Maybe a Mermaid Page 13

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Mom sat next to me on the bench. “You could get hurt. I couldn’t take that. Especially not today.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Three whole tears slipped down her cheeks.

  That stunned me. Mom never cried. Not with actual tears. Ever.

  “I mean it,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Another tear.

  “I’m okay. I didn’t get hurt. Look. I promise.” I did a goofy arm dance to show her I was in 100-percent working order.

  Mom wiped at her eyes. “It’s not really that,” she said.

  I glanced at the Home Party sales sheet again.

  “There are still three days left until the end of the month,” I said. “If you work hard, you could get Mrs. Quinn, and that would be enough to get the bonus.”

  Mom put her hand on my knee. “It’s not going to happen, honey.”

  “Mom! Negative Thoughts…”

  “I had a call from one of the Hive Directors,” she said. “If I don’t pull my team together, I’m going to be demoted to Worker Bee.”

  Demoted. I heard the word, but I couldn’t let it sink in. I let it float above my head, hovering at a safe distance so I wouldn’t have to think about what it meant if we’d wasted the last five years.

  Mom wiped another tear and tried to smile. “I need to do my job better. I should have stayed focused and instead I dragged us up here. I thought it would buy us time, but you’ve been miserable, and I…”

  She hiccupped and sniffed, really losing it now.

  “I’m not miserable,” I said. “I like it here.”

  I was surprised to realize it was true. I did like it. I liked The Showboat Resort. It was creepy and deserted, but it was interesting and unpredictable. Even without magic or mermaids, Mom had been right—there was a feeling about the place. In fact, if I really thought about it, this was the first place we’d been that felt something like home.

  “You don’t have to say that.” She sniffed. “Anyway, we’ll leave on Thursday, okay?”

  I sat up straight. “Thursday? That’s two days from now.”

  “I know. I was going to suggest tomorrow, but I can’t handle another speed-packing session.”

  “We’ll lose the deposit. We haven’t even been here three weeks.”

  “I talked to Charlotte today. She said she’d prorate us. As a favor to you. You must have made a good impression when you brought her that sample pack.”

  This was not how things were supposed to go. The Mom I knew wouldn’t throw in the towel on a month-end bonus when there were still three days left. She would get a plan together, pull a couple all-nighters, and Do What It Takes to get the job done.

  “We can’t go back to Mr. Li,” I said. “He could…” What could he do? Report us? Put Mom in jail for not paying the rent? I was starting to feel like I couldn’t breathe, like I was sucking in water I couldn’t spit out.

  “We’ll go to Chicago,” Mom said. “Kimmy said we can stay with her. My best Worker Bees are there. It’s where I’ll have the best chance to get our team back on track.”

  I didn’t want to cry, but my eyes filled up anyway. Minutes ago, I’d been fantasizing about quitting swim lessons and hiding in the cabin until we could leave The Showboat. But the thought of actually leaving made me dig in my heels. I wanted to stay. Badly.

  “You’re the one who wanted to come here,” I said. I could feel the tears slipping out of the corners of my eyes, one for every promise she’d made that hadn’t come true. “You said it was magical. All we had to do was think positive. Stick to the plan.”

  “Well, maybe not every plan is worth sticking to!” Mom snapped. She stood up and walked to the window. “Maybe sometimes you have to know when to give up on a plan.”

  Give up?

  “What happened to ‘Gillis Girls Don’t Believe in Maybe’? You said you were going to fix everything!”

  “Anthoni, I have to take care of my team.”

  For a moment, I felt like I was back underwater with DJ’s goggles tight around my hair, minnows and weeds drifting in and out of sight. Blood rushed to my head, thumping in my ears as I held my breath. Did she even hear herself? Her team?

  “What about taking care of me?” I shouted, hot tears sliding down my cheeks. “You might not have noticed, but I don’t have any friends. Not one. I don’t even have Gramps anymore because you put him in a home. What if something happened to you? I’d have nobody. Not. One. Person! Do you ever think about that?”

