SIXTEEN

“It’s so gross!” I say, flopping onto the sofa in Ari’s den. “It’s literally fish puree. Plus, I had to chop off fish heads! Ugh, I feel sick just thinking about it. And then, you can’t just feed it to the animals, right? Oh no. You have to give it to them through a tube.” I shudder.

Ari makes a sound like she’s trying to care about my complaints, but I know she’s mostly ignoring me. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, her guitar in her lap, leaning forward to study something on her phone.

I sigh and stare at the ceiling.

“But I have to go back,” I say, as much to myself as to Ari. “If I want to redo that project, I have to go back. For four whole weeks.”

Ari plucks a few strings, then frowns and shakes her head. She finally looks up at me. “Why can’t you just settle for the C?”

I give her a withering look.

She shrugs. “Just saying. It’s what almost anyone else would do.”

“Well, it’s not what I would do. A C. It will haunt me the rest of my life if I don’t get it fixed.”

“Will it, though?” says Ari sweetly. “It’s not like you’re going to need science credits when you apply to business school. Literally no one but you cares about this project or the grade you got.”

“Exactly. I care, which is the most important thing.”

She considers this. “I suppose that’s true. So you’re officially volunteering at an animal rescue center for the next month. How very selfless of you, dear Prudence.”

“Hey, I can be selfless,” I say, noting the dryness in her tone.

She laughs. “I know you can, but don’t you see the irony? You’re only doing this for the grade.”

“So?” I sit up, suddenly defensive. “Actions make a person good, not motives.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that,” she says wistfully. “But it’d make a good theme for a song. Good or bad, right or wrong … do the means justify the ends and vice versa…” She goes into her dazed songwriting look, but it passes quickly. She bends over the phone again, long wisps of dark brown hair falling over her face like a curtain. She pulls them back with one hand, twisting her hair once at the nape of her neck, before letting it drape across her shoulder. The wisps will return in a few minutes, and I consider offering her my hairband, but she never uses them so I don’t bother.

Ari’s brow furrows and she plucks the same strings over again. She harrumphs, frustrated. “Other than fish smoothies, how was it working with Quint?”

I snarl. “It feels like I’m being punished for something.” My brow crinkles upon further consideration. “Although I guess it wasn’t as terrible as it could have been.”

Her eyebrow lifts, and I grab a pillow to throw at her. She hunkers forward, protecting the guitar. “Stop it. I am not interested in him. I’m just saying, evidently, he can be a halfway-decent human being when he’s doing something he cares about.” Because I could tell he does care about the center, a lot. “That still does not excuse all the stress he put me through this year. And I guarantee that when it comes time for us to finish this project, again, it’s going to require just as much prodding and tooth-pulling as it did the first time. Ideal scenario: I do it myself and we just use Quint’s email address to submit it, so our teacher thinks he was involved.”

“I thought you said part of the reason you got a bad grade was lack of teamwork?”

I sneer. “Again—not my fault. You try working with him.”

Ari giggles. “And yet, you’ve signed up to do just that.”

“I know.” I groan and stretch out on my side.

Ari tries the strings again, playing the same melody over and over until she lets out a frustrated groan. “Okay, this is clearly not right. Whoever wrote this arrangement had no idea what they were doing.”

She stands up and goes to her shelves of vinyl records. She scans the spines for a second before pulling a record from its paper sleeve and setting it onto the ancient turntable that has lived in this room since the day I met her. Probably it’s lived in this room since the day her family moved into this house. Ari’s record collection is something else—an entire wall of built-in shelves, floor to ceiling, each one packed full. There’s an order to the system, but it’s lost on me. Genre? Era? I know there’s a section of Mexican music somewhere, because Ari introduced me to an eighties rock band called La Maldita a while back, and they turned out to be pretty awesome, but I couldn’t say where their records live in all of this.

I do know where to find the Beatles, though.

That’s not what Ari is putting on now.

A beautiful melody begins to play, but it takes me a minute to place it. “Elton John?”

Ari shushes me. “Just listen. Oh, I love this intro. A flute! Who thinks of that? I never would have thought of that. But it’s so perfect!”

I make a face. Whatever you say, Ari. But she’s not paying attention to me.

