Maybe a Mermaid Page 8

  “Mom!” I yelled.

  Mrs. Quinn poked her husband in the arm. “What was that?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought … I saw something. I didn’t want to hit it.”

  At first, I thought he was goofing around like before, but he didn’t wink. His eyes were serious. The empty rope bounced wildly on the water as Mr. Quinn spun the boat around. I craned my neck and scanned the lake, but the boat’s waves made the surface choppy and unclear. I couldn’t see a thing.

  17

  SECRETS

  Mom adjusted the ice pack on her face and took the glass of wine Mr. Quinn handed her.

  “That’s what I get for showing off,” she said.

  All the adults laughed as if my mom hadn’t been seconds away from a trip to the emergency room on a gurney. From the boat, it had looked like she got clobbered with her ski, but she’d curled up in a ball to protect herself and bumped her knee into her cheekbone, barely missing her eye. Mr. Quinn had looked worried when he helped her into the boat, and Mrs. Quinn gave her a towel and rubbed her back while we motored slowly toward the house. After it turned out to be only a bruise, they all acted like it was hilarious.

  “You’ve still got it, Gills,” Mr. Quinn said. “The Somersault Crash—classic move!”

  I didn’t find it funny. Especially considering that it was his fault. Mom would have landed the jump fine if he hadn’t swerved like a madman. Even Mrs. Quinn said he ought to have his eyes checked.

  “I told you. I saw something.” Mr. Quinn threw his hands in the air like a wanted criminal.

  Mrs. Quinn rolled her eyes. “Sure. One of Maddy’s mermaids?”

  Mermaids? I tried to catch Maddy’s eye but she was focused on her fork. I didn’t get her. At the beach she was all look-at-me attitude, in the boat she was a laugh riot, but at home she was a mouse. She hadn’t said a single word all through dinner.

  The adults traded stories about what Eagle Waters was like when they were kids. Mom laughed a lot, and it struck me that she hadn’t mentioned Beauty & the Bee all night. Not one word about eye shadow, or wrinkle cream, or the work-from-home opportunity of a lifetime. She didn’t usually wait this long to start her pitch. She was probably angling for the right moment.

  In the middle of the second story about Mr. Quinn’s stunt as a human ski, Maddy set down her fork.

  “Want to go to my room?” she asked.

  Mom gave me an encouraging smile, and I followed Maddy upstairs.

  We stood in front of the marshmallow bed and Maddy chewed her fingernail while I studied the mural on her wall. I thought through my usual list of conversation-starters.

  “What would you rather have?” I asked. “Telepathy like Emma Frost or the ability to control weather like Storm?”

  Maddy stopped chewing her fingernail. “You read X-Men?”

  I nodded. “I’d rather have telepathy,” I said. “Life would be a lot easier if you knew what everyone was thinking.”

  Maddy laughed. It was a nice laugh, like the laugh in the boat. Not the snarky laugh I’d heard at the beach.

  “True,” she said, “but I’d rather make storms.”

  She walked across the room and opened the door to her closet, closing it quickly behind her. When she came out, she was wearing her rectangular glasses. She tossed a stack of comics on the floor and sat down cross-legged.

  “Start with this one,” she said. She handed me a vintage Uncanny X-Men with a hologram of Magneto on the cover. “It’s my favorite.”

  Then she smiled at me. A full-on, magical, let’s-be-friends kind of smile.

  I sat down on the floor next to her and opened the comic book. It was Magneto’s origin story. Magneto was one of the most interesting X-Men because he could be very good or very evil, and you never knew which way he was going to go. Depending on which issues you’d read, it was easy to misjudge him. I supposed that was true with humans, too. Maddy, for instance.

  I played around with the thought while I flipped the pages. If I’d learned anything from comics, it was that one small panel never gives you the whole story. It turned out the real Maddy Quinn wasn’t the one I met on the beach at all. I bet she was sick that day, or her cat ran away, so she was feeling extra jealous, mean, and cranky, like when Magneto’s daughter died and he lashed out and almost destroyed the world. Some people need a second chance. I let my mind take Maddy’s smile and run with it, imagining the next few weeks—the two of us water-skiing together, having sleepovers, reading comics, and telling secrets.

