by Liz Kessler
The entire morning was a disaster. I couldn’t concentrate at all. In addition to being my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Partington was also my pre-algebra teacher. We were doing some simple equations, and I kept getting x wrong. I was really mad, because I’m good at math, and usually I can solve the bonus questions easily. Mrs. Partington kept giving me sideways looks out of her good eye.
When the bell rang for break, I actually did start to feel sick. Next was swimming. Everyone ran out of the room, but I took ages putting my pens and book away in my backpack.
Mrs. Partington was wiping the board. “Come on, Emily,” she said without turning around. “It might be nice to do something on time today.”
“Yes, Mrs. Partington,” I said, and crawled out of the classroom, reluctantly dragging my swimming bag behind me.
I walked to the gym like a zombie. We were supposed to catch the bus right outside to the Brightport Community Center, where the pool was. It crossed my mind just to keep walking and not stop at all. I’d gotten as far as the double doors when Philip North called me back. “Oy — teacher’s pet!” he yelled. Everyone turned to see who he was talking to.
“Teacher’s pet? What are you talking about?”
“Come on, we all saw you showing off last week in the pool. Bob couldn’t stop going on about how amazing you were and how we should all try and be like you.”
“Yeah. We all heard what he said.” Mandy Rushton came up behind Philip. “And we saw you.”
I glared at her, speechless. She saw me? Saw what? My tail? She couldn’t have! It hadn’t even formed — had it?
“I can’t help it,” I said eventually.
“Yeah, right. Showoff,” Mandy sneered.
“Shut up.”
Mr. Bird, the P.E. teacher, showed up then. “All right, break it up. Come on, you guys.”
I found a seat on my own. Julia sat across the aisle from me. “Philip is such a pig,” she said, putting her bag on her knee. I smiled at her. “He’s only jealous because he doesn’t know how to swim.”
“Thanks, Ju —”
“Move over, Jules.” Mandy plonked herself down next to Julia and flashed me a smarmy smile. “Unless you want to sit with fish girl.”
Julia went red, and I turned to look out of the window as the bus bumped and bounced down the road. Mandy’s words swirled around and around in my head as if they were in a cement mixer. Fish girl? What did she know?
The bus stopped in the community center parking lot. “You coming?” Julia hung back while Mandy pushed and shoved to the front with the rest.
“In a sec. I’ll catch up with you.” I pretended to be tying my shoelaces. Maybe I could hide under the seat until everyone came back, then say I’d fainted or fallen over or something.
I could hear chattering outside the window, then it went quiet. A moment later, there was a huge groan, and people were shouting.
“But sir, that’s not fair,” I heard Philip whine. I snuck a quick peek out of the window. Bob was standing there, talking to Mr. Bird. The kids in the class were just milling around; some had thrown their bags on the ground.
Next thing I knew, somebody had gotten back on the bus. I ducked down again and held my breath. But the footsteps came all the way to the back.
“You’re not still tying your shoelaces, are you?” It was Julia.
“Huh?” I looked up.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just —”
“Doesn’t matter anyway.” She sat down. “Swimming’s canceled.”
“What?”
“The pool’s closed. Budget cuts. They forgot to tell the school.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
I looked at her face; she was totally miserable. I stared down at my lap and shook my head. “God, it’s just not fair, is it?” I said, trying hard not to grin. “Wonder what they’ll make us do instead.”
“That’s what Mr. Bird’s talking about now with Bob. They’re going to send us on a nature trail, apparently.”
“Duh — boring.” I folded my arms, hoping I looked in as much of a huff as Julia. Bob soon turned back toward the building, and Mr. Bird announced with a smile that we were going to Macefin Wood.
Mandy glared at me as she sat down across the aisle. I had to sit on my hands to stop myself from punching the air and shouting, “YES!”
I went to bed really early so I could get a few hours’ sleep before sneaking out to meet Shona. I easily found my way to the rocks again and was there first this time. A familiar flick of a tail spreading rainbow droplets over the water soon told me she’d arrived.
“Hello!” I called, waving, as soon as she surfaced.
“Hi!” She waved back. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” She splashed rainbow water in my face with her tail as she dove under.
We seemed to swim for ages. The water reminded me of those advertisements where they pour a ton of melted chocolate into a bar. Warm, and silky smooth. I felt as if I were melting with it as we swam.
Shona was ahead of me, gliding through the water and glancing back from time to time to check whether I was still there. Every now and then, she’d point to the left or right. I’d follow her hand to see a hundred tiny fish swimming in formation like a gymnastics display, or a yellow piece of seaweed climbing up toward the surface like a sunflower. A line of gray fish swam alongside us for a while — fast, smart, and pinstriped, like city businessmen.
It was only when we stopped and came up for air that I realized we’d been swimming underwater the whole time.
“How did I do that?” I gasped, breathless.
“Do what?” Shona looked puzzled.
I looked back at the rocks. They were tiny pebbles in the distance. “We must have swum a mile.”
“Mile and a quarter, actually.” Shona looked slightly sheepish. “My dad bought me a splishometer for my last birthday.”
