Diving in, p.1
Diving In, page 1
Morgan
Morgan was thinking about fish while walking back to her rental from the dive shop. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe a city block. She was still damp, salty, and hungry, but in a good mood. It had been a good dive. The boat dive she’d been on went to a dive site called Oil Slick for the second of two boat dives. They’d seen all the usual suspects, but they’d also gotten in the middle of a huge school of silvery fish.
Morgan had seen them coming and had stopped looking at all the great little fishies on the reef to watch them approach. One by one, the others on the dive also noticed, but some not until they were surrounded. The fish had left buffers around each diver, like they did with the predatory fish that swam along with them, but they were still all around. It was the first time she’d encountered a school of fish like that while scuba diving and it had been super cool. Thus, the good mood.
Although diving always seemed to put her in a good mood. She was new enough to it that she didn’t know if that shine would wear off, but she hoped it would not. Today had been her twentieth and twenty-first dives. Her dives were legal now. She giggled to herself.
When she got to the yard, she saw someone had moved into the house across the yard. The giveaway sign was that the door was open, letting in the Caribbean breeze. The set up for her rental was two houses, one shared yard. For the three weeks she’d been there, the other house had only been occupied for the first one of those weeks by a couple she’d exchanged waves with, but nothing else. While she made heavy use of the yard, the couple had either been out somewhere on the island or hiding out in the air conditioning. She wondered what this – couple? group? person? – would bring. The open door indicated they might not hide out in the AC.
One change they brought for sure, even sight unseen, was losing the use of the outside shower. Not only was it attached to their house, not hers, but she liked to strip off her suit to shower there (it was hidden from the main road they were situated on by virtue of being at the back of the house), then just wrap a towel around herself while she hung the suit up to dry on the line across the back of the yard. This system was great because it kept her from tracking saltwater inside.
She sighed to herself, leaning her fins, mask and snorkel against the side of the house to finish drying while she went in to shower. After a shower spent mostly thinking about the sandwich she planned to make for lunch, a quick wipe of the floor she’d walked across, and making of the aforementioned sandwich, she took her lunch and Kindle out to the picnic table between the two houses and sat down to eat.
Instead of reading, though, she found herself thinking about her own book. She’d come to Bonaire to write her third novel. The first two, a duology, had had enough popularity amongst the teen set that she had enough money to finally quit her day job as an administrative assistant and just be an author. She was getting through this next one, but it was slow and tedious. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She knew it wasn’t going to be the sort of book that appealed to her previous audience. Should she even keep working on it? Or abandon ship and start over?
She sat thinking, eating mindlessly, and watching the tourists go by on the trolley train. Not that it was a real train. There was no track. But there were open trolley cars being pulled by a car made to look like an engine where a local sat, dressed in what seemed to be plantation garb, of all the appalling things, narrating a tour. It was a cruise day. She’d noticed two large ships from the dive boat and, in fact, could have seen them again had she gotten up and walked to the gate. Given the frequency of the trolleys, she’d have known they were there and were big even if she hadn’t seen the ships.
“Whoa, does the trolley stop here? Can people ride it?”
The child’s voice right next to her startled her out of her reverie and she knocked her can of Bitter Lemon over. Luckily, she’d already drank most of it, so it just clattered to the ground.
“Sorry! Here.”
It was a boy of about nine or so, she guessed, who leaned over to pick up the can and hand it back to her.
“Don’t worry about it,” Morgan told him. “It was empty anyway. Plus, I’m the one that knocked it over.”
“But I surprised you. Sorry! My name is Jake! We just moved in here.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the second house.
“I see. I’m Morgan. Nice to meet you, Jake.” Morgan wiped her hand on her napkin and offered it to shake, feeling immediately stupid. Who shook hands with a kid? But Jake didn’t seem to mind and knew what to do. He took her hand and went along with the shake.
“Nice to meet you, too,” he said politely.
“Are you settling in okay?” she asked him.
“Sure!” he said cheerfully. “My room is like a hidden chamber. You can only get to it through my mom’s room!”
“Cool,” she said, infusing a bit of awe into her voice. “I wonder what other wonders the house holds.”
“Who knows? Secret passages, maybe,” Jake offered.
“Right, or maybe,” she edited herself, having been about to say ghosts, but not wanting to frighten him if he were the sort to be scared, “a treasure hidden in the walls.”
“My bed is on a platform that’s part of the wall, so maybe it’s under there,” Jake said seriously, but with a smile playing around his lips. He clambered into the big chair across from her. The picnic table had large, cumbersome chairs on either side that weren’t easy to pull back. She didn’t blame him for just climbing over the arm instead.
“Sure. You should check it out carefully,” she nodded at him. Then thought to add, “But don’t go punching holes in the wall or your parents will be mad.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not! The treasure would disappear then anyway. I have to find the way to open it. A hidden key or something to push that pops it open.”
“Or maybe something like pulling the right book off the bookshelf,” Morgan offered.
“Yes! Something like that! Maybe you could come help me look,” Jake eyed her.
“Maybe,” she said, noncommittally. She doubted his parents wanted her over there in their business, but she’d be happy to talk with Jake in the yard. He was, so far at least, proving to be a pretty fun kid.
