Their faces told me it would be stupid to speak, so I rose without a word, feeling like my brain was sloshing in the same gritty water dripping from my hair. I took my backpack from Miss Paige and let myself out of Principal Ray's office. My feet seemed to move without my control, taking me across the schoolyard, past Eriana Trench, and back to the road. I didn't make eye contact with anybody I passed, but I felt gazes on me in my mud-covered state.
The rain started, but I was already wet and I decided it would be good if some mud washed off my skin before I walked in the door. Coming home early was embarrassing enough; I didn't need to look like I'd spent the morning making mud pies.
It occurred to me that once I made it home, I wouldn't be allowed out again for a long time. I turned off the road and traipsed through the woods, stopping at the edge of the beach.
A small rock tower waited for me at the shoreline. I hesitated. I couldn't help but feel like Papa and the missing sailors and Nilus had all put their arms across my path, stopping me from going further.
The rain soaked my hair until I felt like I'd just taken a bath. I pushed forwards. I picked up the rock at the top of the pile and threw it as far as I could into the water.
The sound of the rain drowned out any noise it made when it landed. But she would hear it under the water.
Sure enough, a blonde head poked out of the waves some ways away. It sank back down, and seconds later, she was right at the shoreline. She eyed me, plainly wondering why I'd come so early.
"What's wrong?"
I plopped down on the wet, jagged rocks, and my tears started flowing.
"Oh, Mee, don't cry," she said, pulling herself from the water.
Her arms wrapped around me in a hug. Her skin was cold as always, but her embrace was soothing, so I buried my face in her hair that smelled of seawater.
She patted my hair and said nothing until I was able to stop long enough to explain.
"Papa took away the necklace."
I couldn't look at her when I said it.
She was quiet, but after a moment, she hugged me tighter.
"Don't let that old man get to you. He probably wanted to keep the shells for himself."
I shook my head, spraying water from my hair. "He hates the sea. He always says—"
I couldn't bring myself to tell her how much he hated mermaids, how my parents would lock me in the house forever if they knew where I ran off to all the time.
Lysi pulled back, looking at my puffy eyes. "I can make you another one, Mee. Please don't cry because of that. The ocean is full of shells. I'll make you an even nicer one. You can hide this one so your papa won't find it."
I smiled a little and wiped my eyes, rubbing dirt and sand across my face.
Lysi laughed. "You can be so messy."
She wiped the dirt from my face with a clean hand.
"You're not much better," I said, my voice thick, and I pulled a wad of seaweed from her coppery hair. I tried to smile, but it faded right away. "Now I can't even go back to school. I got in a fight. I bet Papa's going to keep me in the house 'til I'm eighteen."
"No, he won't," said Lysi, though she sounded unconvinced.
We sat in silence for a long time, and I watched the waves smash into each other and break into a white, frothy spray. I couldn't stop thinking about having to face Papa. But what could I do? Stay out here forever? Live in a hut by the sea and never go home? The idea was tempting.
"No sense in getting sad about it," said Lysi, and I realised she'd been watching me intently. She reached over and tickled me until I was forced to start giggling.
"That's better," she said.
I wiped the last of my tears, still laughing. She always had a way of making me feel better.
"Want to see something neat?"
I nodded.
She sat up and smoothed her hair, reminding me of a much older girl fussing over herself in the mirror. I sat taller as well, trying to copy the way she positioned her shoulders.
"You ready?" she said.
"Ready."
Lysi closed her eyes meditatively, and for a minute I considered sneaking around and scaring her from behind. But then she snapped them open, and I gasped. The soft whites of her eyes and deep blue irises had been replaced with a fiery shade of red.
Her teeth were clenched in concentration while I sat frozen, staring with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
"How do you do that?" I whispered, and the sound of my voice was enough to break her concentration so her eyes faded back to normal.
"It only happens when I feel really angry," she said.
"What'd you do to make yourself angry?"
She smiled and took a lock of her hair in her hand, twirling it around her finger. "Just now, I imagined your papa taking away your necklace."
I dropped my eyes, feeling my insides deflate again.
"Other times, I imagine fighting off someone who comes to take you away from me."
"Like a kidnapper?"
She slapped her hands on the ground and pulled herself towards me with her small, frail arms. She made her eyes red again as she said, "Like a big, scary, flesh-eating—"
"Stop!"
She stopped, letting her eyes drain back to normal.
"You're scaring me," I whispered.
"If you were a mermaid, you would be able to do that too."
I thought of myself with big, fiery red eyes and smiled, feeling devilish. "It'd be fun to scare people who make me angry."
