The Mermaid's Mirror Read online

  Lena’s father shook the man’s hand. “Don. Good morning,” he said, his voice deepening into what Lena thought of as Dad’s I’m-Being-Serious-Now voice. “This is my daughter, Lena. Lena, this is Mr. Wolinsky.”

  Wolinsky and Wellman Consultants. Must be one of the bosses, she thought. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Wolinsky.”

  “Call me Don, please.” He smiled. “We’re all looking forward to working with your father.”

  She smiled, too. “Great.”

  “This is Karen,” continued Don, indicating the receptionist.

  “Nice to meet you, Lena,” she said. “What lovely hair! You have your father’s blond hair.”

  “Thanks.”

  “In ten years I probably won’t have any of it left,” her father said, chuckling. “I’ll have to look at Lena to remind myself what it looked like.”

  Lena cringed.

  Karen laughed. She held up a bowl of M&M’s. “I always offer candy to the kids when they visit, but I guess you’re not a kid anymore, are you? Let me see—are you fourteen? Or fifteen?”

  “I turn sixteen next week,” said Lena. She took a couple of M&M’s. “Thank you.”

  “Oh!” said Karen. “You’re so petite, I guessed too young.” She winked. “When you’re my age, you’ll appreciate that.”

  The three adults shared a slightly-too-hearty laugh, and Lena smiled, putting the M&M’s in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to respond.

  “Well,” said the Boss Guy. “Shall we give Lena the grand tour?” He turned to lead them down the hall.

  The guy—Don, Lena reminded herself—introduced Lena to the other people in the office, most of whom had already met her father. Lena thought it was the politest group of people she had ever met, everyone smiling and saying nice things about her dad.

  “Let’s take a look at the view from my office,” said Don.

  Lena followed them into a spacious corner office, dominated by a floor-to-ceiling window that curved around the edge of the building.

  “Come look, Lena,” said her dad. “Isn’t this something?”

  She stood next to him, the glass of the window so crystal clear that it seemed as if they were standing at the edge of the twenty-ninth floor with no window in front of them . . . nothing to keep them from falling. She took a breath and looked down. Cars and taxis, buses, and bicycles flowed up and down the streets, advancing and stopping in a traffic dance. People moved along the sidewalks, colorful and distant. There was a grassy park across the street, ringed with trees and flowers. A bubbling fountain was the centerpiece of the park, with a bunch of little kids running around it in circles. San Francisco Bay glinted in the distance.

  Lena’s face grew warm, and a light sweat broke out on her forehead. It felt like the building was swaying, as if in a heavy wind. But the flag on the flagpole across the street hung slack.

  She lifted a hand, as if to hold on to something. But there was nothing there. She focused on the park across the street to regain her perspective. The water in the fountain sparkled and splashed, sparkled and splashed. As she watched, suddenly she felt like she might plummet out the window, not falling straight down, but sailing through empty air like a bird, against all laws of gravity, until she crashed into that bubbling fountain.

  The pressure in her ears returned, along with a roaring sound.

  Lena opened her mouth, trying to take in more air. The back of her neck felt hot, and she thought, Oh, no—I’m going to throw up in front of my dad’s new boss!

  She fell forward against the glass, which was suddenly hard and reassuring under her palms.

  Darkness swam into her eyes, and the last thing she heard was her father calling her name from far away.

  Chapter 3

  “Absolutely. Yes. You’re right.” Lena’s dad, his voice brittle, talked on the phone while Lena stared out the window of the car. Her mind kept replaying the moment when she woke up in that guy’s office with a bunch of scared faces looking down at her. She would never forget it, no matter how long she lived. That Karen woman had wanted to call 911! Errgh. She leaned her head against the side window.

  “We’ll be home in less than an hour,” said her dad. “Okay. Here she is.” He handed the phone to Lena.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  The sound of her mom’s voice caused a lump to form in Lena’s throat. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “I know, sweetie. Dad and I talked about it, and we decided it’s probably not necessary, but I’m going to call Dr. Feldman.”

