Maybe a Mermaid Page 3
“Either way. Yuck. My parents would never put violent comics in the store. We like things to be super wholesome, you know? Is this your first time here? Are you going to join the ski team? You should. The varsity boys are so cute this year. Where are you guys staying?”
Julie paused long enough for me to say, “The Showboat,” and then she sucked air through her braces.
“Really? That’s not, uhhhh…” She turned her head toward the window. “Hey! Is your car shaped like a bee?”
She hopped down from her stool to get a better look. “It is! It looks exactly like a bee! That is so cool! Can I take a picture? I’ve got to take a picture!”
While Julie fiddled with her phone, trying to find the best angle through the window, I found Mom in the toothpaste/cat food/peanut butter aisle.
“She’s nice,” Mom whispered. “But more of a Connector than a Potential?”
I nodded. One good way to build a Potentials list is to meet a Connector and get introduced to all their friends.
The store door jingled and a peal of laughter filled the room.
“Julie, don’t tell me your mother bought that hideous car! What are you running here—a circus?”
I turned around to glare at the rude woman, but Mom took one look at her, grabbed my arm, and dragged me to the farthest aisle. We squatted in front of a shelf full of baby food.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, trying to wrestle out of her grip.
Mom picked up a jar of mashed beets. “Pretend like we’re talking.”
“We are talking. Why are we squatting? Are you feeling okay?”
“Mrs. Quinn!” Julie squealed. “It’s not our car, it’s my friend Anthoni’s. Is Maddy here?”
The door jingled again and Julie let out another ear-piercing squeal. “MADDEEEEEEEEE!”
Maddy? Maddy Quinn? I peered around the aisle and caught a glimpse of navy-blue high-tops.
Mom’s face was white, which didn’t make sense. If that was Maddy Quinn, then the woman must be Mary Pepper. The same Mary Pepper who swam with Mom in “magical” Thunder Lake six summers in a row. Why were we pretending to talk about baby food?
Julie appeared in the aisle behind us, holding her wet nails in front of herself like a TV doctor getting ready to perform surgery. When I saw the girl standing next to her, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Maddy Quinn didn’t look at all like the girl in pigtails I remembered, but she had a rolled-up comic book in her hand. I couldn’t exactly tell what it was, but I saw the Marvel logo and a sliver of what looked like a metal claw.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Julie said. “I thought they disappeared, and that would have been so weird. I’ve never had anyone disappear in the store before. This is my new friend, Anthoni. She’s the one with the bee car.”
“Carrie Gillis?” Mrs. Quinn said. “I haven’t seen you since the girls were in kindergarten. What on earth are you doing here?”
Mom stood and chitchatted with Mrs. Quinn like she would with any stranger she met on the street. Why weren’t they jumping up and down and hugging like True Blue Friends who hadn’t seen each other in years? I swallowed a few butterflies and gave Maddy a friendly wave. She jutted her chin toward me in a nod and bent her head close to Julie’s.
“I used to know her,” she said. It was barely audible, but I heard it. Maddy Quinn remembered me.
“Have you seen The Showboat?” Mrs. Quinn asked. “You won’t even recognize it. It’s gone downhill ever since Mr. Boulay’s daughter took over.”
“Charlotte?” I asked.
Mrs. Quinn looked surprised. “You know her?”
“Anthoni’s staying there,” Julie said.
Maddy make a choking sound. “Seriously?”
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
Mrs. Quinn gave me the kind of smile you give to a five-year-old who’s said something cute.
“Leon and I bought a log cabin after I got promoted to partner at the firm,” she told Mom. “But then we decided to get out of the rat race and move here year-round. Quality of life is more important than working yourself into the ground, don’t you think?” She reached out and touched Mom’s elbow. “I can’t believe you didn’t know that, Carrie. It’s been too long!”
Maddy whispered something to Julie, and as she turned, she tucked the rolled-up comic into her back pocket. It unrolled enough so I could see what it was. Wolverine and the X-Men.
