"I'm shit. I don't know what the fuck he thinks he's talking about," Logan said beside me from the top of the seal watchtower.
I didn't even ask him what on earth he was talking about, since he seemed upset, and I was trying to count seals.
He looked over to me, let out a sigh, and turned back to the water. "Fifty-eight, fifty-nine."
The tide rolled in as the sun began to set over the ocean, and mother and father birds flew across the painted sky to bring back food to their chicks, who were just beginning to learn to fly. They'd flap their wings with such enthusiasm and optimism, and when they came crashing back down to the rocks, they didn't dare to quit; rather, they figured that the next time would be it.
Humanity had a lot to learn about nature, yes, but we also had so much to learn from it.
With the departure of the next generation, our equilibrium had shifted back to its original position, favoring the products of our work instead of the reactants, and even though I had plenty of reasons to feel stressed, it still felt calmer. For me, at least.
There were several people who knew about Logan and me, Robbie, Nastasya, Brett, Hailey, and Logan Two, but only one of them had no filter and constant access to Darrell. But with Brett's brilliant plan, maybe everything would work out.
Maybe it would be a good idea to tell Logan about this brilliant plan. Communication is key, after all.
"Hey," I said just as another seal poked its head out of the ocean like a periscope. "That's—dammit. I lost count."
"Don't worry about it. We'll just double my total for today. No one will even know that you screwed up," he replied.
I frowned. "Logan."
"What? It's not like this is an official, government-funded study. I'm just trying to graduate here."
Some things were better left ignored, so I dropped that subject. "So Brett has an idea that might help us gauge Darrell's reaction to a Paradise City relationship, and I think it's pretty smart, actually."
"It's Brett's idea. How smart could it be?"
"Don't. He's a very smart person, and you shouldn't look down on him because of what he decided is best for him."
I knew what that felt like. According to the small population of Oldham, West Virginia, if I was smart, I would have taken a free college education thanks to my basketball scholarship, but no. I had to be the one who thought she was too important, too good to stay.
But for me, drowning in debt was a small price to pay for drowning in happiness.
"I bet it took all three of his brain cells and his duckie slippers to put the idea together," Logan said.
I said he was smart. I never said he didn't have the decision-making skills of a squirrel in traffic.
"Anyway, he came up with the brilliant idea that he pretends to flirt with me, and we'll see how Darrell reacts," I said.
"Holy shit, that's brilliant. I can't think of a single reason why that wouldn't work or one way that it could possibly end with someone dying." He shook his head. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I've listened to you talk about wanting a pet baby elephant."
"Well, it'd be cool, I think. I'd give it plenty of space and food and clean all of its poop."
"What are you going to do when it grows up into a big elephant? Kill it and get another baby?"
I frowned. "I never said this was a practical dream."
Logan Two would have never made fun of my baby elephant fantasy.
"Rea," Logan said, "I just meant that if you want to keep everything on the down-low, then why should we even test Darrell's response?"
"I'm sorry. I don't know."
Maybe I was just tired of all the hiding out and staying up until the next morning only for a moment alone. Maybe I was just tired. Coffee could only replace sleep for so long, and it was ridiculous to expect more from myself than my body could physically handle.
Did that mean that I was going to take better care of myself? Absolutely not.
I pulled my legs up on the bench and rested my forehead against them. "Are you okay with all this?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you ever feel like you're practically killing yourself over this? You and me?"
"It's not supposed to be difficult, and it's not. Why? Is it for you?" he asked.
Yes.
"No. I was just wondering and checking on you."
Not difficult? What? Maybe I was just really bad at maintaining four thousand things at once.
I let out a breath. There was no way that everything could have been just fine for him. We had to make sure everyone on the island and back home knew that I belonged on the ocean, and that was no easy task.
"Then why don't we pretend everything is normal tonight?" Logan asked.
"Normal?"
"Or as close to normal as we could possibly be. And regardless of the results of Brett's experiment."
"You mean this isn't normal?"
He laughed. "Uh, not quite. You seem like you could use it. No whales, no documentaries, no seals, no nothing. Just us."
Me having a good time with absolutely no whales involved? I don't think so.
"Yeah, that sounds great," I replied.
***
After another delicious dinner by Brett, we all gathered in the game room, even Carter and our responsible babysitter Toby. It was a bit odd since we normally dispersed like dandelion seeds in the wind, but maybe the guests that we all hated brought us a little closer together. Darrell and Jia even sat at the card table together with Brett and me, and neither one took the sword and tried to kill the other.
Like a true family.
Brett shuffled the deck, and he sent a smile in my direction.
I replied with a quick nod of the head and hoped he wouldn't take it too far.
"Hey, Logan, could you play a song for me?" Brett asked.
Logan didn't even look at him. "No."
"Please? It's really important to me and my favorite West Virgin."
"Me?" I asked as a blush burned across my face.
He nodded. "No one else is from West Virginia, are they?"
"That's what I thought. It's, uh, West Virginian. With an extra i, a, and n," I said.
Darrell rose an eyebrow. "Is it, though?"
Those were bold words coming from someone who was someone else's side bitch.
Whoa, Reagan, sweetie. Calm down. It's the stress doing your thinking. Not you.
"I'm going to get some more coffee," I said, then stood up from the table. Judging from the negativity diffusing into my mind, I needed it to fix the caffeine withdrawal.
