The Mermaid Girl

by Xequina

  “But if they’re endangered, shouldn’t they set them free so they can have babies?”

  “They do, but only when they’re sure the animal can survive on its own again. They only keep animals that are sick or injured so badly they wouldn’t be able to find food anymore, and would suffer and die in the wild. Having an endangered animal to study can help the whole species because my mother and other scientists look for ways to help them. They also use them for teaching people about wild animals.”

  “If you found an endangered animal, would you give it to the center so they could take care of it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You would?”

  I nodded.

  “What about that little shark you found, why didn’t you take that to the center?”

  “My mother said it was a tiger shark, and it wasn’t endangered, plus it wasn’t injured.”

  Reggie stared at me. “Cam, do they have a mermaid there?”

  “I don’t think so. My mother would have told me.”

  “But what if it’s top secret, you know, like in that documentary we saw? It said the government may have found a dead mermaid, and it was top secret. You said that place your mother works is a government research center.”

  I was pretty sure they didn’t have a mermaid there, or my mother wouldn’t mind that I was so interested in mermaids. Reggie kept looking at me and waiting.

  “Would you like to go there sometime?” I asked. “I’ll ask my mother if she’ll take us.”

  “Really? Will we be able to see the whole place?”

  I nodded. I asked, and my mother said she could take us the very next weekend.

  Chapter 45

  The Marine Research Center

  My mother was glad we were taking an interest in marine science. On the way down to the center, she told Reggie about it.

  “We do research on marine life at the center. We’re also a teaching facility. We get students from the university in Santa Cruz who are taking classes in marine biology, but lots of other schools come on field trips to see the center, or even hold a class.”

  “Are you a teacher too, Ms. Barcela?” Reggie asked. She was sitting in the front seat.

  “I’ve taught a few classes, but mostly the instructors are from the universities.”

  “Do you take the students scuba diving?”

  “I used to, but not anymore. I only have a part time job right now, and scuba diving takes up a lot of time.”

  Reggie turned around and gave me a questioning look. I was afraid she was going to ask about the diving knife, but then Reggie changed the subject and started asking about endangered species.

  “Right now we have a Guadalupe fur seal that someone shot and we’re bringing back to health, and some tidewater gobies we’re studying,” my mom said. “And a couple of small green sturgeon because they’re one of the Species of Concern. That means they’re threatened and we need a lot more information about them to find out if they should be on the Endangered Species list. We also have a beautiful little loggerhead sea turtle that someone found tangled in a net. We’ll be releasing her next week, which is why it’s so great we’re going this weekend. There’s also a California tiger salamander someone brought in. Those are getting rare.”

  “What about sea serpents?” Reggie asked. “I saw a picture of one. It took sixteen sailors to hold it. Have you ever had one of those at the center?”

  My mom smiled. “You probably mean an oarfish. That’s actually a fish, a very long one.”

  “Oarfish were often mistaken for sea serpents,” I said. “When they’re sick, they swim near the top of the water sometimes.”

  “That’s true,” my mother said. “But they’re found in warmer water than we have around here, so we haven’t had one at the center.”

  “What would you do if someone brought in a mermaid?” Reggie asked.

  “Well, that would be a huge sensation, and scientists would be coming from all over the world to see it. Not just scientists, but the public too. I’m not sure the center could manage that many people.” I could tell my mom was enjoying all the questions Reggie was asking.

  “You could if you kept it a secret.” Reggie watched my mom while she asked these questions.

  “True, but that would be such an important discovery, it wouldn’t be ethical to keep it a secret.”

  “What if you just kept it a secret for a while, until you were finished studying her? Then you could announce to the world that you had a mermaid.”

  “We could do that, and it might even be a good idea. That way, we could decide how we would manage the crowds before we told the press.”

  Reggie gave me a knowing look. I wondered if she was still thinking there was a mermaid at the center. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Reggie knew something about the mermaid, but I didn’t see how that was possible. I had never told anyone.

  We reached the research center and pulled into the staff parking lot. The center was open to the public on the weekend. All the cars in the public parking area meant a lot of people were already there, even though it was early.

  First we went into the visitors’ center and looked at all the displays and posters and charts of ecosystems. There were a couple of big aquariums with live fish and kelp we could look into. Other smaller tanks had been made to look like a tide pool with anemones growing off the rocks, hermit crabs, limpets, starfish, and even a sea urchin. Lots of little crabs were eating part of a fish that had been put in there. A machine simulated waves so water washed over everything every few minutes.

  After that my mother took us into the back and showed us where she worked. The public wasn’t allowed back there. We got to see tanks of all sizes with different animals in them. All the tanks had filtration systems that cleaned the tank and pumps, kind of like my aquarium. She showed us which ones were the endangered species, including the loggerhead turtle, which was amazing. I noticed Reggie looking at a door that said,

  Restricted Area—No Admittance.

  Staff Only.

  My mother led us over to a swimming pool-colored tank with an orange-ish octopus.

