Surfacing by Nora Raleigh Baskin Page B

mouth, and a bucket of dead fish beside him. He smiled, though no one seemed to be listening, and he tried to make eye contact with all the tourists. Then he looked right at Maggie. “Here, our dolphins live only half that life span on average.” She would remember that moment as solidifying the existence of her power. The moment she came to believe in the unpleasant and uncontrollable nature of truth telling.
    “Can we hold on to their fins?” a boy asked, even though the introductory video had already explained that hanging on the dolphins was not allowed.
    He fiddled with the large plastic skull charm he had hanging around his neck from a leather cord. He clearly hadn’t taken off
any and all jewelry
. Maggie’s hair whipped around her face due to the lack of even a ponytail clip. This boy was annoying her.
    “You know”— the trainer kept his eyes on Maggie; he looked sad, despite his overly cheerful voice —“no matter how many times we tell everyone not to hang on the animals, someone always does.” His English was perfect, and his Spanish accent made it sound like music, so it took the boy a while to realize that he was being reprimanded.
    The trainer let the whistle fall from his mouth. He stopped reaching into his bucket of fish. “Day after day, four times in the morning and three times in the afternoon, these two dolphins perform for rich tourists like you. They will jump up into the air and balance on their tails so they can have one tiny dead fish dropped in their mouths.”
    The crowd shifted uncomfortably. Maggie was certain he was looking right at her again.
    “In the ocean, these animals would normally swim hundreds”— he paused and repeated —“hundreds of miles a day, hunt for their own food, and find their own companions. They are extremely smart animals. Here, they swim in circles, over and over and over, so that I can take home a paycheck and feed my family for a month with what you will go home and pay for a new video game.”
    “All right, all right,” the boy responded. It was hard to tell exactly what he was paying attention to, but
video game
seemed to register with him.
    “I think, ladies and gentlemen, that if I were a dolphin, I would prefer
not
to live than to live like this, and yet, here I am, holding the bucket and blowing this whistle.”
    “I think we should go now,” Mr. Paris said, but nobody moved.
    Another trainer hurried out onto the deck. With a big smile, he took the whistle and the bucket and gleefully took over the rest of the show. Maggie hoped the first man wouldn’t lose his job. She worried about his family, but when it was her turn, Maggie took her place on the partially submerged metal platform. Then, on command, one of the dolphins rose out of the water, paused for a moment, leaning his massive body against hers, and pressed his bottlenose against her cheek in what was to simulate affection, while someone on the deck snapped the photograph and then tried to sell it to Maggie and her father as they were leaving.
    “But don’t you want to buy a photograph of your daughter getting kissed by a dolphin?” a very pretty girl in a bikini asked in perfect English.
    “No,
gracias
,” Maggie answered before her dad could say anything.
    But then Matthew wasn’t there, where he’d said he’d meet her, by the front of the school, near the track. Matthew James was a no-show. A few minutes later, a text buzzed into her pocket telling her he couldn’t make it. He had to get on the road back up to Albany. His ride was leaving early.
Sorry, Abbe
. She figured he’d meant to spell
Babe
but hadn’t bothered to even look at the screen while he was typing.
    He was such a jerk, just like Julie had said.
    What did she call Matthew?
A shit-for-brains? Shithead? A douche bag? The familiar comfortable feeling of discomfort rose up from Maggie’s feet, settled in her belly, and then flew around in her brain. It didn’t feel good, but on the other hand, it felt just