Free The Girl of the Sea of Cortez by Peter Benchley Page B

blindly, for his son’s throat and wrapped his hand around it and squeezed until the boy lost consciousness and could be taken swiftly to the surface.
    No, recalling the story of that day, Paloma could not imagine why Jo suddenly wanted to dive again, or why suddenly he thought he could dive without panicking. But she said, “All right. If you want.”
    “Good. I want to see all the things you see. Tomorrow?”
    Paloma spoke quickly. “No, not tomorrow. I’ve got … too many things to do.” She had nothing to do, but tomorrowwas too soon. She had to have time to think about what Jo could have in mind, for she could not believe that his request meant only what it said. Too many things about it were unlike him.
    “Soon, then.”
    “Yes. Soon.”
    Jo stood and yawned and said good night and walked through the front door and disappeared into the night. His room was around the corner, connected to the house but separate in that it had its own entrance from outside. That was one of the privileges a boy acquired when, at the age of fourteen, he underwent the elaborate, old-fashioned mystical ritual of becoming a man. As far as Paloma could tell, all the ritual accomplished was to give the boys privileges. It didn’t make them men; it called them men.
    Paloma and her mother shared a corner of the main room of the house. Neither of them had any privacy in their home at any time of the day or night.
    Now Paloma thought how strange it was for Jo to have asked for her help in anything. This was a significant concession: For him to acknowledge that she—a girl—might know more about something worthwhile than he did was remarkable.
    She would have to be careful with Jo, take each step cautiously and try to fit it into an overall picture.
    She was surprised to find that she truly cared about what these changes in Jo might mean, and she realized it was a reflection of her loneliness, of the quiet desperation she had felt as she paddled home from the seamount that afternoon. To get along with Jo, to establish a relationship, perhaps even to make a friend—that would be a fine thing for Paloma, who had never had a friend.

T he last time the relationship between Paloma and Jo had resembled a friendship had been when Paloma was five and Jo was four: Back then, they had played together happily. But soon Jo had found a pack of boys to run with, and Paloma had found herself either taunted or excluded, and she had begun to hate being a girl.
    Then Jobim had taken Jo away, and left Paloma to Miranda, to be raised in Miranda’s image. The two children had less and less—and finally nothing—in common.
    Then had come the break, the reversal from which Jo had not recovered, when Jobim had returned him to Miranda and had taken Paloma with him, to make her the special one.
    Still, for a long time Paloma had believed that it was badto be a girl. For a while, she had dressed like a boy, cut her hair short like a boy’s, learned to laugh at jokes directed at her—as if laughing with the joke, saying, “Yes, isn’t it ridiculous to be a girl? Aren’t I foolish? Well, I won’t be a girl for long, and then we’ll all have a good laugh at what I used to be.”
    Jobim—as a male who had never wanted to be anything else—could not have understood the depth of the anxiety and confusion Paloma was feeling. But he knew generally what was wrong, deduced that it had to come from her being the only girl of her age on the island, and guessed that her feelings about herself and her sex were jumbled, confused.
    So one day Jobim had taken Paloma fishing. She was quite young then and had never before been taken to sea. In fact, she had rarely been in Jobim’s boat, except for holiday excursions to visit the sea-lion rookery and a few trips to La Paz.
    They were alone in the boat, and Paloma was thrilled. She did not ask why she had been excused from her household chores, or where they were going. She was to be on the sea with Papa, and that was