Vicious Deep Read online

  Duty was what Kurt had said. He has a duty, and it’s me. What’s my duty? Before the storm, before the shift, my only duty was being the best swimmer and saving a life if it needed saving. Can I still do those things without being this—thing?

  I look at the clock on my nightstand before shutting my eyes. It isn’t even midnight yet.

  I dream of the whirlpool again, but all I see is the water. Clear bubbles. Stillness and the infinite black-blue ocean. This time I’m swimming with the Great White. Up close I can see he’s got his own armor with a gleaming metal ring around his head. The ring has two grips at either side. I tighten my hold on them as he pulls me through the water.

  When I wake up, I feel like I’ve been asleep for days. My legs ache when I push myself off my bed. For a moment, sitting in the middle of my blue comforter and surrounded by swim trophies, posters of vintage cars, calendar girls holding surfboards, and pictures of the past seventeen years of my life, I forget about the wave, the whirlpool, the silver mermaid, Kurt and Thalia, my mom’s lack of worry at what’s happening. Everything but the tattoo.

  I reach over my back and trace the raised skin. In the mirror, I see myself as I have always been—the same wavy brown mess of hair, freaky turquoise eyes, lifeguard tan. The mirror doesn’t show the other half—the gills and the scales, the giant blue fishtail. The magic hums in my veins, wanting to be released, craving water the way I also crave air, and I wonder if one of those needs is ever going to be greater than the other.

  “Honey?” The knock on the door snaps my eyes away from my reflection. “Tristan, are you awake?”

  Part of me, the part that wishes I were just a swim-team jock with nothing to worry about but girls and winning, wants to go back to sleep, to never change into a merman again. To know that I’ve just imagined this connection to the ocean. That I’m just a regular guy after all.

  But I’ve never been that guy, not really. Kurt said that I’m rare, but being rare doesn’t make you special. I feel like one of the freak-show acts on the boardwalk. Step right up and see the merboy, merguy, merman. Where does his ding-dong go? Nobody knows! How fast can he swim? Just step right up to the glass. Remember! He goes to school in your very neighborhood and doesn’t do much else. Actually, come to think of it, he’s not that interesting after all.

  Yeah, I’m a crowd-pleaser.

  •••

  The sky looks like a gray blanket that has been pulled tight at every corner. Not a spot of blue. It casts a bright white light in the kitchen. Angel light, Mom calls it.

  When I show up, the laughter stops. There are biscuits and coffee and tea. The orange-juice jar has fresh pulp clinging to the sides. There is a mound of bacon and scrambled eggs, slices of cheddar, and a bowl of green grapes.

  Thalia looks lovely in this light, tiny. Now that her hair is dry, it tumbles in soft black waves that look green when they’re under the light. She’s wearing one of my mom’s sundresses that’s two sizes too big. She’s made a necklace out of the multicolored paper clips in Dad’s office and a bracelet out of a fork. I wonder if she slept at all last night.

  I take the empty seat next to Kurt, who bows his head slightly. That’s going to get old quickly. Kurt spears a piece of bacon and examines the shades of burnt meat before bringing the tip to his mouth. His face is all concentration at first, then pleased, and settles on satisfied.

  “Breakfast of champions,” Dad says. He reaches over and ruffles my hair. Any other day, I’d pull away and whine. But today I welcome the gesture for what it is—familiar.

  “I called the school,” Mom says, pulling a handful of grapes from their stems, “and told them you’d be out just one more day.”

  “I feel fine.” There’s an argument I never thought I’d make.

  She doesn’t acknowledge it. “I also told them that we have family visiting and that they are curious about American schools. Since there are only two weeks left to the year, they agreed there wouldn’t be any harm in letting Kurt and Thalia tag along with you.”

  I choke on orange pulp.

  “I understand we will have to be appropriately dressed for this?” Kurt asks. He even eats like there’s a stick up his merman ass. Where is a merman’s ass? How am I supposed to be their tour guide at school? I might as well hold up a sign that reads: ←I’m with Merpeople→.

  I speak with my mouth full of eggs and bacon, “There are two and a half weeks left.” I don’t know why I’m so against this, other than everything that could go wrong. What if they say the wrong things? What if they lead someone off the pier like in the stories? My mother gives me the eye, and I keep eating in silence.

  “They can’t very well stay locked in the apartment,” Dad chips in. Traitor.

  “When was the last time you guys were around humans?” I ask.

  Kurt raises an eyebrow at me. “We just left the Italian coast. Too soon, I must say. But duty calls.”

  And I go, “Feel free to hang up any time.”

  Dad clears his throat extra loudly, a signal for me to take it down a notch.

  Thalia ignores the knives Kurt and I are throwing at each other and squeals, “Italy is fantastic. The beaches are mostly naked, so we never have to acquire many garments or go inland. We rarely go inland. I’ve never understood the concept of bikinis.”