“A what?”
“Sorry, I keep forgetting you haven’t been a mermaid very long. A splishometer shows you how far you’ve swum. I measured the distance from Rainbow Rocks yesterday.”
“Rainbow what?”
“You know — where we met.”
“Oh, right.” I suddenly realized I was out of my depth — in more ways than one.
“I wasn’t sure if it would be too far for you, but I really wanted to bring you here.”
I looked around. Ocean everywhere. What was so special about this particular spot? “Why here?” I asked. “And anyway, you haven’t answered my question. How did we do all that underwater?”
Shona shrugged and tossed her hair. “We’re mermaids,” she said simply. “Come on, I want to show you something.” And with that, she disappeared again, and I dove under the water after her.
The lower we went, the colder the water grew. Fish flashed by in the darkness.
A huge gray bruiser with black dots slid slowly past, its mouth slightly open in a moody frown. Pink jellyfish danced and trampolined around us.
“Look.” Shona pointed to our left as a slow-motion tornado of thin black fish came toward us, whirling and spiraling as it passed us by.
I shivered as we swam deeper still. Eventually, Shona grabbed my hand and pointed down. All I could see was what looked like the biggest rug I’d ever seen in my life — made out of seaweed!
“What’s that?” I gurgled.
“I’ll show you.” And with that, Shona pulled me lower. Seaweed slipped and slid along my body, creaking and popping as we swam through it. Where was she taking me?
I was about to tell her that I’d had enough, but then the weeds became thinner. It was as though we’d been stuck in the woods and finally made our way out. Or into a clearing in the center of it, anyway. We’d come to a patch of sand in the middle of the seaweed forest.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What d’you think?”
I looked aroun
d me. A huge steel tube lay along the ground; next to it, yards of fishing nets sprawled across the sand, reaching up into the weeds. A couple of old bicycles were propped up on huge rusty springs. “I have absolutely no idea,” I said.
“It’s like our playground. We’re not really meant to come out here. But everyone does.”
“Why shouldn’t you come here?”
“We’re all meant to stick to our own areas — it’s too dangerous, otherwise. Too easy to get spotted. And this is really far from where we live.” Shona swam over to the tube and disappeared. “Come on,” her voice bubbled out from inside it, echoing spookily around the clearing.
I followed her into the tube, sliding along the cold steel to the other end. By the time I came out, Shona was already flipping herself up the fishing net. I scrambled up behind her.
“Like it?” Shona asked when we came back down.
“Yeah, it’s wicked.”
Shona looked at me blankly. “Wicked?”
“Wicked . . . you know, cool . . .”
“You mean like swishy?”
I laughed, suddenly getting it. “Yeah, I guess so.” I looked around me. “Where’s all this stuff from?”
“Things fall into the sea — or get thrown away. We make use of it,” she said as she pulled herself onto one of the bikes. She perched sideways on it, letting herself sway backward and forward as the spring swung to and fro. “It’s nice to have someone to share it with,” she added.
I looped my tail over the other one and turned to face her. “What do you mean? What about your friends?”
“Well, I’ve got friends. Just not a best friend. I think the others think I’m too busy cramming to be anyone’s best friend.”
“Well, you do seem to work pretty hard,” I said. “I mean, sneaking out at night to study for a test!”
“Yeah, I know. Do you think I’m really dull?”
“Not at all! I think you’re . . . I think you’re swishy!”
Shona smiled shyly.
“How come there’s no one else around?” I asked. “It’s kind of creepy.”
“It’s the middle of the night, gill-brain!”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” I held on to the handlebars as I swayed forward and back on my swing. “It would be cool to meet some other people like us,” I said after a while.
“Why don’t you, then? You could come to my school!”
“How? You don’t have extra lessons in the middle of the night, do you?”
“Come in the day. Come on Saturday.”
“Saturday?”
She made a face. “We have school Saturday mornings. Why not come with me this week? I’ll tell them you’re my long-lost cousin. It’d be evil.”
“Evil?”
“Oops — I mean, wicked. Sorry.”
I thought about it. Julia actually had invited me over on Saturday. I could easily tell Mom I was going there and then tell Julia I couldn’t make it. But I was only just getting to know Julia — she might not ask me again. Then who would I have? Apart from Shona. But then again, Shona was a mermaid. She was going to take me to mermaid school! When else would I get a chance to do that?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it!”
“Great! Will your parents mind?”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? Nobody knows about my being a mermaid.”
“You mean apart from your mom and dad? If you’re a mermaid, they must be —”
“I haven’t got a dad,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I never had one. He left us when I was a baby.”
“Sharks! How awful.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to know about him anyway. He never even said he was leaving, you know. Just disappeared. Mom’s never gotten over it.”
Shona didn’t reply. She’d gone very still and was just staring at me. “What?” I asked her.
“Your dad left when you were a baby?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know why he went?”
I shook my head.
“Or where?”
“Nope. But after what he did to Mom, he can stay wherever he is, as far as I’m —”
“But what if something happened to him?”
“Like what?”
