The Mermaid's Secret (6 page)

Armpits? Water is coming out of my armpits. I reach underneath my arms and feel the feathery folds of gills.
This cannot be happening.
I have gills like a fish. Somehow the gills seem even more disturbing than my tail.
Get a grip. Hold it together.

I wish I could see better, but my eyes can't focus on anything unless it's moving.

A blast of vibrations surges down my spine and I tense up. At the mouth of the cave, the tip of a pectoral fin drifts by, lit up in a thousand dots of ultraviolet light. A heartbeat pumps through the water, telling me it's here. Telling me
it
is actually a
she
.

She is a predator.

I am prey.

A minute goes by. Then another. I can feel the electrical current in the water, but my eyes don't detect any movement. On fingertips, I creep over sandy floor to the opening of the cave.

Suddenly, the shark dives at me. I shimmy backwards into the cave. My head slams against rock.

She thrashes her tail and jams her snout into the cave opening. Her eyes are like pools of oil, her jaws open. Hundreds of gleaming white teeth poke out from pink flesh. I can see down her throat, which is a black, pulsing crater.

She jerks back and forth violently, her motions lighting the water in brilliant neon blue. I'm so close I can see the texture of her skin, the scars cut into her face. Black spots crisscross her skin. The words
ampullae of Lorenzini
flash in my mind. Intro to Marine Biology. Professor Sherwood. Freshman year, Ne'Hwas Community College. “
These special sensing organs found in cartilaginous fish help detect electromagnetic fields as tiny as one millionth of a volt.
” Like Sheriff said, I always was good in biology. Then again, Ne'Hwas Community College isn't exactly Harvard. It's practically like an extra year of high school.

Not to mention, Professor Sherwood never described what to do when you come face-to-face with ampullae of Lorenzini inches above the gaping jaw of a killer shark.

I squeeze farther back into the cave, but I'm not familiar with my new dimensions and my tail juts out into biting range. I pull it back, kicking up a plume of silt. The taste of chalky, ancient sand fills my lungs.

Terror paralyzes me as the shark lashes forward again. I can't imagine a worse way to die than being eaten alive. She must be eighteen feet long and weigh a few thousand pounds. Bigger than the dinghies that ferry sailors out to their moorings. Definitely a great white.

She pushes into the cave, my safe haven getting smaller and smaller with each thrust.

I look around for something, anything, to defend myself. There are tiny shards of coral on the sand. Useless. I try to pry a rock loose from above. Nothing budges. I am defenseless against those glowing white teeth.

She thrashes her tail. I can feel tremors coursing through her body, her raw intent to kill me. I try to think back to everything I've ever read or seen about shark attacks and shark behavior, every episode of
Shark Week
running through my mind.
Don't swim at dusk. Avoid swimming or surfing in colonies of sea lions. Try not to move erratically. Don't play dead.

Nothing prepares me for this situation. Great whites are supposed to strike in open water, from below. They don't burrow into caves. They eat other fish, and birds, and fat sea lions; humans are too bony for their taste. Then again, I'm not human anymore, am I?

Why is this happening to me? How is this even possible? How did I go from eating pancakes and arguing with Sheriff this morning to becoming a mermaid hunted by a great white this afternoon?

Then, I remember. I reach into my hair and feel around until my fingers land on the comb that Sheriff gave me for my birthday. From all the swimming and surfing, my hair has become a tangled nest around it. I yank and twist, ripping out hair, until I free the comb. Five sharp prongs run down from the carved bone handle.

The Passamaquoddy symbol for
strength
.

I clasp the handle of the comb in one hand.
Aim for the eye.
When the shark lurches toward me again, I plunge the prongs into her flesh, missing the eye but puncturing a big cluster of ampullae of Lorenzini.

Immediately, she retreats. I lie still, blind in a cloud of silt. I brace myself for the next attack, my comb positioned. A faint smell enters my skin. Blood in the water. An infinitesimal drop. And then it's gone.

Slowly, the silt drifts down, particle by particle, and the water becomes clear. A fish swims by. A shad, I think. Another minute passes. No shark. I see a few more fish emerge from hiding spots. The vibrations running through my body simmer down.

