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No, we can’t leave. Not yet.
“Do you have to be back early? We could explore a little more. I’ve never been to Lansing before.” Sally looks like she’s about to say no, but I reach out and place my hands on hers to stop her from leaving.
Sally thinks for a second and then gives a sigh, indicating she’s giving in.
“There’s a pretty aquarium in town.”
The aquarium smells of salt water, which has a more distinct smell than the lake I swim in every morning. Seeing all the aquatic animals swim around with their schools almost feels nice.
The place is massive, with different training and event rooms. They even have a stingray feeding area.
Since it’s a weekday, the aquarium isn’t packed with people. In the distance, I hear a group of kids learning about the different fish in each habitat.
I casually look at the blue room filled with different little fish tanks and different critters, from seahorses and clownfish all the way to the stingrays that Sally is currently trying to feed.
The room has a feeding machine you can put money into and get little shrimp to feed the stingrays.
“Oh, my god!” Sally gasps for the third time as a ray glides through the water and munches on the dead crustaceans in her hand.
I smile and walk up beside her, putting my hand in the water, barely submerging it. The ray brushes against my hand, expecting food only to find none.
“Sorry, big guy.” I slip my hand over the top of the fish’s body as his slippery self swims away.
The next area we find ourselves in is a round glass hallway surrounded by water. All the fish swim around us as Sally all but presses herself into the glass, watching every single one pass by until a shark swims up to us, followed by a baby shark.
“Aww,” Sally coos, watching the baby swim around the hall. “It’s so cute—even if in, like, a few years, it could kill me.”
“Funny enough, baby sharks are called pups,” I add, standing next to her.
She looks up with a gleam in her eyes before looking at the baby shark again. “It’s as cute as a puppy, so it makes sense.”
I watch the awe in her eyes explode as we ascend some stairs into a wide-open, brightly lit space with a platform over an open tank of water.
Several schools of fish swarm the wide space, each group varying with different shapes, sizes, and colors.
I look at her lips, seeing a more vibrant pink than before. She must have retouched it when in the bathroom earlier.
“You know, most lipsticks actually contain fish scales.”
Her surprised eyes find mine, and she instinctively reaches for her lips, the pink smudging on her finger. She cringes slightly.
“You’ve been a well of knowledge this whole time, but I could do without knowing that I have been kissing fish since I was twelve.”
“Is that when you were adopted?” I ask casually, but Sally stills for a second. I quickly add, “You don’t have to tell me that.”
She weakly nods. “Yeah, but let’s not talk about it. How do you know so much about all the animals here?”
“I wouldn’t say I know that much.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve basically given a fun fact at each of the areas. Like that giant shrimp thing that punches really hard.”
She means a mantis shrimp and how she basically screamed bloody murder when she saw it swim to the minnow and started hitting it to death.
“Then the thing about the seahorses carrying the babies even though they are male.”
Her eyes gleamed when I told her that fact, something mysterious playing behind her hazel eyes.
“Maybe you should be a marine biologist. I mean, you love the water.” She looks over the railing as that shark pup glides along the water with its mother.
