The Mermaid Girl

by Xequina

  “Yes, do!” Bambi said. “Please?”

  I tried to think of what to say. “Well, I . . . I’ve seen things that could have been a mermaid, but . . . but they were like that picture, not an actual mermaid.”

  “You’ve seen something like what’s in the picture?” Bambi asked.

  I nodded reluctantly. All the girls looked at each other with amazement.

  “So there is a mermaid!” Jeannie said.

  “No, what I said—” I tried to explain, but they were all excited and talking and saying, “Camile has seen the mermaid!” and it was obvious they only heard what they wanted to hear.

  “Let’s all go to the lake sometime and look for the mermaid!” Jeannie said.

  Everyone said yes except me. I had made the rumors even worse!

  Chapter 50

  Rendezvous

  Now I only rarely got to go to the lake to see Mermary, so I came up with a plan. Saturdays I usually went to Kitty’s house so we could practice our song for the talent show, and Sundays my mother did the grocery shopping for the week and sometimes went to visit her sister. Instead of going with her like I sometimes did, I had her drop me off at the library. She always told me what time she’d pick me up, which usually was in a few hours. Not only was it enough time to get books and study, I could visit Mermary.

  That Sunday my mother dropped me off at the library and said she’d be back at one o’clock. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with me? Three hours is a long time to study.”

  “I’m sure. I want to start on our final project, which is on fifty great men and women. That’s going to take a long time.”

  “Well, okay. But at least take a break studying,” she said. “Go outside and sit in the sun for or a while, or maybe go across to the park and swing.”

  “I will.”

  In the library I set my books up in a corner with paper and a pen set out, and got the book I had ordered from the librarian. Then I went out, crossed over to the lake, and took the path around it until I reached Dragon Tree Point. I called her and she popped up a minute later.

  “Hi, Cammie!” she said.

  I was so glad to see her. It had been more than a week since the last time. I told her lots of kids at my school were talking about there being a mermaid in the lake and were looking for her. She promised me that she was being more careful and staying away from crowded areas during the day.

  “I’m coming out more at night. The other night a band was walking by the lake, playing horns and something with keys and folds—”

  “An accordion,” I said.

  “An accordion. And people were following behind. Since it was nighttime, no one could see me. I swam along with them so I could watch them and listen to the music. I was looking at their instruments and watching how they play them. They stopped at that landing—” She pointed across the lake. “Two people were dancing, and I swam around to the music.”

  I thought going out after dark was safer, but just in case I told her, “People have instruments they use to see at night. They’re called infrared glasses. I don’t think they’re all that common, but just so you know, people might be able to see you at night too.”

  Then I told her about practicing for the talent show with my friends, and the things I’d been doing, and how much fun I was having.

  “I saw you walking around the lake with a red-haired girl. Is that Reggie?”

  “Yes, she’s my best friend!”

  Mermary didn’t say anything as she looked at me. She looked strange.

  “Mermary, are you sad?”

  “No. I was just wondering if I’ll ever see other mermaids. It’s really hard to be alone, and I’m so curious about people.”

  I realized Mermary was lonely. I felt guilty. I knew there had to be other mermaids living in the ocean, probably not even very far from Luna Beach. If Mermary was in the ocean, she might not find them, but if she was in the lake, she definitely wouldn’t.

  “Mermary, I’m sorry—”

  Suddenly she disappeared. That could only mean someone was coming. I looked around and saw a girl and a fat lady coming across the grass toward me. The lady had a red face and a yellow dress on. The girl wore a baseball cap, a shirt with a large “98” on it, and shorts. I recognized her. She was that eighth-grader who was always glaring at me.

  “Hello, little girl,” the lady said. “Are you looking for the mermaid?”

  I shook my head. She introduced herself as Mrs. Crisp and the girl as her daughter, Helen.

  “Weren’t you just talking to someone?” Helen said. She walked up to the edge and looked at the water.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes you were, I heard you.”

  “I was practicing a poem from school.”

  She looked at me like she didn’t believe it. “Sure you were. Let’s hear it then.”

  Luckily I remembered the poem from summer school, and I recited it.

  “That’s nice, did you write that?” the lady asked. I nodded. I wondered why she was so nice, and her daughter such a crab. “We’re on the lookout for the Lady of the Lake.”

  “Who’s the lady of the lake?” I asked, like I couldn’t guess. So, other people were noticing the connection Reggie had.

  “The mermaid, Miss Act Innocent,” the girl said. I wondered why she was so suspicious.

  “The Lady of the Lake is the Virgin Mary. We go to her school,” I said.

  “Very good,” she said sarcastically.

  “Is that what people are calling the mermaid now?”

  “Why are you acting like you don’t know anything about it, Mermaid Girl?”

  I didn’t respond. Was she jealous? Even with a scowl she was pretty, and she was really smart because she won awards for best essays and writing projects.

  “I think our church is where people got the idea for the mermaid,” Mrs. Crisp said. She opened her tote bag, got out some bread, and threw it into the water.

  “Here mermaid, mermaid, mermaid!”

