The Mermaid's Secret (20 page)

The old woman sits back and lights a clove cigarette. Sweet smoke drifts through the room.

“I'm supposed to be the wild sister in this story, right? I'm Ne'Hwas?” I ask. “And Kay was Sipayik.”

“That's for you to decide. You will need to choose which world you belong to.”

“You mean I have to give one up?”

“That's correct.”

“Dude,” Sammy interjects. “Bummer.”

“There's always a catch,” I say. There is no such thing as getting everything you want. Things slip away from you. People slip away. Life is unfair.

“You have been given a very special gift, little fish.”

Little fish.
Nomeha.
That's what my mother calls me. Is it a coincidence, or does she know that? Is it a common Passamaquoddy nickname? “How do you know my mother?”

“I knew her a long time ago.”

“How?” I ask. I feel tears building inside of me. I swallow hard.

“Remember, I don't tell the past or the future. I can only help you see the present.”

“Can you tell me where she presently
is
?” I ask, sounding more sarcastic than I intend to. “Or, at least, can you tell me if she's still on her spirit journey?”

“That's not important right now. Now, you need to focus on the choice before you.”

“Between human and mermaid.”

“Yes.”

I sigh, wishing she could be a little more helpful. “Can you at least tell me more about Ne'Hwas? Why did she choose the river? Didn't she miss her parents? What about her sister? Weren't they devastated to lose her? Wasn't Ne'Hwas lonely out there? Wasn't she scared?” I ask.

“Ne'Hwas was following her nature.”

I pull down my hoodie and scratch my salty scalp. “I don't know what my nature is.”

She blows a long trail of smoke into the air. “Jumping off that waterfall took a great act of courage, and it led Ne'Hwas to her destiny, just like surfing the wave led you to yours. The question before you is whether or not you have the courage to stay. Like Ne'Hwas and Sipayik, you will have one full cycle of the moon to make up your mind. By the next full moon, the world you choose becomes permanent.”

“What if I don't want to be alone.”

“You won't be alone.”

“So there is another mermaid down there?” I ask.

She takes another drag of her cigarette. “A goddess cannot die. Ne'Hwas is out there.”

“What about the sharks? How am I supposed to survive in a world where they're constantly trying to eat me?”

“You have something the sharks don't have. A human brain. And a human heart. Use them.”

The woman stands and walks toward the door. “We're finished now,” she says.

“Finished? But wait a minute.” I stand up, too. There's so much more I need to know. “Tell me what to do. Can I ever come back? Will I ever see my parents and friends if I become a mermaid?”

She laughs deeply. “You are much like your mother. The animal in you is strong.” She leads me and Sammy out of the room, and then out the front door. I walk out of there in a daze.

*   *   *

“What a drag,” Sammy says. We stop at Scoops Ice Cream Shop on the way home. “You only get to be a mermaid 'til the next full moon. Enjoy it while it lasts, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, licking my cherries jubilee with sprinkles on top.

“I mean, you can't really be thinking that you'll be a mermaid forever, can you? It's not like going to Albuquerque. You'd be a fish. Like, forever.”

I lick my cone and ponder this. Why wouldn't I leave once and for all? My sister's dead, my mom's gone, and my dad and I aren't exactly on good terms. I'm in a dead-end job with no sort of future ahead of me. I scrape by, season to season, on handouts from tourists. Why shouldn't I be a mermaid and live my life as a goddess?

“How do mermaids even have sex?” Sammy says. “Doesn't your tail cover everything up? Oh my God, do you think there are some hot mermen out there? That would be so-o-o kinky!”

“Did you think there was something off about the old woman?” I ask.

“Ye-ah! What was up with all the bones? Totally creepy. And she told me I talk too much, which is kind of rude, considering we were there to talk, but I'm used to that.”

“What I mean is, I feel like she knows more than she's letting on.”

A couple of teenagers walk up to the ice cream line. They flirt and goof around in that awkward, self-conscious way that teenagers do.

