Spirits of Ash and Foam

by Greg Weisman

  Throughout all this prep work, Rain’s mind was racing. A manatee sighting was rare enough, but a manatee that transformed into a raven-haired, golden-skinned woman was something she absolutely had to check out! She tried to justify the necessity of it by telling herself the Mighty Morphin’ Manatee might lead her to the next zemi—but she didn’t take the idea all that seriously. No, what really fueled her fire was one simple fact: Charlie and Miranda saw the weirdness!

  A plan was forming. But her father would have to cooperate. At least up to a point.

  It took all her willpower, but she kept her mouth shut until the banquet was fully prepared. Meanwhile, Wendy, John and Michael had not stopped talking about the Manatee-Woman, and eventually their parents got the gist of the story. It was too fanciful to be considered a lie and way too fanciful to be considered the truth, so the parents chose to be amused and indulgent, especially since the miraculous event seemed to have distracted their children from repeating their earlier—less pleasant—behavior. Wendy seemed to briefly suspect her mother and father weren’t taking them seriously, but when John started detailing scenarios to explain the magical origins of their recent visitor, Wendy dove in with her own theories and forgot to care whether her parents were true believers or not.

  Once Esther Kim began preparing plates off the buffet table for her children, Rain made her move. She slid up to Alonso and said, “They’ll be eating for at least a half hour, don’t you think?”

  Alonso said yes automatically—then instantly realized his daughter was winding up her curveball. He tried to stop her before the pitch, but …

  “Then you won’t mind if Charlie, Miranda and I go snorkeling while they eat.” There was definitely no question mark at the end of that question.

  “Rain…”

  “Dad, we’re roasting. We just want to cool off. A quick dip. We’ll be back on board before they get to the pie. You know, Charlie and Miranda have been out here since eight.”

  She always made it sound so reasonable. Still, he had to at least try to hold the line. “Yeah, well, I’ve been out here since six.”

  “You’re right. I get it. You three go in the water; I’ll do lunch duty.”

  He lowered his head, soundly defeated already. This was a game they played all the time, and he almost never won. In part, this was because he knew Rain was basically a really good kid. She did her chores—not without complaint but without whining—and this week, she’d even been getting her homework done without him or Iris having to breathe down her neck. So he let her win the little victories. Though just once, he’d love to outmaneuver her for a change. Not today, though. “No, you go ahead. But be back before the pie.”

  She jumped up, kissed his cheek and was gone, grabbing Charlie and Miranda and dragging them below.

  As soon as she was in the cabin, she stripped out of the lifevest, sleeveless tee, shoes and shorts she was wearing over her swimsuit. Then she started pulling snorkels, diving masks and fins out of a cabinet. Charlie followed her lead—because he always followed her lead—but Miranda just stood there. Rain looked at her. “C’mon. You are wearing a suit, aren’t you?”

  “Uh, yes. Are we taking the kids swimming?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Maybe. After lunch. Right now, we’re going snorkeling to look for that … that … For her.”

  “Her?”

  “Her!”

  “Oh, yeah. Um, snorkeling?” Miranda had, of course, been snorkeling before, but not often and not recently. Still, she dutifully took possession of the gear Rain handed to Charlie to hand to her.

  Rain removed one more item from the cabinet: her father’s new underwater digital camera. His expensive new underwater digital camera. She decided against asking for permission. She already knew it was reserved for paying customers, but she figured the Kims weren’t the diving type. Besides, Charlie and Miranda had seen Her too. If Rain could get some pictures—some tangible proof all this weird stuff was really happening—then she could tell her parents the truth. The whole truth. Thus she reasoned she was really doing her folks a favor. If they knew, they’d want me to take the camera.

  Two minutes later, the three thirteen-year-olds were in the water. Rain was in her element, scanning the blue for Her (in either form) or for … a dolphin! It was as if the bottle-nose had been waiting for Rain. It smiled, twirled and swam off leisurely. Rain waved her companions forward and set off in pursuit.

