They followed Margaret inside, got their hands stamped with an LSU Tigers stamp to show they’d been paid for, and gathered in the lobby. Masking tape marked rows on the carpet for them to stand along. Eureka fell as far back in the crowd as she could.
Construction-paper art projects faded along cinder-block walls. The visible curve of the planetarium reminded Eureka of the Pink Floyd laser-light show she’d seen with Brooks and Cat on the last day of junior year. She’d brought a sack of Dad’s dark-chocolate popcorn, Cat had snuck a bottle of bad wine from her parents’ stash, and Brooks had brought painted domino masks for them to wear. They’d laughed through the entire show, harder than the stoned college kids behind them. It was such a happy memory that it made Eureka want to die.
“A little background.” The docent turned in the direction opposite the planetarium and waved for the students to follow her. They walked through a dimly lit corridor that smelled like glue and Lean Cuisine, then stopped before closed wooden doors. “The artifacts you are about to see come to us from Bodrum, Turkey. Does anyone know where that is?”
Bodrum was a port city in the southwestern corner of the country. Eureka had never been there; it was one of the stops Diana had made after they’d hugged goodbye in the Istanbul airport and Eureka flew home to start school. The postcards Diana had sent from those trips were tinged with a melancholy that made Eureka feel closer to her mother. They were never as happy apart as they were together.
When no one raised a hand, the docent pulled a laminated map from her tote bag and held it over her head. Bodrum was marked with a large red star.
“Thirty years ago,” Margaret said, “divers discovered the Uluburun shipwreck six miles off the coast of Bodrum. The remains y’all will see today are thought to be nearly four thousand years old.” Margaret looked at the students, hoping someone would be impressed.
She opened the wooden doors. Eureka knew the exhibition room wasn’t much bigger than a classroom, so they were going to have to cram themselves in. As they entered the blue hush of the exhibit, Belle Pogue fell in line behind Eureka.
“God had barely made the earth six thousand years ago,” Belle muttered. She was president of the Holy Rollers, a Christian roller-skating club. Eureka imagined God roller-skating through oblivion, passing shipwrecks on his way to the Garden of Eden.
The walls of the exhibition room had been draped in blue netting to suggest the ocean. Someone had glued plastic starfish to form a border near the floor. A boom box played ocean sounds: water burbling, the occasional caw of a seagull.
In the center of the room, a spotlight shone from the ceiling, illuminating the highlight of the exhibition: a reconstructed ship. It resembled some of the rafts people sailed around Cypremort Point. It was built from cedar planks, and its broad hull curved at the bottom, forming a fin-shaped keel. Near the helm, the low protrusion of a galley was capped by a flat, shingled roof. Metal cables held the ship a foot off the floor, so the deck hovered just above Eureka’s head.
As students banked left or right to walk around the ship, Eureka chose left, passing a display of tall, narrow terra-cotta vases and three huge stone anchors speckled with verdigris.
Margaret waved her laminated map, beckoning the students to the other side of the ship, where they found a cross-section of the helm. The interior was open, like a dollhouse. The museum had furnished it to suggest how the ship might have looked before it sank. There were three levels. The lowest was storage—copper ingots, crates of blue glass bottles, more of the long-necked terra-cotta vases nestled upright in beds of straw. In the middle was a row of sleeping pallets, along with bins of grain and plastic food and double-handled drinking vessels. The top story was an open deck edged with a few feet of cedar railing.
For some reason, the museum had dressed scarecrows in togas and stationed them at the helm with an ancient-looking telescope. They gazed out as if the museumgoers were whales among waves. When some of Eureka’s classmates snickered at the seafaring scarecrows, the docent flicked her laminated map to get their attention.
“Over eighteen thousand artifacts were recovered from the shipwreck, and not all of them are recognizable to the modern eye. Take this one.” Margaret held up a color photocopy of a finely carved ram’s head that looked like it had been broken off at the neck. “I see you wondering, Where’s the rest of this little guy’s body?” She paused to eye the students. “In fact, the hollowed neck is intentional. Can anyone guess what his purpose was?”
“A boxing glove,” a boy’s voice called from the back, eliciting new snickers.
“Quite a pugilistic speculation.” Margaret waved her illustration. “In fact, this is a ceremonial wine chalice. Now, doesn’t that make you wonder—”
“Not really,” the same voice called from the back.
Eureka glanced at her teacher, Ms. Kash, who turned sharply toward the voice, then gave a sniff of relieved indignation when she was sure it hadn’t come from one of her students.
“Imagine a future civilization examining some of the artifacts you or I might leave behind,” Margaret continued. “What would the people think of us? How might our brightest innovations—our iPads, solar panels, or credit cards—appear to distant generations?”
“Solar panels are Stone Age compared to what’s been done before.” The same voice from the back rang out again.
Madame Blavatsky had said something similar, minus the obnoxiousness. Eureka rolled her eyes and shifted her weight and didn’t turn around. AP Earth Science student from Ascension back there was clearly trying to impress a girl.
Margaret cleared her throat and pretended her rhetorical questions hadn’t been heckled. “What will our distant descendants make of our society? Will we appear advanced … or provincial? Some of you might be looking at these artifacts, finding them old or outdated. Even, dare I say, boring.”
Kids nodded. More snickering. Eureka couldn’t help but like the old anchors and terra-cotta vases, but the scarecrows should be drowned.
The docent fumbled her hands into a pair of white gloves, the kind Diana had worn when handling artifacts. Then she reached into a box at her feet and produced an ivory carving. It was an actual-sized duck, very detailed. She tilted the duck toward her audience and used her fingers to part its wings, exposing a cleanly hollowed basin inside. “Ta-da—Bronze Age cosmetics case! Note the craftsmanship. Can anyone deny how finely made he is? This was thousands of years ago!”
“What about these Bronze Age shackles over here?” the same voice jeered from the back of the room. Students jostled to get a look at the persistent heckler. Eureka didn’t waste the energy.
“Looks like your fine craftsmen owned slaves,” he continued.
The docent stood on her toes and squinted at the dark back of the room. “This is a guided tour, young man. There’s an order to things. Does anyone have an actual question back there?”
“Modern tyrants are fine craftsmen, too,” the boy continued, amusing himself.
His voice was starting to sound familiar. Eureka turned around. She saw the top of a blond head facing forward while everyone else was looking back. She crept along the edge of the group to get a clearer look.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Kash scolded, eyeing the Ascension faculty disdainfully, as if amazed none of them had quieted the student.
“Yes, be silent, sir, or leave,” Margaret snapped.
Then Eureka saw him. The tall, pale boy in the corner at the edge of the spotlight’s beam, the tips of his wavy blond hair illuminated. His tone and smirk were casual, but his eyes flashed something darker.
Ander was wearing the same pressed white shirt and dark jeans. Everyone was looking at him. He was looking at Eureka.