Free Mayan December by Brenda Cooper Page A

upon Michael staring fixedly toward the Ball Court. He turned as they approached, laughing, “What took you so long?”
    Showoff.
    “We stopped to admire the view,” Julia said sweetly.
    Michael grunted.
    Her phone vibrated again and Alice turned her back on Michael, no longer caring what he thought. She sat down.
    “Everything’s okay. We were in the water, so didn’t have our phones.” Oriana sounded excited. “We swam with a turtle. It was the most amazing thing. A big old leatherback. They never come in there, not that big, not at Tulum.”
    Alice let her breath out, yet she still felt full of air, almost like she could spread her arms and fly from the pyramid. Nix was okay! She glanced down, looking for Nixie’s light. It wasn’t there. So Tulum was just a dead space in the wireless network. Alice smiled as Oriana continued. “We’re going to dry off and wander through the ruins. We’ll call you later. Don’t worry.”
    “Okay.” She dropped her hand to her side.
    Julia sat on her right and Don Carlo stood beside them, calm and serene. Alice looked below them, the pyramid steps almost as steep as a ladder from this height. Chichén Itzá spread out below her, and for the first time that day, the magic and mystery, the sheer timelessness of the stone world filled her again. Years of her life had been arrowed toward this week. She needed to lighten up and let that in, enjoy it. Quit worrying.
    Michael cleared his throat. “Was that Nixie?”
    “Yes.” She smiled and made a little ceremony of shoving her phone into her pocket. “Let’s go. What are you waiting for?”

CHAPTER 11
    Heat dried the saltwater from Nixie’s back before they even made it off the beach. Nothing, ever, had been so cool as the big turtle. Not even the Mayan man with the quetzal bird. Why was she so lucky?
    “That was . . . wow.” Oriana said. “You are magic. I’ve seen a few leatherbacks before, but never so close in or so . . . so . . . it came to see you!”
    Nixie smiled. “I’ve never seen one before. I wish we’d gotten a picture.”
    “Come on, let me show you the ruins.”
    Nixie blinked at her. Might as well. Nothing could be as great as the turtle, though. Its eyes had been so old, so like her grandfather’s eyes. They gave her that same feeling like she was just perfect exactly like she was, like she would always be perfect. She looked out at the clear, calm water. “No wonder you love to dive.”
    Oriana put a hand on Nixie’s shoulder, and Nixie had to strain to hear her soft voice. “I’ve been diving down here for years, and I’ve never seen a leatherback act that way. It might have been a pet.”
    Nixie screwed her eyes tight against the glare. “It didn’t want to be my pet. It wanted to tell me something, I just know it.”
    “But you don’t know what?”
    “No.” She shrugged Oriana’s hand off and started up the beach. “But let’s go. I want to draw a picture. Maybe we can find a good place to sit so I can draw the ruins. Mom would like that.” She pointed up at the rocky bluffs just above the beach. “Maybe there.”
    “You don’t want to walk around?”
    “Not yet. I want to think about the turtle.”
    As they crossed from sand to grass, they passed five young Federales dressed in black, aliens among the multinational tourists in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts.
    Nixie and Oriana settled together on a wide rock with a view of both the ocean and the ruins. Both pulled on shorts from their packs to protect their swim suits from snags. A tourist path ran between them and the ruins. “Our view’s going to be interrupted,” Oriana said.
    “I don’t care. I want to see the ocean.”
    “Are you waiting for the turtle to come back?’
    Nixie shook her head. “I don’t think it will. Not today. It would have just stayed. But we live in Arizona, and there’s no ocean there.” She dug through her pack and pulled out her journal and her drawing box. “You can use my