Chapter 3
"What'd you tell your mom?" Aqua asked as Hailey emerged from the back door. The girl shrugged and dropped into one of the porch seats.
"I just said I lent the binoculars to someone and that they'll give it back. And that you're in town again. Which she already knows, but whatever."
"Out of curiosity, how did you explain my frequent and somewhat random visits?"
"Pre-grad school backpacking around the world."
"Very nice. She bought it, I assume?"
Hailey laughed. "Well, considering that she did it after college, it's not too hard to believe that you're doing it too."
"Really?"
"Yes, really." Aqua slid off the railing she'd been sitting on and straightened the hem of her dress. "Mom was always a little adventurous," Hailey added, almost to herself. "Probably why she got up and jumped over here so quickly." Aqua sat down on the chair next to Hailey's.
"You still haven't forgiven her for picking up and moving without even asking you." It wasn't a question. Hailey sighed and leaned back, which was enough of an answer in its own way. "Anything I can say to help?"
"You could change the topic."
"Fine. Your life. So, am I gonna stay in the guest bedroom or—"
"You know she didn't even ask me when she decided to make the move? I mean, she gave me a few months' warning and all, but it would've been nice to think that I had a say in something like this." The mermaid let out a breath and relaxed her posture. She'd long since learned that ranting humans were best left to say whatever was on their minds, though she couldn't understand why they had to get started in the first place. "It's like I don't even matter compared to her job, you know? She just comes home one day, tells me that we're moving across the planet and does she even care enough to ask what I think? And then she says she can't understand why I was acting the way I was? I…"
Aqua zoned back in when she detected that Hailey had finally run out of steam. She didn't even catch the girl's last words, and frankly, that was just fine with her. She took a deep breath and prepared to deliver one of the many answers to such a rant that she'd prepared on the long trip over. "Hailey, I—"
The back door swung open and Hailey's mother emerged with a tray of buttery-looking biscuits and a pitcher of what looked like orange juice, plus two empty glasses. She wore a black dress and make-up, which struck Aqua as odd, though Hailey didn't seem to notice.
"Hello, Aqua."
"Hi Mrs Rogers." She set the tray down on table in front of Hailey and poured each girl a drink.
"Hailey tells me you're backpacking around the world," Mrs Rogers said as she straightened up.
"Oh yeah. There's just so much to see, and I want to experience a lot more in the world before going for my masters degree."
"Well, that sounds fantastic. I went backpacking myself, but I didn't really go around as much as I planned. Where've you been?"
"Actually, I just got off a very long flight from France. I was exploring Normandy; the coastal cities, that kind of stuff."
Hailey's mom leaned against the faded white wall; she was clearly enjoying the conversation. "Wow. I've never even been to France, though I've always wanted to see Saint-Malo."
"Oh, Saint-Malo is just gorgeous," Aqua answered, ignoring Hailey's partly-disguised look of awe. "It's just so full of things to see. Walking along the walls is really an experience, and then there's the piscine de Bon-Secour."
"Oh yes, the swimming pool of the sea. I would love to see that one day."
"You really should."
Mrs Rogers sighed, probably wishing she were still young and free enough to go traveling around the world.
"Anyway, I've fixed up the guest bedroom for you, but you'll have to share it with Claire when she arrives."
"That's alright; I've never enjoyed sleeping alone anyway."
"Okay. Well," Hailey's mother continued, glancing at her watch, "I'll leave you girls to yourselves. I have a dinner to attend, so I won't be home until close to midnight." That explained the dress. "See you later," Mrs Rogers said as she went back into the house.
"Bye mom. Have a good time," Hailey called after her mother. A few minutes later they heard the sound of the car revving and backing out of the drive. Hailey downed the rest of her juice and stood up. "Let's head inside. We have a lot to talk about." She waved Aqua in ahead of her, then paused to grab the tray of refreshments. Hey, a girl had to eat.
They'd headed inside to the kitchen; Aqua sat at the counter sipping orange juice while Hailey stood at the stove, having volunteered to cook them dinner. The smell of frying garlic filled the room and wafted out the windows. Since the other rooms were accessible through doorless arches, the smell probably filled the rest of the house too. It wasn't a particularly large kitchen, but it held about everything one would need in such a place. The large cream-colored refrigerator stood beside the opening to the dining room. Next to it stood a white-tiled counter that ran to the opposite wall, interrupted only by the black cooking range. Glass-windowed cabinets under the counter held the things one would need to have a meal; neatly stacked plates and bowls stood next to drawers of silverware, spices, and condiments. Pots, pans, and the like hung from pegs in the wall, and a small collection of cookbooks sat in the corner. A chopping board lay on the stretch of counter next to the range, and two pork chops were on top of that. Aqua had offered to help prepare the food, but Hailey claimed to know exactly what she was doing. Not that it was very comforting.
