To Catch a Mermaid (12 page)

I
t was dinnertime, Saturday night. Just a day had passed since Boom had brought the merbaby home. Forget about the saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day. So much can happen in twenty-four hours. Reality itself can change.

Boom sat at the kitchen table, slurping a spoonful of chowder. The concoction contained more fish tails than usual, and something that looked like an eyeball floated at the surface. Despite the questionable ingredients, Boom ate because he felt famished. So much to do, so much to manage and worry about. He was burning calories like a racehorse. It was one thing to hide a sea creature in a bedroom, but it was another thing entirely to hide a banana tree that was sticking out through a roof. How would he explain
that
to Halvor? He had tried to sweep out all the sand but had managed only to track it down the stairs. And to make matters worse, the seagull that had pecked at his sock was making a nest on top of the refrigerator with bits of toilet paper and string. Boom took another slurp, hoping to energize his brain cells.
Think, think.

But when the dinner hour had passed, Halvor had still not yet returned from his errands. Mertyle wandered -downstairs with the baby bundled like a papoose in a pink blanket. She dipped a ladle into Halvor’s chowder and fed the fish eyeballs to the merbaby, who gobbled them up like they were scrumptious bits of floating marshmallow. So greedily did she eat that she gagged on one of the gelatinous orbs. Boom was afraid he might have to perform the Heimlich maneuver, but the baby managed to hack the eyeball free. It flew out of the tongueless mouth and landed in Boom’s bowl.

“It did that on purpose,” Boom accused, quick to notice the sly green smile.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mertyle defended. “She was choking.”

“Maybe. But in this entire kitchen, don’t you think it’s weird that the one place the coughed-up eyeball landed was in
my
bowl? That thing hates me.”

“She’s not a thing. She’s a baby.” Mertyle patted the blanket. “Poor little merbaby.” She took a napkin and wiped the green mouth.

Boom couldn’t tell whether he felt angry that he was being left out, or jealous that he was being left out. What did Mertyle have that he didn’t have? Besides the fact that she was female, like the baby. If that was the reason the baby didn’t like him, then that was a matter of discrimination, which, Boom was pretty sure, was against the law.

Someone started to pound on the kitchen door. “You’d better take it back upstairs,” Boom advised as the pounding grew in intensity.

Mertyle clutched the baby. “Whoever it is, I wish they’d just go away,” she said, hurrying upstairs. There it was again — the “I wish.” If only she’d follow those two words with something magnificent.

Boom opened the door to find Mr. Mump waving a piece of white paper with red underline marks all over it. “I demand to speak to your father about neighborhood rules.” His forehead glistened with sweat. He huffed and puffed and shoved the document in Boom’s face. “Rules, I say.”

Mr. Piles, another neighbor, stood behind Mr. Mump and began to complain that he couldn’t back his car out of his driveway because the wheels kept slipping on banana peels. And Mrs. Filburt, another neighbor, complained that the hot pink house paint was giving her a migraine. They were so enraged that they actually started yelling at Boom and shaking their fists. He didn’t know whether to apologize or to hide behind the door. But he did neither because the merbaby started to sing again.

The sad song crawled down the stairs like a creature from a nightmare and enveloped the angry neighbors. They stopped yelling as the song twisted itself around their limbs and slithered into their clothing. Mr. Mump shivered. Mrs. Filburt’s eyes filled with tears. Mr. Piles’s face went as slack as an empty balloon and he turned as white as vanilla ice cream. The merbaby hit a particularly low note, like a foghorn, that vibrated every bone in Boom’s body.

The only thing to do when attacked by pure, undiluted sadness is to get as far away from it as possible. That’s why the neighbors turned and ran down the walkway. As soon as they reached Prosperity Street, the singing stopped. When it came to chasing people away, that song worked better than a vicious Doberman.

I wish they’d just go away.

Another wish granted. Another
Mertyle
wish.

