Spirits of Ash and Foam (19 page)

Rain hadn't noticed the absence of her friends. She swam after the dolphin through a forest of kelp. Emerging on the other side, she had to pull up short to avoid swimming right into Her. The woman was floating not far beneath the surface. Tiny bubbles of air were expelled from her small, flat nose. Meanwhile, the cooperative pod was swimming in circles, modestly wrapping long strips of seaweed around her torso like she was a maypole. Rain treaded water, stunned.

Suddenly, she remembered the camera. She held it up for Her to see. The Manatee-Woman tilted her head to regard the object. Cautiously, she reached out a hand to touch the camera with long elegant fingers. This provided no additional information, so she simply offered Rain a questioning look. Rain figured that qualified as permission enough. She started taking pictures. Nonstop pictures.
Gotta love digital! Dad's old camera would already be out of film!
She just held the shutter down and let it click away. The digitally produced sound was artificial, but it carried through the water and made Her smile. Rain was getting some fantastic shots of the woman and of the dolphins around her.

Then suddenly she realized all these pictures really proved nothing at all. A seminaked woman swimming with dolphins was certainly interesting but hardly qualified as mystic. Rain knew what she needed, looked around and found it. One of the dolphins had the manatee's skin in its mouth. Rain pointed at that dolphin and at the skin. The Manatee-Woman looked back over her shoulder, saw what Rain was indicating and beckoned the dolphin forward until it approached with the skin. Stroking the skin, she offered another questioning glance up at Rain, who was trying to remember not to hold her breath. She sucked in air through the snorkel and nodded.

So the woman carefully took the empty manatee skin and pulled its mouth open wide. She bent her knees up to her chest and slipped both feet into the mouth. Then she pulled the manatee skin up over her calves and knees and thighs and hips. Up and up she pulled the skin, and her lithe body somehow filled its potato-shaped bulk, until the mouth was like a bizarre turtleneck around her throat, and all that remained of Her was her hands and her head with its dark halo of swirling hair.

She smiled one last time at Rain—then pulled the top of the manatee head up and over her own. The hands disappeared within the skin. The mouth closed, simultaneously slurping up the last few strands of night black hair. Just like that, she wasn't human anymore. She was the manatee again.

And Rain had video of it all. Nonstop digital footage with time code and no edits whatsoever. The manatee approached Rain, nudging her gently with its bulbous, whiskered snout. Then it somersaulted in the water and swam away, surrounded by the dolphins. Rain didn't even bother following. She clutched the camera to her chest and waited until the pod and the manatee had disappeared into the blue distance. Only then did she look around for Charlie and Miranda. She didn't see them, so she surfaced.

There they were. Charlie said, “There you are. Did you find her?”

Rain spit the snorkel out of her mouth and grinned. “I found her! She transformed back into a manatee right in front of me, and I videotaped the whole thing here!” In triumph, Rain raised the camera high into the air—and a dolphin breached and snagged it right out of her hand!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MERMAIDS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

Now all four of them sat,depressed, at an umbrella-covered outdoor table at the Plaza del Oro Mall on San Próspero just after sundown.

Rain played it all back in her mind. The bottlenose dolphin snatching the camera away. Rain attempting pursuit, swimming with everything she had. The dolphin, holding the camera strap in its beak, taunting Rain by walking backward on its flukes along the water's surface, as if performing a stunt in a theme park show. And Rain having to give up when the dolphin, now an easy fifty yards away, disappeared under the blue water.

They had returned to the
Spirit of the Ghosts.
Her father hadn't noticed she wasn't returning with the camera, because he hadn't known she had taken it in the first place. Soon enough, though, he'd realize it was missing.
At which point,
she thought,
I'm doomed.

