A Mischief of Mermaids (3 page)

“We'll do everything you ask us to,” said Franny.

“And we'll keep our eyes on the skies at all times,” Poppy added. “We promise.”

And that, she thought, was a completely safe pledge to make, because there was absolutely nothing weird to see out here on the lake. Nothing at all.

T
he Malones raced home to pack, then returned to the dock loaded down with duffel bags, telescopes, cameras, DNA testing kits, fishing poles, magnetometers, and a special large box packed with first-aid supplies.

To their delight, they also brought Henry Rivera, their next-door neighbor and now good friend, back with them as well.

“Hey, Franny, do you need some help with that?” Henry asked as Franny wobbled by. She was dragging an oversized suitcase with one hand and holding the handles of two smaller tote bags with the other.

She put the luggage down on the dock with a thump and wiped her forehead. “Thank you, Henry, that's very nice of you,” she said. She turned a scornful look on Will. “It's good to know that
some
boys know how to act like gentlemen.”

Will snickered, and Henry's ears turned scarlet.

“I'm not a gentleman,” he protested. “I'm a, a . . . what's the opposite of a gentleman?”

“A scoundrel, a bounder, a cad?” suggested Poppy.

“Yes, that's what I am,” said Henry. “I'm a cad who happened to notice that Franny's suitcases looked kind of heavy, that's all.”

“That's what I mean,” said Franny. “You saw someone in need and you offered to help. Unlike some people”—she nodded toward Will—“who simply stand by and let the tired and poor struggle on their own.”

“Hey, you pack 'em, you carry 'em,” said Will carelessly. “That's my motto. Why do you need all those suitcases anyway? We're just going to be swimming and kayaking.”

Franny tossed her head so that her long gold curls flashed in the sun. “That's no reason not to look one's best,” she said, surveying Will with a look of distaste. “I'd think you would be ashamed to be seen wearing that outfit.”

“It's not an outfit,” snapped Will. “It's
clothes
.”

He glanced down. His T-shirt told the story of his recent activities (faded ketchup blotches from a food fight with Henry; “Twilight Mist” stains from when he had, under protest, helped Mrs. Malone paint the front porch; dirt and grass stains from an ambitious attempt to build a tunnel from the house to the toolshed; and several rips from the day he climbed the tallest oak tree in the woods). His khaki shorts had also suffered in these adventures, plus he had now worn them for a record seven days in a row.

“And anyway,” he said, “what's wrong with what I'm wearing?”

She raised one eyebrow. “If I didn't know any better, I'd think you just came back from five months in the wilderness.”

“Awesome,” he said stoutly. “That's exactly the look I was going for.”

Franny rolled her eyes. “Just promise you'll stay far away from me. I'd like to make some new friends, thank you very much, and I don't want them scared off by my little brother.”

“No problem,” said Will. “I'll get started right now. Come on, Henry. Let's move far, far away and get the magnetometer out of the car.”

As the boys moved away, Poppy asked Franny, “Who do you think you're going to meet in the middle of the lake?”

As if in answer to her question, a boy with white-blond hair sped past on a Jet Ski, leaving a ripple of water in his wake. He was moving fast, but he still managed to flash a smile in their direction. Franny tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled back.

“Oh,” said Poppy. “Right.”

Franny tossed her head. “You don't need to sneer,” she said. “What's wrong with making new friends?”

Nothing, Poppy thought. The problem is that we never stay anywhere long enough for them to become
old
friends.

“We don't need to make any new friends,” said Poppy. “We have Henry.”

“Henry is nice,” Franny admitted, “but he's just one person.”

“One is enough,” said Poppy. “If it's the right person.”

“That's what you think now,” Franny said darkly. “But you feel differently when you get to be my age.”

She put on a quoting voice. “A young person needs at least three close friends who will offer support and a listening ear in order to make it through the stresses and traumas of middle school.” She paused long enough to give Poppy a significant look. “And I'm going to be in a brand-new middle school! That means I'll have twice the trauma! I'll probably need a half dozen good friends just to make it to high school without suffering serious psychological damage!”

