“Girls,” Harry pops his head back in, stammering when he sees Jules wiping a tear from her cheek.
“Sorry—is everything ok?”
“Everything’s perfect,” she sighs. “I’m just so moved. By… the coral.”
Harry smiles, wrapping an arm around her shoulder as he steers us towards the door.
“That’s one of the many things I love about your sister, Stella. She sees so much beauty in everything. But we’ve gotta hustle! They’re waiting on you!”
With Joanna in the lead, we grab our snorkel masks and trek past the outskirts of the village to a set of blue pangas tied up off the shore. Steven walks close to me, his stride awkward as he attempts to keep sand out of his shoes. I feel a huge weight off my chest knowing Jules isn’t still furious with me, but somehow I still feel tense. And if I had to guess, it probably has something to do with the uniformed man walking a few yards ahead. When I was in college, Marianne told me that the best way not to catch feelings was to snap a rubber band against your wrist every time you thought of someone off limits. But all I have is a hair tie, and even though my wrist is red from it, I can’t seem to shake the memory of the elevator from my thoughts.
Caleb looks back at me, catching me in my shameless stare, and I grab Steven around the ribs instinctively, pulling him so quickly that he nearly trips. Only it’s not Caleb, but Matthew, who seems to notice. He purses his lips at me as he passes us, one step short of actually sticking his nose in the air. Probably disgusted with Steven for even touching someone like me—a member of the working class.
Several tan dogs with wagging tongues come out to follow us as we load ourselves into the boat, all of us armed with a bucket of coral implants from the lab. I never thought I’d see Matthew doing manual labor, but even he doesn’t complain as we haul our buckets across the hot sand. One of the lab techs brings two beach chairs for Arthur and Patricia to wait on shore.
“I’ll wait with you,” Caleb offers them as we load into theboat, but I can tell he’s uneasy about something by the way his voice wavers.
“And miss filming this? No chance,” Arthur replies. “Patricia and I will be just fine on our own.”
“Alright,” Joanna rubs her hands together in anticipation. “Who’s ready to plant some coral?”
We leave them on the beach and jet out over the reef, my knee uncomfortably close to Caleb’s as the panga bounces across the break. Joanna kills the engine as the sea becomes teal blue, indicating shallow waters. She dons her scuba equipment and helps us put on our snorkels and fins. Once we all have our gear on, Joanna leads us down to the garden to show us the beds below. Duplicates of the wire frames we saw in the lab are laid out along the bare ocean floor, some empty, some covered in a rainbow of large corals that have been previously planted. She shows us how to attach each cone to the wire and we all work together until an entire flat is covered with new seedlings.
Then, Joanna takes us out a bit further to show us the reef they’re restoring with the gardened coral.
“It’ll take a few days for it to attach,” she tells us when we’re back on the boat, breathless from holding our air for so long. “But this reef is already coming back from the brink of death.”
She’s not wrong—even though part of the reef is covered in dull grey, broken coral, fish are already gathering in areas where the new coral has been planted.
“If we continue down the path we are on, 90% of coral reefs will be gone by 2050. But if we can expand our work here to new reefs and continue to raise awareness, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to change that. In the Great Barrier Reef, for example, offshore beds like ours have helped regenerate coral that was previously thought to be beyond saving.”
“So… what can we do to help?” Matthew asks, and Caleb and I share a look without thinking. “As fun as this is, it’s not like the average person can jet out to Fiji to plant coral every winter.”
“That’s a good question,” Joanna answers. “For starters, you can cut back on eating meat and conventionally grown foods. The fertilizers and antibiotics used in mass-produced food sources are one of the largest contributors to ocean toxicity. You can support organizations like ours, which exist all over the world. Most importantly, you can spread awareness about the commercial fishing practices that are destroying reefs around the world.”
Matthew grabs his brother’s arm and whispers something to him, but it doesn’t look like he’s complaining. For a moment, I let myself dream of a world where people like the Warrens, with the means and clout they have to make a difference, really started to care about efforts like these. What could be accomplished if men like Matthew, with seemingly unlimited resources, put his energy towards improving the planet rather than getting sloshed in embarrassingly luxurious locales?
We arrive back to the beach to a familiar sight: Arthur fast asleep in his chair, head lolled back and snoring so loudly that he may as well be an erupting volcano. But there’s one thing missing.
“Where’s Mom?” Matthew asks, looking to Patricia’s empty beach chair. Harry shakes his dad, and he awakens with a violent snort.
“Dad, where’s Mom?”
“She’s right—“ Arthur looks around and realizes he has no idea. “That’s funny, I could have sworn she was right here…”
“Well it’s not as if she’d go for a swim,” Harry looks up and down the beach. ”I haven’t seen here in the water since 2009.”
“Do you think she might be hurt?” Arthur jolts out of his chair, genuinely concerned.
“I’m sure she hasn’t gone far, Arthur. She probably just went to find a bathroom,” Jules puts a comforting hand on his arm.
“We should walk back to the lab and see if she’s with Chris,” Joanna tells us.
Harry nods.
“Jules and I will head up the beach to see if she’s wandered north,” Harry offers. “She used to have a habit of collecting sea shells.”
“Is a rogue tidal wave too much to hope for?” Matthew jokes. His brother glares at him—quite a surprising expression on someone who doesn’t so much as swear.
