by D. G. Driver
I screamed, “Dad!” My dad was just standing there, gawking at all the people splashing toward him and tripping into the water. He didn’t hear me. I screamed again, “Peter Sawfeather!” My so-called friends joined in. “Peter Sawfeather!” Finally, we caught his attention. I pointed at the flapping tail. His face became instantly alarmed.
“Call Carter!” he shouted back. “And get these people out of the water!” He dove under the water and began swimming toward the buoy nearest the flailing creature.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed Carter’s number. To my surprise he answered right away.
“Hey, we’re having an emergency. It looks like a mermaid has been spotted. Dad needs you at the beach.”
“I’m almost there already,” he said and then hung up.
I flipped around and addressed Gary and Ted. “Help me.”
“Do what?” Ted asked.
“Keep these people back.”
“Seriously?” Ted stared at me, completely useless. “It’s a mob. What do you expect me to do?”
“You and Gary need to help push them back.”
He didn’t move, and the crowd kept going farther and farther into the water.
“Look,” I said. “Your girlfriend is going to be pissed if her mermaid gets damaged by all these crazy people, and she won’t be able to get the best view. Do you want to deal with that all afternoon?”
Ted sneered at me, but he knew I was right. He grabbed Gary by the arm, said something in his ear, and they both took off chest deep into the water, hollering at people to get back to land. We had to push people a couple times, and Gary helped one man who’d fallen face first into the waves by grabbing the back of his shirt and pointing him back toward the sand.
“My dad is taking care of it. Wait on the sand, please!” I said over and over to the masses. “You’re making it harder for him by trying to come out here.”
Eventually we got all of them out of the water, but they still formed a wall at the water’s edge, snapping pictures to capture every moment of the rescue. Out in the water, the flapping of the tail got weaker by the moment, losing its struggle against the oil. I was completely drenched from the waist down in saltwater, and the rain had done a number on the top half of my body. I certainly wasn’t going to be taking any better pictures at this mermaid recovery than the last one. I stood in the water with Gary and Ted to make sure no one went past us. Over at the interviewing station my mom was up out of her director’s seat, standing behind the row of journalists trying to figure out how to break through and become the center of attention again. At the other end of the beach Regina, Marlee, and Haley were all fixing their lipstick and hair as best they could, using matching compact mirrors.
My dad rested on the buoy for a moment to catch his breath. I saw him dodge the frantic tail and a couple of times he put out a hand to block his face from getting smacked. He couldn’t pull in the mermaid by himself. I remembered the mermaids being pretty heavy. Two men from the crowd were swimming out there, but they stopped halfway to tread water and catch their breath too. One of them raised a finger to my dad as if to say, “Just a minute. We’re coming.” He was too out of breath to talk. Equally, my dad, whose shoulders heaved with his breathing, seemed too tired to answer them back.
Carter’s voice pierced through the crowd. “June!” He dashed down the ramp and passed the girls right by without a glance. I know he was only a year older than Gary and Ted, but that year made a big difference. His body was much more sculpted and manly than theirs. He was a young man, and they were still boys. My heart raced at the sight of him in his t-shirt and jeans as he hurtled through the small waves to get to me. “Where’s your dad?”
“Out there!” I shouted back, pointing to the buoy. “He needs help.”
“I’m on it.” Without hesitation he dove into the water and began to swim. He passed the old farts in a minute and didn’t need to stop once before he got to my dad. By now the tail only flapped a couple weak times a minute. This meant the creature was probably dying, but it also meant that Carter and my dad would have a better chance of being able to capture it. They both lunged toward the creature and dove underwater.
The silver tail flapped. It flapped again much weaker than before. And then it was still. Nothing moved out there but the buoy bobbing along the surface. For a moment it was strangely silent on the beach, and then a small murmuring began in the crowd as they began to conjure up bleak ideas of what was happening out there.
I tried to tune the voices out. I didn’t want to hear them say the mermaid was dead, and worse, that it had dragged my dad and Carter down with it. I searched the shore for my mom. She had broken through and was in the front of the crowd. She stood there with her hands over her gaping mouth, staring toward the spot where my dad should have been rising up for a breath any moment. I watched her instead of the water. I couldn’t bear to watch the water, and I knew her face would tell me what I needed to know. Her eyes grew wide. Her fingers stretched up past her nose and cheeks as though they wanted to cover her eyes but she wouldn’t let them. Mom’s head shook slowly, denying what she was seeing.
My brain began to count. 3, 4... 7, 8... They should be up by now. I dared to peek.
The two older guys finally got to the buoy. They dove into the water like they saw something and thought they could help. I hoped they weren’t too late. I looked back at my mom. A million wrinkles crossed her brow.
Then the crowd uttered a collective, “Oh!!!”
My mom’s hands had moved to the sides of her head, fingers destroying her perfect hair. She was crying, but I could detect a smile under it. That was all I needed. I spun around to see the heads of all four men above the water. Two were on one side of the creature and two on the other.
And then I gulped for my own breath, suddenly aware that I’d been holding it probably as long as they had.
Together, the men swam back to shore. As they got closer we began to see the outline of what they were carrying.
