Teenage Mermaid

by Ellen Schreiber

  “We’ll be there!” Wave said with a smile as the two titans swam off to class.

  “I have to study for my marine biology exam,” I lied.

  “Tomorrow,” Wave insisted. “Today you have to study boyfriend biology,” and she dragged me off to lunch.

  “An underwater kiss?” Chainsaw asked skeptically at our lockers. It was after second bell in the crowded hallway. Chainsaw, my best friend and worst enemy, was born wearing braces, and, man, those things could cut through steel! “What girl has ever kissed you out of the water?” he ribbed me. “Shhh!” I whispered.

  I didn’t want my romantic rescue to flash all over school. I’m a fringe guy, even more unpopular than Chainsaw, content simply not to end up trapped inside a senior’s locker. On a scale of one to ten, I give myself a seven and a half in looks, but I get extra points for personality, which, unfortunately, most people have never seen. And did I mention I’m smart? Not smart enough to be a geek, thank goodness. But I do maintain a B-plus average, which is pretty good for someone who never raises his hand in class. And I know the entire script of The Godfather.

  “Maybe it was just a dream!” Chainsaw said, and laughed.

  I rolled my eyes, pulling my European history textbook from my locker and stuffing it into my backpack.

  “And you didn’t touch her?” he went on in typical Chainsaw fashion.

  “I was drowning, dude!”

  “A gorgeous babe kisses you and you don’t make a move?” he asked in hormonal disbelief.

  “I thought I was going to die! What part aren’t you getting?”

  “Dude . . . did you at least get her number?”

  “You don’t get it‌—I’ve never seen anything like her before,” I confessed.

  “Even in my dreams, I always get the number,” Chainsaw said, slamming his locker shut. “Keep dreaming, Stone,” he added, sauntering off.

  “I got this instead!” I said, catching up and proudly dangling the necklace in front of him. “Anyone can get a phone number!”

  His eyes were momentarily mesmerized by the swinging silver heart.

  “She kissed you, saved your life, and gave you a necklace?” he asked skeptically.

  “Well she didn’t exactly give it to me.”

  Chain scrutinized the necklace like a pawnbroker. “Not bad, Stone,” he said, hitting me in the arm. “Not bad at all.”

  My cousin Dennis spotted the love of his life on the crowded New Jersey turnpike and engaged her in conversation. When the traffic moved and she changed lanes he realized he hadn’t gotten her number. So he bought a billboard on that same stretch of highway. Now they have three kids.

  But I wasn’t destined to find my true love via a giant billboard, the newspaper, or the Internet. I had to go to the sea.

  I wrote my message on a library computer during third bell study hall, and then Xeroxed it on sheets of yellow, pink, red, and turquoise paper. I was temporarily blinded by the continuous flash from the copier when I heard a screeching voice exclaim, “You’re using up all my paper!”

  Mrs. Barney, our toothpick-thin librarian, reached for the paper tray. “ ‘Single White Male’,” she read. “This looks like a personal ad!” she exclaimed, her forehead wrinkling.

  I quickly grabbed the paper from her hand and snatched the remaining stack from the paper tray. “I’m doing a report on relationships!”

  “All these copies for one report?” she said, scrunching her witchlike nose.

  “Did I say report?” I stammered. “I meant . . . collage. For art.”

  “Personal ads,” she said. “I remember when all one had to do was go to the disco.”

  I almost cracked at the thought of Mrs. Barney groovin’ with a John Travolta look-alike.

  “I can’t imagine a world where love is so impersonal. There was nothing more personal than a man in tight pants spinning a girl around a room all night,” she said, gazing out the window at the ocean far below. “But don’t let me get you down,” she added, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Everyone finds their true love, if they want to.”

  “I’m hoping to meet mine at the south goalpost!” I said, stuffing the ads in my backpack, and bolting from the library.

  Chainsaw and I snuck off school property during lunch and raced down the hill to the beach, where we plastered the pier with my ad. We even tacked sheets to an empty lifeguard stand. By the time we were finished, the beachfront looked like Times Square on New Year’s Day. Exhausted, Chainsaw and I made our way back up to school just in time for English lit.

