Читать книгу Stingray City - Ellen Prager - Страница 9

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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

THE FIVE YOUNG TEENS STOOD HORRIFIED, STARING at the creatures on exhibit. Trailing behind the animals’ glowing orangey-gold bells were white, ruffled feeding arms and tentacles seven feet long! The tentacles reminded Tristan of giant strands of dark-red spaghetti. With one big difference—mega-long pasta wouldn’t sting the bejesus out of you.

“No way!” Tristan announced. “I’m not going in there.”

“Like, dude, me either,” Ryder agreed.

“Not a chance,” Hugh added.

“Come on, you guys,” Sam chastised. “One of us has to go in and do it.”

“If you think so, then you go in,” Rosina snarled.

Sam shook her head. “Are you nuts? I’m not going in there.”

If you could ignore their potential to pack a terribly painful sting, the sea nettles in the display were actually quite beautiful. Lit up and drifting against a brilliant blue background, the jellyfish looked like slow-motion dancers costumed in long, crimson streamers and pale ruffles. At the center of the tank, however, things were not so pretty. Ongoing collisions had created a jumbled, twisted mess—a massive floating tangle of stinging jellyfish. And it was growing larger by the minute.

It was nighttime at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the teens from Sea Camp were on untangling duty. Since arriving at the aquarium, Tristan Hunt and his friends had been regular volunteers during the day and on special assignment after dark. But this was an assignment absolutely no one wanted.

Tristan flicked back the strands of brown hair that constantly fell over his face. He leaned his tall, gangly body closer to the tank, staring at the snarl of sea nettles. His best friends and camp mates, Sam Marten and Hugh Haverford, stood beside him. They each wore jeans and a light-blue polo shirt with the aquarium logo on it. Hugh’s slightly pudgy face looked even paler than usual, especially against his short and neatly combed dark hair. Sam fidgeted nervously, twisting her long, sun-flecked, wheat-colored ponytail with her fingers. Tristan’s other camp mates, Rosina Gonzales and Ryder Jones, had stepped back as if the lengthy tentacles could somehow wiggle their way through the thick acrylic viewing window.

The aquarium’s senior jellyfish curator was with the teens. He stood nearby, watching. “So, who’s going in?”

No one volunteered.

“Figured that would be the case,” the man said. “You’ll be pretty covered up, so the stinging won’t be too bad. No one’s ever died from it or anything.”

Tristan couldn’t tell if he was joking.

The jellyfish curator held out a hand curled around five straws. “Whoever draws the short one is the lucky—or should I say unlucky—detangler.”

Sam closed her gray-blue eyes and chose first—a long straw. Ryder went next. As he stepped forward, his wild, blond surfer hair trembled ever so slightly. He came away smiling, holding a similarly lengthy straw. Hugh then nervously grabbed a straw—long. That left Rosina and Tristan. Rosina remained where she was, so Tristan stepped up. Silently praying, he chose. Relief washed over Tristan as he stared at the long straw in his hand.

Rosina promptly turned the moldy-green color of cottage cheese gone bad. Shaking her mop of perpetually disheveled brown hair, she muttered, “I . . . I can’t go in there.”

The man took Rosina’s arm. “This way, young lady. We’ll get you suited right up.”

The others watched as the young teen was led, shell-shocked and mumbling, to the door that led behind the jellies’ exhibit.

“Hugh, I thought you could speak jelly,” Sam whispered. “Maybe you could help. You know, just direct them to untie themselves or something.”

Hugh shook his head. “No, thanks. I may have done some pretty crazy things earlier this summer, like riding that shark. But I was under duress, probably in shock, and that was crazy—this is just plain stupid.”

Tristan nodded, very glad he wasn’t the one going into the tank. He had enough problems just untying his shoelaces or doing anything that took even a small amount of dexterity. On land, he was still pretty much a klutz.

The teens could see Rosina and the curator moving around behind the twenty-foot-long exhibit. Tristan decided to check out some of the other jellyfish in the gallery while they waited for her to get ready.