  Charlie was right behind her, but Miranda was already having trouble getting the hang of the snorkel. She exhaled hard, successfully clearing it of water. But seconds later the tube flooded again, and she didn’t have the breath left to clear it. She surfaced, cleared the snorkel again, caught her breath and realized she had lost track of her friends.

  Charlie was swimming even with Rain when—always the gentleman—he glanced back to make sure Miranda was still with them. He spotted her, not far away, but facing the wrong direction and looking about. He tried to mark where Rain was headed and went back for Miranda.

  Rain hadn’t noticed the absence of her friends. She swam after the dolphin through a forest of kelp. Emerging on the other side, she had to pull up short to avoid swimming right into Her. The woman was floating not far beneath the surface. Tiny bubbles of air were expelled from her small, flat nose. Meanwhile, the cooperative pod was swimming in circles, modestly wrapping long strips of seaweed around her torso like she was a maypole. Rain treaded water, stunned.

  Suddenly, she remembered the camera. She held it up for Her to see. The Manatee-Woman tilted her head to regard the object. Cautiously, she reached out a hand to touch the camera with long elegant fingers. This provided no additional information, so she simply offered Rain a questioning look. Rain figured that qualified as permission enough. She started taking pictures. Nonstop pictures. Gotta love digital! Dad’s old camera would already be out of film! She just held the shutter down and let it click away. The digitally produced sound was artificial, but it carried through the water and made Her smile. Rain was getting some fantastic shots of the woman and of the dolphins around her.

  Then suddenly she realized all these pictures really proved nothing at all. A seminaked woman swimming with dolphins was certainly interesting but hardly qualified as mystic. Rain knew what she needed, looked around and found it. One of the dolphins had the manatee’s skin in its mouth. Rain pointed at that dolphin and at the skin. The Manatee-Woman looked back over her shoulder, saw what Rain was indicating and beckoned the dolphin forward until it approached with the skin. Stroking the skin, she offered another questioning glance up at Rain, who was trying to remember not to hold her breath. She sucked in air through the snorkel and nodded.

  So the woman carefully took the empty manatee skin and pulled its mouth open wide. She bent her knees up to her chest and slipped both feet into the mouth. Then she pulled the manatee skin up over her calves and knees and thighs and hips. Up and up she pulled the skin, and her lithe body somehow filled its potato-shaped bulk, until the mouth was like a bizarre turtleneck around her throat, and all that remained of Her was her hands and her head with its dark halo of swirling hair.

  She smiled one last time at Rain—then pulled the top of the manatee head up and over her own. The hands disappeared within the skin. The mouth closed, simultaneously slurping up the last few strands of night black hair. Just like that, she wasn’t human anymore. She was the manatee again.

  And Rain had video of it all. Nonstop digital footage with time code and no edits whatsoever. The manatee approached Rain, nudging her gently with its bulbous, whiskered snout. Then it somersaulted in the water and swam away, surrounded by the dolphins. Rain didn’t even bother following. She clutched the camera to her chest and waited until the pod and the manatee had disappeared into the blue distance. Only then did she look around for Charlie and Miranda. She didn’t see them, so she surfaced.

  There they were. Charlie said, “There you are. Did you find her?”

  Rain spit the snorkel out of her mout
h and grinned. “I found her! She transformed back into a manatee right in front of me, and I videotaped the whole thing here!” In triumph, Rain raised the camera high into the air—and a dolphin breached and snagged it right out of her hand!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MERMAIDS

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

  Now all four of them sat,depressed, at an umbrella-covered outdoor table at the Plaza del Oro Mall on San Próspero just after sundown.

  Rain played it all back in her mind. The bottlenose dolphin snatching the camera away. Rain attempting pursuit, swimming with everything she had. The dolphin, holding the camera strap in its beak, taunting Rain by walking backward on its flukes along the water’s surface, as if performing a stunt in a theme park show. And Rain having to give up when the dolphin, now an easy fifty yards away, disappeared under the blue water.

  They had returned to the Spirit of the Ghosts. Her father hadn’t noticed she wasn’t returning with the camera, because he hadn’t known she had taken it in the first place. Soon enough, though, he’d realize it was missing. At which point, she thought, I’m doomed.

