by Pati Nagle
Mad put her hands on her hips. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to read.” Holly closed her book and stood up. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten. Rick’s gone home. Carla and Sheila are here, if you want to meet them.”
“Sure.”
Wondering why Madison was annoyed with her, Holly followed her inside. It couldn’t be that she was reading, could it? Mad knew she read all the time.
She smiled as Madison introduced her to Sheila, a plump girl with frizzy dark hair and glasses, and Carla who had light brown hair cropped short and the lean body of an athlete. Both seemed nice. Holly hid her awkwardness with a question.
“Which of you guys picked the posters?”
“Oh, all the theater ones are mine,” said Sheila, “and the skiing and hiking ones are Carla’s, and the music ones are Pam’s.” Her voice was a bit on the loud side, but cheerful. She reminded Holly a little of a girl in her class.
“And who planted all the flowers out there?” Holly gestured to the patio. “They’re beautiful.”
“That’s Pam,” Mad said, picking up the empty margarita pitcher and carrying it to the kitchen.
Pam, who was on the couch with her feet curled under her, smiled. “Glad you like them. I have to have flowers around.”
“I hope you don’t mind that I picked a few.” Holly gestured to the shot glass of pansies.
“I saw that. It’s fine. I usually keep some in my room, too.”
The TV was still on. Holly put away her book and watched the evening news with Mad’s roommates while Mad clattered around in the kitchen. At the commercial break Holly went in to see if she could help.
“No thanks,” Mad said, putting glasses in the dishwasher. “It’s under control.”
“I could cook dinner tomorrow night, if we go shopping. As a thank-you to everyone for letting me stay a couple days.”
Mad shrugged. “Carla usually eats at work, and Pam just has a yogurt or some salad most of the time.”
Holly was already planning. Spaghetti with garlic bread, and a big salad for Pam. Extra sauce so Carla could have some later if she wanted; it was easy enough to boil pasta. Holly opened a cupboard by the stove, hoping to see what spices they had on hand.
“Looking for something?”
Mad’s voice was sharp enough that Holly shut the cupboard door with a snap. “Sorry. Just checking if you had basil.”
Mad turned to face her and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. Holly gritted her teeth while Mad stared at her for a long moment.
“It’s nice of you to offer, but it really isn’t necessary to cook for us. We usually fend for ourselves.”
“Hang on,” said a voice from the doorway. “How good a cook is she?”
Holly looked up at Sheila, who was lounging against the door frame. She flashed her a shy smile.
“I like to cook.”
“She’s OK,” Mad said. “But I figured it might be hard to get everyone together at once.”
“For a home-cooked meal? I think we can manage.” Sheila smiled at Holly. “None of us are great cooks. We should have made that a requirement the last time we advertised for a roommate.”
“Hey!”
Mad whip-snapped a kitchen towel in Sheila’s direction. Sheila ducked behind the wall, then leaned in to stick out her tongue. Holly grinned in spite of herself.
“Guys!” Sheila called to the others in the living room. “Holly’s going to cook us a feast tomorrow night!”
“I don’t know about ’feast’,” Holly said, but Pam’s whoop of approval drowned her out.
She looked up apprehensively at Madison. “I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t.”
Mad looked annoyed, but she shrugged and went back to loading the dishwasher. “Who am I to rock the boat?”
Figuring she’d dodged a bullet, Holly slipped out and joined Sheila on the couch for the rest of the news. When the weather was over, Pam stood up, yawned, and waved a goodnight as she headed for the stairs. Carla stayed through the sports, then got a glass of water from the kitchen and went down the hall toward what must be the master bedroom.
Holly realized she’d been hearing the hum of the dishwasher for a while. She hadn’t seen Mad go upstairs, but when she went in the kitchen it was empty. She got herself a glass of water, then noticed through the glass panel in the front door that the porch light was on.
She walked up to it and peered through the beveled glass. Mad was out there, leaning against the house and staring out at the night. Holly opened the door and Madison jumped, looking at her like a startled deer. In her hand was a lit cigarette.
“You don’t smoke!” Holly blurted, then realized how stupid it sounded.
“Not at home.” Madison took a puff, then dropped the cig and smushed it out with her shoe. “Only once in a while here, and not in the house. The others don’t, except for Pam but she only smokes grass.”
Holly gaped at her sister, still unable to believe it. Mad’s mouth twisted into a smile.
“I’ve been smoking since tenth grade. Didn’t know that, did you?”
Tenth grade? That was three years ago!
Holly shook her head. She felt like an idiot. A sad idiot.
“There’s all kinds of things you might learn if you took your nose out of a book once in a while.”
Madison bent down to pick up the crushed cigarette and brushed past Holly on her way into the townhouse, leaving a smudge of tobacco on the sidewalk. Holly stared at it, wondering if Mad had changed that much, or if she had never really known her.
~ 5 ~
Mad didn’t mention the cigarette the next day. She put up a wall of cheerfulness that set Holly at a distance, and kept them moving so there wasn’t much opportunity to chat. Errands, both off and on campus, took up the whole morning. For lunch Madison chose the Student Union cafeteria, which was OK but not fabulous.
