Anne Brown: Deep Betrayal

Jules walked gingerly across the floor to the bed. A semester’s worth of white loose-leaf paper littered the guestroom floor. Now that my last final was behind me, I planned to toss it all, but I was enjoying the look of the room, kinda snow-covered.

A stack of books leaned like the Tower of Pisa in the corner of the room. Trig, physics, humanities, French, three dog-eared novels, and a copy of Hamlet . A tattered anthology of Victorian poetry teetered at the top, flopped open to Tennyson’s “Mariana.” That poem was what I’d fallen asleep to the night before: a poor girl asking when her true love would return. It probably should have made me feel worse, but it was the one thing that made me feel closer to Calder, remembering the sound of his voice as we recited Tennyson on Manitou Island, the cool air evaporating the water off my skin.…

Jules plunked herself down on the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. “He still hasn’t called?”

I shrugged.

“Do you think maybe you should move on? It’s not like this was a long-term romance or anything, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I mean, it’s not like you’re in love with the guy, right?”

Love. I wasn’t sure what I felt for Calder White. When I first met him, he made me nervous, partly because of his unnaturally good looks, but mostly because he was always just there , too close and too fast.

Later, I was proud of myself when I figured out what he was, and, after that, repulsed when he told me what he did. I had to work hard to keep my face composed. It wasn’t easy repressing my disgust for his hunting past, just so he’d keep talking and feeding me the information I so desperately wanted—information that would explain my family’s history and put my father’s shame to rest.

So, okay, I used him at first. But after learning how hard Calder worked against his nature, after really coming to understand him, and now, after all we’d been through … What did I feel for him now? Respect, maybe? Longing? Fascination?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t as mundane as what Jules was suggesting.

“Well, if he’s not going to call you ,” Jules said, “have you thought about—”

“I can’t call him. He’s got a new number. The one I have doesn’t work anymore.”

Jules crinkled her nose at me. “That’s a bad sign. Is it possible that maybe he just wasn’t that into you?”

I nodded. I had already considered that. Making the reality of his silence sync with the fantasy of my memories was like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. I’d given up after only a few painful attempts.

“Don’t be sad,” Jules said. “It’s not like he’s the only fish in the sea. I’m sure if you put yourself out there again, the guys will be lining up.”

“Heh.” Hilarious . “Yeah. I could do that.”

“Sure you could. We both could. We’ve got a whole summer ahead of us before everyone splits up for college. The last hurrah, right? Let’s get out there and break some hearts.”

I didn’t answer, so Jules wisely changed the subject and asked, “When are your mom and dad getting in?”

“Supposedly tomorrow, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Oh, shut up. It’s not that far of a drive. There’s no way they’re missing your graduation.”

“I don’t mean they don’t want to come. I just don’t know if they can.” I’d been calling home every day to talk to Mom and subtly keep tabs on Dad. After what had happened in the lake, I wasn’t surprised when Mom said he’d been on edge.

She, of course, had no idea about the mermaids, and Dad still didn’t know the truth about himself, but it was only natural that plunging into his birth waters would set something in motion.

“My dad hasn’t been feeling well,” I said. I wished Jules hadn’t brought it up. What if the urge to swim got too strong for my dad? What if he jumped in? I couldn’t help obsessing over where and when and how he’d learn the truth for himself.

I’d hoped things would be better now that he was no longer the target of a mermaid assassination plot, but I was afraid my attempt at heroics had only made things worse. A part of me wished I’d told him right away, but how do you tell your father he’s a merman? Particularly with our family history for crazy.

Instead, I’d tried to limit my worry to something else: If Dad was a merman, what did that make me? My eyes went automatically to MY SCRIBBLINGS , half buried under the flurry of paper. Recently I’d scribbled the cover of my poetry notebook with my answer:

Mutt, MUTANT, Mixed-breed

At least I finally had an explanation for my abnormal ability to endure the freezing lake temperatures. I wasn’t normal. Not by a long shot.

“Your parents will be here,” Jules said. “Don’t worry. Hey, what’s with the paper chain?” She swirled her finger through one of the blue links.

“It’s nothing.”

My phone went off again. Same website link again. Damn spammers.

“Lily, quit saying that. Give me something to work with.”

“I guess I’m just nervous about graduation tomorrow.”

“You mean with Phillip’s thing? No one’s going to get in trouble. Every grad class has some stupid prank. It’ll be easy. When you go up onstage to shake Principal Landsem’s hand, just drop a penny into his palm. It’ll be funny. By the time he gets to the N’s, he’ll have collected about three hundred. His pockets will be bulging.”

“Couldn’t we just go with a streaker?” I asked. “Or maybe a flasher? It’s been a few years since a class did that. I bet Mikey’d be up for it.”

“No doubt. Which is why no one asked him. Have you ever seen that guy naked?”

“No. Have you?”

“Kelly Moeller’s pool party last year. My eyes are still burning.” Jules picked up my poetry notebook. The word mutant stood out the most, in all caps, centered on the cover.

“What’s with the self-loathing?”

I ripped the notebook from her hands. “Who says it’s about me? I was actually commenting on you.”

She grabbed it back and thwacked me over the head with it.

“I’m going to give your dad a big hug when I see him. Seriously, the coolest thing any parent ever did, sending you home where you belong. I doubt my parents would have done it.”

Jules’s phone went off and she slid it open. Her thumbs worked furiously over the keypad as she sent back her response, then snapped the phone shut.

“Good news,” she said. “Robby and Zach are going to make it after all.”

Jules’s mother had planned a catered dinner party at their house for our friends. She was loath to celebrate what she called a “milestone event” at the Olive Garden.

“Now, can I help you clean this mess up? My mom’s going to freak when she sees this floor.”

We spent the next hour sweeping my senior year into a trash can and throwing dirty clothes into a hamper. Jules commented on several of my favorite pieces: a navy velvet jacket and a yellow beret. “You’re the only one I know who can pull this stuff off. I’d look like a deranged clown.”

“I was going more for a modern-day Charlotte Brontë.” I hung the jacket in the closet. I hadn’t worn it since coming back to the Twin Cities. I could still smell the lake air in its fibers.

“Who?” Jules asked as she turned on the TV. The 1939 film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles was playing. Jules flopped down on the bed, resting her head in her hands. I wrapped up in an afghan on the floor and tried to focus on the movie. Something about a curse and some girl who got away.

Neither of us was awake for the end of the movie, and I was dreaming again: