"This sucks."
"It's not that bad."
"It is that bad. Sitting here on this rock dangling my feet in the water can't be the most exciting thing I've done all week. And yet, it is. I'd give my left leg for Internet access."
"Did you know that the water you're dangling your feet in comes from a hot spring under our mountain?"
"Don't care."
"Jordan, it's cool. It's created its own ecosystem with more species of microorganisms and insects just in this little pool alone than most of the rest of New Mexico altogether. Diving beetles, isopods, mollusks, millipedes–"
"Yuck, Jinho. Don't make me want to take my feet out. I just told you it's the most exciting thing I've done all week." She reached over and turned a knob on a small radio providing a tinny musical backdrop. Scratchy speakers did nothing to improve the grating country music that spewed forth. Without an antenna, they had two choices, country music or country music, and they both faded in and out depending on the weather. Neither choice was a genre Jordan would pick if there were any other available options. She was more into EDM and had fallen hard for dubstep just before they moved into this godforsaken silence.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Jordan thought.
A yellow canary perched next to Jordan on the flat outcropping overlooking the pool where she and Jinho sat side by side. A delicate gold chain looped around one claw. Conditioned to believe it could not fly away while the chain was attached, the tiny bird hopped around peeping happily and pecking at anything that looked like a bug. To Jordan's delight, it shook itself and fluffed out its feathers until it was a poof of softness. She tried to reach over to touch it, but it flitted away from her fingers.
Jinho killed a water bug and laid it on the flat rock. He blew it toward the golden fluff. The canary tilted its head to watch the bug skitter by and hopped over to snap it up with its beak.
Jordan leaned forward, her long black hair draping either side of her pixie-like face. Her straight hair had been dyed to a jet-black sheen, but she could see the lighter brown roots in her reflection. She gazed into the water looking past the ripples bisecting their shins. The clean, cool water lay over a rocky bottom. The silver bellies of minnows flashed around her feet.
"Have you seen the crayfish in here?" Jinho slid off the ledge into the knee-high pool of water and flipped rocks beneath the surface.
"The what?"
"Orconectes causeyi. Crayfish. Those little crabby looking things with the pincers?" He pushed his black, large-rimmed glasses up on his nose and opened and closed his fingers as if they were pincers. She slapped his hands away.
"There aren't any crayfish in here. Just minnows."
"There are crayfish. They eat the minnows. All part of that ecosystem I was talking about. I'll show you."
Jordan hopped down off the ledge and together they waited for the ripples to settle. Jinho squatted down and moved aside a larger rock. A tiny crayfish squirted away in the cloud he had created. "Grab it!"
"I'm not grabbing it! It has pinchers!" Jordan danced away from where the crayfish had disappeared and scooched back up onto the ledge.
"They won't hurt you. He's just a little guy. Can hardly pinch at all yet."
He splashed into the water with both hands and came up empty. He waited for the subaqueous clouds to settle and poked around moving other stones, slower this time, so the rocky bottom would not kick up dust under the water.
"I almost..." He snatched his hands into the water. "Got one!"
Jinho waded to Jordan and she cupped her hands. He poured the water and the crayfish into them, then took her hands in his. She pulled her hands away so he could not feel them trembling and let the water through her fingers. She held the crayfish up for a closer look.
"It'll die if you don't keep it in the water," he told her.
She leaned forward between her knees. Water spilled over the lip of her fingers until it covered the crayfish. Jinho poked at it with his finger, and it crept around on her palm. She opened her hands and let it go floating to the bottom of the pool where it quickly disappeared.
Jinho climbed onto the ledge beside her and pushed his glasses up.
"You need new spectacles. You should put that on your wish list for Sergeant Landon."
"What's wrong with these? I can see perfectly." He picked at chips in the fractured rock, tossing them into the water where they made little plip sounds before they sank from sight.
Jordan let it go.
"Uh! To go shopping in a real mall and eat a real cheeseburger from a real fast food place and dance at a real school dance." She lay back on the ledge and cocked her head to the side to watch Jinho reach into his pocket. He pulled out a small clear cup and dipped it into the water. She could see stuff floating in the water when he lifted it close to his face and peered into it.
"What are all those vials of water for?" Jordan pointed a slender foot in his direction as he screwed a lid on. "You get water every time we come out here."
"I'm sampling the water to test the changes in ammonia and nitrates. I want to get a baseline of contaminants in this environment to see if there are seasonal fluctuations. Since the helidrome is supposed to be completely contained, there shouldn't be any changes due to our presence here in the mountain. Seasonally, though, more or less rain might show changes. The algae filter the contaminants through a process of colonization and detoxification. I try to get a bit of alga in the cup with the water so I can look at it in the lab. Once I have a good baseline, I can monitor for the next ten or twenty years–"
"Why did I ask again? You can't possibly be two years younger than me. You talk like you're fifty."
"Admit it. You're fascinated by how intelligent I am."
"Sure. I wish I could be as smart as you and lecture everyone every time my mouth opened." Jinho frowned and she splashed him lightly. "Don't be mad."
Jinho turned his back to her. She swirled the water with her toes and chewed her lip trying to think of something to say to repair the damage. "Sorry."