  “Want to know a secret?” Maddy asked.

  My stomach flipped. Did she already have telepathy? Was that why she chose storms?

  “I’m writing my own comic book. A series.” That smile again.

  “Really? About what?”

  Maddy pushed her glasses up on her nose, and leaned forward. “A mermaid.”

  She slipped into her closet again, and when she returned, she handed me a full page from a comic that had been inked, colored, and lettered by hand.

  “Here’s a page I finished today.”

  Three small panels at the top of the page featured a beautiful mermaid with long, wavy hair, swimming happily toward an underwater city. In a much larger panel below, the mermaid looked straight ahead and opened her mouth to reveal huge fangs. Her eyes were narrow bloodred slits and her hair floated wildly around her head. The speech bubble read: Ska-REEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  “Scary mermaid,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Maddy said. “Her name’s Lexie. She drinks blood and she has supersonic powers. She confuses her enemies with her beauty, then drags them down to her lair.”

  “It’s really cool. Why’s it a secret?”

  Maddy shook her head. “People here think my drawings are weird,” she said. “Even Julie. My teacher made me go to the school counselor because she said it’s not normal for a girl to draw people getting their heads ripped off by a mermaid.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “They’re not weird. They’re awesome.”

  “It was different in Chicago, don’t you think?”

  I barely remembered Chicago, but I nodded anyway. I couldn’t believe it. My Action Steps were practically completing themselves. Maddy and I had made a Meaningful Connection and I hadn’t even tried. She liked me. We had things in common. We’d laughed, and now we were already at Step Three: Develop Trust—the most important step. I didn’t want to screw it up. Don’t bee needy, I reminded myself. Find a way to bee needed.

  “I remember your grandpa,” Maddy said. “He was hilarious. Is he still in Chicago?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “In a nursing home. But I haven’t seen him for a while.” A while. Saying it out loud made me realize how long it had been. Five years. I didn’t even know what his room looked like.

  Maddy looked sympathetic.

  “My grandpa moved to New Mexico,” she said. “When I was a kid, he used to tell the best stories. He had this one about a mermaid who lived in Thunder Lake…”

  My mouth went dry. “A mermaid in Thunder Lake?”

  “Yeah.” Maddy rolled her eyes. “I totally believed it. When I first moved here, I used to make Julie go look for her with me. Anyway, that’s where I got the idea. For Lexie.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I even knew they were coming.

  “I’ve seen her,” I blurted. “I’ve seen the mermaid.”

  The moment I said it, I knew it was true. In fact, I think I’d known it ever since I’d seen Charlotte Boulay dive in and not come up. The Boulay Mermaid photo looked too real to be a hoax.

  Maddy blinked at me behind her glasses.

  “I know it sounds impossible,” I said. “It is impossible. She doesn’t look … anything like what you’d think, but I swear…”

  A slow smile spread across Maddy’s face.

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  Maddy’s eyes got saucer-wide, and her grin sent goose bumps pricking down my spine.

  “Ma
ddy!” We both flinched as Mr. Quinn called up from downstairs. “Julie’s on the phone.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her later,” she yelled.

  “What am I? Your personal assistant? Tell her yourself.”

  Maddy shot me an apologetic look. I waved my hand.

  “I’m cool here,” I said, trying not to let on that I was doing cartwheels on the inside. This evening was going better than I could have dreamed. It was like I’d stepped through a doorway to an alternate universe where everything was brighter. More colorful. Filled with possibility. I couldn’t stop smiling.

  As I waited, I read the rest of the Magneto issue and took another look at the Lexie drawing. It really was good. The hair actually looked like it was floating in the water. I stood up and stretched my legs. In my mind, I checked off Action Step Three, and thought through the final two steps in my plan: Discover Her Secret Dream and Do What It Takes to make that dream come true.