  “Mom, I’m fine!”

  “Of course you are. You probably just had a little attack of vertigo, but I still want to talk to Dr. Feldman.”

  Lena sighed, even though she knew her mom was right.

  “See you in a little while.”

  “Okay, bye.” Lena closed the cell phone and handed it back to her dad.

  He plugged it into the charger and started the car. “Sorry about the shopping, Leen, but—”

  “I don’t care,” said Lena. Her dad was supposed to take her shopping after the visit to his new office, but now they were going straight home. Which was fine with Lena. She didn’t exactly want to start passing out all over San Francisco.

  Her dad drove out of the city and headed south on Highway l.

  They passed a big green highway sign:

  MOSS BEACH 17 MILES

  DIAMOND BAY 28 MILES

  SANTA CRUZ 73 MILES

  Santa Cruz, thought Lena. There’s a bunch of surf schools there. It’s only forty-five minutes away. Dad’s been asking what I want for my birthday . . .

  She looked at him hunched over the steering wheel, his expression taut, and decided that now was not the time to bring up surfing.

  Her mom did her best to act calm and unworried when Lena got home, but her being home in the middle of the day was proof enough that things were not normal.

  “What did Dr. Feldman say?” asked Lena.

  Mom kissed her forehead, and Lena knew she was checking for fever. “Her nurse said to make sure you ate something, and to call back if it happened again. Apparently fainting can happen sometimes during puberty. We might want to take you in for a blood test to make sure you’re not anemic.”

  “I’m fine,” said Lena, for what felt like the twentieth time. “I just got dizzy. It was so embarrassing!” She cringed all over again at the memory of waking up surrounded by strangers. “At least I didn’t puke in front of Dad’s new boss.”

  “Oh, honey!” said her mom. “No one cared about that. They were just worried about you fainting.”

  Lena’s father said, “Yeah, well, you should have seen the Oriental rug in that corner office. I was glad she didn’t puke, too!”

  “Brian!”

  Her dad put his arm around Mom’s shoulder. “Kidding, honey.”

  Cole came crashing down the stairs into the living room. When he saw their parents hugging, he threw his arms around both of them. “Group hug!” he yelled.

  Mom held out an arm to Lena. “Come on, you know the drill.”

  Lena moved into the family circle, putting one arm around her mom, and reaching out with the other to rumple Cole’s hair.

  He ducked out from under her hand. At six years old, he was starting to resist rumpling. He turned his bright blue eyes—so much like Dad’s—up to Lena and asked, “Want to play catch with me?”

  “Maybe later, Coley,” she said. She heard that question from her brother at least once a day—she and her parents rotated shifts of playing catch with him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me when you’re ready?”

  “Sure.”

  He bounded out of the room and headed back upstairs.

  “Have you had lunch?” asked her mom.

  “Yes,” said Lena. “Dad and I stopped at Pink Cottage on our way home.”

  “You stopped at the Pink Cottage and didn’t get me scones?” said her mom, mock-aghast.

  Lena left her
parents to discuss the lack of scones, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll be in my room.”

  She climbed the stairs and went into her room, closing her door. She logged in to her IM. Pem was online.

  Sea_girl: Hey.

  PemberLoca: Lena! Ur home early.

  Sea_girl: Yeah.

  PemberLoca: How come back so soon?

  Sea_girl: Umm . . .

  PemberLoca: ??

  Sea_girl: This weird fainting thing happened.

  PemberLoca: Wha??!!

  Sea_girl: Yeah. Felt rly weird, then I fell over.

  PemberLoca: OMG scary! Were u with ur dad?

  Sea_girl: Yeah, his new work. ☹ We were by this huge window way up high n I guess I got dizzy.

  PemberLoca: Going to doctor?

  Sea_girl: Prolly.