He ignored her and she sat quietly until she couldn't take his silence any longer. "Ten years? Your canary won't last that long."
"Close. And if I'm lucky, I'll get to stay here that long too. I can do independent research and earn a college degree without ever leaving, and then get a job in the labs." He waded closer and set the vial down beside her.
Jordan picked the vial up, shook it, and watched the water swirl around inside. "College will be different, you know."
"What?"
"College. It will be different than middle school. People are more accepting." She stopped swinging her feet and looked at him. "You can be as smart as you want in college and nobody thinks twice about it. You‒"
"You've got it all wrong."
Jordan frowned. "What?"
"I wasn't bullied for being smart. Smart people aren't bullied, they're ignored."
"But I thought‒"
"No, Jordan. Everyone expects Asians to be smart. Even Asians expect Asians to be smart."
"Yeah, but‒"
Jinho waved her words away. "I was bullied because I don't have some phenotypic variability in‒"
"English, please."
"I have the wrong colored skin. Without blepharoplasty‒"
"What's‒
"Surgery, to fix my eyes." He took off his glasses and leaned into her face, then shoved his glasses back on and continued. "An accent."
"You don't have an accent." Jordan pulled her knees up to her chest. The stone beneath her feet turned dark from the water that puddled there.
"Accents can be fixed with practice. Eyes can be improved with surgery. The overall target can't be changed."
"I like your eyes," Jordan said matter-of-factly. She dropped her feet back into the water and swirled them until small eddies formed on the surface.
Jinho sighed. He turned his back to her to dip some more water into the vial.
Jordan reached a toe out and touched his elbow. "I like you how you are, Jinho."
He didn't turn around. "There's no other option here."
Jordan froze. She slowly put her foot back into the water. "You think if there was someone else here, maybe someone my own age, that I wouldn't hang out with you?"
Jinho shrugged. "We don't have anything else in common."
"Lies. We both like those crappy fruit chews that Marybeth orders. We both like being outside the dome. We both like..." Jordan trailed off.
Jinho shook his head and looked her in the eye. "You know how I know?"
Jordan didn't want to know. She pulled her knees back up again and pressed her forehead into them.
"What are the names of the scientists that work with your mom."
She didn't answer. The inside of her lower lip hurt where she chewed on it and a moment later she could taste blood. She swallowed and raised her head. "That's different. We don't have‒"
"‒anything in common?" he finished. "How do you know?"
"Because they're so‒"
"‒smart?"
A tear made a track down Jordan's cheek and splashed onto her knee. "If I talk to them..."
"That's a start."
Jordan slid her feet back into the water and stared at the minnows nibbling her toes until the streak from the single tear dried on her cheek. Jinho took out another vial and dragged it through the sand by his feet.
She finally broke the silence. "You will still fit in at college better than you did in school. You can be smart and Asian."
Jinho dropped his head back to look at the sky and sighed once more. "I can be smart and Asian here, too."
"Yes, you can. Even if I don't understand a word you're saying." She smiled. The sun was dipping behind the mountain and gave her tanned face a golden glow.
"We need to go back. I heard they might do a seal. It'll be cold if we get stuck out here all night." Jinho raised an eyebrow and his glasses slipped down his nose. "We'd have to snuggle to stay warm."
"Nice try, Specs," she snorted.
"Come here, Aurum." Jinho picked up the end of the chain connected to the canary and carefully slid a hand under the bird's feet. It hopped onto his fingertips, and then to his shoulder as he lifted it up. The golden feathers were brilliant against the dark red hue of his shirt. Once on his shoulder, the bird pecked at a loose thread on his shirt collar. As he attached the chain to his shirt, Jinho whistled lightly and Aurum stopped to cock his head and chitter back.
Jordan turned off the music with a small sigh and slipped the radio into a plastic bag. She slid her fingers down the opening and pinched the seal tight. The baggy had saved the radio from several rainstorms and even from some curious animal that had dragged it from the cranny where they stored it for safekeeping. They had once found it floating in the pool like an abandoned swim mattress.
Jinho climbed from the pool and toed a flat stone in Jordan's direction. Drops of water left dark spots on the ledge around his feet. She slid the stone over the nook with the radio. That had stopped the maniac music marauder.
Jordan extended her hand and Jinho pulled her up. They worked their way up from the pool of water darkening with the onset of shadows and climbed confidently to the lip of a ledge above. At the top, they sat down to slip on their shoes. Jordan shook a small flashlight from one of her sneakers. It dangled on a strip of leather she slipped over her head.
They walked across the top of the plateau and then dropped into a crevice that slowly rose into the side of the mountain. Where the crevice appeared to end, they ducked under a ledge and found themselves in a dark cave sloping further upward. Jordan switched on the flashlight and edged forward into the beam of light at her feet. She could feel Jinho brushing against her back and clinging to the bottom of her shirt.
"You really need to get your own flashlight."
Ten feet in, the muffled sound of an alarm reverberated through the rock walls. Low and demanding, it lasted five full seconds. They scrambled at a quicker pace.
"We're not going to make it."
More new characters? I think that's all of them, other than some bit players. Things are going to start coming together soon. Who's your favorite character so far?
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