Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels (2 page)

“Hey, Jade, is that your grandma?” Trey let go of Cori's hand and pointed through the glass windows of the school office. Gran had her back turned, talking to Ms. Wilma as she wheeled around in her office chair, ping-ponging from the filing cabinet to the photocopier and back to her desk with a stack of papers.

“What's she doing here?” I wondered aloud and made my way through the crowd to the office doors. Was there something wrong with Mom? Had there been an accident at Dad's work?

“Gran?” I stepped into the office.

Gran turned to me and her round, rosy-cheeked face broke into a sweet, grandmotherly smile. “Oh, hi, Jadie girl. I'm so glad you're here.”

I walked over to hug her. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yes. Everything is fine,” Gran assured me as she rifled through the bingo markers and tissues in her enormous handbag in search of a pen. “I was just about to get Wilma to call you down here on the P.A. I have someone who needs a tour guide.”

That's when I noticed a girl about my age standing in front of a map outside the principal's office, clutching a schoolbag like it was a life preserver. It took a few seconds for my mind to register what I was seeing.

Long, golden brown hair, lanky arms and legs, slim shoulders. Last time I'd seen her, she was swimming off into the sunset with her mother and father in Talisman Lake. I touched the friendship bracelet she'd given me, hanging from my wrist.

“Serena?” I whispered and turned to Gran, not quite understanding. “What's
Serena
doing here?”

Ms. Wilma paper-clipped a school information package together and handed it to Gran with a smile.

“All righty, Mrs. Baxter. You can fill this part out for now, but we'll also need Serena's old school records, immigration information, and proof of residency before we can officially register her.”

Register her? My eyes widened, but Gran grasped my arm to shush me before I blurted out our secret in front of Ms. Wilma.

I glanced back at Serena, but she was busy studying a school-district wall map of Port Toulouse and the surrounding areas. Serena stood facing the map, as if entranced by the blue waters against the green land. She traced her finger along the Atlantic Ocean, up our town's canal and across the boat lock that separated the ocean from nearby Talisman Lake, where she'd grown up as a mermaid with her parents, Finalin and Medora, and the rest of the Freshies imprisoned there by the Mermish Council.

Serena's finger stopped at the bridge for a second, then followed the lake northward through the islands to Dundee where Gran's cottage was. Finally, she traced a path past the cottage to the northernmost part of Talisman Lake a few miles further, where (I hadn't noticed before) the water spilled back into the Atlantic Ocean through a northern passage.

The last time I'd seen Serena, she was a mer-girl in Talisman Lake. In fact, I was the one who'd brought her back there after a trial run on land. Serena's father, Finalin, had not been very happy with me—after all, he'd sacrificed himself to free her from their lake prison in the first place.

But now Serena was back on dry land and registering for high school?
My
high school?

“The school records might take a while because all of the family's worldly possessions were burned in the lava flow, but we'll do what we can,” Gran said to Ms. Wilma as she finished scribbling information on Serena's school registration form.

What the heck? Lava flow?

“Serena and her mother are staying with Jade and her dad,” Gran continued, “so I'll put that address.”

“Oh, that's wonderful,” Ms. Wilma said, spinning her chair to look at me. “Jade, it must be nice to have your cousin and aunt stay with you.”

“Uh. Yeah,” I managed to utter but I wasn't sure I wanted to encourage this latest turn of events.

“Poor thing has been through so much.” Gran glanced at Serena and actually
pulled
a
tissue
from
her
handbag
to dab the corner of her eye. “We just think a bit of routine and structure would do wonders for her, you know?”

Wow, Gran should really audition for the Port Toulouse Theater Company because she was
good
. She snuck a sideways glance at me and winked. Cori, Luke, and Trey waved and pointed at Serena through the office window from the hallway, wondering what was happening. It would help if
I
knew what was happening.

“Of course!” Ms. Wilma exclaimed. “Heaven knows your son's family has had enough tragedy to last a lifetime,” she said, alluding to the fact that everyone in Port Toulouse thought my mom had drowned in Talisman Lake the summer before. And now my “aunt” (who was actually Mom with a makeover) and “cousin” Serena's village had been destroyed by a volcanic lava flow? Too bad we hadn't stocked up on life and accident insurance.

