~
I opened my eyes to a blackness so complete I thought I was still dreaming. The damp and chill of the night air brought me fully awake, and I almost lost my balance, waving my hands in the pitch black void. I took a step and felt the sting of pine needles under my feet.
Shuffling along and groping in the darkness, I felt a wooden rail and was shocked when I realized where I was. I was on the path down to the stairs, aiming straight for the beach. I made my way back up, clinging to the rail, heart pounding through my chest.
When I cleared the forbidding shadows of the trees, the streetlights illuminated the misty moonless night. I hurried home, praying nobody would see me. I was outside, half dressed, a block from my house in the middle of the night. Why was this happening again?
This time I’d closed the front door, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief to find it unlocked. I couldn’t imagine what Cruz and Abby would think if I had to wake them up to let me in. I was in no mood to try to explain what I was doing when I couldn’t figure it out myself.
It was three o’clock in the morning.
I spent the rest of the night trying to reason out what was going on. I knew I was headed for the beach, but what then? Was I just going to walk into the water and drown like a lemming? Maybe I’d be dreaming I could breathe, and not even try to swim. It wouldn’t even matter, I thought morbidly, the cold would kill me anyway.
The sleepwalking just confirmed my suspicions. I had to try and find Lorelei as soon as I possibly could. Maybe she could tell me what they wanted from me.
Ethan was already at school when we got there the next morning, and I could see the gang of surfers flocking around him, asking him about what happened. They wanted to find the guy who caused the accident and beat him up, but I heard Ethan tell them to let it go.
I was happy to hear it; there was plenty of trouble to be had without going looking for it. I heard them compliment him on his haircut and bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud. He spotted me and Cruz, and headed our way.
“Nice haircut,” said Cruz.
Ethan’s smiling eyes met my tired ones.
“How’s the head?” Cruz asked him, eying the bandage.
“I’ll live,” he said, looking at me critically. I hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after my nocturnal stroll; I was worried, and it must have showed.
“How are you this morning?” he asked.
“I was just going to ask you that,” I said, dodging the question. Cruz and I hurried to class, and I managed to avoid Ethan until after lunch.
“Where have you been hiding?” he asked as he caught up with me on the way to art class.
I made up a story about needing to use the library, and hurried into class. I tried to avoid eye contact with him as we sat side by side, afraid he’d see right through me and realize what I’d already resolved to do. I was going to find Lorelei no matter what; it was imperative that I speak to her. She was the only one who could shed some light on what was happening to me, and now I was pretty sure that my life depended on it.
I knew Ethan would get upset and do his best to talk me out of it; he thought Lorelei was dangerous and believed she was better left alone. I was certain she would never hurt me, at least not intentionally, and I was resolved not to involve anyone else in my quest for the truth. I could handle it on my own.
What I had no control over were the strange dreams and mysterious forces that were luring me towards what was starting to look like a suicidal walk into the sea. All I could think to do was try to meet them on my terms, and I was going to have to break my promise to do it.
After school I hustled Cruz out to the parking lot and we sped away before Ethan got out to his truck. Cruz was so preoccupied with the tweaking of his design for Evie’s dress that he didn’t notice my unusual haste.
“How does Evie feel about asymmetry?” Cruz brainstormed as he drove us home.
“Uh huh,” I replied, thinking about what I would ask Lorelei.
“Would a beaded sash be too much?” He frowned.
“Sounds beautiful.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I think tea length would work.”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
When we got home I slipped out of the house and hurried down to the cement boat. It was cold and gray at the shore; the deepening gloom seemed to echo my desperation. A stiff breeze whipped my hair around and stung my eyes. There wasn’t a soul around as I made my way down the pier to the chain link fence.
“Lorelei!” I called desperately, watching the water churning around the broken chunks of concrete. “Are you there? Please come out.”
