The Mermaid Chronicles: Secrets of the Deep Read online

  In the kitchen, I grabbed my keys, backpack and cellphone and opened the back door. But I hesitated, my gaze fixed on the blank TV screen, conjuring images that weren’t really there.

  I slammed the door on the memory and jumped into my cherry-red Jeep Wrangler. Trent insisted it matched the exact shade of my hair. I wasn’t entirely sure if he meant that as a compliment or an insult.

  Starting the engine, I shook off the remnants of the nightmare. But the news of this latest shark attack stayed with me. Ten people had been killed in attacks this year alone. And that was only the American Pacific coast. If Dad didn’t think that was weird, then his head was buried in the sand.

  A few minutes later I parked in front of the vast mission-style Point Loma High School and found Maya and Trent already bickering in front of our lockers.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t grown out of Disney movies.” Trent flicked Maya on her shoulder. He tapped a finger on a picture of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel taped to the inside of her locker door. “Hey, Cordy!”

  “Hey,” I replied, opening my own locker.

  “It’s not about a Disney movie,” Maya carried on with the conversation, but touched my arm, letting me know she was there. “It’s about Ariel. She’s bold and beautiful and represents all that is girl power.”

  “She looks exactly like Cordy here,” Trent said.

  “Don’t involve me in this.”

  “Exactly.” Maya grinned. “If Cordy was a mermaid she’d look like Ariel.”

  Trent rolled his eyes and gained himself a poke in the ribs. “Hey!”

  “Mermaids will rule the world once again,” she said, her smile smug.

  “News flash.” He made an elongating rectangle with his hands, symbolizing a tickertape. “Mermaids can’t rule the world again. They’ve never existed, so they can’t exactly come back.”

  “Just you wait.” She turned to face him, no longer wearing a smile, shaking her finger. “According to the lore—”

  “Lore? Are you serious?” His laugh only increased the size of Maya’s frown. “There’s actually lore about mermaids?”

  I stifled a giggle and checked my favorite blue pen was present in my pencil case. This was better. Being around Maya and Trent’s constant banter often distracted me from my darker thoughts.

  Maya crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the floor. “Yes, absolutely! Tons of it. Prophecies say the mermaids will replenish—”

  “Maya!” He grinned, his honey eyes dancing with amusement. “Mermaids aren’t real. Trust me, I would know. I’m the one who spends time in the water.”

  “Just because you surf doesn’t mean you know everything that exists in the ocean. In fact, you spend more time on top of the water than you do exploring the mysteries beneath the surface.” She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder as if she’d won the argument.

  I shoved a few random items into my locker, trying to hide my shaking laughter.

  “And thank God for that!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t be a very good surfer if I spent most of my time under the water.” He slammed his locker closed, having selected an army of books for the next three periods.

  “Besides, I’ve seen one,” she said, staring hard through a pair of thick, black glasses.

  He rolled his eyes as he ran a hand through his messy, blond hair. “Not that again. You were ten. Full of make-believe. Actually, not much has changed, has it?”

  She pouted and flicked his forehead with a thumb and forefinger. “I know what I saw.”

  “Hey.” I shouldered my backpack. “You guys want to do something for my birthday?”

  “Oooh! Like a party?” Maya asked, clapping her hands. Trent winked at me, thanking me for distracting her.

  “Well, maybe not a party per se,” I said, “but something…something to mark the occasion.”

  “Good for you.” Trent bumped his shoulder against mine. “Count us both in. Anything you want.”

  “Thanks.” Thanks. I said it again with my eyes. He understood. He’d been Dylan’s best friend. He knew it was a big step for me. For him too.

  I bit back against a sudden prick of tears as the memories swirled.

  It slammed into us, almost capsizing our uncapsizable boat. Mom screamed. Dad held fast to the wheel. Dylan and I tightened our grip on the grabrails.

  “What’s going on?” Dylan’s hazel eyes were wild with fear.

  “I have no freaking idea,” I replied.

