by Joy Preble
Lifeguard Ben—who also happens to be my boyfriend and is thus sensibly ignoring the flirtations of the girl in the lime green bikini—doesn’t see her either. Although unlike Tess, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t believe me if I told him.
Lime bikini girl, having failed to get Ben’s attention, climbs the diving board steps, walks to the edge of the board, then executes a double flip and cuts neatly into the water. She barely misses a head-on collision with the woman in lilac, who’s now settled on the bottom of the pool, her dress fanning out in waves around her as she opens my envelope, slides out the paper inside, and nods her head over my semester grades. She grins at me, baring her teeth in a way that’s even more unsettling than any of the rest of it. This time only a fish tail peeks out from the tattered hem of her lilac dress.
Tess sighs. “Spill.”
She’s said that to me before. Back last fall, when Ethan and a not-so-dead Russian princess named Anastasia and a crazy witch named Baba Yaga turned my pretty ordinary world into a crazy mess.
Tess was there when it all happened. When I discovered that I had power. And a destiny. And a really nutty great-great-whatever-grandfather named Viktor who also happened to be the illegitimate son of Tsar Nicholas and had found a way to live forever. He’d recruited Ethan to his mystical Brotherhood and convinced him that they were saving the Romanov family. But after he had used ancient magic to compel Baba Yaga to save and hold Anastasia, the only one Viktor was really interested in helping was himself: eternal life for the Brotherhood guys as long as Anastasia remained in the witch’s forest. Only Viktor never counted on Ethan finding me, the girl the prophecies said would be able to free Anastasia.
Somehow after all of that, school didn’t quite do it for me.
“Coach Wicker’s world history final,” I explain to Tess. “I couldn’t answer the essay.”
“Oh?”
“Let me quote.” In the deep end, the woman perusing my grades shakes her head. If I’m not mistaken, she even wags one long, pale finger at me. “Discuss the series of events that led to the assassination of the Romanov family in 1918.”
“I see your point. But weren’t there other choices? I helped Neal study for that one.” Neal Patterson is Tess’s boyfriend—the same Neal she’s broken things off with two different times now. Tess is persistent in every area of her life. “He said there were two other questions to pick from. You didn’t have to answer that one.”
I shrug. She’s right. I didn’t have to answer it. I could have answered the question about the downfall of the Roman Empire instead. But by then, everything had sort of dribbled out of my brain.
In the deep end, the woman holding what is most likely my failing grade on the world history final—disappears.
I flick my gaze over to Ben, sitting in all his lifeguardy goodness on the stand, his red life preserver board slung over his shoulders. This is a new thing, Ben and me. About two months new, to be exact. He’s smart and sweet and on the cute side of handsome. Sandy blond hair that’s cut short but not buzzed, brown eyes a little darker than mine. He just graduated a few weeks ago and is headed to U of I in the fall to major in economics: Ben Logan, who’s eighteen years old for his first time. Who, unlike a certain mysterious Russian, isn’t actually closer to one hundred. And who has never been part of a mystical Russian Brotherhood that was supposed to protect the Romanovs. Ben has never been whammied by ancient magic to stay young and hot-looking until I finish his mission for him, rescue Anastasia and let him become mortal again and start over from where he’d stopped. Tess has both questioned and applauded my motives for going out with Ben. As she so delicately put it, You know, if you’d only give in and hook up with water stud instead of moping about old Russian blue-eyes, then maybe you’d be fun again. Did you ever think about that? He’s just what you need. Fun. Sexy. And seriously normal.
Most days, I think she’s right. Like right now, when Ben glances back at me—just me—even though he’s supposed to be scanning the pool to make sure everyone’s safe. He smiles his sweet Ben smile, and I smile back and feel all warm and tingly and think about what a fine kisser he is. And then I feel guilty—the kind of guilty a girl feels when she knows that a guy likes her way more than she likes him. Not that I don’t like Ben. I do. But the liking is diminished by the knowledge that I’m using him because he makes me feel normal. And the more the dreams continue and strange aqua women in lilac stalk me in the neighborhood pool, the more attracted to Ben I feel…which is followed by more guilt.
