“That’s not funny!”
“I think it’s pretty funny,” Clay says, still smirking. He puts a finger through one of the leg holes and spins the bottoms around it, a bright yellow blur against the blue sky. “Maybe you should just come out here and get them.”
I wish I could. If Clay would just leave me alone for two seconds, maybe I could concentrate enough to change back.
“Clay, I’m really thirsty. Would you go get me a bottle of water from the kitchen?” I put on my sweetest, most feminine smile. “Pleeease?”
He chuckles. “Nautilus, there is no way I’m letting you off the hook that easily.”
I squirm, feeling as if I really am trapped on a hook. He moves closer, squats down by the edge of the pool. “Maybe I should just peek down there,” he whispers, “and see what you’re hiding.”
“No! Don’t!” I shout.
A growl pierces the air, and a ball of scruffy tan fur tackles Clay.
“What the … hey!” Clay loses his balance and falls from his squatting position onto, as Lapis called it, his grabbable ass. Barnacle jumps up and down on his chest. If I weren’t in such a precarious position, this would be hilarious. Barney is so tiny, and his threatening barks come out in high-pitched little yelps of ferocity. “Looky who’s defending your honor,” Clay says, his voice brimming with amusement. “Stand down, good sir. I was just teasing her. I’m a gentleman.”
Barney cocks his small head to the side, his ears lifting as if he’s considering Clay’s words. Then, with another growl that sounds more like a whine, the puppy sinks his tiny teeth into the bikini bottoms and decides to play tug-of-war.
“Oh no you don’t,” Clay says, tugging back.
This is exactly what I need. Clay’s attention is focused on Barnacle. I release my grip from the edge, my fingers stiff from my tight hold, and relax my arms by my sides. I force myself to steady my breathing. Then, I concentrate on the sounds of Clay’s laughter, low and rumbling and unintentionally sexy.
My muscles shrink and separate, interlacing with the bones of two separate legs. Almost afraid to believe it, I slit my eyes open and peer down into the blue. Two long, familiar legs tread water beneath me.
That’s not all I see.
Now I really am naked from the waist down. After almost being discovered with a tail, a little case of nudity shouldn’t bother me, but … Clay … right there in front of me … I slam myself right back against the wall of the pool.
He and Barnacle roll on the nearby grass, continuing to fight over the bottoms I now desperately need. “Little monster!” Clay mumbles between laughs.
“Barney!” I call. “C’mere, Barney. C’mere!”
More used to my voice than Clay’s, Barnacle runs to me so fast on his teeny puppy legs that he looks more like he’s jumping across the lawn, my yellow bottoms clenched securely in his mouth. He’s so excited by this game that he runs right past the lip of the pool and into the water.
He yelps, his fur dripping, as I lift him up under his belly with one hand. With the other, I wrestle the yellow fabric from him. The teething pup’s baby teeth weren’t sharp enough to do any real damage, so, moments later, Barnacle shakes himself off on solid ground as I shimmy back into yellow safety.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Clay watching me from where he still sits on the grass. Now, it’s my turn to tease him.
In a well-practiced move I often use when I have a tail, I dive down deep. This time, instead of letting my fins splash out of the water behind me, my legs—with toes gracefully pointed and muscles toned from swimming—shoot out of the water and give Clay quite a view.
As I swim back up, I angle my face just right. When I hit the surface, I flick my head back so my hair flips in a perfect cascade, sparkling with thousands of water droplets that catch the sunlight at every angle. Maybe it’s unfair to use a classic Mermaid move against Clay. But after what he pulled with my bikini? Revenge is sweet.
In a much more human-teen-movie move, I adjust my bikini top, needlessly straightening the straps. Clay’s eyes follow my fingers just as I’d intended, and I angle my body toward him, ensuring he gets an eyeful.