Mrs. Malone, clutching a telescope and tripod in her arms, staggered past just in time to hear the end of this.

“You're not still going on about middle school trauma, are you?” said Mrs. Malone, giving her a harassed look. “Honestly, Franny, going from sixth to seventh grade is not quite the same as climbing Qomolangma in search of Yeti. Poppy, where did you put the night-vision goggles? I can't find them anywhere.”

“They're in the trunk of the car,” said Poppy. “Hold on, I'll get them.”

As she ran down the gangplank, she passed Mr. Malone, who was carrying a stack of books about the Roswell UFO crash.

“Watch out!” gasped Mr. Malone, whose armful of books tilted precariously as Poppy ran past.

“I can take some of those, Mr. Malone,” said Henry.

“That's all right, I've got it,” gasped Mr. Malone. The top book slipped. Mr. Malone reached up to grab it, which disturbed the balance of the whole pile. A half dozen books began tilting, as if in slow motion.

“Drat!” said Mr. Malone as he backpedaled, trying to keep the books balanced. At the last possible moment, just as he was about to step backward off the gangplank and fall into the lake, Henry neatly lifted the top of the stack from Mr. Malone's arms, allowing Mr. Malone to regain his own balance.

“Thank you, Henry,” he gasped. “Of course, I had everything under control, but still . . . thank you.”

“Would you cut it out, Henry?” said Will from the side of his mouth. “You're going to make me look bad.”

Once they got all their gear stowed and clothes put away, the Malones gathered on the deck.

“What should we do first?” asked Will. “Go swimming? Try the waterslide? Take out the kayaks?”

“The answer is none of the above,” said Mr. Malone. “Not until you all help me put this up on the outside of the cabin.”

Poppy, Will, and Franny turned to see Mr. Malone unrolling a long, unwieldy canvas that he had carted from home.

“Don't just stand there gaping!” he called out. “Come over here and lend a hand.”

Dragging their feet, they walked over to where the canvas, now unrolled, was covering a large section of the deck.

The dark blue canvas was twenty feet square and covered with line drawings of aliens. Some had large heads and narrow eyes, some were squat and dumpy, some were tall and thin, some had eight long, thin fingers on each hand and some had tentacles. Various types of spacecraft—flying saucers, strange trapezoid shapes and what looked like dirigibles—were drawn around the border.

“What,” asked Franny, “is
that
?”

“A present from Wilbur,” said Mr. Malone. He stood up, beads of sweat rolling down his face. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt, blinking nearsightedly. “It arrived yesterday from Berlin.”

“That explains a lot,” muttered Will.

Professor Wilbur Sutterwaite had spent his long and controversial career studying UFOs. Mr. Malone had taken a seminar course from the professor as part of his junior year abroad and they had stayed in touch ever since, exchanging chatty letters filled with news about their families, crop circles, career moves, mysterious ship disappearances, travel plans, and famous unsolved UFO sightings.

“Of course, we should have known,” said Will. “Is he still collecting stories about those green glowing spheres that keep floating around the sky in Argentina?”

Mrs. Malone clucked her tongue in exasperation. “I do wish you children would pay a little more attention to dinner table conversation, instead of making mashed potato forts and pelting them with peas,” she said. “I know I told you all about how he had to flee South America after that unfortunate misunderstanding—”

“You mean when he hiked up a mountain and found that little cave?” asked Poppy.

“The cave that he camped out in?” added Will. “The one that turned out to be a sacred temple of the moon?”

“And then had to run back down the mountain to escape from an angry mob?” finished Franny.

“That unfortunate misunderstanding?” asked Poppy, driving the point home.

“All right,” Mrs. Malone said testily. “I see I was wrong. Apparently, you
do
pay attention. Although I don't see what you all think is so funny. The poor man was a nervous wreck for six months.”

“At any rate, he's moved on,” said Mr. Malone. “He's investigating crop circles now. He's come up with some very interesting data. Did you know that electronic equipment often fails when it's taken near a crop circle?”