Past Jake’s shoulder, she noticed a woman emerging from the door, pulling it shut behind her. She was clearly his mother, sharing the sandy blond hair and slightly pixie-ish features of Jake, but in an adult female package which Morgan found quite attractive where Jake was just cute. She made a beeline for the table, giving Morgan a smile as she came.
“Hi. I hope Jake hasn’t been interrupting your lunch?” She raised an eyebrow in question. Or maybe in challenge, as if wondering if she’d lay claim to the yard?
“Not at all. We were just having a little chat. And this is both of our yards, right? I’m Morgan.”
“Ash.”
“Nice to meet you, Ash.” This time, Morgan didn’t offer a hand. Ash was standing behind Jake with her hand on his shoulder and it felt awkward. “How are you settling in?”
Ash shrugged. “Fine. We need to stock up on groceries, though. Jake? We’ve got to get to the store, kid.”
“Have you been to Bonaire before?” Morgan asked. She’d found that most of the people she was diving with were repeat visitors, so it was a fair question.
“No, this is our first time,” Ash replied.
“Do you know where the store is? There are several, but there’s one that’s by far the best.”
“I Googled it. I thought we’d go to a place downtown?”
“Ah.” Morgan nodded. “You’d probably be fine there, but what you really want is Van Den Tweel. Probably. It’s the biggest and has the most variety.”
“Thanks,” Ash said. “We’ll get out of your hair. Jake?”
Jake gave a cheerful wave and darted in front of his mom to open the gate.
Well, it looked like the yard was going to get a lot less peaceful, but that was okay. Jake was cute and his mom, at least, seemed nice enough, too. She wondered if a dad would appear at some point.
Morgan went back inside to switch out her empty plate for her laptop. She took it out and then stood, indecisive. She’d been sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs under the awning of the bigger house to write, but that seemed intrusively close now. Of course, the picnic table was more on her side of the yard, and Jake had come over there. But he was just a kid. As an adult, she should probably show more respect for privacy. Plus, maybe not everyone had gone shopping. It felt more intrusive if someone were home. She looked longingly at the much more comfortable Adirondack chairs before settling back in at the picnic table.
Ash
It was a clunky little pickup truck the rental place had given her. From what Ash had read online, that wasn’t unusual for Bonaire, so she tried not to worry about it too much. However, it was also a manual and her stick skills were rusty. She was really nervous about stalling it out in front of the neighbor Jake had been talking to. There was something about Morgan that made Ash feel less than competent already. It was probably just that she knew her way around the island while Ash was just figuring it out. She was probably one of those people who came down here all the time like most of the people on the plane seemed to be. For her and Jake, though, this was a big adventure.
Ash let his chatter wash over her while she concentrated on pulling out smoothly. It worked. She didn’t stall it out until she stopped at a stop sign and forgot to downshift.
“Oops,” Jake said with a smile.
Ash had stalled it a couple of times between the rent al shop and the rental house, so they’d talked about why it was happening. Ash had always tried to teach Jake to accept mistakes with grace and learn from them, so he was reflecting that back to her. However, after the marathon of traveling to the island from the west coast, which included a red eye flight, Ash was too tired to want to take it with grace. She summoned up what inner reserves of patience she had left, though, and agreed. “Yup, oops. At least it wasn’t in front of your new friend.”
“Morgan is nice, right, Mom? She suggested I look for hidden panels in our house.”
“She did, did she?” Great, with Jake’s imagination being spurred on by this Morgan, there would be holes in the walls for sure. “You know you shouldn’t actually punch holes in the wall, right?”
She glanced over at Jake who rolled his eyes and said irritably, “Of course not, mom. Why does everyone think I’d do that?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“You and Morgan! She said the same thing.”
Well, that, at least, was responsible of her.
“I know you’re too responsible for those sorts of shenanigans, J. I’m just tired.” Ash reached over to ruffle his hair.
“Me, too.” Jake contoured himself over the divide between their seats to rest his head on her shoulder.
While Jake had gotten a lot more sleep than she had on the plane, thanks to him lying mostly on her lap, he was still a kid, no matter how grown up he seemed to be sometimes. She contorted her arm so she could pat his shoulder. He giggled and sat up.
At the grocery store, which was more than halfway back to the tiny airport, Ash found a spot away from other cars even though it meant walking further across the hot asphalt. She, in addition to not being used to a manual transmission, was also not used to driving a pickup truck. Even though this was a small one, she didn’t want to struggle with trying to park between two vehicles.
Yet another issue presented itself when she went to grab a cart.
“They’re locked up!” Jake exclaimed.
“They sure are,” Ash agreed, examining a cart. “There must be some way to get them free.” She looked around. People were using the carts, so it was clearly possible. She bent her head back toward the cart. There was a slot. Maybe she needed some sort of token?
“You have to put a quarter in,” an older, fit looking man who was returning his cart told her in accented English. She presumed it was a Dutch accent, this being part of the Dutch Antilles. He plugged the chain into the cart in front of his and a quarter popped out of the slot. “You get it back when you return it.” He walked off.
