Deep Betrayal

and Dad still didn’t know the truth about himself, but it was only natural that plunging into his birth waters would set something in motion.
    “My dad hasn’t been feeling well,” I said. I wished Jules hadn’t brought it up. What if the urge to swim got too strong for my dad? What if he jumped in? I couldn’t help obsessing over where and when and how he’d learn the truth for himself.
    I’d hoped things would be better now that he was no longer the target of a mermaid assassination plot, but I was afraid my attempt at heroics had only made things worse. A part of me wished I’d told him right away, but how do you tell your father he’s a merman? Particularly with our family history for crazy.
    Instead, I’d tried to limit my worry to something else: If Dad was a merman, what did that make me? My eyes went automatically to MY SCRIBBLINGS , half buried under theflurry of paper. Recently I’d scribbled the cover of my poetry notebook with my answer:
    Mutt, MUTANT, Mixed-breed
    At least I finally had an explanation for my abnormal ability to endure the freezing lake temperatures. I wasn’t normal. Not by a long shot.
    “Your parents will be here,” Jules said. “Don’t worry. Hey, what’s with the paper chain?” She swirled her finger through one of the blue links.
    “It’s nothing.”
    My phone went off again. Same website link again. Damn spammers.
    “Lily, quit saying that. Give me something to work with.”
    “I guess I’m just nervous about graduation tomorrow.”
    “You mean with Phillip’s thing? No one’s going to get in trouble. Every grad class has some stupid prank. It’ll be easy. When you go up onstage to shake Principal Landsem’s hand, just drop a penny into his palm. It’ll be funny. By the time he gets to the N’s, he’ll have collected about three hundred. His pockets will be bulging.”
    “Couldn’t we just go with a streaker?” I asked. “Or maybe a flasher? It’s been a few years since a class did that. I bet Mikey’d be up for it.”
    “No doubt. Which is why no one asked him. Have you ever seen that guy naked?”
    “No. Have you?”
    “Kelly Moeller’s pool party last year. My eyes arestill burning.” Jules picked up my poetry notebook. The word mutant stood out the most, in all caps, centered on the cover.
    “What’s with the self-loathing?”
    I ripped the notebook from her hands. “Who says it’s about me? I was actually commenting on you.”
    She grabbed it back and thwacked me over the head with it.
    “I’m going to give your dad a big hug when I see him. Seriously, the coolest thing any parent ever did, sending you home where you belong. I doubt my parents would have done it.”
    Jules’s phone went off and she slid it open. Her thumbs worked furiously over the keypad as she sent back her response, then snapped the phone shut.
    “Good news,” she said. “Robby and Zach are going to make it after all.”
    Jules’s mother had planned a catered dinner party at their house for our friends. She was loath to celebrate what she called a “milestone event” at the Olive Garden.
    “Now, can I help you clean this mess up? My mom’s going to freak when she sees this floor.”
    We spent the next hour sweeping my senior year into a trash can and throwing dirty clothes into a hamper. Jules commented on several of my favorite pieces: a navy velvet jacket and a yellow beret. “You’re the only one I know who can pull this stuff off. I’d look like a deranged clown.”
    “I was going more for a modern-day Charlotte Brontë.” I hung the jacket in the closet. I hadn’t worn it since comingback to the Twin Cities. I could still smell the lake air in its fibers.
    “Who?” Jules asked as she turned on the TV. The 1939 film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles was playing. Jules flopped down on the bed, resting her head in her hands. I wrapped up in an afghan on the floor and tried to focus on the movie. Something about a curse and some girl who got away.
    Neither of us was awake for the end of the movie, and I was dreaming again:
    I sank through the floor, through the joists, past the tangle of wires to the downstairs, and on past the basement. I dropped like a weighted line below the foundation into a watery underworld. The cold cut my skin and my lungs burned. A mermaid’s arms crushed my chest. Tighter, tighter. I called out, but no one answered. I reached for something that wasn’t there, then the sudden explosion of sound, and the