CHAPTER 12—AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT

 

 

Stacey woke to the smell of baking. She woke to the smell of the sea, and the cry of seagulls, and it took her a few minutes to remember where she was. When she did, she felt her heart give a happy skip, and worked her way out of bed and into the chair. If she was lucky, her brother and cousins would be back, and they could start planning on how to get Veleia back to the sea.

They weren’t, so Stacey made up for it by licking the mixing bowl, her mother had used for the cakes.

“Choc-orange swirl,” her mother said, “with extra chocolate. It’s a bit of an experiment.”

“It’s delicious,” Stacey said, scooping up the left over cake mix with her finger.

“Really, super yum,” she added, after she’d stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked it clean.

Her mum laughed.

“Go wash your hands when you’re done,” she said. “Your brother will be home soon.”

Stacey looked at her over the edge of the bowl. How could her mum be so sure?

“He can smell cake a mile away,” her mum said, and Stacey wondered if her mum could read minds.

She hoped not. It would be really bad if her mum read her mind and found out about the mermaid. She’d quite forgotten that her mum wasn’t the only one who shouldn’t know about the mermaid. The men on the beach hadn’t crossed her mind all afternoon.

Unfortunately, the men on the beach, hadn’t forgotten about her. They arrived with a roar of engines and the loud crunch of gravel as they pulled into the drive. Her mother looked up from the sink, where she was washing the cooking dishes.

“What on earth?” she asked, taking her hands out of the sink and wiping them on her apron.

She headed for the front door at a quick walk, with Stacey wheeling quietly behind. The two of them got to the door, just as the men from the beach did, but the men from the beach did not knock. They kicked the door in, just as Stacey’s mum was reaching for it.

It flew open, and knocked her back, and she tripped over Stacey’s wheelchair, and landed on the floor with bump.

“Hey!” Stacey shouted, just as her dad raced in from the back, and came to a sudden stop. “Hey! What are you doing?”

And then she realised that the men had guns—all of them. Every. Single. One. And she froze, staring at them, and realising they were all in a lot of trouble.

Stacey’s dad started to move towards her mum, but the guns were suddenly all pointed at him, as though the men shared one mind. Her dad stopped.

“Don’t move,” said a familiar voice from the back. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

And the men all filed inside, their leader, the one who had spoken, coming in last.

He reached down and helped Stacey’s mum to her feet.

“Why don’t we all go and sit down?” he said. “I’m sure you’d like to know why we’ve come.”

“You can’t come in here!” Stacey said.

She had wanted to shout it, but the sight of all the guns robbed her of her voice.

Their leader turned his head, and looked at her.

“But we did,” he said, “and, now, Harry, here, will make sure you don’t fall out of your chair, again.”

Stacey felt her face grow hot, and she knew she was blushing. She recognised the leader; he was the one she’d accused of trying to hurt her at the beach. From the look he’d given her, when he’d said Harry would help her, he remembered what happened that morning, too.

Her mother guided them to the dining room, and Stacey let herself be wheeled after her.

“Get your hands off me,” came from her dad, as did the frightening sound of one of the guns making the same clicking noise guns made in movies when the safety came off.

Her dad must have recognised the sound, as well, because he didn’t say anything else. Stacey watched as he was guided into the dining room after her. The men from the beach sat him down beside her mother, and then their leader turned to her.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“Who?” Stacey asked, although she knew very well; she just wanted to hear him say it.

She watched as his neck turned red, and his face turned red, and his lips compressed into a thin line. After a minute, he tilted his head to one side, and looked at her—and then he smiled. It was one of the scariest things Stacey had ever seen.

“You know who,” he said, “but, since you want your parents to hear it, why don’t you tell me where the mermaid is?

“You can’t be serious.” That was clearly out before her father could stop it.

The leader glared at him.

“But we are,” he said. “Your daughter met a mermaid, this morning, when she was sitting under the pier by the beach.”

Stacey’s mother gasped.

“Stacey! You weren’t!”

“How’d you get down there?” her father demanded.

“You didn’t get the chair wet, did you?” her mother added.

“Enough!” said the man from the beach.

He turned to Stacey’s mother.

“She was, and she did.”

Then he turned to her father.

“I’m assuming she came down the boat ramp and across the sand before the tide came in.”

And then he turned to Stacey.

“So, where is she?”

Stacey opened her mouth to answer, but someone else answered first.

“She’s gone.”

And everyone turned to the door that led into the kitchen. Dan was standing in the doorway, doing his best to look like he wasn’t afraid. This was pretty hard to do, since his dark hair made it really obvious just how pale his face was.

“What did you say?” asked the leader.

“I said ‘she’s gone’.”

“Gone from where?”

And Stacey rolled her eyes, and took over.

