“Me?” Mr. Beeston blustered, almost spilling his tea in his lap. “What can I tell you? I don’t know anything!” His face had practically turned purple, and he looked even more uncomfortable than people generally look on that sofa. What was his problem?
Mom shrugged off his reply and turned to me. “You remember what I told you, don’t you? Why they moved away?”
“They thought you were going crazy because you told them you were in love with a merman.”
Mom nodded. “That’s right. They thought I was delusional or that I was making it all up because I didn’t want to tell them who was the real father of my baby.”
“Didn’t they try to get you to leave Brightport and go and live with them somewhere else?” I asked.
Mom nodded. “But I wouldn’t. I didn’t even know why — I just knew I couldn’t leave. There are all sorts of things about it all that I’ve never understood.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, like why Granddad left me the boat when they went off without me.”
“Why don’t you understand that?” I asked.
Mom shook her head. “There was just something about it that didn’t fit. I used to tell myself it meant that a small part of him forgave me, or even believed me. That maybe when things had calmed down a bit, they’d get back in touch.”
“But they didn’t?” I prompted.
“No. Not once. Nothing. Apart from the cards they sent for birthdays and Christmas. That was it. They never even wrote more than their names. Not even Love. Just Mom and Dad, or Nan and Granddad on yours.” She smiled sadly at me. “It was so strange, so unlike them. They were always so warm and friendly. Everyone knew that about them. But what could I do? They just didn’t want to know me.”
Mom fell silent. There wasn’t much any of us could say. Dad held tightly on to her hand. Mr. Beeston was still fidgeting and twitching. All the time Mom was talking, he’d been sitting there looking around the room, pulling at a loose thread on his jacket, tapping his foot nervously. It was as though he were trying not to listen.
Oh, I’m sorry, I felt like saying. Are we boring you? His life was obviously much more important than anyone else’s.
The second Mom stopped talking, he slurped his tea down in one final glug and jumped up from the sofa. Pulling up his sleeve, he looked at his watch. “Gosh, is that the time?” he said in his I’ve-got-much-more-important-things-to-do-than-waste-my-time-with-you-people tone of voice. “I’d better get going.”
And before we could say “Oh, really, do you have to? Won’t you stay for another cup of tea?”— as if!— he’d shuffled over to the door, nodded quickly at the three of us, and made his exit.
“Whoops, sorry, didn’t see you there!” we heard him exclaim. “Good grief, what the blazes are you doing here? Anyway, can’t stop — things to do and all that. Catch you later.”
Who was he talking to? I jumped up and ran to the door. I don’t know who I was expecting, but when I saw who it was, it was the most welcome surprise I’d had since we’d gotten here.
I threw myself into the arms that were waiting wide open for me.
“Millie!” I hugged her tightly as she laughed and squeezed me back.
Then she let go and clambered through the door. “Looks like I got here just in time,” she said, looking around and tutting loudly. “Can’t you folks go five minutes without getting yourselves mixed up in some sort of trouble?”
Mom leaped to her feet. “Millie! What on earth are you doing here?”
Millie threw her arms around Mom. “Couldn’t stand it without you,” she said. “Archie said I was the biggest misery fins he’d ever seen. There was another team heading out this way for a couple of weeks, so he arranged for me to hitch a ride.”
“I thought you couldn’t bear to be parted from him,” Dad said with a mischievous grin.
“Yes. Well, turns out I can’t bear to be parted from you all even more.” She pursed her lips. “And from the sound of things, it seems like you’re not much good without me, either.”
“From the sound of things? You mean you’ve been listening outside the door?” I said.
Millie flushed slightly. “I was trying to work out the perfect moment to make a grand entrance,” she admitted. “Except Beeston ruined that one for me, didn’t he? Typical.” She headed for the kitchen. “Now, what does a weary traveler have to do to get a cup of Earl Grey around here?”
“If you ask me, it’s time to stop whining about your parents and do something about it,” Millie said with her usual bluntness. She’d plonked herself down on the same sofa Mr. Beeston had been on. Somehow she made it look a lot smaller.
“What do you mean, Millie?” Mom asked, her voice strained and raw. “How can I do anything about it? I don’t even know where they went.”
Millie blew on her tea. “Yes, you do,” she remarked, then took a loud slurp from her cup.
“You know where they are?” I burst out. “But I thought —”
“I don’t know where they are at all. Millie, what are you talking about?”
“Postmarks,” she said simply.
“Postmarks?” I repeated.
Millie sighed. “Come on, Mary P. You’re telling me you didn’t hold on to every card, every envelope?”
Mom shook her head. “Well, actually, no. I didn’t,” she said, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. “They weren’t exactly full of touching sentiment.”
“And you never looked at the postmarks?”
Mom didn’t reply.
“I know you did, Mary P. Because you showed them to me. We talked about it. We looked it up on a map. Remember?”
Mom looked down. “Yes, I remember,” she said eventually.
“Where was it, now? Bridge something, wasn’t it? Bridgehaven? Bridgemeadows?” Millie tapped her lip and furrowed her forehead in concentration.