Ben gestures with his shoulder toward the kiddy pool area. One of the other guards has called in sick today, so the kiddy pool with its frog slide is currently closed. Most of the little kids prefer the spacious shallow end of the main pool anyway. I glance at the clock on the storage shed wall by the Coke machine. It’s almost Ben’s break time.
“Gonna meet Ben by the frog slide.” I slide the bottle of Diet Coke back in the cooler and hoist myself off the lounge chair. The pavement feels warm under my feet. But my arms are prickled with goose bumps even though it’s in the low eighties and fairly humid. It’s mid-June, and even Chicago heats up—at least occasionally—by this point in the summer.
Tess lifts her Oakleys briefly. “Now that’s the spirit. You and lover boy go wade in the baby pool for a while. See if that perks you up. Maybe you can let him give you a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or something.”
Sometimes, ignoring Tess is the only solution. So I do just that as I cross the hot pavement to the kiddy pool and wait for Ben on a bench in the shade. The huge frog slide—kids climb up the back side of the frog and zip out of its mouth—blocks my view of the rest of the Aqua Creek complex. I scan the empty baby pool—no woman in lilac. Maybe she didn’t notice me leave my lounge chair. Maybe she just prefers deeper waters. Relieved, I close my eyes.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” Ben ruffles my hair affectionately, then flops down on the bench next to me. His skin smells of suntan lotion, sweat, and chlorine—like a personal embodiment of summer. He’s wearing his navy lifeguard board shorts, flip-flops, and basically nothing else. It’s a good look on him. He leans in and kisses me lightly on the mouth. Ben’s not big on public displays of affection—at least while he’s working.
“Hey.”
He kisses me again, this time on the tip of my nose, then drapes one arm over my shoulders and pulls me close. I rest my head in the crook of his arm, feel packed, toned muscle against my cheek. His thumb rubs over my collarbone.
I wonder, not for the first time, what Ben would say if I told him how less-than-normal I really was. Would he still want to take me for pita and greasy French fries at the Wrap Hut or snuggle up next to me behind the frog slide if I told him that I know how to put a warding spell around someone’s house? Or that Ethan and I used a magic lacquer box to enter Baba Yaga’s forest? Or that a persistent mermaid in a lilac dress keeps swimming in my general proximity?
How about if I told him that I was there when Ethan’s friend, Professor Olensky, was murdered last fall because he tried to help us rescue Anastasia? Or that it was my own crazy ancestor, Viktor, that killed him? Would he still want to go bowling later?
Ben purses his lips, which I’ve learned is his serious look. “You trying to lose weight or something? Because you don’t need to, you know,” he says and pokes a finger gently into my side. “Do you know I can feel all your ribs?”
I overlook the rib comment—mostly because it’s true. I am thinner these days, but it’s hard to eat when you’re haunted by a persistent mermaid. And other things.
“I’m off at four, remember,” Ben says after a few beats. “You’re working today too, right? We’ll do something after.”
This is another part of why I’m with Ben. So many guys like to play the whole unavailable game. It’s one of Tess’s biggest issues with Neal. He pretends he doesn’t know her schedule, or he blows her off to go out boozing with his buddies and tells her that she’s making a big deal out of things when she remi
nds him that they had plans. But Ben’s not like that. He listens when I talk and shows up when he says he will and even calls me before he goes to sleep just to say good night.
“After is good. But it’ll be a little longer than that. Mrs. Benson has me scheduled from three until we close at eight.”
Mrs. Benson is Amelia Benson, owner of the Jewel Box antique and estate jewelry shop, where I’m a part-time salesgirl for the summer. It’s the shop that my mother helps manage—the same one that got pulverized last fall during the whole disastrous Anastasia rescue effort and has now been reroofed and restocked. Not that anyone seems to understand that’s what happened, of course, or that a witch called Baba Yaga caused the destruction. People’s memories seem pretty selective these days.