  Miranda wasn’t feeling any cheerier. When the dolphin had grabbed the camera, Rain swam after. Charlie followed. Miranda couldn’t keep up. She flooded her snorkel again and surfaced, choking and coughing. Charlie stopped to make sure she was okay. A second later, Rain surfaced, too, as the dolphin loudly snickered at them and danced away. Miranda knew she had been a liability on the adventure. A dead weight, if not the reason her friends hadn’t gotten the camera back. She had tried to make up for it. When they returned to the boat, she had offered to take the kids swimming. But Michael instantly fled below deck with his shovel. John asked if they could swim with the Manatee-Woman. Mr. Kim didn’t think that likely, so John went below to find another board game. Miranda volunteered to supervise. Wendy stayed on deck with her parents for a few minutes but ultimately joined her brothers and Miranda in the cabin. Rain and Charlie didn’t come down. Rain had barely spoken since, unless you counted her bizarre monologue during the walk to the Plaza, recounting and lamenting everything that had happened from start to finish.

  Charlie felt helpless. He knew Rain was in trouble, and he knew Miranda felt responsible. He had tried to reassure the latter and had even nudged Rain into mumbling confirmation, but he knew Miranda wasn’t letting herself off the hook. As for Rain? She had lost the proof she had sought and her dad’s camera. Charlie knew how much Rain hated to disappoint her father.

  Finally, there was ’Bastian. He had appeared at sunset to find his granddaughter and her friends walking away from the docks with their heads hanging. Rain had been forced to explain the situation out loud in front of Miranda, who was unsurprisingly perplexed over Rain telling a story the three teens all knew and had experienced. Mostly, this dredged up ’Bastian’s feeling of impotence. His Raindrop had been in trouble—again—and he hadn’t been there. Couldn’t be there. Even now, he felt just as useless.

  Miranda’s cell phone interrupted their pity party. She recognized her father’s ringtone: a snippet of El Amor Brujo by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Embarrassed, she pulled the phone out of the pocket of her shorts as she stood and walked away.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Miranda, where are you?”

  “At the mall.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s fine. But are you coming home? Ariel’s on call to pick you up at the yacht club.”

  “It’s not even eight o’clock yet. Can I just text her when I’m ready?”

  Silence on his end.

  “Did we have plans or something?”

  “No. I have to work.”

  “Then…”

  “Yes, I suppose it’s all right. But not too late.”

  “No. Not too late. Bye, Daddy.”

  “Goodbye, mija.”

  They hung up. Miranda looked toward her friends at the table ten feet away. Then someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around.

  “Hey, Sugar.”

  “Oh, hi, Renée.”

  Renée was dressed for work in the ugly orange and green striped polyester slacks and tunic that comprised the uniform of her fast-food employer, Koko’s Caribbean Fries. She smiled coolly. “Did you have fun working the boat?”

  “Um, sure.” Miranda sounded less than convinced, which basically made Renée’s evening.

  “And the three of you are still hanging out?”

  “Yeah…”

  Renée leaned in. “Okay, but you know Charlie has a thing for Rain, right? You don’t want to be a third wheel.”

  “No, I…” Miranda swallowed hard and glanced at the backs of Charlie and Rain, still moping at the table.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I’m sure they don’t mind you hanging around.”

  “Do you want to … join us?”

  Renée looked down at her attire. “Not like this I don’t. Besides, after a shift at K.C.F., I’m desperate for a shower. But you three have fun.”

  “Thanks.”

  Renée turned and walked away, not bothering to conceal her smile. Miranda watched her go, then turned back toward Rain and Charlie, regarding them with a nauseated expression. It wasn’t so much her own small crush on Charlie. That wasn’t anything too serious. But she didn’t want to be a third wheel … Still, it didn’t seem like either of them was in a romantic mood at the moment, but she’d have to watch Charlie for signs he wanted to be alone. She sighed and returned to the table.

  Rain looked up and asked, “You have to go?”

