Real Mermaids 2 - Don't Hold Their Breath

by Helene Boudreau

  “It’s not like that, we were just…” It was time to come clean before I got myself in even more trouble for stuff I didn’t actually do. “We went looking for the tidal pool.”

  “Jade…” Dad looked from me to Cori in the rearview mirror.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Baxter,” Cori chimed in. “I know everything.”

  “Jade!” Dad cried.

  “Dad, wait! I saw her! I saw Mom.”

  So, I spilled it all—Reese, Uncle Alzear, the culvert, and Renata. Then I explained about McDonald’s and the construction site and the locked gate and seeing Mom’s arm. Dad listened until we rumbled along the drawbridge, crossing over the canal.

  “You saw her?” he said. “Was she okay?”

  “I couldn’t tell. The security guard almost called the cops on us before he kicked us out.”

  “The cops? Jade! This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of.”

  “But she was there, Dad. We actually found her.”

  “And I am thrilled you’ve found your mom.” I could see Dad blink a few times in the rearview mirror. “But I am less than thrilled with the fact that you risked your life and almost got arrested in the process. Why didn’t you call me right away when you first met Reese?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Honestly, Jade. We talked about this!”

  Cori gave me an understanding smile. Despite getting reamed out by Dad, one thing was for sure: it was a relief to finally have her in on my secret.

  “It’s just…” I looked past the railing to the dark waters of Talisman Lake where my mermaid journey had begun just a few short weeks before. “We’ve been disappointed so many times. I just wanted to make sure.”

  Thankfully, Dad didn’t continue to freak out on me just then, but I think I had Cori’s presence to thank for that. When we got home and Cori ducked into the bathroom, though, Dad obviously had a little time to think about what he had to say.

  “You have got to stop doing this.” Dad rested his hands on my shoulders as we stood in our front hall. “How can I trust you if you keep shutting me out? We’re supposed to be a team, remember?”

  It was true. I had gone behind his back. And if I ever hoped to leave the house again, I’d have to grovel like a prairie dog.

  “I know. I’m really sorry, Dad. It was thoughtless and reckless and I’m a horrible, horrible daughter.” I finished off my groveling with a goofy grin and jazz hands to help lighten the mood. “But ta-da! I still found Mom.”

  Dad couldn’t hide his smile. “A horrible daughter who is growing up horribly fast.”

  “So, do you forgive me?” I asked.

  “I’ll think about it.” Dad gave me a hug. “Right now, I am going to go upstairs to the computer to try and figure out what’s going on with this mall construction business. Try not to put your life in mortal peril in the meantime?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied.

  •••

  Cori pelted me with mermaid-related trivia questions while we watched music videos on YouTube and raided the kitchen for snacks.

  “So, what happens to your legs when you grow a tail? Like where do they go?” she asked.

  “I dunno. It happens so fast it’s kind of like an explosion. Growing legs is a bit slower and a lot more painful.”

  “Like burning-your neck-with-a-hair-straightener painful or plucking-your-eyebrows-with-a-pair-of-tweezers painful? Cause one is more of a searing pain and the other is more of a sharp, stabbing pain, I think.”

  Where did she get this stuff?

  “I’d have to go with hair-straightener option if I had to choose,” I answered.

  Grocery shopping wasn’t really my dad’s specialty, so it was slim pickings in the kitchen unless you wanted Sugar-O cereal, two week-old Wonder bread, or soy sauce.

  “You got any popcorn?” Cori searched in the cupboard over the fridge. “Ah, here.”

  Cori plucked an Orville Redenbacher box from the shelf but shook it upside down to show it was empty. I stashed the box in the overflowing recycle bin underneath the kitchen sink.

  “Sorry. We might have some leftover kernels from that time we made popcorn cranberry garlands with my grandmother at Christmas. We don’t have a popper, though.”

  “No biggie.” Cori found a paper lunch bag in one of the kitchen cupboards. She measured the leftover popcorn before pouring it inside, then stapled the bag shut.

  “Are you going to put that in the microwave like that?” I asked, worried that we were going to get electrocuted from the metal on the staples.