  They both watched to see if Mermary would go for it, but I knew she knew better. Pretty soon there were a bunch of little fish eating the bread, and some seagulls landed in the water hoping for some bread too.

  “Have you seen anything that might be the mermaid?” Mrs. Crisp asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I bet you have,” Helen said. “You just don’t want people knowing this is a good spot to see her.”

  I wondered if she had seen something, from a distance somehow, but I didn’t dare ask. They sat down on the edge and kept looking into the water, so I figured they weren’t going to leave. I headed back to the library. On the way, Mermary came to swim alongside me, and I smiled at her but didn’t try to talk to her because there were people around. I saw two nuns from my school heading my way. One was my teacher, Sister Marie Anthony, and the other was Sister Daniel, from the third grade. I stopped.

  “I understand that people are calling our mermaid The Lady of the Lake,” Sister Marie told me. I could tell she was proud.

  “Right, our mermaid,” Sister Daniel said. “A tourist attraction based on a figment of someone’s overactive imagination.” She rolled her eyes. “Someone came into the church yesterday when I was removing the old flowers, asking if there was a connection. The church is not a tourist trap.”

  “One never knows the ways of God,” Sister Marie said. “Maybe some of them will take an interest in Him while they’re there.”

  “But they’re not. It’s Our Lady they’re interested in,” Sister Daniel said, like it was a bad thing.

  “Why is that a problem?” Sister Marie asked. “As the Queen of Heaven, Mary deserves adoration too. She’s the one who does all the work up there, interceding with God for us. Women always do the work, and men get the credit.” She winked at me.

  I said good-bye and headed back to the library. It sounded like everyone in Luna Beach knew about the mermaid now. That’s what happens in small towns.

  Chapter 51
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br />   Calling the Mermaid

  The girls in my class planned an outing to go to the lake and look for the mermaid. They gathered outside in the courtyard after school. Almost all the girls in my class were going, eighteen of them.

  “Will you take us to look for the mermaid, Camile, like you did before?” Kitty asked.

  “Yes, please?” Jeannie said.

  “I can’t, my mother’s coming to pick me up at the library.”

  “You can come just for a few minutes,” Allie said bossily.

  “Please?” Bambi begged. “Your mother never gets here right at three o’clock.”

  I couldn’t believe someone had noticed. They were all standing around me, looking hopeful and excited. I said okay because I didn’t want anyone to find out my mother wasn’t really coming.

  We crossed the street and went over to the landing, then stood by the heavy chain railing that prevented people from falling into the water.

  “Camile, call the mermaid!” Jeannie said.

  “What should I call her?” I said, trying to stall.

  “Just call ‘mermaid.’ She’s probably familiar with you, if she let you see her all those times.”

  “She didn’t let me see her,” I said, but it was no use because everyone believed it. So I stood at the edge of the landing and called “mermaid,” but not very loudly.

  Allie, who was standing next to me, poked me with her elbow.

  “Say it louder,” she said.

  So I yelled, “MERMAID!”

  Of course, I had warned Mermary something like this might happen, and to just ignore me if I didn’t call her by name. To be doubly sure, I made the hand signal for her not to come out, but no one noticed because they were all watching the water. I knew I was misleading everyone, and if they found out, they might all start hating me, and that would be really horrible.

  “Look over there!” Jeannie said, pointing. About twenty feet away from the landing was a fountain that sprayed water into the air, and I could see part of a branch was floating under it. Most of it was underwater, but everyone got excited.

  “Is it the mermaid?” Everyone crowded over to get a better look. Kitty clapped and some of the girls jumped up and down with excitement.

  “No, it’s just a broken branch,” Allie said disgustedly. “Call her again, Camile.”

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “MERMAID! Please come and talk to us! Hello! Where are you, mermaid?” I felt kind of silly. Everyone scanned the water that was nearest to us, but of course there wasn’t anything to see.

  Then I noticed motion in the water off beyond the fountain. I could tell Mermary was turning somersaults under water like she did when she thought something was funny. Maybe we all looked funny to her, calling a branch “the mermaid,” and me yelling for something I didn’t want to happen. I could see the shimmery flashes of her fishtail. She was stirring the water up in such a way that the water over her was mounding up and creating a big, silent disturbance. Emily glanced at me and noticed what I was looking at. She gasped.

  “Look!”

  Everyone looked where she was pointing. After a moment the motion stopped. Everyone was quiet, continuing to stare at the water to see if it would happen again. It didn’t, thank goodness.

  “That must have been the mermaid!” Kitty breathed, her eyes shining as she looked at me.

  Several other girls nodded, everyone looking at each other with their eyes big. They all looked excited. Of course we hadn’t seen anything except an unusual movement of water and the bright, underwater flash of Mermary’s tail.

  “I saw her big tail!” Emily said.

  “Me too,” Allie said, turning around to smile at me.

  “But . . . maybe it was just a big fish,” I said weakly.

  “Yes, the big fish half of a mermaid!” Nela said.

  “I think I actually saw her top half!” Bambi said.

  Emily and Allie nodded.

  “Now we can say we’ve seen the mermaid too,” Nela said. “And Camile is the one who brought her to us.”

