Real Mermaids 2 - Don't Hold Their Breath (18 page)

The good news was that we got Luke safely installed in the trailer without attracting the attention of the neighbors. The bad news, though? The computer still wasn't hooked up, so the Merlin 3000 was no better than the flooded rowboat in Gran's boat shed.

Eddie rode in the trailer with Luke to try to get the computer working while Cori, Trey, and I piled into the car with Dad.

“How long before it's working again?” I asked as we zoomed along the roads of Port Toulouse.

“Eddie needs to reload the data and recalibrate the settings, but Jade…” Dad rubbed a hand over his scruffy, unshaven face.

“But what?” I asked, holding my head. “Please don't give me any more bad news.”

“We just have to remember that the Merlin 3000 is an unproven prototypical experiment based on theoretical extrapolation,” Dad said.

“English, please?” I begged.

“It's just that it's never been tested in the field before,” Dad replied. “Even if we get it operational, there are no guarantees it will actually work.”

“Lalalalala.” I put my fingers in my ears and sang to block out his voice. I knew it was childish but I couldn't stand to listen to another word. The Merlin 3000
had
to work. Then life could finally get back to normal again.

Dad pulled onto our street at top speed and narrowly missed a long black sedan parked along the road.

“Whoa.” I braced my hand against the dashboard and hoped Luke hadn't splashed out of the Merlin 3000 in the back of the trailer. I looked back toward the official-looking car we'd almost rear-ended and couldn't help thinking it looked about as out of place as a penguin in a chicken coop. “Who are those guys?”

Dad looked in his rearview mirror and frowned. “They were parked there earlier this morning too.”

Trey and Cori glanced over their shoulders as well, then we all turned quickly when one of the guys in the car with horn rimmed glasses looked up from his newspaper.

“Do you think they're watching us?” A fist-sized lump grew in my throat. “Could they know something?”

Dad exhaled a noisy breath and checked his mirror again. “I'm not sure, but it's best if we keep cool.” He glanced at Trey and Cori. “Cori, would you mind heading home? The fewer people hanging around the better.”

“Sure,” Cori replied.

“And Trey, I see your parents are here, so act like you've been invited for a barbecue or something.” Mrs. Martin had been discharged from the hospital and their car was parked next to our driveway.

“No sweat,” Trey replied.

“Jade,” Dad backed up the trailer into our open garage, “you go inside and check on Mom.”

A familiar panic rose inside me. Mom and Luke were finally back on land, but I was starting to realize our lives as mers would never be anywhere close to normal.

Trey helped Dad unhitch the trailer while his parents joined them at the garage. They all stepped inside and shut the garage door.

I glanced up the street to the sedan and caught the driver with the mustache looking at me. “Text me when you get home?” I asked Cori.

“You're trembling,” she said, grasping my arm. “Are you going to be okay?”

I took a long, shaky breath and nodded to the garage. “Depends what's happening in there.”

“Don't worry, it'll all work out,” Cori said quietly. “Your dad is the smartest guy I know. Call me if there's news, okay?” She waved as she headed down the street.

I waved back and headed up the front steps to the house. Sure, Dad was a genius when it came to things like calculating the density of air, but I couldn't help worrying that the Merlin 3000 would be a replay of the bathroom faucet fiasco.

I swung open the front door to rush inside and check on Mom, but got a text from Bridget reminding me about my split shift at six (darn!) and tripped over a pair of orthopedic shoes with familiar
Bet
Your
Bottom
Dollar
laces, which sent me sprawling in the front hall.

It was true. Friends shouldn't let friends walk and text.

“Smoly Hokes! Jadie, honey, what's your hurry, sunshine?” Strong hands grasped me to help me up.

“Gran!” Gran was here. Mom was here. A mer-boy was floating in a hot tub in my garage. Gah!

“What are you doing here?” I blurted—maybe a bit too loudly and a touch too forcefully.

“Don't get your flip-flops in a twist. Can't an old lady drop in and visit her favorite granddaughter?” Gran answered. But there was a twinkle in her eye. “Plus, I had to swing by the bank in town to cash my check from the big bingo jackpot the other night.”

Gran reached into her handbag on the hall table and held out an envelope full of cash.

Gran
had
won. Big time! But what was I doing just standing here? Luke could be fighting for his life in the garage! And what about Mom? Where was she?

“What's the matter, Jadie girl? You look like someone just stole your Popsicle.”

Gran could read me like a poker hand, but I couldn't exactly tell her what had me so freaked out.

