Emerge Read online

  “Aurelia, there you are!”

  Emeraldine, my oldest sister, stands at the top of the stairs, her hands on her slim hips. “I thought you’d be home an hour ago. If you want me to do your hair, you’ll have to hurry. The caterers are already here to drop off the food, and I promised Dad I’d help him bring it all downstairs and finish setting up after they leave.” Emeraldine’s voice is measured and even as usual, but a few tendrils of stress uncoil beneath it.

  “Hi to you, too,” I say as I make my way up the stairs. “Where’s Mom?”

  “At the Foundation. She should be home in half an hour at the latest.”

  I have to hurry. My mom made it clear she’s counting on my sisters and me to make a good impression tonight. She and my dad have enough to worry about and I don’t want to disappoint them. My father is the public face of the Foundation for the Preservation and Protection of Marine Life; he’s the one in charge of securing government support, presenting scientific research to universities, and working with marine animals at zoos across the country. My mother, on the other hand, is responsible for the Foundation’s less conspicuous workings—basically keeping the entire Community of land-dwelling Mer afloat. Tonight, every member of that community will be here, in our house, so I have to be perfect.

  Once we’re settled in my bathroom, Em brushes my hair. In the mirror, I examine the intricacies of her hairstyle. Half of her rich, chestnut-colored hair is pulled up into three tiers of buns in progressively diminishing sizes that top her head like a wedding cake. The rest hangs in flowing, perfectly shaped curls down her back, and the whole coif is studded with pearls.

  “How was your day at school?” Em asks, her voice adopting a familiar mothering quality.

  “Good. How was yours?” I shoot back, trying to sound like an equal instead of a child she has to take care of when our parents are busy. Em commutes from our house to Pepperdine University, about ten minutes away. She’s studying business, which couldn’t sound more yawn-worthy to me, but she’s into it. “Classes are fine,” she replies as she picks up a small section of hair above my temple and begins a series of the tiniest braids, which she intersperses among my natural waves. She sounds distracted, and we lapse into silence. Worry lines crease Em’s forehead, and her hands fumble the braiding, causing her to drop a handful of bobby pins.

  They shatter the silence as they scatter across the floor, and I bend to help her. “Okay, what’s up with you?” I ask, handing the pins back.

  She’s quiet as she pins the braids so they frame my face. Just when I think she’s not going to answer, she admits, “Leo and I had a fight.”

  “You two never fight.”

  “Well, we did today.” Unshed tears lace her words, and I want to say the perfect thing to comfort her. How many times has she held me, consoled me while I cried? She deserves it back, but I’m drawing a blank, so I decide to be the best listener I can be. “What happened?”

  “We’ve been talking about marriage lately—”

  “But you’re only twenty-one!” The moment I say it, it’s obvious I’ve put my fin in my mouth. I know better than to mention age around Em.

  “Which means we only have seventy, maybe seventy-five years together, tops!” she snaps in response. “That’s nothing!”

  It’s an old disagreement between us. Em is the only one of us who was born Below. She spent her first few years under the sea, hearing stories from a grandmother I’ve never met. Stories insisting that one day, the curse on the Mer would break and we’d have our immortality back. To someone who believes she should get to spend eternity with her future mate, seventy-five years really does sound fleeting.

  Now that Em’s older and has realized all she’ll ever have is a lifespan as short as a human’s, she feels robbed. Many Mer—practically all the older ones and any younger ones raised at sea—feel that way. Like they’re entitled to more. Like they’re cursed.

  I’ve never felt cursed and neither have my other sisters. I’m pretty sure it’s because we were raised on land, reading human books and watching human movies. I’ve never expected to live longer than a human. For Em, though, the idea of the clock ticking ever closer to her eventual death is a deep source of pain.

  “We just want to maximize our time together as much as we can,” she says.

  “I understand.” And a part of me does. “So you and Leo were talking about marriage … ” I push on.