“Thank you for understanding,” Gran replied, adding a very enthusiastic nose-blow for effect.

“Getting Serena into a new school as soon as possible is probably the best thing for her.” Ms. Wilma patted Gran's hand and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I'll do what I can to push this through with Principal Reamer for now. Just try to get the rest of the information to me as soon as you can.”

Ms. Wilma filed the registration form in a folder and put it in Principal Reamer's inbox.

“As soon as
humanly
possible,” Gran assured her, replacing her pen in her handbag and snapping it shut. “Hey, am I going to see you at bingo on Thursday night? It's winner-take-all, and the jackpot's a big one.”

“Wouldn't miss it. Save me a seat,” Ms. Wilma replied, wheeling away toward the coffeemaker on the other side of the office, mug in hand.

Gran went over to Serena and put a hand on her shoulder. Serena jumped, as if being awoken from a trance, then turned and finally noticed I was there.

Jade,
Serena rang to me in her mer voice, smiling broadly.

Most people would probably think the ringing sound of Serena's mer voice was actually buzzing from the overhead fluorescent lights because that's what it sounded like to non-mers. I thought mer rings were one of the most annoying sounds on the planet, but that was how all mers communicated.

I still didn't know what on earth was going on, but if Serena was going to be human again, I had to break her mer-speaking habit as quickly as possible.

You
need
to
use
your
human
voice,
I rang back and hugged her.
Remember?

Serena knew the basics of English from what she'd learned from me and Mom last time she was human.

“J-shade…” Serena tried again. Her eyes widened in surprise at the sound of her voice. She turned to Gran and pointed to the map. “Grr-ansh. Water? Mother, Father?”

“Yes, honey,” Gran said in a hushed voice. She pointed at the map as if giving a stranger a tour of local landmarks. “This is the bridge we crossed at the canal between the ocean and the lake. And here's the school where we are now, and there is where I live, remember?” She pointed to Dundee on the map, halfway up the lake.

“Thish what?” Serena asked as she pointed to the northernmost part of the lake where it connected to the Atlantic Ocean again.

“That's Folly's Passage,” Gran explained. “It connects the lake to the ocean up north, but it's only open during the highest tides of the year. There's actually a famous shipwreck around there from the Second World War called
Fortune's Folly
. The captain missed the tide and ended up capsizing. Divers have been trying to find the ship ever since.”

“You mean the canal by the bridge isn't the only way in and out of the lake?” I whispered to Gran, trying to talk quickly so Serena wouldn't catch on.

“Well, Folly's Passage hasn't been used since I was a girl,” Gran mumbled back as Serena kept studying the map. “The cliffs have eroded so much from all the forestry people clear-cutting the trees that the passage has filled in, making it pretty shallow. You'd be crazy to take a boat through there now.”

I considered this for a second. Most of the Freshie mers hung out by the boat lock at the south end of Talisman Lake where salt water spilled in from the canal. Other than Finalin and Medora, who'd been in the lake the longest, none of the Freshies had made it further north than Dundee because the lake water was too fresh. There was no way any of them could ever get past the freshwater barrier in the middle of the lake and reach the northern passage to escape. The Mermish Council had the Freshies trapped and imprisoned in the lake, just like they wanted.

“Okay, then.” Gran pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack Ms. Wilma had given her and handed it to me as we headed out of the office. At the top it read:
New
admission: Serena Finora
. “Give this to your homeroom teacher and let her know Serena is a new student. She'll have all her classes with you. Here's her class schedule, some school policy information, and this one…”

“Wait, wait. Back up the truck for a sec,” I said, balancing the papers Gran had handed me. “New student? What's going on?”

“Come.” Gran guided Serena and me out of the office to where Cori, Trey, and Luke were waiting. Gran shuttled us to the bench just outside the school office door.

“The thing is,” Gran whispered, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, “Serena's father and your parents and I have come to a bit of an agreement.”

“You met Finalin?” I asked.

