Maybe a Mermaid Read online

  “Why?”

  “We’ll figure it out like geologists. We’ll make a list of attributes and see how they match up.”

  I wasn’t 100-percent sure if he was being serious or making fun, but it was a decent idea. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it myself. I fished my notebook and pencil out of my backpack.

  “Okay, Appearance first,” he said. “Does she have a tail?”

  “Not exactly, but…” I glanced at the photo of the Boulay Mermaid.

  “Write undetermined,” DJ said. “For all we know, she could be under some kind of spell where her tail grows back once she’s underwater.”

  I gave him a suspicious look, but he seemed to be taking this seriously, so I wrote down: Tail—undetermined.

  “Okay now, Characteristics. You said she can swim really far?”

  “I saw her go all the way to the edge of the bay without coming up for air,” I said.

  DJ nodded. “Promising.”

  I started to write down Breathes underwater, but DJ held out his hand.

  “We’ve only determined Swims far,” he said. “Didn’t she say she uses breathing tubes?”

  “She also said ‘gills.’ And ‘magic.’”

  “True,” DJ said. “Plus, a tube would never work. You’d be breathing out oxygen and breathing in carbon dioxide. Unless she has some kind of air compressor or she’s talking about a snorkel. Maybe scuba gear…”

  “She didn’t have any of that when she jumped in.”

  “Right.” DJ thought about it. For all his gooney exterior, he was more logical and organized than you’d think.

  “Method uncertain,” he concluded.

  In the end, our list looked like this:

  Tail—undetermined

  Swims far

  Breathes underwater—method uncertain

  Prone to strange behavior

  Prone to odd jokes

  Boulay photo—looks real, could be fake

  Rocks from Atlantis—look fake, could be real

  “It’s not a lot to go on,” I said. “I don’t think she’s going to be convinced.”

  “Who?”

  “Maddy.”

  “Quinn? What do you care what she thinks?”

  “She’s nicer than she seems,” I said. “I think.”

  “If you say so. I wouldn’t tell her about the mermaid, though.”

  I pretended to study the box of Genuine Precious Stones. “Why not?”

  “Maddy likes to be queen. If you give her a chance to lord something over you, she will. It would be a disaster.”

  “You don’t know her,” I said, feeling annoyed. “You’ve only lived here a year.”

  “So? You’ve been here two weeks,” DJ said. “You can believe whatever you want to believe, but it doesn’t make it true.”

  I grabbed my notebook and shoved it in my backpack. What did he know? He was happy playing with kindergartners. Or rocks. He wouldn’t understand what it meant to have a True Blue Friend—someone who liked the same things you liked and had your back no matter what happened or how far away you were. Someone who wanted to invite you for sleepovers and made you feel like you belonged. I stuffed Lady Alice and her Dirty Rats in my pack behind the notebook.

  “Hey,” DJ said. “I didn’t mean…”

  He picked up the Boulay Mermaid photo at the exact moment that I reached for it, and like a slow-motion scene in a movie, we watched the frame tumble from our fingers to the table to the bench to the kitchen floor. The photo wasn’t in a heavy-duty frame like Alice and the rest of the gang on The Showboat’s walls. It was ornate and delicate and it shattered with a high-pitched clang.

  We stared at the shards.

  “I’m sorry, Gills,” DJ said in a tortured voice. “I’m such a…”

  I shushed him. “What do you think that is?”

  The man, the woman, and the Boulay Mermaid smiled at us beneath the broken bits of glass. Behind the photo, where the frame had split, the corner of a pink envelope peeked out.

  The envelope wasn’t sealed, and it didn’t hold a love letter or a note written in secret code. It was filled with several carefully folded newspaper clippings. Obituaries, to be exact. The top one, from the Milwaukee Sentinel, was dated July 6, 1942, and featured a photo of the smiling lady in the Boulay Mermaid picture.