  “Trust me, I Googled it.” Cori set the microwave to Popcorn and pressed Enter just as the song on YouTube ended. “Oh! Did you see the video of Chelse yet?”

  “Is it really bad?” It felt a little wrong wanting to look, but Cori had the video cued up on Facebook before I had a chance to say no.

  The video started off with Chelse walking along the dock at her family’s cottage near my Gran’s in Dundee. She had her head down, texting someone on her phone while her dog ran around her, barking at something in the water. The video maker had added really bad, super dorky pop music and text message captions at the bottom of the screen.

  gurl1: hey gurl!

  gurl2: hey gurl! whatcha doing?

  gurl1: i dunno. whatcha doing?

  gurl2: i dunno…just texting you. whatcha doing?

  Just then, the dog ran in front of Chelse and she wiped out and fell in the water, phone in hand.

  I’m not proud of it, but I stifled a laugh.

  “I know, right?” Cori said. “Looks like someone else we know, huh?”

  “I think your splash was bigger,” I teased, remembering Cori’s swan dive into the Atlantic Ocean earlier that day.

  At the end of the video, Chelse flailed in the water, holding her phone overhead and a final message crossed the screen.

  WARNING: Friends don’t let friends walk and text.

  “It has 1,584 likes and 374 comments?” I stared at the view counter. “No wonder Chelse was upset. This thing is spreading like crazy.”

  “It’s all over Facebook.” Cori plopped a glob of butter into a measuring cup then found brown sugar, salt, and chocolate chips, and mixed it all into a gooey buttery concoction while the popcorn finished popping.

  “I feel kinda bad for watching it,” I admitted, shutting the laptop.

  “Yeah.” Cori looked at me and cringed. “After doing the same thing at Toulouse Point, now I kind of do too.”

  The timer dinged, so I pulled out the steaming bag of popcorn so Cori could put her buttery mixture in the microwave to melt.

  “Sorry,” I said. “This is the lamest sleepover ever. First you have to listen to a lecture from my dad, then you have to make your own snacks. At least when my mom was here we had a better stocked kitchen.”

  “Yeah, about that. How exactly are you going to explain your mom’s sudden reappearance when she makes it back home?”

  “If she makes it back home.” I pulled down a bowl from the cupboard and set it on the counter, then ripped open the paper bag to pour the popcorn into it.

  “She’s totally going to make it back.”

  “Thanks, Cori.” I smiled, relieved to know I had a few extra people on my side now compared to my lone-girl rescue mission when I helped my mom escape Talisman Lake a few weeks before. “You’re awesome.”

  “So I’ve been told. But you wanna know what else is awesome?” Cori poured the steaming mixture of butter, salt, sugar, and chocolate over the bowl of popcorn, and tossed it all together. “This popcorn.”

  She held out the bowl for me.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I replied.

  Cori was snoring by the time Dad came by to check on me. A quick glance at my alarm clock told me it was nearly 1 a.m.

  “Sleeping?” Dad asked quietly. He collapsed into the wicker chair beside my bed and rubbed his hands over his face.

  “Not really.” I turned over, yanking the blankets back from Cori
since she’d wrapped herself up like a mummy. Total blanket hog. Cori grunted something about razor clams and circus clowns and went back to her snoring. “What did you find out?”

  “Thankfully, civic bylaws don’t allow construction in public places on the weekends, so your mom should be safe until Monday, at least. Maybe we can figure out how to get in there in the meantime.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Did you know there’s a ten-foot barbed-wire fence surrounding the tidal pool? Luke thinks they’re hiding something.”

  “Yeah, about Luke.” Dad paused for a second. “He is, um, just a friend, right?”

  “Well.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Was Luke more than just a friend? He was my first kiss but that was over three weeks ago. He’d held my hand today but said what he really needed was a friend who understood him.

  “Because I’m not sure if I’m okay with my little girl dating.” Dad stood and paced a bit but bumped into my dresser in the dark and stubbed his toe. “Oh, ouch.”