  The boat juddered and tipped under the effects of another impact. Dad tumbled across the deck. I clung to the grabrails, waiting for what might come next. He made an awkward, dangerous attempt—a flying, leaping, sliding manoeuvre—to get to the rudder. The wind slammed him against the mast, knocking the breath out of him, and a wave yanked him back the other way. The shark circled, flashing its white underbelly.

  “Christopher!” Mom yelled. “Cordelia! Dylan!”

  “Maybe we could go away for a weekend,” Maya said. “Or see a show, or go quad biking or…”

  Her suggestions swirled around me like the scuttling of autumnal leaves caught in a sudden whirlwind and caused a dull headache to form at the base of my skull. Plus, something caught my attention on the other side of the hall. A boy, standing there, struggling adorably with his locker combination in that I’m-new-here-please-don’t-look-at-me kind of way. I couldn’t see his face, but there was something about the shape of his chin and the slight dimple in his cheek that was incredibly familiar.

  “Damn,” I muttered. I couldn’t place where I knew him from. I wished he’d turn around so I could see.

  “What’s the matter?” Trent asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” I turned my attention to my friend and looked at my watch. “We’re going to be late.”

  I glanced once more across the hall, toward the boy with the dimpled cheek, but he was gone.

  First period was math. Specifically trig, and Mr. Phipps dived right into the importance of cosines and gave a ten minute speech about different methods of finding a triangle’s angles. Thankfully, Maya and Trent endured it with me. Mr. Phipps wasn’t the most dynamic of teachers.

  First period until mid-terms was going to be Mr. Phipps with his belly hanging over his belt and breakfast in his moustache spraying us with spittle. And my dark thoughts. He wasn’t engaging enough to distract me from the morning’s news.

  After the class, Trent nudged my shoulder and said, “I meant to say to you earlier, I was worried you might have seen the news this morning?”

  I faced him. His tangled surfer hair fell over his forehead. He stared at me with those damningly emotional eyes of his which almost convinced me to start spewing the details of my nightmare. The sympathy in his pupils was hard to bear. I shrugged it off and then looked away.

  He touched my arm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  “S’okay,” I replied.

  Maya bounded toward us, her hair and books both caught up in her exuberant stride. “Study Skills after lunch.”

  Trent huffed out a sigh. “What is the point of that damn class anyway?”

  She laughed. “Study Skills and How to Apply to College? I think it says what it does on the can.”

  “I don’t even want to go to college.”

  “So drop the class,” I said.

  He puffed out his cheeks. “It’s compulsory.”

  “What are you going to do if you don’t go to college?” Maya asked.

  I giggled at her gaping mouth. She was going to be one of those studious, innocent college types who spent her life in the library, unaware of her beauty, naively fending off propositions from a line full of guys.

  “We can’t all be geniuses,” he said. “I’m going to surf. Or act. Or both.”

  All outcomes were entirely plausible. Trent was a minor celebrity at our school. He’d scored major roles in a number of children’s movies over the years and was looking to expand his experience into the adult world. Either that or he would become the next Kelly Slate
r. Or, as he said, both.

  “I can’t imagine anything more exciting than furthering your knowledge, learning more about the world, what secrets it possesses waiting for you to discover. It’s so exciting,” Maya said, rubbing a hand across one of her books like it was the Holy Grail.

  Trent and I both rolled our eyes.

  “Does she get how nerdy she sounds?” he asked.

  “It’s Honor Roll blindness,” I replied. “And those thick framed glasses. What happened to your contacts?”

  “Stupid foster siblings ran off with them again,” she huffed. “As soon as I’m eighteen I’m going to get laser-eye surgery. I’ve almost got enough saved from my tutor money. Then I’ll be able to see a mermaid properly.”

  “This again.” Trent winked at me as he held the door of the cafeteria open for us.

  Maya paused on the threshold and lowered her voice, “I know you don’t believe me, but I did see one.”

  “It was probably a swimmer with one of those pull-on mermaid tails. They’re all over the place at the moment,” he said, passing out trays as we joined the food line.

