The Mermaid Girl Read online

  After that I was able to pay attention and not stare at the lake so much. The three o’clock bell rang, and amazingly only Bambi came over to tell me we had to cancel singing practice on Saturday because her grandmother was visiting. Other than that, no one asked me to walk home. I left school and went to Dragon Tree Point. After a moment, Mermary popped up.

  “Hi, Cammie! It’s nice to see you!”

  “Hi, Mermary,” I said. “How are you?”

  She told me about her day. I told her I’d had a bad week because I was so worried about her, but that I’d prayed and asked Our Lady of the Lake to help us.

  “Did she?”

  I nodded. What I had to say was very difficult. “Mermary, how would you feel about leaving the lake?”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Well . . . I think you’ll be safer in the ocean.”

  Mermary leapt and did a somersault in the air. “Yay! I’ve wanted to go there for so long. I can smell the ocean and feel it, and I’ve been so curious about it! When? When can I go?”

  I was glad that Mermary wouldn’t be sad to leave Lake Meredith, although I was sad she wouldn’t be near me anymore.

  “Soon, I hope,” I said. “What I have to figure out, is how.”

  Chapter 56

  A Solution Comes in a Dream

  The next day was Saturday. I woke up and listened to the ocean while I thought about a dream I had. Reggie was in it, and she was wearing a kerchief like a pirate. She was showing me a treasure map and pointing at a trail that was plotted out with dashes across it to a beach.

  “We’ll keep this a secret,” Reggie said.

  Then we were floating in the ocean with Mermary. A white mermaid, bigger than a whale, held out her hands while she sang up to the moon. I didn’t mind that Reggie could see me with Mermary. I felt really happy.

  I always wrote down my dreams about Mermary, so I got out my mermaid journal. After writing my dream, I drew a picture of the giant mermaid. Her curly tail made me think of Our Lady of the Lake. All of a sudden I knew what the dream meant. I had to talk to Reggie.

  I got up and put my clothes on. After I fed the fish, I looked out my window. The day was overcast. I put on the pirate girl sweatshirt Reggie had given me. It seemed like a good thing to wear for what was ahead of me.

  At breakfast I got permission to spend the day with Reggie. I set out right after I brushed my teeth, not even waiting to call her, and walked to Reggie’s house. A breeze was coming off the sea, blowing a few clouds inland. I was glad it wasn’t too hot. Reggie opened the door.

  “Hi, Cam, what’s up?”

  “Reggie, I need your help with a secret project. Are you busy? Can we go someplace where no one will hear us?”

  “My parents are in the garden and probably won’t be in for a while, but we can go up to my room.”

  On our way up the stairs I looked out the window to make sure her parents were still in the backyard. Her father was digging and her mother was moving plants.

  “Is anyone else here?” I asked, because sometimes her brother came home for visits, and I didn’t want him surprising us.

  “No.”

  We went into her room and closed the door, then sat in chairs in the little dormer.

  “What’s going on, Cam, are you in trouble?”

  “No. Well, yes, in a way. I made a serious mistake, and now I have to fix it. I had a dream, and you were in it.” I told her the dream. “I think the big mermaid was Our Lady of the Lake.”

  “Sounds like it. Do you think it means anything?”

  “Yes. Our Lady of the Lake was telling me you could help me.”

  “How? And what’s the problem?”

  “It concerns the mermaid.”

  Reggie got excited. “Cool! Have you seen her?”

  “First, you have to totally promise me you won’t tell anyone else. At least, not until after this problem’s been fixed.”

  She promised, but I had kept Mermary a secret for so long, I didn’t know how to start talking about her. “I’m sorry, Reggie, but I had to lie to you about the mermaid.”

  “What? You mean there is a mermaid at the research center?”

  “No, thank goodness,” I said. “About the mermaid in Lake Meredith. I told you I didn’t know anything about her. But I did. I do.”

  “What!? Tell me!”

  I took a deep breath. “Not only have I seen her, I know her. She’s my friend. Her name is Mermary.”

  Reggie’s eyes got big. “You actually know her? You mean, you’ve talked to her?”

  “Yes. In fact, I’m the one who put her in the lake.”

  “You did? Why?!”

  “I found her, when she was just a tiny mermaid.”

  With my fingers, I showed her how big Mermary was then. I told Reggie the whole story, how the storm floods had brought the mermaid to the open drain outside our house; how I kept her in the aquarium in my room, and lived with her for months.

  “So that was you! On Pirate Andy’s website!” she almost shouted.

  I nodded.

  “That’s why I went over to your house the very first time,” Reggie said. “I found the posting and I thought Sea Bee might be you. So I went over to your house to see if there was a mermaid, but there wasn’t. But it was all just like you posted on Pirate Andy’s site: you didn’t live far from the ocean, there was an open drain where a mermaid could have lived, and an aquarium, but no mermaid.

