Flush - Carl Hiaasen [48]
Everything felt so good and so right, I had this feeling that we’d finally get to see the green flash. The evening was perfect for it.
Gradually the sun changed from gold to blazing pink and seemed to turn liquid as it dimpled the horizon. None of us said a word because we didn’t want the moment to end.
People who’ve never seen a sunset at sea would be blown away. Time seems to slow down until finally that huge blazing ball looks like it’s just hanging there, balanced on the far edge of the earth. In reality, though, it’s dropping fast.
As the last rosy crescent melted into the Gulf, I felt myself leaning forward, squinting hopefully at the skyline.
Then the sun was gone, leaving a pale lemon emptiness. I glanced over at Abbey, who was putting the camera away. She smiled and shrugged.
“Wow, that was gorgeous,” my mother whispered.
“Yeah,” said Abbey, “but no green flash.”
“Maybe next time,” my father said, as he always did.
I turned my gaze back to the horizon and held it there, even as the rim of pink faded to darkness. I heard Dad hauling in the anchor and Mom zipping her windbreaker and Abbey asking if she could steer back to the dock, but still I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky.
FOURTEEN
Fifty-seven dollars and sixteen cents.
That’s all Abbey and I could scrounge up—and fifty-one bucks of it was hers. I would’ve had more if I hadn’t bought new skateboard trucks the first week of vacation.
“You think it’s gonna buy enough?” Abbey asked on the way to the store.
“It’ll have to,” I said.
I didn’t know the exact size of the Coral Queen’s holding tank, but I guessed it carried a couple hundred gallons of waste. I also didn’t know how much dye we could get for fifty-seven dollars and sixteen cents.
Abbey led me to the aisle where the food coloring was displayed.
“Blue won’t work, right?”
“No, that wouldn’t show up,” I agreed, scanning the shelves. “What do they use this stuff for anyway?”
“Frosting. Desserts. All kinds of goodies.”
“Do they make an orange?”
“No, but here’s fuchsia,” Abbey said.
“What?”
“That’s how it’s pronounced, Noah. Few-sha.”
I had no idea what fuchsia was, but it sounded like something you wouldn’t want to step in.
“It’s a hot reddish purple,” Abbey explained. “Perfect for Operation Royal Flush.”
That was the code name for our secret mission to nail Dusty Muleman. We’d decided to use food-coloring gel instead of laundry dye because the gel wasn’t made with chemicals that would harm the sea life. Even better, it was highly concentrated, which meant that a small amount would dye a lot of poopy water.
The plastic bottles were little, though, holding only an ounce. There was only one container of fuchsia on the shelf, so we asked a stock boy to go find more.
“How many you want?” he asked.
“Bring us all you’ve got,” I said.
When we got to the cash register, the checkout lady gave us the skunk eye as she tallied up the total.
“What in the world,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “would you kids be doing with thirty-four bottles of food coloring?”
Abbey smiled sweetly. “We’re baking a birthday cake,” she said.
“Oh, is that right?”
“A very big birthday cake,” my sister added.
“And a very purple one, I see,” the checkout lady said, handing us the bag of bottles.
On the way home I kept looking behind us to see if we were being followed by the old pirate geezer. I couldn’t stop wondering who he was, and how he knew us.
Abbey said he was probably a gnarly old mate from one of the sportfishing boats, or maybe a bridge person who’d seen us around the island and overheard us calling each other by name.
Whoever he was, I kept my eyes peeled.
As we turned the corner of our street, someone called out to us. It was Bull, of all people, standing in front of the house. He waved as we rode up, though Abbey and I were too suspicious to wave back.
I hopped off my bike and asked, “What’s up?”
Bull seemed edgy and uncomfortable. I could see Abbey’s teeth marks on his left ear, which was still puffy and crinkled. He cleared his throat about five times before he finally spoke.