When I raise my head, our eyes meet. And his are hungry. Not in the disturbing way they get when he’s been sirened—that wore off when he first got here. No, this is a natural, human boy hunger, and it’s directed at me. It sparks a glow inside me from the tips of my recently recovered toes to the ends of my recently flipped hair. I’ve never felt this … sexy.
The look on Clay’s face—of slack-jawed wonder—is empowering. It’s only there for a second; then he gives me a knowing smile.
“Well played, Nautilus.” He gets to his feet and … unzips his jeans? I gulp. Maybe I went too far with my little game.
“Clay, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” he asks as he pushes the denim from his hips and lets it pool at his feet. He kicks his jeans to the side. Now he stands in front of me in only a tight white V-neck t-shirt and blue cotton boxers, his legs tan and muscular. “I’m going for a swim.”
He walks closer. “You can’t show me a pool like this and expect me to resist the temptation,” he says. His muscles dance under his skin as he raises his arms above his head and dives into the water.
When he comes up for air, I gasp. He’s much closer than I expected. He’s inches from my face, so close I can see the water clinging to his eyelashes in iridescent beads.
“Salt water,” he says in surprise. His tongue peeks out to lick his full bottom lip before disappearing again inside the cavern of his mouth. I track its progress with my eyes and think how much I’d like to taste the salt on his lips. How much I’d like to taste him.
“Yeah. It’s more buoyant.” I murmur the well-rehearsed excuse without thinking. I can’t think about anything right now, not with Clay so close to me.
And he’s moving even closer. He’s leaning toward me, his breath cool against my wet skin.
My world spins upside down as Clay dives forward. He wraps his arms above my knees, lifting me into the air as he stands, and throwing me up over his shoulder so my upper half hangs down his back.
My screams and laughter blend together. “Clay! Put me down!” I giggle, pounding my hands lightly against his back.
“Now, why would I do that?” His laugh vibrates against my thighs as it rolls through his chest. Barnacle barks from the edge of the pool, eager to join in the excitement.
Clay walks around the shallow end of the pool with me still hanging over his shoulder, and I let out an undignified squeal as I whap him on the back, just above where his sodden white t-shirt meets the waistband of his equally wet boxers.
“Aurelia!”
My laughter dies half-formed on my lips.
Just like that, my world spins upside down again.
My mother has never looked so scandalized. My father has never looked so uncomfortable. And I, dangling in a bikini over the shoulder of a human boy whose hands are all over my bare legs, have never been in so much trouble.
Clay is gone. With as much politeness as my mother could muster, and that wasn’t much, she asked him to leave. I didn’t even manage a goodbye. I just stood there by the pool and watched as he walked through the glass door, through the living room, and out of my house.
I should be planning what to say, how to explain my behavior. But how can I possibly explain? Instead, I stay motionless, listening to the drip, drip, drip of the water onto the concrete until my father throws me a towel.
“Cover your legs before your mother has a heart attack.” My parents know legs aren’t considered as blatantly sexual to humans as they are to Mer, but walking in on me with so much of my legs exposed—worse, with a boy actually touching my legs—must shock them. Still, it can’t shock them more than the risk I took by getting in that water in front of Clay.
I expect them to yell right away. Instead, they’re quiet. The silence scares me mo
re. My mother, the consummate politician, has been rendered speechless by my behavior.
She paces back and forth in front of me, but doesn’t say a word. My father stares at nothing, wringing his hands.
Then, after several long, tense minutes in which my stomach tangles itself up like strings of seaweed on the beach, the storm starts.
“How, Aurelia? How could you? You went in the water with a human! Have we taught you nothing? You could have lost your control at any moment. Imagine if he’d seen your tail! What were you thinking?” Her shouts continue in an endless stream.
I don’t interrupt. I don’t try to argue. How can I, when she’s right? If my parents had come home ten minutes earlier, I would have been in my tail in front of a human.
My father usually soothes my mother’s anger. He’s the jokester to her disciplinarian. But he doesn’t try to quiet her now. All he says is, “You endangered all of us.”