  SELINA BOULAY—VAUDEVILLE HOLD-OUT—DIES, AGE 34

  EAGLE WATERS, WI—Selina Boulay, daughter of famed actress Alice VanEllsburgh and daughter-in-law of vaudeville veteran Barnabus Boulay, died yesterday in a tragic accident at The Showboat Resort in Eagle Waters, Wisconsin. Born into vaudeville, Mrs. Boulay was best known for her family novelty act, “The Famous Boulays Present: The Darling Boulay Mermaid.” Selina Boulay is survived by her husband, Frank Boulay, age 36, and her daughter, Charlotte, age 12.

  A tragic accident? My eyes focused on the last phrase. “Survived by … her daughter, Charlotte, age 12.” Mom was thirty-four. And I was almost twelve. Even though I’d been mad at her lately, I couldn’t imagine life without her. Who would laugh at my robot dances and put her arm around me when I had a bad day? Who would cheer me up with Green Goddess smoothies and sing along with the radio until we went hoarse? If something happened to Mom, I’d be more than lost. I’d be completely alone.

  “Poor Charlotte,” I said.

  DJ tucked the clippings back in the envelope. His face wasn’t red, it was white. Gray, almost. Deliberately, he stood up and left the cabin, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.

  25

  GRAVITY

  I found DJ on the wooden bleachers that led down to the dock. He sat perfectly still, staring out at Thunder Lake.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Shhh.” DJ held up his cast.

  I stopped moving and scanned the area, trying to see what he was looking at.

  “What?” I whispered. “What is it?”

  DJ pointed to a shallow, weedy area to the left of the dock.

  “Blue heron.”

  The gray-blue feathers blended so well with the water and the weeds that I almost missed it. A bird stood in the shallows, still as a statue, balancing on its spindly, twig-like legs.

  Quietly, I sat down next to DJ. The heron seemed to be listening or watching for something. Its long neck stretched forward, and a breeze lifted a few of its feathers. It looked ancient and exotic, like a miniature velociraptor who got left behind when the dinosaurs went extinct. Suddenly, the heron stabbed the water with its beak and pulled out a gigantic frog.

  “Nasty!” DJ hissed.

  The frog wriggled and thrashed and nearly escaped, but the heron tilted its head, tightening and adjusting the frog’s position in its beak. When the frog was in the right spot, the heron threw back its head and gulped. The bird gulped and gulped, forcing the frog down its skinny throat.

  We watched the bulge slide slowly down the bird’s neck, and when it got about halfway, DJ grabbed my arm. The heron had stopped moving. But it wasn’t the intense stillness we’d seen when it was hunting the frog. The heron swayed a little, and its legs began to bend. The bird looked woozy.

  DJ’s grip tightened on my arm, and we gasped as the heron jerked back to life, gulping again until the bulge disappeared. Then, the bird stretched its wings, tilted its head, and began to walk, slowly and carefully, away from the dock.

  DJ turned to look at me. His eyes were huge. “I thought he was going to keel over,” he said, still whispering.

  “Hey, DJ,” I whispered back.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re crushing my arm.”

  DJ looked down, clearly surprised to find that his good hand had my wrist in a death grip. Even his ears turned fuchsia.

  “Sorry,” he said, stretching out his fingers. “That was insane.”

  We sat in silence. I hadn’t believed Charlotte’s impression of the choking heron for one minute. I thought it was a joke, but now I wondered how many of the things she’d told me had been true. I thought about how ha
ppy she looked in the photo with her mom and dad, everyone smiling like movie stars. Not like the way her eyebrows had pinched together when she’d told us about her dad going to jail, or when she’d thrown her head back and yelled, “The weight of the past!” No wonder it felt so heavy. If anything happened to Mom, I’d probably be flattened under the weight of it.

  DJ looked a little flattened now, too. I remembered what Kurt had said at the beach, about DJ’s dad being in the hospital.

  “How come you live with your aunt?” I asked.

  DJ kept his voice low. The heron was still making its way along the shore, head bobbing forward with each step. “My dad has a chemical thing in his brain that makes him depressed,” he said. “It’s not a huge deal. Most of the time he’s fine, but right now he needs help getting back on his feet. He’ll be home soon.”

  “And your mom?”

  DJ picked up a pinecone and started to pick off each scaly piece, tossing them one by one into the lake.

