Real Mermaids 2 - Don't Hold Their Breath

by Helene Boudreau

  It took me about three seconds to turn into a blubbering, snot-bubble crybaby, but I didn’t care. I just couldn’t believe how many people had actually showed up.

  “Thanks so much for coming!” I said to each person I greeted, handing them a pamphlet.

  Pretty awesome, huh? Luke leaned over and rang into my ear.

  More than awesome. I just hope it’s enough, I replied.

  “Hey, you got a pair of wings for us?” A voice from behind made me jump. I turned.

  “Cori!” I hugged her tightly. “I thought you had to work!”

  “Well, there’s nobody on Main Street, so the boss figured we should close up shop and join in on the fun.” Cori stepped to the side to reveal Bridget popping open a humongous cooler of ice cream.

  “Wow, guys!” I fought back more tears. “I just don’t know what to say. Thank you. This is all so awesome. How’s your knee?” I asked Cori.

  “Better. Plus, there was no way I was going to miss this!” she replied.

  “Green means green! Green means green!” the crowd chanted. “Butterflies not Boutiques! Butterflies not Boutiques!”

  But despite all our banner waving and chanting, the trucks kept rolling up and down the gravel construction road.

  Any one of those loads of earth could be burying my mom right now, I rang to Luke.

  Well, then. Let’s take this show on the road. Luke whistled to Trey who was directing traffic in the parking lot. He pointed to the truck kicking up a cloud of dirt along the road.

  Trey understood and leaned in to talk to a group of tattooed motorcyclists that had just driven up. The leader of the pack smiled and nodded his head for his pals to follow, then wheeled his bike through the parking lot to the gravel road, which they parked across.

  “Hey! This way!” Luke waved for everyone to follow him.

  Cori and Chelse grabbed the ice cream cooler while I carried the extra signs and butterfly wings. We looked like a humongous green snake as our rally weaved through the parking lot to join the motorcycle blockade.

  “Oh. Wait a second!” I rushed over to the biggest biker and handed him a pair of purple sparkly wings. He chuckled and slipped the elastic straps around his muscular shoulders. His buddy flipped one of his wings and laughed, but butterfly biker swatted his hand away.

  A dump truck exited the highway and slowed down as it approached the crowd. The driver blared his horn for the motorcycles to move, but the tattooed, leather-vested bikers leaned back on their bike seats and folded their beefy, tanned arms across their chests.

  The truck driver opened his door and scanned the crowd.

  “Butterflies not boutiques!”

  He shook his head and sat back in his truck.

  “Green means green!”

  “How many people signed up for this, anyway?” I asked Luke once he finally made his way through the crowd to me. The crowd’s chants were so loud I could barely hear myself speak.

  Luke got his phone out and searched for the Facebook invitation. “Lots!”

  There were lots—352 to be exact. They kept arriving in cars and buses while others came out of the mall to see what our protest was all about. In fact, one of the most recent arrivals was making a beeline for our group.

  “Lainey Chamberlain.” Cori stepped in front of her. “I see you got my invitation.”

  •••

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Lainey’s perfectly straightened hair skimmed her shoulders as she glanced around the crowd.

  Cori handed her a pamphlet. “Stopping your daddy’s mall construction. And saving the Monarch butterfly.”

  “Oh really?” Lainey ignored the pamphlet and looked up to the sky and smiled. “Well, we’ll just see about that.”

  Seconds later, the whomp, whomp, whomp of something big and ominous sounded from above.

  “A helicopter?” Trey called out over the noise. “Cool!”

  “Not cool!” I cried. Especially when the sound of sirens filled the air as a police car pulled up from the direction of the highway and a security car screeched to a halt on the other side of our group, from the construction side.

  “Wow!” Bridget shouted. “You kids definitely know how to get people’s attention.”

  “Must be the ice cream!” Cori handed out two more cones to the gathering crowd.