  “The mermaid came because she knows you’re the Mermaid Girl,” Wanda said.

  Everyone watched the water for several more minutes, but of course Mermary was still now. She probably had gone to her cave so she could laugh out loud and roll to her heart’s desire.

  Finally I said I had to go. Kitty and Bambi hugged and thanked me, as did several other girls. Everyone left in different directions, and I headed over to the library until they were all gone. I took out my phone and called my mother to leave a message that I went with a bunch of girls to look for the mermaid. I knew she would like hearing that. Then I hurried home.

  I had to admit it was nice to be loved like that by the girls in my class, even though I hadn’t really done anything. I was kind of mad at Mermary for going through her antics like that. She probably didn’t realize the disturbance it created on the surface, or that it might look suspicious, especially to people who were already on the lookout for a mermaid.

  Or had she done it on purpose?

  Chapter 52

  Deliberation

  Alone in my room that night, I got out my mermaid journal and wrote: “Mermary laughs at people where they can see,” and “Mermaids engage in risky behavior.”

  Then I thought about it. Just because Mermary engaged, didn’t mean all mermaids did, so I erased “mermaids” and put in “Mermary.” In fact, I was willing to bet that most mermaids never engaged in risky behavior around people, because if they did, we would have caught one by now. No doubt mermaids were taught from birth to always stay away from humans. But Mermary hadn’t grown up with mermaids, and I couldn’t think of all the ways she needed to be warned about us.

  She probably didn’t know some of the things she did was risky. She had an instinct to hide from people, but she couldn’t stop being curious. It was a natural part of who she was. Curiosity was partly why mammals became intelligent, and part of how she was connected to humans and other primates. Unfortunately, sometimes curiosity could get you into trouble. That’s why there’s that saying, “curiosity killed the cat.”

  She was also going to make mistakes. Part of how we all learn is through making them. Like, how was Mermary supposed to know that her way of laughing would cause a disturbance on top of the water that would attract people? How would she know that she could be seen in shallow water?

  Maybe her trusting me was her very first mistake. And maybe she had a basic need that helped her learn to trust me so that we could hang out and be friends and talk because . . . because mermaids were social. They had a need to be with others, just like humans.

  I knew Mermary was lonely. I felt bad because I couldn’t keep her company the way I had when she lived in the aquarium. Maybe deep down inside she thought if she was found, she would have company again. Maybe she didn’t really believe that people would hunt her, and thought they were all like me. Or she didn’t realize how bad being confined to a tank would be; she probably thought it would be the same as when she lived in an aquarium at my house. But I was sure, after she had an entire interesting lake to live in, it would be too hard to go back to an aquarium.

  Mermary needed to be in the ocean with her own kind, who could keep her company. They would teach her how to stay away from humans, and help her to understand how humans could be dangerous and even treacherous. Also, there would be many interesting things going on in the ocean to keep her busy.

  I should have set her free in the ocean when I had the chance, and now it was too late. I couldn’t carry her there by myself. She had gotten so big, I knew she would be too heavy to carry all the way to the ocean in a bucket by myself.

  This was a terrible problem, and I didn’t know what to do about it. The only thing I could think of was to take her to the ocean in a car, but what adult could I trust with the information that I had found a real mermaid? Certainly not my mother. Although I loved her, and thought what she did for work was important, if I told her abo
ut Mermary, there was no way she would allow me to set Mermary free.

  And once it got out that mermaids were real, what would happen to all the other mermaids? The government would probably give huge grants to help people find them, and the poor mermaids would be caught and kept in zoos for everyone to gawk at. Maybe they would even be put in water shows and forced to perform tricks, like dolphins and seals and killer whales. I knew sea mammals were actually much smarter than what could be shown in a water performance. I wondered if they felt silly doing tricks, but felt they had to in order to be fed and taken care of.

  Maybe those shows were really to demonstrate people’s dominance over nature. Maybe they even helped people to feel reassured when they watched them. But we were just fooling ourselves; nature was so much more huge than us.

  With so many people knowing about Mermary and looking for her, and Mermary being careless or behaving riskily, maybe other people had seen her by now. In any case, it was only a matter of time before she was seen again.

  I thought and I thought, trying to figure out what to do to keep Mermary safe, and the existence of mermaids a secret. I had to come up with a solution, and it had to be soon.

  Chapter 53

  The Pirate’s Show

  “Can I come over? I have to show you something!” It was Reggie calling.

  Since it was a Monday and a school day, I had to get special permission. My mother said it was okay. I wondered what Reggie was so excited about. Reggie arrived on her bike, and was so excited she didn’t even want to wait for the cookies my mother was setting out for us.

  “Is it okay if we use the computer, Mrs. Barcela?” she asked.

  My mother said “fine” from the kitchen. Reggie went to the computer and opened YouTube.

  “This is a pirate show I watch once in a while,” she told me. “Pirate Andy Kydd! Have you heard about him?”

  I shook my head, but his name was very familiar. I tried to remember where I had heard it before. She clicked on the frame of the video she wanted.