  The message read: “SWM, 15, seeking golden-haired beauty who saved my life. I wear your silver heart close to my own. Meet me at Seaside High Stadium (south goalpost) at 8:30 A.M. I want to thank you.”

  I didn’t put down my name, phone number, or e-mail address, to avoid hassles from the local graffiti police, and to weed out any desperate forty-year-old women with amorous intentions!

  After school I dragged Waverly to the rocks underneath the pier where we sat out of human sight, our tails safely hidden in the water. “That’s what you’ve been waiting all day to tell me? That Earthdude has your great-grandfather’s necklace? Your mom will kill you!” Waverly shrieked.

  Luckily, there wasn’t much activity on the beachfront today. Just an orange-vested man taking down brightly colored sheets hanging all over the pier. Of course it’s dangerous to approach land, but at the moment I was more worried about being near my mother. I had to figure out a solution‌—and fast. Merpeople can only inhale air for about ten minutes before having to return underwater.

  “I’m going!” Wave said impatiently. “We can talk about this dilemma in your hideaway, where it’s safe.”

  “I need help, now,” I said, grabbing her arm. “I wanted to use the necklace for my Earthee project. I was going to return it right after school. Mom never would have known it was gone!”

  “So Earthdude grabbed it in the struggle for his life?” Wave realized, shaking her head in disapproval.

  “I have to find that heart immediately! If Mom opens her Butterfly Venus shell‌—”

  Wave gasped, pulling at her hair in disgust. “A seagull pooped on me!”

  “No, it’s just a piece of paper,” I said, and laughed, grabbing it before it blew away. Crisp letters written in black ink smeared onto my wet hand. “ ‘SWM,’ ” I read slowly.

  “Let’s go before someone sees us!” Wave said anxiously.

  “ ‘Fifteen . . .’ ” I continued. “ ‘Seeking golden-haired beauty.’ ” I gazed up at Waverly. “My hair is golden.”

  “So it is, but it’ll turn blue if we don’t return underwater!”

  She inched away from me but I quickly grabbed her arm.

  “ ‘Who saved my life.’ How poetic!” I said dreamily, gazing at the cloud-filled sky.

  “ ‘Who saved my life?’ ” Wave repeated, suddenly intrigued. She grabbed the paper. “This is totally cosmic! ‘I wear your silver heart close to my own.’ ”

  Our eyes locked in disbelief.

  “Silver heart?” Wave repeated, incredulous.

  “Saved his life . . .”

  “Golden hair? Lilly, it’s a message from that Earthdude! He’s trying to find you!”

  “It couldn’t be . . . that’s impossible,” I said, bewildered.

  “This is way dangerous,” Wave argued.

  “It’s totally glacial! Read the rest‌—I’m too freaked out!”

  “ ‘Meet me at Seaside High Stadium (south goalpost) at 8:30 A.M. I want to thank you,’ ” she read.

  “Thank me?” I asked, grabbing the parchment. Had my Earthdude written this?

  “Don’t even think about it! We never saw this paper,” Waverly urged, grabbing the note and tossing it into the sea.

  My heart fell as the pink paper gently floated away from us on the ocean’s surface. It drifted out of sight on a cresting wave.

  I could tell my mom I took her locket to school without her permission and lost it, and s
he would immediately sell my precious dolphin, Bubbles. Or I could tell her the truth, that my lips were pressed against a forbidden Earthee and he yanked it off in that life-giving kiss. In which case, she’d sell me.

  My options were clear. I had to get the necklace back.

  “It’s either a day at Seaside High or an eternity in an Atlantic boarding school,” I concluded, and we dove back into the water.

  Wave and I rode Bubbles, my dolphin, to the Underworld far below the reef’s warm water and bright colors. The water in the Underworld was frigid and the only colors that could be seen even with our sharp mermaid eyes were indigo and purple. To get there we had to ride past the finball stadium, past the school, past the recycling center, and dive down into a steep, jagged valley with giant stingrays swarming around. We’d never been this far from home before.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Wave said, sitting behind me, tugging my hair.