“Yes, such a charming fellow.” Gran smoothed her slacks and looked from Serena to me. “Serena had left your necklace on that hook in the boathouse like you'd shown her, so I got your dad to come out to the cottage over the weekend to get the Merlin 3000 ready.”

I'd given Serena my toe ring strung on a necklace and told her to hang it from a nail on the dock inside Gran's boathouse if she ever wanted to become human again.

“Your mom,” Gran continued, “I mean, Tanti Natasha, acted as interpreter.”

“Where the heck was I when all this was going on?” But then I remembered. I'd been at Cori's, enjoying our final long weekend of summer with Luke and Trey.

“It all happened rather fast,” Gran said in a low tone. “Basically, Serena's dad insists that she give being human a try again, though she wasn't thrilled by the prospect. Once I explained that she could go to school with you and your friends and be around people her own age, she seemed to warm up to the idea.”

“So that's it?” I asked. “Serena is a human now?”

“Well, we've got the school part figured out for now,” Gran stroked Serena's hair and smiled sweetly at her as if to reassure her that everything was as they'd agreed upon, “with the understanding that she can go home on weekends.”

“Is the Merlin 3000 able to handle that?” I whispered, remembering all the trouble Dad and Eddie had setting up the mer-to-human synthesizer, which made the transition from water-breathing mer to air-breathing human easier. We hadn't even been sure it would work on Luke the first time they had used it just a few weeks before.

“Your father is making a few extra adjustments and upgrades,” Gran said.

“But how are we supposed to do this, exactly?” I asked. “She can barely speak English. How is she supposed to understand anything that's going on?”

“I'm sure she'll catch on,” Cori said. “She already understands a lot of English.”

“But not just school,” I protested, thinking about how Serena had pretty much taken over every waking moment of my life for the short time she was human the last time. “What about—”

Gran touched my arm to stop me and turned to Trey and Cori.

“Why don't you two show Serena the bulletin board?” Gran asked them with a wink. Trey gave her a thumbs-up while Cori took Serena by the arm and led her to the bulletin board and out of earshot.

“I know this is not ideal,” Gran glanced around the bustling hallway, “but I'm counting on you and Luke and your friends to help make this as smooth a transition as possible. That father of hers—Finnegan, is it?”

“Finalin,” I said with a shudder, remembering the merman's pockmarked face and scraggly beard.

“Well, whatever his name is, the fella has quite a temper. He's already damaged a lot of the boats in the area, and he's threatened to start wreaking more havoc around the lake if we don't cooperate.”

“He's the one who cut our boat from its mooring!” Luke exclaimed. “And all that other stuff happening on the lake, I bet he's behind that, too.”

So, Finalin was sabotaging boats and holding it over our heads unless we cooperated? The guy was a menace.

“Yes, and given his past performance…” Gran's voice trailed off.

I thought back to the day last summer when Finalin and his wife, Medora, had pulled Mom underwater and we all thought she'd drowned.

“Do you think he would actually hurt anyone?”

“It's quite possible,” Gran said, making sure Serena wasn't listening. “All I know is that we'd better cooperate or else we might find out.”

“Don't worry, Mrs. Baxter,” Luke said. “We'll take care of Serena. Right, Jade?”

I glanced across the hallway. Cori took a scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around Serena's. Cori had been thrilled to have a life-sized model for her
Cori
Original
designs last time Serena was human. Serena hadn't minded. In fact, she seemed to enjoy being a human Barbie doll.

“I am going to have
so
much fun dressing you again,” I heard Cori exclaim.

“Well, I wouldn't want to deprive Cori of her human mannequin.” I turned to Luke. “You think we can do this?”

“We can totally do this.” He took my hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, dearie.” Gran patted Luke on the arm and kissed me on the cheek, then adjusted her handbag over her shoulder and headed for the school door just as the 9:00 a.m. starting bell rang. “Now be good and don't go getting yourselves into too much trouble.”

“We won't,” I called after her.

But given what had happened the last time me, Luke, Cori, Trey, and Serena had all been together, that “not getting into too much trouble” part seemed highly unlikely.