I thought of Papa, and how scared he would have been if my eyes turned red when he tried to take my necklace away.
"More of me will change as I become a grown-up," she said, "like my skin and my teeth—and my fingers, I think."
I scanned from her hair down to her greenish-brown tail. "All the time? Or just when you're mad?"
"When I'm mad."
I looked at my hands, wondering how fingers might change in an instant.
"I know how you could do that too, Mee. If you want."
I snapped my head up. "You mean you know the way to make me a mermaid?"
She smiled coyly. "Maybe."
"Tell me!"
She swirled her hands in the water for barely three seconds before the secret became too much.
"Okay, I'll tell you." She leaned in and cupped a hand around my ear so she could whisper, as though protecting the secret from eavesdroppers. "My brother says a mermaid kiss will turn a human."
I gasped. "A kiss!"
She giggled and fell backwards into the water, splashing me. When she emerged, she had stopped giggling and was looking at me curiously. "It won't work until I'm a grown-up. I'll know because my skin and my fingers and my teeth will all change, not just my eyes."
I felt a stab of disappointment. The ocean would have been my perfect escape. I was suspended from school; Papa was sure to yell at me and make me cry when he got home from work; Dani would be impossible to face once she found out I got suspended. I would gladly abandon life above water, especially to be with Lysi.
"Well, I feel like a grown-up," I said hesitantly. "Do you feel like a grown-up?"
She thought for a moment. "Yes, I think I do."
I thought of Mama, who I might miss if I couldn't see her every day. I might miss Annith, a little. But I definitely wouldn't miss Papa.
Lysi pulled herself up on land again. "Should we try it?"
She slid closer and I suddenly felt nervous. I'd never kissed anyone before, unless I counted one time when Tanuu ran up and kissed me on the lips before I could push him away. I remembered finding him later and rubbing mud in his face in revenge.
I looked again at the frothing waves and tried to imagine what it must be like to live underneath them.
"Do you want to?" she said. I felt her studying the side of my face.
I took a breath. The thought came to me that it'd be much easier to find my brother if I was a mermaid.
"Yes."
"All right."
She was right next to me now.
I faced her and tried to smooth my sopping wet hair. She leaned in, until our noses almost touched.
"Close your eyes," she said.
I did. I pushed my lips out, not sure what to do but trying to copy the way older kids kissed.
It was over quickly. Her lips touched mine and then she pulled away. There wasn't even a kissing sound like the older kids made.
I opened my eyes.
"How do I know it worked?"
Lysi frowned. "Do you feel different?"
I touched my lips. "My lips are tingly."
I ran my hands over my arms and legs. They felt the same.
"Try putting your legs together, so it's easier for them to turn into a tail."
I did so.
Lysi shook her head. "I don't think it worked. We'll have to wait until we're grown-ups. I bet turning someone into a mermaid has to do with my teeth growing in."
I glowered at my stupid human legs, tears burning my eyes again. Dodging my punishment was not in the forecast for me that day.
Suddenly, something whistled past us behind Lysi. We both jumped and Lysi spun around, making an odd hissing noise. I grabbed her wrist and peered behind her. The top of a bolt protruded from the rocky sand.
We stared at each other, our eyes wide. Lysi's mouth hung open. She had jumped between me and the water—and I was sure a second bolt would've followed if I wasn't in the way. I looked behind us. A dark figure stood between the trees, aiming a crossbow.
Papa.
I leapt to my feet, shrieking. "No!"
Lysi flattened herself into the rocks as another bolt shot wide of her, burying into the sloppy shoreline.
"Papa, stop!" I put a hand out. My fear was only heightened by the panic in my own voice.
His shout boomed across the beach as he aimed again. "Move aside, Metlaa Gaela!"
I turned back to Lysi, who was still flat against the rocks, her eyes wide and terrified. "Lysi, get away!"
My heart gave a painful jolt when she looked at me with such terror in her pretty blue eyes.
"Get away!" I said again, and I stepped in front of her so it'd be harder for Papa to aim.
He roared. "Meela, move!"
I glanced back to make sure Lysi made it into the falling tide.
Her eyes locked on mine, and they burst red. She opened her mouth—and I must have imagined the sudden sharpness of her teeth, the way the smooth ivory of her skin seemed to rot away. She screeched, and the sound rippled down my core like ice.
I screamed and stepped back. My foot caught on a rock and I fell. Papa had a careful aim, and he shot around me. The bolt whizzed over my head and splashed into the water.
Lysi screamed.
I scrambled to my feet. "No—Lysi!"
Her tail flipped up, but then she was gone. Blood stained the water.
