Page 12 of Grave Matter

I run up to them. “Have you seen Amani?”

Lauren frowns. “Who?”

“Amani,” I say, scouring the area. “She has a pink hijab. She wasn’t in the class, but she was on my plane.”

Lauren shakes her head. “No, I haven’t seen anyone like that here. Ready for dinner?”

“I guess,” I say reluctantly. Amani had said I would be late. Maybe she’s already inside the mess hall.

“I’m Justin,” the other guy says as we start walking. “Justin Wong.” He’s cute, tall, with thick black hair and a cocky smile. From the way his zip-up fleece fits him, it seems he works out too. “I did actually play the tuba in high school.”

I laugh. “Maybe Nick got his wires crossed.” I pause. “Hey, does it bother you guys that we aren’t going to be working in the lab that much?”

“Lab work bores me,” Lauren says cheerfully. “My major is forest biology. University of Victoria. I’m more happy to be out in the woods than in the lab.”

“I’m doing marine science,” Justin says. “I’ll be in the floating lab when I’m not in the water.”

I look over at Munawar and his fungi shirt. He smiles and nods at me. “I’m just happy to be here.”

I feel I should be taking an example from him.

We enter the mess hall, which is a lot more elegant than the name implies. It resembles the common room of the main lodge, except there are long wooden tables done up with red checkered placemats and comfy-looking chairs. While the fireplace crackles and burns at one end, at the other is a bustling kitchen, the smell of roast chicken in the air.

I scan the room, but Amani isn’t here.

One table is already full, so we take our seats at the other before the rest of the students file in. The sound of awkward conversation and scraping chairs fills the space as a staff member with braided grey hair comes out of the kitchen doors with two jugs of water and starts filling everyone’s glasses. I keep looking around, expecting Amani to pop up at any moment. Perhaps she’s in the washroom.

A door at the corner of the room beside the hearth opens, and David Chen enters, followed by Everly, Nick, and three people that seem familiar but I don’t recognize: a white man in a tailored suit with shoe-polish black hair, very deep-set, beady eyes, and stiff posture; an Asian woman with glasses and long hair; a brown-skinned woman with layers of necklaces over a lab coat with a big grin, and a Latino man with a shaved head who waves at us. The door almost shuts before Kincaid squeezes his way through, joining the row of people who have gathered in front of the fireplace.

“Good evening, students,” David says, clasping his hands together, “and welcome to your first day at the lodge. I know you’re hungry, probably a little tired too, so we won’t keep you long. I just wanted to introduce the team. Some of them you may know of, some you may not, but by the end of your sixteen weeks, the twelve of you will come to think of us as family.”

Twelve. There were eleven of us at class. Amani hadn’t been there.

I look around, six of us at one table, another six at the other.

Twelve.

There’s a girl at the end with freckles and curly red hair. She wasn’t in class earlier. She’s resting her chin on her hand and watching David speak, enraptured.

I’m about to nudge Lauren and ask who that girl is when David’s voice gets louder. I glance at him, surprised to find him looking right at me. I swear they’re all looking right at me, waiting for me to pay attention.

“May I introduce to you to the CEO and the COO of the Madrona Foundation, Dr. Everly Johnstone and Dr. Michael Peterson,” David says.

A few claps break out. Since I’m being watched, I clap too, even though the motion is causing my head to ache. That’s nothing new when I haven’t eaten for a while. I hope I get something in my stomach before I get really hangry.

Luckily, the appetizer, clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, comes out while Michael is talking.

“This is the seventh year for our grad student program,” he says. He smiles every now and then, but it never reaches his eyes. There’s something cold about his manner, and it’s not just because his eyes are so deep-set, his brow so prominent that he looks perpetually angry. I automatically dislike him. “We started with a couple of students, then made our way up to six, and now a dozen. I’m telling the truth when I say the summer season ismy favorite for this reason. You. You bring life to the lodge, to the land. If you can imagine for us researchers, we’re in isolation for so long. We love our jobs, and you can’t beat the nature here. It’s like living in paradise, in the gaze of God’s creation, while we ourselves create.” He glances at the other doctors, who smile and nod, all except the Asian woman, who is staring at the floor, and Kincaid, who is gazing straight ahead at the back of the room, hands behind his back.

“But you all,” Michael continues, looking at us again, “you all make our lives here a lot more interesting. You’re not just students, you’re not strangers, you are crucial to the work that we do here. You are one of us. So I think I’m not alone when I say, welcome to the family.”

More clapping. If this were Everly’s speech, I’d believe it, but for some reason, I don’t trust a thing that comes out of that man’s mouth.

I go back to my chowder. It’s perfectly rich and salty, with chunks of wild salmon, and listen as the rest of the researchers introduce themselves. The Asian woman is Dr. Janet Wu, very soft-spoken and seemingly ill at ease being in the spotlight, the one who will be teaching us in the lab. Then, the woman with the necklaces, the bubbly Isabel Carvalho from Brazil, the genomics lab manager, and the man with the shaved head is Gabriel Hernandez from Mexico, who is the head of the marine sciences.

Then there’s Kincaid. He keeps it very short. He just offers his name and doesn’t say anything else. A man of few words seems to be the right impression of him.

When they’re done, they walk off, and the roast chicken comes out. Even though I was hungry earlier, I could only eat half my chowder, and I’m not even sure I can eat the chicken.

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