Miranda wasn't feeling any cheerier. When the dolphin had grabbed the camera, Rain swam after. Charlie followed. Miranda couldn't keep up. She flooded her snorkel again and surfaced, choking and coughing. Charlie stopped to make sure she was okay. A second later, Rain surfaced, too, as the dolphin loudly snickered at them and danced away. Miranda knew she had been a liability on the adventure. A dead weight, if not the reason her friends hadn't gotten the camera back. She had tried to make up for it. When they returned to the boat, she had offered to take the kids swimming. But Michael instantly fled below deck with his shovel. John asked if they could swim with the Manatee-Woman. Mr. Kim didn't think that likely, so John went below to find another board game. Miranda volunteered to supervise. Wendy stayed on deck with her parents for a few minutes but ultimately joined her brothers and Miranda in the cabin. Rain and Charlie didn't come down. Rain had barely spoken since, unless you counted her bizarre monologue during the walk to the Plaza, recounting and lamenting everything that had happened from start to finish.

Charlie felt helpless. He knew Rain was in trouble, and he knew Miranda felt responsible. He had tried to reassure the latter and had even nudged Rain into mumbling confirmation, but he knew Miranda wasn't letting herself off the hook. As for Rain? She had lost the proof she had sought
and
her dad's camera. Charlie knew how much Rain hated to disappoint her father.

Finally, there was 'Bastian. He had appeared at sunset to find his granddaughter and her friends walking away from the docks with their heads hanging. Rain had been forced to explain the situation out loud in front of Miranda, who was unsurprisingly perplexed over Rain telling a story the three teens all knew and had experienced. Mostly, this dredged up 'Bastian's feeling of impotence. His Raindrop had been in trouble—again—and he hadn't been there. Couldn't be there. Even now, he felt just as useless.

Miranda's cell phone interrupted their pity party. She recognized her father's ringtone: a snippet of
El Amor Brujo
by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Embarrassed, she pulled the phone out of the pocket of her shorts as she stood and walked away.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Miranda, where are you?”

“At the mall.”

“Oh. Well. That's fine. But are you coming home? Ariel's on call to pick you up at the yacht club.”

“It's not even eight o'clock yet. Can I just text her when I'm ready?”

Silence on his end.

“Did we have plans or something?”

“No. I have to work.”

“Then…”

“Yes, I suppose it's all right. But not too late.”

“No. Not too late. Bye, Daddy.”

“Goodbye,
mija.
”

They hung up. Miranda looked toward her friends at the table ten feet away. Then someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around.

“Hey, Sugar.”

“Oh, hi, Renée.”

Renée was dressed for work in the ugly orange and green striped polyester slacks and tunic that comprised the uniform of her fast-food employer, Koko's Caribbean Fries. She smiled coolly. “Did you have fun working the boat?”

“Um, sure.” Miranda sounded less than convinced, which basically
made
Renée's evening.

“And the three of you are still hanging out?”

“Yeah…”

Renée leaned in. “Okay, but you know Charlie has a thing for Rain, right? You don't want to be a third wheel.”

“No, I…” Miranda swallowed hard and glanced at the backs of Charlie and Rain, still moping at the table.

“Well, don't worry about it. I'm sure they don't mind you hanging around.”

“Do you want to … join us?”

Renée looked down at her attire. “Not like this I don't. Besides, after a shift at K.C.F., I'm desperate for a shower. But you three have fun.”

“Thanks.”

Renée turned and walked away, not bothering to conceal her smile. Miranda watched her go, then turned back toward Rain and Charlie, regarding them with a nauseated expression. It wasn't so much her own small crush on Charlie. That wasn't anything too serious. But she didn't want to be a third wheel … Still, it didn't seem like either of them was in a romantic mood at the moment, but she'd have to watch Charlie for signs he wanted to be alone. She sighed and returned to the table.

Rain looked up and asked, “You have to go?”

Miranda was about to sit but froze halfway down. “No. But I can, if—”

Rain shook her head. “Stay. Share the misery.”

“Thanks?” She sat.

Rain sighed. “Okay, so here's the deal. I need to replace my dad's camera with an exact duplicate.” She pointed at the smartphone, still in Miranda's hand. “Can that thing find out what it costs?”

Thrilled to be of use, Miranda tapped her search engine app and said, “Sure. Do you remember what kind of camera?”

“Action SureFocus Waterproof Digital.”

Miranda's thumbs went to work. Soon, she was holding out the screen to show Rain. “Is it one of these?”