Winger pushed past Mr. Piles and charged up the walkway. “Boom? What happened to your house?” he asked, his words muffled by a mouth full of banana. “You can see the pink glow all the way to my house.” Once inside, Boom shut the door and got real close to Winger, like he always did when something really important needed to be said.

“It’s still granting Mertyle’s weird wishes,” he informed his best friend.

“That stinks.” Winger sat down at the table and offered the rest of his banana to Boom, but Boom wasn’t hungry anymore. “If it’s not going to grant your wishes, then you should go ahead and sell it to a collector. I asked my dad —”

“You what? You told your dad?” Winger’s dad knew everyone on Fairweather Island because he ran the island’s only bank. Word about the merbaby would spread like measles.

“I didn’t tell my dad.” Winger looked hurt, as though Boom had punched him in the stomach. “I wouldn’t do that. I just asked him what was the best way to sell something that’s worth a lot of money.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“He said that by using the Internet a seller could set up an auction and people all over the world would bid.”

Boom had been to an auction once, when one of Mr. Broom’s paintings — a seascape with a two-masted sailing ship — had been for sale. Boom remembered the frenzy as people raised their hands and waved little signs when the auctioneer asked for bids. His dad had made twice as much money as he had expected, and they had all gone out to the Fairweather Bistro to celebrate. There had been fancy drinks with paper umbrellas and an ice cream dessert that the waiter actually lit on fire.

“Maybe I shouldn’t sell it. What if it keeps granting wishes?” Boom asked. “Maybe it will start granting some good wishes.”

“Maybe, but its not granting
your
wishes, is it?”

No, it wasn’t, the ungrateful little monster. It wasn’t even being nice to Boom. Spitting in his chowder. Growling at and biting him. Was there a new pair of Galactic Kickers on Boom’s feet? No, not even an old pair. Was he asking for the world on a silver platter? No, just a pair of shoes. Boom had saved the merbaby’s life, for goodness’ sake!

“What’s that?” Boom pointed to a piece of paper jutting out of Winger’s pocket.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, unfolding the paper. “I went to the print shop, just like Mertyle asked. I gave them that scale and they enlarged it. Look, there really is a drawing on the scale, and here it is.”

It was a drawing all right, but Boom had no idea what it was a drawing of. A line ran across the page with a shape above that looked like a witch’s hat and a shape below that looked like an upside-down witch’s hat. But the hat on top was white surrounded by black and the one on the bottom was black surrounded by white. A string of strange shapes lined the bottom edge — like hieroglyphics. The only thing he recognized was a little shape at the top of the drawing. “It’s a half-moon.”

Winger nodded. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Where’s Mertyle? I’ve got to show her.”

“She’s upstairs.” Boom held the paper closer. Mertyle had been right. She had actually seen something through the magnifying glass that wasn’t her crazy imagination. But what was something like that doing on a merbaby’s scale?

The bedroom was dark except for the glow of the television. One of Mertyle’s game shows was playing, the one where if you kept answering correctly you would win a million dollars. Mertyle was smart enough to go on one of those shows, but she never would because she’d have to go beyond the dirt circle.

Mertyle lay in her bed, hidden beneath her comforter. How could a person spend so much time in bed? Didn’t she know that people who stayed in bed got bedsores? That would be something she wouldn’t have to fake. The baby, on the other hand, sat perched at the end of the bed, her tail dripping green droplets onto the carpet. She stared at the television screen, her violet eyes widened to Ping-Pong-ball size. The light cast an eerie glow and the blue-green scales sparkled like phosphorescence. The baby held the remote control and clicked steadily through the channels. The cable company had cut off cable service when Halvor couldn’t pay the bill, so the only channels that came in were the three that floated by the Brooms’ rooftop antennae.

Boom and Winger made a wide arc, steering clear of the baby’s spit trajectory. She watched them from the corner of a wet eye as they moved cautiously. Boom leaned over the bed. “Mertyle?” he called. “Mertyle?” He slowly peeled back the corner of the comforter, but Mertyle pulled it out of his grip.

“Go away. I don’t feel good.”