Mrs. Quinn slapped her hands together. “Cancel your reservation. You and Anthoni are going to stay with us.”
I couldn’t believe it. In a matter of seconds, we’d gone from a dumpy old resort to staying at a log cabin with someone who was going to become my True Blue Friend. I could feel it. It was in my head, clear as day—Maddy Quinn and I sharing a room, trading comics, telling secrets, and making each other laugh until our sides hurt.
“Oh no,” Mom said. “We love The Showboat. It’s perfect.”
“You do?” Julie asked.
I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. Perfect? Love?
Mrs. Quinn sounded almost relieved. “At least come for dinner, then. How about next week…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed the baby-food beets in Mom’s hand. “Another baby? Carrie, I didn’t know!”
Mom straightened herself up to her full height and smiled her super-confident B&B smile. “Oh, this?” she said, holding out the beets. “These are great for smoothies. The antioxidants do wonders for your skin tone. You should try it.”
Julie sidled up to me and started to giggle. “You hear something new every day,” she said. “Baby-food smoothies. Beet baby-food smoothies! It’s pretty weird, but I’d try it. Wouldn’t you, Maddy?”
Maddy Quinn chewed a fingernail and looked me over like she was sizing me up along with the beets.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
For a split second, the dark tone in her voice squashed the floating-on-clouds feeling I’d had since she walked into the store. But another glance at the Wolverine comic convinced me I was on the right track. Maybe … I thought, and then I caught myself. Gillis Girls Don’t Believe in Maybe. I had hard work and stick-to-itiveness on my side. All I needed was a plan.
7
QUEEN BEE
On our way home from Anna Lee’s, it started to sprinkle, and by the time we got to The Blue Heron, rain was pelting down. It churned up the surface of Thunder Lake until the water was gray and choppy. Mom had wanted to spend our first day swimming, but instead, we split up the items on our Gillis Girls Clean Team checklist. We scrubbed every inch of the avocado-green refrigerator and vacuumed the red-and-white-checked curtains.
The cabin was small, so it didn’t take long. The kitchen was only a sink, a stove, and a picnic table in a corner of the living room. There was a tiny bathroom, Mom’s bedroom, and the loft. When every task had been completed, the air smelled like Organic Grapefruit Cleanser instead of dust, and The Blue Heron felt less disappointing than it had the night before.
Mom hung her whiteboard above the picnic table while I made some ramen for lunch. I grabbed a couple issues of Wolverine and the X-Men and collapsed into one of the chairs next to the wicker couch.
“You didn’t tell me about these,” I said.
The Blue Heron might not have much going for it, but it had two incredibly cool chairs. They were made out of rope and hung suspended from the ceiling, like hammocks, only better. Each chair was a cozy, swinging hive full of pillows. At first, I worried the one I’d sat down in would collapse, sending me, my soup, and the comics tumbling onto the floor. But surprisingly, it held.
Mom finished drawing a Potential Clients column on her whiteboard, then sat in the chair next to me and used her feet to sway back and forth while she slurped her noodles. She looked like she’d slept less than I had.
“This place used to be really popular,” she said. “When Gram and Gramps were kids, movie stars came here all the time. Bob Hope stayed every summer.”
“Who’s Bob Hope?”
We sat for a while, swinging and slurping while I read and Mom looked out at Thunder Lake. The rain had stopped and a bright, happy blue was taking over the sky. The bottoms of the clouds were still dark, but the sun’s rays sparkled on the lake like spilled glitter.
“Magic,” Mom breathed.
I flipped through a comic with Jean Grey’s School for Higher Learning on the cover. Talk about magic. Mutant kids are always meeting each other at that school and becoming friends for life. No matter what happens after they leave—if they lose their family, or even if they lose their powers—they stay friends. They stick up for each other, make jokes together, and always show up when needed. I’d been to nine schools, and I’d never found a friend like that. But Maddy …
“Hey, Mom, do you still have last year’s issues of Buzz from the Hive?”
