A Mischief of Mermaids Read Online Free Page A

brand-new middle school! That means I’ll have twice the trauma! I’ll probably need a half dozen good friends just to make it to high school without suffering serious psychological damage!”
    Mrs. Malone, clutching a telescope and tripod in her arms, staggered past just in time to hear the end of this.
    â€œYou’re not still going on about middle school trauma, are you?” said Mrs. Malone, giving her a harassed look. “Honestly, Franny, going from sixth to seventh grade is not quite the same as climbing Qomolangma in search of Yeti. Poppy, where did you put the night-vision goggles? I can’t find them anywhere.”
    â€œThey’re in the trunk of the car,” said Poppy. “Hold on, I’ll get them.”
    As she ran down the gangplank, she passed Mr. Malone, who was carrying a stack of books about the Roswell UFO crash.
    â€œWatch out!” gasped Mr. Malone, whose armful of books tilted precariously as Poppy ran past.
    â€œI can take some of those, Mr. Malone,” said Henry.
    â€œThat’s all right, I’ve got it,” gasped Mr. Malone. The top book slipped. Mr. Malone reached up to grab it, which disturbed the balance of the whole pile. A half dozen books began tilting, as if in slow motion.
    â€œDrat!” said Mr. Malone as he backpedaled, trying to keep the books balanced. At the last possible moment, just as he was about to step backward off the gangplank and fall into the lake, Henry neatly lifted the top of the stack from Mr. Malone’s arms, allowing Mr. Malone to regain his own balance.
    â€œThank you, Henry,” he gasped. “Of course, I had everything under control, but still . . . thank you.”
    â€œWould you cut it out, Henry?” said Will from the side of his mouth. “You’re going to make me look bad.”
    Once they got all their gear stowed and clothes put away, the Malones gathered on the deck.
    â€œWhat should we do first?” asked Will. “Go swimming? Try the waterslide? Take out the kayaks?”
    â€œThe answer is none of the above,” said Mr. Malone. “Not until you all help me put this up on the outside of the cabin.”
    Poppy, Will, and Franny turned to see Mr. Malone unrolling a long, unwieldy canvas that he had carted from home.
    â€œDon’t just stand there gaping!” he called out. “Come over here and lend a hand.”
    Dragging their feet, they walked over to where the canvas, now unrolled, was covering a large section of the deck.
    The dark blue canvas was twenty feet square and covered with line drawings of aliens. Some had large heads and narrow eyes, some were squat and dumpy, some were tall and thin, some had eight long, thin fingers on each hand and some had tentacles. Various types of spacecraft—flying saucers, strange trapezoid shapes and what looked like dirigibles—were drawn around the border.
    â€œWhat,” asked Franny, “is that ?”
    â€œA present from Wilbur,” said Mr. Malone. He stood up, beads of sweat rolling down his face. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt, blinking nearsightedly. “It arrived yesterday from Berlin.”
    â€œThat explains a lot,” muttered Will.
    Professor Wilbur Sutterwaite had spent his long and controversial career studying UFOs. Mr. Malone had taken a seminar course from the professor as part of his junior year abroad and they had stayed in touch ever since, exchanging chatty letters filled with news about their families, crop circles, career moves, mysterious ship disappearances, travel plans, and famous unsolved UFO sightings.
    â€œOf course, we should have known,” said Will. “Is he still collecting stories about those green glowing spheres that keep floating around the sky in Argentina?”
    Mrs. Malone clucked her tongue in exasperation. “I do wish you children would pay a little more attention to dinner table conversation, instead of making