‘Uh, I think we’re going to Penalty’s to watch the Liverpool match.’
Hopping frantically, as though she was on a very wobbly pogo stick, Molly willed her school skirt to stay in place. Molly fought the urge to cry out.
‘Lovely,’ she gasped. ‘Very nice. Sounds good!’
Too many positive words, Molly! Talk like a normal human being, even if you can’t walk like one!
‘What about you?’ Fit Steve asked, kicking another stone and paying no attention to Molly’s sudden breakdown. ‘Any fun parties?’
Astonished that Fit Steve thought she was the kind of person who had parties to go to, Molly tried to think of a funny response. Something punny? About Smarties, maybe?
Unfortunately, thinking was getting hard – she was starting to pant with the effort of remaining upright. She swung violently from side to side, like a jack-in-the-box. Even Fit Steve had started to look at her in bewilderment.
Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.
‘HeysorryIgottago,’ Molly garbled, now at a forty-five degree angle to the ground.
Hopping like a lunatic, she burst through the fire exit to the swimming pool and ditched her bag by the long tiled bench, where a bunch of year sevens in rubber swimming caps sat watching her bemusedly.
Still fully clothed, Molly leaped behind a wall of floats. Although her shimmery white top and fully formed tail were shielded from view, she couldn’t stay upright any longer, and she was about to topple to the ground. Just in time, she dived ungracefully into the deep end of the pool, plunging to the very bottom with a sigh of relief.
As soon as she was submerged, everything felt much calmer, and she could breathe perfectly well – although the chlorine-infused water was much less pleasant to inhale than the tangy sea.
The temptation to stay at the bottom until the chaos subsided was strong, but she knew Ms Phelps would dive in after her if she thought Molly was drowning. She had to resurface, but with a fresh wave of panic, Molly realised her tail was in full view.
Quick! Think!
What should she do?
Maybe if she thrashed her tail hard enough, the water would go foamy and opaque so that nobody would be able to make out the giant snowdrift she had instead of legs. It was worth a try.
Propelling herself to the surface, Molly shook the water from her eyes and, not making eye contact with the crowd of year sevens, began swimming up and down the length of the swimming pool.
It was so easy. Molly had always been quite a good swimmer, but this was another level. Instead of half a minute, each length only took ten seconds, and with every stroke she felt more and more powerful. After a few lengths of churning the water, she fell into an effortless rhythm, even doing those fancy underwater direction changes at each end. It felt as natural as breathing. It wasn’t front crawl, or breaststroke, or butterfly, or any of the other swimming techniques she’d been taught. This was something new entirely; something fluid and innate.
Even though she was filled with apprehension over what would happen when she stopped, Molly found she didn’t ever want to stop. So she kept swimming, up and down like a shark, razor-focused and filled with powerful energy.
She was vaguely aware of the year sevens dropping into the other side of the pool, vaguely aware of them plodding up and down in clumsy backstroke, vaguely aware of when they left again . . . and vaguely aware of Ms Phelps crouching by the deep end, summoning Molly over.
Molly swished over to the edge of the pool and pressed her body flat against it, so Ms Phelps couldn’t see her tail.
Ms Phelps stared at her, agape. A plastic whistle hung loosely from her neck, and her straight blond hair was tied back in a neat bun. Her forearms were covered in colourful tattoos, including a pink dragon breathing blue fire. She was the youngest – and coolest – teacher in the school by far.
‘Ms Seabrook, that was . . . astounding. You’re not even out of breath, are you?’
Molly shook her head. She wasn’t breathless. Not in the slightest.
‘Why have you been keeping this talent hidden?’ Molly shrugged. ‘Didn’t want people to think I was weird.’ At least that part was true.
The teacher laughed. ‘Well, you’ve certainly made a splash today – in every sense! Maybe we could work on a smoother technique . . . although your unconventional style seems to be working for you. Would you be interested in joining the school swimming team?’ Ms Phelps smiled broadly, revealing gappy teeth that somehow made her look even more friendly. ‘You’re only in year eight, but you’re absolutely strong enough to join the under fifteens, at least. Would you like that?’
