Page 49 of Midnightsong
Nineteen
Angie
Angie, Reesa, and Leo succeeded ingathering a small group of her classmates to join them and Dr. Williams with their mer education outreach project.
Their first order of business was to plan a rally outside the school. As she waited for them in an empty lecture hall next door, she went through her notes from talking to Creston dock workers.
One truck driver said he only saw one diver.
Two others swore they saw two or three divers enter the water.
Another worker said the entire group went in that night.
She appreciated that all of them answered their phones and gave her the time of day, or night, as it were, when she called them.
But the conflicting information wasn’t helping her narrow down who the divers were.
The only thing they all agreed on was that the divers were already fully suited up, and they couldn’t tell who they were, even if they tried.
About to close out her phone notepad, she stopped when a hastily typed out, typo and abbreviation-filled note at the bottom caught her attention, from the final worker she called:
1 womn in grp w/o mask on, unIDable
If Angie could only figure out who this woman was, then she might find out who murdered the Mer-Queen.
Behind her, her friends’ and professor’s voices burst through the door, talking about their just-finished coastal ecology class.Scratch that, it was mostly Reesa and Leo talking. Dr. Williams’ deep, jovial voice wasn’t among them, and when Angie turned to wave them in, she saw why. Their professor walked some feet away from Leo and Reesa, his eyebrows pulled together, the crease like a valley between his brows. He stared at the tablet in his hands and ran his free hand through his neat, line-up, curly hair.
“Everything okay, Dr. Williams?” Angie asked when the three were close enough.
He didn’t meet her eyes but sat his tablet face-up on the table next to her. He was reading an article about another mermaid caught in a deep-sea fishing net and sold to a facility in central Oregon. “We need to get this project going, stat,” he said, hoarsely.
“Dr. Williams.” Leo squinted at the screen, gnawing his bottom lip. “You know anything about what’s going on with these mer? Like, does SMOSA know anything about this? It’s concerning.”
Reesa nodded. “We don’t know what they’re doing with the mer; we saw the news of them being taken and then nothing.”
“Concerning is the way I’d put it,” Angie chipped in.
Dr. Williams turned the tablet off. “This might be my fault.”
“Yourfault? How?” Angie gaped at him.
“Ever since I shared the two mer I found with my workplace. And here.” He cleared his throat, shuffling one foot on the ground. “After that, the news of the mer spread like a red tide. And my colleagues have been talking about people actively hunting for merfolk. And with those teens that disappeared at Shoreline...” She rubbed her knees, where a slight sore emerged from when the teenagers shoved her onto pebbled ground.
“Damn,” Reesa muttered, and beside her, Leo sucked in an audible breath.
“I don’t know who’s responsible, but that doesn’t matter now. We need to minimize damage to the mer. People think they’re dangerous,” Dr. Williams said.
Angie mulled over her professor’s words, and then, it clicked. “Are you under liberty to tell us what’s going on in your lab? Whatever you can share that won’t get you into trouble. We could use that information to show how people are treating them inhumanely.”
Dr. Williams cleared his throat again, this time, louder, and rubbed his hands down his pant legs. “We have whistleblower protections, and I don’t agree with some of the things my colleagues are doing. Not all of them, but a few.” Angie took a seat with Reesa, and Leo and Dr. Williams stayed standing in the lecture hall. “There’s a merman there who’s just left strewn-up overnight with his chest cavity wide open like a pig on a meat hook. We’re supposed to put him in a bag and move him to the specimen storage area before we leave.” He stared at the floor. “Another mermaid, she’s still alive, and we’re only supposed to be studying her skin chemicals and physiological adaptations when she moves in and out of the tank.” His eyes looked haunted and he shuddered. “But we’re supposed to be keeping her fed and the water cleaned until we complete our studies and return her to the sea. When I went in to cover for that group working with her, the water was so dirty, and she was starving.”
Angie blanched, a stray shiver thrumming through her in the temperate space. The last time she saw dirty tanks with starving mer inside was back in Creston. The visuals came back to her as a nightmarish flashback.
Dr. Williams shook his head, lower lip jutting out. “So, I cleaned her water and gave her some kelp. My supervisor and I yelled at that team and threatened to oust them to the higher-ups.”
This was awful and Angie’s stomach hurt as she jotted down notes in her phone’s notepad. She pushed down the queasiness threatening to rise. “I’m sorry you had to witness that and thank you for helping the mermaid,” she said, once Dr. Williams was done.
“It feels better to get it out.” He had a far-away look in his gaze, and focused his attention on them again, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s get started with rally planning.”
