The Summer of Moonlight Secrets (15 page)

40

Allie Jo

The moon is now missing a banana-shaped chunk. The mosquitoes aren't bad; one whines past my ear and I swat around my head.

“Sending smoke signals?” Chase asks.

I make a face at him and look across the water. After not being able to talk about Tara in front of Sophie, we agreed to meet at the springs after dark. Mom and Dad said letting me outside tonight was a trial run after the last time, so I'd better not blow it.

Chase was sure Tara would be here. “You've seen her there three times,” he pointed out. Plus, he wanted to give her a shirt he stole from Lost and Found.

I told him employees weren't allowed to pick through it until after thirty days. But he shrugged me off. “Think of it as a donation,” he'd said.

I look at him now, sitting expectantly with the shirt neatly folded beside him.

We sit there, the moonlight spilling on us, the water softly tugging at our feet. A lone whip-poor-will calls out. It's rare to hear one in summer; this one must have forgotten to fly back north.
Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!
No one answers him back. I wonder if he's lonely.

Suddenly, the water surges over my calves.

“Look!” Chase points across the pond.

Dark shapes stream through the shadows in the water.

I snatch my legs up and scramble backward, all the while watching.

The shapes spin and twirl, floating around each other as if they're dancing … or playing. I steal a glance at Chase; his eyes are locked on the springs.

The water shrieks and parts in a crashing fountain right where our feet just were.

I scream, but it's voiceless. That's how scared I am.

“Hello,” Tara says, as if she didn't just scare the life out of both of us.

The watery shapes lumber away.

Her face is radiant. She climbs out of the water wearing her usual outfit. Nothing about her gives off the impression that she finds it strange for us to be here.

I notice neither Chase nor I have said anything. Tara walks past him to the cabinet, grabs a towel, comes back, and sits on the grass.

I watch her twist and squeeze her hair, then do the same to the tail of her top.

“
What
was in that water?” Chase's voice explodes with curiosity.

“Manatees,” Tara says, same way I might say
grass
if someone asked me what was green and grew on the lawn.

“Sea cows?”

Tara giggles. “They hate that name.”

Chase snickers, but I'm confused. What a strange thing to say.

I gesture toward the springs. “You were swimming with them,” I say, my voice full of awe.

Something strikes me to the core. “You're … you're …”

She stares at me dead on. “Yes, say it—
say it
.” Her eyes penetrate mine deeply.

“A mermaid?” I say in a small voice.

Her mouth drops.

To my side, I hear Chase chuckle, then laugh openly. I look away from both of them, the tips of my ears burning. I sounded like a little girl saying that. Chase is still laughing. A mermaid. Oh, he's right. I turn back, ready to laugh at myself, but when I glance at Tara, she's staring after me with a haunted look.

41

Her soul burned to name her fathers, to say aloud that which had been stripped from her. “Yes, say it—say it,” she urged the girl.

Allie Jo's voice rose timorously. “A mermaid?”

Her heart crashed a hundred times upon hearing the girl's words. Humans knew only of their own legends, and even then, often did not believe. The boy laughed, but Tara did not take her eyes from the girl.

“I am Selkie.” The power of the words caused her to straighten her spine.

Chase leaned over onto his elbow. “I thought you were Irish.”

She spoke into the gloaming. “My fathers swam in the seas of the North and the Irish, but my own folk roam the waters of America.”

The boy creased his eyebrows. “What?” he asked. She beheld amusement in his eyes. “Are you sailors?” he asked. This, at least, seemed to be of interest to him.

“We are Selkie,” she said again.

Allie Jo paled in the moonlight. Tara sensed that, although she didn't understand, she believed.

She spoke to the girl. “My skin was stolen from me as my friends and I sat upon the rocks. When the man came, my friends slipped into their skins and dove into the water, but the man snatched my skin before I could reach it.”

The boy sat up, an unsure grin crossing his lips. “What skin?”

“My skin, my coat—” She searched for a phrase to make them understand. “My sealskin.”

Surprised laughter escaped his lips. “Your sealskin?” With an open grin, he glanced at Allie Jo.

Confusion swirled in the twilight, curling around her. Having now told them, she must have them believe.

“Without my skin, I am human,” she implored them. “With it, I return to the sea, my home.” Her voice cracked saying these last words.

She saw that still they did not understand. “My people are Selkie. We live in the sea and we are clothed in sealskin. Sometimes, at night, we come ashore and take off our skins and become human so we can bask on the rocks.

“If a human man steals a Selkie woman's skin, she must become his wife. Many Selkies have been lost in this way.”

Allie Jo stared at her with wide eyes. “You're a seal?”

“I am Selkie,” Tara said. “But without my skin, I am human.”

“Are you married?” Allie Jo asked.

“I'm too young for marriage.” She brushed away tears and cast her head down. “I want to go home.”

