The party was dead, and I killed it with the whole falling-overboard thing. It turns out, a possible emergency and missing persons case can really ruin the vibe. No one wants to party after the life of said party starts screaming for her sister. So once they pulled me back in, the Sirena returned to the marina. The party-goers dispersed, maybe even to the next party, while I followed Lena back to her car.

“I am so sorry,” she repeated as she turned the key and the car roared back to life. “I didn’t know you’d left the main deck!”

She turned to me as I huddled in the car-seat and the towel one of our hosts had lent me, trying to get warm. “What were you even doing over there?”

I shrugged, unsure of how to even begin to describe what I’d seen. 

“Doesn’t matter—something was off anyway,” Lena continued, more to herself than to me. She paused. “Tess says we hit something, that’s why the boat shook. But we didn’t see anything. Jake said it was just a freakishly large wave or something. . .”

She looked back to me, dark brown eyes wide with panic. “You don’t think they hit a manatee or something, do you?”

“Do manatees even come this far north?”

“I don’t know.” Lena bit her lip contemplatively. “I hope we didn’t hit anything. I’d hate for an animal to be suffering like that.”

I thought of what I saw in the deep. If we had hit that creature, it clearly hadn’t been enough to hurt it. “I think Jake was right.”

“Really?” She let out a sigh—but she still looked unsettled. “I guess there’s nothing we can do, either way.”

She glanced back at me, and a spark of determination lit in her eyes. “Besides, we’d better get you home before Mom and Dad freak out.”

Considering what had happened, Mom and Dad did not freak out. They were a little worried, but accidents happen on pontoons and the beach, Dad said with a shrug. And I’d always been a strong swimmer, even back when I was a baby. Clearly I was fine, too, so no harm had been done. 

I kept my mouth shut the entire time, only responding to what had to be responded to—I wasn’t going to get Lena in trouble. I was scared that she was going to be the one who got us into trouble, though, with the way she kept looking at me nervously when I talked.

I suspected that would be the last time Lena invited me to any of her rich friends’ yacht parties. Which was fine by me. If I was supposed to be going out to find someone to fall in love with, it wasn’t going to happen on a yacht. 

Once everyone was assured that I was fine, I excused myself to my room in a strategic retreat. Because at the end of the day, the monster I’d seen beneath the water haunted me. I knew I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to see. But more than that—I’d done something to it, with the light that had come from within and scared it off. That hadn’t come from the boy underwater who’d helped me or the monster—it had all been me, some part of me that I didn’t know. 

That required investigation. 

Luckily, I knew exactly who to go to for help. 

The next morning, after further reassurances to Mom that I was fine before she and Dad went off to work for the day and Lena was picked up by one of her friends to go to the big fancy mall downtown with all the designer brands, I walked next door.

I was greeted by a face I’d known all my life, with neighborhood barbecues and shared beach-days. 

I put on my best girl-next-door smile, arms behind my back. “Hello Mrs. Andersen. Is Max home?” 

Mrs. Andersen smiled, creaking gentle crinkles around her soft hazel eyes. “It’s nice to see you, Mika. Your hair looks nice.”

I’d forgotten. “Lena took me to get my hair cut yesterday. Something about cutting off the dead ends and fresh starts.”

Mrs. Andersen nodded sagely. “I find the start of summer is the best time for a new haircut and a new start.” 

She brushed a graying light brown strand out of her face and laughed at the realization of it. “Of course, it’s a little late for a new start for me.” She then glanced over her shoulder at the driveway. “I think Max is still here, he’s probably out on the back porch working on that journal of his. He has a shift later today at the aquarium.”

“I’ll just head back then and say hello.”

“You’re such a nice girl, it’s so lovely that you’ve been such a good friend to him.” I could recognize the undertone, the same unspoken sentiments that almost broke the surface at the mention of his journal. 

That journal was the exact reason I’d come to find Max, and was the reason he was infamous in our neighborhood.

