, and I touched it every night before I went to sleep.

  Now I stared at it, wondering what the dolphin in the canal was doing right now. Or maybe she wasn’t in the canal anymore. Maybe the scientists were right and she’d found her way back out to her pod.

  Dolphins are supposed to be one of the smartest animals out there, I reminded myself, wandering over to the room’s single window. I bet she figured out how to get home.

  I stared out, wishing I could see the canal from here. But all I could see was the building across the alley and the sloped roof of the first-floor apartment below. If only I had the guts to climb out the window onto that rooftop. Then all I would have to do was slide down the pipe on the corner of the building and walk a few blocks, and I’d be able to see for myself whether the dolphin was still there.

  That
was what Nia would do. Or Julia, probably. Maybe even Amber if it was something she wanted badly enough.

  I frowned, not wanting to think about my friends right now. Instead I stepped over to my desk and flipped open my laptop. Soon I was surfing the ’net, looking for information about dolphins.

  More information, that was. I’d already memorized everything I could about my favorite animal. But that didn’t mean I knew it all …

  To my surprise, I quickly discovered something I hadn’t known—this wasn’t the first time a dolphin had swum into the Gowanus Canal. I gulped as I skimmed one of the articles I found. The last time it had happened, the poor dolphin hadn’t survived …

  I quickly clicked away from that, hoping that Dr. Hernandez and the others knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t let my dolphin die, would they? She wasn’t sick; just confused. Right?

  For a few minutes I bounced around to different sites, though I seemed unable to focus on any of them. Then my attention caught on a headline that read “Dolphin Spotting in Montauk.” Clicking on the link, I saw that it led to a blog article about a whale-and-dolphin-watching cruise out on Long Island. The blogger was listed as John Dory and I smiled, recognizing that immediately as the name of a species of fish. Was it the blogger’s real name? I doubted it, especially since the blog appeared to be all about marine biology and related subjects.

  I skimmed the entry about the cruise—apparently the blogger hadn’t seen any whales, but he had spotted some dolphins—and then scrolled down through the latest few posts. There was one about the SeaGlass Carousel in Manhattan and another that talked about recent upgrades at the aquarium right here in Brooklyn.

  I wonder if John Dory is from New York City, I thought, scrolling back up to look for a photo of the blogger. But there wasn’t one; instead, at the top of the page was a picture of a cool-looking puffer fish.

  Oh well; it didn’t really matter, I figured. For the next few minutes I looked around the blog some more, reading entries about a shark sighting at Rockaway Beach and seashell hunting at Sandy Hook in New Jersey. Whoever this John Dory was, he seemed to know his stuff. I bookmarked the page so I could follow the blog after this.