I ran into the waves, my feet clumsy, and soon found myself paddling helplessly in the shallow water.
"Lysi!"
My feet kicked against the pulling tide, and my pants clung heavily to my legs.
I screamed for her again, paddling outwards. What happened to her? Did she sink? Or was she swimming away? My foot cracked against a rock beneath the water, but the pain was nothing beneath the echo of her scream.
The waves crashed around me. Already, the blood-red water dispersed, leaving only black in its place.
"Meela, get out of there!" Papa's voice was closer now, down on the beach.
I couldn't control my sobs as I tried to find Lysi, to see if she was all right or if she was hurt and needed help.
A hand gripped my upper arm. I strained against it, but Papa was too strong. He pulled me from the water and dragged me to shore, and all the while I kicked against him. I screamed at the pain in my arm from his grip, and in my knees and feet from the rocks, and in my eyes from the stinging saltwater, and most of all in my heart as I remembered the paralyzed fear on Lysi's face.
We stomped through the bush and onto the dirt road. Papa kept a firm grip on my arm that burned every time I stumbled. My cries of pain did nothing to make him ease up.
Before we got to the front door, he let me go and faced me, dark eyes bulging.
"Were you trying to get yourself chewed on like scrap meat?" he yelled. I instinctively stepped back from his booming voice. "I can't even begin to imagine what you were doing down there!"
"We live on an island," I yelled back. "You can't expect me to stay away from the sea my whole life!"
He clenched and unclenched his fists like he was struggling to relieve tension. "Were you trying to make friends with that demon?"
I didn't know what to say. Should I tell him the truth and make him angrier? Or should I lie and betray my friendship with Lysi? What would he think I was doing, if not making friends with her? Would he think Lysi was trying to kidnap me?
My silence stretched for too long, and Papa's lined face turned purple.
The door opened and Mama's jaw dropped. She looked from me to Papa, who faced each other on the front porch, Papa's eyes bulging, tears on my cheeks, clothes soggy, hair dripping.
"What's happened?"
Papa pointed at me with a shaking fist. "Your daughter was at the beach, getting cozy with a sea demon."
Mama's face turned to horror and then to sadness. Tears sprung to my eyes. What kind of daughter was I, causing this look on her face?
Papa turned to me again. "This is the most foolish, selfish thing you have ever done. Think of what your mother and I would have to go through, losing our only remaining child."
"You wouldn't have lost me!"
"Do you understand what you were willingly sitting next to?"
"She's my friend!"
I didn't know which was worse: Papa's stunned silence, which stretched for so long I thought it might never end, or the yell that followed, which must have been heard across the island.
"They feed on human flesh, Meela! You think that's the mark of a friend?"
"They're not all bad, Papa," I shouted.
He took a breath and covered his eyes. When he looked at me again, he didn't blink, like he really wanted me to understand. "All those sailors—every one of them that was supposed to come back yesterday—do you know what happened to them? Do you know what happened to your brother?"
"Kasai, dear," said Mama softly, but her voice sounded like a warning.
"No," said Papa, snapping. "She's ten years old! I was already a man when I was ten—a hunter."
I stared at Mama, unsettled by the way her eyes had widened.
"Meela," said Mama, speaking before Papa could go on. "You remember what we told you when your brother didn't come back from the Massacre? That his ship would still return one day?"
I didn't respond, but she continued anyway.
"Honey, we didn't want to scare you."
Numbness grew in my fingers, working its way upwards.
"Your brother was murdered," said Papa. "All of them were. The entire ship was murdered and fed upon by merm—"
"No!" I clapped my hands over my ears, not wanting to hear the rest. Mermaids had not killed my brother. Mermaids did not eat him. It wasn't possible.
The whole world seemed to stop. Why had Mama and Papa let me believe he could still be alive? Did they think I was too fragile to know?
My arms and legs and lips felt numb, like the blood rushed away from them. He wasn't lost. He was dead. But somehow I knew that. Deep down, I always knew my brother was dead. The mermaids really had killed him.
I just never wanted to believe Lysi's kind was responsible for my family's pain.
Mama's arms wrapped around me, pulling me into the house.
Lysi would never kill and eat a human. She was good. Mermaids had to be good.
But I remembered what she'd shown me this afternoon, the way her eyes became so inhuman.
Something must have changed on my face, because Mama said softly, "It's only a matter of time until her instincts take over, honey. We're looking out for you."
My eyes burned. I couldn't stop the tears from escaping. My voice came out high-pitched and unconvincing. "Our friendship is stronger than her instincts."
