Fathom L. Standage (books for 8th graders .TXT) 📖

“Liv,” said Sam, rolling her eyes to the sky.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” I called back to her as I moved around the dolphin pool. “I’ll meet you by the food stands.”

“Go save the fishies,” she said in dramatic resignation. I hurried to where the man had disappeared around a hedge and followed after him. He headed back in the direction of the shark exhibit. I was only about twenty feet away, when I opened my mouth to call after him, when he nearly collided with an Oceana employee holding a stack of cardboard boxes. He recoiled and snapped at the employee. I caught a glimpse of his profile. Cold foreboding slid down my throat.

Rich Guy. And in his hand, he held a large, white clam.

Keep it safe at all costs.

Along with the spike of fear arose the red-headed woman’s forlorn face in my mind. She had trusted me with something important to her. And I’d given it up to the horrible man who owned this abysmal, cruel theme park. The fear and rage within me galvanized, morphing into determination. A surge of recklessness took hold of me, and I started walking again.

The clam. Why had Mr. Rich Guy gone to such great lengths to get it? What could be so important that he’d neglect the biomes in his care? Could he be seeking out an expert here in the park to learn more about it? Maybe it was an endangered species. I had to know.

I followed him from a distance, staying out of sight. What was his name? I couldn’t remember. He passed the gift shop alongside the shark exhibit, walked along the building, around a corner, and through an unmarked door. I hurried to catch the door before it closed, but it clicked shut before I got to it and wouldn’t open.

I bit my lip in defeat. Several other park patrons passed by. I turned to storm back to where Samantha waited. But just as I had gotten a few steps away, another park employee appeared around the corner, walked past me without notice, and opened the door with a key card.

I snuck in after him.

The park employee walked down a hallway with tight-knit blue carpet and white walls. The hall joined another in a T, with the option of going left or right. The employee turned left. Everything looked the same and I couldn’t see where Mr. Rich Man had gone. I felt horribly out of place, like a schoolgirl in a boy’s bathroom. If I got caught, I’d be in huge trouble.

But only if I got caught. So I continued down the hall and peeked around the corner. The Oceana employee opened a door on the right, second door in. I heard a rustle of papers and a heavy drawer slam.

“Mr. Linnaeus?” asked the employee.

Linnaeus—that was his name. I leaned back out of sight and listened.

“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” I heard the accent drift down the hall before the door closed, shutting off all the noise. I chanced a peek around the corner; it was empty and quiet. What now? Should I go press my ear against the door to see if I could hear the two men talking inside? What if the employee came out while I was snooping around?

The door opened. I hid back behind the corner.

“… sure we could get it,” said Mr. Linnaeus. A pause. “I don’t care what the stock numbers say. I have something big that’s sure to pull through. Bigger than big.”

He came closer. I opened the nearest door and ducked into a dark room. A thin strip of light from the bottom of the door gave me just enough light to see mop buckets, broom handles, and a vacuum cleaner crowding the space. I hoped no janitors were on their way. After waiting a second, I peeked out. The two men headed to the exit, but they weren’t talking to one another, like I'd thought. Mr. Linnaeus chatted on a cell phone, his hands empty of the clam. The employee, also empty-handed, walked out behind him. Now was my chance.

The seashell—one thing among many I had been afraid of seeing again. And here I was, trespassing to find it. Trespassing again. I took a deep breath to clear my head from the voice of reason telling me to run away and walked out of the broom closet. I crept around the corner and went to stand in front of the second door on the right. On it, a brass plaque read Doran Q. Linnaeus.

I put my hand on the knob and turned it.

I stopped in my tracks, struck by the interior of Linnaeus’s office. Almost the entire floor was made of thick glass—a window into the shark tanks. Below my feet, a small tiger shark drifted through the water with menacing elegance. No wonder this Linnaeus guy didn’t have an office on the millionth floor of a huge, mirrored skyscraper downtown. If it were me, I’d rather stare at sharks in an aquarium than a cityscape any day.

The rest of the office had rich, dark cherry wood furniture: a huge desk, a plush leather office chair, and several enormous bookcases filled with leather-bound books. A filing cabinet stood near the corner, a few branches of a thick, fake topiary peeking out behind it.

I locked the door behind me. Stupid, really—as if it would stop the man who owned the office from coming in. Still, it made me feel better. A little. Where should I start? A quick scan of the shelves made it clear the clam wasn’t out in the open.

I started on the drawers. Some of them wouldn’t budge, and the unlocked ones only held ordinary pens, papers, and other assorted office stationery. No clam.

As I closed the last drawer, the label on a file folder sitting on top of the desk caught my eye: Project Fathom, written in red ink. The