The water was covered with a froth of whitecaps. I saw no sign of life as I looked down, disappointed. I stood there for a while, face pressed against the wire, wishing fervently that her coppery head would pop out of the foamy water. I wondered if she could be down by the part I had climbed out onto before. I grabbed hold of the wire and climbed up it like I did the day of my first trip to the buoy. I reached the end and leaned out as far as I could from the boat to get a better look. Nothing. I picked my way back down to the deck.
I turned around to see Ethan standing behind me, arms crossed. He looked furious. I stood there, wind blowing hair into my face, not knowing what to say. He turned and walked away.
“Ethan?” I called out to him, but the wind drowned out my voice.
I wanted to go after him, to ask him to forgive me, to promise I’d never lie again. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and tell me it would be all right. I just stood there frozen, watching him walk away. I slumped down onto the bench, head in my hands. I was so very tired. I made my way back home slowly, dreading the night ahead.
I sat down to dinner with Cruz and Abby and tried to eat. Cruz was still obsessed with finalizing his design, and I listened politely as he went on and on about his plans for the gown to end all gowns. Abby was strangely preoccupied with a pile of cookbooks she had been poring over, and I wondered why the sudden interest in improving her cooking. I was relieved that neither one of them took any notice of my foul mood. I excused myself and retreated to my room.
The cat was waiting for me on the bed and jumped into my lap when I sat down. I stroked him absentmindedly, tears blurring my vision as I thought about the look on Ethan’s face. I knew that he wouldn’t understand why I went to see Lorelei again, but I never thought he’d get so angry about it. I knew I had ruined it with him, and I was acutely aware that he was the only person in the world that I could talk to about my strange secret.
Charlie nuzzled my hands when I stopped petting him, making me smile despite the sense of doom that was closing in on me. Darkness was falling and I desperately wanted to sleep, but I was afraid. I usually slept in my underwear and a T-shirt, but I kept my jeans on just in case. I moved the chair against the door as a barricade and curled up around Charlie.
“Wake me up if I try to leave,” I told the cat, before drifting off into a fitful sleep.
I woke up to see the sun streaming into the window. My night had been filled with watery dreams and I had started awake multiple times, finding myself sitting up or standing next to the bed. I was tired but relieved; happy to see the chair still propped up against the door as I got ready for school.
Ethan kept his distance from me the rest of the week, and didn’t show up for art class. Sometimes I could see him watching me from the cluster of surfers, but he always looked away when our eyes met. The girls in the group immediately sensed the tension between us. They smiled smugly at me, and I knew they were happy to see the rift grow. I noticed that a couple of the surfers had gotten buzz cuts to imitate his, but I found little humor in it.
Cruz proclaimed me ready, and took me down for my official driving test. I was happy for the distraction and lucky that I was able to pass despite my increasing weariness. I called Evie to share the news and we planned a visit to the city after Cruz finished her dress. I tried to find Lorelei a few more times with no luck; it s
eemed as if even the mermaids were avoiding me now.
I felt like I was cursed, and started to adopt a fatalistic attitude. I remembered that Evie always said that even if fate means for you to lose, you should put up a good fight anyway.
The next few days came and went, and I kept waking to find myself standing by the door, knob in hand. I started moving the desk against the door too. I was beginning to feel increasingly spacy, as though I was disengaging from daily life. My dreams began to seem more and more real, and I escaped into them to avoid Ethan’s terrible indifference. I felt horrible, like I was being punished for something I had no control over.
Cruz was in his own little world and didn’t pay much attention, but Megan pulled me aside at lunch on Friday. “What happened between you and Ethan?”
“I don’t know,” I said, fidgeting. I had made the same promise to Megan and Cruz about not going mermaid hunting. I didn’t want to disappoint her too.
“Should I go ask him?” she looked at me with playful exasperation.
“Oh, Megan.” I broke down, my eyes filling up with tears. She put her arm around my shoulders and sat me down at a bench. I hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time for a week and I lost control, shuddering with suppressed sobs. “Sorry,” I choked, trying to pull it together. I looked up to see Ethan watching us.