  The helicopter did a flyby of our crowd, then landed in an empty field a couple hundred feet away. A tall, tanned man who looked like he’d just stepped off the golf course emerged from the helicopter’s side door flanked by two business-suited pinheads carrying briefcases.

  “Daddy!” Lainey rushed over to greet him and held out her arms for a hug, but Mr. Chamberlain didn’t seem to notice her.

  “Get the lawyers on this,” he boomed to the pinhead on his right as the helicopter propellers whirred to a stop. He scanned the crowd and scowled. “Now!”

  “Daddy,” Lainey tried again.

  Mr. Chamberlain stopped short and took off his sunglasses.

  “Lainey?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  Lainey rubbed her arms as if a cold breeze had just swept over her.

  “I’m the one who called your office earlier. They’re trying to stop your mall project.” She handed him the pamphlet. He scanned it quickly, then gave it back with a wave of his hand.

  “Darling, this doesn’t concern you.” Mr. Chamberlain put his sunglasses back on and stalked over to the police car. Lainey followed him. She looked down at the pamphlet and unfolded it as she went.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” I asked once Lainey and her dad were out of earshot.

  “Yeah, Mr. Chamberlain doesn’t exactly look like the bargaining type.” Cori watched as he gestured toward the crowd while talking to the police.

  I dropped my sign to my side and turned to Luke. Any ideas?

  Just wait a sec. Luke scrolled through something on his phone. “Someone posted a link on our Facebook page about a subway line that had to be totally rerouted because of a rare kind of tree.”

  Luke handed me his phone just as the policeman turned on the siren and lights.

  “Attention, everyone!” the policeman called out through his bullhorn. “You are welcome to continue your demonstration, but you need to clear this road.” He swept his arm over the crowd, motioning to the edges of the road. A few moms with strollers pushed them onto the grassy area.

  “Daddy?” Lainey said as Mr. Chamberlain made his way back to his waiting helicopter. She held up the pamphlet. “Is this true? Is the construction destroying the Monarch’s habitat?”

  Something on Luke’s phone screen caught my eye—one detail that could change everything. Could it be? Could this be the thing that would stop Chamberlain Construction in its tracks?

  I rushed after Lainey and her dad, trying to read the information on the phone’s screen while Mr. Chamberlain stalked back to his helicopter followed by his pinheads. He turned to face his daughter before climbing in.

  “Don’t believe everything you read, darling. These people are menaces, keeping people from doing their jobs,” he said, scanning the crowd. “This is a multimillion-dollar project and idle trucks cost me money.”

  Mr. Chamberlain pointed to the two dump trucks parked along the road waiting to get through as the crowd moved to the side.

  “Green means green!”

  “Butterflies not boutiques!”

  Finally, I had what I wanted. I looked up from Luke’s cell phone. “Mr. Chamberlain?”

  “I’ve got to get back to my golf game, sweetie,” he said to Lainey. “I’ll see you at home.”

  “Mr. Chamberlain, wait! Each pile of dirt you dump in there is destroying the environment and putting the Monarch butterfly at risk, not to mention all the birds and other wildlife.” Like my mom, I wanted to say, but I fought back the urge.

  “Green means green!”

  “Butterflies not Boutiques!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Nobody is destroying the en
vironment.” Mr. Chamberlain held up his hands and raised his voice so the crowd could hear. “Chamberlain Construction is a green company. Why do you think we’ve committed to this urban garden idea?”

  “So,” I continued over the sound of the revving propellers, checking the information on Luke’s phone to make sure I got it right, “are you telling us that you’ve had a full Environmental Assessment? Because it doesn’t seem too green to fill in a marsh full of a species of interest.”

  Mr. Chamberlain turned to me and reddened. He looked back to one of his pinheads and whispered something in his ear. Pinhead shuffled through his briefcase nervously and produced a paper after a few minutes of frenzied searching. Lainey’s dad scanned the document quickly and produced it for us to see.

  “One of these, you mean?”

  I took the paper in my hand.