  “And I mentioned that he didn’t have to worry because I was fine with a traditional Mer marriage.” Her voice trembles and her eyes shine with those same tears I heard stuck in her throat a moment ago. “And … and he blew up at me. He said he couldn’t believe I didn’t want to be monogamous.” Like everything else in our culture, Mer ideas about marriage go back thousands of years, before the curse stripped us of our immortality. Since for most of our history, married couples stayed together forever—and stayed young forever—fidelity was never a requirement. Just thinking about it squigs me (all the married couples that come to mind are my parents’ friends), but it kind of makes sense. If you lived for countless centuries, it would be understandable that you’d … roam periodically … then return to your mate. Still, it doesn’t strike me as something Em or Leo would want.

  “So you want his permission to slut it up, huh?” The voice from the doorway is matter-of-fact.

  I turn my head, disrupting the latest pinned braid, to see that Lapis has entered the room, Lazuli close behind.

  “I absolutely do not!” Em answers, dropping my hair and folding her arms across her chest.

  “Relax, I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it,” Lapis continues, trying to sound reassuring. “If I’d been with the same guy since I was fourteen—”

  “Gag me,” Lazuli interjects.

  “I’d want the chance to swim with some other fish, too,” Lapis finishes. Lazuli nods, her blond hair bouncing in its already completed curls. The two of them flash Em identical smiles.

  “I don’t want any other fish!” Em gets out through gritted teeth.

  I put my hand on her arm and shoot the twins a reproachful look. At eighteen, they’re a year older than I am, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. “Then why did you tell Leo you wanted a traditional marriage?” I ask, careful to keep any judgyness out of my voice.

  “I thought that’s what he wanted, too. He’s a guy! And like Lapis said, we’ve been together since we were fourteen. I didn’t want him to think I had unrealistic expectations.”

  “But I thought you wanted to … ” How did she phrase it? “ … maximize your time together, since you’ll only have seventy-something years?”

  “Yes,” Em answers, nodding. “I want to maximize our time, but I also want to maximize our happiness, or what’s the point? And isn’t it arrogant to assume we know more about what makes a happy marriage than the generations of Mer who came before us? Or that we know how we’ll feel decades from now? I just think Mer who have actually been married must understand more about this than we do.” She sighs. “But as soon as I said I was open to keeping our marriage traditional instead of monogamous, Leo started yelling at me. It was so unlike him.”

  A tear finally spills over onto her cheek, solidifying into a perfect drop-shaped pearl on its way down. She plucks up the pearl, looks at it without really seeing it, and drops it into my box of hair accessories.

  “He said he could never do that to me, but that if I wanted to be with someone else, I was free to.” She breaks down into sobs, and pearls clatter against the tile floor. “That’s not what I meant at all. I just thought, well, he’s always been traditional, and so have I … and even just seventy-five more years is a lot to demand of a person … ”

  “Humans manage it,” I say.

  “Yeah and end up in divorce court after cheating on each other,” Lazuli points out.

  “Forget what you think he expects or doesn’t expect. Do you want a traditional marriage?” Lapis asks Em, serious n
ow.

  “I want the option,” she says, sniffing back more tears. “I don’t like that Leo’s just shutting it down—it’s a decision we should talk about together. It’s not that I want anyone besides him, but it’s how Mer marriages have always been. Accepting the monogamous, human version of marriage feels like … we’re abandoning our culture.” She shakes her head. “I just always thought I’d have a certain type of marriage, and I don’t think I can throw all that away.”

  “Then you two need to talk,” I say as I collect the pearls from my bathroom floor. Em cried a lot—I might have enough for a bracelet. “He’ll be here tonight, right?”

  “I think he’s still coming.”

  “Then you can take him somewhere private and straighten this out. It’ll be fine.” I really hope I’m telling the truth. Em loves Leo more than anything.

  “Come on,” Lazuli says, “finish up Lia’s hair so we can help you decide on an outfit.”

  “Wear something hot enough and you and Leo won’t even need to do any talking,” Lapis concludes.

  Em splashes her face with water from the sink. “Fashion advice from the two of you? No thank you.”

