Part 6 (1/2)
”He called me fat! He called us fat!”
”I said, humans. Not ex-mermaids and their offspring.”
I stuff my hands in my pockets and watch the numbers go down. My palms are sweating, and I don't think I've finished shedding my scales around some very sensitive areas. How the h.e.l.l are the three of them so composed? I've turned into a merman, and now we're going to the mall. I feel like I'm about to erupt, as if the fish half of myself is trying to break through. Wasn't this tattoo supposed to help with that?
”I think your tattoo didn't work,” I say.
Kurt observes me a moment. The doors open and we walk past the neighbors, who stare at Kurt and Thalia so long that the door starts to shut with them in the middle. The tall lovely boy whose clothes are too small for him and the young girl who makes you want to sigh when you glance at her.
”I believe it takes a bit to settle in. Magic is gradual, not instantaneous, contrary to whatever you've been exposed to.”
”What's the point of that?”
”The point is that at least you're no longer in a bathtub too small to fit your fins.”
”You mean you don't feel antsy at all?”
He thinks on it as we cross the street to the car. He looks like he's going to say something smart-a.s.s-ish. Thalia suddenly stops. Her high-pitched voice comes out shapeless, just a mumble of hysterical sounds.
She stands in the middle of the street, reaching down to grab a Chihuahua the size of a football from the road, its puke-pink leash dangling as it wiggles in Thalia's grasp. She doesn't know not to stop in the middle of the street. Two cars honk and drive around her but don't slow down. I run and grab her around the waist. An SUV holds his horn down and hits the brakes, stopping right where she was standing two heartbeats ago. The driver rolls down his window to curse at us before running the red light.
”Oh my,” Thalia says.
People on the street stop and stare. Others stand on their stoops and crane their necks to get a better look at us. I set Thalia on the ground. The puppy barks, and she holds him up so that he licks my face.
”Thank Lord Sea for saving us,” she tells him. The ugly little thing barks at me with sharp teeth. She holds him like a baby doll while a girl runs across the street, struggling to hold on to five other leashes.
”Thank you! So much!” Her face is almost green with sickness. There's something that looks like gum stuck in her braces. ”That's a five-thousand-dollar dog. Mrs. Hirschwitz would've killed me.”
Thalia hands over the dog with a pout on her pretty lips. The dog walker waves at us as she gets pulled in six different directions by her borrowed hounds.
”What a horrific line of duty,” Kurt says, opening the pa.s.senger door for Thalia and then letting himself into the back.
Mom reaches over and holds Thalia's chin gently. ”I know this is a new world. It is different. It is dangerous. I can't have anything hurt you, okay? Please, stay close to us.”
”Also, don't stand in front of moving metal,” I say, slightly shaking from the rush of adrenaline.
Thalia nods. ”I just missed my Atticus.”
”Your catfish?”
”Her sea horse.”
She lets my mom buckle her seat belt and slumps down, not unlike a girl her age who's been told she can't have a puppy. I picture her room as a giant cave with seaweed and tiny stolen trinkets.
Mom turns on the radio. The Beach Boys sing something about suns.h.i.+ne and girls in rainbow colors and surfing. We drive through the grayest day of the summer, pa.s.sing girls in rain boots and short dresses and men with umbrellas tucked under their arms. I let all the images outside the car window drift through my mind so that I don't think of one concrete image. One I've dreamt every time I shut my eyes. The silver mermaid. Her beautiful, ghostly face. The sharp teeth. The nails long and dirty at the tips like they'd been dipped in blood.
And then the Beach Boys get completely drowned out by static.
Kurt turns to me and says, ”I am indebted to you.”
”I thought I'm already your duty,” I say, in air quotes.
”I am here because the king wished it. But you have saved my sister. Now I also wish to be here.”
He turns back to the window. I wonder if all merdudes are this stiff even when they're trying to be friendly. ”To answer your question from before, I am antsy,” he says. ”I've just had more years to practice hiding it. Besides, at the end of it I always go back to the sea.”
”So if you don't like being in human form, why even come on land?”
”Because I go where my family goes. Besides, it gets boring after a few years with the same people at court.”
”When you guys get bored, you go island-hopping. When I get bored I watch a movie.”
”We don't have those.”
Thalia sits up in her seat. ”The moving pictures! Oh, Lady Sea, may we please go see one? Though the last time we saw one on the Florida coast the automobile smelled like dead cow.”
”The last movie you went to see was a drive-in, and you still look about fourteen?”
”We age slowly,” Kurt says, ”like the sea itself. I'm 103.”
”G.o.d d.a.m.n,” I go. ”How old are you, Mom?”
”Didn't your father tell you you're not supposed to ask a lady her age?”
We get on the expressway. I can't smell the sea anymore, but the smell of metal and burning rubber and oil makes me queasy.
”Is this normal?” I ask Kurt.
”It would depend on what is normal to you. What are you referring to?”
”The smells. I smell things a lot more than before I changed. When the storm was coming, I could smell it. Only I didn't know that I could. When people get too close to me, I can smell what they're feeling.”
”It helps when you're swimming along to detect if there are any nasty things in the water with you. Or if you're looking for food.”
In the rearview mirror I catch my mom looking at us and smirking. She flicks on the winds.h.i.+eld wipers, and they squeak because it's only just begun to drizzle.
”What else should I expect?”
Kurt rolls down his window and lets the drizzle hit his face. ”You already know how much the s.h.i.+ft hurts. It does get easier, not because it hurts less but because you get used to the pain. Your sense of smell and hearing should be accelerated. Your libido will increase-”
”Whoa. Hey, not in front of my mom.”
She goes, ”How do you think you got here?”
Uncomfortable hot flash. ”Please never say that again.”
I lean in to Kurt and whisper. ”Bro, where does it go?”