Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [20]
“Miss Merlin’s done loads of research into it. Siren legends and mysteries are her favorite thing, and she knows more about them than anyone in the whole ocean! She told us the last place they were reported to have been seen.”
“And?”
Shona looked as if she were about to burst with excitement. “And it’s near here!”
I knew instantly what she was thinking. Before Shona met me, she’d never really had an adventure. Since we’d been best friends, we’d hardly had anything but!
“You want to see if we can find them?”
Shona nodded excitedly. “Look, I need to get to school. But think about it. Maybe we could look this weekend. It might distract you from everything else that’s going on.”
She had a point. And anyway, it did have an interesting ring to it — a group of sirens all vanishing into thin air overnight, never to be seen or heard from again. We could at least pretend that we were going to find them. Anything had to be better than sitting around getting more and more miserable about — well, about pretty much everything.
“You’re on,” I said with a grin. I knew Shona would manage to make me smile. She always does.
“Swishy!” She grinned back at me. “I’ll see if I can find out any more from Miss Merlin. We could go on Sunday.”
“Let’s do it!”
With that, we headed back. I had a slight twinge when we went our separate ways and she swam off to school. I don’t even know what the twinge was. A whole mix of things, I suppose. A bit sad seeing her go off on her own to school without me. A bit jealous of her still going to mermaid school and learning about things like sirens disappearing into invisible hiding places while I would soon be back to French and fractions.
And, yes, if I’m honest, there was a little bit of guilt in there, too, at the fact that I was excited about getting back to Brightport and spending the rest of the day with Aaron.
I waited for Shona to stop and wave before she rounded a corner, then I turned and swam back toward Brightport. A group of long black fish swam parallel with me, as though we were racing. Ahead, a stripy blue-and-pink fish swam across my path. Seaweed swayed below me, feathery ferns brushing the end of my tail as I swam over it. A feeling of peace washed over me. I smiled to myself as I headed home. Everything was going to be fine; I could tell.
And things were fine all week. Mom was back at the bookshop where she used to work. She’d gone in one day to say hello and it turned out one of the new assistants had just left, so they grabbed her right away and got her back on the job. That seemed to make her happier — as did the fact that Millie was around again. Millie had loads of friends in Brightport, so hadn’t had any trouble finding somewhere to stay. Mrs. Swindale, who ran one of the guesthouses on the waterfront, said she could stay there free of charge for as long as she wanted in exchange for a daily tarot reading, a couple of Reiki sessions, and a chakra cleansing or two.
Dad was busy working with Mr. Beeston, and Mom had even managed to get Aaron’s mom a part-time job helping out at the local thrift shop — which just left Aaron and me.
I showed him all my favorite parts of Brightport: the back streets where you could get lost if you didn’t know your way around, the walk along the promenade, where you could watch the sun set over the sea. We even went to look at the Rushtons’ new theme park. We only looked in from the outside, though. I didn’t want to bump into Mr. and Mrs. Rushton. After what had happened with Mandy, I couldn’t face it.
Once I’d shown Aaron the town, I decided to show him the other side of Brightport, the side I’d only known about since I’d discovered I was a mermaid — in particular, Rainbow Rocks. We swam there together. I told him that it was where I’d first met Shona, and where my mom had said good-bye to my dad when I was only a baby. That was the last time she’d seen him till last year.
“It’s very special here, isn’t it?” Aaron said, swimming slowly around the rocks. The water was so clear that you could see every pebble and every fish below us, even