“And he cut off her hair, blah, blah, blah,” said Gabrielle. It sounded like she’d heard Jack’s recitation a few times already. She rolled her eyes, which I hoped would persuade Lily to drop the whole thing. Jack Pettit was being far too convincing.
“He cut her hair?” Lily repeated, her eyes wide. “Yep,” said Jack. “He tried to catch her, but she was too slimy. All he was able to do was catch her by her hair, and when he cut it, she capsized his canoe and drowned him.”
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“Freaky,” said Lily.
“Yeah, but remember,” said Gabrielle, “there are no legends of mermaids around here.”
“Not exactly,” Jack said. “The Anishinabe have legends about water gods. They call them manitous. You really shouldn’t rule anything out.”
“There’s a water way from Maine to here,” said Lily.
Tucked into my hiding spot, I pounded my fist against my forehead. Why was she trying so hard to make this real?
“They could have followed the St. Lawrence Seaway to Lake Superior. That would make sense.”
“Are you listening to yourself, Lily? That doesn’t make sense at all.” Gabrielle had clearly hit her limit. “Come on, I’m hungry. Let’s go up to the IGA. I’ve got a coupon for Twinkies.”
“My mermaid wasn’t slimy,” said Lily. “It wasn’t like a snake, either. . . .” She drew her finger along the painting, tracing the tail.
“You don’t
have
a mermaid,” said Gabrielle. She took the painting from Jack, tossed it into the trunk, and slammed the trunk shut. Then she dragged Lily away from the car and up the sidewalk. Jack followed. “And what about Calder?” Gabrielle asked. “Did you ask him if he saw anything strange?”
“He told me I was stupid to think I saw a dolphin. I guess he was right about that.”
“Man,” said Jack. “I’ve said it before, I’m going to say it again. I don’t think you should be hanging out with that guy.”
I stalked behind them and shot dagger eyes at Jack. I didn’t need him pushing Lily further away from me. I was doing a good enough job on my own.
“I mean, what’s he doing telling you to lean over the rock
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anyway? It’s almost like he wanted you to fall in. He sounds like an asshole to me.”
“It
is
weird that we’ve never heard of him before,” offered
Gabrielle. “What did you say his last name was?”
“Um, White? I think that’s what he told my dad.” “Well, there’s one way to solve this,” said Jack. They were now by the door of the IGA. An old pay
phone hung on rusted bolts, mounted on the outside wall between the grocery store and Big Mo’s Pizzeria, a phone book tethered to the shelf. Jack flipped open the water- warped pages to the back.
“Huh. There is a White. Just a phone number, though.
No address.”
“Dude, call it,” said Gabrielle.
“I’m not wasting my minutes on this guy.”
Lily wasn’t listening to them. She was still stuck in the
original conversation. “Whatever it was, it was amazing. It was the most fantastic thing I’ve ever seen.”
Jack nodded. “I believe you, Lily.”
“You do?”
Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “What you saw? It was probably just the endorphins talking. They made you feel all happy because you weren’t going to die, so everything looked good. Don’t forget, you
do know
who pulled you out, and I’m willing to bet this Calder White doesn’t have a ring around his neck. Or a tail for that matter.”
Lily looked uncomfortable. She couldn’t deny the fact that I’d carried her home on two legs. And as far as she knew, I had no ring around my neck. Lily’s eyebrows pulled together and the corners of her mouth turned down.
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I could see I was going to have to get to know her better, to understand what she was thinking. If she was having serious qualms about me this early, we were going to have to change tactics again.
Lily and the Pettit kids walked into the grocery store, and I emerged from behind the Dumpster, catching my reflection in the window of the Blue Moon Café. My eyes settled on the Help Wanted sign.
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14
PROMISE ME
T he next day, I found myself pacing in the shadows of a sea cave, peering out on the world through a curtain of ivy. Everything was black. The depression gnawed at my brain, feeding on my fear of failure with Lily, gorging itself on the thought of never being free of Maris. Or was it the aching memories of Lake Superior that pushed me so close to oblivion? Whatever it was, I was teetering on the edge, and watching a most unfortunate kayaker approach.