I nod, my eyes downcast.
My mother curses in Mermese. She never curses. “Have you slept with him?”
“No! I haven’t even kissed him.” Even though I could have. I’ve tried to do the right thing, really, I’ve tried.
Her shoulders lose some of their tension, but her pinched expression remains. “Maybe human school was a mistake. I have the utmost respect for humans and we want you to fit into this world, but—”
“But you can’t forget you’re not one of them.” My father’s voice is so quiet it’s almost like I’m hearing it inside my head. “You’re not human, Lia. You never will be. You’re Mer.”
My mother looks at me for the first time since she saw me in the pool with Clay. She steps right up to me and puts one of her hands on each of my shoulders, demanding my full attention, as if she didn’t have it already.
“Friends are one thing, Lia. Friendships with humans are necessary to survive here and can teach you a great deal. But romance, romance is off-limits.” She keeps holding me—even jostles me once by the shoulders—until I nod again. “You know this. Don’t set yourself up for misery.”
She lets go of me and releases a labored sigh, as if I’ve sapped away all her energy. Now, my father moves closer, looking grimmer than I’ve ever seen him. “You’re better than this, Aurelia.”
I snap. I can’t listen anymore. “How do you know?” You don’t know that I’ve wanted him since last year, that I’ve buried my feelings so I could be who you wanted me to be, that I’ve saved him, that I’ve cursed him—that I’ve fallen face over fins for him. “You don’t know me.”
“We know that you’re too smart a Mermaid to chase after a fantasy.” Now my mother’s voice is calm, collected, steely.
My father’s sounds like it might break when he adds, “We brought you here—gave up everything—so you could have a better life. Not so you could throw away your entire future. You’re not to spend any more time with that boy. Understand?”
I nod one last time. But this time, it’s a lie.
Amy waits for me in my grotto bedroom. “Lia, I’m so, so sorry! When I let him in, I thought you’d still be upstairs. How mad at me are you? How mad at me are they?”
“I’ve never seen them madder, but not at you. They just assumed I let him in.”
“I’ll tell them! I’ll go upstairs right now and—”
“No, you won’t. There’s no reason for them to be mad at both of us. I don’t think they could take worrying about your judgment and mine.”
“I screwed up,” she says, looking about ready to cry.
“Yeah, you did, but it happens. I’ve been screwing up way worse. And I don’t know how to stop.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she asks.
“Will you go distract them? I need to go back upstairs and make a phone call.”
While I’ve been getting yelled at, Clay’s been out there unprotected. Letting my sireny wear off while we’re together is one thing, but letting him leave like that means Melusine could reclaim him any time.
Once I’m in my upstairs bedroom with the door locked, I call him up with shaking fingers.
He picks up right away. “Lia, are you okay? Your parents seemed really upset. How can we fix this?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I just sing.
When I get home from the Foundation the next day, the way Amy greets me—a mixture of eagerness and temerity—tells me she wants to talk. She must still feel bad about yesterday.
I’ve started researching Community bylaws at the Foundation in hopes I’ll find something to pin on Melusine besides sireny (nothing so far). I’m exhausted from pushing my brain to understand all the legal Mermese. So, it’s tempting to ignore Amy, but I’ve been doing that too much lately. Between spending time with Clay, worrying about Melusine, researching at the Foundation, and meeting in Star Cave with Caspian, I’ve spent almost zero time with her.
“Hey, Aims, have you walked Barney yet?”
Her face lights up, and she shakes her head.
“Get him leashed up and show me what those new legs of yours can do.”
For the first few blocks, she’s uncharacteristically silent. I pretend not to notice as I chatter on about school and compliment her leg control.
This must make her feel more at ease because she says, “So, that boy you got caught with … ” She trails off, as if now that she’s broached the subject, she doesn’t know what to say next.
