Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [27]
What would Neptune do if he found out how badly we were failing?
I had plenty of experience with what Neptune does when he isn’t happy, the kind of punishments he can dole out. And I knew one thing. I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of another one. No, we had to sort it out. We simply had to.
All we had to do was figure out how.
I sloped over to Aaron’s, too mixed up and miserable to try to work out any more answers on my own.
“Come on. Let’s go out,” he said. His mom had discovered a whole channel of game shows, and it was hard to talk over the TV.
“I thought maybe we could try to talk to my grandparents one more time,” I said as we walked down the beach. We both knew it wasn’t likely to do any good, but Aaron agreed that it would be worth trying one more time . . . just in case they remembered. So, we headed toward the row of cottages where they were staying.
“Hello?” I shouted through the mail slot.
Aaron rapped on the door for the third time. Nothing.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Maybe they’ve gone out?”
“Try one more time,” I said.
Aaron lifted his fist to knock again, but stopped midair. “Hang on,” he said. “Look.” He pushed the door and it swung open. “Should we . . . ?”
I peeked inside. “Nan?” I called. “Granddad?” There was no reply. I turned back to Aaron. “Come on.”
We went in. Creeping around, feeling like burglars, we looked in every room. Not that it took long. There are only four rooms in these cottages — and every one was empty.
“They’ve left,” I said, plonking myself down on one of the armchairs.
“All their stuff’s gone.”
“And they were in such a hurry to get away from us that they didn’t even lock the door behind them when they left!”
Aaron reached out and pulled me up from the armchair. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We walked along the beach, heading back to the pier, both lost in our thoughts. I hoped his weren’t quite as miserable as mine. In other words, I hoped he wasn’t thinking about the fact that every single thing I ever tried to do to make things better only seemed to make them worse. And I hoped he wasn’t thinking too hard about how much trouble we were going to be in with Neptune if we didn’t hurry up and get some peace talk going on around here.
“Oh, great,” Aaron said heavily.
I looked up to see a familiar figure heading toward us. Mandy Rushton. That was all we needed.
She stopped right in front of us, hands on hips. For a second, a strange look flashed across her face. Her expression was baffled and contorted, as though it were being pulled in two directions at the same time. Have you ever seen a film or cartoon where someone’s trying to decide between good and evil and they have a little angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both talking to them at the same time? There was something about Mandy’s expression that reminded me of that.
And then I guess she must have listened to the devil, because she looked me right in the eyes and smirked. “Oh, look,” she said. “Someone’s left a pile of trash lying around on the beach again.” Then she turned her scowl on Aaron. “In fact, two piles of trash,” she added.
So much for thinking Mandy Rushton might have an angel sitting on one shoulder!
“Excuse me,” I said. I tried to get past her, but she stepped to the right so that she was still in my way.
“Got somewhere important to be, have you?” she sneered. “Oh, poor you, that nasty Mandy Rushton getting in your way? Well, it just so happens I’ve got somewhere important to be, too.” She took another step closer toward me. Her face was inches from mine.
I wanted to ask her to stop it. I wanted to remind her we’d been friends once and ask her if we could do it again. I stopped myself, though. I wasn’t going to go begging her. It would only give her more ammunition to throw back in my face. Mandy would never be friends with me again. The memory drug had made sure of that.
Aaron reached out and took my hand in his to reassure me.
Mandy burst out laughing. “Aw,