Emerge (28 page)

“Is there anything I can do?” she asks.

“Will you go distract them? I need to go back upstairs and make a phone call.”

While I’ve been getting yelled at, Clay’s been out there unprotected. Letting my sireny wear off while we’re together is one thing, but letting him leave like that means Melusine could reclaim him any time.

Once I’m in my upstairs bedroom with the door locked, I call him up with shaking fingers.

He picks up right away. “Lia, are you okay? Your parents seemed really upset. How can we fix this?”

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I just sing.

When I get home from the Foundation the next day, the way Amy greets me—a mixture of eagerness and temerity—tells me she wants to talk. She must still feel bad about yesterday.

I’ve started researching Community bylaws at the Foundation in hopes I’ll find something to pin on Melusine besides sireny (nothing so far). I’m exhausted from pushing my brain to understand all the legal Mermese. So, it’s tempting to ignore Amy, but I’ve been doing that too much lately. Between spending time with Clay, worrying about Melusine, researching at the Foundation, and meeting in Star Cave with Caspian, I’ve spent almost zero time with her.

“Hey, Aims, have you walked Barney yet?”

Her face lights up, and she shakes her head.

“Get him leashed up and show me what those new legs of yours can do.”

For the first few blocks, she’s uncharacteristically silent. I pretend not to notice as I chatter on about school and compliment her leg control.

This must make her feel more at ease because she says, “So, that boy you got caught with … ” She trails off, as if now that she’s broached the subject, she doesn’t know what to say next.

“You going to lecture me, too?” I ask. I widen my eyes in mock-fright, and she giggles.

Last night, my parents gave me what I thought was the lecture to end all lectures. I was wrong. When Emeraldine got home from campus, she gave me a lecture of her own. Everything from why it’s dangerous to get involved with a human to how wonderful love can be once you’ve found the Merman of your dreams. Apparently, she and Leo have had some serious convos the last two weeks. I don’t know what kind of conclusion they’ve come to, but when she talked about love last night, her smile finally met her eyes again. She practically glowed when she told me that, one day, she wants me to find a love like hers so I can be as happy as she is. I let her talk. I wish she could understand that not everyone falls for the Merboy next door. Love isn’t always as predictable as a fairytale.

Once Em felt she’d given me enough sisterly advice, the twins came in and gave me their own earful about how dumb I was to get caught. They told me that no matter what they got up to, they never let Mom and Dad know enough to get this worried.

Considering the echo in the grottos, I’m sure Amy heard every word. But she won’t
RSVP
to the criticize Lia party. Instead, she asks, “Clay, right? That’s his name?”

“Yeah. He goes to my school.”

“Clay,” she repeats, as if testing the feel of it. She stops walking, letting Barnacle sniff a nearby tree. “He likes you, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I thought he didn’t, but then yesterday it seemed like maybe he does.” By the time I got my legs back yesterday, the spell had totally worn off, but Clay went right on flirting with me. It might mean nothing, but maybe, just maybe it means …

“
You
like
him
, though.” It’s a statement, not a question. I don’t know whether it’s my behavior from yesterday or my current blush that gives me away. Either way, I don’t deny it. At thirteen, Amy looks up to me, and I don’t want to set a bad example by feeling this way for a human, but I don’t want to lie to her either.

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Do you love him?”

The question catches me off guard. I know the answer, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to admit it out loud. I say the closest thing I can to yes. “I think so.”

“So, you love him even though you’re not supposed to?”

“Yeah, I’ve tried hard not to, really I have, but I can’t help how I feel.”

She looks at me for a long moment, studying me. Then she tugs on the leash. We walk for another few minutes in silence.

Amy’s conflicted expression means she has more to say. I wait.

By the time Barnacle stops again to investigate a garden gnome, a determined expression has settled on Amy’s face. But her voice comes out shaky. “You remember when I first got my legs … ”

I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “Yep, I remember.”

“You know how you told me that if I had trouble keeping them, I should think about a boy I like?”

“Yep,” I say again.

“Well, it didn’t work.”

“What do you mean? You’re doing great with your legs. I never could’ve walked this long on a public street so soon.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. When I was practicing, thinking about boys in my class—even thinking about guys on TV—it didn’t work. It still doesn’t work.” Her voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “But, when I think about Stas, well … ” She gestures at her legs.

Wait. What? “Staskia? You … think about Staskia?”

“I think about Staskia.” She says the words like she’s wanted to say them for a long time, like she’s needed to say them. How long has she wanted to tell me this? How long has it been since I really talked to her? Should I have already known? Maybe if I wasn’t so wrapped up in Clay, this wouldn’t come as such a shock.

“Does Staskia know? Have you two … ?” I gesture wildly.
Oh yeah, real mature, Lia.

“No! I mean, not yet. I haven’t said anything exactly but, well, sometimes we hold hands while we walk and I thinkmaybeshefeelsthesame.” She says the last part very fast and now she’s blushing as red as a flame angelfish. “Do you think your parents are gonna be mad? Do you think they’ll tell my parents?”

I stop to think about it. I’ve heard that, before the curse, homosexuality (what translates to
glei elskee
or same-love in Mermese) was accepted in Mer culture. Most Mermaids mated with Mermen, but Mermaids mating with Mermaids wasn’t uncommon, and neither was Mermen with Mermen. Mer also sometimes took advantage of their immortal lifespans to explore the company of both genders.

