And Then I Turned Into a Mermaid

by Laura Kirkpatrick

  Do penguins bark? Molly did not know, and could not think because she was too busy transforming into a mermaid in front of hundreds of people.

  She had to think fast – and find some cover. There was a short line of refreshment and gifts kiosks in front of the enclosure fence, with a tight gap behind them. Maybe if she could hurl herself behind there . . .

  But then she’d be even closer to the lake in the penguin enclosure, and transforming back into a human being would be impossible.

  Her jeans began to disappear. Her legs cemented together.

  The kiosk solution wasn’t perfect, but it was her only option. Mere seconds before the scales appeared and her tail materialised, Molly dived behind the T-shirt stall with an oooft.

  Panting hard, she struggled to turn herself over so she was facing the sky, not the ground. She was wedged in there pretty snugly. The penguins barked mockingly. She found herself getting irrationally annoyed with them.

  At least she was shielded from view, and she didn’t think anyone had seen her clumsy leap.

  Why me? Molly thought miserably. Just when she was starting to come to terms with being an unbelievable freak, something like this happened and made her furious all over again.

  It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t she just enjoy a trip to the zoo like a normal thirteen-year-old – without having to sneak out of a stupid chip shop, and worry about turning into a mermaid along the way?

  Staring at the sky in resignation, she fought the urge to cry. Frustration always made her feel like this. She could handle sadness or anger without bursting into tears, but the second something frustrated her, her tear ducts became the Niagara Falls.

  The penguin parade was about to start. The trainers herded the peculiar little birds into a neat row at the entrance, like when teachers make primary school kids pair up and hold hands to walk anywhere.

  What was she going to do? She’d have to wait here until the zoo had emptied. Ada and her family would either be worried sick or incredibly irritated.

  Fishing her phone out of her bag, she fired off a text to Ada.

  Stuck in the loos. Must’ve eaten some bad chips. Will be back once the bum wees have stopped.

  Hopefully Ada would be so uncomfortable over the phrase ‘bum wees’ that she wouldn’t come looking for her.

  A ripple of cheers erupted as the penguins began their parade around the zoo circuit. Elated laughter from toddlers mingled with delighted squeals from teenagers and rowdy clapping from parents. Molly no longer had a view of the parade, so she decided to focus all of her attention on thinking her way out of this current bind.

  She seemed to be stuck behind a T-shirt kiosk that sold kitschy animal-themed apparel and umbrellas. The back of it had a door for the staff to get in and out of, and it was currently slightly ajar.

  Molly could hear the unmistakable iPhone keyboard taps coming from inside the kiosk, so clearly the zoo employee was using the penguin parade as an opportunity to catch up on their correspondence.

  Maybe if she could open the door wide enough to grab some T-shirts, she could fashion some kind of sarong to cover her tail? All right, so it was technically theft, but she would return the T-shirts once she was back in the Land of the Legged.

  It was a plan full of potholes, but it was the only plan she had.

  Shifting her bodyweight on to one side so she could try to prop herself upright, Molly fought the urge to grunt. Then, slipping her hand through the slim crack in the door, she felt around for something loose and fabricky.

  No luck. The cheers got louder as the penguins reached the halfway point of their circuit.

  Quick, Molly thought, before the parade ends and the kiosk person puts down their phone!

  Desperation mounting, she shoved her arm deeper into the kiosk, and finally found something soft and flowy. She grabbed on to it and pulled.

  An almighty squeal erupted from the kiosk.

  The door swung open, and Molly looked up at the girl whose apron she’d grabbed.

  It was Felicity Davison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Look, a Penguin

  Felicity’s eyes widened. Her trout lips fell open. ‘What the . . .’

  Molly held up her hands as though she were about to be arrested. ‘Felicity, please, don’t –’

  Opening her wooden mouth as wide as she could, Felicity let out an almighty scream. Thankfully, an emperor penguin had done a little trick jump right at that very moment, and the cheers all but drowned out the wail.