“You going to lecture me, too?” I ask. I widen my eyes in mock-fright, and she giggles.
Last night, my parents gave me what I thought was the lecture to end all lectures. I was wrong. When Emeraldine got home from campus, she gave me a lecture of her own. Everything from why it’s dangerous to get involved with a human to how wonderful love can be once you’ve found the Merman of your dreams. Apparently, she and Leo have had some serious convos the last two weeks. I don’t know what kind of conclusion they’ve come to, but when she talked about love last night, her smile finally met her eyes again. She practically glowed when she told me that, one day, she wants me to find a love like hers so I can be as happy as she is. I let her talk. I wish she could understand that not everyone falls for the Merboy next door. Love isn’t always as predictable as a fairytale.
Once Em felt she’d given me enough sisterly advice, the twins came in and gave me their own earful about how dumb I was to get caught. They told me that no matter what they got up to, they never let Mom and Dad know enough to get this worried.
Considering the echo in the grottos, I’m sure Amy heard every word. But she won’t RSVP to the criticize Lia party. Instead, she asks, “Clay, right? That’s his name?”
“Yeah. He goes to my school.”
“Clay,” she repeats, as if testing the feel of it. She stops walking, letting Barnacle sniff a nearby tree. “He likes you, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I thought he didn’t, but then yesterday it seemed like maybe he does.” By the time I got my legs back yesterday, the spell had totally worn off, but Clay went right on flirting with me. It might mean nothing, but maybe, just maybe it means …
“You like him, though.” It’s a statement, not a question. I don’t know whether it’s my behavior from yesterday or my current blush that gives me away. Either way, I don’t deny it. At thirteen, Amy looks up to me, and I don’t want to set a bad example by feeling this way for a human, but I don’t want to lie to her either.
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Do you love him?”
The question catches me off guard. I know the answer, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to admit it out loud. I say the closest thing I can to yes. “I think so.”
“So, you love him even though you’re not supposed to?”
“Yeah, I’ve tried hard not to, really I have, but I can’t help how I feel.”
She looks at me for a long moment, studying me. Then she tugs on the leash. We walk for another few minutes in silen
ce.
Amy’s conflicted expression means she has more to say. I wait.
By the time Barnacle stops again to investigate a garden gnome, a determined expression has settled on Amy’s face. But her voice comes out shaky. “You remember when I first got my legs … ”
I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “Yep, I remember.”
“You know how you told me that if I had trouble keeping them, I should think about a boy I like?”
“Yep,” I say again.
“Well, it didn’t work.”
“What do you mean? You’re doing great with your legs. I never could’ve walked this long on a public street so soon.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. When I was practicing, thinking about boys in my class—even thinking about guys on TV—it didn’t work. It still doesn’t work.” Her voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “But, when I think about Stas, well … ” She gestures at her legs.
Wait. What? “Staskia? You … think about Staskia?”
“I think about Staskia.” She says the words like she’s wanted to say them for a long time, like she’s needed to say them. How long has she wanted to tell me this? How long has it been since I really talked to her? Should I have already known? Maybe if I wasn’t so wrapped up in Clay, this wouldn’t come as such a shock.
“Does Staskia know? Have you two … ?” I gesture wildly. Oh yeah, real mature, Lia.
“No! I mean, not yet. I haven’t said anything exactly but, well, sometimes we hold hands while we walk and I thinkmaybeshefeelsthesame.” She says the last part very fast and now she’s blushing as red as a flame angelfish. “Do you think your parents are gonna be mad? Do you think they’ll tell my parents?”
I stop to think about it. I’ve heard that, before the curse, homosexuality (what translates to glei elskee or same-love in Mermese) was accepted in Mer culture. Most Mermaids mated with Mermen, but Mermaids mating with Mermaids wasn’t uncommon, and neither was Mermen with Mermen. Mer also sometimes took advantage of their immortal lifespans to explore the company of both genders.
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