Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings (2 page)

I wondered how long human beings could hold their
breath before passing out since I was sure I was bordering on three minutes already. I could imagine the Swimwear person coming over. They’d see the stain for sure. They might even bust me for the chaos I’d left in the dressing room. Security would escort me out to the parking lot and alert the media. I could imagine the headlines:

Freak-of-Nature, Jade Baxter, gets First Period Four Weeks from Fourteen.

Ruins stock at local Hyde’s Department Store.

Full story at six.

“It’s a tankini,” Swimwear said when the lady finally arrived.

I must have sighed a bit too enthusiastically because Gladys gave me a bitter look. “It goes on our shift report if we punch it in wrong.”

I dropped my gaze and fumbled in my bag for my wallet.

Gladys rang up the bathing suit and my whole body relaxed when she finally placed it in the bag. I paid, mumbled a thank you and stuffed the receipt in my wallet.

Finally! Free at last!

I slammed into a row of shopping carts as I rushed for the exit to the mall.

“Hey, not so fast!” Gladys yelled.

Pain shot through my hip as I turned to face her. Had she seen the stain? Did it finally occur to her what it was?

“Yes?” I whimpered.

Gladys looked at me over her jeweled half-glasses. She waved the hanger in the air. “I thought you said you wanted this.”

“Oh, sorry! Thanks!” I doubled back to grab the hanger then charged for the exit to make my getaway.

T
HE BATHROOM WAS A
bust.

I had to wait for the cleaning lady to clear out and then my quarter got stuck in the maxi-pad machine, so I was left with no choice but to make the trek to Dooley’s Drugstore a little farther down the mall.

Did I even know what to get once I got there?

I rushed past the food court, hoping Cori and Lainey didn’t see me and tried not to waddle as I approached Dooley’s, but the Super Sonic Slurpee napkin situation was making things a bit tricky. My heart rate ramped up to a whirr as I pushed through the drugstore’s turnstile to enter. I blinked back the glare from the stark, fluorescent lights. A cold sweat rose from every pore of my skin, covering me in a damp slick.

Nerves. Just nerves.

I tried to channel one of Dr. Becker’s visualization techniques. She had a cottage close to Gran’s and I’d gone to see her for counseling after Mom drowned.

Breathe in, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. Go to your happy place.

Except my “happy place” was just about anywhere but there at that precise moment.

Priority number one: just get what I needed and hightail it back to the washroom. I scanned the aisle markers and tried not to gag as I brushed past the perfume counter.

Hair and Hair Products

First Aid

Pain and Cold Remedies

Then, hung over aisle six, in print that seemed to be twice the size of everything else, there it was.

Feminine Hygiene Products

“Ouch!”

A leftover Mother’s Day display jabbed into my other hip, balancing out my shopping cart injury. At this rate, I’d need a walker before I even made it through puberty. A few greeting cards fluttered to the floor.

On this Mother’s Day

The Meaning of Mommy

Yo, Momma!

I hurried to stash the cards back onto the display and tried to stay focused. Especially since my Slurpee napkin wedgie was beginning to slip.

I made it to aisle six, avoiding any more injuries, and walked partway down the row, glancing around to make sure Cori hadn’t decided to restock on cherry blast lip gloss. A mother struggled by with a rubber band of a toddler, forcing me to plaster my body against the opposite shelf to let them through.

What I wouldn’t give to have Mom there. But Mom was gone. Plus, Dad was probably sitting on a bench in the middle of the mall, Googling random facts on his Blackberry, and Cori was totally in the dark about what was going on thanks to the Lie.

I was on my own with this one.

Once the coast was clear, I turned to face the dizzying display of flower and butterfly packaging in varying shades of pinks, purples, and whites. This was nothing like the panty liner commercials with the girl in the flowing dress, prancing through fields of daisies. How was I supposed to choose from the millions upon millions of choices spread over a ten-acre radius of super absorbency?

White plastic tags hung from the shelves.

Super Maxi $6.25

Easy Glide $4.49

Sheerlights $7.99

Gah! Money!

I tucked my Hyde’s Department Store bag under my arm and rifled through my purse for funds. Half eaten cookie, a dead Tic Tac, the can of pepper spray Dad insisted I carry when I walked home by myself that week when Cori had the measles.

“Aim for the eyes and look away,” Dad had coached. I couldn’t imagine any shady characters in Port Toulouse I’d ever have to pepper spray, but whatever.

I frowned at the pathetic amount of money I had left. Just as I’d expected.

The tankini had set me back quite a bit, so all I had left was a grand total of four bucks (I fished in my pocket) and twenty-seven cents.

