Zip (18 page)

“Are you coming?”

Lyssa peeked out of the bathroom in time to see Circe pull open the motel door and head to the parking lot. She nearly tripped over her own feet scurrying after her, stepping outside just as Circe unlatched the flatbed of her truck. Pigs tumbled down clumsily from the flatbed, stiff from their long time in confinement. One of them rolled up next to Lyssa’s feet, grunting and kicking its tiny legs

“Where are we going?” Lyssa asked, kneeling down to help the pig up

“Swimming pool. Out back, behind the motel,” Circe said. She clucked her tongue and the pigs all trotted up behind her, tumbling into line like fat, pink soldiers. Lyssa had to race after Circe as she led all thirteen pigs to a sidewalk that curved around the side of the motel

At the back of the motel was a huge swimming pool, encircled by a chain-link fence. Unlike the dirty hotel room, the pool was sparkling and clean. Circe pushed open the gate and followed her trotting pigs onto the pool deck

“Bombs away,” Circe shouted, running up to the side of the pool and jumping in fully clothed. The pigs squealed and leapt into the pool after Circe, their curly pink tails wiggling as they plopped into the water. Lyssa, who had followed the pigs to the edge of the pool, had to leap backward to keep from getting splashed. Lyssa shivered, tucking
her arms up into her muumuu. Sure, it was August, but it was late in the afternoon and couldn’t be more than seventy degrees outside—which, to her, felt freezing. Circe and her pigs might be okay with bathing in a freezing swimming pool, but Lyssa wanted to take a bath someplace
warm
.

Something gurgled behind her. She turned. There, on the other side of the pool, was a hot tub. The water was golden and bubbly—like the homemade apple cider Lyssa’s mom used to make on their stove every fall. Lyssa closed her eyes and could practically smell cinnamon in the air. The hot tub was calling to her. It was a perfect place to take a bath.

Lyssa pulled her muddy clothes out of her backpack and headed for the hot tub. She could kill two birds with one stone—wash her clothes and get clean herself. She dipped one toe in and let out a sigh of happiness. The water felt amazing. It was hotter than a Texas lake in August, and the bubbles made Lyssa’s toes tingle. All her worries dissolved like the brown sugar in her mom’s apple cider. Lyssa dumped her tomato-stained clothes into the water and splashed in after them

She waded right into the center of the hot tub and closed her eyes. Her muumuu ballooned around her and bubbles popped on the surface of the water, spraying her cheeks and nose with apple-scented suds. Lyssa spun around, letting all of her doubts and worries spin away

Then she heard a loud noise: like a car revving its engine or a jet taking off. She opened her eyes and stopped spinning, planting her feet firmly on the bottom of the hot tub. The sound, she realized, was coming from just
underneath
her.

All at once, the water became frothy and wild. What was happening?

Bubbles formed faster and faster, the water churning like a milk shake in a blender. Lyssa’s feet were swept out from underneath her. She went under and came up coughing. She was twirling around and around in the water, unable to stop, unable to reach the stairs. This wasn’t like her mother’s magic. This was something dark and frightening, and Lyssa didn’t understand it at all.

Now the hot tub seemed as big as a lake, and Lyssa was a tiny toy boat circling the drain. The water was like a living thing. It shot up her nose and tangled her hair and tugged on her legs and feet, dragging her under. She thrust her hands into the bubbles, grabbing for the first solid thing she could reach. Her fingers enclosed something round and slippery, but when Lyssa tried to pull on it, it oinked

Lyssa blinked the water from her eyes. She was holding on to one of Circe’s pigs. The pig kicked her leg away and disappeared back into the bubbles, just as another pig doggie-paddled past her and a third bobbed in the water ahead

Despite Lyssa’s panic, she had time to think the clearest, simplest, stupidest thing:
How did they all get here?

“The hot tub calls to them,” said a melodic, musical voice behind her. Lyssa yelped just as she once again went under and came up spluttering. There was someone in the hot tub with her. She flailed her arms around in the water, hauling herself back up to the surface

It was the mermaid from the Siren Choir—the one she had been so convinced was Athena! Or, at least Lyssa
thought
it was the same mermaid…

This woman was just as tall, and even sitting on the bottom of the hot tub, her head and shoulders were still well above the water. She wore a polka-dotted swimsuit instead of her mermaid costume and beads of water clung to her beehive hairdo. A pair of rhinestone-encrusted glasses was balanced on her nose

As Lyssa, still dog-paddling, stared at her, she seemed to fade, slightly, until Lyssa could see the blue sky through her golden skin. But the next second the mermaid snapped back into place—looking just as solid as she had before. Lyssa rubbed her eyes. She must be hallucinating. Was the heat from the hot tub making her imagine things?