“This place is great if you’re in a hurry, or out of other choices,” Mad said.
Holly glanced at some of the other choices—kiosks out in the hallway of the building that offered more interesting food than her grilled cheese sandwich and potato chips. She ate the pickle garnish and picked at the sandwich. She wasn’t really hungry. Part of her wanted to plead with Madison to quit smoking, another part wanted to avoid the whole issue and couldn’t wait to get away.
In the afternoon they visited the science department. Madison took her to the office of one of the professors, a geologist. He was younger than Holly had visualized but both uninterested and uninteresting. After five minutes of pretty meaningless chat, they left.
“So, want to see the classrooms?” Mad asked. “I think we can get a peek at a lab.”
The chemistry lab they looked at was empty; all the instruments were put away, so it was just a bunch of long, high tables. Mad yakked about a class she had taken there the previous year. Holly listened, uninspired.
She cheered up when they hit the grocery store on the way home. While Mad picked up raisin bran and single-serving bowls of soup, Holly filled a basket in the produce department. Cooking made her happy. Even though Mad pretended to be grumpy about it, Holly knew that the meal she was fixing was one of Mad’s favorites.
Or was it? Maybe Mad’s tastes had changed.
Doubt assailed her, but she ignored it as she picked out baguettes for garlic bread. At least two of Madison’s roommates were looking forward to this dinner. If Mad turned up her nose at it, that was Mad’s problem.
Holly paid for the groceries with some of the money Dad had given her, and remembered that he wanted her to buy Mom a gift. As they drove back to the townhouse, she brought this up.
“Pearl Street Mall,” Madison said. “We’ll go tomorrow. You’ll like it.”
The determined cheerfulness was giving way to impatience. Holly wondered if it was because Mad wanted a cigarette. She thought back over the last few days—over all of Madison’s visits home in the last year—and saw Mad
’s behavior in a new light.
Her sister had become edgy, impatient. Holly had assumed it was because she was pursuing a line of study that she didn’t really love, but maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe it was just addiction.
She didn’t like thinking about that, and she sure wasn’t going to bring up the subject. Mad’s choices were none of her business. She was an adult, and Holly was still a high school kid.
When they got to the townhouse Holly started cooking right away while Mad disappeared upstairs. It was still early, but the spaghetti sauce would be better if it simmered for a while, and Holly had bought some fudge chocolate pudding mix to make for dessert. She had just poured the pudding into bowls and put them in the refrigerator when Pam walked in.
“Hi, Holly! Whatcha doing? Working on the feast?”
“Um, yeah.” Holly gave the spaghetti sauce a stir, turned down the heat, and covered the pan. “Actually I’m done for now. I was thinking about taking a walk down to the lake.”
“Can I come along?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Pam grinned. “Let me grab my sandals.”
Holly stepped out onto the back patio to wait. The pansies’ colors were even more glorious in sunlight, and between them the bowls of white petunias cascaded like foaming waterfalls. It made Holly want to create something like this at home. Maybe she’d plant a bowl of flowers when she got back—though it was kind of late in the year for that. Chrysanthemums would be better than petunias at this point.
Pam joined her, wearing a Rockies cap and shades over her tank top and shorts, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She carried a plastic grocery bag. “Do you want a hat?”
“Nah. I’m all right.”
Pam swung the gate open and started down to the path. Holly caught up with her.
“Your flowers sure are gorgeous.”
Pam smiled. “Thanks.”
“Are you studying agriculture?”
“Nope. Nursing.”
That made sense. Pam seemed to care a lot about other people.
“How about you?” Pam asked. “Have you decided on a major?”
Holly kicked a pebble down the path. “Not yet.”
“Well, you don’t have to choose right away. There’s a lot of pressure to do that, but it’s better to know what you want. I changed my major twice.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Drove my parents nuts. They wanted me to study business, so I started out there, but I hated it. Then I tried education. I should have just gone with my gut to begin with.”
Holly thought about that, wishing Mad had been here to hear it. Maybe Pam had talked about her changes of direction with her roommates.
They reached the path along the lake shore and started walking north. Holly kept an eye on the water, watching for any movement, any sign of a face.
“You know, Carla’s graduating next spring, and she’s going to California for grad school. We’ll be looking for another roommate next year.”
Holly didn’t say anything. She knew what was coming.
“Think you might be interested in CU?”
“I don’t know. Just came up to take a look.”
“It’s a good school.”
“Yeah.”
“And Boulder’s a pretty good town. Kind of conservative, but that’s all right.”
They were nearing a stand of cattails where some ducks were clustered. Pam opened up her grocery sack and the birds swarmed toward her, quacking madly. She took out a handful of bread crumbs and flung them over the water, sparking a free-for-all, then offered the bag to Holly.
With all the commotion the ducks were making, Holly figured any water spirits in the lake were probably watching from a distance. She tossed bits of bread one by one to hopeful ducks, watching them catch and gobble or miss and fight over the crumbs with other birds. She and Pam stood there until the bread was gone and Pam stuffed the empty bag in her pocket.
The ducks figured out pretty fast that the party was over. They drifted away, quacking and nipping at each other.
