Clare was almost thirteen, her father a fisherman on a boat out of Perth on the Indian Ocean.
Last year, her name had been Clara, after her mother. But her mother had died, and her father wanted a change for himself and for her, and looked at a globe in the library to see where in the world was the opposite of Fall River, Mass. That was almost exactly Perth, which was fine because he could keep doing what he was already good at. In line with the mood of change, she would switch from Clara to Clare. They talked about it on the plane, both believing it would help her fit in better where they were going. As soon as they landed in Sydney, he started calling her Clare, and she went along with it easily. The next day, they were in Perth, and it was as if that had always been her name.
But it hadn’t always been her name, and some of the kids in her new school made sure fitting in wouldn’t be easy. It was a rough start to her first term. Many times she hoped in vain her father would be too tired by the time he got home to notice she’d been crying.
One Saturday, Clare went with her father to the docks, to watch and help and just be there with him while he and the rest of the small crew worked on the boat. Just between the wooden piles and plankways was a small buildup of sand, right up against the steel retaining wall, narrow, colored dark brown-gray, same as the water. She hopped down and started looking at the driftwood and seaweed, the shells and pebbles that had somehow washed up. A small piece of red stuck out from behind an overturned clamshell. She crouched down, moved the shell out of the way, and picked up a red stone. Translucent but somewhat cloudy, smooth and bright, it fit in her hand just right. It might have been a piece of coral, or an ornament that fell off a crown, or scepter, or some other extravagance. Right away, it was her favorite thing about moving here so far. She smiled.
“Clare,” her father called from next to the boat, “look at this!”
She stood up, put the red stone in her pocket, and made her way back to her father. He was looking down at a blue plastic bucket sitting on the dock. She could tell there was something in it he wanted her to see. They both bent down to get closer. What they saw was a small, strange-looking fish with tentacles out front.
“What is it?” asked Clare.
“That’s a cuttlefish,” answered her father. “Do you like it?”
Clare didn’t answer right away. She was studying it.
“We caught it by accident,” her father continued. “I guess that happens in these waters sometimes.”
Still looking at the cuttlefish, Clare thought its color was changing, but she wasn’t sure. She squinted to get a clearer look, and her father noticed.
“They do that,” he said. “Just wait a second…” he trailed off. “There! See?”
In an instant, the cuttlefish went from white with black spots to brown with white spots.
“That’s something, huh?” her father asked. “Do you like it? Do you want to keep it?”
The captain had been watching them and walked over.
“You’ll need a reef tank for that one,” he said. “That is, if you want to keep it.”
“Yes, she wants to keep it,” her father said. “Don’t you,” he continued, with emphasis, “Clare?”
“Yeah, sure,” she answered. The cuttlefish was now dark blue with brown stripes, and its skin had become wrinkled. “It’s really strange-looking.”
“Good, okay,” said the captain. “Tell you what, I’ll give you mine.”
Clare and her father both turned to him, just a bit unsure.
“Reef tank. I’ll give you my reef tank. Yeah, I got one I don’t use anymore. My boy’s, well, not a boy anymore. He’s off to uni, won’t be needing it. If you really want the cuttle, I’ll give you mine.” It was settled.
Over the next weeks, she spent a lot of time in her small room looking at the red stone and watching the cuttlefish, both of which fascinated her. She turned the stone over in her hands, held it to the light, held it to the setting sun, and tried to imagine where it might be from.
She also watched the cuttlefish swim around and up and down in the reef tank, sometimes digging itself a little into the sand. It had a fin that went all around its body like a ribbon, and that’s how it moved around. Every once in a while, it would swim next to the piece of blue coral, or the tiny castle the color of speckled granite, or the toy plastic diver in a yellow suit. As it did, it would change the color of its skin, and even the texture, to match the object.
Most of the time, though, the cuttlefish stayed in place along the bottom of the tank and seemed to be looking at Clare. Its eyes had inscrutable keyhole-shaped pupils, not at all like Clare’s, but she started to believe she could read them as though they were. Sometimes the cuttlefish would swim around to another spot, settle down, then turn to look at her again.
After a while, Clare started to think about school while looking at the cuttlefish. She thought about how the boys hit her extra hard in dodgeball, how the girls rolled their eyes at her shoes and hair, which were different from theirs, and how all of them made fun of the way she talked. She thought about the teacher pulling her aside at the start of recess just a few days ago and telling her it was all a part of learning. She started to cry a little and reached for a tissue from a box on her desk.
After a minute or so, she broke away from those thoughts to look at the red stone again, in her hand the whole time. She noticed the cuttlefish had moved to a spot closer to her, almost right up against the glass of the tank, looking right at her. Its skin was slowly going through a progression of colors and patterns, blue to brown, yellow to white, dots, stripes, sometimes even small circles. Clare became fixated on the display and stopped crying. By the time her father came home, it was dark outside, and the red had left her eyes.
The next day at school, Clare was taking one of the books out of her backpack when she reached into her pocket for the red stone. It wasn’t there. She tried her other pocket, but it wasn’t there either. She was sifting through her bag somewhat frantically when two girls walked over to her desk, one taller than the other. She looked up and braced herself.
“Hi Olivia, hi Isla,” she said to them tentatively.
“Hoi Olivy-yar, hoi Oy-lar,” said the taller one, exaggerating.
Clare looked at them blankly, but the corners of her mouth started to turn down, and her upper lip started to tremble a tiny bit.
“Why are you crying?” the taller one asked. “Are you crying because your ratty Yank shoes? You mean your Yank Dad hasn’t fished you a new pair out of the water yet?”
“Yeah,” added the shorter one, “your Yank Dad.”
The two girls started to giggle.
