The Mermaid Girl Read online

  The Mermaid Girl

  Xequina

  © 2016 Xequina

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any means,

  electronic or mechanical, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  978-1-943837-56-4 paperback

  978-1-943837-57-1 epub

  978-1-943837-67-0 mobi

  Cover Design

  by

  Dragonfeather Books

  a division of

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing, LLC

  Fairfield, California

  http://www.bedazzledink.com

  To Mermaid Girls everywhere

  Chapter 1

  A Most Amazing Discovery

  The day I found the mermaid it had been raining hard. The huge storms that caused some flooding were over. They weren’t bad enough to make us evacuate Luna Beach, but there was damage and everyone stayed away from the shore. The giant waves could sweep people and even cars into the sea.

  I liked the storms. I loved looking at the rain from my bedroom window; hearing the howling wind and watching the enormous waves crash onto the beach and promenade. I got to wear my rubber boots every day. They were lime green with orange frogs and handles on the rims to pull them on. There were big pools of water, and sometimes I found shells and water-polished rocks, and once a little fish. I wanted to keep it but my mother wouldn’t let me.

  “It’s a baby leopard shark,” she told me. “It’ll grow too big, and anyway, it’s wild and needs to live in the ocean.” She helped me catch it in a bucket, and then we carried it to the beach to set it free. I was sad, but my mother’s a marine biologist, so she knows what’s best for sea life.

  We lived about a block away from the beach. At the lowest corner of our house was an open drain with a basin about four feet long and two feet wide to catch rainwater from the gutters. It was overflowing now, because the drain was clogged with mud and leaves. One day after school I stopped to look into it. There was something swimming around, long and thin, and looked like a greenish earthworm, but it had mossy seaweed on its head, and a couple of projections that it was using to swim.

  I crouched down to get a better look. It swam away, down to the bottom, where it hid in a pale green eggshell. There were two halves, not quite broken apart, and the worm-creature was curled up inside it. When I picked it up, the creature wiggled out of the shell and dove back into the water, where it hid in the mud.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. It looked like a tiny mermaid!

  The shell was smaller than a hen’s egg, and the color reminded me of light seen in a swimming pool, when you opened your eyes underwater. I put the shell back in the water and waited to see if the mermaid would come out again. She was moving, like she was trying to nestle down further into the mud.

  “Camile!” my mother called. “Where are you, honey?”

  After another long look, I picked up my books and went inside.

  Chapter 2

  My Mother

  My mother was working at the computer. “I noticed you outside. Were you playing?”

  I nodded. I put my knapsack and lunch box down. I was too surprised to say anything about what I’d found. Anyway, I wasn’t really sure it was a mermaid I’d seen. My mother had told me they were a legend.

  Her thick black hair was in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes when she works, and she still had on the old clothes she wears because her job is messy. She works at a research lab and preserve down the coast from Luna Beach. She observes the animals and nurses sick and injured ones. She also tests water in the different tanks, prepares the animals’ food, and helps to clean up after them. Sometimes she dissects and studies dead animals. At home she works on grants to keep the preserve funded.

  “How was school today? What did you learn?”

  I had to think hard because I was really distracted. “We practiced writing.” I stared out the window. Was that really a mermaid?

  “Cammie? Honey? Are you listening to me?”

  I turned back to my mother.

  “I asked what you wrote about.”

  “Oh. Pets.”

  “Pets?”

  “Amigo.”

  Amigo was the neighbor’s cat. We didn’t have any pets. My parents said I had to wait until I was older and could be responsible for one. I knew it was because my mother takes care of animals at work and didn’t want to end up doing it at home too.

  “Would you read me what you wrote?”

  What I really wanted to do was go look for the mermaid. “Later?” I asked. “Can I play for a while?”

  My mother looked out the window. “All right, but come back in if it starts raining.”

  I made sure she was back at work before I went out. I ran up to the basin of the drain and saw a disturbance of surface water like a fish made when they were scared. All I could see was a trace of mud floating up through the water, where the creature had gone back to hide. I found a stick and stirred the mud, but she wouldn’t come out. I stayed until my mother called me to come in. I still didn’t tell my mother what I’d seen.

  “Mom, what would you do if you found a mermaid?” I asked during dinner.

  “Mermaids aren’t real, Camile.”

  “But . . . what if they were real, and you found one?”

  “Well, that would be a really important discovery, since no mermaid has ever been found. I’d take her to the research lab where she could be studied. First we’d make sure the environment was right for her, and find out what foods she ate. We wouldn’t want to add to the stress of being captured by giving her the wrong food. When an organism is under stress, it’s difficult to study DNA expression and biochemistry.”

  “Does being put into captivity cause stress?”

  “Yes, because it would be a drastic change from what she’s used to. Change always creates stress. And when any animal is under stress, their body’s biochemistry changes, so the way they respond to food and environment will be different. Want more salad?” She gave us both more carrot salad.