“But, Mertyle,” Winger said. “I went to the print shop. It’s some kind of drawing, just like you said.”

Mertyle threw back the comforter, scrambled out of bed, and grabbed the paper from Winger’s hand. She examined the drawing, not noticing that both Boom’s and Winger’s mouths had opened so wide that they were likely to catch flies. White fuzzies had sprouted all over Mertyle. They peeked out the ends of her sleeves and covered her neck. They poked out through her long brown hair like unplucked weeds.

“Wow,” Winger said.

“Wow is right. This is an amazing drawing,” Mertyle declared. “Look at the detail. Such graceful lines —”

“Uh, Mertyle,” Boom interrupted.

“The black part of the drawing isn’t solid. It’s actually composed of teeny, tiny dots. Did you notice that?” She traced her finger over the drawing.

“Uh, Mertyle.”

“And these symbols on the bottom look like some kind of writing. I bet it’s the merbaby’s language!”

“Uh, Mertyle.”

“What?” Mertyle asked, scratching her neck. “What’s the matter with you two?”

“Nothing’s the matter with us,” Boom said, pushing his sister toward the pink bedroom mirror.

When Mertyle caught her reflection, she began to shriek.

Chapter Eighteen:

Ick

M
ertyle tried to pull out the fuzzies, but they couldn’t be pulled out. Boom tried too, grabbing a tuft from under Mertyle’s ear, but he only managed to make Mertyle shriek louder. She cried and cried, running around the room like a lunatic as she grabbed at her fuzz-covered skin. The baby flicked her tail a few times, then turned up the volume on the remote control. Apparently a talk show about weight loss was more interesting than Mertyle’s plight. Boom was beginning to really dislike the creature.

“Mertyle? Is this one of your wishes?” Boom asked.

“Huh?”

“Did you wish to actually be sick?”

She pulled at some wrist fuzz. “Do you think I’m crazy? Why in the world would I wish to
actually
be sick?” She grabbed the magnifying glass and examined her arm. “It’s growing right out of my skin! It’s so itchy.”

“You look like my goldfish,” Winger said. Winger didn’t usually say things that made no sense. Boom assumed that, in light of the shocking situation, Winger was simply having a brain fart.

“That’s so mean,” Mertyle cried, her face turning red. “That’s just a horrible thing to say.” But Boom strongly disagreed. Telling Mertyle she looked like a goldfish, though it made little sense, was actually a compliment at the moment. What she really looked like was a giant dandelion seed ball.

“I didn’t — didn’t mean it like that,” Winger stammered as Mertyle started to cry again. “I said you look like my goldfish because my goldfish has Ick. It’s a goldfish disease. He’s all covered with white fuzz too, just like you. It’s some kind of fungus.”

“Fungus?” Mertyle’s eyes widened and she pulled at her hair again. “I’m covered in fungus?” She had faked fungus before, but it had infected only her nostrils. This was the real thing, Boom realized with that sinking feeling that comes when the truth punches you in the gut. Mertyle was sick — disgustingly sick. “How could I have gotten Ick?”

The baby started to smash the remote control against the bed frame.

“You caught it from
that,
” Boom said, pointing at the mer baby. “It’s some kind of mermaid disease.” That totally made sense. Mertyle had been the one carrying the baby around. The creature had slept in her bed. No one else had fuzz.

“There’s medicine for Ick,” Winger said. “I gave some to my goldfish, but I used it all up.”

Mertyle grabbed Winger’s shoulders, panic breaking her voice. “You’ve got to get me some of that medicine. I can’t let people see me like this.” What people? Mertyle never left the house. It wasn’t like she had guests dropping in unexpectedly. It wasn’t like she gave parties or anything.

“Uh, Mertyle, there’s something I forgot to tell you,” Boom said. “Daisy Mump has invited you to give a party here, tomorrow, for her weirdo doll club.”

“What?” Mertyle now looked like a
crazed
dandelion seed ball. “Here? Tomorrow? Sunday?”

“She thinks you’ve got some kind of mermaid doll and she wants it.”