Cori stood on the sidewalk as the bus pulled away, still muttering about how she couldn’t believe what was happening. Finally she looked around, trying to get her bearings.
“So what are we doing at the mall exactly?” Cori asked.
“Looking for a magical tidal pool,” Luke whispered in her ear, trying to hold back a smile.
I laughed. It was kind of fun to mess with her head.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” Cori put her fingers in her ears and hummed.
“Maybe it’s closer to the mall,” Trey suggested.
We walked up to the chain-link fence by the construction site and tried to look between the signs advertising the mall expansion. Could the tidal pool be in there? Was Mom just inside that fence? “I can’t see past these signs.”
Just then, a car backfired in the parking lot, making Cori jump in surprise.
“I seriously don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She put a hand to her chest.
Seconds later, a great blue heron rose from within the construction site a few hundred feet away.
“Herons usually mean there’s water!” Luke said.
“Let’s get past these signs to get a better look,” I suggested, hoping Luke was right.
The fence stretched from the mall by Hyde’s and continued for several hundred yards toward the ocean. We followed it through a marshy area and down to a secondary gravel road that ran along the shore.
“It looks like the fence goes along this road then turns back up to the mall in a big rectangle,” Trey said.
I looked back up the hill toward the mall and could still make out the McDonald’s golden arches off in the distance, just like earlier, underwater. “Does anyone see a culvert around here?”
“There’s a bit of a hump in the road up ahead,” Luke said.
Luke and I followed the raised ground across to where the ocean met the large rocks at the shoulder of the road. We climbed the rocks and peered into the deep water.
“Do you see anything?” Trey called from the road where he waited with Cori.
“Yes!” I yelled. “But it’s under a couple feet of water.”
It was the same gray metal tunnel I’d seen with Reese. We’d found it! Now, how were we supposed to get through it?
“How big were those mer-dude’s spears?” Luke asked as we turned back to join Cori and Trey on the dirt road.
“Big!” I said, shivering at the thought. “So, unless we want to get skewered, we’re going to have to find another way in.”
“Mer-dudes with spears?!” Cori cried, scanning the open ocean. “Next you’ll be telling me to watch out for sea witches.”
“I haven’t seen any sea witches yet, but there’s a pretty scary mermaid named Medora in Talisman Lake.” I searched for the hump in the road again and followed it as it ran straight through to the construction site. I peered through the fence. The evening sun glittered off what looked like water through the brush. Could that be the tidal pool?
“There are mermaids in Talisman Lake?” Cori cried. “I learned to swim in that lake!”
“And you lived to tell the tale.” I laughed to reassure her and checked the height of the fence to see if we could climb it, but it was about ten feet high and topped with a coil of barbed wire. “How big is this mall expansion going to be, anyway?”
Just then, a frighteningly loud rumble made us plaster ourselves against the fence as a large truck passed, followed by a huge cloud of dust. We coughed and waved our hands in front of our faces as it passed. The truck kept following the road for another hundred feet or so, then disappeared as someone swung open a large gate to let it through at the far end of the fencing.
“Come on!” I yelled. “That’s got to be the way in.”
We ran to the gate just as a beefy security guard clanged it shut and secured it with a large lock. He must not have noticed us, because he turned back to the orange and white construction trailer and started climbing the steps to go inside.
“Hey, wait!” I yelled, and coughed away the dirt cloud kicked up by the heavy truck.
The security guard paused at the top of the steps. “Can I help you?”
“We need to get in there!” I called.
“This is private property, miss,” he answered. “Only authorized personnel allowed.” He reached for the trailer door.
“Just a second!” I yelled. But what could I say? That my mermaid mother might be stuck in there? How was I supposed to wheedle my way into a locked construction area, skirted by a ten-foot barbed wire fence? And why such tight security, I wondered.
