care. He holds his head high, even though I can’t keep from laughing
as we file into the elevator. “We still have a lot to discuss,” Kurt
says.
“You know, I can tell you’re going to be the life of the party.”
What an interesting contraption,” Thalia goes.
Before I can stop her, she runs her fingers all the way up and
down the elevator numbers. B to 17.
“Thalia,” Mom says in her best mom voice, “you must only push one
button.”
“Which one?”
“The level you wish to go to.”
“Which level do we wish to go to?” Her eyes are less intense than
yesterday, her lashes so long they look like they’re reaching out for
you.
My mother presses her finger to her mouth to suppress a giggle.
Like I said, she’s always wanted a daughter. “Level L to go out to the
street. To go back home, Level 14.”
I figure Kurt, in his own way, must be amazed by the elevator.
That is, until he says, “We don’t need metal boxes in Toliss. We can
swim wherever we like. You remember, Lady Sea?”
Mom doesn’t answer, but I can smell her longing-a petal being
crushed between fingertips. Then I see Layla’s face in the back of my
mind. She loves me not .
“It’s nice to rest your fins once in a while,” Thalia says.
“Well, there’s one reason merfolk are not as fat as humans,” he
says simply.
“The delicious kelp and algae diet?”
“Tristan, be nice.”
“He called me fat! He called us fat!”
“I said, humans. Not ex-mermaids and their offspring.”
I stuff my hands in my pockets and watch the numbers go down. My
palms are sweating, and I don’t think I’ve finished shedding my scales
around some very sensitive areas. How the hell are the three of them
so composed? I’ve turned into a merman, and now we’re going to the
mall. I feel like I’m about to erupt, as if the fish half of myself is
trying to break through. Wasn’t this tattoo supposed to help with
that?
“I think your tattoo didn’t work,” I say.
Kurt observes me a moment. The doors open and we walk past the
neighbors, who stare at Kurt and Thalia so long that the door starts
to shut with them in the middle. The tall lovely boy whose clothes are
too small for him and the young girl who makes you want to sigh when
you glance at her.
“I believe it takes a bit to settle in. Magic is gradual, not
instantaneous, contrary to whatever you’ve been exposed to.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“The point is that at least you’re no longer in a bathtub too
small to fit your fins.”
“You mean you don’t feel antsy at all?”
He thinks on it as we cross the street to the car. He looks like
he’s going to say something smart-ass-ish. Thalia suddenly stops. Her
high-pitched voice comes out shapeless, just a mumble of hysterical
sounds.
She stands in the middle of the street, reaching down to grab a
Chihuahua the size of a football from the road, its puke-pink leash
dangling as it wiggles in Thalia’s grasp. She doesn’t know not to stop
in the middle of the street. Two cars honk and drive around her but
don’t slow down. I run and grab her around the waist. An SUV holds his
horn down and hits the brakes, stopping right where she was standing
two heartbeats ago. The driver rolls down his window to curse at us
before running the red light.
“Oh my,” Thalia says.
People on the street stop and stare. Others stand on their stoops
and crane their necks to get a better look at us. I set Thalia on the
ground. The puppy barks, and she holds him up so that he licks my
face.
“Thank Lord Sea for saving us,” she tells him. The ugly little
thing barks at me with sharp teeth. She holds him like a baby doll
while a girl runs across the street, struggling to hold on to five
other leashes.
“Thank you! So much!” Her face is almost green with sickness.
There’s something that looks like gum stuck in her braces. “That’s a
five-thousand-dollar dog. Mrs. Hirschwitz would’ve killed me.”
Thalia hands over the dog with a pout on her pretty lips. The dog
walker waves at us as she gets pulled in six different directions by
her borrowed hounds.
“What a horrific line of duty,” Kurt says, opening the passenger
door for Thalia and then letting himself into the back.
Mom reaches over and holds Thalia’s chin gently. “I know this is a
new world. It is different. It is dangerous. I can’t have anything
hurt you, okay? Please, stay close to us.”
“Also, don’t stand in front of moving metal,” I say, slightly
shaking from the rush of adrenaline.
Thalia nods. “I just missed my Atticus.”
“Your catfish?”
“Her sea horse.”
She lets my mom buckle her seat belt and slumps down, not unlike a
girl her age who’s been told she can’t have a puppy. I picture her
room as a giant cave with seaweed and tiny stolen trinkets.
Mom turns on the radio. The Beach Boys sing something about
sunshine and girls in rainbow colors and surfing. We drive through the
grayest day of the summer, passing girls in rain boots and short
dresses and men with umbrellas tucked under their arms. I let all the
images outside the car window drift through my mind so that I don’t
think of one concrete image. One I’ve dreamt every time I shut my
eyes. The silver mermaid. Her beautiful, ghostly face. The sharp
teeth. The nails long and dirty at the tips like they’d been dipped in
blood.
And then the Beach Boys get completely drowned out by static.
Kurt turns to me and says, “I am indebted to you.”
“I thought I’m already your duty,” I say, in air quotes.
“I am here because the king wished it. But you have saved my
sister. Now I also wish to be here.”
He turns back to the window. I wonder if all merdudes are this
stiff even when they’re trying to be friendly. “To answer your
question from before, I am antsy,” he says. “I’ve just had more years
to practice hiding it. Besides, at the end of it I always go back to
the sea.”
“So if you don’t like being in human form, why even come on land?”
“Because I go where my family goes. Besides, it gets boring after
a few years with the same people at court.”
“When you guys get bored, you go island-hopping. When I get bored
I watch a movie.”
“We don’t have those.”
Thalia sits up in her seat. “The moving pictures! Oh, Lady Sea,
may we please go see one? Though the last time we saw one on the
Florida coast the automobile smelled like dead cow.”
“The last movie you went to see was a drive-in, and you still look
about fourteen?”
“We age slowly,” Kurt says, “like the sea itself. I’m 103.”
“God damn,” I go. “How old are you, Mom?”
“Didn’t your father tell you you’re not supposed to ask a lady her
age?”
We get on the expressway. I can’t smell the sea anymore, but the
smell of metal and burning rubber and oil makes me queasy.
“Is this normal?” I ask Kurt.
“It would depend on what is normal to you. What are you referring
to?”
“The smells. I smell things a lot more than before I changed. When
the storm was coming, I could smell it. Only I didn’t know that I
could. When people get too close to me, I can smell what they’re
feeling .”
“It helps when you’re swimming along to detect if there are any
nasty things in the water with you. Or if you’re looking for food.”
In the rearview mirror I catch my mom looking at us and smirking.