  Miranda was about to sit but froze halfway down. “No. But I can, if—”

  Rain shook her head. “Stay. Share the misery.”

  “Thanks?” She sat.

  Rain sighed. “Okay, so here’s the deal. I need to replace my dad’s camera with an exact duplicate.” She pointed at the smartphone, still in Miranda’s hand. “Can that thing find out what it costs?”

  Thrilled to be of use, Miranda tapped her search engine app and said, “Sure. Do you remember what kind of camera?”

  “Action SureFocus Waterproof Digital.”

  Miranda’s thumbs went to work. Soon, she was holding out the screen to show Rain. “Is it one of these?”

  “That one. The blue one.”

  They all leaned in to see. Even ’Bastian walked through the table to get a closer look.

  “A hundred eighty-nine dollars?!” Rain moaned in stunned despair. “Okay, okay. I have thirty dollars in tips I haven’t spent. And I think I still have some money left over from buying school supplies. But that was only like four and change.”

  She looked at Charlie, who shrugged. “I have exactly six dollars and twelve cents. But it’s all yours.”

  Then she turned to Miranda, who felt awful but could only shake her head.

  Incredulous and a little desperate, Rain said, “I’ll pay you back. Eventually.”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t have any cash. I’ve got a credit card, but the bill goes to my dad. If I use it to withdraw that much money or even to buy the camera, he’ll know. He’ll ask.”

  Rain looked up at ’Bastian standing in the middle of the table.

  “Sorry. You really can’t take it with you.”

  Rain let her head crash into the tabletop, hard enough to make the other three wince. From that position, she muttered, “So we’ve got like forty dollars. I only need a hundred and fifty more.”

  “Plus tax and shipping,” Miranda said, regretting it immediately when her qualification elicited a painful groan.

  Maq couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been Dumpster-diving in the vicinity and had scored perfectly edible quantities of Koko’s Sweet Potato Fries. Now he strode up to the table and said, “Rain, I have your new magic number, and it’s not one hundred eighty-nine.”

  She raised her head to look up at him—completely baffled. “What?”

  “Your new magic number is one.” Then Maq turned to Charlie and said, “Yours is six.” Then he pointed at Miranda
and said, “Three.” Finally, he looked right at ’Bastian, but I immediately started barking loudly to cut him off. I didn’t think it was time to let on we could see ghosts too. Evidently, he agreed—or else I simply distracted him enough that he forgot what he was about to say. Either way, he smiled and patted me on the head. Then he turned back to the kids. “Okay, the going rate for magic numbers is twenty-five cents per. So that’s three of you…” He counted the teens just to be sure. “Yes. Three. So that’s seventy-five cents.”

  Rain remained baffled. “What?”

  “Seventy-five cents.”

  Rain looked from Maq to ’Bastian to Miranda to Charlie, looking for some confirmation that it was Maq who was crazy, not her.

  But when she looked at Charlie, he sighed and said, “Fine.” Then he pulled out his wallet and pulled out a dollar. “I don’t have seventy-five cents.”

  Maq snatched the bill away. “That’s all right. I’ll owe you the quarter. Actually … come to think of it … Hura-hupia owes me a quarter. I officially transfer her debt to you. Good luck collecting.” Then he turned on his heel and quickly walked away. He had already spotted his next target. Tourists Bernie and Maude Cohen, in matching Hawaiian shirts of fluorescent green and gold, were exiting K.C.F., each with a large order of Fries-N-Onions. They looked like two heart attacks in the making.

  Maude saw Maq coming, grabbed her husband by the elbow and hustled him away. “Come on, Bernie. We have to get back to the hotel and pack.” She had met Maq before and no longer found him charming. Maq chased after them, calling out, “It’s good luck to share onions with a local! Anyone’ll tell you that.”

  I stayed behind, crawling under a nearby table to watch Rain stare after him. I could tell she wasn’t finding Maq so charming either right about now, but something else was nagging at her brain. Something Maq had said that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It fled away, so she turned and punched Charlie in the arm. “We needed that dollar!”