2:30 AM <I got my phone back. How r u in Maine?>
11:03 AM <Mom is making me stay with Dad and Darleen until you get home. Kill me>
10:48 PM <Skype me if you get any of this. I know you and Agustin are back but Darleen is making me stay for family bonding.>
11:50 PM <Seriously, help. Say you need me for comfort.>
1:24 AM <Pretend? Ivy league is here and he wants to play Scrabble.>
1:26 AM <He's already using Monopoly pieces>
Now <im gonna deck him>
Rhea threw her phone to the foot of her bed and buried her face in her pillow. She could still feel fingers running up and down her tail, even with her human legs. The deep mer wouldn’t say what she did. Her parents wouldn’t either. She didn’t even understand it herself. One minute she was out to cast a love spell. The next, she was swimming with sharks. Then, she wrapped herself in a stranger’s lost beach towel somewhere along the coast of Maine, and tried to find out where she was. An older mermaid, going for a morning swim, heard her story and brought her to the deep mer, who probed like extraterrestrials and sent her to Augustin’s family. Not one word was said to explain what was happening.
“Open your mouth.” “Look at the light.” “Flip your fins.” “Let us scan your stomach.” It was wild what messengers could do if they took an interest. Her data was supposedly being sent to her local deep city.
She couldn’t tell anyone how much it freaked her out, not even her best friend. She hugged the pillow tightly and curled up around it. As tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. There were too many thoughts still eating at her sanity. Maine. A new shipwreck. When did she leave Red Marina? Where were the sharks? And her stuff was still lying on the ground somewhere at Hector Bay. Her parents said no one went there, and that it was foolish to swim by herself in the dark. But was there something in the water? Maybe a secret? Something bad?
Her text tone went off repeatedly. Ignoring Tristan made her feel a little bit guilty, but she didn’t want to see him yet. She kicked the phone and all her blankets off the bed, tossing the pillow after them. She got up only to retrieve a jar of pink salt, some dried bay leaves and a handful of sea urchin spines. There was something very bad coming, and she wanted to cast a protection spell.
Morning beach cleanup focused on an especially filthy former tourist trap that day. It wasn’t all litter contributing to the mess- a lot of animal carcasses and seaweed tended to wash up there. When Red Marina used to make money off the beaches, it was kept unnaturally clean. In more recent years, Hector Bay had become like an open-air morgue for aquatic life.
In two years of summer cleanups and a lifetime of occasional visits, Hazel had never seen evidence of casual beachgoers along Hector Bay. There were bottles in the mounds of rotting kelp, plastic bags in the dunes, even the occasional lost shoe, but they were all from the sea. There weren’t even cigarette butts. A neglected shoulder bag was the first sign of human presence she’d ever seen.
It prompted her to scan the beach excitedly, looking for the owner. Maddy did the same, but with far less enthusiasm. Neither girl found a human in sight, so Hazel moved it to a wooden step near one of the beach entrances. It was off-balance on the splintering wood, but neither girl noticed as they began their task.
Cleaning Hector Bay was one of the nastiest activities Hazel could bring herself to do. Maddy always quit early and went to draw graffiti on the sun-bleached rule sign- not that anyone would see it- leaving her alone to separate the human litter from the organic hills that made wave-shaped lines along the shore. She didn’t enjoy it, but it had to be done. Such a unique ecosystem didn’t deserve to be full of water bottles, and only a person with a strong stomach could withstand the smells, slime, and fish guts to help.
By fifteen minutes in, Maddy was waiting in the parking lot and Hazel was pushing a small sand tiger shark back into the water with a remarkably sturdy piece of driftwood. ‘Small’ for a sand tiger meaning only seven feet long, it was quite heavy. Each time she thought she had it safely returned, it swam back into a coming wave and was deposited onto the shore as the foam receded. “Just live, you dumb fish,” she moaned, the third time it rolled back and started flailing.
From behind her, a small rock flew into the water. Hazel turned her head for a moment to see who’d thrown it- a big mistake. The confused shark bit into her driftwood, which made it considerably harder to maneuver.
“It’s okay, I’ll help!” Unsettlingly sweet words she was getting all too used to established Rhea’s presence on the scene. Dressed and groomed like she rolled out of bed for no greater purpose than to caffeinate and stream movies, she almost reminded Hazel of their first encounter. Distraction was a luxury Hazel could not afford if she was going to rescue the shark, however. Recalling the past would have to wait along with pleasantries.
She tried again to push the shark down the gentle slope of the shore, but with her one useful tool now being gnawed by a shark, the battle was nearing a stalemate. Understanding the situation, Rhea hummed and pushed ahead to grip the shark’s tail.
In her mind, every note echoed like organ music as they carefully forced the shark back into the sea. If it beached itself again, she considered the possibility of leaving it. Letting a vulnerable shark die on a beach didn’t seem right, but the fight it put up would be difficult to counter again. What could possibly be keeping it from swimming away was a mystery.
As they walked farther out with the shark, it was as if the water cleared and the sun shone a little bit brighter. When they’d waded to about knee depth, it released the stick from its mouth. Rhea let go of its tail. They retreated out of reach and as they looked back, they saw the shark leaving.
Her head was beginning to throb though. The humming might have stopped, but its effect was still thumping through her skull.
“You like the fish, huh? Even the big ones?” Rhea wiped her hands on her clothes and grinned stupidly. Hazel was used to hearing that kind of thing. She had to hear it the most after her father’s death. One day he’d been teaching her cousins how to surf, then the next, he was sitting in a hospital room with a missing foot. Everyone had acted like that was why he died. They knew it wasn’t. Even at the funeral, she heard the incessant buzz of shushes and whispered questions. Questions about her. About her swimming. About her snorkeling. About her home-pressed library of algae on watercolor papers. They didn’t ask how she felt about drug allergies.
Her mind didn’t usually go back that far. Maybe it was because of the shark, or the headache setting in, but she didn’t feel like explaining herself. “Yep. You must too- it’s risky picking ‘em up and dragging ‘em, you know.” She wasn’t sure if there was an edge to her voice. If there was, it was warranted.
Although Rhea was still drained from her recent misadventure, the mermaid still found a little warmth and joy at this unexpected encounter. Exactly why was a mystery. Sharks were just part of her world. Alive or dead- it didn’t matter. The angry, violent presence she’d half-ass banished with a song she’d learned from the most evil creature at her school? That was definitely not sitting well with her. If it was scaring large predators, there was no way it would stay where she pushed it away to.
Maybe she was excited to find another piece in the puzzle she was working on. If Hazel was a human, it’d be pretty weird to help a shark. They weren’t scared of normal humans the same as mer. Getting rather comfortable with them in recent years, actually. And would an average, oblivious creature of the land just happen to be at a secluded beach so early in the morning? There was a chance, but it was shrinking.
Confident she’d found an opportunity to probe, she swooped in to steal Hazel’s trash before she even thought to recover it. “That should be enough karma for one day, right?” The suggestion was met with a confused stare. Hazel tried to steal back the bag. “There’s an ice cream place down the street- good enough to stay open since uh…” Her keep-away skills were advanced from competing with Tristan, but talking at the same time still threw her for loops sometimes. “I think elementary school. Anyway, long time to last on this strip!” She stepped in the direction of the parking lot as she continued to escape Hazel’s reach.
Hazel stopped mid-lunge, a gray storm blowing into her eyes as they turned from her litter bag to Rhea. Annoyance failed to fade, but a forced smile spread over her face. “I’ll ask my partner,” she offered flatly. Ice cream wasn’t the worst thing to have with her mind in a morbid place- but more of Hector Bay might be.
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