“Bridgefield,” Mom said flatly. “Not that it matters.” She got up and walked over to the kitchen. “Who would like something to eat? I’m starving.”
“Mom, why doesn’t it matter?” I said, biting my lip while I waited for her to reply. Mom doesn’t take kindly to being pushed on a subject that she’s decided is closed.
“Because I’m not planning to try to get in touch.”
“Why not?” I persevered.
Mom turned to face me. “They’ve made it clear that they don’t want to have anything to do with me. I’m not going to go begging them.”
“But Mom,” I insisted, “we’ve been assigned to try to bring the mer and human worlds together. Maybe this could be how we start.”
Mom drew in a breath, pausing just long enough to give me a bit of hope that she might be about to change her mind.
Then she shook her head. “No, I’ve decided. We’ll find another way to get our task started. We’ve still got this whole development thing to sort out, too. And, so far, we haven’t had any bright ideas on that. If we don’t make progress soon, we might as well give up and tell Neptune to find another family for the job.”
“But Mom —”
“No buts,” Mom said firmly. “I’m not putting myself through that again. It took me long enough to get over what they did. I don’t intend to give them the chance to do it all over again. Subject closed. Now let’s have some breakfast.”
And with that she got some bread out of the cupboard and started to slice it.
I opened my mouth to say something else, but Dad shook his head at me. “Best leave it,” he said softly. “You know what your mom’s like once she’s made up her mind.”
I looked at Millie. She was scribbling something in a velvety notebook while Mom was making breakfast. Then she shoved the notebook in her bag and winked at me. “Don’t worry, pet,” she said in a whisper. “It’ll be OK.”
I don’t know what made her think anything was going to be OK. As far as I could see, since we’d gotten to Brightport, things had just gone from bad to worse.
Bu
t there was nothing I could do now. I decided to let it drop, even though it felt as if the conversation were still hovering all around us like a heavy mist.
I suddenly had a longing to see the one person who might help me feel better. And for the first time in ages, it wasn’t Aaron. It was the person who always cheered me up, always made me look on the bright side of life, and always helped me find a solution when things were looking hopeless.
“Can I go over to Shiprock after breakfast?” I asked. I needed to see Shona.
It was still early enough to catch Shona before school. We swam out toward the playground where we used to hang out. It’s really just a sandy patch where bits of rope and anchors and seaweed had been gathered and turned into things to climb over or crawl under. We swam through a large abandoned porthole and sat on a long plank of wood. Nearby, a lobster poked its head out through a gap in a rock, its black eyes facing us, pincers sticking out like a giant handlebar mustache.
As we swam, I caught her up on everything that had happened.
“It all sounds a bit grim,” Shona said. “Poor you.”
“Yeah, I know. The only decent thing is that I don’t have to go to Brightport High till the fall,” I said. And I get to hang out with Aaron. I had a feeling that Shona had started to get a bit tired of me talking about Aaron, and right now I didn’t want to do anything to annoy her, so I didn’t say that part out loud. I wasn’t going to risk upsetting Shona on top of everything else. I decided to change the subject.
“What’s it been like here?” I asked.
“Miserable! School’s no fun without you,” she said. “Nothing’s the same without you,” she added, making me feel even more guilty about the fact that I’d been so pleased that Aaron and I would get to spend even more time together. I hadn’t thought about missing Shona till this morning.
“In fact, nothing’s the same at all,” she went on. “The atmosphere at school is awful. Mrs. Sharktail’s been in a foul mood, and everyone’s scared of getting hauled up for a major telling-off in front of the school.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” I said, remembering the shame of all those eyes on me while Mrs. Sharktail made me feel like I was the most disgusting thing on the planet.
“And all anyone can talk about is what’s happening over in Brightport and how it might affect us. We felt the walls shaking at my aunt’s last night — it was pretty scary. She thinks we should just pack up and move, but Dad says it’ll die down and we shouldn’t leap into anything drastic. The worst thing is just not knowing what’s going on. Have you heard any more about it?”
“Mom was talking to someone at the Laundromat,” I said. “They told her the council’s going to decide what to do at their next planning meeting.”
Shona nodded. “So all we can do is wait?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “I’m sure coming back here was meant to be better than this.”
“I know. The only good thing is Sirens and Seas. We’ve got a new teacher, and she’s been telling us some new siren tales that we’ve never heard before.” Shona’s eyes brightened in that way that only siren talk can make them.
“Like what?”
“The lost sirens!” Shona got up from the log and swam over to the anchor on the other side of the playground. She darted around it, swishing this way and that, making a shoal of tiny purple fish turn and dart away as one.
“There was a group of sirens who disappeared years and years ago. One of them was known all across the oceans for her singing. Fishermen deserted their boats and threw themselves into the seas to find her.”
Shona hesitated. Before we’d met, she thought nothing of the idea of luring fishermen to watery graves. Since we’d been friends and she’d realized humans could be OK, she wasn’t so comfortable about that part of a siren’s job anymore. And with a bit of luck, no one would see it as part of the job soon, if Neptune was serious about the two worlds coming together — and if we managed to make it happen!