“That’s not a mermaid!” some lady shrieked from the crowd.
“What is it?” people cried out, desperate to know.
I plodded a little deeper into the water to get a better look. From what I could see, it was a creature about four feet long and relatively thin. Its head had a high, round forehead, and two flippers stuck out on both sides of the upper torso. I bit my lip to keep from laughing and called back to the onlookers, “It’s a finless porpoise.” The missing dorsal fin on this breed of porpoise made its body long and slender, easily mistaken for a mermaid tale at a distance.
The chorus of groans and jeers behind me was terrifically loud. You’d think I just told them they’d lost the lottery. They yelled things about how we’d played a trick on them and were just a bunch of fakes and liars.
I shrugged at all of them and said only loud enough for Gary and Ted to hear, “I haven’t lied about anything. A finless porpoise along our shore is almost as rare a sighting as a mermaid. If they knew that they’d still be snapping pictures.” The boys, with soaking wet clothes and ruined hair, both gave me a look like I was nuts and they waded back to the girls.
“You are so not worth this,” Ted said as he passed me.
A few people from the mob stayed at the water’s edge to see the porpoise—to make sure it wasn’t going to turn out to be a mermaid after all, I guess. Most of them went back to their towels and chairs to wait for another sighting. A handful grabbed their stuff to leave, probably figuring that the whole thing was a big waste of time.
Regina snapped her compact shut as I walked out of the water. “Well, that didn’t turn out the way I hoped,” she said, staying a few feet away from me so she wouldn’t get any seawater on her as I shook my legs to loosen my wet jeans.
“Yeah,” Marlee agreed. “I really wanted to see a mermaid.”
“So did everybody here, Marlee,” Ted said. Then he turned to Regina. “Can we got get something to eat now? I saw a doughnut shop when we drove th
rough town.”
“No, silly,” Regina said, reshaping his hair again as lovingly as she could. She worked her eyelashes and pouty lips on him. He grinned wide. Did he really like that crap? “We’re not done here yet. There’s more fun in store. Right, Junie?”
I winced.
Gary plopped down in the sand and put his arms over his knees. “I still think this whole thing’s a fake. You guys haven’t proven anything to me.”
Regina smacked him on the top of his head. “You’re getting all sandy and are not going to be riding in my car that way.”
“I’ll ride with Ted.”
I wandered away from them to wait for Dad and Carter at the spot where it looked like they would be coming ashore. Haley stepped up beside me.
“I’m glad your dad’s all right,” she said quietly. “It got scary there for a minute.”
There she was—my old friend. I knew it was only going to last for a moment, but it was nice to see her again. I put my arm around her waist and dropped my head to her shoulder. She wrapped her left arm around my shoulders and we stood like that for the next couple minutes, until the men got close enough for me to get to them and help tug the porpoise to shore.
It was a baby—very slender, only about four feet long, with a deep blue-gray sheen to its skin that sparkled a bit against the overcast sky. All four men dropped to their knees as soon as they were out of the water. The two older volunteers flopped to their backs.
“What can I do?” I asked. “Do you want me to try to clean the oil out of its blowhole?”
“It’s too late,” Dad said. “He already suffocated.” Dad caught Mom’s attention and beckoned her over. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
Carter stood up and walked away from us, his hands on his hips, his head back. I followed him.
“If I had just gotten here a couple minutes sooner,” he grumbled. “Just a couple minutes, and we could’ve saved him.”
“Carter, you didn’t know...”
He spun around. “I knew you were here,” he said. “You were on the news this morning. The second I saw your face I jumped in my car and headed over. But then on the radio one of the reporters said that you told them Dr. Schneider was doing experiments on the mermaids at his lab, so I thought I should go there first. If I hadn’t, I would have been here sooner.”
“I didn’t tell them all that stuff about Dr. Schneider. My mom did.”
I pointed at my mother who appeared to be getting instructions from my father about how to share the facts about the dead porpoise with the reporters behind her. I imagined he was filling her in on what a rarity this particular animal was and how the oil spill may very well have wiped out all the finless porpoises on our coast. My dad is nothing if not very focused on his goals. If Carter weren’t here, I’d probably be helping by pulling up some extra details from Google on my phone that we could throw at the press for extra sympathy. My dad knew deep down that the press wouldn’t care about this porpoise, but he would convince Mom to make this moment about the oil spill and not the mermaid.
Carter shook his head at the two of them and then gave me a half grin. I guess I hadn’t done anything to earn one of his genuine golden grins yet. I longed for it, though. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll blame your mom then.” He nodded at the porpoise. “Want to help me get this up to the truck and back to the Center?”
He wanted my help! I almost chirped with happiness, but I kept it under control. “Yes. Anything. I’d love to help you... I mean, I really want to get out of here.” Well, I kind of kept it under control, if you consider babbling like an idiot some form of control.
I crouched down and wrapped my arms around the tail. He lifted the head. The porpoise was heavier than it looked, but nothing the two of us couldn’t handle. As we started away, the two swimming volunteers got to their feet and asked if we needed them anymore. We thanked them for everything they did.