  PemberLoca: Too freaky! U ok, bff? ☹

  Sea_girl: Yes! Just a one-time thing.

  Lena lifted her hands from the keyboard, suddenly chilled. Just a one-time thing. That’s what she’d told herself about the sleepwalking.

  Sea_girl: Lets not even talk about it, k?

  PemberLoca: K. See u tomorrow?

  Sea_girl: Yes!

  PemberLoca: Bye.

  Lena logged off and went back downstairs to get something to drink. As she walked into the kitchen, her mom was saying, “. . . if the vertigo was caused by something else?”

  “She’s never had any blood work done,” said her dad. “It would be—”

  Her parents stood close together, their heads bent. They fell silent as Lena entered the room, and Lena caught the worried expression on her dad’s face before he saw her.

  Glancing up, he made an effort to smile, then said with fake casualness, “What’s up, Lena?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Nothing. Just getting a drink.”

  She grabbed an energy drink and hurried from the room, because she did not want to talk about fainting anymore.

  Kai was singing into the phone. “Lena said knock you out . . . I’m gonna knock you out . . .”

  Lena laughed. Even though Kai looked like the quintessential California surfer boy—whose life would revolve around “brews and bros,” and who would only listen to speed metal—he was actually a drama geek who loved all music, from power ballads to punk. Lena had heard Ani accuse him once of having “ludicrously undiscriminating taste in music,” to which he had replied, “Love Ludacris!” Lately he’d taken to inserting Lena’s name into whatever song was on his brain radio. “I did not say to knock anyone out,” she said. “And I think you’ve reached your limit on oldies for the day, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, Leen,” he said. “There is no limit. Hey . . . that sounds like it should be a slogan, doesn’t it? And you might as well prepare yourself. Drama Club is voting on which musical to put on. It’s down to three: Brigadoon, Grease, and Guys and Dolls.”

  “Whoa,” said Lena. “Those are all really old!”

  “Don’t be ageist,” said Kai. “They prefer the term ‘classic.’”

  “Why not something like Wicked?”

  “I dunno. Hey, how was your trip to the city?”

  Lena reluctantly told him about the fainting, and he begged to come over immediately to confirm in person that she was all right.

  “Nooo,” she said. “I’m fine, I’m fine! No one seems to believe me. I probably just have swimmer’s ear, or something.” Although I haven’t been swimming in over a week, she thought.

  “Okay, I believe you,” he said. “Let me come over anyway. Just to . . . you know.”

  Lena giggled. “You know?”

  “Right. You know.”

  “Um, I don’t know. And I’m almost afraid to find out.”

  “I want to be alone with you. There. How’s that for blunt?”

  “That might be kind of tough,” she said. “Seeing as both my parents are here, and they’re all worried about me now, so they probably won’t let me out of their sight.”

  Exhaling heavily, Kai said, “Man. They’re such, like, good parents. Why can’t they be all wrapped up in their own problems?”

  “I know, right?” Lena laughed. “I’m practically grown. They should just leave me to my own devices.”

  “I got your devices right here, baby,” said Kai in his sexy voice, which made her crack up some more.

  “I’ll just see you tomorrow,” she said.

  “Really?” Now he sounded hurt. “I was serious. I want to see you.”

  Lena paused. She was still adjusting to the concept of Kai being her boyfriend. Friend Kai would have said, “Yeah, catch you later.” Boyfriend Kai wanted to see her all the time, it seemed like. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. Um, why don’t you come over after dinner?”

  “Perfect.”

  “But don’t blame me if you’re bored once you get here.”

  “Unpossible,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Chapter 4

  Lena dreamed she was falling, the helpless dizzy sensation jolting her out of sleep.

  She lay frozen, her heart thudding in her chest, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Practically in the clouds.

  She rolled over and sat up. No more sleeping today. She wasn’t going to risk going back to that dream. Without turning on the light, Lena got out of bed and went to the window, moving aside the curtain so she could peer outside. A light fog blanketed the empty street, casting a misty halo around each streetlight. Sliding open the window, Lena felt the rush of cold air on her face. Perfect autumn beach weather.