  “Then I thought maybe your mother took her to the research center, but she wasn’t there either. I finally decided you had made it up. I didn’t mind, because I make up stuff too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, like when I told you I thought I saw a school of mermaids. It turned out to be just a bunch of seals, but it sounds cooler to say it was mermaids,” Reggie said. She thought for a minute. “You know, I thought there was something strange and coincidental about all that.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, when I first heard about the mermaid, I thought she must have got in from the ocean, through the locks at the end of the lake. Then I found that posting. A few months later, all of a sudden everyone’s saying there’s a mermaid in the lake. It seemed like a coincidence somehow, but I couldn’t put it together. But why did you put her there?”

  “It was just like Pirate Andy said. I released her into the lake because she was getting too big for the aquarium in my room,” I said. “I didn’t want to put her in the ocean because she was so small, I was afraid something would eat her. But I also wanted to keep her where I could see her all the time because she was so pretty and wonderful, and . . . and because I didn’t have any friends.”

  My whole face burned as I admitted this, but I was tired of all the lying I’d been doing, and I may as well tell the whole story.

  “How come you didn’t tell me?” Reggie demanded.

  “Because I knew it was better not to tell anyone. It’s really hard to keep secrets. I’ve heard classmates tell secrets when they didn’t know I was listening. They would tell the person, ‘don’t tell anyone,’ and then that person would tell someone, and after a while everyone knew.

  “For me it was easy not to tell anyone, because it was so hard for me to chat. And I knew I couldn’t tell my parents, because they would have taken her away from me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re scientists. If marine biologists got their hands on a mermaid, they would never set her free. She would be too valuable a find. My own mother even said so.”

  “Makes sense,” Reggie said. “So tell me about her, how big is she now? What’s her name? Can I meet her?”

  “Her name is Mermary. I’ll tell you everything I know about mermaids,” I said. “I’ll even show you the journal I kept about her. Best of all, you’ll get to meet her. But first, we have to figure out how we’re going to save her.”

  “From what?”

  “From Pirate Andy and his scientists, and all the people we saw in his sho
w who are trying to find Mermary.”

  “Why? They’re not going to hurt her, I don’t think.”

  “We can’t take that chance. You saw Splash. Remember when they found out Madison was a mermaid, and they locked her in a dark basement laboratory so they could study her, and she got sick and started wasting away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s real. We can’t let that happen to Mermary.”

  “Oh . . . so you want me to help find a way to keep her hidden?”

  “No. I need your help setting her free.”

  “But she is free.”

  “No. Or rather, she’s free right now, but she’s a sitting duck in the lake. Sooner or later, someone is going to catch her.”

  “What can we do?”

  “We have to take her to the ocean and set her free there.”

  “No way!” Reggie said. “It’s really cool that Luna Beach has a genuine mermaid!”

  “Yes it is, it’s the most wonderful thing in the world to me. But it’s even more important that she has her freedom.”

  “But people are making laws to protect her. Remember?”

  “No. They’re campaigning for laws. My mother explained all this to me. The laws haven’t been made yet, it’ll take a while. And what if the government decides they want the mermaid? They can probably overrule any local law. We have to save Mermary now, today if possible. Before she’s found.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes. It won’t be long before Mermary shows up on one of those fancy water computers we saw on the pirate’s show, then they’ll know for a fact there’s a mermaid. Her life is at stake. And even if it isn’t, you heard Pirate Andy. His scientist friends are planning to take her away from Luna Beach. Or even worse, the government will seal off the whole lake while they do their experiments, like in that documentary. Then we won’t have a mermaid or a lake.

  “Also, after they finished examining her, and taking samples of her skin and blood and hair and poop, and asking thousands of stupid questions, they’ll probably let her waste away and die so they can dissect her and study her insides. We can’t let that happen.”

  I took a deep breath. I had never said so much in my whole life.

  “You’re right,” Reggie said at last.

  “So, will you help me figure out how to get her from the lake to the ocean?”

  Reggie was quiet while she thought about it. Then she stood up and went to put on one of her pirate T-shirts.

  “Of course I’ll help you,” she said. “That’s what friends are for.”

  I was so grateful, I hugged her.

  Chapter 57

  A Secret Plan

  “Can we put her in the basket on my bike and take her? I can ride you too.”

  “She’s too big for your basket. Besides, we need to take her in something that holds water so she won’t dry out on the trip to the ocean.”

  “Oh.” Reggie thought some more. “How about if we put her in a bucket and take her there? We can take turns carrying her, or carry her between us maybe.”

  “It would have to be a really big bucket.” I told her how heavy Mermary had been when I carried her to the lake, and that she was much bigger now. “Plus, she’ll need water to keep her moist, and water is heavy.”

  “The best thing would be to get someone to drive us there. My mom or dad could drive us to the beach . . . or better yet, my brother? We can trust him. He’s coming home in a couple of weeks. He’ll help us.”

  I knew Reggie adored her brother and trusted him completely, but I didn’t know what he would do if he found out about the mermaid. He studied computer science, but he was still a scientist.

  “We can’t wait that long. We have to do it today, if we can. You saw all those people searching Lake Meredith. They’re probably looking for her right this minute,” I said. “And we can’t ask your parents to drive us. They’ll want to know what we’re doing, and once they see it’s a real mermaid, they might not let us set her free.”

