The Mermaid's Secret (8 page)

“Don't let him get to you,” Matthew says. He frowns in a way that makes me think
he
thinks I have every right to give Trip Sinclair a piece of my tequila-soaked mind.

I look up at the stars and almost fall over. “I'm going back in,” I say.

“That's a bad idea.”

“He killed her, Matthew. Trip Sinclair. Rich. Perfect. Trip Sinclair. Drunk at the wheel. That's manslaughter. That's leaving the scene of an accident. That's prison time for anyone else. Why does he just get to walk away?” The ocean is near. I smell the salt air on the wind.

“We've got work tomorrow. First thing. You need some sleep.”

“Motherfucking Trip Sinclair.”

“Calm down, killer. You need to let go and get on with your life. I know what I'm talking about here.”

A memory of Trip Sinclair standing in front of the police station with his lawyer, Grant le Carre, by his side flashes before me. Reporters asked questions: “
What was your relationship with the deceased?
” “
Had you been drinking the night of the accident?
” “
Did you attempt to resuscitate the victim?
” “
Why did it take you five hours to report the accident?
” Trip read a short statement, but his lawyer did all the talking. There was no hint of an apology in the statement. Not a whiff of culpability. Trip Sinclair had a wall of protection around him. And a smile hidden beneath the charade of condolence.

“It ruined us. All of us. My mom. My dad. Me.”

Matthew puts his arm around me.

“I have something for you, Creary. Come here.” We go to his pickup, my flip-flops dragging through the gravel.

I lean against the truck to stabilize myself. “Cops gave up too easy. My father gave up too easy. I'm not going to let my sister down. She deserves better.”

Matthew pulls something out of his truck and hands it to me. “Happy Birthday.”

It's wrapped in newsprint. A bow of twine tied on top. “Whyd'ya get me a prezent?” My tongue and my lips are on different speeds.

“It's nothing.”

I unwrap it. “I'z a picture frame.”

“Turn it over, Einstein.”

Inside is a newspaper clipping of the day I won the Northeast Regional Surfing Championship in New Jersey. It's a picture of me standing on the winner's podium after the competition, holding a trophy high over my head. I have a look of pure exhilaration on my face. My eyes are turned up at the trophy and I'm letting out a terrific cheer. I was seventeen. It was the best day of my life.

“Read the caption,” Matthew says.

I squint at it, try to read, but the Long Island Iced Tea and tequila aren't helping.

Matthew takes it out of my hands. “The title is ‘All-In.'” He reads: “Jess Creary, of Ne'Hwas Island, swept the junior girls' amateur surfing competition at Beach Haven, NJ. Big waves and rough conditions narrowed the field of talented young surfers. Creary posted a perfect ten-point ride, taking the waves with unmatched determination. ‘It's a dream come true,' Creary said of her first career win. When asked how she gets herself mentally prepared for tackling such rough conditions she said, ‘I don't overthink it. As soon as I enter the water, I'm all-in.'”

I take the frame and look at the picture of my seventeen-year-old self, marveling at how dynamic and vibrant I seem, how completely content in the world. When did I lose that? When did my life become such a shit storm of disappointment?

“I know it's been a rough couple of years,” Matthew says. “But that girl is still inside of you. You've just got to find her.”

I hug him, and I feel tiny against his giant fisherman body, and I feel like I could spill my guts to him. Like I could tell him my deepest secret.

 

S
EVEN

These are the things I remember about last night:

1. Matthew drove me home.

2. I puked once on the side of the road.

3. I tried to get in my car and drive back to the Rongo to give Trip Sinclair what was coming to him.

4. Matthew stopped me (thank God!).

5. I told Matthew I was a mermaid.

After that, nothing.

I'm still dressed in my clothes from last night, and my tongue feels like cotton balls and kitty litter. My birthday present—the framed clipping of my junior surfing championship—is on my nightstand next to the alarm clock, which Matthew must have set for me so I'd wake up in time for work.

