Slither - Edward Lee [17]
Nora felt like slapping him. "That and six bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks ... maybe."
.You are the queen and I am the king of our field. We're marine zoologists of the first water. It may even be-and I mean no arrogance when I say this-that we may be the best polychaetologists in the world. So. That's something to be happy about, isn't it?"
Now Nora had to laugh. "I appreciate your positivity, Loren."
"Good. Revel in your life! Celebrate your essence of superiority in the void of the soul-dead hoi polloi."
"Whatever," she muttered, and forced herself to her feet. "Let's go find G.I. Joe and the Barbie doll, try to keep this day from turning to total shit."
"Well said!"
They left their cinder block lab, headed back toward the campsite. Nora knew she had to snap out of this mood. There was no reason for it. Midlife crisis and I'm not even middle-aged, she thought. What a ripoff. But was that it, or something else?
The woods pressed in on them as the trail narrowed. "And another thing," she remembered. "That big pot plant."
"What about it?" Loren said, following her up.
"That's pretty weird, isn't it? Something like that, growing here?"
.You heard Trent. He told us right off the bat, sometimes kids sneak on the island to make whoopie. Some kid dropped a seed and-presto-it grew."
"Um-hmm, and how convenient an explanation." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Or maybe I'm right. Maybe Trent really is hiding something."
Loren's chuckling floated forward. "You really have a problem with Trent."
"Think about it." Subconsciously, her eyes roved through the forest's plush vegetation. Searching for spiky plants? "Secluded location, abandoned government land. And the only authority is our buddy Lieutenant Trent. He could have a veritable farm of pot growing out here, and who would know?"
"And it must be pretty good weed, too, because you've obviously had a few bowls already today."
"Oh, kiss my ass, Loren!" she snapped back.
"Drop 'em and I will."
"You wish."
"No, you wish."
"No! You-" But then Nora dropped it. Listen to us!
"I know," Loren said after the contemplative pause. "We sound like a couple of kids in junior high."
"Yep. And you know why, don't you? Because that's about as far as we've evolved socially."
"How wonderfully pathetic!" Loren cheered. "But you're not really serious about Trent, are you? Please. Tell me you're not."
Nora didn't say anything, trudging on down the trail.
They stopped at a marshy pond that stretched off to their right. A reddish brown bird with a white head pecked at the water.
"Fresh, not brackish," Nora noted.
"Looks like a brown noddy, too. Haven't seen one of those for a while."
Their presence seemed to agitate the bird, which then flew off, yacking. Nora pointed to a scurry of tadpoles in the water. "Southern cricket tadpoles?" Nora questioned. "What's that? Gryllus dorsalis?"
Loren stooped to one knee. "Maybe, but look at the flake of the eyes. Probably a Hyla cinera."
Nora squinted. "Yeah, you're right. The Gryllus doesn't get the gold till the tail falls."
Loren stood back up. The oddest stasis seemed to take hold of them.
Finally Nora said, "This is depressing, Loren. We're looking at a pond and identifying the tadpoles by the Latin classification. That's pretty fucked up, isn't it? I mean, really, that's not normal."
Loren scratched his head, cruxed. "Are we really that nerdy?"
Simultaneously, they looked back down, eyed their reflections in the water. Like a carnival mirror, the water made Loren's buckteeth look like horse teeth, and his Adam's apple as big as a popover. Nora stood five four, but in this mirror of water she looked seven feet tall and bent, a big frizz-mopped ball for a head jutting from a stick: a geek scarecrow. The knees on her broomstick legs looked grotesque: Elephant Woman, she thought.
Are we really that nerdy? Nora repeated the grim question in her mind. "Let's get out of here before I friggin' throw up," she said. They