The security guard opened the trailer door midway. A television blared in the background. He turned to glare at me. “Look, all I want is to watch the last ten minutes of Ultimate Survivor, and for the last truckload of dirt to get here so I can finish my shift and go home. So whatever you want, make it quick.”
“Uh.” I looked to Luke, Trey, and Cori, but they shrugged hopelessly. I turned back to Grumpy McGrumpypants. “How much space is this mall expansion going to take, anyway?”
“The whole darn thing,” the security guard answered, waving his arm back and forth to show that he meant everything. “They’re putting in a new wing off Hyde’s then landfilling the rest to plant some sort of urban garden or something. Now, unless you wanna get mowed over by a truck, I’d suggest you scram.” He went into the trailer and slammed the door.
“The whole thing?” I whispered. I leaned on the fence next to Luke, wishing I could just walk through it, or under it or over it, but each option was as hopeless as the next.
“They’re hiding something in there. I just know it,” Luke said. “Why else would they have such tight security?”
Luke’s phone rang. He stepped away to answer it, then put his hand over the receiver to talk to Trey. “It’s Mrs. Clarke. She wants to know when we’re going to go back to finish the raking.”
Trey slapped his forehead. “Oh no. I completely forgot when you called me about the girl shorts.” He put his hand out for the phone. “Here, let me talk to her.”
“Hello, Mrs. Clarke?” Trey said. The rumble of a truck sounded in the distance. “Just a second, I’ll move somewhere where I can hear you better.” He covered his ear with his hand, and he and Luke moved down the road to try to sort out their lawn-mowing customer.
Cori and I sat on the rocks at the edge of the road by the ocean. “We need to get in there,” I muttered.
“You really think your mom’s in there?” Cori asked.
“I won’t know until I can have a look,” I replied.
“Wow.” Cori shook her head in disbelief. “This is huge. I’m sorry I got mad at you back there, but I’m glad I finally know.”
I put an arm around her shoulder. “Me too.”
Just then, another truck filled with earth pulled up and stopped in front of the locked entry. It tooted its horn for someone to open the gate, but the security guard must have been busy catching the last few minutes of his show because he didn’t come out of the trailer right away.
“Well, if we’re gonna get in there, this is as good a chance as any.” Cori popped up from her seat on the rocks and ran to the back of the truck. She hopped onto the back bumper and grabbed the tailgate, turning toward me with her hand outstretched. “Come on!”
“You’re crazy!” I laughed and raced after Cori, jumping onto the truck just before it lurched forward and continued through the gate. Thankfully, the security guard was busy securing the lock as we entered the construction site and didn’t turn our way before rushing back into his trailer to catch the last few minutes of his show.
Luke and Trey ran for the gate, laughing, and gave us a thumbs-up as the truck rolled away. I waved to them and flashed a hopeful smile, then grasped onto the tailgate to keep from becoming road pizza, hoping I didn’t just make a huge mistake.
“This secret-identity stuff is fun!” Cori exclaimed, choking on the cloud of dust kicked up by the truck’s mas
sive back tires.
I put a finger to my lips to get her to shush. What would happen if we got caught? I seriously contemplated running back to the gate and waiting for the next truck to come through so we could escape. But then we turned a corner and I caught a glimpse of shimmering water through scrub brush and bushes, and any worries I may have had fell away.
“Oh wow.”
“What?” Cori turned to see what I was “oh-wowing” about but the truck hit a pothole and she bounced off the bumper and onto the road.
“Cori!” The same weird superhuman (or super-mermish) force rose up inside of me like when she’d fallen into the ocean earlier, and suddenly I found myself leaping from the truck and shoulder rolling onto the gravel road to save her. “Oof!”
Okay. So maybe it wasn’t the daintiest shoulder roll ever, but if my life ever became a blockbuster movie I promised myself I’d get a stunt double. I struggled to my feet and ran to Cori, just as she lifted her head. The truck rolled on down the road and around the bend, the driver oblivious, leaving us covered in dirt and coughing exhaust fumes.