On the record, Elton John starts singing about someone named Daniel, who’s traveling to Spain.

“Oh, hey, that reminds me,” I say. “Did Jude talk to you about working at the record sto—”

“Yes! Prudence. Stop talking.”

I press my lips together. Ari picks up her guitar again, but she doesn’t play. Her face is set with single-minded focus as she listens to the song.

My mind drifts back to the center and all the photos in Quint’s report. Fishhooks. Fishing line. Shark bites. Sad, tragic eyes.

I think about Quint, how angry he looked at first.

But then the way he lit up when he was telling me about the different animal patients they’ve had this year.

For some reason, I find myself thinking of his smile. His eager, ever-present smile. It seemed different today somehow. More energized.

Oh, come on, Brain. Are we really wasting valuable space toward analyzing Quint’s smiles? Knock it off.

My memories circle back to how Quint and the other volunteers seemed so busy, and Rosa so stressed. And why they don’t just hire more staff.

The song ends, and Ari hops up to stop the record before it can move on to the next song. She grabs her guitar, and I realize she’s trying to figure out how to play the intro, the part that the flute plays on the album.

“I think they might be in trouble,” I say.

Ari stops playing. “What? Who?”

“The center. Quint’s mom seemed super tense, and maybe it’s just because they were shorthanded today, but I don’t know. I just have a feeling, like, things aren’t going so well there. Most of their money comes from grants and it sounds like that’s barely enough to keep them afloat.” I massage my forehead. “I can only imagine what they spend on fish, much less everything else it takes to keep the place running.”

“Do they do any fundraising?” Ari asks.

“I don’t know.” I mull this over. There was all that paperwork in the lobby. Financial reports? Donor information? Grant applications? But if they are fundraising, they seem to be doing a terrible job at it.

“Araceli!” yells her dad from the kitchen. “Is Prudence staying for dinner?”

Ari glances at me.

“Is Abuela cooking?”

“I don’t think so.”

I pout, but it’s still the best offer I’ve had. “Yeah, fine. As long as it’s not fish.”

Ari sets down her guitar and darts upstairs. When she comes back, she gives me an affirmative nod. “He’s ordering pizza. No seafood involved.”

I give her a thumbs-up. “So, are you excited to work at the record store?”

She gives a small squeal. “Are you kidding? It’s my dream job! Well, my dream summer job, anyway. I start next week.”

“Better you than me.”

She lifts the needle on the record player. “Speaking of dream jobs, did you know that Elton John didn’t write his own lyrics? He did the music, but the words were almost entirely written by a guy named Bernie Taupin. Can you imagine? I want to be him so bad.”

She starts the song again, but she doesn’t pick up her guitar this time. Instead, she lies down on the floor and shuts her eyes, her face tense with concentration. The flute introduction plays and is soon joined by a keyboard and Elton’s sorrowful voice.

“Listen to this,” says Ari, her fingers dancing through the air. I can see the red taillights heading for Spain … She throws her hand upward, mirroring the rise in the music, then brings her hand back down in a giddy fist. “There! Did you hear that E-seven? A non-diatonic dominant chord, but then it resolves straight to the A minor. Brilliant. Honestly, piano players write the best chords.” She presses both palms against her forehead and sighs heavily.

I have literally zero idea what she’s talking about.

“Maybe I should take up the piano,” she says.

“I have a keyboard you could have.”

She turns her head to look at me. “Really?”

“Sure. It’s in our living room, abandoned and unloved. You can totally have it. I mean, it’s not super-high quality. Probably your mom could buy you something way nicer, but if you want it…”

Ari grimaces. She hates it when anyone mentions her family’s affluence, which I guess I can sort of understand. She doesn’t want to be judged for having money any more than I want to be judged for not having it.

“I would love to have it. Thank you,” she says. “And I promise to take very good care of it. Now, shush, listen. This part—”

Elton sings about the scars that won’t heal, about the eyes that have died. Ari looks positively euphoric as both hands shoot upward again, pointing at the ceiling. Daniel, you’re a star …

“Oh,” she croons wistfully. “Listen to that high note! He’s hitting the tonic note over a modal interchange chord. So simple, yet so brilliant. It’s just…” She sighs, dropping her hands down to her heart. She starts to sing along, but I can barely hear her over the album.