The Fake Breed: a Mermaid Mystery

C.5

It was a couple of days later, and I was reading in my room after dinner when a knock came to the door. I ignored it, since Dad would answer. I heard muffled voices briefly then footsteps and a door shutting. After coming up the stairs, my dad opened my bedroom door and let Leo in. I don't think my dad noticed that I was startled at all because he simply left the door open and went back downstairs.

I sat up on my bed but did not close the book. Leo kept his feet in the doorway and I wondered how he got my dad to let him up here.

"Hi." He said brightly.

"Hi." I said cautiously. "Can I help you?"

He smiled like a model. "Yes actually, we were wondering if you wanted to go grab some ice cream with us."

I closed my book slowly. "Who is we? "

"My sisters and I. Estelle and Evangeline."

I have no idea why I even thought about saying yes but I told him I'd check with my dad. Hoping he would say, "no we finally have a day to do something together" which I planned on hinting at, but I found him in the office on the phone fighting with a woman on the other end. I assumed it was my mother so I told Leo it was probably alright and we left. I dunno why I did it. I regretted every step out the door.

I waited in their living room while They searched the house for Estelle's lost keys. I was getting more and more nervous, especially when Xenon came in.
Ya know, each time I've been around Xenon, he's had a different disposition going on. The first time, he was stuck up and unsociable, the second he was friendly and inviting and this time he's agitated and annoyed with everything around him.

"What are you doing here?" He sneered, holding a couple of combination locks.

My voice must have been stuck because I didn't find anything to say between the time he asked me the question and when he walked out. Truth was, I didn't know what I was doing there. He walked past me and picked up a box from the coffee table, and dropped the locks in. As he left I glimpsed the chains that were coiled in the box. I didn't let my mind run the possibilities of what those were for.

Evangeline found the keys and we got into Estelle's deep red Sebring. After a short drive, we arrived at Swig and sat at quaint swing benches. My ice cream was delicious; rock solid just the way I like it. I looked up and saw Evangeline staring at me but she quickly looked away. My eyes glanced left and saw Leo do the same thing. Sure enough, so did Estelle. Words had not been said for more than a couple minutes, of course it was awkward.

"What?!" I finally scolded.

At the same time all three of them turned their eyes to their ice cream. "Sorry." Estelle said. "We've never hung out with anyone before really. Socializing isn't all that...allowed."

I looked at my ice cream to avoid looking at them when i asked questions. "Then...why are you 'hanging out' with me now?"

"Well we don't hang out with other people because we don't want to risk them knowing anything. But since you already know... ...why not" she explained.

"Know what...?" I knew the answer but I still didn't want to believe it.

"You know." Evangeline said, as if ashamed to say it out loud. "That we...can change."

Somehow, when someone else admitted it in words, it was okay to accept. I began to get a grip on the idea.

It was awkward and I was afraid to ask at first but I am rather a curious creature. So I asked them the questions (with as much sensitivity as I could muster) anyone would ask.

"So," I said hesitantly, "how did you all become this way..?" They didn't expect the question, and I felt horrible for asking. "I'm so sorry!"

"No it's okay," Leo said. "It's a long story for another day, but some of us were born into this life and some of us were turned."

"Why would you have been turned?"

"To save our lives." Evangeline said. "This life is better than being dead."

I didn't know what else to say at that moment so she continued.

"Leo and I, and some of our other siblings, we almost drowned as kids."

"That's enough Evan." Leo told her, she was giving too much at a time.

"I fell off a cliff when I was 7, the wind knocked out of me when I hit the water and I just sunk. My family looked for my body for days."  A pause followed. "Leo was 12 when--"

"Evan!"

She stopped.

For a moment I saw flashes of images that I had no idea where they came from. I saw first  a boy on a nice boat, then a mess of white water, a propeller churching bubbles of red, a dark dark sea with a blurry calf that had been ripped open. Blurry, dark sea with a fading light somewhere at the surface. Then a young face, very close up, and lips. They felt like memories but couldn't be.

When I saw the present again, I looked at Leo who resembled the boy in the boat, and his right leg, now revealed as he wore shorts on this blistering summer day, which was scarred up the side. I think he knew what I saw because he tucked his ankle behind the other and knocked his head to the back of the bench, in absolute regret and embarrassment.