But once the curse stole our immortality, we started dying off in droves. All Mer who’d lived longer than a normal human lifespan, nearly eighty percent of the population, died immediately. The wars decimated our remaining numbers. With such a strong need for repopulation, being gay became frowned upon as the worst form of selfishness.

Now, Mer are expected to mate young and produce children. My parents adhered to this idea themselves and have certainly encouraged it within the Community. We’ve hardly ever discussed same-love. My parents support gay rights for humans, but humans aren’t dangerously under-populated. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what their reaction will be. But I know what mine needs to be.

“Thanks for telling me, Amy. If it ever seems like I’m too busy to talk, just pull my hair or something until I listen.” That’s what she did as a toddler, and the memory elicits a smile from her now. “I’m never too busy to talk to you, got it?” She nods. “You don’t have to tell anyone else in the family until you’re ready. And don’t worry about what they say. You’re growing up, and you have to do what feels right to you.”

“You … you don’t think I’m weird?”

“Not at all. Do you think I’m weird? Falling for a human and all?”

“Not any weirder than you were before.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say with an eye roll. I’m happy she’s smiling.

“So, now what?” she asks.

“Now? I guess we love who we love. What choice do we have?”

I can’t worry about what my parents think or what my sisters say, or even what I would have thought of myself two months ago. I need to be with Clay.

My parents may not know what “grounded” means, but they sure know “you’re only allowed at school and home, no exceptions.” Then I ask if I can go to Caspian’s for dinner. I want to spend time with a boy who’s Mer? They say yes right away. Instead, I walk straight to Clay’s house.

I have to be honest with myself. I’m in love with Clay. I’m in love with Clay and I can’t keep trying to stop it, to force it back into some deep dark corner of myself. It wasn’t supposed to happen. If I’d been born and raised in the ocean like I should have been, we’d never have met. But I wasn’t and we did and now I love him. I don’t know if his feelings for me are real—I can’t know as long as he’s under my spell. Not knowing feels like an orca whale lying on my chest, making it impossible to move or even breathe. But it doesn’t change the fact I love him.

I know I can’t have him. I know we have no future. And, since he’s sirened, it would be beyond wrong to kiss him, to touch him, so we have no present, either. But it doesn’t change the way I feel. I don’t care what we do; I just want to be with him.

When he opens the door, he seems so happy to see me, and it lifts my spirits as it breaks my heart.

“My mom’s at a writers’ conference in NorCal for the week. Wanna come up to my room?”

We lie together on his bed, and it takes everything in me to resist his advances. To tell him no and refocus his attention on our conversation. We talk for over an hour, spread out on the softness of his flannel bedspread. I ask questions and answer questions and laugh and feel him close to me. It’s the sweetest torture I’ve ever known.

When it gets late, I gaze at Clay. At the trust in his eyes. Maybe, just this once, I should go a night without sirening him. He’s supposed to tell me every time Melusine talks to him, and she hasn’t in three weeks. Maybe, if I give him a night of freedom, by morning he’ll know how he really feels. It’s a dizzying thought. But it’s a selfish one. Leaving him unprotected would be a mistake.

With a sigh, I lean in, and it scares me how easy it’s gotten to siren him, how routine it’s starting to feel. I hum and watch the mist close in over his eyes. Then I leave.

I’m turning onto my own street when I stop dead. Heavy, booted footsteps run toward me. By the sound, they’re at least a block away, but they’re speeding up and they won’t be far off for long. I reach in my bag, clutching around desperately for my pepper spray. My dad gave one to each of us when we got our legs and started walking by ourselves.

“It’s a human weapon,” he’d explained when he showed me how to use it. “Now that you’ll be doing human things like walking home alone, you should have it.”

At the time, I’d teased him for being too cautious. Now, I silently thank him as my hand closes around it. I pull it out just as a dark shadow rounds the corner.

I drop it, and it clatters to the sidewalk.

“Clay!”

“Lia!” His voice is a strangled cry as he collapses three feet away from me. I run to him, crouch down.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” He’s shaking all over and deathly pale.

“Mel came by … ” Each word is a struggle. He swallows, fighting to draw ragged, rattling breaths. “Brought tea. Feel strange. Had to—” His eyes fall shut.

“Clay?” I shake his shoulder lightly, not daring to jostle him more. “Clay!” He doesn’t respond. I feel his forehead and it’s burning. I take his pulse and it’s racing.

Wait! I can fix this. He’s under my siren spell. “Clay,” I say, making my voice stern, “wake up. Open your eyes.”

It’s not the instant cure I expected. He convulses, his limbs smacking against the unforgiving pavement. Sweat pours down his face.

What’s happening to him? I need to make sense of the words he fought so hard to tell me. He saw Melusine? It’s only been fifteen minutes since I left him, twenty tops. Maybe she watched the house, waiting for me to go. The hacking and sweating and struggling for air, that isn’t sireny. I didn’t think there was anything worse, but this, this looks worse. He said something about tea. Damn it! She must have slipped him something. Some kind of potion. But if she did, where is she now? And what was she trying to do? Kill him?