Emerge (26 page)

“How’s it going, Goldfish?”
Caspian calls out. He’s waiting outside the underwater entrance to his school, where he asked me to meet him since it’s on my way home from the Foundation through the grottos.

Seeing Caspian at the end of a long day is usually all it takes to make me happy. But I can’t bring myself to feel that way today. I haven’t been happy since I left Clay’s yesterday afternoon, and I feel like I may never be happy again. Like I have no right to be. Still, I shouldn’t inflict my mood on Caspian.

I make myself smile.
“Well, genius, didn’t you say you had an exam in Mer history today? How’d it go? Another perfect score for Mr. Zayle?
”

His face lights up.
“Well, there were one or two tough questions,”
he says. I roll my eyes at his modesty and poke him in the ribs. His laughter makes my plastered-on smile feel even more fake.

“So, did you just ask me to meet you here on my way home so you could brag?”
I swat playfully at his side with my tail as I swim away from the entrance.

He puts a hand on the small of my back and guides me down a deserted side waterway.
“I asked you to meet me here so I could tell you that Mr. Havelock left me alone while he was on a dive yesterday. Melusine was out, too, and I spent four hours searching their entire house—the upstairs and the private grottos.”

“And?”
In Mermese, the word comes out a harsh, insistent hiss.

“And
…
Lia, I think you’re wrong.”
My face must fall the same way my stomach does because Caspian rushes to reassure me, “
At least about Mr. Havelock. Maybe Melusine is planning something. I don’t want to argue with you about it.”
Of course he doesn’t. When we’d race as kids, he’d let me win just so I wouldn’t get upset.

“All I’ll say is,”
he continues,
“I didn’t find anything strange in either of her rooms or anywhere else. But if she is up to some scheme, I’d bet my last sand dollar her father’s not in on it.”

“Casp, just because you’re trustworthy doesn’t mean other people are.”

“
Lia, I’m telling you, Mr. Havelock is
…
cool.”
Cool is one of those words that doesn’t really translate into Mermese, so Mer our age use Mermese sounds to approximate it. It comes out sounding similar to the English word but more melodic. I’m surprised to hear Caspian use it, though. He’s such a purist when it comes to languages.

“He’s gone out of his way to be nice to me,”
Caspian says.
“He even sat me down and explained all the reasons he thinks ingredients collecting wouldn’t be a good use of my potential.”

“I’m sure my parents put him up to that,”
I counter.

“It’s thoughtful of him regardless. It can’t be easy to confess to someone you barely know that your own job isn’t good enough for them. He knows so much about potions and medicinal sea plants. He must have been a top medic Below. The man’s brilliant.”

All this talk about Mr. Havelock being nice and thoughtful doesn’t gel with the condescending elitist I met at my parents’ party. What could have caused Caspian to come down with such a case of hero-worship?

“He even knows how to write in Mermese!”
Caspian announces, grabbing my arm and shaking me in his excitement.

Well, that explains his newfound mancrush. Written Mermese hasn’t been used in thousands of years. Before we discovered how to seal our voices in
konklilis
, Mer kept written records on red algae leaves, the way humans did on papyrus. But preserving these records underwater was difficult. It required covert trading with human merchants for wax that we could infuse with magic and use to coat the leaves. Once
konklilis
and shell calls were common, written Mermese became extinct. It’s now a dead language studied only by the highest-level scholars.

And, of course, by Caspian. He started teaching it to himself when we first learned to read and write in English. We were taking turns writing our names on wide-lined paper in childish scrawl at our all-Mer elementary school when Caspian raised his hand and asked our teacher how to write his name in Mermese. She explained that she didn’t know and that very few Mer did. When he kept asking, she spoke to his parents about getting him a
konklili
on the history of the language. He sped through that and asked for more. Eventually, his parents enlisted mine to find resources for him. As there was no teacher in our Community school qualified to teach him, Caspian taught himself.

For a while, he tried to teach me, too. I was interested at first because I thought we could use it to write secret messages to each other, but the artful characters were so numerous and so difficult for my small, uncoordinated fingers that I decided I much preferred English. Since then, in typical Caspian fashion, he’s mainly kept his studies of the written language to himself.

But it’s one of his passions. If Mr. Havelock knows written Mermese, it’s little wonder Caspian admires him so much.

“I was shocked when I found a letter written to his family Below and coated in wax—a whole letter in Mermese! He must know konklilis can be intercepted by one of the underwater factions. Anyway, I read it—for you, because you were suspicious.”

“What did it say?”
I ask before the words are even out of his mouth.

“It was about how wonderful life is Above. How much more peaceful and safe it is. He begged his family to give up their udell thinking and move up here.”

“But I thought
…
”

“You thought wrong. He’s changed his entire life to be here, just like our parents did, and I don’t think he’d jeopardize that for some dangerous scheme. After reading his letter, I can’t believe he’s still an udell. He’s a smart man. He even knows some ancient Mermese characters.”
Caspian goes off excitedly on a tangent about sketches of Mermese letters so old not even he had ever seen them before. As he takes out a pen and scribbles a few on his hand to show me, I question how I could have so completely misjudged Mr. Havelock.

Is it possible he has no idea that his daughter committed the high crime of sireny? That she bent a human to her will for weeks without his notice? How could a parent not know such a thing about his own child?

Later, when I reach the underwater entrance to my house and my own father asks me how my day was, it hits me. My parents are as oblivious to my sins as Mr. Havelock is to Melusine’s. I’ve tricked them. Lied to them. After all they’ve done for me, I’ve failed them. I look at my father’s kind smile. If he knew what I’d done—what I’m doing—he wouldn’t even recognize his own daughter.