  The words and the tears kept pouring out. It was like a floodgate had opened, and I couldn’t stop them if I tried. I felt my hand crumple her Home Party sales sheet and throw it at her.

  “You stole from Mr. Li!” I yelled. “You can call it a detour or buying time, but really, you’re just a thief!”

  Mom winced like I’d slapped her in the face, and I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see how badly I’d hurt her feelings. But yelling never worked on Mom. It only made her more stubborn. She smoothed her hair and pulled herself together. Her tears were gone.

  “Anthoni, it is what it is,” she said calmly. “Chicago is the new plan. Now, change your state and start packing.”

  I threw my backpack over my shoulders. My whole life, she’d been telling me all you needed to succeed was a plan and the guts to stick to it, no matter how tough things got. And now, apparently, she didn’t believe it, or she didn’t have the guts. Well, I did. I wasn’t going to be like her. I wasn’t going to get this far and give up.

  I walked out of The Blue Heron and slammed the screen door behind me. Mermaid or no mermaid, I had a plan and I was sticking to it.

  27

  DEATH OF VAUDEVILLE

  I went to The Black Bear first, hoping to catch DJ sorting his rocks, but no one was there. The wooden bear looked devastated.

  “It’s all right, buddy,” I said, and patted him on the head. We stood together for a while, watching a squirrel make loud tsk-ing noises at us from a high branch. I tried to remember what Chicago was like. I was seven when we lived there last, and all I could recall about our apartment was that the wallpaper in the bathroom had lollipops on it. I wondered what our new bathroom would look like and if any kids my age would live in our apartment building. The thought of making a new Potentials list made me tired.

  The squirrel started throwing acorns at my head, so I left the cub to fend for himself and continued down the path toward the hotel.

  I heard the music blasting even before I got out of the woods.

  The front office was empty, but somewhere behind the revolving bookcase a woman belted out, “I’m always chasing ra-a-a-ain-bows.”

  “Hello?” I could hardly hear myself over the song.

  I walked halfway across the room before I noticed that all the photos DJ and I had cleaned and boxed up were back on the walls. The frog-man, the tap dancers, the hula girls—every frame had been rehung exactly as it had been before.

  The singing stopped and a man started talking. I pushed at the bookcase and stepped through the revolving door into the swanky Showboat Lounge. Charlotte Boulay sat curled up in the center booth, transfixed by a black-and-white movie playing at top volume on a screen above the stage.

  “Hello?” I shouted again over the din. Charlotte put a finger to her lips, then beckoned me over without taking her eyes off the screen. Her feet were tucked underneath a long silk bathrobe and her orange hair was hidden under a knot of silk scarves.

  “This is my favorite part,” she said in a loud whisper as I slid into the other side of her half-moon booth. On the screen, an old man sat at a piano next to a teenage girl with perfect curls. Two men and a blond woman stood next to them, arguing.

  “That’s Judy Garland,” Charlotte said, her eyes still glued to the screen. “She’s been in a vaudeville act with her father for years, but now she’s trying out for a solo part in a big show called the ‘Ziegfeld Follies.’”

  The man on the screen clearly di
dn’t like her audition. “Doncha know they quit beating a song to death ten years ago?” he said.

  “Now, watch,” Charlotte whispered. “She’s going to sing it again—her own way, not her father’s.”

  The girl started to sing the song again, only this time she sang it slowly. Instead of a peppy, loud song about someone running after rainbows, it turned out to be a sad song about chasing dreams that never come true. It was beautiful.

  When the song was over, Charlotte lifted up a remote and paused the movie. “See?” she said, dreamy-eyed. “Isn’t that a great scene?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Charlotte leaned closer, examining me. “Rough day?” she asked. “You’re looking a little damp.”

  I felt damp. My throat hurt and my eyes felt swollen and hot.

