“Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes,” Mo said as she drove. “Don’t look until I tell you.” The car swerved. I worried I might vomit.
“Okay,” she said when she finally stopped the car.
I opened my eyes. She clapped her hand over my face. “Don’t open yet!”
“You said, ‘Okay!’ ”
“I meant, ‘Okay, we’re here.’ Not ‘Okay, open your eyes.’ ”
“Well, I didn’t know.”
“Keep ’em closed. Stay put. I’ll come get you.”
She helped me out of the car and put her hands on my shoulders to steer me. “Okay, step up.”
I lifted my leg.
“Not that high,” she said, laughing. “Like the normal height that anyone would ever step.”
A few more steps and then the ground went from pavement to grass. “Can I open my eyes yet?”
“No.”
“Come on!”
“Stand still.” She let go of me and I heard something scraping. Then her hands were back on my shoulders. We walked a few more feet.
I did, lifting a little less high than before. My foot caught on something and sent me hurtling forward, but Mo steadied me.
“Higher,” she said, laughing. “Hysterical!”
We took a few more steps.
“Okay, sit down.”
I reached behind me for a chair.
“On the ground!” Mo said.
“In movies this kind of thing is much quicker, and way more romantic.”
“Yeah, well, I only like you as a friend,” she said, helping me find the ground.
I stumbled.
“Can you even move like a normal person?” She laughed. “Alright, lie down.”
“Really?” Around me I felt dirt and pokey pieces of grass.
“Lie down.”
So I did. And she did. Her arm against mine.
“Okay,” she said. “Look!”
I opened my eyes. All I saw was blue sky, the sun streaming down.
“We’re under the sea!” she shouted.
“What?” I sat up.
There was a huge metal circle surrounding us, and a construction fence beyond that. We were at the marine park, where Morty lived.
“Ready to work?” she asked, pulling a pair of gloves from the pocket of her overalls and tossing them in my lap.
“What is this?” I asked.
“A mermaid tank,” she said, standing up.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Jen Gonzalez from the park board came to the mermaid show. She’s madly in love with Morty. So I had lunch with her and pitched this.”
“That’s amazing!”
“The only thing—I hope Nan isn’t mad . . . I told her Nan and Bitsie would teach two mermaid classes a week,” she said, picking at a scab on her elbow. “I want to surprise them with the tank, so I didn’t clear it with them first. It’s an adult class and then one with kids. And then some shows.” Mo wrinkled her forehead. “Do you think they’ll do it?”
“Absolutely, they will,” I said. A few nights earlier, Nan, Bitsie, and I had a martooni-fueled brainstorming session about starting a business called The Mermaid Experience, where clients could have a costume custom-made and learn some moves from the pros. By the end of the evening, Bitsie and Nan had all but planned an empire.
“I’m making a rock formation in the shop,” Mo said, drawing a picture of it in the dirt with a twig. “Kind of like the tunnel you’d see in an aquarium. So it’s going to look like a great big fish tank, and we’re all so small.”
“What will you do for the glass?” I asked, taking the twig from her. I drew a mermaid swimming through the tunnel.
“Danny has a friend who does plexiglass art. Like thick installation pieces. So he’ll get co-credit, and half the grant. Totally worth it. I don’t know shit about plexiglass.”
I could picture all of it. I drew air bubbles rising from the mermaid’s mouth.
Mo drew a face in one of my bubbles with her finger. “Luca helped me.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to keep my feelings off my face.
“He sent me footage of the documentary so I could show it to Jen. She thinks when his film comes out it will be fantastic for tourism.” Mo shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand.
“You’ll help me?” she asked. “Because I’ve totally overpromised on this.”
“Yeah,” I said, leaning against her. “I’ll help you.”
I knew she was already sure I would help when she asked. I hoped when we were seventy-five, we would still have crazy projects to work on together. Our own mermaid show, in whatever form it might take.
I studied her sun-bleached hair and peeling, sunburned nose, the way her eyes squinted in the late afternoon light. I wanted to cup her face in my hands and tell her I was going to love her forever, the way Nan loved Bitsie. I was going to be the person who showed up for her, because friendship is a love story too. There were so many things I couldn’t figure out how to commit to yet, but I could commit to Mo. I could show up for Mo for the rest of my life. I could have faith in myself about that.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” Mo said, crossing her eyes at me.
“Because I think you’re amazing.”
“Good,” she said, blushing. “Can you help me bring that beam over to lock into this one?”