  After Em escapes downstairs, I get talked into letting the twins help me pick out what to wear.

  “Why are all your clothes so boring?” Lapis complains.

  “Where’s that siluess I gave you for your birthday?” Lazuli asks.

  A siluess is a piece of clothing worn on the torso when the bottom half of the body is in tail form. It comes from the Mermese word for chest covering. Mostly, I wear bikini tops, but that would be far too casual—and too human—for tonight.

  “What’s wrong with the white one I wore last time?” I reach past them to where my siluesses hide behind a few years’ worth of Halloween costumes and pull out a delicate white one covered in tiny puka shells.

  “It’s so babyish.” Lazuli snatches it from me and hangs it back up. “You should give it to Amy—she’ll fill it out soon enough. Besides, isn’t Caspian coming tonight?”

  “So?” I pretend not to see what she’s getting at.

  “So that boy is a total foxfish. It’s just too bad his family is—”

  “Nothing’s wrong with his family. And we’re just friends.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I’m about to continue arguing when Lazuli pulls a hanger out of my closet and holds it up in triumph. “Here’s the one I got you!” It’s a tiny scrap of lace that looks more like something that belongs on a Victoria’s Secret model than on me. The fabric is so thin that, as soon as it’s wet, it’ll leave nothing to the imagination.

  “That’s too frilly,” Lapis says. “You can borrow something of mine.”

  Somehow, that scares me more. Lapis and Lazuli may as well be named Leather and Lace. While both have the jealousy-inducing ability to exude sexuality without even trying, Lapis is more rocker chick about it, while Lazuli sticks to pastels and candy-colored nail polish. I don’t want to end up in some strappy, studded getup of Lapis’s any more than I want to wear the lacey piece of fluff Lazuli still clutches.

  “You know, I think I’ve got this covered,” I say, trying to shoo them out of my closet. “Why don’t you two go get ready?”

  “And just what are you going to wear?” Lapis asks, folding her arms across her ample chest.

  “Um … this!” In an effort to end the conversation, I pull out the most risqué siluess I’ve ever purchased. Like today’s golden heels, I bought this because it was too beautiful to part with, but I haven’t had the courage to wear it. It’s a shining midnight blue fabric dotted with small mother of pearl pieces. When I saw it, it reminded me of stars glittering in the night sky above the ocean. It’s low cut and reveals the entire expanse of my abdomen, so it should be enough to satisfy the twins.

  “That’ll work,” they say in unison.

  What have I gotten myself into?

  Once the twins leave, I change into the dark blue siluess, a simple wrap-around skirt, and flip-flops. I put on a bit of Mer-made waterproof makeup and head downstairs. Now it’s my turn to play big sister.

  When I reach the entrance hall, I take one last longing look out at the ocean before I walk to a door behind the main staircase that’s disguised as a coat closet and open it. The row of coats that usually stands a foot or two back from the door has been removed in preparation for tonight, leaving a long corridor in plain view. I walk along it until I reach another staircase at the end. It winds down, down, down and opens onto an antechamber.

  Shelves and hooks line the walls, and a deep canal filled to the brim with satiny salt water cuts across the floor, starting in the middle of the room and flowing out around a bend. The rest of the floor slopes downward, toward the canal. I step around the water, slip out of my flip-flops, and push them to the very back corner of one of the higher shelves. Tonight, this room will serve as the shoe-check it was designed as, and I want to be able to find mine easily. I untie my wrap-around skirt and hang it on a hook, then sit at the smooth edge of the canal. Normally, Mer wait to use this room one at a time so we’re not all hanging out together naked from the waist down. If any other Mer did happen to be in the room with me, custom dictates they’d turn politely away during my transformation, offering me privacy while I temporarily reveal my human body. But since I’m alone, I take the time to relish what comes next. With a deep breath of damp air, I close my eyes and let my tightly-held control slip away.

  Transforming creates the familiar sensation of ocean tides pushing and pulling against my legs. I’m connected to the sea, connected to its magic, connected to the generations of Mer who have come before me. The bones and muscles shift and fuse and it feels so good. Like I can finally stretch out. When the mystical tide recedes with a final tingle, I open my eyes, look down, and see my golden tail shimmering in the light of the wall torches.