“I, uh, I'm just really in a hurry to get to work.” I found a hair elastic in a dish on the hall table and scraped my hair into what I hoped looked like a ponytail. “Plus, it doesn't help that I have to do my shift at the ice cream parlor with Chelse Becker. That girl doesn't know the difference between strawberry and chocolate sauce.”

“Isn't she the Beckers' daughter with the cottage up my way? I thought she spent her summers there.”

“She usually does, but she had to take a job to pay her parents back for a canoe they think she lost but—” I stopped before I revealed too much. But back to the task at hand: mer-Mom, mer-boy, mer-ME, Gran. I had to get Gran out of there.

“Don't worry. I know all about the canoe.” Gran looked at me with an understanding look on her face.

“You do?” I asked.

Just then, Mom stepped out from the kitchen holding a mug of steaming tea. Her hair was cropped short in a blond pixie cut.

“Yes, indeed.” Gran looked from Mom to me and smiled. “In fact, your
Tanti
Natasha
told me all about your little canoe trip across Talisman Lake.”

“Oh! Tanti Natasha.” I crossed the hall and put an arm around Mom, plastering a smile on my face. “So, you've met?”

“We most certainly have.” Mom kissed the top of my head.

Gran slapped her thigh and chuckle-snorted. “Oh, Jadie! You should see the look on your face.”

“So, you know all about how Tanti Natasha is from Tonganesia? And about her daughter Serena…” Oh, I'd have to revise my story now that Serena was out of the picture. “Who just went back to the old country to go to boarding school?”

Mom gave me a wide-eyed look.

I'll fill you in later,
I rang to her.

Gran played with the setting on her hearing aid, probably wondering if that's where she'd heard the ringing. “Yes, yes. I know all about Serena and about your boyfriend in the hot tub in the garage and those maniacs who pulled your mother underwater that awful day last summer.”

She knew. She knew everything.

“You're not freaked out, are you?”

“Jadie, honey.” Gran laughed. “I've been to Las Vegas seventeen times. It takes a lot more than a couple of mermaids to freak me out.”

“Gran even cut my hair.” Mom patted her new hairdo and flashed me a smile.

Cori's mom also stepped out from the kitchen. Mrs. Blake and Mom had been best friends since they met at a Stroller Striders walking club when Cori and I were in diapers. She held an empty box of hair dye.

“We had a bit of a spa day,” Mrs. Blake joked.

“Speaking of hair, Jadie”—Gran pointed to my lopsided, poker-sticky ponytail—“have you looked in a mirror lately?”

•••

I rushed upstairs to get brushed and changed, then headed to the garage to check on Luke before I had to get to work in seventeen minutes.

“How is he?” I hurried down the short flight of stairs into the garage from the rec room.

“We're getting him stabilized.” Dad had taken the soft top off the trailer, and he and Eddie were busy adjusting the settings on the Merlin 3000 while the Martins watched nearby.

Mrs. Martin sat in a lawn chair near the trailer looking pale and tired, mostly from her recent trip to the hospital, I imagined, but it probably didn't help that her son was in a state of mer-suspension at that moment. I handed her Luke's phone from my backpack upstairs.

“I hope you're feeling better?”

She smiled and patted my arm. “Yes, thank you.”

“How's everything going? Is it working?” I turned to Dad.

“The computer is back online and we're recalibrating the sensors.” He stepped down the trailer steps to let me in. Eddie sat at the counter, monitoring graphs and numbers on the three computer screens in front of him. He waved and returned to the conversation he was having via videoconference as he worked.

My vision adjusted to the low light from the lone bulb lighting the garage. Luke's eyes were still closed.

“But he's still unconscious?” I turned to Dad.

“Yeah.” Dad grimaced and rubbed his hand over his hair. “We're trying to figure that one out. His pulse is elevated, but otherwise he looks okay. Eddie's speaking with Bobby in Florida, and she says there's a comatose period for mers when they go through the change.”

Bobby was a
she
? I looked past Eddie's shoulder and sure enough, a woman about Eddie's age smiled back at him. Our eyes met and she waved.

“Luke told me his best time was two days.” I leaned heavily against the side of the Merlin 3000. “Is it going to take that long with this thing?”

“Well.” Dad squeezed by me to go check a graph on the computer screen. He adjusted one of the leads attached to a probe submerged underwater. “If my calculations are correct, it should actually speed things up, because normal tides work on a six-hour cycle and ours is optimized to two. We might have him back on two feet later today if all goes well.”

“And if it doesn't work?” I asked.

Dad looked over at the Martins and took a deep breath before answering.

“Luke's parents have decided to give it twenty-four hours, but if there is no measurable transformation, we'll have to transport him back to the ocean. Kind of a catch-and-release effort, if you will.”

“You can't do that!” I exclaimed. “You didn't see those Mermish Council guys. You've heard how protective they are of the Webbed Ones secret. Who knows what they'll do to him if they catch him again?”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Dad said quietly.

Gran had opened the door to the garage and was standing at the top of the stairs.

“Hey, Jadie, sweetie?” she called over. “Don't you need to get to Bridget's?”

“No.” I couldn't just leave Luke there. What if he woke up? Or worst of all, what if he didn't wake up? “I'll call Bridget and tell her I'm sick or something.”

“Jade—” Dad began.

“You're not seriously going to make me go to work with all that's happening, are you?” I asked in disbelief.

But by the look on Dad's face, I knew the answer. He pulled me into a hug. “There's really nothing else you can do here. We'll call you the second there's any kind of news. Deal?”

“Fine.” I stared down into the tub and hoped Dad and Eddie knew what they were doing. Otherwise, Luke may never become human again.

Gran jingled her eight ball key chain from her purse.

“Well, pitter-patter and I'll drive you over there. Besides, I'm stacked full of bills and have a real hankering for an ice-cold treat.”

Chelse got Gran's ice cream order ready while I went to the kitchen to get ready for my shift. I laughed out loud when I saw the piled up ice cream, smushed bananas, and pool of chocolate sludge.

Gran looked up at me with a bewildered expression from her seat at the counter.

“See what I mean?” I whispered. “But until I can come up with another seventeen weeks' worth of paychecks to pay for the rare aboriginal canoe I lost, she's here for the long haul.”

Gran ate a spoonful of ice cream and considered this for a moment.

“Chelse, honey? Can you come over here for a sec?” Gran called Chelse over from her perch on the stool by the cash register.

To her credit, Chelse put her phone away and walked over sweetly. “Anything else I can get you, Mrs. Baxter?”

“Oh, no thank you. You've done a tremendous job on this…” Gran looked at her dish.

“Banana split?” Chelse offered.

“Yes, yes,” Gran continued, “banana split. But there's something I've been meaning to tell you. You know that old canoe of yours?”

“Yes?” Chelse answered.

I stood behind Chelse and shook my head to keep Gran from blowing my cover. She continued anyway.

“Well, I feel really bad but one night—” Oh no! Gran was about to take the blame for the canoe. I couldn't let her do that. Or could I? Chelse wouldn't get mad at a sweet old grandmother, would she?
My
sweet old grandmother.

“I did it!” I blurted. Chelse and Gran both turned to look at me. I cringed, thinking of how I'd let Chelse work there all summer when I really should have confessed from the very beginning.

“Jade,” Gran began, but I held up my hand to stop her.

“One night,” I continued where Gran left off, trying to be as truthful as possible, “when Gran was out, I took your canoe for a ride, but it tipped over and I had to swim to shore. I'm really sorry, but it was dark and I lost your canoe.”

“And”—Gran looked at me with a knowing glance—“I'm partly to blame because Jade was staying with me and I'd left her unsupervised. So I want you to take this for your troubles.” She fished into her handbag and slid a familiar-looking envelope of money across the linoleum counter. Chelse picked it up and looked inside. Her eyes grew wide.

“Wow, I don't know what to say.”

“Just promise me,” Gran rested her hand on Chelse's and eyed her seriously, “that you'll give up any aspirations for a career in the dairy industry?”

“Thank you!” Chelse smiled widely and returned to the counter to get back to her texting.

“Gran!” I hushed. “You didn't need to do that. I would have paid her off eventually.”

“Oh, you're not getting off that easily. You still owe me for half so keep scooping, Jadie girl.” Gran winked and fastened her handbag, then stood up from her stool. “Now, gimme a kiss.”

She leaned over the counter and gave me a sweet peck on the cheek.

“Do you want to take that to go?” I pointed to her disaster of a banana split.

“Of course! No need to waste it.” Gran slid the takeout box I'd handed her underneath her dish and took a generous bite, waving her spoon in the air as she headed for the door.

•••

“Are you mad?” I asked Chelse once the traffic at the ice cream parlor window finally died down at about 7:30. She hadn't said a word to me since Gran left.

Chelse looked up from her phone. “Not exactly mad. More curious. Why didn't you say something when I first got here? We could have worked something out.”

“I guess I was kind of scared of what you'd think of me,” I said as I cleaned the counter with a damp cloth. I couldn't exactly tell her I'd stolen the canoe to rescue my mermaid mother, but I definitely owed her an apology. “I'm sorry. And really sorry you got stuck working with me all summer.”