“So get your skin back,” Chase said.

“I can't.” Her spirit diminished upon hearing her own words.

Seeming to sense this, Allie Jo touched her arm. “What happened? Is this why you ran away? Why you can't go home?”

“My friends and I were sitting on the rocks. I strayed a bit to look for winkles, and when my friends screamed that a man was coming, I was too far.

“He watched them cloak themselves in their skins and dive into the water. They surfaced—seals now—crying out to me still. The moonlight shone on his greed. He understood perfectly what we were.

“When he saw me running, he spotted my skin and grabbed it. Then he grabbed me.” Human tears filled her eyes. “It was not my hand he wanted. He said I would make money for him—that he would provide water for me and I would become a seal for him on TV.”

“A magic trick,” the boy said.

Tara looked at him sharply. “It is no magic; I am Selkie.”

“But it's a trick, right? Like an optical illusion—he puts you in a tank and distracts the audience while you put your costume on.” He grinned. “Awesome!”

Allie Jo leaned forward. “She's not joking, Chase!”

Chase glanced at the spring, then openly took Tara in. “How'd you get those manatees to swim with you?”

She stared back, measuring how to tell him. But words failed her. Instead, she stood. “Come,” she said, not unkindly, for it was an invitation she bestowed. He would see with his own eyes. She held out her hand.

He rose to his feet, stood uncertainly. “You mean … in the springs?”

When she nodded, he said, “I'm not supposed to get my cast wet.” Then his face broke with light. “But I'm getting my short cast tomorrow.”

He strode up to her, his face glowing in the moonlight.

Allie Jo jumped to her feet. “Chase—”

“Your turn's next!” He grabbed Tara's hand.

Tara saw the shock on his face as she leaped into the water, taking him with her.

42

Chase

I don't know what to think. Mermaids don't exist, but maybe they do. Then again, Tara didn't say she was a mermaid; she said she was a Selkie.

I'm lying on my bed—3:00 a.m., according to the hotel clock. Dad snores on blissfully. Earlier, when I came in drenched, all he said was,
Well, I'm surprised you held out this long
, so that was cool.

But I can't sleep. Everything in me jitters; my thoughts race and my eyes stay wide open. If they plugged me in, I could light an entire city—that's how much energy courses through my body.

“Come,” Tara had said, holding out her hand.

It took me a second to understand what she meant, and even then, I thought we'd jump in and her story would fizzle out as I did a one-arm dog paddle beside her.

Man, was I wrong.

She lifted me off my feet and we plunged headfirst into the springs. I barely registered the ice-cold water when Tara pushed me onto her back and torpedoed through the pond. The springs roared in my ears, made even louder by the speed of her swimming. I could feel the power of her arms, pulling us, propelling us forward.

Sounds burbled in the water, strange spaceship sounds, like electronic blips. I heard birds chirping. It was Tara—she
trilled
underwater. She slowed down and twirled us on our bellies; my heart pounded and my head was light. She turned like a dancer in the water and the sensation thrilled me. I only hoped my lungs could hold out.

Then I saw it—a sea monster, big, fat, moving slowly because it knew we couldn't escape. It stopped in front of us, a huge potato-shaped shadow. Then it opened its mouth, floated closer, and squeaked.

I screamed underwater. Tara shot to the surface with me on her back. My lungs burst. Adrenaline pumped through every vein in my body; even my feet were buzzing.

We broke through the water like a whale at SeaWorld. Gasping, I let go of her and flailed my arms, but I wasn't going anywhere.

“Chase, Chase,” Allie Jo called.

Water dripped in my eyes, but I could see Allie Jo leaning, stretching her hand over the water for me. Before I could reach her, Tara grabbed my hand, tugged me to the side, and pushed me up.

I fell onto my back and spluttered.

Allie Jo's face hovered upside down over mine. “Do you need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard Tara splash over the side and Allie Jo murmur to her.

I lay there catching my breath, watery images swimming past me, shadows and moonlight. My heart was finally slowing when I caught a glimpse of Tara out of the corner of my eye.

She sat straight with her legs crisscrossed, watching me.

Adrenaline shot through my nerves. My chest rose and fell quickly. Water drizzled in my eyes and I wiped them with my forearm. When I opened them again, I saw that she still looked after me, that her gaze held a yearning and a hopefulness.

I turned my head on the grass and stared at her. “That was incredible,” I said.

Her eyes took on a light, as if moonbeams traveled through her.

Thinking about it now, in the dry darkness of the hotel room, I chip off pieces of my cast. I tried blow-drying it, but that was kind of useless. It had been totally worth it. A flash goes through my mind—the manatee squeaking like a mouse underwater. I smile now, remembering how the manatee popped its eyes when I screamed.

I am Selkie,
she'd said. My heart pounds as I realize something: I believe her.