“She's a seer, dude. She's supposed to know more than she lets on.”

“Sammy, promise me you'll keep it a secret. If anyone knew, they'd try to get there themselves. They could die in the surf at Tutatquin Point, and I'd be responsible. Or worse, they could make it. What if someone else discovered the legend of Ne'Hwas? What would they do? Flag down the six o'clock news? Try to land their own reality TV show?”

“Wicked. You could totally have your own show.” She licks her ice cream and flips back her hair. “Until the next full moon anyway. It'd be kind of short-lived.”

“You can't even tell Spencer,” I say.

“Okay, okay.”

“Pinkie swear.”

Sammy huffs. “What are we? Seven?”

I lick the last of my cherries jubilee and toss the napkin in the trash.

“Do it.”

We do the pinkie swear. Kay was the only other person who knew it. She used to make me give her a pinkie swear whenever she wanted to keep a secret from Mom and Sheriff. Not that there were that many secrets. Kay was the good one; I was the one sneaking out of the house to meet my friends, go night surfing, or skip school.

I was the sister with the wild streak in me. I was like Ne'Hwas.

Sammy has it backwards. I only get to be
human
until the next full moon.

 

S
EVENTEEN

Am I really considering ditching my legs for a tail? Swimming with whales, killing fish with my bare hands, running from great white attacks every day?

Living like a goddess?

Do I follow the path of Sipayik or Ne'Hwas?

According to the tide chart, the next full moon is the same day as Regatta, the big midsummer yacht race. I have ten days to figure out my destiny.

No pressure there.

On Saturday, I'm back on the
Dauntless
and life is back to normal (minus the whole choosing-which-species-I-belong-to dilemma).

Saturdays are my favorite aboard the
Dauntless
. That's when my buddies Nick, Joey, and Mario join us. Harold loses money on these guys because they bring their own sandwiches and don't buy anything in the galley, but I've come to think of them as family.

They're always overdressed in goose down vests and wool caps, as if they're crossing the North Sea in February. They're all over sixty-five, retired, and they've been fishing on Harold's boats for as long as I've worked here.

There's Nick. He spent his life as an electrician and constantly recites his philosophy of life: “Work was invented by people who don't know how to fish.” Nick brings a cooler on board to store his catch, even though coolers are technically prohibited. The years are marked on the lid in Sharpie ink, with a Jesus fish under each year to record the number of times he's won the fishing derby. Nick never takes a break. He jigs all day in the pulpit. Happiness, to him, corresponds directly to the number of fish he's caught.

Then there's Joey, the builder of houses. He spent thirty-five years building homes, from the Shenandoah Valley to New Brunswick. He likes to tell people that his beard is twenty-one years old.

Mario is the leader of the group. He wears dark, wraparound glasses, “Not because I'm mafia, you know, but because of the cataracts.” He has a bulbous nose, a broad white smile. My first conversation with Mario went something like this:

“Hey galley girl, what kind of deodorant do you use?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you wear Ban or Speed Stick?”

“Isn't Speed Stick a man's deodorant?”

“Ban then?”

“Actually, I wear Secret,” I said, feeling like the conversation was getting a little too intimate.

He reached into his gigantic duffle bag and pulled out a half dozen sticks of deodorant. “Sorry, don't have your brand.”

“That's … okay.”

“Here,” he said, and offered me a bottle of French's mustard instead. He was proud of his gift. Mario's a coupon clipper. Goes on about how much he saved on two-liter bottles of orange soda, or how he got a free oven mitt during a promotion the Stop & Shop was running on baked hams. He offers to take me shopping, to show me “how it's done.”

They play poker on the trip out and always give me a five-dollar tip from the group. It's what they can afford, and I accept it with a smile.

They're always concerned about my love life. They give me advice, even though I really don't need to know the inner workings of an electrical circuit or the best days to pick up the
Penny Saver
.