Or maybe she’d messed up in some way…maybe her mother’s magic was going haywire because Lyssa wasn’t where she was supposed to be…

“What—?” Lyssa started to ask, but just then the water swirled her around until she wasn’t facing the mermaid anymore.

The mermaid began singing behind her until her voice rose high into the air. Lyssa wondered if the song was a hallucination too. She was so dizzy…

The mermaid was no longer singing words, exactly, just stretching one note out as far as it could go until it rumbled with a sound like thunder

Under again, and then up, gasping, and still the note hovered in the air, beautiful and inhuman. Through her panic, Lyssa thought about how Melodius’s music had turned into thunder in her recurring dream. She craned her head toward the sky. The clouds were purple and black, and they swirled together violently. Lightning crashed down from the clouds and thunder rumbled just beneath it

Desperately, Lyssa pushed through the water and grabbed for the handrail leading out of the tub, but her hand slipped and she fell back into the waves

“Help!” she shouted, hoping the mermaid would try to save her. The pigs were still swimming in the water around her. It looked like they were performing some kind of choreographed water dance. They swam in a circle, then ducked into the water at the exact same moment, kicking their legs into the air playfully

“Lyssa!” she heard someone shout

“Circe!” Lyssa splashed around in the water, trying to stay afloat long enough to find her friend. The powerful jets sucked at her toes—trying to pull her under. She kept dipping below the surface of the water. Lyssa kicked and kicked, but she couldn’t keep her face above the waves. “Circe! Help me!”

She was under again. She opened her eyes and all she saw were bubbles. She couldn’t even tell which direction was up

Then Lyssa felt strong hands wrapping around her arms as someone lifted her out of the water and set her on the edge of the hot tub. Lyssa sucked in a breath of fresh air and everything around her became still. The jets buzzed off and the bubbles disappeared

Lyssa spit out a thin stream of water. She looked around for the mermaid, or whoever it was who had saved her from the dangerous waves, but the woman was gone. Sitting on the side of the tub was a bright blue cowboy boot, a Crock-Pot, and a pom-pom that looked exactly like the one that had gone missing from Lyssa’s scooter

Still a little dazed, Lyssa reached out and grabbed the pom-pom

“What happened?” Circe demanded, running toward Lyssa as she struggled to her feet. “I leave for a minute to
take the pigs back to the hotel room to get dry and you almost drown! Don’t you know how to swim?”

Lyssa rubbed her eyes with her palm. Hadn’t Circe seen the crazy bubbles and the jets and the mermaid? Could Lyssa have imagined the whole thing? Was she so tired that she dreamed up a storm? Had the mermaid been there at all?

“How’d you get the hot tub to stop?” Lyssa asked. Circe pointed to a bright red button on the side of the hot tub. A sign above it read
Press in Case of Emergency
.

“Oh,” Lyssa muttered, feeling stupid. “Thanks.” Circe gave her a strange look and headed back for the stairs

Lyssa glanced around for her clothes. She knew that she’d thrown them into the water before she got in herself, but they weren’t floating on the surface of the hot tub. She was trying to wring out a corner of her wet and cold muumuu, wishing that she had anything else to wear, when she saw her clothes sitting next to the hot tub, clean, dry, and neatly folded

Lyssa opened her mouth to thank Circe for folding her clothes, but the words died on her lips

Sitting on top of her clean, dry pair of jeans was the little blue paper airplane. It was crumpled, ripped, and a little water stained, but the message was still clearly displayed on its wing:

There’s no place like home.