  Bubbles, too, was reluctant to press on and I had to tap her reassuringly to dive deeper.

  “It’s so arctic!” Wave cried through chattering teeth as we sped to lower depths.

  “Don’t be such a jellyfish! We’ll be there soon!”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of! If those tiger sharks don’t kill us, our parents will.”

  Just then I, too, noticed several tiger sharks swarming over a mangled tuna below us.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” Wave shrieked in horror.

  “Relax, they’ve already found lunch,” I said, steering Bubbles around the feeding predators.

  “Yeah, but we’re dessert,” Wave yelled, as the biggest shark broke away from the rest. “They’ve spotted us!”

  Suddenly our lives were in major danger!

  Pacific Reef had shark fences that repelled sharks from invading our city, but every once in a while one got through and caused panic. Only last year a merman was attacked on his way to a finball game. We usually carried shark mace in our purses, but I had foolishly taken mine out earlier to make room for my crystal sea horse collection which I intended to barter in the Underworld.

  The biggest shark was fast approaching and Bubbles was whining anxiously. I tapped her hurriedly. “Go, baby, go!”

  “Lilly, use your mace!” Wave shrieked.

  “Mine’s at home‌—use yours!”

  “Home? What good’s it doing at home?” She scrambled through her pink backpack as the shark drew closer. “I can’t find it!”

  “Look harder,” I shouted.

  “Here’s my compact! My comb!”

  “Today, Waverly! Today!”

  “My lobster sandwich from lunch . . . here it is!” But in her panic the mace slipped from her hand and sank to the ocean floor.

  I think even Bubbles let out a shriek.

  The shark was now just yards away, his gray eyes piercing us and his jaws open, waiting for a triple-decker treat.

  “Help!” Wave called desperately. “Help! Someone help us!”

  “The sandwich! That’s why he’s following us‌—he smells dead fish,” I screamed.

  “Soon he’s going to smell dead mermaids!” Wave screamed, squeezing my waist.

  “Throw him the sandwich!” I commanded.

  But Wave just grabbed me harder.

  I peeled the sandwich from Waverly’s paralyzed hands and turned Bubbles around sharply. The shark, rising to attack us, opened his jaws again and I threw the lobster sandwich as hard as I could into his mouth. The shark seemed bewildered for a moment, then suddenly pleased, and swam past so closely I could have reached out and touched his belly.

  “We’re alive!” Waverly laughed, waving her arms.

  “That was electric!” I exclaimed.

  Even Bubbles smiled brightly.

  “Now let’s go home,” Waverly said.

  “But we’re almost there.”

  “Are you crazy?” she asked, out of breath.

  I tapped Bubbles onward and within minutes we dove as debris and litter floated past us into a darkened filthy district where homeless merpeople begged for coins, addicts scored stingray venom, and dancing merladies hung behind glass-enclosed caves enticing mermen into their lairs.

  I secured Bubbles to a rock outside Hurricane’s House of Tattoos. “We’ll just be a minute,” I said, petting his nose as he squirmed nervously.

  A one-eyed merman who stunk of fermented jellyfish leered at us from the alley. “Hey, girls!”

  I grabbed Wave’s trembling arm and swam past him. We’d heard of Madame Pearl from kids at school. Some said she was a sea witch, some said she was a charlatan, but she was my only hope.

  MADAME PEARL’S POTION PALACE. The painted clay letters were weathered and cracked, but the store was smaller and less frightening than I had imagined. No snakes or eels, no shrunken skulls hanging in the windows. Just a small, dilapidated cave with seaweed curtains swaying with the undercurrent.

  We opened the barnacle-encrusted front door and cautiously entered. A woman loomed over us whose crinkly face showed the signs of someone who’d been in the lower depths for decades. Her porcelain flesh was puffed out like a blowfish, and her chest spilled over her huge black sequined shirt.

  “Madame Pearl?” I asked hesitantly.

