Free Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova Page B

back of my head hits the bottom of the tub, and when I take a deep breath, I forget I don’t have gills anymore. The rose-soap water snakes down my throat. The strangest feeling is not having water go down the wrong pipe but the fact that my leg muscles feel like they’re reverberating right at the core. I push myself up and cough until my throat feels raw.
    Mom holds a towel in front of me and I take it, drying my face first, then standing to wrap it around my waist. It hurts to stand, like the day after doing squats in Mr. Loughlin’s fitness class.
    â€œI’m sorry this is happening,” Mom says. “It wasn’t supposed to.”
    I’m shivering. I’m shivering, I’m naked, I’m wet, and in a handful of days I’ve nearly drowned, hallucinated, and turned into a mythical creature. Yeah, none of this was supposed to happen.
    â€œI’m going to clean up,” Dad says. He runs out and comes back with a mop and every towel we own to carpet the tiles and soak up the water.
    â€œGet dressed, honey,” Mom says. She rubs my face with her hand, and part of me wants to rest my head on her shoulder like when I was little and didn’t want to start kindergarten without her. The other part of me, the part that’s angry like I’ve never thought I could be, flinches from her touch.
    â€œLet’s get you kids some clothes,” she tells Kurt and Thalia.
    â€œI’m going to bed,” I announce.
    â€œBut there’s so much we have to discuss,” Kurt protests. We stand in the living room. I can hear Mom rummaging through her closet and Dad wringing out the towels into the tub and then laying them out on the floor again.
    â€œYeah, well, unless the information is going to change in the next ten hours, I think it can wait.”
    Kurt goes to speak, but Thalia says his name hard. “ Kurtomathetis . Remember our place.”
    Yeah, as in they’re know-it-all mermaids and I’m just a human guy. Or I was.
    Kurt’s face changes from a tight-lipped expression to just plain pissed-off and then right back to full control in seconds. “Forgive me. This is a lot to gather.”
    â€œI’ll see you guys in the morning.”
    The land-locked mer-siblings watch me sulk to my room and close the door. My navy blue sheets have never felt softer against my abused skin. I feel for traces of scales on my body, but this time there aren’t any. Where my gills are shut against the air, I can feel raised keloids, like the scar on my mother’s back.
    I bury my face against my pillow and let my body sink into everything that’s happening. I’d pinch myself if everything didn’t already hurt. The sounds of my house slow down: the squeak of the metal in the pull-out couch as it’s being unfolded, the rustle of Kurt and Thalia helping my parents making it up with sheets and blankets, and their low voices most likely discussing me, or maybe how much they wish they weren’t here.
    Duty was what Kurt had said. He has a duty, and it’s me. What’s my duty? Before the storm, before the shift, my only duty was being the best swimmer and saving a life if it needed saving. Can I still do those things without being this—thing?
    I look at the clock on my nightstand before shutting my eyes. It isn’t even midnight yet.

I dream of the whirlpool again, but all I see is the water. Clear bubbles. Stillness and the infinite black-blue ocean. This time I’m swimming with the Great White. Up close I can see he’s got his own armor with a gleaming metal ring around his head. The ring has two grips at either side. I tighten my hold on them as he pulls me through the water.
    When I wake up, I feel like I’ve been asleep for days. My legs ache when I push myself off my bed. For a moment, sitting in the middle of my blue comforter and surrounded by swim trophies, posters of vintage cars, calendar girls holding