Mermaids in the Backyard Read Free

hated the thought of needing a babysitter even more.
    Once again, a crackle of static swallowed her mother’s voice. “… but she’ll be there as soon as she can.”
    “Mom?” Lindy said as her mother’s voice cut out. “Hello?”
    The phone was dead. Lindy set it down and tugged at her hair. Now what? Suddenly she hoped Jessica would get there quickly.
    She looked out the back window. In the wind and rain, the yard looked like it belonged on some distant, sandy planet. The wind kept blowing the branches of the big tree against the side of the house. It sounded as if it was knocking to come inside.
    The ocean looked more frantic than ever. Lindy hoped the waves wouldn’t grab the bug house and pull it right into the sea. She shivered at the thought. Maybe it would float off like the houseboat she’d once seen on TV. Her room on the top floor would stick up like a buoy, swaying with the current.
    Then again, maybe the house would sinkto the bottom of the ocean. Fish would swim in through all the windows, and barnacles would attach themselves everywhere. Maybe one would even stick to her dad’s bald spot when he came home.
    The thought made her smile a little. She stared out to sea, wondering if it was as stormy beneath the waves as it was on the surface. Were the fish waiting for the storm to pass just like she was?
    Her gaze slid closer to shore. The water was still rising behind the line of old-man boulders at the bottom of the hill. The huge rocks seemed to hunker down as waves kept crashing against them, sending more spray flying everywhere.
    Then she saw something else. She leaned closer to the window. It was hard to see through the blowing rain. Was there reallysomething moving out there by the old men?
    Maybe it’s Jessica
, she thought.
    Resting both hands on the glass, Lindy pressed her face to the window. There! She saw movement again. It looked as if someone was sitting in the tide pool.
    “Matthew wouldn’t be crazy enough to poke around out there
now
, would he?” Lindy mumbled. She squinted harder, trying to see past the streams running down the window.
    Thinking about Matthew reminded her of the day before. He and Jessica hadn’t believed that Lindy had seen someone out in the cove. Could they have been right? Had her eyes been playing tricks on her?
    The wind blew the rain away from the window for a second, giving her a better look at the tide pool. She gasped. She wasn’tseeing things. There was a person out there!

    “Help!”
The storm was so loud that Lindy could barely hear the cry, even though the windows were cracked open to keep the house from getting too stuffy.
    Her arms and legs started to tremble. Who was out there?
    She raced to the front window and looked out. Still no sign of Jessica.
    The cry came again. This time it was drowned out by another rumble of thunder.
    Lindy clenched her fists to stop her hands from shaking. She’d never been so scared in her life. Yet she knew she had to try to help the person out there.
    The wind grabbed Lindy as she dove out the front door. She held tightly to the handrail, worried that she might fall down the wet wooden steps. Somehow she made it safelyto the bottom. She had to lean forward to make any headway against the wind-lashed rain.
    It seemed to take forever to reach the rocky side yard. As soon as she did, Lindy knew she hadn’t been seeing things. There was a girl in the tide pool by the old-man rocks! She had long silvery-blond hair plastered to her head by the rain. Her soggy green top clung to her pale torso.
    “Hey!” Lindy called. She skidded down the slope on the sandy path. “Are you okay?”
    The girl turned to look at her. Her eyes were huge and frightened. She cried out, but the wind swept the words away before Lindy could hear them.
    Lindy’s heart pounded as she fought the wind and the rain-slick rocks to get closer to the tide pool. She felt like she did in scarydreams sometimes, when she ran and ran and couldn’t