  She quickly sized us up with her skeptical gaze. “This isn’t the place for two young mermaids,” she said.

  “I need your help.”

  She grabbed my small hand in her large one and closed the door behind us. She led us into a consultation room with a heavy round table and chairs dripping with black lace. “You have come to hear your destiny,” she said when we were seated.

  “Well, not exactly,” I answered.

  “You want to know if your current relationship is a lasting one?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “You want me to tell you about your past lives?”

  “No!”

  “Well, tell me already! I’m not a psychic!” she blurted out.

  “You’re not?” Wave asked.

  “I need a potion,” I whispered.

  “You can get potions anywhere these days. Kids sell that stuff in school bathrooms. They’ve plumb run me out of business,” she said, rising. “You shouldn’t risk your lives to come here for that. I can’t be bothered with such things anymore!”

  She floated through a thick seaweed curtain into another room.

  “But I want a special one!” I said, following her, but the seaweed curtain closed in my face. Wave swam over, looking relieved. “We better take off.”

  “I don’t know where else to go!” I called through the curtain.

  There was no response. “Let’s leave,” Wave whispered, tugging at my arm.

  “Only magic can help me!” I exclaimed, not moving.

  I could hear the faint wailing of a beggar blowing bubbles through a cone shell outside. There was no response from Madame Pearl.

  I opened the front door, resigned to leave, when suddenly the curtains opened and Madame Pearl peeked her head through. “Magic?” she inquired. “No one’s asked me for magic for years! Everyone wants youth potions, aphrodisiacs, or cold relief. Sit down!”

  She drew the curtains over the windows and returned to the table.

  “Now, what kind of magic do you need? Longer hair? A spell cast upon an enemy?”

  “I want to be an Earthee!”

  Her jaw dropped. She got up from the table. “Out of the question!”

  “But I’ll be sent to the Atlantic!”

  “That potion is of much greater danger than banishment to the Atlantic!”

  “I’m willing to take the risk!”

  “And why, may I ask, are you willing to risk your life for a few hours on land?”

  “I have to get my great-grandfather’s necklace back!”

  “A necklace? Buy another!”

  “You don’t understand. It’s priceless. And I know where it is. It won’t take me an hour.”

  “But there are consequences. If you stay past the rising moon, you’ll
lose your mermaid form forever.”

  “I’ll only be on land for a few minutes.”

  Madame Pearl fingered her crystal necklace. “I will need parental consent,” she said, rising, and rummaging through a box of forms.

  I opened my purse and spilled out my crystal sea horse collection, which slowly sank onto the table.

  Madame Pearl stared at the crystal almost salivating, as if I had put a marinated lobster tail in front of her.

  “These are yours?” she asked skeptically, forgetting the box of forms.

  “It took me six years to collect all of them.”

  “Wait here a minute,” she said, scooping the sea horses into the top layer of her black skirt. She quickly left the room. The seaweed curtain, slightly opened, revealed her working fervently on the other side. Wave and I peeked through.

  Madame Pearl floated high in a cluttered kitchen. Bottles with sea creatures and hardened seaweed books lined the marble shelves. Purple crystals hung from the stalactites on the ceiling. She grabbed a book from the top shelf and set it open on a wooden table. Then she began adding ingredients from labeled shells: an octopus leg, the eye of a shrimp, the tongue of a frog. She placed them and a dash of herbs in a green glass bottle, closed it with a cork and vigorously shook the concoction. Finally she held the bottle to her chest and spoke words I couldn’t understand.

  When she looked up, Wave and I quickly floated back to our chairs.

  Madame Pearl returned. The gook-filled bottle leaked the most horrible smell.

  “You must drink the entire potion within three hours from now. Not a minute after, or it will lose its potency,” she declared, handing it to me.

  “Can’t I just place it under my pillow?” I asked, holding the bottle at arm’s length.

  “I knew this was a mistake,” she said, extending her hand to take the potion back.

  “I’ll do it!” I vowed, pulling the bottle close to my heart.

  “You’ll have until moonrise to return to the ocean. Not a second longer!” she warned.