Holly looked out over the lake. Someone had a boat out at the far end, chopping up the water. She brought her attention to the shore nearby, gazing into the murk at the feet of the cattails.
“Did you ever see anything interesting in the water?” she asked.
“There are some big koi in there. Someone let them loose a couple of years ago, and now they’re really huge. They’re pretty shy, though.”
“Do people fish?”
“Sometimes. Technically it isn’t allowed.”
Holly squatted by the water’s edge, peering deep. “Any turtles or anything?” What she wanted to ask was if Pam had ever seen a water spirit, but she was too chicken.
“Might be. I’ve never seen one.”
Pam joined her and tossed a pebble into the water. Holly frowned at the expanding ripples.
“One time when I was pretty stoned I thought I saw a mermaid,” Pam said.
Holly glanced at her. “Here?”
“Over at the north end, by those trees. It was after a party.”
“Let’s walk over there.”
She stood and started off along the path. Pam followed, but at an ambling pace. Holly slowed down to match her.
“What did it look like?”
“I don’t really remember. I thought it was beautiful, though.”
Holly shoved her hands in her pockets and glanced sidelong at Pam. “Do you believe in mermaids?”
Pam laughed. “In a lake in Colorado?”
“Well, maybe it was some other kind of—water spirit.”
“You know, that sounds really lovely. I’d like to believe that.”
But you don’t. Holly bit her tongue, wanting to blurt out that it was true, it was real. If she said that without proof, Pam would just think she was crazy.
She kept an eye on the water as they walked. A couple of times she saw flickers of movement, but they could have been fish.
The stand of trees was bigger than it looked from across the lake; a sprawling cluster of poplars and willows along a good stretch of the shore. There was a pleasant, greenish smell that she couldn’t identify, but it seemed familiar. At the near end of the tiny forest, in the shade and half-hidden by willow branches, stood a wooden dock. Holly stepped onto it.
“Careful,” Pam said. “It’s kind of rickety. I think it’s pretty old.”
“Where did you see the mermaid?”
Pam gave a sheepish grin and nodded toward the lake. “Out at the end.”
Holly started walking along the dock, watching where she stepped. Occasionally a board was loose or a little rotten, but mostly they were sound. Probably whatever government agency maintained the lake kept an eye on it, and if it was really unsafe they’d have cordoned it off as dangerous.
The draping willows made a lacy green tunnel over parts of the walkway. The muted gold-green light inside felt magical. Holly’s arms began to tingle with excitement.
“This is cool!” she said as Pam caught up with her. “Man, if I were you I’d be out here all the time!”
“I used to come here a lot, actually. Haven’t had much time lately.”
They walked out from under the last willow branches a little before they reached the end of the dock. Holly knelt down and peered into the deep water. She couldn’t see the bottom.
“Was it here?”
“Yeah. It was at night, but there was a full moon, and it glowed down into the water a little bit. Have you ever seen that?”
Holly shook her head. “I’m a desert rat. Haven’t spent a lot of time around lakes or anything.”
“Well, I was sitting here dangling my feet over the water and staring down into it. I was kind of depressed, actually, and thinking about falling in.”
Holly looked at her in surprise. Pam always seemed sunny happy; it was hard to picture her depressed.
“And then she swam by, just underneath the surface, lit up by moonglow.” Pam’s voice
had dropped, and her face softened with memory.
“The mermaid.”
Pam nodded. “She looked up at me, then swam around the end of the dock here and headed toward the shore. I jumped up and followed her, but she was too fast for me to catch up. I ran all the way back to the shore before I lost sight of her.”
Holly waited, biting back questions. Pam was looking over her shoulder, toward the shoreline.
“And then I realized I must be more stoned than I thought, so I went home.”
“Where did the mermaid go? Along the shore?”
“I thought she ducked under the dock, but you know, it was dark and I was pretty blitzed.”
Holly sat back and drew up her knees, hugging them. “Do you think she was real?”
“Then I did. Now … I think she was probably a hallucination.”
Holly sighed, frustrated. “Maybe she was a—a guardian spirit, ready to protect you from drowning if you fell in.”
“Hm. If nothing else, she got me to back off on some of the crazy shit I was doing.” Pam glanced at her, smiling. “Sorry. I try to watch my mouth.”
“It’s OK.” She watched Pam gaze at the water for a moment, then added, “It’s still a cool story.”
Pam chuckled. “Thanks. So, should we go back? It’s probably getting close to six.”
Holly checked her watch and stood up in a hurry. She’d left the sauce on low, but they’d been out here longer than she’d planned. As Pam started toward the shore, Holly glanced down into the water once more.
A pale girl’s face looked up at her from beside a pylon, then darted beneath the end of the dock.
“Hey!”
Dropping to her knees, she leaned over to look, gripping the thick ends of the old boards.
“Holly, be careful!” Pam came running back.
“I saw something!”
“Probably a koi.” Pam knelt beside her.
Holly frowned, staring into the water. “It was bigger than a fish.”
It had a face. She was sure it had been a water spirit. She wanted Pam to see.
“Come back!” she called, but there were no more flashes in the darkness. She knew it was down there, the spirit. It was hiding from her. Why?