  She slammed a plate onto her tray. “At the moment being the operative words. They weren’t around seven years ago.”

  “Prototype then.” He grabbed two burgers and a large scoop of French fries.

  “Maybe we should agree to disagree,” I said. “We’re all entitled to our own opinions.”

  “Exactly!” Maya and Trent said at the same time, then both cracked up.

  When we sat at a table with our trays of canteen food, the drilling sensation of a pair of staring eyes bored into me. I looked up and, across the cafeteria, spotted the boy. His handsomeness was almost offensive—the groomed sandy-brown hair, the smooth skin, the chiseled jaw and shiny white teeth, and those infectiously adorable dimples—but it was a handsome face I found myself not wanting to look away from. The face of the boy in the hall who’d struggled with his locker. The boy I recognized. A boy from a long time ago.

  “I’m afraid, Cordelia, that I can’t let you win this one.”

  My heart rate increased, and I grinned. “You can try. But don’t feel bad when you lose.”

  He stepped onto the diving block and flashed me those adorable dimples. I climbed onto the block next to him. Hanging my toes over the edge, I waited for the whistle to blow. The smell of chlorine surrounded me. I knew I could take him. I knew I was faster. And it wasn’t my style to let someone win.

  Wade Waters sat at the table of jocks—the football players, the cheerleaders, the basketball players. Those who were cool and pretty and on a completely different plane than me. Trent was often invited to sit there on account of his notoriety in the movies. He always refused, calling them ‘a bunch of ego-centric, skin-deep heathens.’ They weren’t really that bad.

  Wade sat in the middle of a hubbub of swirling activity: cheerleaders giggling coquettishly, the jocks telling jokes and laughing at their own comedy, two basketball players engaged in a playful wrestle. But amidst it all, he lifted his head and stared at me. The star quarterback socked him on the shoulder, and he didn’t flinch. He kept his gaze on me and gave me the faintest of smiles.

  “Who is that?” Maya asked. “That guy staring at Cordy?”

  “Huh?” Trent swiveled his neck to follow my eye-line.

  “Him, over there?” She pointed toward Wade with less tact then I would have liked. Heat crept up my neck. He ignored the bustle of activity around him. His eyes never left mine, not for a single moment.

  “Well, I’ll be damned—” Trent said.

  “Who is he?” she asked again.

  “You don’t recognize him, Maya?”

  She narrowed her eyes through her glasses. “Yes, I do. That’s what’s driving me crazy!”

  Wade moved his head to engage in conversation with the head cheerleader—Babette, one of those with a glossy, high ponytail and perfectly pert b-cup breasts and legs that went on for miles types.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s Wade.”

  Maya’s brows furrowed. “Wade?”

  “Wade Waters,” Trent said. “I heard he was back.” He twisted in his seat to get a better look.

  We stared at Wade. He was still listening to Babette, but he turned in my direction once again and winked.

  “Did he just wink at you?” Maya asked.

  “Uh…I’m not sure…”

  Wade Waters. A long time ago that had been a special name. He’d been on the school swim team with me, and we’d often competed for times. He’d been the object of my first crush. Then everything happened with my family, and when I emerged from my cocoon of misery six months after the tragedy, Trent informed me Wade and his family had moved to San Francisco. I’d assumed he was going to be my first kiss. I was pretty sure he’d liked me too.

  But he moved away, and I never saw him again, until today. And my first kiss? It hadn’t happened for another two years, during a game of truth or dare.

  “I’m sure he winked at you,” Trent said. “Looks like you’ll pick up right where you left off then.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. I balled a napkin and threw it as his nose.

  Only Dylan, Trent, and Maya had known about my feelings for Wade.

  “I’m not sure…it’s been so long…”

  “Are you blushing, Cordy?” Trent asked, the corners of his mouth curling into a smirk.

  “Maybe?” I asked, as if it might be possible that the current heat on my neck and face might be attributed to something else. Like the weather. Or a weird adverse reaction to the air conditioning.