Molly’s heart sank, because the second she realised she would like that was the same second she realised she could never do it. The possibility of hiding her tail from a whole bunch of teammates was zilch, no matter how badly she wanted to find a place she belonged.
Suddenly, the adrenaline of her epic swim session died. She felt deflated and sad all over again. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Phelps. I don’t think I can. But thank you.’
After countless attempts at persuasion, Ms Phelps eventually left Molly alone in the pool. Reluctantly, she climbed out – no mean feat when you have a giant tail that’s useless on dry land – and dried herself off, then managed to wriggle back to the empty changing rooms, where she transformed back into a normal, boring thirteen-year-old girl.
Frustration ebbed in Molly’s chest as she trudged back up to the main school. She’d screwed up her one chance at ever holding a normal conversation with Fit Steve – the guy every girl in school would kill to be around. What if something romantic had started between them, and she had ended up hanging out with the same people as Ada? They’d have to be friends again, then.
But no. What had actually happened was that she’d wobbled violently away from him, as though she was on a space hopper that was about to burst, and dived into the swimming pool in front of a bunch of year sevens. She’d have to come up with an excuse for missing her actual PE lesson too.
Fantastic. Being a freak had ruined everything, just like it always did.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carrot to Eagle
Double maths: also known as the place where dreams go to die.
Ms Stavros, who had a well-known protractor obsession, explained acute angles for the ninetieth time. Molly had managed to nab a seat near Eddie of the Ears, but he was focusing all his energy on learning Pythagoras’s theorem, which Molly found deeply offensive. How could triangles possibly be more interesting than her shark jokes?
A trapped bluebottle fly buzzed inside the strip lighting. Someone snored loudly from the back row, but Ms Stavros was too busy fondling the swinging arms of a bevel protractor to notice. If news broke that Ms Stavros had eloped with a pencil case and was expecting her first protractor child, Molly would have no difficulty believing it.
At one point, Ada half turned around and subtly looked over her shoulder at Molly. Molly, who had already been staring at the back of her head, smiled weakly as they made eye contact. For a long second, Ada looked conflicted, unsure whether to return the smile. She opted not to, and turned back around. Molly’s heart sank.
After the rest of maths dragged by, it was time for biology, which was one of the few subjects Molly didn’t actively hate. A lot of the other girls were squeamish during dissections, but Molly found them absolutely fascinating. Watching Mr Moxton carve into a pig’s heart to show them the different atria and ventricles gave her a strange kind of thrill, even though the smell was pretty gross.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to slice open today. Molly arrived in class to find they were being split into pairs to prepare presentations on food chains. This was the second most terrible news Molly had received all week, and it was about to get a whole lot worse, because they were split into pairs alphabetically. Which meant . . .
‘Molly Seabrook and Ada Shen,’ Mr Moxton called, sounding bored.
Ada groaned audibly. Molly wrapped he
r scarf tighter around the bottom half of her face in a bid to hide the frantic blushing. What had happened to the Ada who almost smiled at her earlier?
Then Molly realised Briony Tait, one of Felicity’s friends, was in the class too. She’d been held back a year after a bad spell of glandular fever wiped her out for most of the previous winter. So Ada was clearly trying to impress Briony, and it stung. Did she only want to be friends again when nobody popular was around?
Ada sidled over to Molly’s bench space and dumped her new designer school bag on top of Molly’s notes. She wrinkled her nose, as though Molly were a bad smell.
‘Right, let’s get this over with.’ She flipped the laminated square of paper. ‘Our food chain is carrot to eagle.’
Molly sighed. ‘Yeah. Any ideas?’
‘Rabbits? Snakes? Rabbits definitely eat carrots, and snakes definitely eat rabbits, but what could come between snakes and eagles?’
‘I have no idea,’ Molly admitted. She tried to make Ada laugh like she used to be able to do so easily. Maybe if she could break the ice that way, she’d be able to launch into an apology. ‘Buffalos? Aardvarks? Tasmanian devils?’