“Sure, why?”
“Just … I remembered an article I want to read again.”
“They’re in my ‘Collateral’ box in the bedroom,” she said.
I retrieved the stack of newsletters and spread them on the picnic table in the kitchen. I sorted through articles like “How to Build a Buzzing Potentials List” and “Five First-Encounter Tactics to Help You Sweeten the Pot.” The article I was looking for was in last year’s June issue on page two:
How to Discover Your Client’s Secret Dream and Become the Person Who Can Make That Dream Come True
By Carrie Gillis
You’ll no longer have a client, you’ll have a True Blue Friend for life—guaranteed!
ACTION STEPS:
1. Meet Potential Clients
Join an activity
2. Narrow In
Identify your best Potential and Make a Meaningful Connection
3. Develop Trust
Don’t bee needy; find a way to bee needed
4. Discover Her Secret Dream
Bee a careful listener
5. Do What It Takes
Become the person who can make that dream come true!
I remembered helping Mom with the list. I’d even come up with the “bee” puns, which I’d been pretty proud of. At the time, we were only trying to fill space in the newsletter, but now, the Action Steps looked like points plotted on a treasure map.
I grabbed my notebook and turned to a blank page. In block letters, I wrote TRUE BLUE FRIEND: ACTION STEPS and copied down Mom’s list. I could already check off number one, Join an activity. There’d been a swim lesson sign-up sheet at Anna Lee’s, and while Mom filled it out, Julie had cheered her on: “Yay! Everyone’s going to be there! Fun!”
Everyone, I assumed, included Maddy Quinn.
As I wrote down number two, Narrow In: Identify your Best Potential, I grinned. Maddy was easily the Best Potential I’d ever had. Like the kids at Jean Grey’s School for Higher Learning, we shared a backstory. She’d liked me once. We’d fought dragons together.
Next to number two, I penciled in Maddy Quinn and drew stars around the name. Making a plan felt great. Ever since Mom had mentioned Maddy, I’d felt like the universe was shouting at me: Now. Now is your chance. It was my job to take charge and make it happen. Like Mom did with Queen Bee. Like she always did. With everything.
By the time I put down my pencil, Mom was back at her whiteboard making her own list. Under her Potential Clients column, she’d written the words “Charlotte Boulay” and added three Action Steps under her name:
1. Free Sample
2. Bee-You-tiful Makeover
3. Home Party
“Charlotte Boulay?” I asked. “Really?”
“Mr. Boulay used to tell our ski team about his daughter who worked in Hollywood with all these famous movie stars. It has to be her, don’t you think?”
“Probably. So?”
“Don’t you think she’d have good connections?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know…”
“Even if she doesn’t, Charlotte would be an ideal Worker Bee,” Mom said. “She could sell Golden Nectar Sunscreen in the front office.”
Out of nowhere, I felt a flash of annoyance.
“To who? Loons?”
Mom winced.
I felt bad. I didn’t know why I’d snapped at her. I’d been feeling great a second ago, but now my chest felt tight.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I know what you mean. But tourist season doesn’t kick off until the Fourth of July. The Showboat will be hopping with people by then.”
She added “Target Date: July 4” next to Charlotte Boulay’s name, but she wrote the words slowly, like she didn’t believe them, and she added a question mark at the end.
I realized what was bothering me.
“Why are you working?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Um … we’re on vacation?” I said. “Besides, you’re Queen Bee now. Recruiting Worker Bees is the Pollinator’s job.”
Mom set her marker down.
“We should talk about that.”
She scratched a mosquito bite on her wrist before looking me in the eye. Something wasn’t right. Had Beauty & the Bee changed the rules? Were they going to give her recruiting duties even though she was a Queen Bee? That wouldn’t be fair.
“I’m not Queen Bee, Anthoni,” she said quietly. “I didn’t make my goal.”
It felt like a sucker punch. Like Emma Frost showed up in her diamond form and gave me a swift kick to the jaw.