  “Wha…?” Cori sat up in bed and waved her head back and forth, her eyes still closed. “Is the clam in the bucket? Did the clown put the clam in the bucket?” she babbled.

  “Go back to sleep, Cori,” I said quietly.

  She lay back down and kept snoring.

  “I’m not exactly a little girl anymore, Dad. Lots of girls date at fourteen.”

  “What are you saying? When did you go on a date with this boy? Why don’t I know anything about this?” Dad asked.

  “It wasn’t a date, exactly. We just—well, we kissed that one time, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “You kissed?” Dad’s “whisper” was loud enough to wake the neighbors, but Cori slept on, oblivious. He paced back and forth at the end of my bed, rubbing his head as he walked. “No, no, no. I am not comfortable with this. There’s lots of time for that. Lots of time.”

  That’s when I started getting mad. Here I was pretty much taking care of myself ever since Mom disappeared the summer before. I was a model student (except for last term), a model daughter (if you didn’t look at the mess under my bed), and pretty much cooked every meal we ate in this house (my Hot Pockets were especially delicious). Where did Dad get off saying I wasn’t mature enough to date? That was what he was saying, wasn’t it?

  “Are you telling me I can’t date?” I asked.

  Dad sat back down and shook his head hopelessly. “I’d just rather you wait. Yes. Just wait until your mom gets home.”

  “But—”

  Dad stood and made his getaway before I could say anything. Last time I saw him move that fast, he was being chased by a cloud of wasps.

  •••

  Cori sat at a stool at the kitchen island the next morning, sprawled across the countertop. I poured her a glass of orange juice and placed it in front of her. She flashed me a peace sign without looking up.

  I grabbed a bag of peas from the freezer and held it out for her. “Here, put this on your knee.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cori mumbled, but her knee was swollen to the size of a small watermelon from jumping off the construction truck and she could barely walk. I dropped the bag of frozen peas in her lap anyway. “Oh geesh! That’s cold!” she cried.

  “That’s the point,” I teased and pointed to her leg. “Twenty minutes!”

  “All right, all right!” Cori placed the peas on her knee. “When did you get so bossy?”

  “Just giving you a taste of your own medicine.” I poured some Sugar-Os in a couple bowls and got the milk from the fridge.

  Just then, Dad came into the kitchen to refill his cup of coffee. “Good morning, ladies.”

  “Good morning, Mr. B.,” Cori said.

  “What’s with the peas?” he asked.

  “My knee’s just a little stiff. It’ll be fine once I get to work,” Cori said.

  Dad looked from Cori to me. “Oh, no. You shouldn’t go to work with an injury like that. Jade would be happy to do your shift today since you filled in for her yesterday afternoon, wouldn’t you, Jade?”

  “But—” I began. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the day scooping ice cream when Mom was floating in a tidal pool behind Port Toulouse Mall, but the look on Dad’s face suggested I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. “Of course. I’ll take your shift, Cori.”

  “You sure?” Cori raised her head from the counter.

  “I’m sure. It’s the mature thing to do.” I eyed Dad, making sure he caught my drift from the conversation we’d had the night before.

  “Cool.” Cori flopped back onto the counter and closed her eyes.

  “Jade.” Dad sighed as he poured a bit of milk in his coffee. “I know you’re not happy with how we left things last night.”

  “You mean the part about how I’m not allowed to date?” I grabbed a couple spoons from the cutlery drawer and jabbed them into each bowl, spilling a bit of the milk in the process.

  “I’d just feel better if you waited until your mom was here to walk you through this dating thing, that’s all. Besides, you seem to forget how I made a total fool of myself with that other thing.” He said “thing” between clenched teeth like he’d rather forget our feminine hygiene–product shopping trip from back in June.

  “You weren’t that bad,” I said but cringed at the memory.

  “Still, I’m sure your mom would be much better qualified to deal with this.” He stirred his coffee then tapped the spoon on the side of his mug. “You get it, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said vaguely. “I get it.”

  “Thanks, honey.” He smiled as he picked up his coffee mug and headed back up to the office upstairs.