  It was, indeed, an Environmental Assessment. My heart sank. Of course Mr. Chamberlain had jumped through all the hoops. The guy owned a multimillion-dollar construction company.

  Pinhead snatched the document back from me and stuffed it in his briefcase.

  “So see? Chamberlain Construction is committed to the environment. We’re even putting in a Rainforest Café in the new wing. You kids are going to love it.” Mr. Chamberlain winked at me like I was a first grader and disappeared into his helicopter with his pinhead posse. But just as they were getting in, the turbulence from the propellers made a few papers flutter out of the pinhead’s briefcase.

  Lainey stooped to pick them up and waved them toward the helicopter, but it had already lifted off and swept over the crowd on its way back to the golf course.

  Everyone must have decided it was no use to continue our rally, because I felt the pats on my back as protesters dumped their signs and butterfly wings into Chelse’s supply box.

  “Hey, wait!” Cori called out over them. “This isn’t over. They can’t just do this.”

  But people were already heading for their cars and the campers were being herded back onto the Camp Whycocomagh bus.

  “No. We don’t have a case.” My eyes blurred with tears, thinking the whole rally had been for nothing. “They have every right to be building where they’re building.”

  “And here’s the proof,” Lainey said as she stalked over toward us, waving what looked like the Environmental Assessment in the air. She stuffed the papers in my hand. “Are you happy now?”

  “I’m sorry, Lainey.” I reached out to touch Lainey’s arm, but she turned and walked away.

  Luke, Trey, Cori, Chelse, and Bridget all huddled around me as the crowd dwindled, offering encouraging words.

  “Thanks, guys.” But as the construction trucks rumbled to a start and headed down to the site once more, my stomach twisted in a horrible gut-wrenching knot. If the epically powerful web presence of Chelse Becker couldn’t help save Mom, what chance did I have?

  I sat on a large rock by the ocean, just down the hill from the construction site, waiting for Dad to pick me up. The crowd was long gone, the trucks had restarted their caravan back and forth through the chain-link gate, and the gang was catching a ride back to Main Street in Bridget’s van. I suppose I could have gone with them, but the thing I wanted most was to be alone.

  Large waves crashed against the rocks where I sat. On one hand, I wished the surf would grab hold and sweep me out to sea. On the other, I wanted to run far, far inland and never see the ocean again.

  I imagined the sentries blocking the mouth of the culvert underwater and the locked chain-link gate behind me. I’d failed Mom on both land and sea. Even after everything that had happened, nothing had changed.

  Someone sat down beside me.

  “Luke.” I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my T-shirt and sniffed louder than I had planned.

  Luke leaned over, nudging my shoulder with his. “Hey.”

  “I thought you guys were all gone. Didn’t you go with Trey and Cori?” I turned to see if the others were with him.

  “I was going to, but then I remembered you still have my phone.” He smiled his adorable curvy-lipped smile.

  “Oh.” I felt in my pocket and realized I’d gone totally klepto on him. Reese would have been proud. I stood on the rock, pulled out his phone, and handed it to him. “Sorry.”

  “No.” Luke slipped his phone into the side pocket of his board shorts. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should never have gotten your hopes up about that Environmental Assessment thing.”

  “You were only trying to help.” I waved a hand back in the general direction of the mall parking lot. “In fact, everyone’s been so amazing—even if they don’t understand how this is about more than just butterflies for me. Much more.”

  “For me too,” Luke said quietly. That’s when I realized this was bigger than just me and Mom. The tidal pool was important to all mers, Luke included.

  “I just don’t know what to do next.” I jumped from rock to rock, trying not to slip into the crashing surf. Luke followed behind, step for step. He picked up large rocks along the way and tossed them into the water beside me, splashing my jean shorts. “Hey, are you trying to soak me?”

  “Maybe.” Luke laughed. “Or if I’m lucky I’ll knock out one of those culvert guys.”

  That’s when something occurred to me.

  “Where is that thing anyway?” I followed the shoreline, trying to figure out where the large metal culvert could be, but the water came all the way up to the rocks making it impossible to find. I scrambled up the bank to the road.