“That one. The blue one.”

They all leaned in to see. Even 'Bastian walked through the table to get a closer look.

“A hundred eighty-nine dollars?!” Rain moaned in stunned despair. “Okay, okay. I have thirty dollars in tips I haven't spent. And I think I still have some money left over from buying school supplies. But that was only like four and change.”

She looked at Charlie, who shrugged. “I have exactly six dollars and twelve cents. But it's all yours.”

Then she turned to Miranda, who felt awful but could only shake her head.

Incredulous and a little desperate, Rain said, “I'll pay you back. Eventually.”

“It's not that. I just don't have any cash. I've got a credit card, but the bill goes to my dad. If I use it to withdraw that much money or even to buy the camera, he'll know. He'll ask.”

Rain looked up at 'Bastian standing in the middle of the table.

“Sorry. You really can't take it with you.”

Rain let her head crash into the tabletop, hard enough to make the other three wince. From that position, she muttered, “So we've got like forty dollars. I only need a hundred and fifty more.”

“Plus tax and shipping,” Miranda said, regretting it immediately when her qualification elicited a painful groan.

Maq couldn't take it anymore. He'd been Dumpster-diving in the vicinity and had scored perfectly edible quantities of Koko's Sweet Potato Fries. Now he strode up to the table and said, “Rain, I have your new magic number, and it's not one hundred eighty-nine.”

She raised her head to look up at him—completely baffled. “What?”

“Your new magic number is one.” Then Maq turned to Charlie and said, “Yours is six.” Then he pointed at Miranda and said, “Three.” Finally, he looked right at 'Bastian, but I immediately started barking loudly to cut him off. I didn't think it was time to let on we could see ghosts too. Evidently, he agreed—or else I simply distracted him enough that he forgot what he was about to say. Either way, he smiled and patted me on the head. Then he turned back to the kids. “Okay, the going rate for magic numbers is twenty-five cents per. So that's three of you…” He counted the teens just to be sure. “Yes. Three. So that's seventy-five cents.”

Rain remained baffled. “What?”

“Seventy-five cents.”

Rain looked from Maq to 'Bastian to Miranda to Charlie, looking for some confirmation that it was Maq who was crazy, not her.

But when she looked at Charlie, he sighed and said, “Fine.” Then he pulled out his wallet and pulled out a dollar. “I don't have seventy-five cents.”

Maq snatched the bill away. “That's all right. I'll owe you the quarter. Actually … come to think of it …
Hura-hupia
owes
me
a quarter. I officially transfer her debt to you. Good luck collecting.” Then he turned on his heel and quickly walked away. He had already spotted his next target. Tourists Bernie and Maude Cohen, in matching Hawaiian shirts of fluorescent green and gold, were exiting K.C.F., each with a large order of Fries-N-Onions. They looked like two heart attacks in the making.

Maude saw Maq coming, grabbed her husband by the elbow and hustled him away. “Come on, Bernie. We have to get back to the hotel and pack.” She had met Maq before and no longer found him charming. Maq chased after them, calling out, “It's good luck to share onions with a local! Anyone'll tell you that.”

I stayed behind, crawling under a nearby table to watch Rain stare after him. I could tell she wasn't finding Maq so charming either right about now, but something else was nagging at her brain. Something Maq had said that she couldn't quite put her finger on. It fled away, so she turned and punched Charlie in the arm. “We needed that dollar!”

“Ow! Cut it out. I thought you wanted me to pay!”

“Why would you think that?”

“I dunno. You looked at me.”

“And that look said pay the man for counting to three?”

“A dollar one way or another's not going to make any difference!”

That shut her up. She knew he was right. After a few beats, she exhaled loudly and said, “Okay, maybe we're going about this wrong. Instead of buying a new camera, let's get the old one back.”

They all stared at her. Finally, 'Bastian said, “How?”

“The dolphins were working for Her. For the Manatee-Woman. We need to figure out what she was exactly. Once we know more about Her, we can figure out where she'll go. If she's there, the dolphins will be there. And if the dolphins are there, the camera will be there, too.”