“I’ll meet you at Java Joe’s a little after eight,” I suggest. “You can buy me something with whipped cream.” The whipped cream reference is my feeble attempt at making light of the weight thing.
“Hmm.” Ben arches an eyebrow and smiles his cute smile. I’m sensing that the whipped cream reference has sent his boy brain to more interesting places than just fattening me up.
“I’m thinking venti mocha latte, Ben. Not whatever you’re thinking.”
Ben looks mildly disappointed. Back at the main pool, someone blows the safety break whistle. Ben unwraps himself from me.
“Gotta run, babe,” he says. “Duty calls. Have to do a pH check before the kids all crash back into the water.”
He’s all business then, striding away. I start to follow him, only some mom in a black suit with one of those skirts that’s probably supposed to hide her thighs but doesn’t steps in his path. She starts a mild rant about why, why, why are there no peanut butter crackers in the snack machine because that’s her son’s favorite. Safer to hide on my little bench behind the slide.
Only it’s not.
In front of me in the kiddy pool, the woman in the lilac gown slips down the mouth of the green frog slide and settles herself gracefully in its spacious lower jaw.
My heart goes thump. We stare at each other for a few beats. Me and my own personal mermaid, eyeball to eyeball. That’s what she is, by the way. Not that I understood, at first. But it’s amazing what I’ve learned in the wee hours when I can’t fall back asleep after yet another crazy dream. Eventually, it was easier to just stay awake, fire up the laptop, and figure out what was stalking me. And so I did.
Rusalka. Russian mermaid. We haven’t ever spoken, so I don’t know if she’s actually Russian—but given who I am and what I’ve seen, it’s not that much of a stretch. Rusalka. A formerly human girl who somehow died tragically. Or got betrayed by the man she loved and then died tragically. Or whatever, blah, blah, blah, and then died tragically.
Emphasis on the tragic. And the dying.
According to every website I went to, she’s supposed to be haunting whatever body of water is handy near wherever it is she died. Only right now, I think she just has to haunt me.
“I know what you are,” I say quietly. I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who sees her right now, but no sense gathering a crowd. My life is messy enough without everyone at the Aqua Creek Water Complex, including Ben and Tess, thinking that I talk to myself.
My mermaid smiles and runs a thin hand through her long, dark, wet hair. Shakes her head. Droplets of water fly around her, little wet sparkles in the patches of sunlight sneaking through the fabric canopy overhead. “Are you so sure you understand what I am?”
“Yeah. But you need to swim around someone else. Whatever it is you think you want from me, I’m not your girl.”
She tilts her head and smiles at me. “Do not be so sure of that.”
“Oh, I’m sure. Absolutely positive. I am so not the person you need.”
“Help me,” she says.
This startles me. “Help you what? You know, I don’t even have to talk to you. I can choose to tell myself that you’re not real.”
Mermaid woman shakes that long, snaky, black hair. Droplets of water splash against my legs. Even though I try not to, I shiver.
“You helped Anastasia.” She says it so quickly and matter-of-factly that at first it doesn’t even register. When it does, I just feel angry.
“Anastasia’s dead. You’re part of the supernatural crew. Figured you’d have known that.”
“What if the Romanov girl still isn’t dead?” is how the rusalka answers me. “What if she didn’t actually go back to die?”
“Impossible.” I shiver again, watch her stretch her pale arms in the cramped confines of the slide. “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. You know. Or maybe you don’t know, you possibly being a figment of my imagination.”
“Things are not always what they seem, Anne. You look at me, but you do not see what you need to see.”
My heart pumps a little harder as the sound of my name echoes around me. So much for hoping that she had the wrong girl.
The rusalka—if that’s what she is—tips back her head and catches a few stray drops of water on her tongue. Her skin is pale as skim milk, blue veins running the length of her bone-thin arms. “You saw Anastasia disappear. But that doesn’t mean she died. Not like me. Although I suppose not unlike me. I’m here and not here. Everywhere and nowhere. Breathing and still drowning. If I can be as I am, then why not your Anastasia?”
