Page 10 of When We Believed in Mermaids

It’s appropriate that we’re in Auckland, the land of volcanoes, because my middle feels like it’s turned to magma, burning hot and impossible to calm.

When I find her, I don’t know what I’ll do. Hit her? Spit on her? Hug her?

I have no idea.

Chapter Four

Mari

Simon and I arrange to meet Sarah’s teacher before class. We drive separately so that we can head out on our own afterward, me to Sapphire House to start taking notes, him to his empire of gyms.

I’m in the best possible mood, thanks to dawn sex with my fit and vigorous husband, which made me so cheerful I whipped up blueberry muffins for breakfast, which even Sarah ate with alacrity, after picking at her food the past few days. I peer at her in the rearview, and she’s gazing out the window, her dark hair swept back from her freckled face. She’s so unlike me that it’s a little strange. You’d think your own child would have some resemblance to you, but she’s my father and my sister, all in one.

Perhaps a fitting punishment for my sins, though I try not to dwell on it. Accept the things you cannot change and all that.

What I do know is that Sarah will hate it when the other girls stop growing and she keeps on, just as my sister did. Already she has bigger hands and feet than the other girls and a solidness that is nothing close to fat, but she’ll see it that way if we don’t stay at it, countering the bullshit that she hears day in, day out.

“Swim club today, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” she says, her accent so very New Zealand,yis. “I beat Mara yesterday.”

Her nemesis. “That’s fantastic. You’re stronger than she is, by far.”

She shrugs, then meets my eyes in the mirror. “You don’t have to go to the school, you know.”

“I don’t have to,” I agree mildly. “But you don’t seem very happy lately, and your dad and I want to make sure everything is okay.”

“My teachers don’t know anything.” Her tone is not scornful, only matter-of-fact.

The traffic is thick, and I have to pay attention to the road for a few moments. At the next stoplight, I say, “What don’t they know?”

Her wide mouth flattens into an expression of resignation. She just shakes her head.

“Sarah, it will be a lot easier to help you if you let me in on what’s going on.”

She doesn’t reply. I pull into the school lot. Simon’s Infiniti is not yet here, so I turn off the car, unbuckle my belt, and turn around, sorting through the ten thousand possible responses for the one that will help unlock the secret here. “Are you having trouble with a friend?”

“No.”

“I’m not sure why you won’t just tell me. You know you can trust me.”

“I can trust you, but if I tell you, everything just gets worse, and no one will like me at all.”

“What will get worse?”

She shouts, “I don’t want to tell you! Don’t you understand?”

Reaching through the seats, I wrap my hand around her ankle and just sit there, willing myself to believe her secret is not as dire as mine was when I was just a little older. She’s a well-tended, well-observed child. “All right. There’s your dad. I’ll just pop into the school.”

I meet Simon at the door, and he takes my hand. Our unified front.

The teacher is young and pretty, and she blushes when Simon shakes her hand. “Good morning, Ms. Kanawa.”

“Good morning, Mr. Edwards. Mrs. Edwards. Sit down, won’t you?” She folds her hands on the desk. “How can I help?”

We outline the problem—that Sarah wants to be homeschooled suddenly, and it seems there might be something going on. Ms. Kanawa mulls it over. She says, “You know, I wonder if there might be some bullying. One of the girls is quite the queen bee, you know, and all the other girls listen to her as if she’s a royal.”

“Is it Emma Reed?” I guess. She’s a milk-and-peaches child with ribbons of spun-gold hair and enormous blue eyes—all hiding the instincts of a barracuda.