The last time I’d seen Serena, she was a mer-girl in Talisman Lake. In fact, I was the one who’d brought her back there after a trial run on land. Serena’s father, Finalin, had not been very happy with me—after all, he’d sacrificed himself to free her from their lake prison in the first place.
But now Serena was back on dry land and registering for high school? My high school?
“The school records might take a while because all of the family’s worldly possessions were burned in the lava flow, but we’ll do what we can,” Gran said to Ms. Wilma as she finished scribbling information on Serena’s school registration form.
What the heck? Lava flow?
“Serena and her mother are staying with Jade and her dad,” Gran continued, “so I’ll put that address.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Ms. Wilma said, spinning her chair to look at me. “Jade, it must be nice to have your cousin and aunt stay with you.”
“Uh. Yeah,” I managed to utter but I wasn’t sure I wanted to encourage this latest turn of events.
“Poor thing has been through so much.” Gran glanced at Serena and actually pulled a tissue from her handbag to dab the corner of her eye. “We just think a bit of routine and structure would do wonders for her, you know?”
Wow, Gran should really audition for the Port Toulouse Theater Company because she was good. She snuck a sideways glance at me and winked. Cori, Luke, and Trey waved and pointed at Serena through the office window from the hallway, wondering what was happening. It would help if I knew what was happening.
“Of course!” Ms. Wilma exclaimed. “Heaven knows your son’s family has had enough tragedy to last a lifetime,” she said, alluding to the fact that everyone in Port Toulouse thought my mom had drowned in Talisman Lake the summer before. And now my “aunt” (who was actually Mom with a makeover) and “cousin” Serena’s village had been destroyed by a volcanic lava flow? Too bad we hadn’t stocked up on life and accident insurance.
“Thank you for understanding,” Gran replied, adding a very enthusiastic nose-blow for effect.
“Getting Serena into a new school as soon as possible is probably the best thing for her.” Ms. Wilma patted Gran’s hand and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’ll do what I can to push this through with Principal Reamer for now. Just try to get the rest of the information to me as soon as you can.”
Ms. Wilma filed the registration form in a folder and put it in Principal Reamer’s inbox.
“As soon as humanly possible,” Gran assured her, replacing her pen in her handbag and snapping it shut. “Hey, am I going to see you at bingo on Thursday night? It’s winner-take-all, and the jackpot’s a big one.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Save me a seat,” Ms. Wilma replied, wheeling away toward the coffeemaker on the other side of the office, mug in hand.
Gran went over to Serena and put a hand on her shoulder. Serena jumped, as if being awoken from a trance, then turned and finally noticed I was there.
Jade, Serena rang to me in her mer voice, smiling broadly.
Most people would probably think the ringing sound of Serena’s mer voice was actually buzzing from the overhead fluorescent lights because that’s what it sounded like to non-mers. I thought mer rings were one of the most annoying sounds on the planet, but that was how all mers communicated.
I still didn’t know what on earth was going on, but if Serena was going to be human again, I had to break her mer-speaking habit as quickly as possible.
You need to use your human voice, I rang back and hugged her. Remember?
Serena knew the basics of English from what she’d learned from me and Mom last time she was human.
“J-shade…” Serena tried again. Her eyes widened in surprise at the sound of her voice. She turned to Gran and pointed to the map. “Grr-ansh. Water? Mother, Father?”
“Yes, honey,” Gran said in a hushed voice. She pointed at the map as if giving a stranger a tour of local landmarks. “This is the bridge we crossed at the canal between the ocean and the lake. And here’s the school where we are now, and there is where I live, remember?” She pointed to Dundee on the map, halfway up the lake.
“Thish what?” Serena asked as she pointed to the northernmost part of the lake where it connected to the Atlantic Ocean again.
“That’s Folly’s Passage,” Gran explained. “It connects the lake to the ocean up north, but it’s only open during the highest tides of the year. There’s actually a famous shipwreck around there from the Second World War called Fortune’s Folly. The captain missed the tide and ended up capsizing. Divers have been trying to find the ship ever since.”