  I looked around the room. What was Maddy’s secret dream? To be an artist? How could I help with that? I wondered how many more mermaid illustrations were in the closet. A comic book’s worth? A whole series? If I saw them all, I could get an idea about what to do next. I touched the doorknob, but paused. I should wait for Maddy to show me.

  Emma Frost stared at me from the other side of the room, as if she was sending me telepathic messages. Or trying to. What would Emma Frost do? There was zero chance she’d stand around second-guessing. She’d get the plan done. I only had a few weeks in Eagle Waters. The faster I could discover Maddy’s secret dream, the faster I’d have a True Blue Friend for life—guaranteed!

  I opened the door.

  Maddy’s closet was the size of a small bedroom and there wasn’t one piece of clothing in it. There was a comfy chair, a lamp, two bookshelves, and a real artist’s easel with organized cubbies for pens, pencils, and erasers. One bookshelf was full of comics, and the other held dozens of stuffed animals, mostly dolphins. I picked up an especially squishy dolphin. It had the softest fur I’d ever touched.

  As I moved toward the easel, something glittery caught my eye. A pendant in the shape of a star hung from the lampshade. I turned on the lamp to get a better look. It was an old-fashioned hair clip tied to a string. The silhouette of a mermaid balanced in the center of the star, and the way it dangled made the lamp cast a mermaid-shaped shadow on the wall. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember why.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, and I quickly switched off the lamp. I told myself it was fine, I wasn’t doing anything bad, but my hands shook as I tried to put the squishy dolphin back on the shelf. I knocked another one onto the floor, picked it up, knocked over a third, and before I knew what was happening, stuffed animals were tumbling to the ground. The footsteps were getting closer, almost outside Maddy’s room. In a panic, I left the dolphins in a heap, shut the closet door, and threw myself onto the floor in front of Maddy’s marshmallow bed.

  I opened a comic book to a random page and tried to breathe like a person who wasn’t doing anything but sitting around reading about Magneto. And then I saw it: a fuzzy, pale-blue dolphin the size of my fist lay on the carpet in front of the closet door. It must have tumbled out in the avalanche. I lunged for it, but before I could find a place to put it, the doorknob turned.

  I shoved the dolphin under my shirt and crossed my arms over my belly to cover up the bulge.

  “Sorry about that,” Maddy said as she walked into the room. “Julie’s a motormouth. I hope I never get poison ivy. It sounds disgusting.” She adjusted her glasses and looked at me. “You okay?”

  My heart was pounding so loudly, I was certain she could hear it. I forced a smile.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Your face is really red.”

  Of course it was. I had a stuffed dolphin under my shirt and no idea what to do with it. I thought about confessing, but how was that going to sound? Hey, Maddy, I snooped in your closet, knocked your toys on the ground, and rubbed one of them all over my belly button. So much for Developing Trust.

  “Your mom said you have to go now. I’ll see you at swim lessons?”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to know more about … you-know-who.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’ll be our secret.”

  Maddy Quinn and I had a secret.

  We grinned at each other until it finally sunk into my thick brain that I was supposed to get up off the floor and leave. With a stuffed sea creature stowed away in my shirt.

  Miserably, I gripped the squishy lump with one hand and pushed myself up off the floor with the other.

  “You sure you’re feeling okay?” Maddy asked.

  “Stomachache,” I mumbled, holding the dolphin close to my belly.

  And then—I could hardly believe it—Maddy linked her arm through mine as we walked down the stairs. Even as I clutched the smuggled dolphin, happy thoughts ricocheted through my mind. In a tiny, run-down town in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but swat mosquitoes, I had found a friend. Not just any friend. A friend who could trick ski and illustrate beautiful, terrifying mermaids. A friend who liked X-Men and trusted me with secrets.

  And now I was going to steal her dolphin?

  The hopeful feeling disintegrated. I paused at the bottom of the stairs, reached under my shirt, and held out the fuzzy bottlenose. Maddy dropped my arm.

  I stammered, “I didn’t mean to … I thought … your drawings were really cool…”

  Maddy’s mouth puckered up like she’d eaten something sour. In the middle of my apology, she snatched the dolphin out of my hand and ran upstairs to her room.