“We put her in Hobson’s Lagoon. She said she’d see if it linked in to the sea. Dan and...” she caught herself, but not fast enough. “Dan went to check if she’d made it out, or if we were going to have to go back later and help her get to the beach.”

She ignored the surprised looks on her parents’ faces, and looked over at Dan.

“But you’re sure she’s gone?” she asked.

And he nodded, a slight smile playing on his lips.

“Yep. She’s gone. We walked all the way around it.” He stopped hearing their dad’s intake of breath. “Don’t worry, dad. We kept an eye out for snakes. None of us want to get bit. Anyway, we walked all around it, and found where it joined the creek.”

He looked at Stacey.

“Did you know they’ve built a path all the way from Hobson’s down along the creek?”

Stacey shook her head.

“It’s new,” came Wade’s voice from the door leading back out into the corridor. “They only finished it a couple of months ago. It should take the chair.”

“Hobson’s Lagoon, hey?” said the leader, taking control of the conversation, once more.

He looked from Wade to Dan.

“Why don’t you two boys take four of my men and show them?”

Wade looked at Dan, and Dan looked back. Both of them started to smirk.

“Sorry, man,” Dan said. “We’ll leave you to find it. The signs are pretty obvious. Why don’t you take all of your men, and go check it out for yourself?”

The leader of the men from the beach opened his mouth as though to argue, but Wade cut him off.

“You’d better hurry,” he said. “I called the police and told them there were two SUVs I didn’t know parked in my cousin’s driveway. And then I told them there were men inside with guns.”

“Why you—”

“Yeah,” Dan added, “and then I told them my mum and dad and sister were inside, and my sister was in a wheelchair, and how I was really, really scared for her, and how she’d been attacked on the beach this morning by these strange guys, and how no one should have this much bad luck, and could they hurry, please hurry, to 92 Diamondback Crescent, because there are eight guys with guns in my dining room, and I know I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near the place, but I was just so scared for my family I had to.”

And then he pulled his mobile phone out from behind his back, and held it up, so he could film the scene inside the dining room.

“That’s 92 Diamondback Crescent,” he yelled, and then he bolted out of the doorway and out of sight, and they could all hear him shouting into the phone. “Yes. Eight! Yes, they’re still here!”

They were all staring at the empty doorway to the kitchen, when movement drew their eyes to the door leading to the hall. Wade was backing away, but he was holding his phone up, and moving it slowly so it scanned the entire room.

“Say cheese!” he yelled, when he saw them looking, and then he, too, bolted out the door.

Stacey could hear his footsteps thundering down the hall, and then the front door slammed.

The men looked at their leader.

He glared at Stacey.

“She’s gone?”

And Stacey nodded.

“If the boys say she’s gone, she’s gone,” she said. “And, if she wasn’t, they wouldn’t have given you the name of the lagoon.”

The men glanced at their leader, and Stacey held her breath. She watched his face turn white, then red, then white, again, and decided that that couldn’t be good. But, before he could respond, they all heard sirens in the distance.

“Out!” the man ordered. “Go! Go! Go!”

And the men from the beach ran from the room, their leader last to go out into the hall.

“Sucks to be you,” Stacey muttered, as he turned the corner and hurried out of sight.

And then she sniffed the air.

“Mum! The cake!” she said. “The cake!”

Why it mattered was a mystery to her, but, when her mum didn’t move, Stacey wheeled herself into the kitchen, and tried to get close to the oven. Outside, the roar of engines and sound of gravel spraying up against the house told her that the men from the beach were leaving. Inside, part of her relaxed, and she turned off the oven, and tried to open the door.

“Don’t you dare!” her mum said, just as Stacey was trying to work out how to get the oven door to stay open, while she reached in without burning herself.

Her dad followed, grabbing tea-towels from the cupboard under the sink.

“Here, move out of the way,” he said. “You’ve given us enough heart attacks for one day.”

Stacey moved, wheeling herself over to a corner by the fridge, and watching as her dad got the cake out, and her mother put the kettle on.

“How many cups do you think we’ll need?” she asked.

“For who?” Stacey wanted to know.

“For the police your brother called. How many do you think will be coming?”

Dan! Stacey had forgotten about him. Almost. She had forgotten that he and Wade had been outside when the men from the beach had run for the door. Now, she wondered if the two boys were okay.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, and wheeled herself out of the kitchen.

For a minute she wondered which door to go to, and then decided that neither Wade nor Dan were dumb enough to be anywhere near the cars when they left. She turned the chair and started for the back.

It opened before she could reach it and the boys came back inside, with Jelly right behind them.

“You okay?” Dan asked, just as the sirens stopped outside the front door.

Well, some of them stopped. Quite a few of them kept right on going, as though they were heading for the only road out of town.