Anyway. The gray guard isn’t that much more convincing than the rest of them. Sure, they’ve got way more expensive gear (dyed leather wings, grills to make their mouths protrude, and gray contacts for effect) but now that I’m familiar with a gargoyle in the flesh (so to speak), nothing compares to the real thing. What can I say. Living beneath an actual stone behemoth has ruined me. The rest of the Ren world is as real to me as it was to Mom, but. Those guys are just strong men painted gray.
Tav and I manage to keep our cool until the monster’s out of our rearview and then she looks back.
She didn’t make any broken-down lawnmower noises or poke fun at the way my car struggles up the hill, so I didn’t get to ask her when we can take that super-sweet ride she doesn’t own. Our morning banter’s totally thrown off.
“How do you think Dad’s gonna get rid of him?” she asks.
“I have no idea.” He’s out of sight, but I glance back anyway.
“It’s not gonna work,” she says, and I incline my head. That’s a given. I just hope he isn’t considering hurting the thing. If that’s even possible. “Is it weird that I want him to stay? Kind of? I mean, I only really hate him when Dad’s lecturing me about the way he sticks around.”
“Or maybe you only really like him cuz he pisses your dad off.”
“You make it sound cliché, but at least it’s not me pissing him off.” And then, “Is that weird?”
In the three years that the gargoyle’s been coming and going, I’ve gotten used to the sound of him settling in above my head. He’s been with the Philipses almost as long as I have, and as far as I’m concerned, he just comes with the territory. Anyway, if he were offering protection to me, I’d want him to stay, too. How many people have their own personal bodyguard, let alone one literally chiseled from stone?
“It’s not weird,” I tell Tavia, and then it gets quiet and my pre-gargoyle morning comes rushing back.
I’m trying not to mention the “s” word, but eventually I can’t stop myself.
When we stop at a red light not far from school, I say, “Hey. Have you heard of any sprite sightings lately?”
I keep my eyes on the road, but I know Tavia’s looking at me. I avoid this topic like the plague, so there’s no pretending this is normal. She knows there’s a reason.
“The mirage again?” she asks. “It’s just a game your eyes play on you because you spend so much time underwater.”
She can be so optimistic when it’s not siren-related. Like having a huge watery distortion in my vision when I’m nowhere near my tank or the pool is gonna be explained away.
“It’s happened a few times since the park, right? And nothing bad’s happened?”
“Yep.” I seal my lips and nod earnestly. Only four of my friends ever turned to statues. The mirage must be harmless. Thanks, T. “Never mind.”
We don’t talk for the rest of the drive, and neither of us switches on the radio. It’s the kind of silence a nerd like Tav might call “pregnant” … and hell if it ain’t uncomfortable.
“Hey,” I say when we’ve parked and the engine’s quiet.
“Hey.” She cuts her eyes at me, which is totally fair. I’m the one who made it tense, so I’m the one who has to make it better. I can tell by the way she waits patiently that she’s not even upset. These are just the rules. Whoever acts like a jerk gets to stumble awkwardly around for the other’s amusement or something.
“I just freakin’ love you, sis.”
“I just freakin’ love you, too.”
“So hey, wanna come set up with me after school?”
Sometimes when I’m lamenting my crappy skin and itchy scalp, Tavia compliments what she calls my “big, bashful eyes,” so I widen them on purpose. Bat my eyelashes a few too many times.
“No foolin’?” she asks, too intrigued to comment on how I probably look like I’m having a seizure.
“No foolin’. Finna cross state lines,” I say like I’m trying to get hyped.
Tavia squeals. “Today’s the day!”
“Today’s the day.”
I’m not fooling anyone trying to play it cool, so after a moment, I squeal too.
* * *
Ever since first grade, I’ve been a mermaid. For two glorious weeks a year, I’ve appeared at the Portland Faireground, a temporary exhibit reconstructed every year under St. Johns Bridge. But starting this year, Euphemia the Mer will be on display in Vancouver.
The big time.
It makes almost no sense that the permanent exhibit of the Ren faire is in Vancouver, Washington, instead of PDX, but sometimes you have to throw people a bone, I guess.
The important part is that Vancouver is home to the sacred tent of the Hidden Scales. And I’m getting closer.
Mom was a main-stage character before I debuted.
Minerva the Chosen. She was a pirate captain and she was so important that she was allowed entry to the Scales, where stories are born and decided. I thought that must be why I was given a story—a betrothal to the royal blacksmith’s son—but Mom always said it was all me.
The audience loved to watch me in the Mer Cove. I mean, I get it. A little Black girl swimming—in a mermaid tail, no less! But when they were oohing and aahing and maybe gawking for all the most annoying reasons, I was working on my craft. I was earning my story. I was working on my breathing exercises during the off-season so I could stay underwater for ridiculous stretches of time. I was defying my introvert tendencies and smiling widely, learning to drape my body the way Mer Shirl did. The chain-smoking matriarch entranced me from the start, the way she would disappear from the Cove and turn up at the river’s edge, half her body submerged like the water really was her lifeline.
The only mermaid at the faire for a long time, Mer Shirl got promoted to Vancouver when I was just starting out, and I made it my business to fill her fins. Every year for the beloved two weeks, I basked in the sun if it was shining and bathed in the rain if it wasn’t, and no matter what the PNW weather had in store, I practiced sign language so I could speak underwater, just like Mer Shirl did.
I realize I’m white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel and ease back.
“It’s finally happening,” I say through a shudder.
I don’t have to hide my excitement from Tavia. She’s not part of this world, but she gets it. She’s the only one who doesn’t think it’s corny, who doesn’t feel the need to remind me I’m the only Black girl in the faire now that Mom’s gone. She’s the only one who seems to get that the fairegrounds are the one place it feels like Mom still exists. Where no one shies away from calling her Minerva, like Mama Theo always has. Even when Mom legally changed her name, Mama Theo insisted on calling her Minnie.
“How are we gonna put that huge tank together?” Tav asks, and her voice sounds just as energized as mine. I love it.
“Oh, we don’t actually have to construct the tank itself, just make it home. Oversee the tech guys replacing Mer Shirl’s with mine so the Vancouver Cove doesn’t get cluttered up.”
“Mer Shirl’s retiring?”