I lie in the dark cave a few more minutes, willing myself to stay calm, to survive.
Sharks eat mermaids.
This is new information; this is important to know. It's not something Professor Sherwood ever tested us on. Not something they've ever mentioned on
Shark Week
. This is something you have to learn on your own.

Eventually, the vibrations disappear altogether.

By the time I swim out from my cave, the ocean has darkened. Feeling for vibrations around me, smelling with my skin, listening with my tongue, I swim upward.

My head breaks the surface, and I feel a flush of relief.
My world.
The sun is a low, orange luster on the horizon and the sea is rippled in waves.

As my eyes adjust to air again, everything comes into focus—the silhouette of Mount Wabanaki, the gray face of Tutatquin Point, the warm yellow lights from the homes at Nipon Beach. I'm about a mile from shore, by my rough estimate.
I can make it home. I can survive this.

I take a deep breath of air, uncertain what will happen. At first, my lungs feel heavy and sore. Then the water flushes out and air rushes in. I breathe like normal. Like human.

But am I human? Can I change back? What if a boat came up to me right now? Would I terrify them? Would they spear me and roast me up with some lemon and dill? Would they take pictures to sell to
Weekly World News
? Would I be featured alongside the monkey-faced boy or the bat-eared grandmother? Am I a mermaid forever?

What if I showed up at County Hospital with this tail? That wouldn't go well. They once amputated the wrong leg on a diabetic patient. It was such a major hack job, it made national news and everything. What would they do with something like me?

What would my friends say if they saw me like this? Sheriff would have a heart attack. What would Matthew think? “
Maybe you're good bait fish after all, Creary.
”

I lift my tail in front of me. It shimmers in the fading sunlight. Magically, my scales oscillate from blue to green to purple to pink as I twist around. Colors so brilliant, they appear to be made of pure light. My tail sparkles like veins of mica in granite, like cut crystal. Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe I'll wake up any second in my bed, Sammy snoring in the next room.

A seagull squawks overhead. It dives down and plucks a small fish from the water near me. I watch it swallow the fish whole and fly back toward land.

I start giggling, and the giggling takes me off guard, so I start laughing, and then I laugh uncontrollably. I laugh as though I haven't laughed in a hundred years. I laugh as though all the laughter has been trapped inside of me, brewing and percolating, stewing and fermenting, and it's finally ready to be released. I shake with laughter. Hearing myself laugh like this makes me laugh even harder.

It occurs to me that I should be freezing by now, hypothermic even, but I'm not. I'm comfortable in my body, unfazed by the elements.

I look back at Ne'Hwas. Somewhere on the island Sammy is sitting around with a bunch of our friends, waiting for me to walk through the door to yell “Happy Birthday.” I wonder if she's worried about me right now. I wonder if she's called Sheriff to tell him I never returned from surfing. I wonder if Sheriff is driving around the island, lights flashing, looking for my car, a sick, familiar dread in his gut. He'll think the worst. Cops always think the worst.

I need to get back to them.

I lie on my back and start swimming toward land, but it's slow going. Wind whips in my ears as I'm tossed around on the waves. So I slip under the surface. The shock of breathing water is gone now, and I tune in to my senses. There are no vibrations, no danger. I hang motionless in a state of neutral buoyancy—not floating, not sinking—watching faint streaks of sunlight dance around me. It is absolutely silent. Peaceful. Calm. So different from what's above.

Naked, my hair flowing behind me, I dolphin kick and glide through the water, feeling strong and free. A trail of bioluminescence appears in my wake. I stop and swish my hands around, watching the microscopic particles light up with the friction of my movements. I draw figure eights and swirls and happy faces, like trippy, underwater fireworks.

A thought flickers in front of me, so faint I have a hard time catching it: I could stay. Be a mermaid forever. Escape once and for all. I could live out here. Never return. It would be easy to slip away. It would be … wonderful. The thought vanishes and a more familiar voice chimes in:
Don't be stupid
.

I swim to shore, amazed by my speed and stamina. As I get close to land, the sandy bottom slopes upward. I break the surface to get my bearings. Nipon Beach is straight ahead. The sun is almost gone. Luckily, no one's at the beach at this time of night, this early in the season. I swim to shore.