“I worry about him sometimes,” Mrs. Andersen continued, trailing off. “I thought he’d be over it by now, grow out of it, but. . . “

She sighed and shook her head. Her pleasant smile returned. “You can go find him on the porch. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will, Mrs. Andersen!”

She stepped aside, and I passed the pristine blue and white coastal furniture set through the living room and then into the back-porch, where indeed Max Andersen was waiting for me. 

He sat under the table with the sun-umbrella, and didn’t seem to notice me at first. Caramel brown hair fell into his soft hazel eyes that were narrowed in concentration as he scribbled down something in arcane handwriting with a pen marked with the aquarium’s logo. The journal was worn, the edges rounded and the cardboard showing, the pages yellowed and with some spills over the years of soda and s’mores. 

He’d started the journal when he was eight years old and fell into the water during a Fourth of July party at night when no one had noticed. At least, until he rose from past the shallows where we were allowed to swim, spluttering and raving about a mermaid who had saved him.

No one had believed him, although Mrs. Andersen just smiled and indulged the fantasy for that night. After all, when you’re eight, you still believe in all the magic of the world, so of course a miraculous stroke of luck comes off as more magic. He’d sworn up and down that the mermaid was real, even past when all the adults stopped smiling and chuckling indulgently and began whispering instead about something being wrong.

That was when Max had bought the notebook and begun his research. He’d approached the problem from multiple angles, first writing down his own account, then researching all of the lore about mermaids from as many cultures and histories as he could. Prominently featured in there was a story about Wilmington’s own infamous mermaids. 

I remember when he’d told me about it, when I was still eight and believed him whole-heartedly. The story about a group of mermaids who had drowned a tavern occupied by the redcoats. 

But that was back when I still believed in mermaids. Eventually there came a time when I turned my nose up at magic and superstition, “and threw away childish things” as C.S. Lewis put it. That’s when I, too, started to distance myself from Max and his mermaid journal. He shifted focus, away from folklore and mythology and towards a scientific perspective, to figure out the right circumstances of evolution and complex genetics that would recreate what he saw.

That was what led to his internship and hopes of becoming a marine biologist—but he never forgot the mermaid. 

“Hey,” I said softly, to get his attention.

“Oh, hey, Mika.” He looked up, only to blink and adjust his tortishell glasses. “Mika?”

“It’s just a haircut.” I found myself tugging at a strand of my hair.

“No, there’s—“ he waved his pen at me. “—All of that.”

“Lena took me shopping.”

“Right.” He frowned. “You’ve never been interested in clothes.”

I took a seat opposite to him at the table. “I am now—but that’s not important. I need your help.”

He tilted his head. “What with?”

I nodded towards the open journal. “Your life’s work.”

His eyes went cold. “No.”

“Wait, hear me out!” I grabbed his wrist. He stiffened, hazel eyes wide, but he didn’t try to pull away. I leaned in. “I saw something last night, in the ocean. A monster and a boy, maybe even a mer-boy.”

“What?” He blinked again, rapidly this time.

“I believe you now.” I let go. “I’m sorry I didn’t before. But I do now, and I think we might be able to help each other.”

“Help each other?” He raised an eyebrow. 

“I can help you find out more about the mermaids, find evidence even.” I was thinking out loud. “And you can help me figure out what monster I saw.”

He pressed his lips together into a thin line and was quiet for a long minute. Then he nodded and picked up his pen again. He flipped to a new page. “Tell me everything.”

And so I did. Well, almost everything. When I got to the part about the pink light that had come from me, I got this feeling. Like, it wasn’t something that I was supposed to be sharing. So I said that it was the boy who did it, who rescued me. 

Max to his credit wrote it all down, listening with the stoic patience expected of a scientist. I couldn’t help it—the whole thing made me see him differently. I hadn’t seriously hung out with Max outside of a neighbors’ beach day in years. In that time, I hadn’t realized that Max had grown up. 