Chelse picked up a dish towel to help me dry the counter. “It hasn't been all that bad. We got to hang out, plus I've learned a few new tricks of the trade.”

“Yeah, um, your banana split is really coming along,” I offered.

“I was thinking more of my dish towel ninja skills.” An evil grin crossed Chelse's face as she twirled her towel and snapped it toward me in a perfect Cori-inspired flick.

“Nice!” I dodged her shot and laughed. “I guess I deserved that.”

“Call it even, then?” Chelse tossed the towel over her shoulder.

“That depends,” I said. “Are you gonna keep flicking me with that thing?”

Chelse smiled mischievously as she continued her texting. “You just never know when the ninja dish towel will strike,” she joked.

“Okay, I guess I deserve that too.” I laughed “Thanks, Chelse.”

I checked my phone too. There was a text from Cori saying she'd made it home okay and one from Lainey Chamberlain wondering if I'd found the Environmental Assessment yet.

“Oh darn.” I muttered. I sent a text to Dad to see if he could grab it from the pocket of my jean shorts and bring it to me when he came to pick me up after my shift.

“Anything wrong?” Chelse asked.

“No, nothing serious,” I replied, though I could easily come up with about a dozen things that were actually wrong at that very moment. Then Lainey's text reminded me of something. “Hey, did you get the Facebook invitation to the big beach party?”

“Yeah.” Chelse smiled. “But I think I've had enough of Facebook for one summer.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she studied the screen of her phone. A familiar bracelet hung from her wrist. I looked down at my own wrist to the bracelet Serena had given me.

“Chelse,” I said slowly. “Where did you get that bracelet?”

Chelse looked down at her wrist and her lips grew into a sad smile. “Oh. A friend of mine made it for me when we were kids.”

I covered my bracelet with my hand, not knowing if I should show it to her. Then an idea grew in my head. Chelse had said a few weeks before that she wasn't the only one who could be hurt by the video on Facebook. I pulled out my phone and checked Facebook, remembering that Chelse had edited out the part where she'd fallen in the water in the version she'd made. Was there something in that part of the video she didn't want others to see?

After clicking through a few links, I finally found the original video her ex-boyfriend had posted and played the last few seconds. I followed Chelse's gaze to something she'd spotted in the water, impossible to see unless you were looking for it. But there it was; the unmistakable outline of a shimmering mermaid's tail.

“Her name is Serena,” I murmured, looking up.

“Huh?” Chelse asked.

I placed my phone on the counter. “Your friend. The one who's trying to save you from drowning in the video. The one who gave you that bracelet. Like the one she gave me. Her name is Serena.”

I held up my wrist to show her my bracelet made from Serena's hair.

Chelse's hand was over her mouth and her eyes glassed over with tears. “How—I haven't seen her all summer. I looked for her everywhere and then my mom and dad made me work here and I was afraid—”

That's why Serena disappeared toward the Becker's cottage when we got to Gran's. She was looking for Chelse too.

“She's okay. And she's back,” I said.

“I've known her since we were kids,” Chelse said between tears. “Every summer she'd come. I kept her secret.”

I stared down at my bracelet, then looked around to make sure no one was around.

“I have an idea,” I said quietly. “I think you should take that envelope of cash my grandma gave you and pay your parents back, then enjoy the rest of your summer up at your cottage. Leave the ice cream scooping to Cori and me.”

“But what about my shifts?”

Bridget emerged from the kitchen just then, catching the tail end of our conversation.

“I think that's a great idea!” Bridget had done her share of covering for Chelse's scooping deficiencies. She actually looked a bit relieved. “There are only a few more weeks left in the summer. I think with a bit of juggling, Cori, Jade, and I can cover the ice cream parlor.”

“Thanks, Bridget!” Chelse hugged her.

“Not a problem, hon.” Bridget crossed the diner and turned off the neon open sign. “In fact, you ladies can start cleaning up because we're closing up early.”

“Really? Why?” I asked.

“Got that big catering gig from Chamberlain Construction. I've got enough people to man the barbecue grills for the beach party, but I'll need your help getting the buns and burgers down there. After that, consider yourselves off-duty.”

Just then, I got a text from Dad.

@geeksrule: all is well but nothing new to report. lainey (?) called. found the paper, told her I would bring it to you at beach party. xo dad

I guess I was going to the beach party after all. Given the way things seemed to be working out, maybe it would be a good distraction. Plus, I owed it to the Butterfly vs. Boutiques people to at least show up, after they'd been so awesome at the rally.

I clicked back to the Facebook invitation and pressed
accept
.