Holding my breath, I waited for her companion. Kayakers always traveled in pairs. They were like loons. But as she
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drifted closer, I realized she was alone. I should have known. The woman’s aura pulsed with purple ripples: the color of independence and adventure. A companion would have slowed her down.
My insides constricted as she drew closer and I waited for the right moment. If I gave her too much notice, if she saw me too soon, the deliciousness of her high emotion would ferment and then putrefy into fear. Human anxiety was bitter enough on my tongue, but to absorb their fear . . . fear left me retching in the bushes for hours.
An expensive- looking camera hung around her neck. It was heavy enough not to sway as she paddled. The woman rested her paddle across her lap and picked up the camera, holding it to her eye. She aimed it at a rock formation to my right and clicked as she scanned the foliage, lowering it to scan the waves licking at the mouth of the cave.
Then she froze.
And I knew what was centered in her viewfinder. Lunging, I was at the woman before she dropped the
camera. Once the kayak overturned, it was only too easy to pull her out. The camera slipped from her neck and sank to the bottom of the lake, destroying any evidence she might have recorded. I entangled her in my arms, dragging her deeper, waiting for her emotion to seep through my skin. It was taking longer than expected, and I got only a trickle of excitement before the sour taste of panic hit my tongue. My eyes popped open, and I saw Maris watching me smugly from the bottom of the lake. It was her twisted smile that made me release the woman, who scrambled to the surface, only a tiny trickle of bubbles trailing from her nose. I didn’t
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look back to see if she would reclaim the surface. She’d never report a merman attack to the authorities and, really, who would believe her if she did?
Maris shook her head in disgust.
“Follow me,”
she said, her words a telepathic punch to the gut.
We swam toward Manitou Island until she stopped and surfaced. I broke through the watery plane five full seconds behind her.
“Look around, Calder. What do you see?”
“Someone who enjoys my misery,” I said.
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Touché. But do you recognize this spot?”
I turned in a circle, calculating the distance from Manitou, to the mainland, to the next closest island in the chain. It formed a triangle with me at its center. Yes, I knew this spot. “This is where I fell in.”
“Bingo.”
The memory of the sailboat rose again, the mystery letters stenciled on the stern, my human parents drifting away, scrambling to drop the sails, to turn back, to throw a life preserver. . . . My lungs burned with the memory; I remembered the sunlight fading into a pinprick of light as the dark waters swallowed my tiny body and my heart slogged to a stop.
“Should she have left you for dead, Calder?”
The question snapped me back to the present.
“I’ve often wondered,” Maris went on. “You’ve never been completely right for this life. If you need any more proof, that woman back there . . .”
“I’m just out of practice.”
“That’s what I mean, Calder. Why should you be out of practice? It’s not normal.”
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I didn’t know what to say to that. But I knew where she was going, and I knew the answer to her next question.
“She was my mother, too, Maris. And I
will
avenge her death.”
“Silly boy,” she said, her tone patronizing. “I know you want to. The question I’m asking is
can
you.”
“Get a grip, Maris. We made a deal. I
can.
And I
will.
And once the deed is done, you’ll never have to be bothered with wondering if I’m normal or not.”
Before Maris could answer, a 330 Sun Sport came around a bend in the shoreline, its engine churning the water, its driver fixated on the shore, binoculars scanning the rocks. Behind his back, Maris and I made no attempt to submerge ourselves.
“Should I take that one?” I suggested sardonically. “Would that prove something to you?”
“No,” she said coolly. “Not that one.”
I focused on the figure in the boat. What was so special about him? It surprised me to recognize the lucky boater as Jack Pettit. “Why not him?”
“That one’s Pavati’s.”
I choked on a laugh. “Oh, man, you’re telling me she’s got dibs?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“Never mind. She can have him. Besides, I’m going to be late for work.”
“You have a job?” she asked, amused. “Who’d hire you?”
“Maybe I’m not
completely
lacking in skill, Maris. I can be persuasive. And it’s all part of my plan. Like I said, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got this.”
She raised her eyebrows in an expression of doubt and
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dove away, leaving me to slump back into the bleakness she’d found me in.
As I swam toward the Bayfield fishing pier, I felt Tallulah trailing several yards behind.