"A mermaid, eh?"
"Yep. The whole package, with the fins and the ridiculously long hair and the seashell bra…okay, she didn't have the seashell bra," Hailey amended hastily when Aqua opened her mouth to interrupt. "But yes, a mermaid."
"Now that's very interesting…" Aqua trailed off, thinking hard.
"You know, for such a secretive species, there's an awful lot of you hanging around with humans," Hailey commented, taking a bite out of a cookie.
"And for a species as concerned with their weight as yours, you sure eat an awful lot," came the mermaid's retort.
"Geez, sorry. Talk about sensitive."
"It's called quick wit. You might want to try it out."
"Haha, very funny," Hailey muttered as she rolled her eyes. "Let's get back to the issue at hand."
"Right. Ryan's mermaid. What do you know about her?"
"Aside from what I've already told you? Pretty much nothing. She's as much of a mystery as Ryan."
"Well then, we're gonna have to see if we can find out more, huh?"
"Guess so," Hailey replied, finishing off the cookie and picking up another one. Aqua took a long drink from her glass as Hailey started speaking again.
"Claire's flight probably just left, so she's not arriving for over a day. When she gets here, we'd better have something good to tell her."
"Because…?"
"Because she'll know what to do about it. She always was the smart one."
"I thought you were the smart one."
"No, I'm the gutsy one."
"Does that make you—"
"No, it does not make me stupid."
"Just had to clarify that."
Hailey used the stainless steel spatula to pick up the pork chops and drop them into the frying pan. There was a hiss, and a cloud of steam filled the room. "I don't think it was supposed to do that," Hailey muttered, almost too softly for Aqua to hear.
"You know, Hail, I'm starting to feel not so good about this," Aqua said, a slight quiver in her voice.
"Look, relax, I know what I'm doing," Hailey reassured her.
"Sorry. It's just that dying in a fire seems like a really weird way for a mermaid to go. And I'd feel better if you didn't keep eating while you're doing that," she added, taking the tray of cookies from its position next to the stove. Hailey made a face, but went on with her work, tossing in a dash of pepper. "What're you making, by the way?" Aqua asked.
"Heck if I know, but it'll probably be good," came the not-quite-helpful answer. "Look, forget about the food for a second," Hailey told her.
"Right, forget about my impending death by food poisoning due to the incompetence of one of my best friends."
"Come on. Just trust me."
"Fine."
"Okay, I was thinking that we get up real early and head out to the cove before Ryan gets there."
"What makes you so sure he'll head to the cove?"
"He can't take her to eat on the boardwalk; people would notice."
"No, I mean, why're you so sure the first thing he'll do is head out to meet his secret girlfriend?"
"Because she's his ultra-hot secret girlfriend. Meeting up with ultra-hot secret girlfriends is always first on every teenage guy's to-do list."
"That actually makes sense."
"Of course it does. Hand me a couple of plates, will you?"
After finishing dinner and cleaning up, the two girls had headed out to the beach. Aquamarine would lose her legs at sunset, which made it a bad idea for her to actually spend the night in Hailey's house, unless she slept in the bathtub. "In hindsight, you probably should've told your mom that I'd found a place in town," Aqua said as she lazily drifted in circles not far from the shore. Hailey leaned back and closed her eyes, almost wishing she could fall asleep and spend the night where she lay underneath a rocky outcropping that jutted out over the water. It was a little risky to be relaxing in such an open place a few hundred meters from the boardwalk, but it was their hang-out every time Aqua dropped in. So far, they had yet to be seen by anyone.
"Nah, she wouldn't let you spend half a cent if you could stay with us," Hailey replied sleepily. "'Sides, it's not like she'd find out you weren't there anyway. So long as you get back into the house by breakfast, the charade survives." The sound of the waves softly washing onto the sand was a hypnotic lullaby; she was already fighting to keep her eyes open. "Just lock the door, you climb in through my window come morning, and…"
The next thing she knew, she was wide awake, soaking wet, and her heart rate had jumped to match the speed of a sports car in high gear.
"What did you do?" she demanded, fixing Aquamarine with an angry look.
The mermaid shrugged and said, "You fell asleep."
"So what, you splashed half the ocean on me?" Hailey tugged off her shirt, thankful that she'd worn her bathing suit underneath.
"I just figured that your mom would find it really weird if you were discovered asleep out here," was the sarcastic response.
Hailey wrung her shirt, squeezing as much seawater out as she could. "Thanks for waking me up, then," she grumbled.
"I actually find that kind of weird," Aqua commented, leisurely floating on her back as the waves carried her close to the sand. "Your kind has the weirdest reactions to water. I mean, it wakes you up? I couldn't sleep a wink without it."