“Like — like — maybe he got taken away, or he couldn’t come back to you or something.”
“He left us. And we’re fine without him.”
“But what if he didn’t —”
“Shona! I don’t want to talk about it. I haven’t got a dad, okay? End of subject.” I watched a shoal of long white fish swim across the clearing and disappear into the weeds. Seaweed swayed gently behind them.
“Sorry,” Shona said. “Are you still going to come on Saturday?”
I made a face. “If you still want me to.”
“Of course I do!” She swung off her bike. “Come on. We need to head back.”
We swam silently back to Rainbow Rocks, my head filled with a sadness stirred up by Shona’s questions. Of course they were not so different from the ones I’d asked myself a hundred times. Why had my dad disappeared? Didn’t he love me? Didn’t he want me? Was it my fault?
Would I ever, ever see him?
I waved to Mom as I made my way down the pier. “Bye-bye, darling, have a lovely day,” she called.
Go back in, go back in, I thought. “Bye!” I smiled back at her. I walked woodenly along the pier, glancing behind me every few seconds. She was smiling and waving every time I looked.
Eventually, she went inside and closed the side door behind her. I continued up to the top of the pier and checked behind me one last time, just to be sure. Then, instead of turning onto the boardwalk, I ran down the steps onto the beach and snuck under the pier. I pulled off my jeans and shoes and shoved them under a rock. I already had my suit on underneath.
I’d never done this in the daytime before. It felt kind of weird. The tide was in, so I only had to creep a short way under the pier. A few people were milling around on the beach, but no one looked my way. What if they did? For a second, I pictured them all pointing at me: “Fish girl! Fish girl!” Laughing, chasing me with a net.
I couldn’t do it.
But Shona! And mermaid school! I had to do it. I’d swim underwater all the way to Rainbow Rocks. No one would see my tail.
Before I could change my mind, I ran into the freezing cold water. One last look around, then I took a breath and dove — and was on my way.
I made my way to Rainbow Rocks and hung around at the edge of the water, keeping hidden from the shore. A minute later, Shona arrived.
“You’re here!” She grinned, and we dipped under. She took me in a new direction, out across Shiprock Bay. When we came to the farthest tip of the bay, Shona turned to me. “Are you ready for this?” she asked.
“Are you joking? I can’t wait!”
She flipped herself over and started swimming downward. I copied her moves, scaling the rocks as we swam deeper and deeper.
Shoals of fish darted out from gaps in rocks that I hadn’t even noticed. Sea urchins clung to the sides in thick black crowds. The water grew colder.
And then Shona disappeared.
I flicked my tail and sped down. There was a gap in the rock. A huge hole, in fact. Big enough for a whale to get through! Shona’s face appeared from inside.
“Come on,” she said with a grin.
“Into the rock?”
She swam back out and grabbed my hand. We went through together. It was a dark tunnel, bending and twisting. Eventually, we turned a corner and a glimmer of light appeared, growing bigger and bigger until eventually we came out of the tunnel. I stared around me, my jaws wide open.
We were in a massive hole in the rock. It must have been the size of a football field. Bigger! Tunnels and caves led off in all directions, around the edges, above us, below. A giant underwater rabbit warren!
Everywhere I looked, people were swimming this way and that. And t
hey all had tails! Merpeople! Hundreds of them! There were mermaids with gold chains around slinky long tails, swimming along with little merchildren. One had a merbaby on her back, the tiniest little pink tail sticking out from under its sling. A group of mermaids clustered outside one passageway, talking and laughing together, bags made from fishing nets on their arms. Three old mermen sat outside a different tunnel, their tails faded and wrinkled, their faces full of lines, and their eyes sparkling as they talked and laughed.
“Welcome to Shiprock — merfolk style!” Shona said.
“Shona, better get a move on. Don’t want to be late.” A mermaid with her hair in a tall bun appeared beside us. “Five minutes to the bell.” Then she flicked her dark green tail and zoomed off ahead.
“That’s Mrs. Tailspin,” Shona said. “She’s my history teacher. We’ve got her first thing.”
We followed her along a tubelike channel in the rock. At the other end, where it opened up again, mergirls and boys were swimming together in groups, swishing tails in a hundred different shades of blue and green and purple and silver as they milled around, waiting for school to start. A group of girls were playing a kind of skipping game with a long piece of ship’s rope.
Then a noise like a foghorn surrounded us. Everyone suddenly swam into lines. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Shona pulled me into a line at the far end. “You okay?”
I nodded, still unable to speak as we swam single file down yet another tunnel with the rest of our line.
Everyone began to take their seats on the smooth round rocks that were dotted around the circular room. It reminded me of the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree dome at the Museum of Science movie theater, where they show films of daredevil flights and crazy downhill skiing. Only this wasn’t a film — it was real!
Shona grabbed an extra rock and pulled it next to hers. A few of the other girls smiled at me.
“Are you new?” one asked. She was little and plump with a thick, dark green tail. It shimmered and sparkled as she spoke.
“She’s my cousin,” Shona answered for me quickly. The girl smiled and went to sit on her rock.