I’m still worrying about it a few days later. And it’s not my only worry. I’m spending some time alone in my upstairs bedroom this afternoon, and all the thoughts I wish would disappear are bubbling to the surface. When school got out, Clay practically begged me to come to his house or go on a hike or go kayaking—anything, as long as we could spend time together. But that was only after I’d hummed in his ear. Only after I’d brainwashed him into liking me.

I can’t let myself listen to those pleas. Instead, I have to remember that he requested more space. Space away from me.

Thinking about it makes me cold inside. Maybe soaking up some sun will help lift my mood as it warms my body. I change into a bright yellow bikini, hoping some of its cheeriness will rub off on me.

“Stas and I are taking Barney for a walk,” Amy calls from downstairs.

“’Kay!” I call down. Good. Everyone else is out, so I’ll have the whole house to myself—a rare occurrence. I head outside, looking forward to the quiet. Soon I’ll have to call Clay; the siren song will be wearing off. Doing it will make me hate myself a little. Maybe not enough. It can wait another few minutes.

I pull one of the beach chairs close to the pool’s edge so I can watch the sunlight shine golden white off the water without blinding myself. Then I stretch out against the canvas fabric of the chair, wiggle out of my bikini bottoms, and let them drop to the ground as my eyes slip shut. I’m just starting to feel the sensation of tides rushing against my legs in transformation when the memory of Clay holding me against his warm chest rises unbidden to my mind. The way he put his arms around me, the way his smooth skin electrified mine. When I open my eyes, my legs haven’t budged.

Usually, letting my tail free is the most natural act in the world. It provides a relief I crave all day. But when my thoughts drift to Clay … to
being
with Clay, it’s the only time my legs have ever felt like they belong, like they don’t want to go away until they’ve wrapped around him.

I close my eyes again and exhale in one long, slow breath.
Don’t think about Clay
, I tell myself.
Think about school
. School … history class … Clay sitting close to me at his desk while we worked on our report, leg to leg.
No! Okay, I’ll try P.E.
Coach Crane … bad hair gel … self-defense … Clay underneath me as I flip us out of a submission hold.
Bad brain, bad! Pre-calculus. Clay isn’t in my pre-cal class.
I run through mathematical formulas in my head.

Tides push and pull along my legs. My bones and muscles shift and fold, and my scales slip free, like blossoms after too long a winter. This time, when I open my eyes, my tail flows out from my waist, decadent and sparkling in the sun.

The distant noise of the front door opening and closing startles me. Amy must be back.

The view of the ocean stretches out below me, and the palms sway in the breeze. The sea air’s salty tang refreshes my senses, and the warm California sunlight kisses my face, chest, arms, and tail.

“Wow.”

Clay!

Panic like I’ve never felt seizes me, strangling my insides. I must have imagined his voice. He can’t be here, can he?

My beach chair—thank the current—is facing toward the ocean, away from the back door. Staying as still as I can so that my tail remains hidden from his view, I crane my neck around the back of the chair.

He’s there. Clay is standing right there. And I’m lying here,
IN MY TAIL
. This can’t be happening.

“Your pool is ginormous!” he exclaims.

He’s not looking at me. He, like most of our visitors (human and Mer alike), is taken aback by our pool. My parents have done their best to make up for the no-swimming-in-the-ocean-during-the-day rule by building a swimming pool that wraps around nearly two sides of our house’s exterior and has a disappearing edge like a waterfall. Once you get in, it looks as if the pool flows seamlessly into the Pacific Ocean below. All I can do is hope Clay’s distraction lasts long enough for me to transform back into my legs.

I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing to do exactly that. But my heart pounds in fear and my breath comes in shallow gasps. I can’t concentrate to save my life. Literally. In my terror, my body has decided swimming away from danger is my best option, and I can’t calm down enough to call my legs to the surface. Clay could walk over here any second. What am I supposed do?

“Is that my dad?” I ask too loudly, pointing inside the house.

“Where?” Clay turns his head around to look, and I catapult my body into the pool, knocking over the beach chair in the process.

It clatters against the concrete, diverting Clay’s attention.

“Guess not,” I say as I peek my head out of the water. “I thought I saw him. What are you doing here?” As I talk, I move as quickly as I dare toward the edge closest to Clay. As soon as I reach it, I press my tail up against the wall of the pool. If he stays right where he is, he shouldn’t be able to see it. But if he comes any closer …

“I ran into Amy and her friend outside. You have history’s cutest dog. Why haven’t you ever invited me over to play with him? I know you say your sisters are too distracting for us to get any work done here, but I’ll put up with any level of distraction for that amount of tail-wagging.” He brings his hand up to his forehead, cupping it over his eyes as he looks down at me. I hope like I’ve never hoped before that the glare from the sun hitting the water blinds him enough to conceal the truth. “Amy let me in and said you were upstairs doing homework.”

“Clearly, she was mistaken.” And her mistake might cost me absolutely everything.

He takes one dangerous step forward. My hand starts to shake. To make it stop, I clutch the lip of the pool so hard my knuckles turn white. A tiny, far down, secret part of me has always wished something exactly like this would happen. That Clay would somehow find out what I am without me telling him, and I’d be able to be honest with him for the first time ever. Now that I’m faced with the reality of that fantasy, I realize how idiotic it was. This isn’t going to end in lovey-dovey smiles and truthful confessions. This is going to end in screams of disgust and me on the front page of some sleazy supermarket tabloid alongside an alien mummy and vampire Elvis.

Clay’s eyes widen as he spots something.

My tail. He’s spotted my tail under the water. This is it. It’s all over.

His mouth opens into a small “o” of shock.