"You literally can't sleep without it, Aqua, unless you don't mind having your tail dry up and die. That'd be the mermaid version of drowning, I assume."
"And it's not just the wake-up with a shock thing," Aqua went on as though she hadn't heard Hailey's comeback. "You can't live without it, but you'd die if you were stuck in it too long. If someone had told me that before I'd met you and Claire, I'd call it utter bullshark."
That drew a laugh and a retort from Hailey; "Yes, being one-hundred percent human is on the universe's Top Ten list of weird stuff. It's right above being one-hundred percent fish, as I recall."
"Ah, there's that wit we were talking about earlier. Glad to see you've got it after all."
"Out of curiosity, how'd you get here so fast?" Hailey asked, changing the subject while she continued to twist as much seawater out of her shirt as she could.
"I took a shortcut," Aqua replied.
"A shortcut?"
"Even if I told you, it wouldn't matter much," the mermaid replied before submerging headfirst, her tail making no more than a ripple as it slid beneath the waves.
"Nobody ever tells me anything," Hailey grumbled as she tugged her mostly-dry top back on.
"Read 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea," Aqua said as she resurfaced. "It'll give you a fairly good idea as well as a better sense of literary appreciation." Hailey laughed; this from the mermaid who'd learned to interact with boys from tabloids and magazines!
"Well, I'm gonna head back home. Don't forget, you've got to be back by dawn."
"Righty-oh. See you in the morning."
Hailey waved and started towards the houses a kilometer or so away. Behind her, she heard a splash as Aqua dropped underwater. Hailey had grown up loving the water, and she spent a lot of time wondering what it was like to be a mermaid. As she walked back towards home, she thought for the millionth time how amazing it was just to be friends with Aqua. There were so many questions she had that she'd wanted to find the answers to long before that fateful storm a little less than a year ago, when Aquamarine had suddenly dove into their lives. Things like how they slept, what they ate, what they watched on TV; heck, did they even have anything like TV? Meeting Aqua had only added to the pile, and the mermaid answered fewer questions than she created, whether unwittingly or on purpose. Did their special powers vary from merperson to merperson? Did they actually live in undersea kingdoms and go to crustaceans for advice? They did listen to starfish, and that wasn't exactly something one could just take in stride. Hailey reached the back door and unlocked it, her mind switching from the mermaid-related musings to musing once more about Ryan Hardy. Aside from finding the general area in which he lived, Hailey still knew nothing about him. While learning that he was seeing a mermaid answered the question of what he did in his spare time, it sprouted several more.
She made sure to lock the guest bedroom before heading to her own, though she left the window open in case Aqua decided to climb in there instead. Out of curiosity, Hailey had spent a couple of nights in the extra bedroom, but it didn't feel as good as her own. Her bedroom was in the part of the house facing the ocean; she had a fairly good view in the morning. The single bed—which she'd been trying to convince her mom to replace with a queen-sized one, or a bunk—was against one corner. Across it sat her desk on which stood the fishbowl containing her pet fish. A dresser was placed at the foot of her bed, on top of which was the makeup kit she never used. Her small collection of footwear occupied a wooden rack next to her desk.
She actually liked her room here in Australia much more than the one back in Baybridge, though she would never admit that to her mom. The wooden walls were painted a soothing caramel color, with simple yet beautiful carved decorations that added a touch of sophistication. She didn't have a ceiling light; instead, floor lamps stood in the three unoccupied corners of the room, and a fluorescent reading light sat on her desk and the side table next to her bed. A glance at her watch told her that it was still too early to go to bed, so she plonked down at her desk and poked at the fishbowl. Though Martin was a good fish, at least as far as fish went, he just wasn't Roby. That sounded weird even in her head, since fish pretty much just swam around and ate, which didn't leave much to compare. Still, she missed Roby. It seemed Martin wasn't in a sociable mood, judging by his refusal to come out of his coral castle, so Hailey got up and went to change into her bedclothes. Afterwards, she killed the light and flopped down on her bed, though she still wasn't ready to fall asleep. She reached over and turned on the lamp that stood on the bedside table, then picked up a magazine from the many dozens that were under her bed. After ten minutes of flipping through the pages without reading anything, she gave up and tossed it to the floor, then turned the lamp back off. She'd never been able to get to sleep very easily, at least in her own bed, and it had only gotten worse since the intercontinental move. It was too hot, too cold, the mattress was too stiff, the pillow needed fluffing; any of a hundred different things could bother her for hours. With some luck, tonight wouldn't be one of those nights.
