Page 11 of Natural Selection

Sophia lifts her mask and slowly scissors her flippers. She won’t look down again; she no longer wants to know what’s lurking beneath her. She swims in the direction of the panga; the choppy waves keep slapping her, and she swallows mouthfuls of water. Natural selection, she thinks. The species with the most favorable traits are the ones who produce the most offspring, and then those traits carry on. Emmeline has three boys; Ariadne is having twins. Sophia has no one. JP is hiding something from her.

Finally, Sophia gets close enough to the boat to call out to Luis Antonio. He jumps up at the sound of her voice; he’s holding a fishing line in one hand. “La reina?”

Sophia kicks toward the boat, her teeth chattering. She does not feel like a queen at the moment. Luis Antonio helps her up the ladder.

“Okay?” he asks.

The boat lurches under her feet as she scrambles to wrap herself in a towel. “Shark,” she says. She claps her hands in imitation of a giant, munching mouth.

“El tiburón,” he says. He chuckles and goes back to his fishing. The sun has completely disappeared behind a blanket of thick gray clouds. From here, Sophia can see why the island is called Sombrero Chino: it’s conical, an upside-down funnel, with no vegetation; it’s just a craggy chunk of brown volcanic rock, a stepping stone in the Pacific. Sophia’s throat burns from the water, and her fingernails are light blue. But she’s fine now, even though she knows there will be nothing on her phone from JP when she gets back.

Survival of the fittest, she thinks.

That night at dinner, Sophia sits with Wanda and Henry. Dolores and Hugh sit by themselves at the third table, their heads bent toward each other, their voices low.

“I manifested that,” Wanda says.

For their final day, the Dorado heads back to Santa Cruz so they can search for the magnificent frigate bird. It’s a black fork-tailed bird that glides high in the thermals. The male has a red pouch that inflates when he’s trying to attract a mate. Miguel showed the group a picture of the inflated pouch: the frigate bird’s chest becomes stretched and translucent like a balloon. But after two hours of hiking, all they’ve seen are frigate birds on the ground with their pouches hanging as limp and lifeless as old nylon stockings.

“Impotent frigate birds,” Henry says.

Sophia has brought along JP’s camera. In less than forty-eight hours, she’ll be back in New York City. A part of her holds out hope that everything with JP will still be fine, and if that’s the case, she wants to be able to show him what he missed.

After the hike, the boat cruises to Puerto Ayora to drop Luis Antonio off with his family. When he leaves, he squeezes Sophia’s hand and says, “Adiós, la reina.”

Sophia holds his hand in both of hers. She wants to thank him for calling her “queen”; it was a little thing, but it mattered. “Muchas gracias,” she says, because those are the only words she has at her disposal. Luis Antonio hitches his bag over his shoulder and waves to the group; then he and Miguel climb into the panga and speed toward shore.

It’s the first of the goodbyes. Sophia can’t believe it, but her heart breaks a little.

For the final dinner, they have lobsters—scarlet shelled and steaming—and everyone cheers. Sophia recalls seeing a picture of lobsters when she and JP were perusing the Dorado website. The lobsters had made the boat seem fancier than it, perhaps, was, but when Sophia looks around at DeAndre and Grant, Tucker and Kelly, Wanda and Henry, and the newest pair—Dolores and Hugh—she’s glad she didn’t end up on some bigger, fancier boat. The species that survives, she thinks, is not the strongest nor the most intelligent. It’s the one that adapts.

“Home tomorrow,” Henry says.

“We’ll have to exchange emails so you can send us the link to the Travel + Leisure article when it comes out,” Wanda says. She pulls snowy lobster meat from the shell. “Just think how much you have to tell your husband.”

It’s another chance for Sophia to come clean, probably the last one she’s going to get. There is no article. Also, JP isn’t my husband. At this point, he may not even be my boyfriend. Wanda would be shocked; she might even feel betrayed—and so, it feels like a kindness to just bolster the lie.

“I’m not sure where I’ll even begin,” Sophia says.

After dinner, Miguel taps his water glass with a spoon. “I just want to say, you have been a fantastic group. And so, tonight, we have a special treat.” He disappears into the galley and returns holding a frosted sheet cake lit by dozens of pink candles. He sets the cake down in front of Henry and Wanda. “In honor of forty-six years together.” The group bursts into an off-key rendition of the “happy anniversary” song. Wanda dabs her napkin behind the lenses of her glasses. She and Henry hold hands across the table and somehow blow out all the candles in the first try. Sophia wonders if it’s possible to miss people she has only known for a week. She thinks she might.

After cake, Miguel corrals them all onto the stern for a group picture. DeAndre pulls Sophia between himself and Grant, wrapping an arm around her; Dolores wipes icing out of Hugh’s mustache. They all cheese, and Miguel takes a million pictures. Tucker makes a joke about how they are the “rare second-week-of-March Dorado species.”

As the little moment is breaking up, Kelly hands Sophia a shopping bag. “I wanted to thank you for switching rooms with us,” she says.

“You didn’t have to . . .” Sophia reaches into the bag and pulls out a stuffed animal: the blue-footed booby.

When Sophia gets back down to her cabin, she checks her phone—and blinks. There’s a missed call from JP.

Suddenly all her unexpectedly warm and fuzzy feelings about this trip are replaced by a heart-pounding-in-her-ears sense of . . . panic? Dread? Anticipation? The thing she has been yearning for has now happened . . . and yet, she’s afraid to call him back.

She tells herself she’s being silly. She has waited long enough to know what’s going on. She clicks on his number, and her call is answered right away.

“Hello, Sophia.”

It’s a woman’s voice.

“Hello?” Sophia says. “Who’s this?”

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