“Anyway,” she went on quickly, “she was one of the top sirens, and then one day she vanished — just like that. Gone without a trace. There was a group of them. She and her friends sang together sometimes, and all of them disappeared overnight.”
“For good?” I asked.
Shona nodded and swam back to me, swinging on an abandoned rope and brushing the seafloor with it as she swam. A shoal of bright blue fish rushed out from underneath, zigzagging away from us. “None of them have ever been seen again.” Her eyes sparkled. “The legend says that they went off to a magical place that’s so well hidden it’s virtually invisible! And guess what else?”
“What?”
“Miss Merlin’s done loads of research into it. Siren legends and mysteries are her favorite thing, and she knows more about them than anyone in the whole ocean! She told us the last place they were reported to have been seen.”
“And?”
Shona looked as if she were about to burst with excitement. “And it’s near here!”
I knew instantly what she was thinking. Before Shona met me, she’d never really had an adventure. Since we’d been best friends, we’d hardly had anything but!
“You want to see if we can find them?”
Shona nodded excitedly. “Look, I need to get to school. But think about it. Maybe we could look this weekend. It might distract you from everything else that’s going on.”
She had a point. And anyway, it did have an interesting ring to it — a group of sirens all vanishing into thin air overnight, never to be seen or heard from again. We could at least pretend that we were going to find them. Anything had to be better than sitting around getting more and more miserable about — well, about pretty much everything.
“You’re on,” I said with a grin. I knew Shona would manage to make me smile. She always does.
“Swishy!” She grinned back at me. “I’ll see if I can find out any more from Miss Merlin. We could go on Sunday.”
“Let’s do it!”
With that, we headed back. I had a slight twinge when we went our separate ways and she swam off to school. I don’t even know what the twinge was. A whole mix of things, I suppose. A bit sad seeing her go off on her own to school without me. A bit jealous of her still going to mermaid school and learning about things like sirens disappearing into invisible hiding places while I would soon be back to French and fractions.
And, yes, if I’m honest, there was a little bit of guilt in there, too, at the fact that I was excited about getting back to Brightport and spending the rest of the day with Aaron.
I waited for Shona to stop and wave before she rounded a corner, then I turned and swam back toward Brightport. A group of long black fish swam parallel with me, as though we were racing. Ahead, a stripy blue-and-pink fish swam across my path. Seaweed swayed below me, feathery ferns brushing the end of my tail as I swam over it. A feeling of peace washed over me. I smiled to myself as I headed home. Everything was going to be fine; I could tell.
And things were fine all week. Mom was back at the bookshop where she used to work. She’d gone in one day to say hello and it turned out one of the new assistants had just left, so they grabbed her right away and got her back on the job. That seemed to make her happier — as did the fact that Millie was around again. Millie had loads of friends in Brightport, so hadn’t had any trouble finding somewhere to stay. Mrs. Swindale, who ran one of the guesthouses on the waterfront, said she could stay there free of charge for as long as she wanted in exchange for a daily tarot reading, a couple of Reiki sessions, and a chakra cleansing or two.
Dad was busy working with Mr. Beeston, and Mom had even managed to get Aaron’s mom a part-time job helping out at the local thrift shop — which just left Aaron and me.
I showed him all my favorite parts of Brightport: the back streets where you could get lost if you didn’t know your way around, the walk along the promenade, where you could watch the sun set over the sea. We even went to look at the Rushtons’ new theme park. We on
ly looked in from the outside, though. I didn’t want to bump into Mr. and Mrs. Rushton. After what had happened with Mandy, I couldn’t face it.
Once I’d shown Aaron the town, I decided to show him the other side of Brightport, the side I’d only known about since I’d discovered I was a mermaid — in particular, Rainbow Rocks. We swam there together. I told him that it was where I’d first met Shona, and where my mom had said good-bye to my dad when I was only a baby. That was the last time she’d seen him till last year.
“It’s very special here, isn’t it?” Aaron said, swimming slowly around the rocks. The water was so clear that you could see every pebble and every fish below us, even the ones that were virtually see-through, little stick-thin things flicking through the water like darts.
I was glad he could feel it too. Rainbow Rocks was possibly my favorite place in the world. My favorite place in Brightport, anyway.
It had been a magical week so far and I didn’t want it to end. Soon everyone would be done with school and it wouldn’t feel as though we had the whole place to ourselves anymore.
But the week would end.
And so would the wonderful, magical feeling.
Friday morning I was at home on my own when a thud on the front deck signified that someone had arrived. And by the way the boat rocked with their arrival, I had a good guess who it might be.
“Where is she?” Millie burst through the door, breathless and scarlet. “Where’s your mom?”
“At work,” I said. “Why?”
Millie shook her head. “Not there. Can’t find her.”
“She might have gone to the store,” I said. “Millie, what is it? Are you OK?”
Millie nodded as she caught her breath. “Oh, blast! We’ll come back for her as soon as we can. I can’t wait — I’ll have to take you on your own first. Come on!”
“Come on what?” I asked.
Millie grabbed my hand. “You’re not to say anything. We’ll bring them over as soon as your mom’s back, OK?”