She lets Wanda hold the clipboard and write down the numbers while she calls them out. They go on like this, sweat and condensation rolling down Wanda’s skin in thick streams, and eventually they come to a little lagoon, where the soft ground gives way to cloudy water and a blue heron eyes them from a young mangrove island. The heron watches them for a long minute and then lifts off, beating its wings against the thick air. Wanda turns to Phyllis.
“Can I do this one?” she asks.
“All right.” Phyllis passes her a vial and Wanda selects what she hopes is the most solid path toward the edge of the water. It looks promising. Except, it isn’t. The mossy surface disintegrates under her foot almost immediately and her entire body pitches forward, cutting through the silty murk. The swifts that have been fluttering among the mangroves depart, rising in a cloud, while Wanda plummets headfirst into the brackish pond scum.
She is stunned by the force of the water rising up to meet her. It’s a full-body slap, a surprise that nearly knocks the wind out of her. She is above, and then suddenly she is below, panicking, clawing through the lily pad stems and the seagrass and the silt, trying to scratch her way back to the surface, eyes squeezed shut, water slipping through her grasping fingers. And then, something else—
It spreads through her, an internal wave, rolling over every part of her at once. Not warmth exactly, but something else, bright and cool. She recognizes it from that day at the Edge, and her intrigue outgrows her panic. She stops struggling. Opens her eyes. And even through the swirl of mud and flora she can make out sparks. Little lights, popping into existence in great swaths, spreading until it is as though she is floating through a wet sky. This time, she can feel their consciousness, a sensation of curiosity surrounding her, inspecting her. They want to tell her something, but Wanda doesn’t know this language.
Wishing she could stay but needing to breathe, she kicks upward, breaking the surface and immediately registering the blur that is Phyllis, a few yards away, moving toward her. Wanda finds some solid ground, heaves herself onto it, and takes in all the air she can get. Over her shoulder, she sees that the dark, impenetrable lagoon she fell into is something else now.
A smoldering, shivering spray of lights burns beneath the surface, bright and translucent. Bats are just beginning to swoop, cutting across this opening in the trees, coming down low for the mosquitoes. The blue heron calls out, hidden but not far. The frogs chirrup and chirrup and chirrup. Wanda isn’t sure what just happened. She looks to Phyllis for an explanation, but even Phyllis is baffled. They sit, staring at the luminous water in silence until it begins to fade, the water returning to its dull muddy swirl. It all happens quickly, but it feels like hours.
“I’ve never seen bioluminescence here,” Phyllis says slowly, reaching for an explanation, latching onto the only thing that makes sense to her. “Dinoflagellates, maybe. They respond to agitation, to movement. I guess you surprised them.”
“Dino…”
“Dinoflagellates. Maybe. Or something else. Bioluminescence pops up all over the place. Different habitats, different times.” She sifts through her memory for everything she’s ever learned about bioluminescence, but this is not her area of expertise. There is something here that doesn’t fit. She pushes it away and focuses on what she knows to be true. “Fireflies, glow worms, comb jellies. Krill, I think. Some do it all on their own; others are just hosts for bioluminescent bacteria or algae.” Phyllis stares, uncertain about her own hypothesis. What she doesn’t say is that she has never seen or heard of bioluminescence that looks like this—that is every color at once, that she knows for a fact was not here two months ago. The water has gone dark now; the sky is darkening also.
“What’s it for?”
“Oh, different things. But I suppose the main categories are to distract predators, to find mates, and to communicate. Adaptation always comes back to survival, remember—survival of the individual, survival of the species.”
Wanda finds a stretch of solid ground where she can sit and empty her boots. The water that gushes out still glows softly, but as she pours it into the lagoon, the light dissipates, blends, becomes opaque and muddy like the rest. She can still feel that sensation of a voice without words speaking to her, but she doesn’t know how to explain this to Phyllis. Beside her, Phyllis flicks her hand through the water and waits. Nothing happens. The water stays dark. “It’s strange how…” Phyllis says, but then doesn’t finish. Wanda leans over and imitates Phyllis, skimming the edge of her hand across the surface. A swipe of light, there and then gone.
“Like this,” she says, and does it once more, as if showing Phyllis a trick she’s learned that can be replicated with the right technique. Phyllis tries again, but there is nothing where her fingers meet the water except dull ripples. Her mind is working overtime, trying to process this new data, searching for a plausible explanation, but still—nothing quite lines up. Wanda puts her boots back on and they sit, quietly contemplating the lagoon.
“It’s all changing,” Phyllis says after a long silence. “It’s changing so fast, Wanda, it’s hard to keep up.”
“But we’ll be ready,” Wanda replies. “Won’t we?”
“Maybe,” Phyllis says, suddenly doubting all of her preparations, all of her years of careful study. In the end, it’s all guesswork. Sitting here, she is reminded of just how much she doesn’t understand. “That’s the plan.”
They drive home in the dusky silence, lost in two different streams of thought: Phyllis ticking through hypotheses and experiments and variables, while Wanda wonders if she only imagined those lights whispering to her. And if it was real, what were they trying to say?
Kirby is already parked in the driveway when they get back. Wanda’s clothes are still soaked. He raises an eyebrow at Phyllis when he sees Wanda.
“What happened here?”
“Oh.” Phyllis had forgotten that part. She looks at Wanda, dripping onto the gravel. “She…fell in.”
“Ah,” Kirby says. “Get in the back, Wan. I love you, but you smell like something that’s been dead for days.” He opens the tailgate for her and gives her a boost, then nods at Phyllis, who watches them, still standing motionless beside the car. Kirby shuts the tailgate and Wanda sits down on the wheel well with a squelching sound. “If you’d ever accept any money—” Kirby begins.
“I wouldn’t,” Phyllis says quickly. She doesn’t want his money. Not for Wanda. Not for anything, really. She has no use for it anymore. Just one of many things that are changing.
After the truck has rumbled off, Phyllis takes her field kit inside and goes straight to her study with the water sample from the lagoon. She positions the slide under the microscope and looks and sees something she’s never seen before—organisms that are awake and shimmering and moving in the kind of intricate pattern such simple creatures should not be capable of. Yet here they are.
Chapter 40
After Lucas sends in his applications, he tries to forget about college. Unfortunately, this is impossible. He thinks about it constantly. It’s a tic, a reflexive rut he can’t seem to escape. He goes back over his applications in the middle of the night, searching each piece for a fatal mistake. But there aren’t any. Brenda wrote a nice recommendation. The guidance counselor came through. His essay turned out all right. And most importantly, no one else knows—there’s no one to ask him if he’s heard anything or to watch him while he checks the mailbox, turning each envelope over in his hands like it might be the one. He is safe from everyone’s expectations except his own.