  One push of my arms and I’m sliding down the slope and into the canal. Water reaches up to my waist and runs over the gilded scales of my tail like liquid silk. I shiver in delight. Now that I’m in the water and in my true form, the call of the ocean thrums through my body like a heartbeat. It makes me want to swim.

  With a flick of my fins, I’m down the canal and swimming around the corner, past the walls that hide the antechamber from view, and into the main ballroom. Like all the rooms that comprise the hidden grottos underneath our house, the ballroom is a cave formation with seating and tables carved from the rock. The walls shine opalescent, like the inside of an abalone shell.

  My chest remains above water while my tail wades beneath. Toward the center of the room, the water is deep and I’m just dying to do a backflip into the cool, welcoming ripples. I want to dive down as deep as I can, feel the skin below my ears open into gills, and let the water flow through me—become a part of me. But Em would fillet me if I ruined my hair before any of the guests got here, so I’m careful to keep my upper half above water.

  I make my way through the ballroom, the dining hall, and the other public grottos before turning a corner into the private quarters. I swim past my own downstairs bedroom and toward my cousin Amethyst’s room.

  “Come in!” she calls in response to my knock on the archway wall. I part the curtain of hanging seaweed and head inside.

  Amethyst, who goes mostly by Amy, lies on her sea sponge bed listening to music on the waterproof MP3 player my father bought her. The bed is elevated, so the water comes to only about half a foot above it. This way, the long, light purple tail that matches her name can stay wet while her torso remains exposed to the cool evening air wafting through the grottos from outside. When I enter, she takes out her earbuds and places the device on the rock formation that serves as her nightstand.

  “Lia, you look so pretty! Did Em do your hair?”

  “Yep. And the twins helped with the outfit.”

  “It’s bold. I really like it.” Her smile is huge and her enthusiasm infectious. Before I know it, I’m
mirroring her grin. “I couldn’t wait for you to come down. Something so insanely huge happened today! Staskia got her legs!”

  Oh no. It’s started. Staskia is the first of Amy’s close friends to get legs, and now that she has, I won’t hear about anything else until Amy gets hers. As if in a hurry to prove my prediction right, she immediately launches into the story.

  “It happened in the middle of history class. Stas was embarrassed but you could tell she was like super excited, too. The first time, her legs only held for a second, so thank goodness Mrs. Cordula had time to cover her up with an extra skirt before they came back.”

  This story isn’t ending any time soon, so I grab her hairbrush and a few pins and settle on the bed. I’m not as skilled a stylist as Em, but I’m decent. My fingers work quickly, but they don’t compare to the speed of Amy’s voice as she tells me every detail. “She’s got all ten toes and pretty nicely shaped calves. Her legs aren’t too long, but her tail never was either, so I bet I’ll be taller. At least she has nice ankle bones. Do you think I will? Lia, I’m so afraid I’ll have cankles.”

  “You won’t have cankles. No one in our family has cankles except Aunt Dolores, and she eats like a porpoise.”

  “When do you think I’ll get mine? Staskia is only three months older than I am, so I’ll probably get them soon, right?”

  I know the answer she wants, but it’s impossible to predict. I didn’t get mine until I was fourteen, but that’s on the late side. Lapis and Lazuli were early bloomers at eleven. Em got hers at thirteen, the age Amy is now. “When did your mom get hers?”

  “She was fifteen, but you know it takes longer Below. I just can’t wait to be able to go to the movies and go shopping and go out to dinner … ” She trails off, but I understand how frustrating it can be. Until Amy gets her legs, she’s pretty much restricted to the underground canal system the Foundation has put in place. She can swim through the tunnels to her school, like all the children in the Community who have yet to get their legs, and to the underwater entrances of friends’ houses, but she can’t get upstairs to the rest of our house unless my dad carries her. Right now, the whole human world is a mystery to her.