  She pulled on sweats over her pajamas, shivering a little. Stepping into the hallway, she listened for early-morning family sounds, but the house was quiet. They must still be asleep. She padded down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she turned on the light, dimming it immediately so the glare wouldn’t hurt her eyes. She grabbed a marker and scrawled on the dry-erase board:

  6:15 a.m.—went for walk on the beach—L.

  Pulling on her jacket, she stepped outside, where the cold air smelled of the sea. Lena took a deep breath, as if inhaling perfume. Why couldn’t it smell this good everywhere?

  She walked two blocks to the end of the road without seeing anyone else. When the streets were silent and dark, it was easy to imagine she was the only person awake for miles. Behind the dark windows of all these houses, she pictured everyone still curled up in bed, fast asleep, while she roamed the neighborhood alone.

  Lena walked across the graveled public parking area and moved down the narrow beach path, a worn stretch of earth in the middle of tall grasses. The dew-covered blades clung to her pants like wet fingers. Stashing her sandals near a fallen log, she gave a sigh of relief as her feet touched the cool sand.

  The only light on the shore came from Pelican Point Lighthouse, two miles to the north, where a bright beam flashed in the darkness and winked out, just like clockwork. But the darkness didn’t bother Lena; she could walk this stretch of sand with her eyes closed. In fact, she thought wryly, I could walk this stretch of sand in my sleep.

  Lena made her way down to the edge of the water, where the sand was rippled from having been under water a few hours ago. The tide was out, but she could feel the urgency of the sea . . . soon the tide would sweep back in and cover the sand where she stood. The waves pounded as if hungry for shore.

  She walked almost a mile, until she came to Shipwreck Rocks, the massive stone jetty that extended into the sea, separating Diamond Bay from Magic Crescent Cove. A weathered sign proclaimed WARNING! DO NOT CLIMB ON ROCKS. RISK OF INJURY OR DEATH. Ignoring the sign, Lena began to scale the rocks. The sign had been there her whole life, and she’d never heard of anyone getting hurt on the rocks, other than the occasional twisted ankle or scraped knee.

  Once she reached the top, she settled down on a relatively flat boulder, resting her eyes on the horizon, where gray met darker gray. It was so early even the surfers weren’t out yet.

  She’s never had any blood work done . . .

  Lena shivered. She wished she
hadn’t overheard her parents. She couldn’t get that word out of her mind. Blood.

  I’m fine, she told herself. My blood is fine. Restless, she got up and made her way carefully down the other side of the rocks. When she neared the bottom, she jumped onto the sand.

  She walked farther down the beach, farther from home, as if she could leave her fears behind. Finally she stopped to catch her breath, staring out at the empty water.

  As she gazed at the sea, a sleek head popped out of the water.

  She smiled and waved at the sea lion. They loved this stretch of shoreline. She knew it was silly to wave at them—she wouldn’t do it if other people were around—but sea lions always seemed so interested in human activity that she couldn’t help greeting them. She wished she could swim out to play with them.

  The sea lion disappeared beneath the surface again, popping up a few more times in different spots, finally drifting so far north that Lena couldn’t see him.

  “Bye,” she whispered.

  . . . never had any blood work . . .

  Lena wished she could pluck the thought out of her head and throw it into the sea, where it would be borne away by the waves.

  She splashed ankle-deep in the surf, letting the cold water tickle her feet. She grabbed a sandy stick, dragging it through the wet sand, making circles and hearts and stars. Then she wrote in big letters, I AM FINE.

  Lena tossed the stick onto the sand and made her way back to Shipwreck Rocks. She should probably head home. No point in worrying her parents even more by being MIA when they woke up. Lena climbed to the top of the rocks, glancing back the way she had come, and almost stumbled. A solitary figure had appeared on the beach.