Walking away from Erie is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I swear I hear her voice screaming my name as I shower, but it must be my imagination. I can’t get back inside the holding rooms, regardless. By the time I leave the locker room, I can’t hear anything.
My god, I can’t believe I won’t see her anymore. The thought stops me halfway up the stairs, and I grip the railing to keep myself upright. I will never hear her cheerful “Good morning, Finn!” again. Never fall into the depths of her eyes. Never feel her fins brush over me in the fish version of a caress. Not until the day I free her.
I’m more determined than ever to make that happen, especially when the HR manager tells me I’m working in the gift shop with my sister. I’d rather be fired outright, but at least this gives me a chance to tell guests about Erie—about how amazing she is. About how we need to free her. If Corporate sticks me in the gift shop, then I’ll undermine that decision as much as I can.
The one o’clock show is starting when I make my way topside, and the gift shop is deserted except for my sister and the other girl that works there. “Hey, Munchkin,” I say.
Heather slaps me in the face. “Finnegan Phillip Jarvis, don’t you ever scare me like that again.” I’m still in shock over being slapped when she throws her arms around my neck and hugs me hard.
I rub my stinging cheek. “Nice to see you, too.”
She releases me, but her frown is still in place. “You better call Mom—she freaked out when you jumped in the water. She’s probably left seven voicemails by now.”
“Mom was here?”
“Of course. She’s pissed she had to learn about your first show from me.” Her eyes bore into me. “Last night.”
“Oh, uh, I guess I’ve been so busy, I forgot to tell her.” If I’d known Mom would be at the show, I would have warned her I was jumping in.
Scratch that—I wouldn’t have said a damn thing, because Mom would have told Serge’s mom, who would have told Delmara.
“So,” Heather says, “you here to rub in how amazing your show was and how they’re changing the name of the park to Finn-land?”
Finn-land, I wish I’d thought of that, and wish I was in any sort of a mood to joke about it. “I’m here to work. Corporate wasn’t happy with the show, so I’m topside for the rest of the summer.”
Heather’s jaw actually drops open. “You’ve been demoted?”
The word makes me sick. “I was trying not to think of it like that, but yeah, I’ve been relieved as Erie’s trainer. If I’m a good boy, I can have a new Mer next summer.”
“Who’s Erie?” the other girl says.
I glance around the shop—I’m surrounded by Erie here. Stuffed animals, figurines, clothes, magnets, you name it, all emblazoned with her magenta hair and fins. I don’t feel like explaining, though. I don’t feel like being here at all.
“I’ll be back,” I say and escape the magenta commercialism. I walk to the top of the stands and watch the rest of K, Radon, and Argon’s show instead. Clair and Huron. Huron, the broken ex-boyfriend of my Mer. This is what Corporate wants: dead-behind-the-eyes, broken Mer who never smile and can’t wait to kill their trainers. Delmara wants to break Erie’s spirit, but I won’t let her. I don’t care what it takes—I will destroy my dream job to get Erie out.
I lean on the passenger side door of Jen’s car as she walks out of the staff entrance. Her shoulders are slumped, and a crease that wasn’t there yesterday—or this morning—mars her forehead.
“Hey.”
She lifts her head. “Hey.”
The car beeps that it’s unlocked, and I climb in. Ever since Niku attacked me, I’ve been carpooling with Jen. First because I couldn’t drive, and then because I was spending my nights at her place. Awkward silence permeates the car. “How’s Erie?”
“Sedated.”
“As in mellow? Or as in you dumped quinaldine in the tank?”
“Quinaldine.” Jen’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel as she stops for a group of tourists crossing the street. “She freaked out and started to float. Sergio gave her a sedative, but promised she’d be able to perform tomorrow.”
I should be thankful Sergio didn’t shock her when she freaked out, but I can’t believe they drugged Erie. “But—”
“She asked us to.” Jen’s voice is strained, and my anger turns into guilt. They wouldn’t have had to sedate her if I hadn’t so royally fucked up. “Niku had to hold her down, and Serge said sedation would be the quickest way to stop her floating.”
I stare blindly out the window as we cross Duval—I’ve seen Mer float before. After we shocked Carbon into releasing what was left of Hannah, he took one look at her and hyperventilated. He began to float and panicked, trying to swim to the depths of the arena, but unable to. I’ve always wondered if it was because he realized what he’d done, or if he knew what would happen to him for doing it.
When I don’t answer, Jen keeps talking. “She balanced out after a while and curled up on Niku’s back like normal.”
I nod, imagining Erie’s tail curled around his dorsal fin, while her hair hides her face from the gray concrete walls surrounding them.
Heavy silence wraps around Jen and me until she parks, turns the car off, and sits back. Neither of us moves.