  “What are you looking for?” Luke asked.

  “That spot where the road bumped up a little.” I scanned the road. “There!” I pointed.

  We followed the hump back to the water. The culvert was still underwater but even deeper than the last time we’d checked. I listened and could just make out the faint ring of the sentries over the pounding surf. Luke must have heard it too.

  “So, I should aim for down there, huh?” He picked up another rock and heaved it into the water, but we both knew it would take more than a slowly sinking rock to get past those guys. But seeing Luke tossing rocks into the water reminded me of something.

  “You remember that puddle on the beach below Toulouse Point, where we first heard Reese?” I asked.

  “You mean the one with the crabs and barnacles that got trapped at low tide?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah. I’m just wondering, do tidal pools work the same way?”

  “Maybe. I’m not really sure,” Luke responded.

  I looked down into the water, thinking through my idea and hoping I was right. If the barnacles and crabs got trapped in that puddle when the tide went out, would the same thing happen to the tidal pool? Did the tide go down far enough so that we could actually walk through the culvert?

  “When is low tide?” I asked excitedly.

  Luke had his cell phone out. His fingers flew over the screen for a few minutes. “According to Weather.com it’ll be low tide at 7:32 p.m.”

  I looked at the time on his cell phone. It was 1:23.

  “Darn. That’s still six hours away. How low does the tide get here?”

  “It’s about a five foot drop at my grandfather’s place.” Luke looked down into the water. “That looks deeper than five feet.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s shallow enough, the sentries might not be able to swim through,” I said.

  “Only problem is it’ll still be light out at 7:30.” Luke rubbed his chin and looked down into the water.

  “We have to try, though, don’t we? When it’s dark?” I looked back at him.

  “I’m in.” Luke slipped his phone back into his pocket and hopped onto a higher rock to get a better look.

  “Yeah. Except I’d rather not drag everyone else into this. All those people up there. Plus Chelse. And Cori and Trey. Bridget.” I glanced back at the mall parking lot feeling sad that they’d all put so much effort into the rally only to have it all fall apart. “If this is another dead end, I’d rather not have an audience. S
o…just us?”

  Luke held out his hand.

  “Just us.” He took my hand to help me up to the rock where he stood. My heart quickened as I stepped onto his rock and realized how close we were standing once I made the trip over. My face was inches from his, close enough to see a new spray of summer freckles across his cheeks and to smell the coconut sunscreen scent of his skin.

  Just kiss him, you idiot, I thought, ignoring Dad’s voice droning in the background. A whole flock of butterflies fluttered in my stomach and my face grew hot. But if we kissed again that would make him my boyfriend, probably, and me his girlfriend, I guessed. What then? How lame would it be to have a boyfriend and not actually be allowed to date?

  I turned my head to give myself a chance to think, but just then, my phone rang.

  “Sorry. Excuse me.” I shuffled on our now seemingly teeny tiny rock and struggled to get the phone out of my pocket without accidentally knocking Luke into the ocean. “Dad, where are you? I think I might have a solution to our problem. Just meet me at the shore below the mall, okay?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t do anything until I get there, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay, okay. But hurry,” I said hanging up.

  Luke looked at me slyly.

  “So. Just us plus your dad, then?” He took my hand and helped me up the bank to wait for Dad.

  “Sorry.” I looked back at the rock where we’d stood and gave myself a mental slap upside the head for ruining a perfectly romantic moment. Did Luke think I didn’t like him now? Argh! Why did I have to be such a dating dork?

  “Actually, it’s perfect.” Luke picked a long strand a grass and put it between his lips. “Your dad can drive the getaway car.”

  •••

  By the time it was dark enough to launch Operation Culvert, the tide was low but rising. It had rained since dinnertime, and now a steady cold drizzle fell, adding to the eerie darkness. A knee-deep stream flowed out from the culvert, down the shore, and to the ocean about ten feet away.