“You mean the canal by the bridge isn’t the only way in and out of the lake?” I whispered to Gran, trying to talk quickly so Serena wouldn’t catch on.
“Well, Folly’s Passage hasn’t been used since I was a girl,” Gran mumbled back as Serena kept studying the map. “The cliffs have eroded so much from all the forestry people clear-cutting the trees that the passage has filled in, making it pretty shallow. You’d be crazy to take a boat through there now.”
I considered this for a second. Most of the Freshie mers hung out by the boat lock at the south end of Talisman Lake where salt water spilled in from the canal. Other than Finalin and Medora, who’d been in the lake the longest, none of the Freshies had made it further north than Dundee because the lake water was too fresh. There was no way any of them could ever get past the freshwater barrier in the middle of the lake and reach the northern passage to escape. The Mermish Council had the Freshies trapped and imprisoned in the lake, just like they wanted.
“Okay, then.” Gran pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack Ms. Wilma had given her and handed it to me as we headed out of the office. At the top it read: New admission: Serena Finora. “Give this to your homeroom teacher and let her know Serena is a new student. She’ll have all her classes with you. Here’s her class schedule, some school policy information, and this one…”
“Wait, wait. Back up the truck for a sec,” I said, balancing the papers Gran had handed me. “New student? What’s going on?”
“Come.” Gran guided Serena and me out of the office to where Cori, Trey, and Luke were waiting. Gran shuttled us to the bench just outside the school office door.
“The thing is,” Gran whispered, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, “Serena’s father and your parents and I have come to a bit of an agreement.”
“You met Finalin?” I asked.
“Yes, such a charming fellow.” Gran smoothed her slacks and looked from Serena to me. “Serena had left your necklace on that hook in the boathouse like you’d shown her, so I got your dad to come out to the cottage over the weekend to get the Merlin 3000 ready.”
I’d given Serena my toe ring strung on a necklace and told her to hang it from a nail on the dock inside Gran’s boathouse if she ever wanted to become human again.
“Your mom,” Gran continued, “I mean, Tanti Natasha, acted as interpreter.”
“Where the heck was I when all this was going on?” But then I remembered. I’d been at Cori’s, enjoying our final long weekend of summer with Luke and Trey.
“It all happened rather fast,” Gran said in a low tone. “Basically, Serena’s dad insists that she give being human a try again, though she wasn’t thrilled by the prospect. Once I explained that she could go to school with you and your friends and be around people her own age, she seemed to warm up to the idea.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “Serena is a human now?”
“Well, we’ve got the school part figured out for now,” Gran stroked Serena’s hair and smiled sweetly at her as if to reassure her that everything was as they’d agreed upon, “with the understanding that she can go home on weekends.”
“Is the Merlin 3000 able to handle that?” I whispered, remembering all the trouble Dad and Eddie had setting up the mer-to-human synthesizer, which made the transition from water-breathing mer to air-breathing human easier.
We hadn’t even been sure it would work on Luke the first time they had used it just a few weeks before.
“Your father is making a few extra adjustments and upgrades,” Gran said.
“But how are we supposed to do this, exactly?” I asked. “She can barely speak English. How is she supposed to understand anything that’s going on?”
“I’m sure she’ll catch on,” Cori said. “She already understands a lot of English.”
“But not just school,” I protested, thinking about how Serena had pretty much taken over every waking moment of my life for the short time she was human the last time. “What about—”
Gran touched my arm to stop me and turned to Trey and Cori.
“Why don’t you two show Serena the bulletin board?” Gran asked them with a wink. Trey gave her a thumbs-up while Cori took Serena by the arm and led her to the bulletin board and out of earshot.
“I know this is not ideal,” Gran glanced around the bustling hallway, “but I’m counting on you and Luke and your friends to help make this as smooth a transition as possible. That father of hers—Finnegan, is it?”