Famous for figuring out how to keep jellyfish alive and on display, Monterey Bay Aquarium had one of the best collections of both common and exotic species. The first tank Tristan came to was a five-foot-high, transparent cylinder filled with flying saucer-shaped pink moon jellies. Each was about a foot across. He’d seen this species in the Bahamas and Florida. Supposedly, their sting was pretty weak. Tristan preferred not to be the fact-checker on that one. Next to the moon jelly display was another cylindrical tank. This one held dozens of small, white-spotted jellyfish. They were yellowy-brown, mini-cupcake-sized, polka-dotted creatures with clusters of short, frilly feeding arms. Next to the tank, a small speaker blared fast-paced disco music. Tristan leaned closer to the tank. He could swear the white-spotted jellies moved in short, rapid bursts, perfectly in beat with the music. He moved to the next tank. It contained small, plum-colored blubber jellies pulsing to a different tune. Their bells resembled dark-purple, sideways-bouncing, blubbery rubber balls trailing clusters of weird, triangular-shaped arms. Tristan then moved to a darkened corner of the exhibit, where perhaps the strangest of the bunch were on display—jellyfish that lay on the bottom of the tank with bioluminescent pearls of light atop their flattened bells. After staring at the seemingly starlit creatures for a few minutes, Tristan hurried back. He definitely didn’t want to miss any of the action at the big sea-nettle tank. On the way, he passed displays with upside-down, egg-yolk, and lion’s mane jellyfish.

“Here she goes,” Sam announced.

Tristan made it just in time to see Rosina climb up a ladder to the top of the sea nettle tank. A wetsuit top and hood covered all but her hands and face. The hood gave her chipmunk cheeks and emphasized her big, fearful eyes. The jellyfish curator stood beside the ladder and urged her on. Rosina paused, looking around. Tristan figured she was probably searching for the nearest exit. Rosina then took a there’s-no-way-out-of-this deep breath and tentatively stuck a hand into the sea nettle tank. She reached cautiously toward the huge, drifting knot of jellyfish. One of the free-floating jellies bumped her hand. Rosina drew back so fast, Tristan thought she would fall off the ladder.

It was then that Tristan noticed the strands of transparent goo flowing from Rosina’s fingers. “Nice slime,” he said, referring to the mucus that regularly oozed from Rosina’s hands when she was in seawater. When it came to their special ocean talents, she was the only one in the group who had developed mucus deployment skills. Rosina slowly reached back into the tank and gently touched the jelly’s bell, pushing it out of the way. Her hand trembled as she then nudged the jelly’s tentacles and feeding arms away from the massive tangle. The look on her face was not what Tristan expected—puke-inspiring pain. Instead, Rosina appeared pleasantly surprised.

Rosina reached more confidently into the tank and undid a twist of tentacles and feeding arms. She then leaned over and submerged her entire head and upper body. Using both hands, she began to swiftly untangle the sea nettles. Rosina came up for a breath and then leaned back in. Soon the massive snarl was undone, and all the jellies were once again drifting freely about the tank.

The other teens stood stunned in front of the exhibit. Deep in thought, Hugh pondered the scene. “It must be the mucus.”

“What must be the mucus?” Sam asked.

“It’s like how clownfish coat themselves in mucus so they don’t get stung by the anemones they live in.”

“Oh, I get it,” Tristan said. “It’s her slime. It’s protecting her from the stinging.”

Sam smiled. “Sweet!”

“Like, she can have it,” Ryder said.

Rosina popped up from the water grinning. She reached back into the tank and stroked one of the jellyfish like it was a cuddly pet. She looked up and waved with a slow-motion, I’m-the-queen wave. Tristan swore she was looking and smiling specifically at him. It was a bit disturbing. Rosina was usually not the most pleasant of people, and she rarely smiled. But then again, ever since he’d saved her from drowning in the boulder pool and helped her escape from the psycho spa in the British Virgin Islands, she’d been acting strangely nice to him.