All around her, the city burned in shadow. She was looking for something, but she had no idea what. Or who. There was nobody but her on the streets except for a lone dog that scavenged the open dumpsters. "What are you looking for?" a voice behind her whispered. Hailey whirled around only to find that nobody stood there. "Are you looking for me?" the voice said again, this time from her left. She spun, but again found no one. They started coming in droves; "How about me?" "Do you know what you're looking for?" "Are you lost?" "Did you lose something?" "Where is the cake?" She grew dizzy from spinning around and around, trying to see who was talking to her. Suddenly the voices stopped. All was silent for a few minutes. Hailey held her breath, listening intently for the slightest sound. Even the dog had disappeared into the darkness. Just as she started to finally calm down, someone behind her said, "Maybe it's me." She whirled and found herself face-to-face with a grinning opera mask. "You were expecting someone else?" the voice said from behind the mask and the robes that cloaked the figure. In a flash, she reached up and grabbed the mask, yanking it away to expose the face that wore it. Only there was nothing there; the robes fell to the ground, empty. Hailey stood holding the mask, a look of confusion on her face. The cityscape was absolutely silent. There came a loud noise from behind her, and she spun and threw the mask as hard as she could at
Aqua, who nimbly dodged the pocket book that Hailey flung at her. The mermaid had one foot in the room, the other still outside the window, which had woken Hailey when Aqua opened it from the outside and made a not-quite-loud but still startling noise. It took Hailey a minute to process what she was seeing, her brain still groggy.
"What time is it?" she mumbled.
"Ten past six," Aqua answered as she completed her entrance and shut the window behind her. "As I recall, your mom gets up around seven, and it takes at least ten minutes to make the guest bed look like someone actually slept in it."
"Right, right," Hailey muttered, trying to shake off her sleepiness as she climbed out of bed. She staggered to the door and opened it, grabbing the key to the guest room from her desk as she did so. Aqua silently followed her into the hall and waited as Hailey unlocked the room opposite hers. She pushed the door open and shuffled into the room, beckoning Aqua inside. The mermaid came in and flopped down on the bed; Hailey's mom had to believe that someone had actually used it.
Hailey shut the door behind her and dropped on the couch that occupied half of one wall. She'd thrown off most of her drowsiness, but she still had to fight to stay awake. "Aqua," she called. "Go back over the plan; I'm starting to fall asleep."
"And discussing your weird strategy to stalk a boy and his mermaid girlfriend is going to keep you awake because…?"
"I need something to focus on until I wake up." Hailey could barely keep her eyes open; she was definitely not a morning person. "Just needs to—" Her last words were cut off by the cold water Aqua doused her with. It was not a welcome surprise.
"What was that for?"
"Again, you humans have really weird reactions to water."
Hailey glowered at her, then stood up. At least she was wide awake now. "You lie down on that bed, I'm gonna go change."
"Sounds like a plan," Aqua replied with a smile as she returned to the bed.
"So I figure Ryan plans to spend the whole day with his girl, hopefully at the cove."
"Yes, you said that already."
"Right." Hailey took a bite out of the apple in her right hand. Her left twirled the telescope, which she'd brought along in case the binoculars were either gone from the cliff or damaged beyond use from their night there. "Anyways, our first stop is the boathouse where he keeps his jet ski. If it's there, we'll know that he either hasn't left to meet her yet or they're meeting up somewhere else."
"How do we know which one to go with?"
Hailey shrugged. "Best bet is to wait and see whether he shows up. If he's not there by eight, we'll know that they're meeting somewhere else."
"And then what do we do?"
Hailey stopped and faced her. "Look, I'm making this up as I go. I don't do specific plans. I get an idea, I roll with it."
"That would actually explain a lot."
Hailey sighed and said, "There's a reason I needed Claire around."
"As I recall, you're the one who usually comes up with the plans. You were certainly the reason the two of you met me."
Hailey laughed. "I'm guessing Claire told you who pushed her into going back to the pool that night." She was referring to the girls' first encounter back in Baybridge. Hailey and Claire had been standing in the pool area of the local beach club one morning after a terrible storm that had deposited what seemed like the contents of the entire ocean on the shore. Claire had stood too close to the pool, and a section of the wall – presumably weakened by the torrents of water that had spent most of the previous night trying to smash the club into nonexistence – gave way and dropped her into the murky water. After Raymond, then merely an impossibly handsome lifeguard, had pulled her out, Claire had confessed to Hailey that she'd seen something unnatural in the water. It'd been Hailey's idea to go back later that night. The result was that they'd met their very first mermaid, and Aquamarine had in turn seen humans up close for the first time.
"It was Claire's idea," Hailey told Aqua. "She just didn't want to say it." It was true; Claire's natural curiosity had been obvious, but the fear of water she'd developed after her parents drowned had overridden it. She'd needed a little push, and Hailey had been there to give it. That's my side of the friendship," Hailey explained as the two continued down the beach. "Claire's the brain, I'm the brawn. Such as it is."
Aqua laughed her bubbly laugh and said, "Well then, brawn, don't get us killed with your brainlessness."