“Oh, God,” I said, trying to hide my face. Megan looked up to see him.
“Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. I passed a surprised-looking Cruz the Jag keys and we hurried out to Megan’s car. “Girl stuff,” Megan called to Cruz over her shoulder. We drove to a coffee shop and sat in a corner booth, ordering coffee and fiddling with little paper packets of sugar.
“So,” she said frankly, “spill the beans.”
My first impulse was to lie, to keep it to myself and gloss over the facts. I hated to be weak, to see pity in people’s eyes. Being brought up a motherless child, I was all too familiar with that look, and I hated it.
“Well …” I started to equivocate, dancing around the edges of the story. Then I met Megan’s skeptical eyes and something inside me surrendered. I told her all the secrets I’d been keeping, in a flood of cathartic truth telling. She listened carefully while I told her about my mother, my dreams, and even the sleepwalking.
“That explains a lot,” she said, and I was grateful for her analytical nature. We discussed what everything meant, taking into account my hybrid status. When the waitress came to take our order Megan looked at me thoughtfully and asked, “Would it be cannibalistic of you to eat tuna salad?” We broke into hysterical laughter and the waitress looked at us like we had just broken out of the lunatic asylum.
“We should probably tell Cruz,” I said. “But do you mind if we wait until he gets Evie’s dress done?”
“Good idea,” Megan said with a knowing look. “He’s a total stressmobile already!”
It was good to sit and laugh, to be honest. I felt like a ton of weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
“Thanks, Megan,” I said sincerely. “I guess I really needed to talk about everything.”
“Do you know what your problem is?” she asked, looking up at me over her coffee.
I knew this was a rhetorical question, and that she was going to tell me whether or not I wanted to hear it.
“You mean besides the obvious?” I replied sarcastically.
“Seriously,” she said. “You keep too much to yourself. You seem to think you have to do everything alone.”
I couldn’t argue. I knew that was one of the reasons my father gave for sending me here in the first place. I thought self-sufficiency was a virtue; how could one possibly be too independent?
“It does feel better to let it out,” I admitted.
“Do you want to tell me what happened with Ethan?” she asked.
I told her that Ethan knew everything, and that I’d broken a promise to him by seeking out Lorelei on my own.
“You can see I had no choice, right?” I said with indignation.
“If you say so.” She met my gaze levelly, ruining my justification with her eyes.
I looked down. “I suppose I should have said something, but he gets so freaked out about everything. He wouldn’t have wanted me to do anything.”
“I noticed he’s been avoiding you like the plague.”
I looked at her, stricken. “I don’t think it’s really fair of him to be so … punitive.”
“Don’t you remember what I told you about his ex-girlfriend dumping him?” She looked at me like I was an idiot.
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked incredulously.
“Just because he’s so good-looking doesn’t mean he’s not as insecure as the rest of us. I think he has some serious trust issues.” I thought about his mom leaving him and it did made sense.
“But it’s not the same thing,” I protested.
Megan rolled her eyes at me. “Believe what you want to believe,” she reprimanded me. “But you don’t see how he’s been watching you. You’ve been walking around in a daze.”
“I’m afraid to sleep,” I said.
“I’m afraid you wanna go sleeping with the fishes!” she retorted, and I laughed in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Megan’s cynical outlook on life was like a tonic, showing me there was simply no point in wallowing in self-pity. I needed to play the hand I was dealt.
Megan drove me home, making me promise to barricade myself into my room carefully. We made plans to hang out on Saturday and she made me laugh again, teasing me about sleepwalking down the street in my underwear.
“I’ve been sleeping in my clothes all week!” I complained.
“Dang, Marina, I thought me and Cruz were the weirdos!”
“Step aside, there’s a new freak in town,” I laughed.
“Don’t worry,” she said, leaning over to give me a hug. “We’ll figure something out.”
I turned to leave with a grateful smile. “Thanks.”
“Marina–” she called after me. “I don’t think you should meet with her alone either.”