A little while later, Rosina rejoined the group. Hugh and Sam high-fived her. Ryder gave her a cool head nod. Rosina then stepped toward Tristan as if she was about to hug him. He shuffled backward awkwardly, nearly tripped, and held out a fist. Rosina fist-bumped Tristan, all the while staring kind of dopily at him. Sam rolled her eyes and Hugh grinned knowingly.

The jellyfish curator joined the group and gave Rosina a hearty pat on the back. “Well done, young lady. That was quite impressive.”

The trip to Monterey and its world-famous aquarium had come as a complete surprise to Tristan and his friends. Just over a week ago, they’d been at Sea Camp in the Florida Keys, waiting alongside the other campers for a ride home. They were leaving several weeks earlier than normal. All of the teens were disappointed; some were ready to revolt. They loved their summers spent training at Sea Camp. At the age of twelve, each had been invited to the camp housed at the Florida Keys Sea Park. The teens all had rare, but very cool, genetic abnormalities. Their bodies contained traces of the ancient genes that have allowed animals to adapt to life in the sea. This gave the teens some truly unusual and amazing abilities in the ocean. At Sea Camp, they learned how to use their special talents and trained for missions to help the ocean and marine life.

Thirteen-year-olds Tristan, Sam, Hugh, Rosina, and Ryder were second-year campers, or Snappers. For them, the early end of camp that summer was doubly crappy. Like the other teens, camp was the best part of their year. They didn’t want to leave early. Even worse, they were the ones being blamed for the early departure. Earlier that summer, they’d helped to expose creepy wackjob Hugo Marsh as the person responsible for a series of fish kills in the British Virgin Islands. Unfortunately, along the way, the teens had also revealed their secret ocean talents to Marsh and one of his partners—the shark-killing, kidnapping billionaire J.P. Rickerton. Tristan and his camp mates had run into that evil nutcase before. With the campers’ help, Marsh had been captured and taken into custody, but Rickerton had escaped. Sea Camp’s director, Mike Davis, said Rickerton was on the run. But just to be safe, the camp was temporarily shut down and the teens sent home early—except for the Snappers. Rickerton knew about them and what they looked like, so the camp leaders decided it would be best if the Snappers went somewhere to hide for a little while . . . just to be safe.

Monterey Bay Aquarium was a perfect hiding place. During the summer, the place was swarming with visitors and teen volunteers. Tristan and the other young campers would blend right in. They could hide in plain sight.

By day, the teens were regular volunteers helping to direct people to different exhibits and working at the aquarium’s touch tanks. As volunteers, the teens told people how to handle the sea creatures properly and explained their biology. The big pink sea stars were everyone’s favorites. Tristan and the others happily explained how the sea stars walked on hundreds of suction-cupped tube feet, that they could survive out of the ocean for hours by pumping themselves full of seawater, and about their amazing powers of regeneration. If a sea star lost an arm, it could grow another one. Of course, the teens didn’t tell onlookers about their own special healing capabilities in the ocean. Once regular visitor hours were over, the campers were assigned somewhat more unusual tasks.

Rosina’s detangling duty was the teens’ last job of the night. On their way out of the aquarium, they passed the enormous Open Sea tank. Swimming within the more than one million gallons of water were hammerhead sharks, sandbar sharks, a school of fast and beefy tuna, and a few extremely large stingrays. Also in the tank was a small bat ray. Tristan stopped and waved to the bat ray. It was about a foot and a half across, black on top, white underneath, with a short whip for a tail and a large, bat-like head.

“Hey, isn’t that the ray you got moved from the touch tank?” Hugh asked.