  “What would you do next?”

  “We’d take samples to study under a microscope, and X-rays of her whole body, so we would probably put her under sedation so she wouldn’t know what was happening.”

  “But wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  “Yes, but we have very safe methods, and so far, we haven’t lost too many animals that way.”

  Not too many—which meant they had lost some.

  “We would perform lots of experiments with her, because the more we do, the more we can learn about mermaids. If she could talk, we’d bring in linguistics experts to study sound patterns and learn her language, so we could talk to other mermaids when we found them. We’d also teach her to speak English. Then we’d be able to ask her questions, and trust me, we’d have thousands. I’m sure the scientists who work with dolphin and human communication would want to work with her as well.

  “She would probably be sent to a bigger research lab so she could be studied more in depth. They have a lot more instruments they could use for testing. A facility would probably be built specially for her with one-way mirrors, microphones, and video cameras. Also, scientists from all over the world would want to come to see her, and they would have their own studies and experiments to conduct.”

  “When everyone was done with their tests and questions, would you set the mermaid free?”

  My mother thought about it. “I suppose we could; then we could put a little camera on her so we could monitor where she goes and what she does, and a tracking device so we could find out where other mermaids lived. We’d learn even more about her that way. But I think she’d be too important a discovery to just turn l
oose again. Most likely we would try to find and catch more mermaids instead.”

  They would make a complete prisoner out of her. It all sounded like a tiring and awful way to be forced to live. I couldn’t imagine them putting that tiny creature through all of that, and her surviving. And what about privacy? She would never have any again. I decided not to tell my mother what I’d found.

  Chapter 3

  Feeding a Mermaid

  When I got home from school the next day I went back to the open drain, walking slowly and staying as far as I could to see if the creature-thing was out. Sure enough, she was swimming lazily around the basin. I got a good look. I hadn’t been seeing things. The upper part of her body was like a person, with a little head and arms, long, wispy, dark green hair like fine seaweed, and tiny bluish fins on her forearms and down the middle of her back. Her lower body looked like an earthworm, only without the rings along the length. Her skin looked like delicate human skin, except it was pale green.

  I edged closer. Immediately the mermaid dove and hid under a rock. I was disappointed because I’d scared her again. I walked around the basin and looked into the water from all sides, but couldn’t see anything. I waited a long time, but the mermaid didn’t come out.

  While I sat there, I looked at the water. The bottom had mud and some old leaves, and there were a few rocks with moss growing on them. There were also a few soggy worms. I started fishing them out with the stick to put them on the grass, then wondered if that was the mermaid’s food. What did she eat? And did she have enough food?

  I started wondering what mermaids ate. They came from the ocean, so it had to be fish or seaweed, or both. I went inside.

  My mother wasn’t home from work yet. I opened a can of tuna and took out a pinch, then looked in the refrigerator. I tore off a small piece of lettuce. I also took a little bit of bread. Since goldfish and carp ate bread, maybe mermaids did too.

  I took them out to the basin and sprinkled them on top of the water, then backed away to watch from a distance.

  The bread and lettuce floated for a while, but the tuna sank. Suddenly the mermaid darted up, out from the mud and grabbed some in her tiny hands and ate it. I noticed she had only three fingers and a thumb, with webs between them. After the mermaid ate, she swam over to investigate the bread and lettuce, which were now slowly drifting through the water. She nibbled at them.

  It was so interesting to watch the mermaid that I didn’t even realize I was moving closer. The next thing I knew I was leaning over the water and the mermaid saw me and quickly disappeared again.

  After that I brought the mermaid something every day, different foods like apple, hamburger, raw and cooked, the tender stalk of green onion, zucchini, or tomato. Once, when my dad came home with a big platter of sushi, I was able to give the mermaid raw fish, grains of rice, and even some seaweed, all of which she seemed to love. There were also things she didn’t like, onions and hot peppers, although she ate sweet red pepper. In this way, I learned that mermaids are omnivorous. That means they eat just about everything, like humans.

  Chapter 4

  Patience

  That Saturday I sat near the pool, waiting to see if the mermaid would come out. I was watching the water so carefully that I didn’t noticed my mother coming toward me.

  “What are you looking at, Camile?”

  I jumped, then tried to think of what to say. Finally I just said, “Tadpoles.”

  “Did you find any?” She crouched down next to me to look into the water.

  I picked up the stick and I stirred up the water because it scared the mermaid, and I didn’t want her to come out right then.

  “Just worms. I put them on the lawn.”

  “That was very kind of you. Without earthworms, the ground would be a dead, dry place.” She sat there for a while, looking into the water too, turning her head so she could see around the sides of the rocks. I was worried she would see the mermaid squirming in the mud the way she did sometimes and wonder what it was. Finally my mother got up.