  Reggie thought for a minute. “Let’s go see what we have in the basement.”

  We went down and looked around. It was dark with cement walls and high windows, and the washer and dryer were in there, next to a couple of big sinks.

  “Hey, look at this!” Reggie pulled a big, five-gallon plastic bucket out from under one of the sinks. It was full of old rags. She dumped them out. “Is this big enough to hold Mermary?”

  “I think so, but with her in it, and water, it will probably be too heavy for us to carry to the ocean. That’s the problem.”

  “Then we need something with wheels . . . we have a wheelbarrow, but my parents are using it today I think. What else . . . ?” She opened the door into the garage. Underneath a work bench along the side was a small wooden platform. She put her foot on it and drew it out. There were wheels on the underside. “My brother uses this to work underneath cars.” She set the bucket on it and pushed it. “It’s difficult to steer, but it might work with both of us steering it.”

  I noticed something flat with wheels on the wall of the garage. It was a square wire object.

  “What’s that?”

  Reggie looked where I was pointing. “Hey, I bet that’ll work! It’s a cart.” She took it down and unfolded it. We picked up the bucket and set it down inside. It fit perfectly.

  I clapped. “It works!”

  We took it out to the front and Reggie got the hose and put water in the bucket.

  “How much water do we need, like halfway?”

  “No, maybe about an eighth or quarter full.”

  I wasn’t feeling quite so worried anymore. I was sure this would work now. Our plan was coming into place, and Reggie had been exactly the right person to help me after all!

  Chapter 58

  A Plan in Action

  “Is there anything else besides water Mermary will need?”

  I was glad Reggie reminded me.

  “Something to protect her from the sun would be good,” I said.

  The clouds were starting to burn off, and it would probably get warmer. I went back into the house and sorted through the rags Reggie had stuffed back under the sink. I found one that would cover the top, but that had a loose weave so Mermary could get air. Then I remembered I had put seaweed into the bucket the first time I transported her. She would need something to hide in, in case someone looked into the bucket. I told Reggie about it.

  “I have lots of seaweed at home, but I don’t want my mother to know what I’m doing.”

  “Let’s see if there’s anything in the compost pile.”

  Outside, Reggie ran over to where her parents were piling branches and weeds.

  “How about these?” Reggie asked, pulling some branches out with dark green leaves and purple berries. She picked some of the berries and ate some, then handed me one.

  “They’re perfect,” I said. “Mermary might even like to snack on the berries.”

  “Dad,” Reggie called. “Is it okay if we take some of these for a nature project Cam is doing?”

  I liked that Reggie called it that.

  Her dad straightened from where he working in the garden. “Help yourselves.”

  “Just a few,” I told Reggie. “We need to leave plenty of room for Mermary.”

  We carried them to the front. We put them in the bucket, and they came to a couple of inches over the lip, and we draped the cloth over the whole thing.

  Reggie went to tell her parents we were headed off to the lake to complete my “science project.” Reggie’s mom came out front with her.

  “What’s your project, Camile?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “We’re going to catch the mermaid!” Reggie said.

  I thought I was going to faint, but her mother just smiled and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Okay. Try to stay out of trouble,” she said. “What time will you be home?”

  “About three, three-thirty?” Reggie looked at me. It was nearly eleven,
I hoped that would give us plenty of time to carry out our plan. She knew what I was thinking and told me, “I have my phone. If we need more time, I’ll call and let my parents know.”

  We started off. I looked back, but her mother was gone.

  “Reggie, I can’t believe you told your mother the truth.”

  Reggie just waved her hand. “Oh, I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Sometimes the best alibi is the truth.”

  We set out for the lake, pulling the cart behind us. Reggie was excited.

  “I can hardly wait! I’m going to meet a real mermaid!” she said.

  I was too stressed to be excited. “We should practice with different ways of pulling the cart.”

  So we tried going faster and faster and almost knocked the cart over. Then we tried pushing it in front and dragging it behind us, and figured out how to handle it when the sidewalk was broken or uneven, and learned how to let it down gently at curbs. We found a good speed, not too fast and not too slow, pushing it in front of us.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get to the lake. A lot of people were gathered around the landing at the colonnade, and we could hear beautiful, tinkling music.

  “That’s where I used to meet Mermary before school,” I told Reggie. It still felt strange to be telling someone about her.

  “What’s happening over there?” Reggie asked, pointing at all the people. “Let’s go see.”

  We made our way through the crowd and saw there were two women in long, green dresses, playing harps in the middle of the landing. One harp was so big, it stood on the landing. The other musician held a smaller harp in her lap. The music was beautiful, like something fairies would play. In front of them was a sign saying “Marla and Kendra from the Luna Beach Symphony Orchestra.” Some people were around them, listening to the music, but several were facing the lake, watching the water.

  “What’s going on?” Reggie asked an old lady with wire-rimmed glasses and a hat with a big brim.