When Matthew keeps popping down to the galley for drinks and snacks, they want to know what's going on with the captain. Even Nick, who's never aware of anything other than the end of his fishing line, thinks that Captain Matthew might have a crush on me.

“You should play hard to get,” Nick advises. “Girls who put out too easy end up with their phone numbers on the walls of the men's urinal.”

“Will do,” I tell him.

“And boys who ride motorcycles are usually trouble. Watch out for them. Find yourself a boy that respects his mother and obeys his father. You know, a good, wholesome boy.”

I think the sum of Nick's relationship advice was gleaned from
Happy Days.

Nevertheless, I find myself watching the cabin door, waiting for Matthew, excited to see him, to have a quick little exchange before he steals away to check the fish finder.

Finally, when he comes down for his third bag of potato chips, he smiles and asks if we're still on for tonight.

“Where are we going?” I ask. Even though
I
was the one who asked him out,
he's
the one taking me out.

“It's a surprise.”

When I'm all alone, chopping onions for the chowder, Mario comes up to the galley and puts a five-pack of flavored ChapStick on the counter for me.

“What's this?” I ask.

“Little something extra for you today, Jess.” He flashes me a big, white smile. “Maybe you can share with the captain later on.” Wink, wink.

*   *   *

That evening, all the anticipation has worked its way through me and I'm a basket case. I think about faking food poisoning, which wouldn't be such a huge stretch, since my stomach is in knots and I feel like hurling any minute.

Sammy can read me like an issue of
People
in the checkout line.

“Don't even think about flaking.” She is attempting to unspaz my hair, which has taken on epic dreadlocks over the course of my mermaid summer.

“It's too weird. Matthew and me on a date. He's like a brother.”

“He
likes
you. What's weird about that? And he's hot. And he's not a drug addict.”

“Maybe you should set the bar a little higher.”

“Are you going to tell him about the whole mermaid thing?”

“Not yet,” I say. It's not the kind of thing you throw out there casually.
Hey, so I'm a fish and I saved a humpback whale and fought off a great white. Could you pass the ketchup?

“Right. Good. Increase your chances for a second date.”

“I'm going to call him. I can't go.”

She grabs my phone out of my hand and stuffs it in her back pocket, then spritzes me with detangler. “When's the last time you went on a date? It's been, like, three years, right? Girl, you must be wound up like a bottle of champagne, ready to pop. You
need
this.”

Granted, I don't have a fraction of the sexual expertise of Sammy, but I don't feel the need to hook up in order to validate my existence. My needs are much more complicated than that.

“Great advice. Where did you hear that … Spencer?”

“I'm serious. You can't keep pushing people away.”

I give her a push.

“It's time,” she says.

I hate it when people say that. But Sammy was like Kay's sister, too. She's got more skin in the game than the rest of the free-advice-giving public.

“Okay, so I can't use Kay as an excuse. What about the fact that I'm a mermaid? Huh? What about that?”

“Minor bump in the road.”

I think about the beating I gave to the lumberjack.
The animal in you is strong,
the seer said. What if I've already lost a part of my human self? I feel different than I did before I caught that barrel. I'm not as in control as I used to be. And I don't know if I can stop what I'm becoming.

“Are you sure this dress isn't too much?” I ask for the millionth time. After much debate, Sammy helped me settle on a hip-hugging crochet dress with a cool surfer girl vibe to it.

She shakes her finger at me. “I don't know how you ended up with a bodacious bod like that from turning into a fish, but you have
got
to flaunt it. Look at you! You are banging!”

“Shut up!”

“You are a bootylicious mama with some junk in the trunk,” she says, and slaps my bootylicious bottom. “Where's he taking you, anyway?”

“Wouldn't say. And what's up with that convention anyway? Why should
he
take
me
out? Why does the man get to be in charge?”

“Poor Matthew.”

*   *   *

Everything is wrong from the start.

Instead of sitting outside and honking his horn like every other guy I've been out with, Matthew actually walks up the stairs to the apartment and knocks.