How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(18)

Like mermaids. I nearly laughed out loud in the irony.

“I want to find Nereia again, to undo this. Please.” I reached out and touched his nose. He leaned into it, closing his big eyes. “And I swear, I’ll help you get out of here.”

It was the right thing to do. I was going to find a way if I had to jump into the pool and carry him out myself. I owed him that much. He deserved better.

Kai regarded me for a second more before turning away. I thought he had dismissed me and my hopes fell until he said, “Just go into the ocean and say, ‘Finn, I’m here’.”

“Really?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll find you.”

I heard commotion across the way to the entrance to the dolphin pools. Someone had either found me or they were going to stumble upon me. I grabbed my mermaid tail and clutched it to my chest. I crouched and ran over to the edge of the landing, heading towards the ocean.

“I will be back,” I whispered to Kai. “I will set you free, okay, buddy?”

“Tell Finn hi for me.” It seemed like he, too, was skeptical about my odds of setting him free.

Perhaps he thought that I would somehow be persuaded to stay in the ocean. Even though the idea of it was impossible to me, I promised myself that if it ever happened and I did stay in the ocean, I’d still find a way to get the dolphin calf out of here.

I pulled myself over the fence, careful not to slip and fall. I hop-skipped down the rocks, being very careful not to misstep, trying to move quickly to stay out of sight from whoever was coming.

“Hey fellas,” a voice said from over the ledge, addressing the dolphins. “Hungry?”

The dolphins went crazy, excited for one last feeding for the night. Their voices jumbled together into an incoherent cacophony. If it wasn’t directly into my head, I would have covered my ears.

Despite their raucousness, I could hear Kai’s voice over it, calling to me.

“Good luck.”

The water below looked like it was lapping at the sharp rocks a bit too forcefully, reminding me of a meat grinder. No wonder I’d hit my head when I slipped off.

I hesitated, struggling to determine the best place to dive into the ocean. Finn had somehow found a place to come up onto the shore without being torn to shreds, I just couldn’t find it. It all looked treacherous and scary.

Then I spotted it, a space where I could leap and land into what I thought was calm water. I could be completely wrong, and have a riptide throw me out to sea. I really had no idea how deep it was. I guessed that was where Finn had come in for his rescue mission and that was going to have to be where I landed in the water.

I gripped the tail to my body, determined that I wouldn’t lose it. Once I got in the water, I would put on my tail and swim. After the spectacle I made earlier that day, I could handle these waves and rushing water.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to take the jump. Finally, I leaped out into empty air and plunged to the churning water below.

***

Instead of the rocks, I miraculously hit the water with a loud splash, and I scissored my legs open, attempting to stop my descent. Panic jammed my senses all at once when I opened my mouth and filled my lungs with water. At the same time, whatever part of me was turning into a fish knew exactly how to breathe and I began to inhale normally. Though my mind didn’t know how to handle the ocean, my body did.

That didn’t help the crashing of the waves or my tumbling head over heels. The mermaid tail was torn from my grasp, floating off into the water. Although everything was all discombobulated, I couldn’t let my lifeline get swept away. I blindly reached out, and despite the odds, my fingers found it. I gripped it with everything I had, like my life depended on it.

I kicked, willing myself to get out of the current and away from the churning water against the rocks. That underwater instinct that I’d felt during the performance took over, calming my nerves and I was able to dolphin kick away and shoot through the sea like some sort of missile.

By a stroke of luck, I hadn’t died or gotten severely injured. I’d had quite a few near deaths in the last twenty-four hours.

After several long, agonizing moments, the water got calmer as I moved further away from the rocks. I surfaced, surprised to find that I was a good two hundred yards from the shore. The aquarium glistened like a miniature city on the edge of land and beyond it, the suburbs of Houston.

“I’ll be back,” I promised Kai. I wasn’t going to fail. I was going to make this work.

After I shimmied into my tail, I started searching the water for Finn. Given that I was swimming like a fish without it, I probably didn’t need it, however, since the odds were so stacked against me, I would take every bit of help I could get.

Besides, it felt like my last touch with familiarity as I was headed into the unknown.

I floated on my back in the water and looked at the dark sky, thinking I’d gone crazy. One, for believing that I was turning into a mermaid; two, for thinking that I could talk to dolphins; and then believing that I could find a certain merman in all of the vast ocean.

“Finn?” I called to the night air. “I’m here.”

I waited, drifting on the waves for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only for a few minutes. Nothing and no indication that anything had changed when I had called for Finn’s help.

Of course.

Okay, so it was going to be a bit harder than a simple request for help. I flipped onto my stomach and submerged, heading out to sea. I had no direction in mind, except away from the shore. I went deeper and deeper, further and further at an impossible depth, distance, and time for an ordinary human.