  “He’s pretty hot, Cord,” Maya said. “You’re one lucky girl.”

  I hid my face behind a hand. “Stop! You’re reading in to it!”

  “That’s pretty intense, the way he keeps looking at you,” Trent said.

  The scrutiny made the tips of my ears warm and caused a prickly sensation to crawl across my scalp. “Time to go.”

  I picked up my tray and headed to the exit of the cafeteria. Maya and Trent followed suit, chattering about birthday plans and the next big wave he planned on conquering that afternoon. As I left the cafeteria, the prickle of Wade’s gaze on my back made me turn my head.

  He smiled and waved, and a warm flush spread over my cheeks.

  Chapter Three

  “Please be careful out there.” I touched Trent’s arm, pressing my point. An ocean breeze wound between my legs, tickling my shins.

  “I always am.”

  I shifted my weight to my other foot and dug my toes into the sand. “Considering what happened yesterday.”

  “I know, Cordy. I know. But I can’t stop living my life because of one shark attack.” A red flush crawled up his neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know. It’s true. I have stopped living my life. I know that.” I dropped my gaze to my sand-encrusted feet. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  He tugged on the end of my hair. “Besides, it was miles away in San Francisco.”

  I poked a finger into his chest. “Sharks can swim fast. Especially ones that aren’t normal and attack people on purpose.”

  He raised a blond eyebrow. “You don’t know that.”

  I crossed my arms. “Yes, I do.”

  “Maya and her mermaids; you and your sharks.” Trent looked over his shoulder at the glistening ocean. “And now you’re freaking me out. But I have to go into the water. I’ve got the competition to practice for.”

  I gazed out to sea. A few sailboats interrupted the straight line of the horizon, and the unobstructed sun made a mirror of the surface. “I know. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just want to you to be careful.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed as another memory assaulted me.

  None of us could move. With the shark shunting against the boat in a constant barrage, we didn’t dare release our grips on the grabrails. The boat rocked and spun, and waves splashed over us, drowning the deck in frigid saltwater and seaweed. With my teeth chattering and
my legs trembling, I tightened my life jacket. Dad reached for the flare gun and managed to fire one shot into the sky before the next wave ripped the gun away and sucked it into the churning infinity below. But no one was going to see a flare on such a sunny day. No one. It would do nothing to save us.

  Trent smiled as he rubbed sunblock onto the back of his neck. “If I get into trouble, you can save me.”

  “Uh-uh.” I wagged a finger. “You’re on your own. I’m not setting foot anywhere near the ocean.”

  His hands flew to his chest in mock horror. “Even for me?”

  “Argh! Go!” I pushed him away. “Before I have to tie you up and forbid it.”

  “I’ll be off to Maverick’s soon,” he called as he splashed into the water.

  He was referring to the most dangerous beach on the Californian coast where his hero, Mark Foo, had lost his life. Actually, it wasn’t a beach, it was more of a craggy line of hideously sharp rocks known for its big waves. Although Trent could perform a number of tricks on his short board, the long board excited him more and the search for the biggest wave to conquer. While the rest of us went running for cover during an earthquake, checking our survival packs were up-to-date, hiding in door jambs, he would grab his surfboard and head to the beach to inspect the subsequent swell of waves approaching the coastline.

  Now, he dove under the water with his board, plunging under each wave until he passed the break line and could paddle on calmer water. Waves rolled toward shore. White crests formed green rooms, and the water’s foaming tongues licked the beach. My toes twitched, desperate to edge closer to the water, but I couldn’t allow it. I had to ignore the ocean’s magnetic pull.

  “I promise you, mermaids are real,” Maya said, rubbing sunblock into her skin. We went through a bottle of factor fifty every week. She was almost as fair as me. “Right off that pier.” She pointed toward the towering concrete structure. Waves lapped at the stone support pillars and seaweed floated in large swirls in between. A gentle offshore breeze played with the ends of my hair, and I tugged my cap lower to ward off the afternoon sun.