  “I put my head in the lake,” I said. “For the first time. I was too scared to do it before. Actually … terrified.” It felt good to admit it.

  “Nicely done,” Charlotte said, nodding her approval.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I suppose you’re here about the gifts?”

  I’d almost forgotten about the photos and the stones from Atlantis. “Don’t you want them anymore?” I asked.

  “You’re a good audience, kid. They should belong to someone who can appreciate them. Think of it as a thank-you present.”

  “For what?” As far as I knew, DJ and I hadn’t done anything but break into The Black Bear, spill tea on her floor, and upset her by bringing up the weight of the past.

  “For helping me get things in order.”

  “But you put all the pictures back up.”

  “True,” she said. “I got lonely. It’s hard to get rid of the past when it’s all you have.”

  “You have now, don’t you?”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Technically.”

  I looked at the empty booths in the Showboat Lounge and tried to imagine what the place was like when Charlotte was a kid. I pictured it filled with people dancing and drinking cocktails while Selina Boulay sang onstage. I bet back then, Charlotte never imagined she’d be sitting here, years later, all alone.

  “Did you and your mom ever fight?” I asked.

  “What do you mean … like fisticuffs? Who do you think I am?”

  “No, I mean like a big fight. Where you said horrible things and you couldn’t take them back?”

  My voice trembled, and Charlotte let out a heavy sigh. She was quiet so long that I started to wonder if she’d forgotten I was there. Finally, she slapped her palm on the table, scaring me half to death.

  “You know, kid—want to hear a deep, dark secret?”

  I leaned forward across the table. It was impossible, but still, deep down, I felt she was going to admit everything. I wondered if she’d show me her tail, and whether it would be slimy, or glittery, or rough like snakeskin.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Charlotte’s eyes drifted downward. Even in the dim glow of the movie screen, I could see the veins on her eyelids.

  “When I was your age, I quit the show. I told my mother I hated vaudeville, but I didn’t. I loved it.”

  “Oh.” I leaned back against the booth, disappointed.

  “That’s not the secret.”

  I inched forward again and waited. Her hand was shaking. She brought it to her mouth and pressed her fingers to her lips. I knew it was possible she was acting. That at any minute, she could erupt with a loud laugh or a “Gotcha!” But she didn’t.

  “I quit because I thought my mother loved the show more than she loved me,” Charlotte said. “Can you imagine feeling like that?”

  I could, actually.

  “I threw her hairpin in the lake.”

  I nodded. The pin. The one with the mermaid in the star. Exactly like the one in Maddy’s closet. That wasn’t so bad. Hardly a deep, dark confession.

  “We could find it,” I offered. “What if it washed up? What if someone has it and you could get it back?” A very specific someone, in fact.

  Charlotte shook her head. “That’s sweet, kid,” she said. “I’d like to have it back, but it’s only a thing, see? I lost a lot more than a hairpin that day.”

  I didn’t ask because I knew. She was talking about Selina Boulay.

  “They said my mother died because she went off course during rehearsal,” Charlotte said. “But I know why. She dove in trying to find that pin. It was my fault. And I never had a chance to say I was sorry.”

  Charlotte’s eyes got watery, but she didn’t cry. She just sat there, looking impossibly sad. I was starting to feel teary again, sorry I ran out on Mom. Sorry for yelling at her.

  “You must miss her,” I said.

  Charlotte’s eyes swam. I thought if Charlotte cried, my own waterworks might start up, too, so I kept talking.

  “Was she good?” I asked. “In the show?”

  Charlotte sniffed and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “She was a star,” she said. “An absolute star. There was nothing like it, you know. The energy, the laughs, the applause. Before a show, my mother used to say, ‘Chin up, Charlie—let’s transport ’em!’”

  “Your mom called you Charlie?”

  “Atch’r service.”

  “I wish I could have seen it. Vaudeville.”

  “Kid, we showed people things they’d never seen, not even in their dreams.”