  18

  NOVELTY ACTS OF THE VAUDEVILLE STAGE

  “Want to watch a movie?” Mom settled onto the couch and put her feet up on the wicker coffee table. It had started to rain, and the cabin was filled with the patter of raindrops on the roof. It almost felt cozy.

  I did want to watch a movie. It might take my mind off Maddy Quinn. The whole drive home, I kept imagining her opening her closet door, seeing the avalanche of stuffed dolphins, and letting out a loud Ska-REEEEEEE! It didn’t help that Mom couldn’t shut up about Maddy’s X-Men mural and how much we had in common and how it was like I’d manifested the perfect True Blue Friend by thinking positive thoughts and wasn’t it all just Meant to Be.

  “Earth to Anthoni,” Mom said. “You okay?”

  Mom wouldn’t understand about snooping around in Maddy’s room. Snooping wasn’t the kind of activity that attracted positive results. So I had to ask carefully.

  “Did you ever do something sort of bad, but not that bad, and then make it worse by trying to fix it, but in a really dumb way that turns out terribly, and then your friend wouldn’t forgive you for it?”

  Mom raised her eyebrows. “That’s pretty specific,” she said. “And vague. Can I get more details? Gillis Girls Tell Each Other Everything, right?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “We used to.”

  Mom looked hurt, and even though it wasn’t my fault that what I’d said was true, I regretted saying it. And I didn’t want to talk about Queen Bee again. Not now. I had bigger problems.

  “I think I messed things up with Maddy,” I said.

  Mom waited, and when I didn’t offer more, she nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve done something like that,” she said. “Usually the best thing to do is to say you’re sorry and really mean it. A True Blue Friend will forgive you eventually.”

  I sighed. Maddy Quinn wasn’t my True Blue Friend yet. I was right there at Action Step Three: Develop Trust, and I’d blown it. For what? Sure, I’d seen Maddy’s secret studio, so maybe technically I’d made it all the way to Action Step Four: Discover Her Secret Dream. But if Maddy wanted to be a comic-book artist, I couldn’t think of a single way to help.

  I listened to the rain and imagined it splashing into Thunder Lake, each drop sending out a small circle of ripples—hundreds of tiny clones of the splash that Charlotte made every morning when she dove into Thunde
r Lake. I sat up straighter. The mermaid splash. Maddy’s eyes had lit up when I’d mentioned the mermaid. What if seeing a real live mermaid was her secret dream? If that was true, this dolphin thing was only a small setback. A detour. I couldn’t help Maddy become an artist, but I could show her a mermaid.

  I looked sideways at Mom. She was scrolling through movie options on her phone.

  I tried to make my voice sound casual, like chitchat. “Did you ever hear of the Boulay Mermaid?”

  “The what?” Mom’s thumbs continued to scroll.

  “Boulay Mermaid,” I said.

  “Actually, yeah.” She looked up at the ceiling like she was trying to remember something stuck far back in her brain. “I forgot about that. Mr. Boulay used to claim he had mermaids in the family.”

  “He did?”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “He was always telling stories to get the ski team riled up. He had half of us convinced there was a family of foxes living on the second floor of the hotel. Why? How’d you hear about it?”

  That was a tough one. If snooping wasn’t a positive-result activity, breaking into The Black Bear, pawing through someone else’s closet, and “borrowing” a secret photo was downright negative. Not only was I not going to tell Mom everything, I needed to tell a white lie.

  “I brought Charlotte Boulay a Wrinkle-Free sample and she told me about it.”

  Mom put down the phone and gave me an odd look. “That was thoughtful of you,” she said. “Every time I try to go over there, she seems to disappear. But … next time, you shouldn’t visit her alone. I’m sure she’s very nice, but she is a little eccentric.”

  “Do you think it’s real?” I asked.

  “Sure. The key to the Wrinkle-Free line is to use it regularly. If you don’t apply it every morning and night…”

  “I mean the Boulay Mermaid. Do you think it could be real?”