“Yes, you did,” I said. “You told me you did.” She wasn’t making sense.
“I didn’t mean to. You jumped to the conclusion, and you were so happy. I couldn’t stand to let you down.”
“You lied to me?”
It didn’t seem possible. I replayed the last two days in my mind, picking apart moments, scenes, all the little things she’d done and said that made me think she was Queen Bee. She’d let me spend two whole days believing that our hard work had paid off. That our ship had come in. She’d let me believe we were done moving from state to state, spending nights and weekends counting inventory and stuffing Healthy Honey Glow sample packs. That we were done bringing our calculator to the grocery store to make sure homemade pizza supplies didn’t bust our food budget for the month.
Mom walked over to the window and gazed out at Thunder Lake.
“Then what are we doing here?” I asked. If we hadn’t made our goal, we hadn’t earned our incentive either. “Tell me the truth.”
She sat down on the picnic bench across from me.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “Mr. Li needed the rent, and I … needed time. To get us back on track.”
The words sunk in—back on track—and that’s when I knew.
Recently, Mr. Li, our landlord, had been stopping by and leaving notes. “Just checking in,” he’d say in a sweet voice when I answered the door. I thought he’d turned over a new leaf, acting nice to his tenants, but he was kicking us out.
I felt queasy.
“Did we…” I couldn’t even think of the right word. Run away? Skip town? Steal?
“I’ll send him the rent,” Mom said. “I promise. When I couldn’t get the Showboat deposit back, I did a cost-benefit analysis, and I thought…”
“We’d hide here for six weeks.” I looked away from her. The spectacular Showboat Resort wasn’t a disappointment. It was a disaster.
“We’re not hiding.” Mom sat up straighter and put on a smile. “We’re on a detour. Detours can be good. Sometimes they’re even Meant to Be…”
We sat in silence while Mom stared out at the lake, chewing her lip and thinking. The clouds had disappeared and the whole sky was a brilliant, bright blue. I glared at the sunshine. It felt wrong and out of place.
Worries began to dogpile on top of me: What if we couldn’t pay back the rent? Would someone come after us? Mr. Li? The police? What was going to happen in six weeks when our time was up at The Showboat?
Where would we go? Not to Gramps. Mom convinced him to move to Shady Rest. We couldn’t live there. And if we couldn’t pay the rent, did we even have money for other stuff? Like food?
The replay in my mind sped back weeks, then months. All this time, she must have known things were going badly. Why didn’t she tell me? She must have been upset and she didn’t say a word. The Gillis Girls were supposed to tell each other everything. We didn’t have anybody else. If we couldn’t trust each other, we were sunk.
Finally, Mom let out a deep breath.
“I’ve got a new plan,” she said.
I leaned forward.
She stood up and erased everything on the whiteboard. Good. If we were going to dig out of this mess, we needed something a whole lot better than Charlotte Boulay.
What she did next stunned me. She picked up the dry-erase marker and tossed it in the trash.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “We’re going to put on our bathing suits, go down to the lake, and enjoy this beautiful day.”
I’d never seen her like this. Stuck. Buying time. Giving up. It seemed impossible that my mom—my unstoppable, stick-to-itive mom—didn’t know what to do. And we were trapped at The Showboat Resort until she could figure it out.
“That’s not a plan,” I said.
Mom bit her lip. “I know, honey. But right now, it’s all I’ve got.”
8
THUNDER LAKE
It was a short walk down the Hansel and Gretel path to the wooden bleachers I’d seen from the loft. The ground was wet under my bare feet and pine needles stuck between my toes. The forest was blanketed in a post-storm damp and hush that managed to feel peaceful and terrifying at the same time.
I’d put on the old Waterbugs Water-Ski Club swimsuit that Mom had saved for two decades in her memory box. It smelled like mothballs, but it fit okay. I felt strange walking half-naked through the woods in a suit borrowed from a person who’d been lying to me for months. I pulled my towel tightly around my shoulders to distract myself from the nervous chill that had settled into my bones.