“Where . . . ?” Her hands slide over the steering wheel. “Where did they . . . ?”
I’m glad she can’t finish, because I don’t want to hear her say the words. “Gift shop, with my sister.”
Jen swallows. “Oh.”
“She’ll get a kick out of ordering me around, so at least someone’s happy.” That reminds me of what Heather said about Mom, and I fish my phone out of my pocket. Sure enough—several voicemails and a few texts. I rub my eyes with my fingers. “I hope you have something stronger than beer inside.”
“Tequila.”
Ugh. Tequila shots are the worst, but they’re better than the feeling squeezing my chest right now. It’s a fine mixture of guilt, denial, and pride that goes down even worse than tequila.
Two shots later, I sprawl on the couch with my arm around Jen, though she’s stiff and I’m thinking of anything but sex. Or her.
She takes a deep breath and stiffens more. “Can I ask you something?”
“From the sound of your voice, I’ll need more tequila for this.” The bottle’s on the floor next to us, and I take another shot before I tap her arm. “Go.”
Another deep breath. “What did you mean when you said you gave Delmara the idea for the Mer shows?”
That was her question? I expected her to ask what was going on with Erie saying she loved me, or why I was so convinced Corporate would never fire me, though I guess this is kind of a roundabout way to the latter. “When she first documented the Mer, I mentioned that it would be cool to see them perform at Orca World.”
Jen tilts her head back. “That sounds like something a twelve-year-old would say.”
“I was fifteen.” She turns her face into my arm as I talk. “We were still at the college then, and the tanks were barely big enough to hold the Mer—they were made for much smaller fish. We had one female that kept trying to escape by jumping out, but there wasn’t enough room for her to get any momentum, so she mostly just splashed around a lot. That’s when I made the comment.”
“So Delmara just . . . built Oceanica for you?”
My laugh is more a derisive snort than anything. “She did nothing for me—the Mer needed bigger tanks, so she went to Orca World and offered to sell them, with the stipulation that she would be hired to do research.” That’s what Oceanica should be—a research facility. But no one wants to fund a multimillion dollar research facility if they aren’t getting a return on their investment.
“Orca World said no. They were in the middle of a PR shit-storm and thought that bringing in an even more dangerous—and humanoid—creature was a bad move.”
“And now your Mer shows have put them out of business.” The laugh that escapes Jen is humorless.
“Their former owner holds at least a quarter of the shares in Oceanica. He knew it’d be bad business for Orca World, but great for us.”
Jen deflates. “That’s . . . disheartening.”
I can’t help but agree. Freeing Erie means we don’t just go up against Corporate—we go up against Corporate. Savvy businesspeople who can wind legal documents around us until we choke on ink. Despite the protests against keeping orcas, the only thing that tanked Orca World was the Mer shows—what will we have to discover to make people forget about mermaids? A unicorn? Aliens?
My promise to free Erie feels impossible.
Jen’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “Do the deaths ever bother you?”
“Of course.” That deserves another shot of tequila, as an image of the failed dissections flashes through my mind. “I mean, at first watching them foam was kind of cool, but you never feel good about having to do it.”
She sits up so fast I spill tequila as I set the bottle back on the floor. “I meant the human deaths. The trainers.”
What? I thought we were worried about Erie? “Of course the trainer deaths bother me, but it’s not like it’s my fault. It sucks when my friends are attacked, but they asked to work with the Mer.”
The expression in Jen’s eyes tells me that I’m the most reprehensible human being on the planet. “What about the ones who came from Orca World—because you shut it down?”
Maybe it’s the tequila, but I’m not following this conversation. “They had just as much of a chance of being attacked by a killer whale.”
Jen punches the couch and stands, pacing. “My god, Finn. Your stupid comment when you were fifteen has cost people their lives! Trainers have died. Mer have died. Erie—”
I stand, too, knocking over the tequila without caring. “Erie won’t die.”
Jen swallows back tears, her hands moving like she wants to say something, then folding into fists at her side. “Maybe you should go.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“I’m asking you to go home.”
I throw up my arms. “I can’t fucking believe this. First, I lose my job—and Erie—and now, my girlfriend is kicking me out of her house.”
Jen gapes at me for a moment, mouth open, before she snaps it shut and points a finger in my face. “I am not your girlfriend. Get out of my house.”
All of the anger sags out of me. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean girlfriend. I meant—”
“Get. The fuck. Out.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath before I punch something. “Fine. Tell Erie to smile tomorrow.” I slam the door and begin the long walk home—to my mother’s house. I don’t want to deal with Sergio right now. And at least this way, Mom can yell at me in person, instead of over a voicemail.