“Calder, wait up.”
I looked behind me and saw her arms curled around a newborn baby. My throat tightened in revulsion, and I pulled up quick.
“Aw, geez, Lu. Why?”
But when she extended the bundle toward me, I realized it wasn’t a baby after all. Just a whitefish bloated with roe. She laughed, reading my initial impression in my fading thoughts, and wrapped a long, waxy arm around my neck. She pulled me closer. Chuckling, I pushed her off and examined the catch.
“Where’ve you been?”
she asked, her thoughts revealing her own colorful imagination.
My eyes popped wide at the images.
“Oh, man, Tallulah, would you quit it? I’m not Pavati. You can stop imagining the worst.”
But I couldn’t help latching onto the last picture she showed me: Lily in a hammock, pressed underneath me, her fingers in my hair, her heel trailing up the back of my calf.
Tallulah smiled and took my hand. We swam together, the whitefish tucked under her arm, our twin silver tails glistening, matching stroke for stroke. Again, I wondered what it would be like for us to live without Maris. Maybe hook up with the mermaids in Lake Michigan? Then again, maybe not. With our luck, they wouldn’t be a trade up. Besides, wasn’t it bad enough being tethered to my own sisters? I couldn’t imagine having that kind of persistent bond with strangers. Like any school of fish, once it was formed, no
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individual broke away from the group. Not for very long anyway, and not by choice. As far as I knew, I was the only exception to that rule, and I could only hold on to my winter hiatus for a few sweet months. Hope burst like chrysanthemums of light in my brain. The promise of being released from the group chokehold was too precious to fathom. Lily was sure to deliver Hancock to me. Eventually. It wouldn’t be long before I was cashing in.
Tallulah dove seven fathoms and found a seat on a large boulder on the lake floor. I checked my watch, then circled her three times, watching as she pulled her lips back and sank her teeth into the fish, tearing the flesh with a shake of her head. When she finished, she looked up at me balefully and said simply,
“I don’t like you spending time with her.”
Lily’s face flashed across her mind again.
“You don’t have to like it,”
I said.
“If Maris had just stayed out of it . . . The original plan was better.”
She flashed her teeth at me and looked away, her head instantly full of confusing images: a school of alewives, a restaurant in New Orleans, the backseat of the Impala.
I laughed, recognizing her attempt to keep her true thoughts private. Image scrambling was a trick I often used on my sisters, and I wasn’t about to deprive Tallulah of the little bit of privacy she could make for herself. She was always good to repay the favor.
I winked and waved goodbye, but before I left, she grabbed my hand and jerked me back until we were nose- to- nose.
“I heard what Maris said to you back there.”
Of course she did. It wasn’t like Maris was subtle about anything.
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“I don’t think it was a mistake for Mother to reinvigorate you, Calder. I never have. You are a beautiful creature, weird behavior and all. It doesn’t matter to me what Maris thinks.”
“So you don’t think I’m going to fail?”
“No, I don’t. I need you to succeed, Calder. And then, when she cuts you loose,”
she squeezed my hand harder,
“I want you to take me with you.”
I pulled my fingers free.
“Promise me you’ll take me with you.”
Her eyebrows pulled up into an inverted V.
“I gotta go, Lu. I don’t want to be late for my first day.”
I reached up toward the surface of the water, leaving her underneath a shower of electric- blue sparks with no promise given.
“I won’t let you fail,”
she called after me, the words distorting in my wake.
Later that night, long after my shift at the café had ended, I surfaced outside the Hancock house, all jacked up on caffeine and pacing back and forth in the glass- calm water. Just exactly how was I going to make this work? A breeze blew through the trees, bringing a piney citrus tingle to my nose. When I crossed some invisible line in the water, a low humming filled the air, followed by a loud
ka- chunk,
and floodlights illuminated the lake in a one- hundred- foot radius from the end of the Hancock dock.
I froze, momentarily blinded. The porch light flashed on and Hancock’s voice called out, “What is it? Who’s out there? Show yourself.”
“It’s okay, Dad. It’s nothing. Just bats chasing mosquitoes. Must have set off the motion detectors.”
I shielded my eyes with my hand and searched for the
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