Tristan smiled. “Yeah, looks pretty happy now that there’s no touching going on.” He thought back to the campers’ first night at the aquarium. He’d been asked to find out what was wrong with a small ray in one of the touch tanks. Most of the skates, small bamboo sharks, and bat rays in the shallow outdoor pool swam happily around, letting people feel their soft, velvety skin. But one bat ray stayed in a corner and refused to go anywhere near human hands. To get it to talk, Tristan had to climb into the pool and sit next to the reclusive bat ray. At first, the ray simply ignored Tristan. But when it realized he wasn’t going away, the creature finally opened up for a heart-to-heart, bat ray-to-teen talk. The creature spilled its guts, luckily not literally. It proceeded to explain in agonizing detail why it didn’t like being touched by humans: germs. The bat ray was a serious germophobe. Tristan had tried to convince it that human hands didn’t carry any germs that would harm the ray (as far as he knew). But no matter what he said, the bat ray was convinced human hands were laced with germs that would make it deathly ill. Tristan eventually concluded that the ray was totally neurotic, bordering on having OCD, and would never make a good touch-tank occupant. He convinced the aquarist in charge to move the bat ray into the big non-touching Open Sea exhibit.

As Tristan watched the bat ray swim alongside one of the big stingrays, a hammerhead shark swam across the tank right next to the viewing window. Then it did a U-turn and swam back.

“What’s it doing?” Sam asked.

“That’s the shark with the weak left eye that kept swimming in circles. Remember, the other night when you guys were with Hugh at the giant octopus tank, I was here helping the hammerhead learn how to swim straight. It’s just showing off now.”

“Speaking of the giant octopus,” Hugh said. “I better go by the tank and check things out.”

The teens took a short detour to the giant Pacific octopus exhibit.

“Looks okay to me, dude,” Ryder noted.

Hugh pointed to a large pink sea star at the base of the rocks in the display. “Yeah, except I think that’s one of the sea stars from the touch tank.”

The teens looked closer at the five-armed crawler. Suddenly, a large red arm with giant white suckers slithered to the sea star and lovingly caressed it.

“Oh boy, that guy’s a real monster, all right,” Rosina snickered.

“What can I say, he’s a friendly giant octopus,” Hugh said.

“Yeah, and still a kleptomaniac,” Tristan laughed. The octopus was infamous for its after-hours thieving. At night, when all the visitors and staff had gone home, the huge red octopus liked to slither out of its tank and take things. In the morning, the staff often found play toys from the otters’ tank stuffed into and under the rocks in the octopus’s tank. Several signs had been jimmied off the walls and had also ended up in the exhibit. The octopus seemed particularly fond of signs that read Stop Here and No Flash Please. One morning, the staff even found a Barbie doll in the giant octopus exhibit. A young visitor must have left it behind in the aquarium. It gave everyone a real start when they found the doll, upside down, legs sticking up with its head stuffed into the mouth of a giant anemone, in the exhibit. Sometimes the octopus would kidnap other creatures, like the sea star, and place them in its tank as well.

“C’mon, he’s trying to break the habit,” Hugh said. “It took me three nights of convincing and, of course, the video footage from the security cameras, to get him to confess. After that, the guy in charge agreed to put some toys in his tank at night and add a few new tank mates.”

Tristan had been with Hugh for moral support on one of the nights he was trying to get the octopus to confess. Hugh was used to working with Old “six arm” Jack, the elderly octopus back at the Rehab Center at camp. But Monterey’s bright-red octopus was about ten times larger—hence the name giant Pacific octopus. Its four-foot-long arms were lined with huge white suction cups, and its bulbous head was nearly two feet across. Hugh had become pretty good about swimming with sea creatures and talking to them, but the giant octopus kind of freaked him out.

As they walked out the aquarium exit, Hugh said, “Remind me to tell someone about the kidnapped sea star.”

The group was staying with Pete, the aquarium’s director of communications, at his house nearby. As Tristan got ready for bed, he wondered what new tasks they’d be assigned next at the aquarium. For the most part, he liked their nights there. He felt like they were accomplishing something useful and helping out in ways other people couldn’t. Plus, at night it was quiet with only a few people around. The daytime crowds made Tristan nervous. He was constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering if people were staring at him or the others weirdly or if Rickerton had discovered where they were and had sent a goon or two to spy on them. Back at camp, Tristan had hoped they’d be able to help search for Rickerton. But once Director Davis sent the teens to the aquarium to hide, suggesting that they may not be safe at home, Tristan lost a little of his nerve.