The Summer of Chasing Mermaids Read Online Free Page B

judgmental.
    â€œYou’re kidding,” Mrs. Kane said, a smile finding its way through the cold.
    â€œSwear to God, ma’am,” Vanessa said.
    Just like that the tension in the room evaporated.
    It was easy to see why she and Kirby were friends. Kirby had a heart the size of Oregon, and Vanessa was a magnet, a sweet girl with a gorgeous smile and a fearless tongue, the girl everyone simultaneously loved and wanted to be.
    Except for me.
    I’d already been that girl, and it didn’t work out.
    â€œAnyway,” she said, “that only served to galvanize us in our mission.”
    Soon she had the Kanes enraptured with a story about how she’d rallied the girls sports’ teams at her school in Fort Worth, and, together with a few supportive parents, they’d gotten the school to start a new women’s literature core. Her mother had even ordered T-shirts for all the girls’ mothers that said PROUD MOM OF A FEMINIST KILLJOY .
    The way Vanessa told it, I wanted to be a killjoy too.
    Vanessa wasn’t bragging, though. She’d done it as a diversion, I realized. The Kanes were newly focused on her, listening attentively. Mr. Kane was asking questions about how she’d organized so many girls, and Mrs. Kane was laughing about the T-shirts.
    Vanessa knew how to work them. She’d likely been in the middle of it before. Maybe she’d tried to save Christian and his brother from the arguing.
    Despite my ability to read people, I felt like an outsider, like someone watching a party from the other side of the glass. I could see these things unfold, but I couldn’t quite understand the dynamics, the deep knowing that comes from growing up with people you care about.
    I missed my sisters.
    I’d met so many people tonight, Vanessa and the Kanes, the mayor, Lemon’s friends. And though I was smiled at and asked to pass plates or glasses, no one really spoke to me. No one asked me about Tobago, or my family, or what I did before arriving in Oregon. No one asked how the party compared to celebrations back home, or why I called my aunt Lemon instead of Ursula, her real name. They hadn’t heard me say it, after all. They didn’t know that Natalie had invented it. We were four years old, failing miserably at sounding out Lemon’s last name.
    Langelinie.
    I felt the loss of my voice like a fresh wound, a cold blade against my throat, and I closed my eyes to keep the sea from spilling down my cheeks. No one knew me like my family in Tobago, but they’d known me always as Elyse, beautiful songbird, weaver of music that could bring a man to his knees. Music was my life, a rare gift that Natalie and I had shared, had grown into, had grown because of.
    And now, without the music, I was just . . . Elyse. Broken.
    My family didn’t know me anymore. Natalie didn’t know me. I didn’t know me.
    Pictures of Granna and Dad flickered in my mind, my five sisters following with pleading eyes—Juliette, Martine, Gabrielle, Hazel, and Natalie, my twin, the one whose absence had carved the biggest trench in my heart.
    I blinked them all away, my family and the cocoa pods and the chatty orange-winged parrots. Tobago. This was my home now—Atargatis Cove, Oregon. My own bedroom in a beautiful house by the sea with Aunt Lemon and Kirby, an informal job hunting sea glass and helping out at Lemon’s gift shop. No pressure greater than this party, no expectations for a big bright future, no expiration on the offer to stay. As far as Lemon was concerned, as long as my visa was in order, I could linger here the rest of eternity.
    If I were still the type of girl who made long-term plans, that would’ve been it.
    Linger.
    Eternally.
    â€œSo now I’m a feminist killjoy.” Vanessa dusted her hands together. “Done and done.”
    In the crush of laughter that marked the end of her tale, I took the back stairs down the way we’d come up, and