He was a tall, lanky boy, with gentle freckles over his face. There was good bone structure there, I decided as I watched him finish taking notes. Lena had gone on and on about how much good bone structure would do for you when I’d first come to her for makeover advice. It was in all of the magazines she’d given me as reading material too.

It seemed like out of nowhere, he’d suddenly become cute.

Then again, so had I.

Once he was done, he closed his notebook and regarded me solemnly. “I’ll check some of my previous records, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

He then stood up, only to stop and look at me softly. “Mika?”
“Yes?”

“Thanks for believing me.” He even smiled. “I’ve got to get going, to get ready for my shift. We can meet up later—you still have my number, right?”

“I think so.” When I’d first gotten my cell phone, Max had been one of the first people I’d exchanged numbers with just for proximity and excitement. 

“Good, great.” He nodded, mostly to himself. “I’ll see you later, then?”

“I will.” I stood up. “Bye, Max!”

I caught his face turning pink before he turned away. “Bye.”

When I returned home, the second day of summer stretched out as infinite as the ocean skyline. It would be a while before Max would be able to give me more information, and Lena was out with her friends. I doubted she would take me to a party again so quickly after what had happened on the Sirena. With Mom and Dad at work and everyone else out of the house, that left me to my own devices.

I decided to start with a snack, a sandwich with tomatoes and avocado and goat cheese. Then I headed back to my room to continue my plans to start a summer romance. As I passed the full-length mirror by my dresser, I couldn’t help but stop and tilt my head to examine my own changed appearance. 

I’d never been truly ugly. But I never knew the way Lena did, instinctually, how to dress up my features or pick nice clothes. I’d been a gangly collection of lanky limbs, with frizzy dark hair I’d always swept back into a ponytail that I’d half-heartedly combed out after my shower. Then high school hit like a hurricane, when all my friends it seemed like were dating and having crushes and I was just. . . left behind.

After two years of that was when my Cinderella moment happened. A lanky build became willowy, statuesque even, with me towering over Lena. My features settled, and with them came the desire to make a change, to become glamorous, someone worthy of falling in love with. 

Lena started with the haircut, to make it easier to learn how to work with my thick, curly dark hair. She taught me all the products to use, products that I faithfully recreated the last few days and this morning. I was still getting used to the weight of my hair being gone, now gliding gracefully over my shoulders. 

Then came the boutiques the day before. I had a bunch of money stashed from birthdays and Christmas, and Mom had been willing to donate a little extra when she heard what Lena and I were up to.

She didn’t know about the plans for summer romance, necessarily, but she was more than happy to see me taking pride in my appearance for once as she put it. 

“Get the clothes you’ve always wanted,” Lena told me when we went down the row. “The things you always were too shy to wear, too afraid of. That’s what’s going to make you look good, feel confident.”

I glanced up and down at my outfit—an orange shimmery tank top and a pink skort with a butterfly design that hugged my hips. I wasn’t used to showing so much skin. It wasn’t an inappropriate look by any means, and still passed the dress code requirements, as Mom had requested. 

The bright colors made my dark brown eyes look more intense, my tan skin glowed. The butterfly clips in my hair and the bright, plastic-y jewelry like a Polly Pocket hadn’t exactly been Lena’s picks. But they were mine, and I could see now why Max and Mrs. Andersen were so taken aback by the changes.

For once, I felt almost as beautiful as Lena. 

I glanced out the window—the day was just beginning, and it was perfect for a beach day. And the beach was also a perfect place to meet cute guys.

Still, I felt some hesitation, remembering the monster in the water the night before. What if I saw it again? 

I’d made it go away on my own, hadn’t I? With the pink light, the part I hadn’t told Max about?

There were other mysteries, I realized. Ones that Max couldn’t help me with—ones only I could investigate.

Starting with the part where I was breathing underwater.