  ‘W-what is this?’ Felicity whispered fearfully, staring at Molly’s stark white tail. ‘What are you? Is this some kind of joke?’

  ‘Yes! It is!’ Molly insisted. ‘That’s exactly what it is. Margot put me up to it. You know Margot? My sister? She’s big on pranks. Really big. And, erm, this is one of them. Gotcha!’

  Felicity glared at Molly with a charming mix of hatred and distrust. ‘So the tail isn’t real? You’re just an idiot?’

  Nodding enthusiastically, Molly replied, ‘The biggest idiot in Idiotsville.’ This was, at the very least, believable.

  Felicity took a step towards Molly, who fought the urge to cower. She had to act casual, like this really was a silly prank, otherwise her fear would show Felicity the truth.

  ‘But . . . but it looks real.’ Before Molly could stop her, Felicity bent down and touched the slippery tip of the tail with her manicured hand. She leaped back from its glistening scales with an ‘Arrrrrghhh!’

  Molly’s heart raced with fear. She couldn’t let the world find out the truth about her double life as a mermaid. Not just because the thought made her convulse with horror and shame, but because her family had impressed on her the importance of keeping this quiet.

  What would happen if she betrayed them? Would she be taken to mermaid prison and left to rot? Would she be thrown to the piranhas and ripped to shreds?

  Or, worst of all, would her family be disappointed in her?

  As Felicity’s yells got louder, Molly panicked. She needed to shut her up, fast. And for that she needed a distraction.

  The penguins were marching back towards the enclosure, right past the opening where Molly lay wedged between the kiosk and the fence. Without thinking, she grabbed the nearest baby penguin and pulled it into her nook.

  It barked.

  Well, it was more of a chirp or a honk than a bark. But still. The penguin frantically flapped its flippers, trying to escape.

  ‘Look,’ Molly said, deadpan. ‘A penguin.’

  At a loss for what to do next, Molly put the poor penguin in her lap, thinking maybe it would enjoy the sensation of scales and feel more at home.

  Oh God, penguins eat fish, don’t they? What if it tried to eat her?

  Instead Molly picked it up again and held it in the air, like Rafiki holding up baby Simba in The Lion King.

  ‘A penguin,’ she reiterated.

  Felicity gaped at her in horror, flapping her hands much like the abducted penguin. ‘Oh my God, what are you doing? Let him go! Let him go!’

  ‘No,’ Molly retorted, although keeping hold of the squirming bird was becoming increasingly difficult. They were heavier – and slimier – than they looked. ‘Not unless you promise not to tell anyone.’

  Molly felt a bit bad about this. She hadn’t meant to use the penguin for hostage negotiations, but that was just the way the situation turned out.

  ‘OK! OK, whatever!’ Felicity begged. ‘Please, just let him go before you hurt him.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a him?’ Molly asked sincerely, but Felicity reached for the walkie-talkie tucked into her belt loop, seconds away from calling security. ‘OK, OK,’ Molly added hastily. ‘Here you go.’

  She placed the penguin back on the ground, and he waddled away happily. He joined the back of the parade as though nothing had happened. Molly found herself feeling jealous of him.

  Felicity collapsed against the doorframe of the kiosk, rubbing her eyes in disbelief. Mascara ended up smudged all down
her cheeks. ‘I can’t believe this . . . What? How? Mermaids aren’t real. It –’

  ‘But you promised not to tell anyone, remember?’ Fear was building in Molly’s chest. She didn’t trust Felicity. Not one bit. ‘You just promised. Please, Felicity.’

  ‘Or what?’ Felicity snapped. ‘You’ll keep kidnapping penguins?’

  ‘Look, I know we don’t get along –’

  ‘It’s not that we don’t get along.’ Felicity twisted her face cruelly. ‘I just don’t care about you at all. The only reason I know who you are is because of the chip-grease smell.’

  Something inside Molly snapped at that, and pure, hot anger flooded her veins. She clenched her fists so hard her fingernails dug into her palms. There was something underneath the potent anger too. Something that twisted and coiled like a python in her gut.