  “This is a Pacific coast octopus,” she said. “He’s not endangered. He’s here for research purposes. We won’t keep him too long, because he’ll grow too big for our tanks. He’s also one very smart cookie. He somehow knows there’s fish in the other tanks, and if we didn’t put a locked lid on his tank, he’d sneak out and eat them.”

  “You mean he can get out of his tank and go over to the other tanks without water?” Reggie asked.

  “Not only that, but after he eats them, he gets back into his own tank, thinking we won’t know. When we first got him we thought he was too small to be a threat to the other fish in here. We found out the hard way when fish started disappearing.”

  My mother let us touch it. It felt like it looked—slimy. The octopus seemed like it was checking us out at first, then it pulled back his arms. Reggie seemed mesmerized by the octopus.

  A man and woman came to talk to my mother about the wounded seal. They were concerned because the seal looked “listless.”

  “Mom, can we see the seal?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Let me go back and check on her. You and Reggie stay here and look at the animals. Remember, don’t touch them or the tubes that feed into the tanks.”

  As soon as we were left alone, Reggie pointed at the door to the restricted room. “What’s in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve never been in there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let’s go see!”

  “What if we’re caught?”

  “What are they going to do, send us to juvie?” She ran over and tried the door. It was unlocked. “Come on! Your mother said they could be secretly studying mermaids here.”

  Of course, that’s not exactly what she said, but I followed. Actually, I had wondered what was back there too. The room was like a big warehouse, and at the end was a wide door lik
e a giant garage door. There was also a channel where a boat could come in from the ocean.

  “This must be where they first bring animals and samples in,” I said.

  There were a lot of tanks like in the last room, but some were bigger. Reggie ran around and looked into all of them. Not all of them had fish in them, and the ones that were in there didn’t look healthy. Out of one popped a seal, right into Reggie’s face. We both jumped back, and then we laughed.

  “He probably thought you were going to give him a fish,” I said. “You know, like at the zoo?”

  Reggie reached out to pet him but he quickly slipped back down in to the water.

  “It’s better not to touch them,” I said. “We could give him germs, or he might give them to us.”

  “Is this the Guadalupe fur seal your mom was talking about?”

  “No, I think it’s a young elephant seal. See his nose? He’s a male. And look—he’s got a cut all around his middle that’s healing. That’s probably from a fishing line.”

  “Hey, look at that!” Reggie said, pointing across the room. It was a big tank with Plexiglas sides, half full of water, although there wasn’t anything in it. She ran over to it. I kept checking the restricted door to see if anyone was coming.

  “Cam, this tank is just like the one they kept the mermaid in that movie, Splash. And look, there’s even big scales on the bottom!”

  It did look like there were scales at the bottom of the tank. Reggie looked at me.

  “They could have had a mermaid in here!”

  “But where would she be now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they studied her for a while, and then she told them mermaids are endangered, and asked them to let her go, and they did. Or maybe . . . wow, maybe she died? Your mother said they usually get injured or sick animals. That might be how they got a mermaid, and they’ve kept it secret.”

  “That’s good then,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Reggie admitted. “But it sure would have been cool to see a live mermaid.”

  I wondered what my mother would say if she caught us in here. “Reggie, we probably should get back. We might get in trouble for being in here.”

  She took another long look around and finally said, “Okay.”

  We slipped back out the door, and we had just closed the door when the opposite door opened and my mother came back.

  “Come on, girls. I can let you have a quick look at the seal.” She didn’t even seem to notice we were standing right in front of the restricted door. Reggie and I looked at each other and tried not to giggle.

  Later, when we were by ourselves in my room, Reggie said, “I thought you told me your mother does scuba diving.”

  For a minute I didn’t know what to say. “Well, once in a while she does, like when we went to Mexico for a vacation.”

  “I thought you said she did it for work?”

  “She can use the knife in her work here, or if she does some diving,” I said.

  After that, Reggie dropped it. I had learned in school that you should never lie, because one lie leads to another. We’d never gone to Mexico for vacation. I just hoped Reggie wouldn’t ask my mother about scuba diving in Mexico—or about the knife I had supposedly given her.

  Chapter 46

  A Sighting

  One day in March, right after the three o’clock bell rang, someone tapped my shoulder. It was Will, the boy who saw a mermaid in Hawaii.

  “Camile, did you hear someone saw a mermaid in Lake Meredith?”

  “What?” I was shocked.

  “Yeah, isn’t that cool?”

  I didn’t think it was cool at all. I was scared.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Will asked.

  “No,” I said. “Mermaids live in the ocean.” But if Will was reading lots of stories about mermaids, he would know mermaids also live in rivers and lakes and wonder why I was lying. “Actually, mermaids used to live in lakes or rivers, but not anymore. I’m not sure why. Who was it that saw the mermaid?”

  “David Toledo, he’s in the sixth grade. He was fishing with his mom at the far end of the lake last weekend. You know how the sea fish come in from the estuary? The water is a little shallow in places down there. David said he was just sitting there staring at the water, and then he saw something moving underwater. It was chasing a fish. He swears it was a little mermaid, about that big—” He held his hands apart about a foot, which was Mermary’s size. “He said she snatched the fish and zipped away.”