“She’s not my Anastasia.” I stand up and edge toward the slide. I can feel my pulse in my throat. “She doesn’t belong to me. And you’re wrong. She made her choice. She went back to die. And I helped her.”
The rusalka smiles at me again. Her teeth are white and shiny and a little bit too sharp. “We all have our stories. Yours is no more tragic than the next girl’s.”
She makes a sound that I think is supposed to be a giggle, only it’s a lot creepier. Then she’s behind me, lounging casually on the bench I’ve just vacated. Tendrils of dark green seaweed dot her hair. The smell of her rises up and surrounds me—water, salt, and something I can’t quite identify. The ocean, maybe.
“Well, then,” I tell her, “if I’m so ordinary, then maybe you should just backstroke on out of here and leave me alone.”
I sound a lot braver than I feel. Being brave, I’ve learned, isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.
“He cares for you,” she says as though she hasn’t heard me. “But it’s not easy. It never is for men.”
“Whatever.” I’m not even sure who she means. It could be Ethan. Or it could be Ben. My lifeguard, Ben Logan, with normal brown eyes, who’s probably back on his guard stand on the other side of the pool and doesn’t see crazy Russian mermaid women floating in the deep end like I do. Who’d never ask me to help him save a princess. Or turn my life upside down and then leave.
“Things are coming.” The rusalka’s voice—low and soft—yanks me out of my thoughts. “You need to be ready.”
“If that’s an ancient prophecy, you can keep it to yourself. Tell whoever it is that I’m not available. The world’s a big place. Someone else will help. You just keep asking around.”
“Perhaps Anastasia wasn’t the only one who needed help. Perhaps there is more you need to know.” Still stretched across the bench, mermaid lady sits up on an elbow and rests her chin in her hand. She watches me with eyes as gray as storm clouds.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” I ignore the extra beat or two my heart has taken and wave my hand in her general direction. “Shoo.”
“Secrets within secrets, Anne. Stories within stories. Like Anastasia’s pretty little doll. You know how it goes. You know the circle of it. It holds you, even if you pretend it does not. You must pursue this.” She means Anastasia’s matroyshka doll—the one I used to help send her back. The one that repeats its figure, smaller and smaller, each tucked within each other. The image of it in my head makes me sad—Anastasia choosing a fate we all wanted her to avoid.
“I don’t have to pursue anything. And you need to just swim back up the slide or slither down the drain o
r whatever it is you do. Plus, how is it exactly that you know my name? It’s not like I know yours. Or want to, honestly. No offense.”
My rusalka sighs. Something that looks like sadness flickers through her dark eyes. She smooths her hands over her ripped and sodden lilac dress. “I know what I know. I am who I am. So here is what you must know. You have more to do. The witch is not done with you. And neither am I.”
And then she’s gone. She doesn’t slip back into the kiddy pool or melt into the puddles of water that have dripped off her hair. She just stops being there.
“What the hell are you doing back here? Did I just hear you talking to someone?” I whip around to find Tess looking a little concerned and a lot annoyed.
“Talking? Well, I…” So what do I tell her? She’s my best friend, and if I can’t tell my best friend that I’m being stalked by a Russian rusalka, then honestly, who can I tell?
But if I tell her, then I have to admit it’s really happening. I’ll have to do something about it. And right now, that’s about the last thing I need. But she’s looking at me with the wrinkled-brow Tess look, the one that says she’s going to pursue this like a pit bull until I tell her the truth.
I begin. “Something weird is going on,” I say, which is certainly an understatement when it comes to my life.
“Weirder than you talking to the air?” She links her arm with mine, and we walk back to our chairs. I’m still sort of shivery and my hands feel clammy and I can see that Tess registers this. The furrow in her brow gets a little deeper.
“Well, I—” A few yards away, at the entrance counter, Ben waves cheerfully to me. I guess he’s rotated to check-in duty.
I wave back, then brace myself for whatever it is that Tess is going to ask and I’m going to have to deflect somehow because I just can’t do this all again. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.