Ada sighed. ‘Could you actually try, for once? Some of us actually care about our futures. We’re not all planning to spend our lives in a chip shop.’
Humiliation ebbed in Molly’s veins. The desire to apologise evaporated.
To her surprise, though, a clear voice piped up behind them: Eddie of the Ears. He was loosening his tie as though preparing for a fight. ‘I know I’d prefer working in a chip shop to being a boring accountant, or whatever it is you plan on doing.’
‘Who even are you?’ Ada snarked, even though she knew exactly who he was.
‘I’m someone you can never be mean around,’ Eddie announced. ‘Because trust me, I will hear. My ears once landed me a job in a circus.’
Ada folded her arms. ‘Circuses are inhumane.’
‘You’re telling me!’ Eddie agreed vigorously. ‘Once, my ears caused an accident and a bunch of other elephants got injured, so they made me dress up like a clown and perform dangerous stunts. Fortunately my luck turned around when I discovered my ears gave me the power of flight, and I astounded everyone at the circus with my new talent.’
There was a long pause. Then Ada said, ‘That’s the plot of Dumbo.’
‘Which was loosely based on my life,’ Eddie said slowly, as though Ada were an idiot.
There was a tense silence, and Molly let out a peculiar little whimper, which she often did when she was trying desperately hard not to laugh.
To her enormous surprise, Ada let out a hearty bark of laughter, and before she knew it, the three of them were clutching their sides and cackling maniacally. Mr Moxton helplessly tried to shush them, but it was no use.
Tears streamed down Ada’s face, and Molly’s ribs ached. Eddie of the Ears had never looked more pleased with himself.
And it felt good. It felt really, really good to laugh with Ada again. But the moment didn’t last, and when the laughter subsided, their fight had not been magically fixed.
From then on, Ada took charge of the presentation, and expressly forbade Molly from contributing. When the bell finally rang, Ada started packing up her things in silence.
Molly didn’t know whether it was the temporary bliss of laughing with her best friend again, or the way Eddie of the Ears had the magical ability to make any situation feel less tense, but a sudden determination came over her.
She wanted Ada back in her life. She wanted it so badly. She wanted to tell her all about the insanity of the last few weeks, to gossip about Fit Steve and Penalty Pete, to discuss what subjects they’d drop the second they got the chance. To find out whether Ada still wanted to be a translator in the UN, or whether she’d like to give accounting a shot after all.
And yet she’d screwed up. She’d screwed up horribly. All right, so Ada had started the fight by gossiping about her to Felicity, but Molly had made it go nuclear the second she’d brought up the divorce. It had been hugely unfair, and Molly hadn’t meant a word of it, especially since Ada had been her rock during Mum’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. Molly should be doing the same for Ada now, while the break-up was still messy and the wounds were still raw.
The damage was done, but maybe it could be healed. Molly would never know unless she took the first step.
‘Hey,’ she whispered to Ada, swallowing hard. ‘Can we talk?’
‘I can’t.’ Ada stuffed her neat leather pencil case into her bag and hooked it over her dainty shoulder. ‘I’m meeting Pete at break.’
Molly noted the fact she no longer called him Penalty. Was this an attempt to make him seem cooler and more mature than he really was?
‘Ada, please,’ Molly said, trying to keep the note of begging out of her voice. ‘I have something I want to say.’
Ada started to walk away into the corridor.
‘C’mon,’ Molly pleaded, jogging to keep up. Fit Steve looked over from the water fountain with interest, but Molly ignored the jittery feeling in her stomach. ‘We both said stuff we didn’t mean. It wasn’t just me, Ada, no matter how much you wish it was.’
Ada sighed, strolling over to her locker and twiddling the padlock. She shoved her science textbooks on top of her PE kit and slammed it shut again. ‘Whatever, Molly. I gotta go.’
‘Don’t you miss having a best friend?’ Molly asked, not even caring who heard now. ‘Because I know I do. Yeah, I have my sisters, and yeah, you have your new popular group. You have Felicity. But it’s not the same. You know it’s not. I bet none of them know about the time you baked your little brother’s used nappy in the oven to punish your dad for grounding you.’