  Shame.

  She was ashamed of who she was. Humiliated to her very core.

  While she’d been embarrassed before, this was a whole new level. It was bone-deep shame. It was a part of her.

  Molly looked up at Felicity, looked into her deep hazel eyes, and then something very strange happened.

  Molly felt Felicity’s shame too.

  She felt the argument Felicity had had with her stepdad that morning. Felicity had told him she hated him, and she was ashamed of herself for that. He’d only been trying to help her plan her study schedule.

  She felt the embarrassment of when Felicity’s latest report came home, and her mum saw how much her grades had dropped. She felt the fear of failing her GCSEs, and never leaving this tiny town.

  She felt how Felicity saw herself when she looked in the mirror: like a scared little girl who just wanted to be perfect.

  All of this came flooding to Molly like a dam had burst. She couldn’t understand why she’d never noticed any of this about Felicity before. It was written all over her face.

  Felicity’s eyes widened at Molly, as though she could feel something odd happening too, but didn’t quite understand what it was.

  That made two of them.

  And then, beneath it all, Molly saw something more raw and jagged than everything else. The root cause of Felicity’s shame.

  Her mum was sick.

  Cancer.

  Oh no. Oh God.

  Molly’s heart hurt. She wanted desperately to say something profound to Felicity. Something to let her know she understood that very particular sadness and fear.

  However, Molly was not good with words, so instead she said, ‘I’m sure your maths grades will pick up if you buy Ms Stavros a protractor.’

  Felicity’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Your GCSEs. I’m sure you won’t fail. And your stepdad knows you don’t hate him really.’

  Felicity looked as though she might punch Molly in the mouth.

  Molly’s chest twisted. She hurt for Felicity. She knew how desperately painful it was to watch your family go through something so awful.

  But why would her mum being ill make her feel . . . ashamed? Because that was the overriding emotion she could feel from Felicity: shame. It didn’t make sense.

  Deep down, though, it made all the sense in the world.

  Because Molly had felt that way too.

  ‘It’s OK if you resent her, you know.’ Molly’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Felicity’s expression grew even fiercer. She clenched her fist around her phone. ‘What did you just say to me?’

  ‘Your mum.’ Molly swallowed hard. ‘My mum had cancer too. And it’s OK to resent her for having it, even though you think it makes you a bad person. It doesn’t. You’re just . . . human.’ Even though all signs point otherwise, Molly added to herself.

  ‘How do you know about my mum?’ Felicity choked out. ‘Nobody knows. I made sure.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Molly admitted, and it was the truth. ‘I just had an inkling.’

  Felicity’s face crumpled then, and she began to cry. ‘I don’t know why I’m so angry with her about it. It’s not like she chose to be sick.’

  ‘And yet now your entire life is about her being sick,’ Molly said softly. ‘It’s all you can think about, and all the rest of your family can think about. It’s ruined everything.’

  Rivers of snot dribbled into Felicity’s kitchen table mouth. ‘I hate myself for it.’

  Molly nodded. She wanted to tell Felicity she shouldn’t hate herself, that she couldn’t help having those feelings, but she knew that wouldn’t change anything. So instead she said, ‘That’s normal too. But it goes away, I promise.’

  Felicity sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. ‘Your mum got better?’

  Molly smiled then. ‘She got better. You know the skinny-dipping Ada told you about?’

  Felicity’s lips quirked, but not in a cruel way. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s my mum just . . . celebrating being alive. Reclaiming her body.’ And giving her tail a bit of a stretch.

  For the first time ever while thinking about her mum’s skinny-dipping, Molly didn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. She felt proud of her tough, joyful mum. She felt grateful beyond words that she had beaten cancer. Watching a forty-year-old woman dance naked in the sea was a thousand times better than the alternative.

  Felicity sat with this thought for a second. Molly watched the different emotions flicker across Felicity’s face and wondered again how she’d never noticed them before. There was anger, then fear, then hope. Then anger again.

  Was this her merpower? Tapping into people’s emotions like a radio station she hadn’t been able to reach until now?