I rub my aching head and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair's stuck to the side of my face. Puffy skin lines my eyes. I have that sick feeling that I did or said something stupid in my drunken state last night. Something embarrassing. Something I can't quite remember, but that other people (namely Matthew) probably can. I vaguely remember going off on a tirade about what assholes great white sharks can be.

Ugh. I will never drink again.

I down a warm bottle of Gatorade and get dressed for work.

As I pull on my Slack Tide shirt and a pair of clean underwear, I look around for my other birthday present—the comb of whalebone that Sheriff gave me. I want to hold it in my hands. If it's here, then I didn't use it to stab the shark, which would confirm that I definitely imagined the whole mermaid thing and I'm officially losing my mind. On the other hand, if it's not here then maybe it is lying at the bottom of a cave in the ocean and I really did become a mermaid, in which case I'm officially losing my mind. Either way, I'm losing my marbles.

I dig through drawers, look underneath piles of bras and bathing suits on the floor. But I can't find it.

In the light of day, nothing makes sense. Did I really become a mermaid or was I dreaming? Sometimes dreams feel so real that it's impossible to tell the difference. Did I get a concussion, like Sammy thinks? I feel around my head for lumps. It makes me sick to think I would use a concussion to explain what happened.

Trip Sinclair blamed his behavior of the night Kay died on a concussion. His lawyer actually convinced a judge that Trip couldn't be held responsible for his actions (or lack thereof) in the hours after the accident because he had banged his head and didn't know what he was doing.
Obviously,
the lawyer argued, Trip was impaired by an injury because he would have jumped in to try and save Kay, being an experienced sailor and all. At the very least, he would have called for help instead of returning home and waiting five hours before picking up a phone.

Trip had suffered both physically and mentally from the accident, the lawyer claimed, and that was supposed to explain everything.

*   *   *

It's high tide when I get to the boardwalk, lobster and scallop boats head out for the day. Restaurants are setting up for the breakfast crowd. My head throbs, the Long Island Iced Tea and tequila working their dark magic on the inside of my skull. Walking feels good and clears my head a little, which isn't good, because now all I can think about is how bonkers I must have sounded telling Matthew about sharks and mermaids.

He probably thought it was the tequila talking. The girl who spends so much time in the water she's part mermaid.
How cute.
There are cheesy T-shirts all over Spinnaker Street to that effect: “You know you're a mermaid if you drink like a fish and seas the day.” “Keep calm and swim on.”

The hull of the
Dauntless
shimmers like liquid where it catches the reflection of the rising sun on the water.

A handful of customers are already lined up at the shop to buy tickets for today's trip. Harold hands me the keys to the mess locker as he rings up a party of four guys on a bachelor weekend. Beneath their ball caps and scruff, they look like they partied as hard last night as I did. Chunk blowers, for sure.

I get a cart from the supply shed and load it up with cases of beer, soda, and water. Since this is the first trip of the season, I'll have to stock the galley with nonperishables like ketchup and candy bars, along with the daily ration of frozen burger patties, hot dogs, cheese, milk, and bacon.

When I get to the end of the pier, Ian pulls off his heavy rubber gloves and helps load food into the boat. Tony stands at the fillet table, cutting bait.

“Gonna be a good day, people. Let's make some money,” Tony says in an excessively cheery voice. If he's hungover from last night, he doesn't let it show. He's here to make money, and he's not going to let a little headache cost him anything in tips.

“How are you not hungover?” I ask.

“Guys can hold their liquor better than chicks. Everyone knows that,” Tony says.

Stefan is setting up tackle and stowing burlap bags for the customers to store their fish. “Norwegians don't get hungover,” he says proudly.

Ian pounds his chest. “We are raised on aquavit and breast milk from when we are babies.” The brothers high-five each other as I step onto the boat.

“Well, I'll be in the galley mainlining Advil if anyone needs me,” I say.

“It was a good party,” Tony says.

I wait for him to give me the business, to tell me what a fool I made of myself, but luckily I had enough sense not to do anything too stupid in front of Tony last night. I'd never hear the end of it.