“Give me a quarter, Mom! I can do it,” Jake told her.
“I don’t think I have a quarter, kid. I cleaned the change out of my wallet for the trip. I guess we’ll have to go inside to get change.” She turned to head inside.
“Here, do you need a cart?” a young woman pushed her cart up. “I’m done with this one and I leave soon, so I don’t need my quarter anymore.”
“Thanks!” Ash told her, one problem solved.
Entering the blissfully air-conditioned store solved another problem. It had been smoldering, standing in the hot parking lot, sorting out cart-related things. While, of course, they were going for tropical here, the transition from the cold, rainy Pacific Northwest winter to hot, humid Bonaire was a bit of a challenge to the system.
Jake hopped up on the end of the cart for a ride. “What are we going to buy? Can we get cookies? How about soda?”
“We’ll have to see what we can find,” Ash told him. “Mostly the same sort of stuff we buy at home, I think, but, yes, of course we can get some vacation treats. How about some apples to start?”
The entrance had deposited them in the produce section.
“Sure!” Jake hopped off and started grabbing apples.
“Hang on, there, bud. Let’s get a bag and maybe these ones?” The apples Jake was in the process of collecting looked a little...rough.
They checked out their cart full of slightly different food than they’d have gotten at home, including chocolate crunchy muesli, and made it back ‘home’ without incident. The neighbor, Morgan, was sitting at the table still, but now with an open laptop. She waved as they came in the gate and stood up.
“How was the shopping? Did you find the store okay?” Morgan asked them, walking over and grabbing a couple of bags out of the back of the truck.
“Yes. Thanks for the suggestion. You don’t have to do that,” Ash told her, perhaps a little sharply. She didn’t want to seem needy.
“Oh. Okay. I’ll just set it down here for you.” Morgan deposited the bags she was carrying outside their front door. “See you, Jake. Ash.” Morgan scooped up her laptop and disappeared into her little house.
“Why did you do that, Mom? She’s nice,” Jake said reproachfully.
“Sorry, bud. I didn’t mean to be rude. It just came out that way. I’ll try harder next time. Meanwhile, let’s get these groceries put away and then have a bite to eat, okay?”
“Okay! Can I have a cookie now? I’m starving.”
“Sure. Just one now, though, and maybe a couple more after we eat.”
Morgan
“So, someone moved into the house across the yard,” Morgan told her dinner mates. She was eating at Captain Don’s with a couple of friends she’d made on her boat dives.
“Really? Anyone interesting?” Greta asked.
“It’s a family. So far, I’ve met a kid and a mom. The kid seems cool enough. The mom...I don’t know. She’s fine. Maybe a little standoffish.”
“How so?” Livy asked.
“I dunno. Jake was talking to me and she came out and basically dragged him away like I was dangerous.” It hadn’t been that bad, but after the brush off with the bags, she was feeling a bit hurt.
“That’s too bad. Especially since you’ll be sharing the yard. Has it impacted your yard time? Your writing?” Greta asked. She worked from home in her regular life and knew how important routine could be.
Morgan chuckled. “Yard time, yes. It’s only been today, though, and writing does fluctuate, so I wouldn’t say it’s been a huge impact yet. In fact, I feel a little stuck. I’m writing, sure, but it’s just not flowing.”
“Stake your claim to the yard, woman! You’ve just got to move in and pretend you’ve always been there.” Greta looked at Livy. “That’s what she did, anyway.”
Livy laughed. “Yeah, sure. You were begging me to move in.”
Morgan smiled at them. They were such a cute young couple.
“Really, though, it’ll probably get better as they get settled. Maybe the mom is just tired. It can make a person grumpy and, depending on where they flew in from, it can be a grueling trip,” Greta said.
“Yeah, some people don’t take being tired well,” Livy said, all innocence.
“Everyone has to have at least one fault,” Greta said with mock dignity.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll keep an open mind. And not hide out in my room. If nothing else, maybe Jake will help get the creative juices flowing. We talked secret compartments today.”
“Sure, the usual first meeting conversation,” Livy smiled. “How old is he?”
“I dunno. Nine-ish? Maybe?”
“I wonder why you’d come here with a nine-year-old,” Greta mused. “I mean, it seems like there’s isn’t much to do here if you don’t dive. And nine is too young, isn’t it?”
“I think I remember reading you have to be ten. Maybe he’s ten and they are here to dive.” Morgan shrugged.
Greta and Livy shrugged back at her. The conversation turned to the diving they’d done that day and plans for the next day.
“Where should we dive tomorrow?” Greta asked.
“Oil Slick!” Livy said. “Let’s see if we meet the school again. That was so cool.”
“Um, don’t you have to jump in there?” It would be Morgan’s first time shore diving. Greta and Livy had rented a truck so they could shore dive, but they’d all met while boat diving and this would be Morgan’s first time not diving from a boat.
Livy examined Morgan. “Or...we could do something like, um, Yellow Submarine. If you’d rather walk in.”
Morgan was nervous, but she also didn’t want to hold them back. And Oil Slick had been very cool. She took a deep breath. “No, no. Oil Slick would be cool. There’s a ladder, right?”