  “I get that I’m going to grow up to be an old maid living alone with twenty-nine cats if my dad has anything to do with it,” I muttered as I heard Dad’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Cats? Wha…what cats?” Cori sat up, confused.

  “Never mind, just eat up.” I placed a bowl of cereal in front of her and popped a spoonful of Sugar-Os in my mouth.

  Someone knocked on the kitchen door.

  “Hi, Mrs. Blake,” I said as I opened the door. Cori’s mom had come to pick her up.

  “Hello, sweetness.” Mrs. Blake gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek. She handed me a still-warm, home-baked lasagna and a basketful of peaches. “Did you girls have fun?”

  “Yes, but wow.” I peeked under the aluminum foil and snuck a piece of cheesy pasta. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mrs. Blake waved my comment away. “It’s just as easy to make two lasagnas as it is to make one, and they were practically giving the peaches away at the farmer’s market.”

  I polished off the rest of my Sugar-Os and rinsed out my bowl before serving myself a piece of lasagna as big as my head.

  “Ohmygarmmm. This is so goorf,” I said as I chewed, imagining the day when my own mom would be standing in the kitchen making me food.

  “Glad you like it.” Mrs. Blake squeezed my arm and smiled. “Cori, honey. Are you almost ready to go? What happened to your knee?”

  “I twisted it.” Cori winced as she propped her leg up on the stool next to her. “Which totally stinks. How am I supposed to go to the movie tonight like this?”

  “And with whom were you planning to go to the movie?” Mrs. Blake raised her eyebrows.

  “With Trey,” Cori began, then she saw the skeptical look on her mother’s face, “and Jade, and maybe Luke? There’s a big group of us, I think.”

  Dad had left things a bit fuzzy. Was going to the movies in a group okay, or was my social life doomed for the foreseeable future?

  Mrs. Blake pursed her lips and looked back and forth between the two of us.

  “Can’t wait!” I exclaimed, maybe a bit too cheerily but I couldn’t leave Cori hanging.

  “As long as there’s a group,” Mrs. Blake said. “You know how I feel about you dating. Trey Martin seems like a nice boy but he is almost sixteen.”

 
An icy silence filled the room. Cori shifted the bag of peas on her knee.

  “Well, look at the time!” I glanced at the clock on the microwave. “If I’m going to take over your scooping duties today, we all better get going.”

  “I’ll give you a ride over.” Mrs. Blake popped the rest of the lasagna in the fridge and picked up her purse. “Grab your things and meet me in the car when you’re ready?”

  “Sure. Thanks!”

  Mrs. Blake left through the kitchen door while Cori dug around her cereal.

  “Can you believe that?” Cori picked up her bowl and limped over to the sink. “It’s SO unfair.”

  I thought back to the conversation I’d just had with my dad.

  “I feel your pain, my friend. I really do,” I mumbled as I finished up my last bite of lasagna. “Add scales and a tail and we’re practically the same person.”

  “Chelse?” I called. Melting ice cream dripped down my hand as I handed a triple order of chocolate dipped soft-serve over the counter to the waiting customers. They waved their money for me to take, but I was way too sticky.

  “Chelse, honey.” Bridget nudged her as she headed out into the diner with a club sandwich platter and a plate of calamari.

  Finally, Chelse pulled out her earbuds and glanced up from her cell phone.

  I turned back and smiled at the customer. “Chelse can help you at the end of the counter.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Chelse blinked and took the money from the customer and actually made the right amount of change as far as I could tell.

  Once the customers were gone, I turned to wash my hands in the sink, then leaned back against the counter to dry them with a paper towel. Chelse looked so sad. Sure, I was peeved because I pretty much had to carry the shift on my own whenever I worked with her (plus all of my earnings were still getting socked away until I could figure out how to pay for the canoe of hers I’d lost), but I couldn’t help feel bad for her. And guilty.

  “Hey, Chelse?” I asked. “You okay?”

  Chelse looked up at me. Her face drooped in its usual cheerless expression, but then she forced a smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?” I asked. “I’m a good listener.”