  All I could do was stare at Will with my mouth open.

  “So then David starts yelling, ‘A mermaid! A mermaid!’ His mother told him to calm down and tell her what he saw. Some of the fishermen said sometimes your mind wanders and you see things when you fish. Another person said maybe what he saw was a mud puppy, which is a giant salamander, but we don’t have those here. David says she had long hair and hands, and a long fish tail.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say.

  Will said he was going fishing with David that weekend and they were going to look for the mermaid. “I’ll let you know if we see anything.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  I wanted to head right over to the lake, but then a new girl named Emily, who was African-American, came over and showed me a book.

  “This is The Water-Babies, it’s about water fairies. They’re not exactly mermaids. It’s my favorite book. Would you like to borrow it?”

  I had already read it, but took the book to be polite. Emily kept hanging around while I got my homework books and papers and stuffed them in my knapsack.

  “Want to walk home together?” she asked.

  I had to talk to Mermary, but I didn’t want to be rude and tell Emily to go away. She didn’t have very many friends yet, and I knew what that was like.

  “I have to go to the library today. My mother’s picking me up there,” I said, even though it wasn’t true.

  “Can I go with you?”

  “Sure,” I said, though I was feeling really anxious.

  At the library I showed her some mermaid books. Then we sat down at a table and started our homework.

  “What do you keep looking at?” she asked.

  “What?” I realized I kept staring out the back doors of the library, at the lake. “Oh, just the lake. It’s so pretty.”

  “I heard Will saying there might be a mermaid in the lake.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. “Do you think it’s true?”

  “No!” I said too loudly, and Emily looked surprised. So I had to force myself to say, “But wouldn’t it be neat if there was?”

  “I think it might be true. Maybe we can go look for her sometime?” she asked.

  “I’d have to get special permission. I’m not supposed to go to the lake.” It seemed like Emily was giving me a funny look, then I realized she was thinking about me going there all the time. “I mean . . . to spend a whole day at the lake. We should walk around the whole lake to really get a good look, don’t you think?”

  She brightened. “What about this weekend?”

  “Um, I’m not sure I’ll have time, I have to check.”

  “Maybe you can ask when your mother comes to pick you up.”

  “My mother—” I almost said my mother wasn’t coming and remembered just in time I had lied about that. “My mother will be here late,” was all I could say. “But I’ll ask her and let you know. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you.”

  Things had been easier when no one ever talked to me. Now to protect Mermary, I was having to lie, and I was doing it more and more. After Emily and I exchanged phone numbers, she said she had to go. She looked happy, and I felt bad because I was misleading her. Of course I had no intention of going to the lake to look for a mermaid. I decided to tell her I couldn’t get permission to go to the lake, but ask her to do something else. I watched until Emily was out of sight, then ran over to the landing. I made sure no one was around and called Merm
ary. After a few minutes, Mermary surfaced.

  “Hi, Cammie, I wasn’t expecting you—”

  “Someone told me today that a boy saw a mermaid in the lake.”

  Her eyes got big and round. “Really? There’s another mermaid here?”

  “Mermary, he was talking about you!” I was practically yelling. I tried to calm down. “A boy from my school saw you when he was fishing. It was at the far end of the lake, where the slough is. Last weekend! Were you there?”

  “Oh!” She was quiet while she thought about this. “Yes, I was down there last weekend. Certain times of the moon, water comes in from the ocean and brings ocean fish with it. They taste better than the lake fish.”

  “Mermary, you have to be really careful!”

  “But I am careful.”

  “Please, be extra careful. It would be terrible if people found out about you.”

  “Why? People would tell stories about me and the lake, like those mermaid tales you’ve told me.”

  I started crying. “No. If they knew you were there, they would never leave you alone again. They would probably take you from the lake and lock you up and study you. I’ve told you all this.”

  She was swimming nervously, diving and popping up to look at me, then diving again and swimming in small circles. I’d never seen her do that before and realized it was because she’d never seen me crying before. I was upsetting her. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my uniform jacket.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just scared for you. I want you to be safe.”

  “I’m sorry, Camile. I promise I’ll be even more careful from now on.”

  I forgot to blow her a kiss when I said good-bye. I called my mother with the phone I could only use for emergencies to tell her I’d be home late (had to make up yet another lie). She said she would come get me at the library.

  While I waited, I started thinking about one or two stories I’d read where mermaids lied and were treacherous. So symbolically, you could say they were connected with lies too, which wasn’t a nice thing. Only I’d never heard Mermary tell a lie; I was the one doing all the fibbing and fudging.

  Lying was wrong, but I didn’t know how else to protect Mermary. Once in confession, I told the priest about lying so much. He asked what I was lying about, and since priests can never reveal what’s said in the confessional, I said, “about the existence of a mermaid. I have a mermaid friend. She lives in the lake now.” He chewed me out for lying in the confessional!