  “That’s my kind of girl,” I say, before realizing that I’m with my parents and her brother, who shake their heads disapprovingly at me. “Okay, but you guys can’t say things like acquire or I do declare. This is Brooklyn, not a Renaissance fair. Oh! Unless we say you guys are British. Then the uptight thing Kurt’s got going won’t seem so questionable.”

  “If you feel that would be beneficial, then we will align ourselves to a land nation, yes.”

  I let my face fall into my palms. This is going to be harder than I thought. “What are we doing today, then?”

  “We have to get them clothes,” Mom says, “and your father still has to go to work.”

  “Yep, we’re going to need a lot of fish food around here.”

  Mom and Thalia giggle. Kurt and I don’t.

  Dad kisses my mom on her forehead and says, “You all be good and, you know, have fun.” With that, he’s out the door. We help clean up the kitchen after we’ve eaten all the food. I didn’t realize how hungry I’d been until I looked down and saw that Kurt and I had finished the entire stack of bacon.

  I lend Kurt a pair of shorts because my jeans are two inches too short, and my T-shirts are one size too small, making him look like a Eurotrash pop star.

  He doesn’t seem to mind, or maybe he does and he’s trained not to care. He holds his head high, even though I can’t keep from laughing as we file into the elevator. “We still have a lot to discuss,” Kurt says.

  “You know, I can tell you’re going to be the life of the party.”

  What an interesting contraption,” Thalia goes.

  Before I can stop her, she runs her fingers all the way up and down the elevator numbers. B to 17.

  “Thalia,” Mom says in her best mom voice, “you must only push one button.”

  “Which one?”

  “The level you wish to go to.”

  “Which level do we wish to go to?” Her eyes are less intense than yesterday, her lashes so long they look like they’re reaching out for you.

  My mother presses her finger to her mouth to suppress a giggle. Like I said, she’s always wanted a daughter. “Level L to go out to the street. To go back home, Level 14.”

  I figure Kurt, in his own way, must be amazed by the elevator. That is, until he says, “We don’t need metal boxes in Toliss. We can swim wherever we like. You remember, Lady Sea?”

  Mom doesn’t answer, but I can smell her longing—a petal being crushed between fingertips. Then I see Layla’s face in the back of my mind. She lov
es me not.

  “It’s nice to rest your fins once in a while,” Thalia says.

  “Well, there’s one reason merfolk are not as fat as humans,” he says simply.

  “The delicious kelp and algae diet?”

  “Tristan, be nice.”

  “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 hell 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-ass-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 passenger 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 sunshine and girls in rainbow colors and surfing. We drive through the grayest day of the summer, passing 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.”

  “God damn,” 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 windshield 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 shift 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?”

  His brows are knit together, and he tilts his head to the side like he’s never seen my species before. “Oh, you mean your phallus.”

  I elbow him.

  He shakes his head at me, like he would hit me back if his duty weren’t to keep me unharmed, or whatever it is he’s supposed to do. He leans into my ear and whispers quickly, “Not to worry. There’s a pocket.”

  We sit straight up again. Mom’s taking the right into the mall parking lot. A pocket? Great, just when I thought I had it figured out the regular way.

  We walk through the revolving doors.

  Thalia keeps going, either because she doesn’t know she’s supposed to get out by herself, or because she’s having too much fun spinning.

  “You have the attention span of a goldfish,” I tell her, wrapping my arm around her n
eck and giving her a noogie. For a moment, I imagine this is what having a bigger family feels like. A slightly pretentious older brother, a jumpy little sister, and a mom everyone stares at when we’re walking around the mall.

  “Actually, I’ve seen very well behaved goldfish,” Kurt says.

  “Of course you have,” I grumble.

  “I think I’ll take Thalia to Glittering World, and you boys can go do your own thing,” my mom says. They go to the escalator, and I stand a little longer and watch Thalia try to get on it. She reminds me of girls on the street playing double Dutch, waiting for just the right moment.

  “You wouldn’t think she’s nearly half a century old,” Kurt sighs. “I told her to stay, but I knew she wouldn’t.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Our parents were killed during a battle with a rebel group of Hungarian dragons. There aren’t many left, but they’re ferocious, and they believe the whole of this plane and the others belong to them.”

  “Is there like a mermaid heaven or something?”

  He doesn’t laugh, which I’m thankful for. “We are of the sea,” he says, “and to the sea we return. An ancient merman like the king, would become a great coral reef, no matter what the climate. Someone like me, like my parents, would turn to surf.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Precisely.”

  A burst of giggles erupts behind Kurt. A cluster of girls is pointing at us. I put my hand up when the flash of a camera hits my eye. What is their deal? Kurt glances behind me, and shock registers on his normally calm features.

  When I turn around, every fish in the aquarium window of Exotic Pet Planet is gathered around my frame with their mouths pressed against the glass. I walk to the right and they follow.

  Between that and the way Kurt’s T-shirt keeps riding up his abs, we’re drawing too much attention. Kurt clears his throat and picks up the pace beside me.

  “I believe we should get me a change of wardrobe as soon as possible.”

  I pat him on the back and jump onto the escalator. “Don’t worry. You’ll blend in, in no time.”