What was I supposed to do now?

“Jade! How’d you make out?”

I jumped so high, I’m sure I caught air. Another headline flashed through my mind:

Caught on Pharmacy Surveillance Tape:

Plus-sized teenaged girl jumps three feet, clean out of her skin.

More at 11.

“Dad! What are you doing here?” I clutched the money to my chest. How did he know where to find me? Was I emanating some kind of first period hormone? I watched the Nature Channel—these things could happen.

Dad smiled. “I needed shaving cream and spotted you on my way to the checkout.”

“Oh.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Wha…?” I blinked.

Dad’s gaze shifted to the Hyde’s bag, now in a heap beside me on the floor. “Looks like a successful shopping trip.”

The bathing suit. Of course.

“Oh, yeah!” I held up the bag and shifted uncomfortably as the Slurpee napkins nagged at my girly bits. “Success!”

“So, are you ready to go? Where’s Cori?” Dad looked past me.

“Uh, she met up with a friend at the food court. I just
had to make a little pit stop.” Then I stopped myself. “To find you, that is. How
are
you, anyway?” I wrapped my arm around Dad’s shoulder and tried to steer him down the aisle.

“So you thought you’d look for me in the…” Dad twisted his head around to get a look at where we were. “…tampon aisle?”

I stopped. What was I doing? I couldn’t leave the store without buying something to replace the wad of napkins in my underwear, and since I was short on cash, I had no choice but to cave.

“Um, Dad?” The words got stuck in the back of my throat like a gob of sticky peanut butter.

“Yes?”

“Well,” I stammered. “See, it’s like this.” How was I gonna approach this? I decided to get straight to the point and admit to another, um, misrepresentation of the truth. “Yeah, remember a couple of months ago when you were on the phone with work and I asked you for ten bucks to go to the drug store?”

Accessing. Accessing. I could see the data being analyzed behind his eyes like the little egg timer doodad on the computer when it’s loading files.

“Oh!”

Bingo.

“You mean for…” He glanced around the aisle.

Well that’s what he’d
assumed
anyway. I know. It looked bad. First Cori, now this. But, to my credit, I didn’t exactly
lie
to him, though it was time to set things straight.

“Yeah, only, I didn’t actually have my period then.”

“You didn’t?” Dad’s face contorted in confusion. Why he hadn’t noticed that the girly stuff never made it to the bathroom closet was beyond me, but I cut him some slack on that one.

“Not until today, that is.” I raised an eyebrow in a hopeless arc.

Dad seemed to be calculating the density of air as he sorted this out in his mind. Then finally, his face came to attention.

“Ah, so you mean?” He scanned the shelves. Then his eyes came back to meet mine. “And you?”

I nodded.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me for a long moment. His mouth softened into a smile. “Don’t worry,” he gave me a quick wink, “I’ll get a basket.”

I sighed, relieved to have another person on the planet who understood what I was going through.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Maybe Mom wasn’t there, but it was all going to be okay.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that I could always count on Dad.

When Dad said “basket,” I pictured one of those handheld, plastic jobbies with the metal handles. But when he rounded the corner of aisle six with a full-sized shopping cart, I seriously considered running and screaming for the food court and confessing everything to Cori.

She’d forgive me for lying, wouldn’t she? She’d come tell me what I needed to buy.

Anything but this.

Dad studied the screen of his Blackberry and pushed the cart toward me with his free hand. “Medzine Online says that the typical volume of blood loss per menstrual period ranges from 10 to 35 milliliters.”

“Are you
Googling
this?”

“Menorrhagia could see flows in excess of 80 milliliters.” Dad tapped his index finger to his lips and scanned the shelves.

“Men-a-what?” Could this be any more humiliating?

But Dad didn’t hear me. He was too busy price checking and comparison shopping. My overflowing pool of confidence in Dad was quickly being drained.

“Let’s just grab something and go.” I reached for a package of extra-long something-or-others and was about to throw them in the basket, I mean, cart.

“Just a sec.” Dad held up a hand, his gaze never leaving the screen of his BlackBerry. “Better get two of those.” Then he picked up a blue and yellow box from the shelf. “What are these Easy Glide things?”

“Read…the…package,” I said between clenched teeth. The Slurpee napkins were now working themselves around the edge of my underwear and threatened to slip down my right pant leg. I was in no mood to negotiate with the Tampon Terrorist.

“Oh! Jade.” Dad looked up from his BlackBerry and
eyed me seriously. “Are you experiencing cramping, loose bowel movements, and acne? Maybe we should get something for that too.”

“Dad!”

“What?” Dad asked, dropping his hand to his side.

