Deep Betrayal

chapter 2

EXILED

The memory of the mermaid dissolved as I woke up and my eyes adjusted to the light, making out the white wicker bed and the floral wallpaper. A matching duvet lay in a twisted jumble on the floor. A silver-filigreed clock read 8:32 p.m. None of this stuff was mine.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The paper chain I’d made hung from the corner of the bedpost. Somehow, in my fitful sleep, I’d managed to get tangled in its length. I unwrapped the chain from around my neck and dropped its loose end to the floor. As of this morning, it had thirty links: one marking every day since my exile from Lake Superior and my parentally enforced separation from Calder White.

Thirty links, thirty days since I’d heard from him. No calls. No texts. Where the heck is he?

Counting had become something of an obsession with me lately. As in, fifty-two days since Dad had dragged me away from Minneapolis, from my school, from all my friends, to go live in a falling-down house on the shores of Lake Superior. Fifty days since I’d been rescued by what I naively believed to be a freshwater dolphin. Thirty-three days since my pathetic attempt at martyrdom had resulted in Tallulah’s death and revealed a family secret that I still could not fathom (and that sent me into a cold sweat every time I tried). And now thirty days, two hours, and seventeen minutes of exile.

I flopped back on the bed and threw a pillow over my face, muttering into it. Damn you, Calder White.

I’d make him eat this paper chain next time I saw him. When he’d swum away, he’d promised to come back for me. Wherever I was. So what was taking so long? How hard could it be to pick up a phone? Had he found a new girlfriend? Was he dead? In my darkest moments I thought, He better be dead. That would be the only acceptable explanation for his silence. But I didn’t really mean it, and I quickly traced the sign of the cross over my chest.

The bedroom door knob rattled, and my best friend, Jules Badzin, swished in with a twirl, wearing a royal-blue graduation cap over her flat-ironed black hair. She carried another cap in her teeth and two gowns on hangers.

I really should have been excited. The only good thing about being forced away from Lake Superior was getting to graduate with my class. Jules’s parents had been generous enough to let me crash at their house, but I had to fake every ounce of enthusiasm. And faking it was exhausting.

“Oh!” Jules said. “Were you going to bed already? It’s not even nine yet.”

“No, I’m good. I’m up.” I picked off the strands of hair that were stuck to my sweaty face.

Jules hung my cap and gown from the top of the closet door. We’d been friends since kindergarten. I could tell her anything. Well, almost anything.

She flipped her hair to one side and wriggled out of her jeans. “I’ve got to start buying pants a size bigger. I swear these are giving me a rash.”

“Thanks for sharing,” I said. My phone vibrated on the bedside table. It was a text from an unknown number. It was the seventh time that day. The first time it happened, I thought, This is it! Calder probably got a new phone, right? That would make sense. Now that he had his freedom, he wouldn’t want his sister Maris to know how to reach him. But when I clicked on it, there was no message—only a link to a website, just some hacker sending me a virus. Now it was just plain annoying.

“Figure-flattering,” Jules said, trying on her graduation gown. “We’re going to look like saggy blueberries. Remember that Willy Wonka girl after she goes through the juicer? I wonder what they’d look like belted?”

“Stupid,” I said, sliding my phone open and closed, open and closed.

“Geez, Lily, what’s got your undies in a bunch?” She laughed. Everyone was always laughing these days. Or maybe they always had been. Had I ever laughed so easily? Nothing seemed funny anymore. I gathered my strength and forced a smile.

Jules rolled her eyes and muttered, “Nice try,” while she scrounged through my closet.

“Sorry. Just tired,” I said. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

Jules bypassed a paisley blouse, a chenille poncho, and a 1970s denim jumpsuit (my latest thrift-store purchase). She tossed a belt and a tuxedo cummerbund onto the bed and wrapped a skinny necktie around her waist.

“You’ve been grumpy for weeks, Lil, and you always say it’s nothing. It’s something, all right. It’s that guy again, isn’t it?” She checked herself out in the full-length mirror. “Want me to get the frozen yogurt?”

That guy. Dark curly hair, hypnotic green eyes, voice like liquid, each word pouring into the next like water tumbling over rocks when he got excited. Calder White. The most amazingly beautiful boy who’d ever tried to kill my father.

It wasn’t funny. Not at all. But I couldn’t help smiling when I thought of how far we’d come. I’d told Jules plenty about him: how we’d worked together at the Blue Moon Café and how he’d taught me to use the cappuccino maker and steam milk to a perfect foam; how he’d rescued me from a near drowning and later given me a personal tour of the shipwrecks and natural wonders of the Apostle Islands. Of course, I’d never mentioned the most amazing part: that the tours had been underwater, with his perfect lips pressed to mine.

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:


I sank through the floor, through the joists, past the tangle of wires to the downstairs, and on past the basement. I dropped like a weighted line below the foundation into a watery underworld. The cold cut my skin and my lungs burned. A mermaid’s arms crushed my chest. Tighter, tighter. I called out, but no one answered. I reached for something that wasn’t there, then the sudden explosion of sound, and the mermaid’s unexpected release, the copper taste of blood in my mouth, red pooling around my face, and the tug of two arms pulling me onto the rocks, a silver ring appearing around a throat … the howling sound of voices calling my name …


I woke up with a shout. “Dad!”

Ugh. Groggy and stiff, I looked around to get my bearings. The movie was over, the lead actor’s voice replaced by a late-night talk-show host’s. I clicked off the TV and stood up. Jules slept peacefully in my bed, her hands curled under her cheek. It wasn’t nice, but I gave her a swift shove, and she rolled off the edge, hitting the floor with a satisfying thud.

“Hey!”

“You fell,” I said, crawling into the warm sheets. “Better go back to your own room. Graduation and all. Get some sleep.”