Leatherback Blues by Karen Hood-Caddy

Author:Karen Hood-Caddy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2018-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Robin didn’t know what time it was when the commotion woke her. Dark shadows of people came running in, hands found her, shook her, pulled her out of the bed. She was alarmed until she heard giggles.

Giggles? She relaxed.

“Robin! Get up! We want to show you something.”

Was that Zo-Zo? It sounded like her, but Robin felt groggy and couldn’t tell for sure.

Someone flicked a switch, and suddenly the room exploded with light. Squirm, Zo-Zo, and Carlos were all grinning at her, their faces bursting with glee.

Robin sat up. Diego. The turtle eggs. She had to tell them what she’d seen, she had to te—

Zo-Zo yanked at her arm. “Come on. We want to take you up the beach.”

“I can’t, my foot, I …” There was no way she could walk the beach. Besides, what was the point of finding eggs if Diego was selling them? What was the point of even being here, doing the website, doing anything, if Diego was just going to sabotage all their good efforts? No, she had to tell the others what he had done.

But what if Diego was listening? She looked out into the black night. For all she knew, he could have his ear pressed against the wall beside her window right now. That could make talking dangerous. She forced herself to keep quiet until she found her grandmother. The moment she did, she’d pull her into a private corner and tell her the whole terrible story.

“Where’s Griff?”

“Waiting for you,” Zo-Zo said. “A little way up the beach.”

Robin pressed her lips together and rolled them back into her mouth. She felt as if she were going to explode.

Squirm wiggled with excitement. “You’ve got to see this.”

Laughing, Zo-Zo waved Carlos forward, and they each took one of Robin’s arms and draped it over a shoulder.

“Stand on one foot,” Zo-Zo said. When Robin did, Zo-Zo and Carlos lifted her up.

“Walk on good leg,” Carlos said, and Robin did as he instructed. Soon she was peg-legging it along the beach, digging her good foot into the sand every second step her friends took and swinging along in between. Thus, they sped along the beach into the blackness.

It’s like having crutches, she thought. Human ones.

Squirm ran along beside them.

At first it was so dark, Robin could only hear the waves, but slowly, as her eyes adjusted, she could see the white curl of the surf splashing on shore. After several minutes, Carlos and Zo-Zo slowed their pace.

“Shh!” Squirm said.

They were creeping along now. Robin could hear something going swish, swish, swish up ahead.

Her eyes bored into the darkness as she searched for what was making that sound. Then she saw it. A massive leatherback.

Griff appeared at Robin’s side. “She’s huge,” she whispered.

“Sometime called baúl in Spanish,” Carlos said in a hushed voice. “Means ‘big trunk.’”

Robin could see why. The leatherback was almost as big as an ATV.

The turtle stopped moving forward and started using her flippers to dig a hole in the sand. On and on she dug, until the hole was about seventy-five centimetres deep.

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