  Charlotte’s hand had stopped shaking, and the color was slowly returning to her face. A pinprick of an idea flitted into my head.

  “What if you could get that feeling again?” I asked.

  She chuckled. “That and the vim and vigor of my youth? In exchange for what? Wishes are dangerous things, kid.”

  Thoughts whirled around in my mind, forming themselves into a plan. A plan with incredible Potential.

  “I think I can get your hairpin back,” I said. “I know it’s only a thing, but wouldn’t it be nice to have it again? To remember her by?” I slapped my hand on the table like Charlotte had done. “I need you to do your act.”

  Her smile disappeared. “My act? Which one? I’ve got a…”

  “I know, a million of ’em. I’m talking about the Boulay Mermaid.”

  We looked at each other across the booth.

  Charlotte shook her head and let her feet drop from the cushion to the floor. “It can’t be done. Everything’s been dismantled.”

  “But the breathing tubes are still there. And you can swim out into the middle of the lake without coming up for air. Can’t you?”

  Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “And how, exactly, does the Boulay Mermaid help you?”

  “There’s this girl. Maddy,” I said. “I told her I’d show her a mermaid, and if I do, I think she’ll be my True Blue Friend.” It sounded dumber than I expected, and I felt my face get DJ-red.

  “So the True Blue Friend search continues—despite my fair warning.” Charlotte’s mouth twitched at the corners. Not like she was laughing at me. Like she knew where I was coming from. Like she understood. “Very well,” she said. “Go on.”

  “I’m always moving from place to place,” I said. “And as soon as I’m gone, it’s like I never existed.”

  Charlotte didn’t say anything, so I kept going.

  “I like it here, and even if the Maddy thing doesn’t work, I’d at least like to go out with a bang. So no one can forget me.”

  “Go out with a bang. That’s good. I’d like that, too.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes, and when she opened them she said, “Okay, now try it again.”

  “What?”

  “The pitch. Try it again. Like you mean it.” She winked at me.

  I grinned, slid out of the booth, and stood in the light of the movie that was still paused behind me.

  “This,” I said, “is the single most important decision you could ever make. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put on the most fabulous, awesome, jaw-dropping show known to mankind!” I threw my arms wildly in the air, stalling for time while my bra
in grasped for words. “Don’t you want to bring some magic into the world?”

  Then I had a moment of true inspiration.

  “Chin up, Charlie!” I shouted. “Let’s transport ’em!”

  Charlotte Boulay smacked her hands together. “It takes some real work to put on a show like that,” she said. “I’m going to need a Master of Ceremonies and a lighting director. Can you make that happen?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’ll show up to rehearsals?”

  “Yes!”

  “And do what you’re told? No back talk?”

  That sounded less appealing, but I agreed.

  “What the heck? I’m in.” She held out her hand. “One last hurrah. My final curtain call. We’ll knock their socks off!”

  I reached out my hand and felt Charlotte Boulay’s soft, bony fingers curl around mine. She pumped my arm up and down.

  “Welcome to showbiz, kid.”

  I felt great for about thirty seconds, until I thought about Mom and her new plan. Off with the Old and on with the New.

  “There’s one more thing,” I said. “I need your help … with a pitch.”

  28

  SEVEN SPECTACULAR DAYS THAT WILL CHANGE THE COURSE OF YOUR LIFE

  On my way back to The Blue Heron, I heard Mom calling my name. She was down on the dock, scanning the shore, her hands fluttering nervously at her side. I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt horrible for the things I’d said. Thief. Was she still mad? I sat down on the top stair.

  “I’m here, Mom.”

  She didn’t say a word. Just came to my side and threw her arms around me.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I was worried,” she said when she loosened her hold. She looked awful. Sad and swollen-eyed.

  I pulled a twig out of her hair.

  “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of how else to say it.

  “Me, too.”

  In the bay, a family of ducks paddled close to the shore, dipping their bills into the murky water. One duckling straggled behind, while the others kept to a tight, fuzzy group.