I could hear another truck coming from the other way.
“Come on!” I propped Cori up and slung her arm over my shoulder. She stumbled as I dragged her off the road and into the bushes, out of the way of the oncoming truck. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” Cori rubbed her knee and turned back to the road. “Do you think anyone saw us?”
“Not sure, but let’s not wait and find out. Are you okay to walk?”
“Lead the way, fish-girl.” Cori raised her hand to point us onward.
We bushwhacked through the brush in the direction I’d seen the water. After a few minutes, my flip-flops began to sink in the muck as the brush gave way to marshy grass and then open water about a hundred feet across.
“Could this be it?” I looked to my left in the direction of the ocean and saw the other end of the metal culvert jutting out into the pond. I had my answer. The culvert ran from the ocean to the pond, making it a tidal pool. Somewhere in there was my mother. I just knew it!
“Oh, hey! Take a picture, take a picture!” Cori tried to hand me her phone with one hand and held up her other arm where two Monarch butterflies had landed.
“Your phone went for a swim earlier, remember?” I laughed and rolled my eyes. “We could be arrested for breaking and entering and you want me to take a photo of butterflies?” Using my phone instead, I lined up the shot so I could get the butterflies on her arm and the dozen others flocking on a bunch of bushes nearby. I slipped my phone back in my pocket and looked out over the water.
“So do you think this is it?” Cori asked, touching one of the butterfly’s wings before it flew away.
“I really hope so,” I replied.
Sunlight glittered on the rippling waves of the pool, and all around it green shrubs waved in the summer breeze. A heron waded in the water not far from us but a loud clang set it off, just like it had earlier. I turned in the direction of the noise, and sure enough, up the hill closer to the mall, dump trunks unloaded earth while front-end loaders picked up a scoop at a time and dumped it into the north end of the pond. I worked my way through the bog to get to the open water but the mud was getting deeper and slowing me down.
“I can’t believe they’re just going to fill all this in,” Cori said. “It’s so pretty here…oooo…ouch!”
I turned to check on Cori and waited for her to catch up. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” She limped toward me, grasping my arm for support, then shielded her eyes from the sun. “I’m good. Can you see anything?”
“Nothing. But I’m going to try to call out to her.”
Cori glanced up the hill. “What if they hear you?”
“They won’t hear me.” I smiled.
Mom? I rang out over the water, hoping she’d hear.
“What was that?” Cori looked at me in amazement. “Was that you? Is that like mermaid Parseltongue or something?”
“Yeah. Sorta.” I strained to hear in case Mom was trying to ring back but couldn’t hear anything except a booming voice from behind us.
“Hey! You two!”
My heart seized in my chest.
“We are so dead.” Cori tightened her grip on my arm and we turned slowly to face the guy who was probably about to bury us in the bog and make it look like an accident.
“I thought I told you kids to scram.”
“Just thought we’d do a bit of bird watching?” I said hopefully.
Grumpy McGrumpypants looked at me sternly and hitched up his leather utility belt which brimmed with brand-new looking survival gear. What exactly did he think he’d run up against in a field behind a shopping mall, I wondered. Killer turtles? Homicidal blue herons?
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” the security guard muttered, stomping toward us through the boggy muck.
“Oh yeah? Well, I know your employers personally.” Cori put a hand on her hip. “And I doubt Mr. Chamberlain would appreciate the fact that you waste his money watching TV on company time.”
“Whoa, now. Wait just a second.” The security guard put up his hand. “No need to get all feisty.” He turned from us and answered his ringing phone. “Yeah. I’ve got them here. The little one’s giving me trouble but…uh, don’t worry. I’ll deal with it.”
He eyed us and then continued his phone conversation.
I wasn’t sure if “deal with it” meant fitting us with cement shoes, but any hope of finding Mom was slowly dwindling away. I turned back to the water, hoping for a sign before meeting my doom. And that’s when I saw it.
