How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(7)

Dad would have approved of me being a professional mermaid. I missed him so much; my family was never the same after he died.

Family...

My thoughts once again drifted back to Kai and his piteous cries. I knew what I had to do to get him out of my head. I had to see him again, if only to see if I could comfort him one last time before I went to bed. I wasn’t sure if seeing a dolphin was against the rules or not, yet I could always feign ignorance if I got caught. After all, I was already behind the scenes in the dressing room. It wasn’t like I was going to be sneaking around in places I hadn’t been before.

Mind made up, I got up from my chair, checked to make sure that my mermaid tail was safely zipped up in its garment bag, and rushed out the door. To my delight, no one was there to stop me.

I snuck backstage, trying to act like I knew what I was doing to not raise suspicions, and was grateful that most of the staff and volunteers had left shortly after the aquarium closed.

Happy dolphin clicks greeted me as I neared the pools, and I hoped that one of them was from Kai. However, when I looked across at the quarantine pool, I knew that he hadn’t joined in with his fellow dolphins.

“Hey guys,” I said to the dolphins. One inspected me with a side eye and then crested and submerged again. They were swimming in circles as if they were trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing there. “I’m just here to check in on Kai. See how he’s doing.”

One stuck its head out of the water and squeaked at me. I almost could have sworn it was trying to say, “Help him out.” I was transfixed by it, unsure of what to say.

Another piteous cry from the quarantine pool drew my attention back to Kai. I stepped by the pool, seeing the little dolphin floating on his side, towards the top of the water. Like earlier, he wasn’t moving much, only doing the bare minimum to keep himself towards the top of the pool.

The wave of dark, depressed emotions hit me like a brick wall again. Even though I was more prepared for it this time, it still nearly bowled me over.

“It was you,” I managed. “I heard you before. Felt your sadness before.”

There was no response and the deep emotions flowed away like water.

Curious clicks from the other dolphins followed me as I circumnavigated the pool, trying to get the best angle on Kai. He didn’t even look up at me, as if he was ashamed.

“It’s going to be okay, Kai,” I told him. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

I was at the far edge of his pool now, where I was the most exposed to the elements. The evening wind had picked up, and I shivered, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. The pool had a platform that jutted out about eight yards from the water with a waist-high fence, probably to discourage the dolphins from attempting to jump the distance. From this vantage point, about twenty feet up from the rocky shore, I felt as if I could see everything. The winter moon hung lazily over the horizon, reflected like a mirror on the ocean’s surface.

It was beautiful, and at that moment, I thought how horrible it was for the dolphins to be so close to the freedom and the beauty of the ocean while being held captive. Neptune’s World was a rehabilitation center for injured animals, and once those animals were healthy, they were returned to the ocean unless they could no longer fend for themselves. At the Houston Aquarium, I could tell that these were healthy, strong dolphins, having no other reason to be here than the fact the aquarium needed dolphins. These dolphins weren’t going to be released back into the wild. They were caged.

“Help me. Help me please. I miss Mama.”

I remembered how I felt after my dad died and my mother emotionally distanced herself from me, afraid of getting hurt again. I was so young. I would lie in bed crying, wanting someone to comfort me, to hold me and tell me that they loved me, something that never came from my mother.

Our circumstances might have been different—I was human, Kai was a dolphin—and I couldn’t pretend to know how awful it must be for Kai to be captured. Instead, I could at least offer him some comfort.

I knelt and reached out across the pool to stroke the melon of his head. His slippery skin felt cool against my hand and at my touch, it seemed like he sighed into it. I petted him, feeling protective of the fragile baby.

“You’re going to be okay, Kai,” I whispered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man pulling himself up and over the fence by me. At least, I thought it was a man—he was hidden by the shadows and I couldn’t be sure. Curiosity overtook fear and I straightened from my kneeling position to get a closer look. Maybe it was a cleaner. Or a trespasser, in which case, I should be running.

I walked towards the figure as it began crawling across the ground, recovered from its climb.

It was dark, so I could barely see the outline of a man’s body stop and look at me. Then I saw the impossible, long, single fin on his lower half instead of two feet, and the scales cascading down from the man’s waist.

A mer tail. Not like the silicon kind I used for my performances. Even in the dark, I could see that it writhed and moved with a mind of its own, fully an extension of his body.

Reflexes and survival instinct took over before my mind could react. I backpedaled, trying to get away from the mysterious figure, only I misjudged how far I was from the edge of the water. And how wet the ground was.

My foot slipped and I fell head-over-heels backwards, plunging over the side of the fence and onto the rocky crags below. I screamed for help, but when my head struck solid rock and the rest of my body impacted with the ground, I fell into an unyielding darkness, one that was haunted by merman-shaped shadows emerging from the ocean.