Real Mermaids 2 - Don't Hold Their Breath Read Free Page B

phone and tossed it back on the counter. “Argh! Another telemarketer. Seriously, do people actually fall for that stuff?”
    Dad let out a breath, then turned to clean up the extra parts and packaging from the faucet box. But I could see his expression in the bathroom mirror. His face was flushed red and his eyes shone with disappointment. Crushing, heartbreaking disappointment.
    â€œDad?”
    â€œYeah?” He cleared his throat and looked up in the mirror, meeting my gaze, then busied himself arranging tools into his metal toolbox. The sound reverberated through the hollowness of the bathroom.
    â€œI want to go to the ocean to go see what’s happening with Mom.” The last time I’d seen Mom was underneath the pier at the Descousse Marina. Sure, she’d said the Mermish Council was going to let her use the tidal pool so she could transform into a human again, but what if something had gone wrong? And why was it taking so long?
    Dad shut the toolbox’s lid. It snapped shut on his finger.
    â€œOh! Ouch.” He snatched his hand back and sucked on his finger. “Yeah, sure, honey. We’ve been up and down the coast looking for the tidal pool already, but maybe we can look around Gros Nez Point this time.”
    This wasn’t going to be easy. How was I going to convince Dad that I didn’t want to do just another one of our evening coastal hunts up and down the shores around Port Toulouse? I wanted to go straight to the source. I wanted answers. Real answers. And there was only one place to get them.
    â€œNo, Dad. The ocean…the actual ocean.”
    â€œOh, honey. No—”
    â€œPlease? Not knowing what the heck is happening with Mom is making us both a little batty. We can’t jump each time the phone rings. And honestly,” I stared at the loose wires hanging from the half-installed bathroom fan overhead, “I’m not sure how many more home improvement projects we can survive before one of us gets electrocuted.”
    Dad blinked a few times.
    â€œNo.” He picked up the toolbox and brushed by me. I sighed and followed him out the door and down the stairs. Dad kept ignoring me through the rec room door and out into the garage, but I pressed on.
    â€œWouldn’t you love to know what’s going on? To have some idea when Mom was actually coming home? Whether she was coming home at all?”
    Dad stood squarely in front of his workbench. He ran his hands along the lid of the toolbox before turning to me. “Of course I want to know, Jade. But I’ve already almost lost one Baxter girl to the ocean. I really don’t feel like risking another.”
    â€œI promise I’ll be careful,” I pleaded.
    â€œIt’s not like you’re asking me to go to the movies by yourself, Jade. What you’re proposing is extremely dangerous. There are tidal forces, salinity and buoyancy factors to consider…”
    Great. Dad was totally geeking out on me.
    â€œPlus,” he continued, “the Atlantic is not like Talisman Lake, where you can just turn in any direction and find your way back to shore. This is the ocean, Jade. One wrong turn and next stop is the British Isles.” He patted the pockets of his pants and looked around the garage as if he’d misplaced something, then peeked under a tarp covering our old camping trailer—except it wasn’t exactly our camping trailer anymore.
    â€œWhat did you do to the trailer?” I asked pulling off the rest of the tarp. “What is this thing?”
    Dad cringed as though I’d found my presents a week before Christmas. “Uh, just something Eddie and I have been tinkering with.”
    The trailer’s canvas top had been removed, and an old hot tub took up most of the floor space inside. Hoses and pipes came off the hot tub at all angles, and a tangle of wires was connected to a laptop on the counter at the far side of the trailer.
    â€œWell, I