“Maybe that explains why none of the people who claim they've seen a crop circle appear right before their eyes have actually managed to film it,” murmured Poppy.

“Eyewitness accounts are just as good,” said Mr. Malone. “In fact, that was Wilbur's inspiration for this poster. He hired a police sketch artist to take all those descriptions of aliens and their spacecraft and make drawings of them. And this is the result!”

He waved a hand proudly at the poster.

Franny stared at it in disgust. “That is probably the single most uncool thing I have ever seen,” she said. “And that is saying a lot, considering that I have spent the first thirteen years of my life in this family. Please please
please
don't tell me you're actually going to hang that up. Everybody who comes within a hundred yards of our boat will see it!”

“Exactly! That was your father's idea, and it was an absolute brainstorm,” said Mrs. Malone happily. “You see, the more people who notice the poster, the more awareness we will raise about the possibility of alien visitations. And the more people who are watching for aliens, the more sightings we're likely to get.”

“Don't worry,” Poppy said to Franny. “At least nobody will be able to see it at night.”

“But that's the best part,” said Mrs. Malone with delight. “It was painted with phosphorescent paint! That means—”

“It glows in the dark,” Poppy said to Franny.

Franny sighed. “Of course it does.”

Half an hour later, they had finally hung the poster. Poppy held up one corner and Henry the other, while Mrs. Malone and Will stood back saying things like, “It's tilted a little to the left . . . try straightening it a bit . . . that's it . . . no, now it's tilting to the right. . . .” and Mr. Malone managed to hit his thumb a half dozen times while trying to hammer nails into the wood. Everybody had lost their tempers at least once but, in the end, the deed was done.

Then Mrs. Malone pulled out her file of local UFO sightings and suggested that they cruise over to where a UFO had most recently been seen and drop anchor for the night. Mr. Malone stepped to the bridge and confidently flipped a switch to start the engine.

The engine turned over. He smiled and put the engine in gear—and then it sputtered and died.

He tried again.

Again, the engine turned over for a few seconds, then gasped to a halt.

“Darling, perhaps I should try,” suggested Mrs. Malone.

“No, no, I've got this,” said Mr. Malone, waving her off. “There's a certain knack to starting these things up, you know.”

Frowning, he fiddled with the key. As he did so, another houseboat chugged past them, stopping a few yards away. A girl about Franny's age stood at the railing, while a boy who looked a little older sat in a deck chair. They were clearly brother and sister—both had blond hair so pale that it looked almost white. The girl was examining the Malones with cheerful interest, but the boy stared off into the distance as if he hadn't even noticed they were there.

A man wearing white shorts and a blue-flowered Hawaiian shirt came out of the cabin and called out, “Ahoy there! Is this your first time on the water?”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Malone irritably. “In fact, I once steered a longboat canoe down a Bolivian river in search of El Ucumar—”

He tried again. The engine stalled.

His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Of course, that was some time ago,” he admitted.

“And remember, dear, we had six young men helping us row,” said Mrs. Malone. She waved cheerfully at the man. “We'd be glad of some help!”

The man stepped from his boat to the Malones' and introduced himself. “Charley Cameron,” he said. “And this is my daughter, Ashley, and my son, Colt.”

“Hi!” Ashley called out with a cheerful smile, but Colt merely waved a lazy hello from where he was sitting in a deck chair, then closed his eyes as if he were about to take a nap.

Ashley rolled her eyes. “
Colt
is too good to come over and talk to us,” she said. “
Colt
is going to be a freshman in high school this fall. And
Colt
”—she grinned and jumped across the gap between the two boats—“doesn't lower himself by talking to people who are only going to be in seventh grade.”

“Me, too!” Franny said with delight. “I mean, I'll be in the seventh grade, too.”

“Which school?”

“McCallum.”

“That's where I'm going in the fall!”

And with that, Franny and Ashley retreated to the stern of the boat to huddle, their heads together, and talk about the mysteries that awaited them in middle school.