“Hey, bring me a coffee, would you?” he says, chopping the head off a bait fish.

“Me too?” Ian says. “Black and sweet, please, just how I like my women.”

“Coming right up,” I say dryly.

Like the lineup at Nipon Beach, the universe of fishing boat charters on Ne'Hwas is a macho sport. Deep-sea fishing is very physical, and you have to be tough to make out here. Guys get injured all the time. They catch hooks in the hand and gaffs in the arms, and it takes a lot of strength to pull an anchor from two hundred feet below to the surface. Since Harold refuses to hire girls as deckhands, we get the lowly job of serving coffee and frying burgers. It's appallingly sexist and unfair, but I do it because I'd rather be here than stuck on land waiting tables or cleaning hotel rooms.

“How you feeling, Creary?” Matthew asks, popping his head into the galley.

“Like a million bucks,” I say. I pour the ground coffee into the machine.

He pulls his sunglasses down and looks at me, and I feel like my insides might flutter away.

“Ready to go toe-to-toe with some great whites today?” he says, a smirk on his lips.

“So … I guess I did say that?”

“You had quite a story to tell.”

“Did I embarrass myself?”

“Not at all. But I would like to learn more about your superhuman powers. Apparently you can swim like a rocket under water. You know, like a mermaid.” He laughs.

I rub my temples. “Ugh. You must think I'm nuts.”

“I've always thought that.”

I think back to Matthew at Kay's funeral. I remember the moment the casket was lowered into the ground and I was trying so hard not to cry, and he knew I was trying. He held me up straight and told me to stand tall, and as soon as everyone turned to get back in the cars, I buried my face in his chest and cried for the first time. I remember thinking how crisp his shirt was, and that I was ruining it with my snot and tears. And I knew he wouldn't care, that he would offer up a thousand clean shirts for me.

“Can we just pretend I didn't make a fool of myself last night?”

“Hey, don't worry about it. You had a few drinks. You said some crazy stuff. Been there, done that.”

He steps into the galley and grabs a Coke out of the fridge. It's a small gesture, but it means a lot to me. All the other guys would ask me to get it for them, instead of taking the two extra steps themselves. I want to talk to him some more, thank him for my present, ask him if he's ever had a dream so realistic that it makes him question his sanity. But now the passengers are entering the cabin and they all need something from me. They want to know where they should stow their bags, how long will it take to get to the fishing site, how much for a cup of coffee, where can they buy a Slack Tide angler's hat.

Matthew gives me a salute and heads up to the wheelhouse.

*   *   *

The day is already hot, but as we make our way into the bay, a cool breeze sets in. One of the guys from the bachelor party walks up to the galley and orders a beer as I fry a slab of bacon.

“Sorry. Can't serve you 'til noon,” I say.

“Aren't we in international waters or something?”

“Not quite.”

The guy leans on the counter, puts on his best frat guy smile. “Ah, come one. Just a beer? Something to settle my stomach. I'm feeling a little queasy.” He holds a twenty-dollar bill and winks at me. “You can bend the rules, right?”

“Sorry,” I say, and go to work filling the salt and pepper shakers. As he walks away, I give him some friendly advice. “Keep your eyes on the horizon. It helps. And definitely stay out of the main cabin.”

His face is already turning green and his eyes are glassy. He turns and walks away, but I can tell by the way he's moving that he's not going to make it through this trip in one piece. He teeters to the rail outside and leans against it, cradling his head in his arms.

Five minutes later, frat boy runs into the cabin, covering his mouth.

“Out!”
I scream, but it's too late. He hurls all over the floor.

I get the mop and bucket and clean up frat boy's filth, which only makes me want to hurl myself. His friends are laughing hysterically, oblivious to the fact that they've only made my job harder.

“You think it's so funny? Get in here and clean it up yourself, assholes,” I bark at them.

They cast their eyes away from me and move farther down the port side. I know I should be nicer to the customers. Service with a smile and all that. I can expect to be shortchanged in the tip jar from those guys today, but I can't help myself. I hate being at the mercy of others, of having to serve.