  “She died a while ago. My dad really misses her. It’s hard for him.”

  “Is it hard for you?”

  “Not usually. Sometimes it just hits you.” DJ shot me a sideways glance. “She was cool. Guess what her job was?”

  “What?”

  “Geologist.” He grinned. “She studied rocks and got paid for it. How rad is that?”

  We watched each pinecone scale hit the water without a sound, then spin and drift. A few clumped together, colliding like bumper cars, and others floated off into the distance all alone. When the entire pinecone was scattered onto Thunder Lake, DJ brushed his hand on his pants.

  “How come you don’t like to put your face in the water, Gills?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, letting him change the subject. “I keep thinking I’ll be brave enough to do it, but the water is so dark. How do you know what’s in there? How do you know how deep it is? Every time I try to put my head in, I get this panicky feeling that I can’t get rid of.”

  DJ nodded like he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “It’s gravity that gets me,” he said, holding up his cast.

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “I love heights. When you climb a tree, it’s like all your problems are underneath your feet.” He pointed to the heron, who had stopped taking slow steps away and paused, with its wings slightly spread. “The problem is, if I let myself look down, I know gravity will pull me right back.”

  With a splash and flutter, the heron spread its wings and lifted off, tucking its feet underneath its body and soaring across the bay.

  DJ stood up just as suddenly. “I don’t stop climbing trees, though,” he said. “Wait here!”

  He took off running up the stairs.

  While I waited, I rummaged through my backpack. I took out Josh’s deflated floaties and blew one up out of boredom. SpongeBob SquarePants got bigger and wider. I slid it over my right arm, but it only went as far as my elbow. I let out some air and tugged the floatie all the way up to my armpit. It fit nice and snug.

  I blew up the second floatie and put it on my left arm. I made fists in the air, holding my arms out like the muscle woman at a circus.

  “Nice biceps,” DJ said, barreling back down the stairs.

  I did a couple strong-arm poses to make him laugh.

  “Here, try these.” DJ handed me a pair of blue swim goggles.

  “No thanks.”

  “Try them.”

  “My mom said I can’t swim without an adult around.”

  “We’re not going to.” DJ pulled a second pair of goggles over his own head.

  “You look like a bug-eyed mutant,” I said.

  DJ did an alien dance to play up the effect. He alien-danced all the way down to the edge of the dock and lay down on his belly. “Come on,” he said.

  I lay down next to him and pulled the blue goggles on.

  “Nice. Look. Fellow. Mutant,” he said in a robotic voice.

  “Mutants don’t talk like robots,” I said. “Unless they’re actual robots.”

  DJ leaned his shoulders over the dock. The water shimmered inches below his nose and he splashed his head down into the lake. When he came up again, he shook the water out of his hair like a dog.

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But think about it. This way, you can get a good look while the rest of your body is safe on land.” He shrugged his shoulders at me. “It’s drown-proof research. At least you’ll know what’s down there.”

  I was curious.

  “Besides, you’re already wearing a snazzy pair of floaties. How safe can you get?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Plug your nose,” he said. “It’ll help.”

  I plugged my nose with one hand, gripped the dock with the other, and stared into Thunder Lake. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Maddy being nice. DJ climbing a tree. I plunged my face in. A floaty sensation filled my ears, and I immediately sat up, gasping for air.

  “Are you okay?” DJ asked.

  I nodded.

  “See anything?”

  I shook my head. “I forgot to open my eyes.” I felt the dock, solid underneath me, and added, “But it wasn’t that bad.”

  I took a deep breath and tried it again. This time, I stayed down a little longer and opened my eyes. I didn’t see a thing. Only murky, brown water. The third time, my eyes adjusted more. I could see green weeds floating on the bottom of the lake and DJ’s hand pointing to a bunch of tiny fish swimming all in the same direction.

  “Minnows,” he said when we popped up.

  To tell the truth, there wasn’t much to see. More minnows. More weeds. Sand. Rocks. It wasn’t nearly as creepy as I’d thought it would be. Each time I put my head in, I felt lighter, happier, more powerful. I was taming Thunder Lake. Until a black fish the size of my foot swam into view. I was so startled, I gulped in water, and lifted my head, coughing.