“Check with my dad,” I told them. “I’m sure he could use some help with what he’s doing, if you’re still interested.”
They checked with each other through a glance, and the older of the two rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, we really just went out there because we thought that thing was a mermaid.”
Carter tugged me toward the ramp that led to the parking lot to keep from saying something he shouldn’t. I said thanks to the volunteers one more time and left it at that.
Haley chased after us. “June! Aren’t you going to say good-bye or anything?”
Oh my gosh! I totally forgot she existed the moment Carter showed up. Here, I’d been griping about what a lousy friend she was, but I wasn’t any better.
“I’m so sorry, Haley,” I said. I gestured with my shoulder because my hands were full of porpoise tail. “This is Carter.”
Haley smiled and gave him an approving once-over. “I thought you might be,” she said. She pointed at the porpoise. “Where are you going? Don’t you need to be here for the interviews and stuff?”
“We’re taking the porpoise back to the rescue center,” I told her.
Haley’s eyes brightened and she hopped up and down in the sand. “Really? Where the mermaids are being kept? Can I go? Can I see them?”
Regina, Ted, and Marlee stepped up behind her. “You’re going to see the mermaids? We’re totally going to be a part of that.” Regina hit Ted to make him go fetch Gary from where he still sat in the sand.
Carter began taking quite wide strides up the ramp, and I had no choice but to try to keep up. It didn’t take long before we were out of earshot of Regina’s crew. For a second he craned his head back to look at me before focusing on where he was going again. His forehead was so creased he could have passed for 35. “Don’t they know?”
I felt a little sick to my stomach over the way he said it, like I was some kind of jerk. “I haven’t really talked to Haley much over the last couple days. And Regina’s kind of the last person I’d tell anything to.”
“All of these interviews and the video on the Internet, and you don’t bother to mention once that the mermaids are missing? That’s kind of important,” he said. “Instead of having people help us look for them, we’ve got a crowd of people filling the parking lot at the Center, desperate to get inside and see something that’s not there.”
“It’s that bad?” I asked. “I mean, I knew it would get bad the moment my mom said that stuff about Dr. Schneider, but it’s that bad already?”
“It’s only going to get worse,” Carter said. “I didn’t even bother parking because I didn’t want all those people bugging me and trying to push inside. I’m guessing Dr. S. has the door locked so no one can get in there.” We got to the top of the hill and Carter stopped and stared at the parking lot. “Great.”
“What?”
“How are we going to get this thing to the Center? Drape it across my back seat? Shove it in the trunk?”
I bit my lip before saying gently, “Well, it is dead, Carter.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The smell will be in there forever.” I stifled a laugh.
“What about my dad’s truck?” Carter nodded and we took the porpoise over and dropped it in the bed. “I’ll get the keys from Dad.”
As I dashed over to the ramp to head back down to the beach, Regina and her club of popular dorks came over the top.
“Oh! Were you coming back for us?” Regina asked, her eyebrow cocked high enough to let me know she was fully aware that I was not. “How sweet of you.” She put out her arm and stopped me. Haley and her friends blocked my way.
“I need to get to my dad,” I told them. “I need his keys to the truck.”
“Ted’s got a truck,” Regina said. She elbowed Ted in the ribs, and he nodded.
“Uh, yeah. It’s over there.” He pointed at his Dodge pickup in the lot. Then he looked at Carter with his arms wrapped around the torso of the slick porpoise and the tail dragging on the ground. “You want me to help you with that thing?”
Carter glanced at me,
shook his head slightly in defeat and then waved Ted over. The two of them hauled the porpoise into the bed of Ted’s truck.
“Damn, that stinks,” Ted said, wiping his hands on his jeans.
Carter patted his stinky hands on Ted’s back. “It’ll take a few washes to get it out of your clothes. Sorry, man.” He walked away and signaled for me to come with him. Ted picked at the shoulder of his shirt and tried to sniff how bad the odor was while he made his way to the driver’s side of his truck. Gary, with sand still stuck to the back of his pants, caught up to him, while the girls all went to Regina’s car.
“We’ll follow you,” Regina said before sitting down and closing her door.
Once we got into his car, Carter leaned close to me and said, “I could lose her in a second and let them drive around the rest of the morning with that dead porpoise. Can I? Please?” I took in his devilish grin and bright blue eyes. I absolutely would love to find a way to rid myself of the Student Council posse and have some time alone with Carter. But I wriggled my nose at him and sighed as my only response. Carter straightened up and put his hands on the wheel. “Oh, fine. I’ll be good.” He started the engine and led the pack away.
I took his joking as an invitation. “So, you’re not mad at me anymore?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I wasn’t really mad at you. Just disappointed.”
“I said some stupid things last time we were together...”
“Let me put it this way,” he said, interrupting me. “I think you’re right about not wanting to follow in your parents’ footsteps. Go to San Diego. Become a Marine Biologist like you want. You know why?”
I’m not sure I wanted to hear the answer. Was it because he hated me? He didn’t want me around? I got on his nerves?
“Why?” I said through the knot in my throat.
Carter tilted his head toward me just a touch, flicking his eyes at me for a moment before looking back at the road. “Because you are a terrible activist.”