“Finalin,” I said with a shudder, remembering the merman’s pockmarked face and scraggly beard.
“Well, whatever his name is, the fella has quite a temper. He’s already damaged a lot of the boats in the area, and he’s threatened to start wreaking more havoc around the lake if we don’t cooperate.”
“He’s the one who cut our boat from its mooring!” Luke exclaimed. “And all that other stuff happening on the lake, I bet he’s behind that, too.”
So, Finalin was sabotaging boats and holding it over our heads unless we cooperated? The guy was a menace.
“Yes, and given his past performance…” Gran’s voice trailed off.
I thought back to the day last summer when Finalin and his wife, Medora, had pulled Mom underwater and we all thought she’d drowned.
“Do you think he would actually hurt anyone?”
“It’s quite possible,” Gran said, making sure Serena wasn’t listening. “All I know is that we’d better cooperate or else we might find out.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Baxter,” Luke said. “We’ll take care of Serena. Right, Jade?”
I glanced across the hallway. Cori took a scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around Serena’s. Cori had been thrilled to have a life-sized model for her Cori Original designs last time Serena was human. Serena hadn’t minded. In fact, she seemed to enjoy being a human Barbie doll.
“I am going to have so much fun dressing you again,” I heard Cori exclaim.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to deprive Cori of her human mannequin.” I turned to Luke. “You think we can do this?”
“We can totally do this.” He took my hand and squeezed it.
“Thank you, dearie.” Gran patted Luke on the arm and kissed me on the cheek, then adjusted her handbag over her shoulder and headed for the school door just as the 9:00 a.m. starting bell rang. “Now be good and don’t go getting yourselves into too much trouble.”
“We won’t,” I called after her.
But given what had happened the last time me, Luke, Cori, Trey, and Serena had all been together, that “not getting into too much trouble” part seemed highly unlikely.
Getting to homeroom took forever because Serena held me hostage at the bulletin board outside the school office well after everyone had scattered for their classes. She kept pulling notices off the board and handing them to me, wanting to know what they meant.
“That’s to sign up for senior band and the other one is about cyber-bullying, but Serena—you can’t keep pulling these things off!” I said in exasperation as I tried to find a thumbtack to reattach a neon orange flyer advertising the upcoming school elections. Serena took the paper from me again and pointed to the picture of a ballot marked with an X on the “Please Vote” option.
“It’s for a school election or something,” I said, layering it over a flyer beside it so I could use the same thumbtack.
“Elec-shun?” Serena sounded out the word.
“Yeah, where everybody votes for people to represent them on School Council.” I made a lot of motions with my hands to try to explain but I wasn’t quite sure she understood.
“Sh-chool Counshill? Like Mermish Counshill?”
“Sorta kinda—but not really. Come on.” I pulled on her arm to go. “We’re already late.”
Mrs. Thorne’s classroom was at the other end of the glassed-in hallway that cut through the courtyard separating junior from senior high. Going there felt like being traded back down to the minor leagues in baseball. I rushed down the hallway hoping we wouldn’t get in trouble for being late on our first day.
We finally got to homeroom at about 9:12, with only eight minutes left before our first class. Luckily for us, Mrs. Thorne was also having a rough start to her first day and was busy mopping up a mug of coffee that had spilled over a few papers on her desk. A bunch of eighth-grade boys were gathered by the window making rude noises, while a few of the girls kept undoing and redoing these weird, stacked half-ponytails on top of their heads, which they held back with skinny headbands.
They looked up at Serena and me like we were some kind of teenage aliens from another dimension. Hello? Probably because ninth graders weren’t supposed to be in junior high! In fact, I only recognized four other poor saps from my grade, two guys and two girls. One of the girls looked even more miserable than I was.
“Lainey.” I smiled as pleasant a smile as I could muster. “How are you?”