Ada glared at Molly in horror, then shot Briony a don’t-listen-to-this-weirdo look. ‘Molly, for God’s sake. Don’t –’
‘Or the time you got taken to A&E because I poured sherbet in your ears on a dare.’
‘Molly, stop . . .’ Ada said, but her lips twitched at the memory. Something in her hard stare softened.
Molly barrelled onwards. ‘Or the time you laughed so hard at my fake Russian accent you did farts that sounded like a machine gun.’
Ada giggled now, covering her face with her hands. ‘OK, OK, I give up –’
‘In fact, I’m not convinced you didn’t follow through,’ Molly added. ‘You disappeared to the loo very quickly.’
Ada snorted. ‘Do you really wanna play this game, Little Miss Dialled 999 About a Pigeon You Were Convinced Was Stalking You?’
‘In my defence,’ Molly replied in a faux-haughty tone, ‘my grandpa always said he would be reincarnated as a pigeon. I genuinely thought I was being haunted.’
‘So you called the police.’
‘I tried the ghostbusters first, but they were swamped.’
Ada was properly belly laughing now, and it felt even better than before, because this time, Molly had made it happen.
When they finally calmed down, Ada threw her arms around Molly, her citrusy perfume smell familiar and comforting. ‘I’m sorry, Molls. You know I love the chip shop. We’ve had to go to Finnegan’s Fish for weeks. Their curry sauce is abysmal.’
‘Traitor!’ Molly said. ‘I take back my apology.’
Ada frowned. ‘You didn’t apologise.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Molly suddenly felt awkward again, but this time, it’d be easier to say it and mean it, because it wasn’t falling on deaf ears. ‘I’m sorry, Ada. Really. And I’m also sorry your parents are such giant buttholes.’
Ada rolled her eyes. ‘Me too. So what’s been going on with you?’
Molly opened her mouth to answer, but quickly clamped it shut again. Even though she really wasn’t supposed to, she desperately wanted to tell Ada about the tail, about mermaids, about this whole other life she never knew she had. About transforming in front of Fit Steve and wobbling about like she was on a pogo stick.
But how would Ada react? She’d probably think Molly was taking the mick, o
r trying to make her look like an idiot. Or just outright lying for attention. After all, who in their right mind genuinely believed mermaids were real? And if Ada did believe her, she’d just be reminded of how much of a freak Molly was. How inescapably weird her family were. If she couldn’t handle the grease smell, how on earth could she accept this?
Muttering half-heartedly, Molly said, ‘Didn’t you say you had to go and meet Penalty Pete?’
‘Nah.’ Ada scrunched up her petite nose. ‘He talks about nothing but football. Just, like, constantly. Pete, what would you like for lunch? Harry Kane. Great. With fries?’
Molly cackled, her best friend’s sarcasm music to her ears after so long without it. They walked side by side to their favourite bench by the football pitch, and spent the rest of morning break catching up as though nothing had ever happened between them.
But something had happened. To Molly, anyway. And as she looked at the rain clouds gathering ominously overhead, she couldn’t help but wonder how long she could possibly keep it a secret.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Purple Tail
Another night, another pier shift. Since it was drizzling lightly, and the haddock suit was not waterproof, it really should’ve been a miserable evening. But somehow, it wasn’t, because Ada was back in Molly’s life, and everything felt lighter and brighter because of it.
Molly made a solemn promise to herself never to let her hot temper get the better of her again. She would never let her quick mouth ruin any of the other relationships in her life. Of course, this was a promise she had made with herself many times before, but she was sure that this time it would stick. She just had to think before she spoke, and not make rash decisions in the heat of the moment.
Except when it came to the snooty old lady who’d called the police on her mum. When Molly saw the ancient biddy strolling towards her haddocky spot on the pier, the sinister little gremlin in Molly’s heart reared its ugly head. Trip her up, it whispered, cackling evilly. Whip her with your tail. Push her out to sea like a Viking burial.
And Then I Turned Into a Mermaid Page 8