“I’ll see you at the check-out,” I muttered.

I turned to go, leaving Dad to his research. Maybe I could just swipe another wad of Slurpee napkins and call it a day. Or better yet, those nice, big Paco’s Tacos ones might provide better coverage. All this was running through my mind as I stormed away, skirted by claims of super absorbency and dry weave. At the end of the aisle though, I ran into something tall, dark and…

“Luke!”

My Hyde’s bag fell to the floor as we collided. Luke’s bag fell too. I bent to pick mine up, only to bonk heads with him as he tried to do the same.

“Oh! Sorry.” An uncontrollable chuckle escaped from my throat. Yeah, real smooth, Jade. Injure the poor guy, then laugh at him. It was like spin-the-bottle all over again.

Luke straightened, rubbed his head, and smiled, no doubt stunned by the blow. He handed me my bag.

“Um…Jayden, right?” He turned his head a bit to the side and squinted.

So, he
did
remember me. Well, kind of. At least it was better than the “Scissor Lips” nickname he’d given me in fifth grade.

“Yes. Well. It’s Jade, actually.” I took my bag from him
and nodded slowly, trying not to be too obvious while I checked him out. Okay, so maybe I was still a
bit
bitter, but I wasn’t
blind
. Actually, it was the first time I’d been close enough to see the silvery scar my braces had inflicted above his right eyebrow. If I hadn’t known better, the scar might have been considered rugged and mysterious.

And his sun-bleached curls
did
fall over his eyes in a pretty adorable way. Plus, Cori was right—killer tan.

But evil
, I had to remind myself.

“Oh, right—Jade.” Luke nodded. “Sorry about that.”

Was Luke Martin actually apologizing? To me?

“That’s okay. I get that a lot.”

I did
NOT
get that a lot. Why was I making excuses for the guy? And why did I keep nodding and staring, with a ridiculous smile plastered across my face?

“You just look different without your braces,” Luke said.

Aha! That braces comment was a dig. Definitely a dig. Well, whatever. I figured that would be it anyway. Pleasantly plump girl bumps into a cute (but evil) boy. A few polite words are exchanged. Girl and boy from parallel universes part ways, never to speak again. Isn’t that how things should go?

But Luke just kept standing there, looking at me with the strangest expression. Did Luke actually want to keep talking to me?

“Um, Jade?”

“Yes?” I asked, expectantly.

He nodded to the bag I was holding in my other hand.
I looked down and wished I had a moron stick to beat myself senseless with, since all the time I was grinning like the village idiot, I’d had a death grip on his Dooley’s Drugs bag.

“Oh!” I said, handing it to him. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Luke said with a grin.

“That. Bag. Yours.” I pointed dumbly.

Sheesh. Such a firm grasp on the English language. But that only made Luke smile wider. Was he mocking me? Sure he was cute, but how did I know he wouldn’t turn this into an opportunity to nail me with another nickname that would follow me through my high school years?

Okay. I had to salvage this conversation. There was no way I was leaving without at least one coherent sentence.

“Um, so you’ve been away, right?” I asked, real smooth-like. “Cruise boating or something? I mean sail shipping?”

Sail shipping? Ugh.
Much
better. Where was the moron stick when you really needed it?

“You mean sailing?” Luke was laughing now. “Yeah, we took a few months off to ‘enrich our bonds as a family.’” He faked a serious tone but his eyes crinkled in the corners.

It was my turn to laugh.

“Oh, sorry.” I stifled a snort. “Did your parents actually use that on you?”

“Yep. It was actually pretty cool though. It feels a bit weird to be back.” Luke’s expression seemed to change and I thought he might turn and leave any second.

“So, are you back in school now?” I asked, filling in
the dead air. Despite the shaky state of my underwear, I wanted to leave on a high note. Plus, there was just something…different about Luke since the last time I saw him.

“We’re back for final exams,” Luke said. “Mom home-schooled us while we were away, but she wanted to make sure she did a good job, I guess.” He smiled. His perfect, straight, white teeth shone against his tanned skin.

“Teeth,” I said vaguely. “I mean neat!” I waved my hand in the air to swat the word away.

Luke looked at me with an amused expression. He bunched up his bag in his hand and nodded his head.

“Well, see you around?”

Huh. That was nice. Not “Later, loser” or “Thanks for scarring me for life.”

“Yeah, sure, Luke. See you around.”

That was perfect. I’d finally managed to talk to Luke Martin without feeling like a complete idiot.

Luke was about to turn to go when we heard a commotion from down the aisle. We both looked up to see that Dad had managed to stock the shopping cart with every imaginable feminine hygiene product known to man. Um. Woman.