  “It’s only a sucker,” DJ said.

  “Will it bite?”

  He laughed. “Every fish in this lake thinks you’re a gigantic monster that wants to eat it. They’re not going to bite you. Watch.”

  We put our heads back down, and DJ reached his arm into the water, waving it in the direction of the sucker. The fish darted away from the dock, and swam toward a large pile of rocks off in the distance. It was hard to see clearly in the murky water, but there was something unnatural about the pile. The rocks looked familiar—gray, bumpy, and egg-shaped—and they were piled perfectly into a rounded, waist-high mound. Something thin and flexible, like a braid or a rope, swayed in the water nearby. I followed it with my eyes. The rope connected to a long, skinny pipe shooting out the side of the rock mound. The rope and the pipe extended together toward the middle of the lake until the water became so deep and dark I couldn’t see them anymore. I jerked my head out of the lake and sat up.

  “Drown-proof research!” DJ said, ripping his goggles off and shaking them at me. His eyes were rimmed with red raccoon circles. “I’m a genius!”

  “So you saw that?”

  “How fast he swam? Yeah, I told you. You’re a monster.”

  “No, the … hold on.” The sun went behind a cloud and a cold breeze blew across Thunder Lake. I shivered as I put my head down one more time. Without the sun shining, the water was even murkier. No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t see anything but ropy weeds and shadows.

  “What’d you see?” DJ asked when I came up for air.

  Part of me wanted to say “Nothing.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. With the sun behind the clouds, there was nothing to see. Which meant it could all still be true. Tail—undetermined. Swims far. Breathes underwater—method uncertain.

  Maybe.

  But even though it meant giving up magic and maybe and possibly even Maddy Quinn, I couldn’t fake it. I knew what I saw.

  “Breathing tubes,” I said.

  26

  GILLIS GIRLS DON’
T BELIEVE IN MAYBE

  I banged open the screen door and dropped my backpack on the floor. I felt like a fool. It was bad enough that I’d believed in the Boulay Mermaid, but what was I going to do on Monday? Show up at swim lessons and say, Hey, guys, that whole mermaid thing? Just joking! Hilarious, right? Maddy Quinn would never forgive me. I might as well give up now. It would be easier to quit swim lessons and hide in the cabin until Mom finished saving the money we needed to leave.

  “Anthoni Marie Gillis! What was the one rule I gave you this summer?”

  My hair, still dripping wet from the lake, had soaked the shoulders of my T-shirt. Mom took one look at me and went ballistic.

  “Mom, I didn’t…”

  “You didn’t go in the water? What’d you do, then, take a shower?” She was seething. “One rule, Anthoni. I only gave you one rule!”

  I was all off-kilter. Mom hardly ever got mad, and when she did, it was never at me. I tried to explain quickly. “I didn’t go in. Just my head. With goggles. And floaties. It was safe.”

  I sat down at the picnic table. It was covered with used eye shadows, partially filled cups of lemonade, and paperwork from Mom’s B&B party.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” Mom said. “Your head? Water? Go on.”

  I explained about the goggles again, but I couldn’t help stealing glances at Mom’s Home Party sales sheet. One $10.50 Bee-You-tiful Lipstick sale and one $15 Zit Stinger sale. A grand total of $25.50—which probably wouldn’t even cover the cost of all the free samples the ladies took home. The Worker Bee sign-up section was completely blank.

  “Anthoni, are you even listening to me?”

  “Are you listening to me? I put my head in! I thought you’d be glad.”

  Mom looked conflicted, like she suddenly didn’t know whether to yell at me or not.

  “Anthoni, I’m glad you overcame your fear and put your head in the water. I really am.” She bit her lip. “But I need to be able to trust you to do the right thing when I’m not around.”

  The words “not around” got my attention. I knew Mom meant it like, “when I’m not around because I’m at the grocery store,” but the news about DJ’s mom—and Charlotte Boulay’s for that matter—was fresh in my mind.