An arm. Partway out of the water and only for a split second. Mom’s arm? It had to be!
Mom! I rang.
The security guard put a hand over his ear like there was feedback from his phone but Cori looked at me, wide-eyed. And I must have actually jammed the phone’s frequency because the security guard tapped it with the back of his hand.
“You still there?” he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Okay. Yeah, I can hear you again. Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. I’ll make sure they don’t bother us again.”
Cori’s hand was beginning to cause deep tissue damage around my arm.
“Stay cool,” I whispered.
But I was far from cool. All I wanted to do was crash through the bog and dive in the water after Mom, but with Grumpy McGrumpypants right there, that was definitely out of the question.
“Okay.” The security guard clipped the phone back onto his belt and led us back to the road. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
I turned back to see if I could catch one last glimpse of Mom but there was nothing. My chest filled with a rush of panic. Would I ever see her again? Could we stop the construction in time for her to make it back home safely?
Encouraged by the hand the security guard was keeping on his nightstick, we made it back to the road and kept walking to the chain-link gate. “You’re gonna walk on out of here just like this never happened. Otherwise, I’ll have the cops on you for trespassing like there’s no tomorrow. Capisce?”
“Yup! We got it.” Cori made a beeline for the gate, limping along on her bum leg.
“But Cori,” I whispered, catching up to her, “my mom just waved to me back there.”
“She did?” Cori replied as we spilled out to the road.
“What?” Luke asked. He and Trey rose from where they’d been sitting on the rocks at the side of the road to greet us. “What happened?”
“My mom is in the tidal pool. I saw her!” I looked back through the fence, desperate to run back into the construction site and fireman’s carry her out of there. “We’ve got to do something.”
“Well, we could tell that guy to tell his boss to stop piling rocks into the tidal pool because your mermaid mother is in the way, but I doubt that would help with the whole ‘secret identity’ thing.” Cori nodded in the direction of the security guard as he swung the massive chain link gate closed.
“But…” My hands dropped to my sides. Cori was right.
“At least now we know where she is,” Luke said quietly. “Didn’t he say that was the last truck for the night?”
“Yes, but—”
“So, she’ll be okay until the morning when we can figure something out.” Luke put a hand on my shoulder and tried to catch my eye. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, hearing the sound of metal on metal as the gate swung closed, just like the boat lock of Talisman Lake.
“Hey, fish-girl.” Cori grabbed me by the arm and led me back up to the mall parking lot. “How about I buy you a Big Mac for your troubles? You know, for saving my life and all that?”
My stomach rumbled. I looked longingly at the golden arches off in the distance.
“That depends. Can I get fries with that?”
Port Toulouse wasn’t going to win any awards for its wild and crazy night life. By the time we’d scarfed down our Super Value meals, the mall was closed and the buses had stopped running. I was bursting to tell Dad about what we’d found when I called to ask if he could pick us up, but the McDonald’s was packed with screaming kids terrorizing the PlayPlace and I could barely hear him. Besides, I really wanted to see Dad’s face when I delivered the news that we’d found Mom.
Luke and Trey were still waiting for their father when Dad arrived. His eyes scanned the booth, doing the mental calculations on our group.
“Hello…fellas.” He nodded to Luke and Trey, then shuttled me and Cori to the car since Cori was coming over to my house to sleep over.
“You won’t believe—” I began, but Dad interrupted me.
“You said you were going to McDonald’s with Cori and ‘the gang.’” Dad pulled onto the highway, stressing the last two words.
“Well, technically—” I glanced at Cori. Apparently, the trade-off for sleeping over was witnessing a lecture from my dad.
“Technically?” Dad interrupted me. “It may have been the nineteen hundreds when I was a teenager, but back in my day, two girls plus two boys was technically a double-date.”
Real Mermaids 2 - Don't Hold Their Breath Page 6