Читать книгу Don't Tell Him I'm a Mermaid - Laura Steven - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

The Faulty . . . Thingymajigger

Molly Seabrook’s favourite thing about being a mermaid was sharing the unlikely secret with her sisters. She had four of them in all, and even though Molly found at least seventy-five per cent of them deeply irritating, it was quite nice to have a special family bond. Plus if any of them stole your white chocolate, you could slap them in the face with your tail, which was definitely a perk.

The worst thing about being a mermaid was almost everything else.

Kittiwake Keep, the wonky old lighthouse they called home, was in pandemonium.

Mum had, for reasons unknown, finally decided to attempt to fix the broken dishwasher. The broken dishwasher had been broken for years, but it didn’t particularly matter, because its primary purpose was not to wash dishes. It was to disguise the trapdoor hidden beneath it that led straight into the sea.

In any case, Mum had obviously got tired of the endless stacks of mugs beside the sink, so she rolled up her sleeves, donned her rubber gloves, and took a wrench to the faulty . . . thingymajigger.

It did not work.

The dishwasher was now essentially a furious geyser spraying water all over the kitchen. The swordfish wallpaper was drenched, the sink was overflowing, and Molly felt like she was trapped inside a washing machine.

Myla, her eldest sister and a literal genius, was frantically leafing through the manual – which was now dripping wet and bleeding ink – as though it contained the key to her Cambridge entrance exam. Margot, the second oldest at sixteen and a notorious practical joker, found the entire thing hilarious and was currently live-streaming it via YouTube. Melissa, Molly’s painfully earnest fourteen-year-old roommate, was lecturing Mum on the importance of hiring professionals.

Minnie, who was six, sat at the sodden kitchen table and laughed like a hyena for around twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, the room was becoming so wet that the inevitable was surely about to happen. They were about to transform into mermaids, as they did whenever they got too close to a body of water. Or puddles. Or broken toilets.

They were about to transform, and Minnie did not know their secret.

‘Minnie, can you please go and fetch the house phone?’ Mum asked in a strangled voice, as she accidentally swallowed another mouthful of manky dishwater.

‘Are you phoning the water police?’ Minnie cackled.

‘Yes,’ Melissa sighed. ‘Exactly. The water police.’

‘They have special handcuffs,’ Margot added seriously.

‘Can you go now, please?’ Mum asked through gritted teeth.

As she felt her legs begin to tingle, Molly gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. Minnie splashed happily out into the corridor mere seconds before Molly’s stark white tail pinged into place.

‘Barricade,’ Mum barked. ‘Now.’

Right as she was about to transform, Margot charged at a dining chair like a rugby player, shoving it along the floor until it slammed into the door. Unfortunately, her tail materialised right at the last minute, and she faceplanted the wet floor with a splosh and an oooft.

‘Do. Not. Let. Her. In.’ Melissa panted with the effort of holding herself upright on her buttercup-yellow tail. ‘Under any circumstances!’

This may have seemed like an extreme reaction, but it was absolutely paramount that Minnie did not uncover the truth too soon. The mermaids had an agreement with the human government that they were allowed to live on land as long as they kept their true identities hidden. If the secret got out, they’d be banished back to Meire: the old mermaid queendom. Meire was now too dirty and dangerous to live in, thanks to pollution and . . . poop. A lot of human poop.

There’s no way Minnie would be able to hold her tongue if she found out her mum and sisters were mermaids – and that she too would become one on her thirteenth birthday. For instance, after Mum gave her the talk about how she had a different dad, she went around telling the entire town that her dad was the ‘Predisent’ of the United States, but that her sisters were peasants. So there was no way something of this magnitude would stay schtum.

‘Heyyyy!’ Minnie yelled, pounding on the closed door with her tiny – and probably sticky – fist. ‘Let me in! Not fair!’

‘We’re having a grown-up chat, Minnie,’ Melissa called. ‘We’ll be out in a moment.’

The door began to budge with the weight of a six-year-old flinging her full force against it, but Margot launched herself up with her pillarbox-red tail and plonked down into the barricade chair just in time. Minnie wailed in frustration.

Just then, the doorbell rang. Mum exchanged worried glances with Myla.

‘The courier,’ Myla groaned, wriggling her emerald-green tail. Her wet hair was plastered to her forehead, and her glasses were covered in spray. ‘I ordered all those second-hand textbooks to be delivered today.’

‘They’ll go away in a minute, don’t worry,’ Mum said, dutifully ignoring the fact she was being squirted in the face by a spiteful appliance. ‘They’ll just leave one of those slips saying it’s with a neighbour or something.’

‘Or Minnie will go and let him in,’ Myla whispered in horror.

‘Quick! Knock her out with your tail!’ Margot said to Molly, knowing how much her sister enjoyed using her tail as a weapon.

‘Right, can we all just –’

Mum’s words were cut off by a fresh spray of water to the face, and a nervous tap on the kitchen window.

It was the courier, peering right in to a room full of mermaids.

Ever the quick thinker, Margot dived towards the dishwasher and whirled it around to face the window, so the gushing cascade of water sprayed straight into the glass and obscured the courier’s vision. Such a feat would normally be impossible, but Margot’s merpower – for each mermaid has a special gift – was superhuman strength. Myla’s was being able to read mythical sea languages without ever having to study, while Melissa’s was being a know-it-all, i.e. being able to tell whenever someone was lying.

‘I’ll come back later then,’ the courier called meekly through the glass.

‘Do you think he saw?’ Melissa gasped. ‘Oh god, oh god, oh god. What if he saw, Mum?’

‘Was it the courier? I didn’t see,’ Mum said, but she was chewing her bottom lip, and Molly could tell she was genuinely worried about being banished.

Molly’s stomach twisted. She hadn’t exactly done a fantastic job of keeping the whole tail thing under wraps.

She’d only found out about her life as a half-mermaid on her thirteenth birthday, a mere two months ago, and yet she’d already accidentally transformed in front of Felicity Davison, the most popular girl in school. There was a whole fandango which involved taking a penguin hostage, but Felicity had eventually agreed not to tell anyone Molly’s secret – as long as Molly promised not to spread the word about Felicity’s mum’s cancer. Molly only knew about Mrs Davison’s illness thanks to her own merpower: reading people’s emotions. She would never have told anyone something so personal, especially having been through it with her own mum, but Felicity didn’t trust her. Their truce was a shaky one, and Molly lived in fear of Felicity going back on her word.

‘Can I come in yet?’ Minnie asked. ‘I need a poo.’