Lainey Chamberlain is the daughter of Martin Chamberlain of Chamberlain Construction—the same construction company I’d exposed in a shady political scheme at the end of the summer, which stopped their multimillion-dollar construction project at Port Toulouse Mall.
That Lainey Chamberlain.
Being stuck with eighth graders was probably the worst thing anyone could ever do to her, but Lainey looked even more unhappy that she’d been put in the same homeroom as me. Especially since we had never been in the same homeroom since her family moved to Port Toulouse back in fifth grade. What were the chances?
“Jade Baxter,” Lainey sneered and glanced over at Serena. “And your cousin, right? Salina or something?”
“Laineesh!” Serena remembered Lainey from when they met at the boat canal a few weeks before. Serena had fallen in love with Lainey’s teacup-sized dog, Cedric, and kind of dognapped him. “Chedrich?”
Before I could stop her, Serena was leaning over Lainey and digging into her oversized handbag, looking for Cedric.
“What the heck?” Lainey shrieked. “Get off me, you freak!”
“I’m sorry!” I stifled a laugh and pulled Serena away. “Serena, dogs aren’t allowed in school.” I tried to whisper so no one could hear me, forgetting that I could have just ringed to her in my mer voice. But it was too late. Lainey had heard me.
“Are dogs allowed in the school where she comes from?” Lainey zipped up her handbag and scowled.
By then, a dozen set of eyes were turned in our direction. One of the eighth-grade girls blew a curl from her forehead, and a guy by the window stopped mid-armpit fart. I gulped.
“Actually…” I looked around at all the expectant faces. Despite Lainey’s wisecrack, I could tell most of the people staring at us hadn’t made their minds up about Serena just yet. It was up to me to make sure I got her school cred on the right track.
I took a page out of Gran’s book and got my imagination going.
“Every student at Tonganesia High brings a dog to school,” I continued. “Dogs are very sensitive to seismic shifts in the earth’s crust. Since Serena’s village was at the base of an active volcano, the dogs act as alarms during the students’ mile-long walk to school. Not to mention, protecting everyone from Komodo dragon attacks through the dangerous rain forest.”
I had no idea if any of that actually made any sense, but a few of the eighth-grade girls gasped.
“In fact…”
I paused for effect, trying to catch a few people’s eyes. “Serena’s dog rescued her when her town was buried by a volcanic eruption this summer. It’s a miracle she’s still alive.”
“Whoa.” One boy whacked his friend across the chest and raised an eyebrow.
Lainey Chamberlain gripped her oversized handbag closer and scanned the class, scowling when she saw everyone looking my way.
“Well, whatever,” Lainey muttered. She shrugged her bag over her shoulder and took a seat at one of the desks at the back of the class. “Just keep that freak away from me.”
Serena slipped into a seat next to some of the eighth-grade girls. I dragged another desk over from a nearby row to keep an eye on her. Serena put a hand to her hair and motioned to the girls’ ponytails.
“Pretteesh,” she exclaimed.
A girl with a fuchsia headband smiled and pulled a few hair elastics from her pencil case. She asked Serena if she wanted her hair done, too.
“Yesh!” Serena exclaimed.
I smiled. I didn’t really need to worry about Serena after all. The boys all stared at her like she was some kind of Greek goddess, and the girls were spellbound by her long, never-ever-been-cut, golden brown hair. She had the whole class (except for Lainey, of course) wrapped around her little finger just by being…Serena.
With Serena occupied, I grabbed my chance and walked up to Mrs. Thorne’s desk to give her Serena’s homeroom registration form like Gran had asked me.
“Great to see you back, Jade,” Mrs. Thorne said in her usual cheery tone. “Your father called me to see if you could be in my homeroom again this year.”
So he was the one to blame. Dad had obviously never been a fourteen-year-old girl desperate to start high school.
“He worried about your performance at the end of last year,” Mrs. Thorne continued. “I assured him we’d keep on top of things to make sure you don’t fall behind again. Sound like a plan?”
Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels Page 2
