Chapter 4: Low Tide

The sea-cave lab only opens at low tide, and on the second Tuesday of term the water went out at four-ten.

Twelve of us walked down the seawall steps in rubber boots and headlamps, with Dr. Reinholt in front.

He had the sleeves of his shell pushed up and a clipboard under one arm.

He had not looked at me directly in six days.

I had noticed, because I had looked at him every single time.

The cave mouth was a black slot in the granite, with a rim of mussels and a smell like iron and cold kelp.

Inside it opened into a long chamber, floor slick with wet sand, with tide pools in the rock and a ceiling I could touch if I stood on my toes.

"Teams of two," he said.

"Transect line on the east wall.

"Count the anemones in the first meter, and do not put your hands on the barnacles."

Freya had the other end of my line.

"Do not put your hands on the barnacles," she muttered.

"Who talks like that?"

"A professor," I said.

"He sounds like a lighthouse."

"A very good-looking lighthouse."

I knelt to run the line along the wall, and reached for the peg he had set at the end.

I put my left hand flat on the rock to steady myself.

The barnacles were underneath it.

They cut a long neat slice across the heel of my palm, and I swore.

Blood came up fast and ran down to my wrist.

I caught it with my other hand before it dripped on the strap.

"Gundersen."

His voice came out of the dark right beside my ear.

"Show me."

"It's nothing," I said.

"Show me."

He was kneeling beside me.

His headlamp lit the cut in a hard white circle, and he took my hand and turned it palm up.

His fingers were warm even in that cold cave, and rough at the pads.

He cleaned it with a bottle of fresh water from his bag, and he did it fast and without ceremony, pressing a pad of gauze over the heel of my hand.

My pulse was banging in my wrist.

I knew he could feel it.

"Hold that," he said.

I held it.

His hand went to my wrist to press the gauze flatter.

It stopped.

It stopped an inch short of the strap.

I looked down.

His fingers hung in the air over the brown leather, not touching it, not moving.