  Sniffing hard and setting her jaw in a defiant tilt, Felicity forced strength into her voice. ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone. About my mum. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.’

  ‘Of course I w–’

  ‘If you do, I’ll tell the world about your . . . thing.’ She pointed at Molly’s tail, but her earlier disgust had eased off.

  Molly blinked, hardly daring to believe her luck. Felicity was willing to keep quiet about the tail if Molly kept Felicity’s mum’s secret. Which meant that if Felicity ever did tell anyone about the mermaid thing, she’d lose her leverage. Even though she was technically being blackmailed, this was kind of the best-case scenario.

  Still, she didn’t want Felicity to know how much of a win this was, so she pretended to consider the proposal deeply.

  ‘And you’ll get me out of here,’ Molly added, shaking now. ‘Without anyone seeing.’

  Felicity swallowed and nodded.

  And that’s the story of how Molly Seabrook was packed up in a T-shirt box and pushed out of a zoo in a seal-shaped trolley.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Strangest Merpower

  Molly spent the whole drive back to Little Marmouth in a jittery state. Even though Ada hadn’t seen anything, Molly was convinced she smelled like penguin. Surely that was bound to raise some questions.

  Thankfully, Ada was too busy ranting about Penalty Pete to notice.

  When she got back to Kittiwake Keep, Molly was relieved to find Margot alone in her room. Once she’d confirmed that everything had gone all right with Eddie of the Ears – they gave him a £10 gift voucher as thanks, and Molly texted him a massive thank-you – and that Aunt Maureen had not been roasted like a doner kebab, Molly started to fill Margot in on everything that had happened at the zoo.

  Everything. Blackmail and all.

  After Molly had finished, Margot sat in stunned silence. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘That’s . . . wow.’

  ‘Just saying wow a lot isn’t going to help me here.’

  Margot started to French braid her unruly hair. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Molly flopped on to the bed and sighed. ‘That I’m not a terrible person.’

  ‘What?’ Margot looked genuinely confused. ‘Why would you be a terrible person?’

  Slowly, as though talking to a particularly idiotic
garden snail, Molly said, ‘I blackmailed Felicity Davison using a mystery superpower.’

  Margot shrugged. ‘Technically she blackmailed you.’

  ‘So . . . I shouldn’t feel bad?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me for validation. I’m not exactly the best judge of what’s right and wrong. Once I pranked an old man at work and he wet himself on the shop floor.’

  ‘Margot! You said you had nothing to do with that!’

  ‘I lied.’ Margot shrugged, twisting the final lock of hair and securing it with a tiny bobble. ‘See? Nobody’s a good person all the time.’

  Molly chewed the dry skin around her thumbnail. ‘But we should still, like . . . try, no?’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. OK, from now on, let’s at least try to be good people.’ A wide grin. ‘Except for when Felicity Davison’s in the room. Then I can’t promise anything. Even with all that going on in her life, she still acts like she’s begging to be smashed in the face with a water balloon.’

  They both cackled then – real, deep belly laughs that melted away some of the leftover tension from the zoo. Molly was very grateful for Margot in that moment.

  ‘But seriously, though,’ Molly said, once she’d finally calmed down. ‘I don’t understand my merpower.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘What even . . . is it?’ Molly had practically gnawed her thumb down to the bone at this point. ‘It was just . . . I could feel her emotions.’

  ‘So you can read minds? That’s awesome.’

  Molly shook her head. ‘Not quite. I couldn’t tell exactly what she was thinking, or like, what she’d had for lunch. Just the emotions she was feeling. Especially shame.’

  ‘Give it time. Merpowers become stronger the more you use them. Like a muscle. Maybe one day you’ll be able to read minds properly.’

  The thought sent a dark thrill up Molly’s spine. But before she could ask any more questions, Melissa came waltzing into the room. She was still wearing her chip-shop uniform, which was stained with flour and batter. Combined with her cocoa body spray, she smelled like a deep-fried Mars Bar.