I crawl on my hands up the sand, like some sort of sea monster. After my grace under water, I feel like a lumbering idiot. But I made it. I'm home. I'm safe.

Or am I? Without my legs, an entirely new danger sets in. I'm completely exposed and vulnerable—not to mention topless. Not far off in the distance, the summer sounds of Nipon Beach ring out—laughter and voices on the streets. Cars cruising by. Music blaring from speakers propped in windows.

I look up to the night sky.
Please don't let anyone see me. If someone does see me, please let it be someone who can handle this. Not some high-strung Nipon junkie or a deranged conspiracy theorist with a shotgun in his truck.

My scales have changed color from the incandescent blues, greens, and pinks of the ocean to a dull gray. And they itch like crazy. I wiggle back and forth in the sand to relieve the itch, but that doesn't help, so I reach down to scratch, and scales come off in my hand.

Okay, think
. I can breathe air. That's good. I can wiggle my fingers. Also good. Stripping off layers of tail. Probably not good.

But the itching sensation is killing me, like a thousand fire ants stinging at once. I rub my tail harder against the sand, which helps, but it only relieves the bottom portion. So I roll. I cross my arms against my chest and roll along the beach, the same way Kay and I used to race down the hill in our backyard when the first tufts of grass appeared in spring. I keep rolling until every inch of me is coated in sand and the itching subsides.

All the rolling makes me dizzy. I stop. I feel lighter, different somehow.

When I look down, two familiar legs are pressed into the sand.

 

S
IX

“It's about time,” Sammy says, when I get to the apartment. She slams the rest of her Corona and grabs her purse off the salvaged lobster trap that serves as a coffee table. “We are so-o-o late.”

I shake sand out of my hair. “You're not going to believe what happened,” I say, shivering. I'm wrapped in an old Mexican blanket I found in the trunk of my car. It's itchy and smells like cheese. My body temperature has plummeted since I left the water. Since I returned to warm-blooded.

Sammy squints in the hall mirror and runs pink gloss over her lips. “Oh my God, Jess, wait until you see the gorgeous crop of boys that came off the ferry today. Must be some college graduation trip. Out to sow their wild oats and all that. How old are college boys, anyway? Are they too young for me? Mm-mmm, these boys looked delicious. Like little Jujyfruits. Sweet and yummy.” She primps her hair. “Remember how Mrs. Hopper always handed out Jujyfruits at Halloween and we loved them so much we'd switch costumes and sneak back for a second round and Kay would yell at us and tell us that's bad trick-or-treating etiquette? Do they still make Jujyfruits?” She looks up from her reflection to me. “Why are your lips blue?” Then she really sees me. “Holy shit. Where are your
clothes
?”

I wiggle my bare toes and feel the solid weight of my feet on the floor. I try to imagine a tail in their place. I still feel like I might be dreaming, but seeing Sammy in the flesh, hearing her yammer on about cute boys and Jujyfruits, snaps me back to reality. “Something happened to me,” I say.

She collapses into the couch and pulls a pillow over her lap. “What?”

“I was surfing.” I try to find the words to tell her.
I'm a mermaid. I have a tail and no legs. I breathe through my armpits. I'm an underwater torpedo. I have beautiful scales that shimmer like jewels. I faced off against a great white shark.

“Was it a rip current? Did you lose your board? That happened to Spencer once. He tried to make it sound like no big thing, but I know it shook him.”

“It wasn't a rip.” Can I tell her? Will she believe me? Or will she laugh in my face? Would I tell Kay? Would she believe me? I'm not even sure I believe it myself. The words won't come. My stomach, however, won't shut up. It grumbles. Suddenly I'm aware of how ravenous I am.

In the kitchen, I pull out a box of leftover fish sticks and ziti marinara from the Lobster Corral. Chunks of fried fish crumble to the floor as I shovel fistfuls into my mouth, not even tasting it. My body screams for calories. All that swimming really emptied my tank.

Sammy looks horrified. “Hel-lo. It's
bikini
season.”