A
fter the adventure in the hot tub, the rest of Lyssa and Circe’s night at the motel felt like a big slumber party. They watched bad science-fiction movies on television and acted them out, using Circe’s costumes to make everything more realistic. Circe showed Lyssa how to make a huge blanket fort using stacked peach crates, pulling the sheets and pillowcases off the beds and stringing them up like a tent. They huddled inside the fort and told each other secrets. Lyssa told Circe that she hated wearing socks that matched, that sunflowers were her favorite flower, and that she was terrible at any sport that didn’t involve a scooter. She even told Circe about her mom—how everything she did felt
like magic, and how Lyssa still believed her mom was in Austin, waiting for her. Circe wasn’t as good at telling secrets as Lyssa was, but she did admit that it sometimes got lonely on the farm with only the pigs to keep her company.

But, after Circe fell asleep, Lyssa’s mind kept spinning at a frantic pace, as though she was still being whipped around by the hot tub. The water had seemed almost
alive
. And the mermaid had been there—then gone, just like that. Lyssa felt a gnawing fear in her stomach. She didn’t understand it at all. When her mother had talked about the winds of change, they had always sounded like a
good
thing. Exciting and adventurous, sure. But good. The same with her mother’s magic. What she felt in the hot tub had been different—scary—and Lyssa couldn’t shake the feeling that she had done something wrong.

Finally, Lyssa fell asleep inside the fort, curled up with Circe’s pigs, still wearing a fake mustache and huge plastic glasses. The pigs were warm and soft, like wriggly little pillows

But when Lyssa woke up the next morning, Circe wasn’t there. Lyssa sat up and stretched, rubbing sticky gunk from her eyes. A nervous feeling fluttered in her gut. Had Circe left without her? Circe’s bag of costume supplies was gone, except for a tube of denture glue that had rolled under the bed, forgotten

Lyssa crawled out of the fort. Her backpack was wedged beneath a snoring pig’s bottom, and another pig was using her sneaker as a pillow. Lyssa sighed in relief. If the pigs were still here, then Circe would be back

She dropped down to her knees and wrestled her things away from the pigs, who kicked and snorted in their sleep. Just as she was tying the laces on her sneaker, there was a sharp honk from outside. Lyssa jumped up and pulled the curtain aside

Circe sat behind the wheel of her beat-up truck, wearing her wig and Lyssa’s cowboy hat. She leaned out the window and waved

“Got the part! Listen to this.” Circe revved the engine and the truck growled smoothly. Smoke didn’t pour out from under the hood, and nothing sputtered or spit.

“Sounds great,” Lyssa shouted out the window. She felt a pang of guilt when she thought about how much it must’ve cost to get that truck fixed. Circe had been so stressed about money the day before. Lyssa only had $8 left, but maybe she should at least offer to pay for breakfast. She was getting a little tired of peaches and tomatoes

She quickly rebraided her hair, anxious to get on the road again. They only had one more day left to get back to Austin. One day! They couldn’t waste another second

While Lyssa packed up her backpack and put Zip into the truck, Circe tried to round up the pigs. Lyssa finally managed to gather them by luring them into the motel pillowcases with peaches. Carrying pigs in a pillowcase was like carrying a very wiggly sack of potatoes

“It’s going to be a good day,” Circe called as Lyssa climbed into the truck. “I can feel it.”

Circe’s good mood was infectious—but, strangely, it didn’t last for long. As they drove away from the town of Bliss, Circe got quieter and quieter. She seemed oddly distracted—even nervous

“Do you know what happens to runaways when they’re caught?” Circe asked Lyssa out of nowhere, after they’d left Bliss and Motel Charybdis far behind

“I think it’s best not to get caught,” Lyssa said carefully. Circe was quiet for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. Lyssa wondered whether she was thinking of the man from the IRS. She guessed that Circe was technically a runaway now, too

“But let’s say you—I mean, a runaway—
were
caught. What would happen then? Probably nothing that bad, right?”

Lyssa just shrugged. Circe might not be in trouble if she went home, but Lyssa knew
she
would be. She thought of Michael and a little pang tugged at her heart. Maybe she
wouldn’t be in as much trouble as she thought she would. Maybe Michael would just be relieved to have her back.

Or maybe not

After sitting in silence next to Circe for five whole minutes, Lyssa pulled out her journal and tried to write a letter to Penn. She wanted to tell her about the crazy motel whirlpool and the Siren Choir burlesque and the mermaids, but, no matter how many times she rewrote the stories, they always sounded strange and unlikely—almost as though they were something Lyssa had made up. She decided to turn the radio on instead and started looking for a station. An Athena song came on and Lyssa’s heart leapt. She turned the volume all the way up.