Jazz hands. Atlantis in a nutshell. A tale about a mythical people that reminded me so much of my father, it stung. We hadn’t been enough for him either.
Henrik was still staring at me. Not in judgment of my explanation or my still waggling fingers, but in surprise.
“It’s a myth,” I said, as though that wasn’t obvious. I dropped my hands to my lap. “A morality tale. Be grateful for what you have or the gods will get you.”
My voice came out as bitter as 28B’s coffee, but instead of being put off by it, Henrik adjusted his glasses thoughtfully, leaning in closer. “But people still look for it. Your dad is looking for it.”
“People have been looking for thousands of years, but no one has ever found any definitive proof.”
Atlantis theories were literally all over the map. Point to almost anywhere on the globe and you could bet that at some point some Atlantis hunter had decided it was the only possible location of the lost city. Antarctica, the Sahara desert, the Amazon jungle… In the (tiny) world of Atlantis hunters, these were all viable but hotly contested theories. Expeditions had been sent out. Scientists had been summoned. Even the Nazis had looked for Atlantis. They thought that the Aryan race must have descended from the demigod Atlanteans. I know. Gross.
“So why does your dad think it’s in Santorini?”
“Well…” I was beginning to regret telling Henrik. We were going way too far down the rabbit hole, but this is how it went with Atlantis. The more people heard, the more they wanted to know. I got it. I’d been that way once too. “Santorini is actually one of the main theories of Atlantis because the island has a lot of similarities that match up to the legend. My dad’s been trying to find proof of it for as long as I’ve known him.”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So your dad is an explorer.”
I couldn’t help the laugh/snort. Explorer. That was a much nicer word than I’d heard hurled at people like my dad over the years, and probably more than my dad deserved, but I felt my shoulders soften anyway. I could tell already that Henrik was the sort of person who gave people the benefit of the doubt. My dad had been like that too. Or maybe he still was like that? I didn’t know anymore.
“Something like that,” I managed.
Henrik’s face erupted into a smile. “Well, you don’t have to explain it to me. I have one of those in my life too.”
My eyebrows shot up. “An Atlantis hunter?”
“Worse. He’s an archaeologist. Academia.” He whispered the last word, and I burst out laughing, which made Henrik laugh too. He had a ridiculous, honking kind of laugh, and the man sitting in front of us turned to glare, but Henrik ignored him, so I did too.
I wiped my eyes, enjoying the bubbling feeling of laughter. It had been a while since I’d had such a nothing-to-lose conversation. “That’s what I tell people my dad does, because the truth is too embarrassing.”
Henrik took off his glasses and polished them on the hem of his T-shirt with a flourish. “God bless the seekers. They’re hopeless really, aren’t they? My boyfriend works on the Minoan excavation sites, and it mostly amounts to him sifting through dirt and getting worked up over old chunks of pottery.”
The bubbles in my chest turned to stone. “Did you say Minoan?”
“What?” Henrik asked, registering my surprise. “You’ve heard of them?”
“Uh, yeah.” I knew more about them than any normal American teenager really should. The Minoans were a Bronze Age civilization who once had a strong presence on the Greek islands and who also happened to have a starring role in my dad’s theory. “My dad believes that the Minoans were part of Atlantis.”
“Ohhhhh,” Henrik said. “I see. Advanced island civilization that was completely destroyed by natural forces. According to Hye, the Minoans were really ahead of their time. Do you think… ?”
“Ta-da. You are now officially an Atlantis hunter.” And I was now officially done talking about Atlantis. Time to change the subject. “Is your boyfriend Greek?”
Henrik shook his head. “American. He spends the summers in Santorini and the rest of the year teaching archaeology in Austin, Texas. I’m the director of a special ed school in Boston, but we spend our summers together.”
“How long have you been dating?”
“Three years. We’ve mastered the art of the long-distance relationship.” He said it casually, and I felt hope swell up in me. Dax and I didn’t have to go to the same school to date, did we? People made long-distance relationships work all the time. Maya’s voice rang in my ears. We’ll only be thirty miles apart! Providence, Rhode Island, was three thousand miles from Stanford. But we’d make it work, wouldn’t we?
Henrik glanced pointedly at the pile of images I’d pulled out of the magazines. “So what’s all this?”
“Oh…” I hesitated, then quickly shuffled the pile together. “I collect images. For collages and as reference photographs. I draw and paint and…” My overstuffed envelope looked even more ridiculous than usual, and I quickly shoved it into my backpack. “It’s no big deal.”
“So you’re an artist.”
The zipper on my backpack got stuck, and I wrestled with it, keeping my eyes down. “Sort of. I’m in high school now, but I’m thinking about going to art school. I mean, probably not, but I like to think about it, I guess. I’ll probably end up studying something completely different.”
I sounded about as confident as a snowball on the beach, and when I met Henrik’s eyes, he was smiling. “But you’re only sort of an artist?”
I couldn’t decide if I should nod or shake my head, so I did both. “Yeah?”
“Well, I can’t think of a better place for a sort of artist than Santorini. It’s absurdly beautiful.” He nudged me lightly with his elbow. “And, Liv, I know our relationship only goes back twenty minutes or so, but I already know you’re going to be fine here. More than fine. Santorini is magic. Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it.”
His tone was a mixture of confidence and kindness, and I felt a whisper of something descend over me. Hope? Maybe Henrik was right. Maybe I was going to be fine.
But then my eyes drifted to the window and I realized with a jolt that I was no longer looking at the ocean. I was looking at Santorini. That brown strip of land contained my father. My father. All good feelings evaporated.
Chapter Four
#4. MAP OF SANTORINI
Out of all the items my dad left behind, I think this is the one that gave me the most trouble. The map was the crux of my dad’s belief in the Santorini-as-Atlantis theory, and proof of all the work he’d put into it. Along with being alarmingly accurate as far as modern Santorini goes (I’ve checked it against other maps), it illustrates all the ways that Santorini matches the description in Plato’s writings.
My dad literally spent years marking up all the clues and even overlaying a drawing of what Atlantis had once looked like with “concentric rings of land and sea” all matching up with the way the island system actually looks today. The map felt like my best proof that he would come back: He wouldn’t leave behind his life’s work, would he? Then one day it hit me. People don’t usually leave behind their life’s work, but they also don’t usually leave behind their families.