“Hey, Sandgroper!” came a loud voice from off to the side. “And where’s your Dad?” All three girls turned that way as a new girl walked up to them.
“I said, where’s your Sandgroper Dad, Sandgroper?” She looked with steel in her eyes at the taller girl. The taller and shorter girls stopped giggling, and a look of real fear settled on their faces.
“Out cutting oilweed, I bet, your Sandgroper Dad,” she continued. “What’s he do then? Smoke it?” She was standing inches away from the two girls. She turned to the shorter one. “And what’s your Sandgroper Dad do, Shrimpy? Does he smoke it too? Or does he just watch?”
The two girls turned and scooted away as fast as they could without running. The new girl turned to Clare and held out her hand.
“Hi, I’m Amy.”
Clare looked down at Amy’s hand, held out her own, and shook it. She was a bit stunned. She looked at Amy, who was about her size and had hair pretty much like her own.
“Lose something?” asked Amy.
“What? Oh…” Clare trailed off. She was still stopped mid-search. She put her backpack down on her chair. “Uh, no. I mean, no, it’s nothing.”
“We just moved here from Melbourne,” started Amy again. “Don’t worry about the Sandgropers. They’re idiots.” She saw that Clare didn’t understand. “Don’t know about Sandgropers?” Amy explained, and for a moment, Clare stopped worrying about the red stone. They talked till the bell rang, then all day—during class, between classes, at lunch, and even after school. Amy told Clare all about Melbourne, and Clare told Amy all about Fall River. By the end of the day, they were best friends. For the first time since moving, Clare smiled all the way home.
When she got back to her room, she put her things down and looked for the red stone. She started at her desk, right next to the reef tank. That’s where she put it every night, but it wasn’t there. Then she looked behind it, on the floor, over by the bed, the window, then out by the bathroom, the kitchen, her father’s room, everywhere. She went back to her room and started again. She looked at the cuttlefish and noticed it was turning with her as she crossed the room back and forth. She walked over to the tank, and the cuttlefish stayed in place and looked at her.
“Do you know where it is?” she asked out loud.
There was no answer. She thought about her day, about her new friend, and smiled. The cuttlefish swam in a small circle and went from thick blue and brown stripes to white and yellow stripes and back in rapid succession three or four times. Then it went off to inspect the back of the tank, where it stayed for a while.
Over the next few weeks, Clare blossomed at school. She and Amy talked about everything: boys, music, Perth. Her schoolwork improved, and she started to get good grades again, as she had before in Fall River. Even the Sandgropers stopped making fun of her and started treating her normally. She still thought about the red stone and looked for it every once in a while. But she was less and less worried about it.
One day, when they were doing homework after school, she told Amy about the cuttlefish, how interesting it was, how it changed color and texture, and how it looked at her. Amy agreed it sounded wondrous.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Amy asked.
“I don’t really know,” Clare answered. “I don’t even know how to tell.”
“I bet it’s a girl,” Amy said with confidence. “What’s her name?”
“I don’t really know,” Clare answered again. She hadn’t thought about it before.
On the way home, she decided to think about it. Her mother’s middle name had been “Joia”, and she decided to call the cuttlefish “Joy”.
She got home and went to her room to tell Joy. There, on her desk next to the reef tank, right where she used to leave it at night, was the red stone.
What? she thought. No way. How…
She picked it up and looked at it closely. It still fit in her hand just right, and might have been a piece of coral, or some piece of ornament that fell off a crown, or scepter, or some other extravagance. But it was wet, so she took a tissue from the box on her desk and dried it off, along with the tiny puddle it left on her desk. Still, something else was different now; the red stone was glossy and clear, not smooth and cloudy like before. It was even better.
What? How?
Clare looked at Joy. She noticed she was hovering just above the bottom of the reef tank and listing a bit. She was brown with blue stripes, looking at Clare even though she was tilted. Clare looked closer, and there was a patch of white skin on Joy’s back right quarter. Not just white, but shriveled and protruding, almost like it was torn. The ribbon fin was detached at that spot, too. It waved back and forth as the cuttlefish moved, reacting more to the water than to direct commands.
“Dad!” she shouted as she heard her father open the door when he got home. “Dad, come here quick!”
Her father ran to her room and found Clare sitting with her face right up to the reef tank.
“What is it, Sweetie?” he asked with hurried concern. “Are you okay?”
“I think she’s sick. Look,” Clare said with eyes fixed on Joy. More of her apron fin had become detached and unresponsive, and the white patch had taken over about half her skin. Some of that had started coming off, too. Joy spun slowly and tilted and rolled all the way upside down. She struggled to keep herself righted, and her left eye was shut.
“What’s happening, Dad?” Clare asked, her voice breaking a little.
“Oh, Clare, I think she’s starting to die. That’s how it happens with cuttlefish, I’m afraid.”
“What? What do you mean?” Clare was tearing up.
“Cuttlefish are very intelligent and very engaging. That’s why I wanted you to have one. But they don’t live very long. And they kind of fall apart when they get to the end.”
It was all over less than an hour later, Clare watching and crying, her father next to her. Clare was sure Joy looked at her with her one good eye and the keyhole-shaped pupil, a final time.
That evening, they took a jar with water from the reef tank and what was left of Joy to the dock. They hopped down onto the small sandbar and poured the jar’s contents into the water. Clare had stopped crying and was mostly silent on the way back. When they got home, she said good night to her father and went to sleep.
The next morning, she got up early and made breakfast and coffee for her father. He came into the kitchen holding some papers, sat down at the table, and started to read. Clare was looking out the window. After a long while, she spoke.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I miss Mom.”
Her father looked up from the papers. He reached his hand across the table and held hers.
“Me too, Sweetie,” he said after a moment. “Me too.”