  “I have to go to the grocery store. Want to come along?”

  I really wanted to keep watch for the mermaid, but I didn’t want my mother to suspect something really amazing was living in the open drain, so I went with her.

  On the way to the store I asked, “Mom, what happens when animals at the center are afraid of you?”

  “I just have to wait until they learn to trust me.”

  “Does it take long?”

  “Yes, because their first instinct is to stay away from humans. Remember, most species have learned over the ages that humans and a lot of other animals are very dangerous and would try to kill and eat them. So you learn to wait, and show them over time that you’re not going to hurt them. Patience is probably the most important skill you learn, doing this kind of work.”

  Of course I already knew the mermaid had the same instinct to avoid me. But just by watching the mermaid, I was learning an important scientific skill.

  After that, I sat on the side of the basin where I could keep an eye on the house so I would know if someone was coming toward me. And whenever my mom or dad called me, I went right away no matter what was happening with the mermaid. I didn’t want them to come looking for me and find out about the mermaid by accident.

  Chapter 5

  School and Library

  I go to Our Lady of the Lake school. It’s a parish school next to the church we go to, about a half mile from where we live. The church and school are across the street from Lake Meredith. I wear a uniform to school with a blue plaid skirt, white Peter Pan blouse, dark blue jacket, and black-and-white saddle shoes. I take my lunch to school in a Hello Kitty lunch box.

  I’m really shy and don’t talk. I never raise my hand in class. If the teacher calls on me I’ll answer, I’m just really quiet. The good news is that I never get in trouble for talking, the way some kids do.

  But there’s a big down side to not talking. For one, I didn’t have any friends. Also, I was always the last one to get picked for kickball and baseball, and I wasn’t invited at all for smaller games. Worse than that, I didn’t get invited places. I usually found out about parties because I heard girls talking about what they did, and how much fun it was. Like this week, they were talking about a slumber party.

  “Wasn’t that movie good?”

  “Yes, especially the part where you first see the zombies.”

  “I can’t believe we got to stay up until after midnight.”

  “And then we got blueberry pancakes in the morning!”

  I tried not to mind. Part of the problem was I didn’t know what to talk about. Even at home I didn’t say very much. I heard my parents talking about it when they didn’t realize I was listening (one good thing about being quiet—all the things I find out).

  My mom said, “Her teachers tell me she doesn’t speak up in class or talk to the other students.”

  “She talks to us,” my dad said.

  “Usually not unless we talk to her. What if it’s some kind of disorder?”

  “Inez, she was evaluated by the school nurse. If she thought there was a problem, she would have recommended further tests.” They talked about it some more, until my dad said, “Don’t pathologize the issue. I’m sure she’ll grow out of it.”

  I snuck away to look up “pathologize.” It means to treat something about a person as if it was abnormal. I guess it was a little abnormal not being able to talk to people. No one else seemed to have that problem.

  That week our class went to the library. We go every three weeks to return books and get new ones. The library is near our school, so we don’t have to walk very far. We gathered in a big room with tall windows and lots of chairs where we met the new children’s librarian, Ms. Tanglewood. She talked about how she was looking forward to helping us find books and articles for our school work.

  “Your teacher will let me know ahead of time what subjects you’re studying, and I’ll make sure to have lots of books o
n that topic for you to use or check out. And if you’re interested in a particular subject, ask me and I’ll find materials for you.

  “And don’t forget the study center is here for your use. You can come here after school to use the computers, do homework, or meet classmates and study together,” Ms. Tanglewood said. “And of course, get help from me.”

  After that we went into the main part of the library. The shelves were crowded with books and the walls had lots of colorful art work and posters with famous people saying, “Read!” On one end of the room were a couple of large tables and several computers, which was the homework center.

  Some kids sat down to use the computers. The rest of us wandered around, looking at books and showing them to each other. No one showed me any books, although my teacher found a book on Hispanic women from history she thought I might like. I found a book about angels and another about the ocean. When Ms. Tanglewood wasn’t busy, I gave her a note asking for books on mermaids. She went to the computer and did a search. A printer came on and some pages came out.

  “The library system has ninety-nine titles on mermaids.” She found the first one on the list for me. It was a large picture book of mermaid stories with beautiful drawings.

  I sat down, excited, and started reading. I didn’t even realize our visit was over and we were supposed to be lining up to head back to school. My teacher, Mrs. Padma, had to come and get me.

  I read the book all through the lunch hour and was still looking at it during class, so Mrs. Padma took it away from me.

  “Now is not the time to read. You should be paying attention to the lesson,” she reprimanded.

  I was embarrassed because I had been paying attention. I was only looking at the pictures, but I folded my hands and kept my eyes on Mrs. Padma. She gave the book back before I went home that day.