Mama opened her mouth, but Papa spoke first. "A demon's allure only mimics true feelings. Your friendship was a fake attraction, the same one that ends in the death of sailors everywhere."
"It isn't fake," I yelled, but my heart thudded against my ribcage, hammering doubt into my bones. "She wanted to be my friend. If it was all phony we wouldn't have been so . . . so . . ."
So what? Strongly connected? Loyal to each other? What could I possibly try to explain that couldn't be faked?
"They sent her to trick you into false companionship. It was a test of her abilities."
Mama put a hand out to Papa, but he continued.
"You were a game to her. It's happened before, to—"
"Please, Kasai!" said Mama, and Papa stopped.
"Calm down," she said to me. My breath escaped in quick sobs, and I sounded like Mama did when she was having an asthma attack.
She reached for my cheek with a soothing look on her face, but I turned and ran down the hallway, a lump in my throat so thick I thought I might choke on it.
I dove onto my bed and buried my face in the quilt, trying to calm my panicked breathing.
"It wasn't fake," I screamed into the blankets, but I didn't know anymore if I was defending Lysi or trying to reassure myself that Mama and Papa were wrong.
Even if she was growing up and had instincts that made her eyes go red . . . even if she did have the urge to murder . . . she would never hurt me.
But even as I thought that, betrayal pulsed through my veins like ice, and I wondered what it meant to have a real friend. How did I know any of my friendships were real, if not Lysi's?
I knew mermaids lured men, of course. Lysi and I had talked about it. But even if I was lured—whatever that really meant—who was to say our friendship wasn't real?
I spent the afternoon curled under my blankets, watching the broken spider web in my window. I wished Charlotte would come back so I could look at something more interesting than the fluttering strings of silk.
Sometime after I'd listened to the low murmurings of conversation and clanking of dishes as Mama and Papa ate dinner, Mama knocked on my door and let herself in.
"Can we talk, honey?"
I said nothing, considering whether or not I should pretend to be asleep. But my eyes betrayed me and opened to look at her.
"Was that mermaid being nice to you?" said Mama. She tucked a lock of my frizzy, salt-crusted hair behind my ear. Her hand was warm and smelled like dish soap.
I hesitated, then nodded once.
"You know she was pretending to be nice so she could lure you into the water."
"That's not true."
"How do you know?"
"She's my friend. Her name is Lysithea. And if she was going to lure me into the water, she would have done it already."
"How long has she been your friend?"
I lied a little. "A few weeks."
Mama sighed. A familiar crease appeared on her forehead and her mouth tightened around the edges.
"Mermaids are not people, honey. You must understand that."
"I do, but—"
"They're closer to monsters than to humans."
"You haven't met one, so you don't know."
"I don't have to meet one to know. How can a creature that feeds on human flesh be good?"
I didn't answer, unable to believe Lysi could feed on humans.
"When the mermaid grows up, she'll have an instinct to kill you." She shook her head gravely. "I only hope your papa was able to get her before she swam away."
"But Mama, she's my best friend!"
"Don't be ridiculous. You can't be friends with something you can't communicate with."
"She speaks our language! I taught her."
Mama froze, staring down at me, her eyes huge. I pulled my blanket up past my nose.
"You taught her to speak Eriana?"
I gave a nearly indistinguishable nod.
She put her head in her hands. "Oh, Meela. Do you know how dangerous this is? The mermaid could use our language to lure someone into the water by pretending she's a human."
"Lysi would never hurt—"
"Please understand me. That mermaid was never your friend. She was using you. Probably to learn to speak Eriana."
I sat up. "You're wrong."
"If she taught it to other sea demons, they'll all have a severely dangerous method of luring our sailors."
"But other mermaids already know bits of our language. They pick up words from the ships."
"Ships they're invading and killing!"
I crossed my arms and looked out the window.
Some moments passed, during which I hoped Mama would just leave, before she said, "Did she pick up our language easily?"
I kept my eyes on the tree outside the window. "Yes."
"What kinds of words did you teach her?"
I might have been mistaken, but I thought Mama sounded interested.
"Lots of words," I said, my nose in the air. "We had lovely conversations."
"What about her language? Did she teach you to speak it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"People can't make the sounds. It's like those clicking noises dolphins make."
She was quiet again, and then said, "She gave you the shell necklace, didn't she?"
This time, the silence stretched for so long that Mama stood to leave.
"You're to stay in your room, Meela. I'll bring you dinner, and once you've eaten I want you to brush your teeth and go straight to sleep."
Her footsteps crossed my room. The door opened and closed. She left me to sit by myself in a hollow, pressing silence.