"Come on, Logan. Just one song," Brett continued, and I listened through the wall to the kitchen.
"Fine. But not Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus or, for fuck's sake, not that one Shania Twain song," Logan replied.
Brett let out an audible sigh. "Never mind, then. Wait, how about John Denver? Take Me Home, Country Roads. That's the national anthem of West Virginia."
"Every day, I wonder how you make it through without accidentally tying your shoelaces together or cutting off all your digits with a knife," Darrell said.
Jia laughed, and I could have sworn I heard a sad quack coming from the game room.
"Darrell, stop. You're hurting his slippers' feelings," Logan said.
Yep. That had to have been a sad quack then. I smiled to myself and poured myself a cup of coffee. Even when it didn't matter, there was something satisfying about being right.
With my mug in hand, I headed back into the game room, and surely enough, the beginning notes to the John Denver classic filled the air. I didn't have the heart to tell Brett that the country roads would never take me home and that his slippers looked like they were on the wrong feet.
"Doesn't it remind you of home, Reagan?" Brett asked.
I nodded. "I just haven't been there in a long time. Almost four years, actually."
"Not even during the summer or Christmas?"
"Why would I? Everyone took it as a personal attack when I left for this, and I'm not going back until I prove that this was worth it. I think I'm getting close, but it's not like I can leave now," I said.
"And your family?" Brett asked.
I smiled. "You mean the whales?"
"You haven't talked to them since you left?"
I shook my head. "I don't really want to talk about this right now. Don't we have more important things to, uh, figure out?"
Logan cleared his throat. "I really think we do."
"Wow, that's really insensitive of you, especially since you're her—" Brett hesitated, "long-lost cousin."
West Virginia wasn't quite far south enough for Logan and me to be socially acceptable in that case, but I really didn't have anything better to say.
"You can say it. You can say that Rea and I are friends now," Logan said.
I took in a breath. Was that a believable lie? Except for the fact that we had matching Venus fly traps, I tried to help his seasickness problem, we worked on our projects together, and he called me Rea and made me coffee, we didn't really seem too friendly.
"Yeah, no shit. We figured that out," Jia said, then went back to the Uno cards in her hand. "These cards suck."
"You know, it's not the cards themselves that suck, since everything in this game is relative. One round, your cards may be horrible, but the next time around when the color gets changed—" Darrell was interrupted with a smack to the arm from Jia.
"Why don't you just shut up for once?" she asked.
Well, their tolerance of each other was good for the fifteen hours it lasted.
Although I wasn't playing the game, I sat between the two, and the tension on either side pressed in on me like a storm front. I forced a smile but didn't say anything, knowing I would probably make it worse.
"Aw, poor Reagan. You want something to cheer you up?" Brett asked.
"Did you make a dessert?" I asked.
"Uh, no, but I don't know how much sweetness you could possibly need with a personality like yours," Brett said, and my heart fluttered for a moment until I remembered what was going on.
The plan. Right.
I smiled. "That's—that's kinda cute."
Darrell sat to my left, and I snuck a peek at his reaction. His cold expression didn't even waiver, and I glanced back at Brett.
"Oh, I got more. If we were DNA, I would want to be adenine, so I would be paired with U," Brett said, and I let out a laugh.
"That's stupid, since uracil is actually one of the base pairs for RNA, but I'm sure you stole that from the internet, so it's not your fault," Darrell said.
A reaction, just like hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. What did it make? Salt.
Brett shook his head. "Scientists are too literal. I'm trying to get her to have sex with me, for God's sake."
My stomach flipped upside down and my heart leaped into my throat. The sunburn on my cheeks was nothing compared to the third-degree burn that Brett branded onto me in a few words, and all I wanted to do was crawl under the table and never come out.
Death seemed like the only honorable option.
"And that's the way you go about it? Look, dumbass, you need some serious help," Jia and turned to me. "You know, like this. Reagan, I whale always love you."
"Shit, that's good," Brett said with a laugh.
Well, at least someone was enjoying the yield from his crop of demeaning lines and plans.
"Stop it. Reagan is very clearly uncomfortable, and there's no reason to continue this. It's disgusting and classless," Darrell said.
"One more. If I were an enzyme, I'd want to be," Brett read the words scribbled on his hand, "DNA helicase, so I could unzip your genes."
I sunk into my chair without another word. Why did I believe this would work? Was I stupid?
"I'm serious. This is so inappropriate, you're embarrassing the crap out of her, and you're blatantly disrespecting not only her but the first rule of Paradise City, which is the one about no relationships," Darrell said.
I looked back over my shoulder at Logan, who looked back at me and mouthed the words, "you were right."
Just like I thought, Darrell wasn't exactly a big fan of any sort of frivolous activity in the workplace, not even after hours. Hypothesis: confirmed. Happiness: busted.
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Hey everyone! Thank you so much for reading! How's it going? Do you have anything exciting going on? I don't. I'm bored. Yay me.
What did you think of the chapter? There was quite a bit of stuff that went down, and I'm sure it went as smoothly as y'all were expecting. Do you think this will help or hurt Reagan and Logan moving forward?
Also, now that my academic year is beginning to wind down (HA! Just let me dream over here), I want to dedicate more time to writing this book so I can finish it. I have another idea in mind that's begging for my attention, but I don't have the intellectual capacity to work on more than one project at a time. So which title would you be more inclined to read: One For the Road or Shifting Gears?