Free Making Waves by Judi Fennell Page A

waved back.
Anthony would probably make fun of her, but it didn’t matter. She
was having fun.
    It was the perfect day at the beach.
    ***
    “I dare you to touch her.”
    Reel looked at his twin brother, Rod. “Why?
You too flounder to do it yourself?”
    “Funny, Reel. No, I’m not scared. Are
you?”
    “So why won’t you do it then?”
    “Because I dared you, that’s why.”
    That was a first. Usually Reel was the one
who did the daring. Then, when Rod wouldn’t do it, he’d do it
anyway. Just to prove he could.
    So of course he’d do it now. After all, he’d
never touched a Human before. He wanted to know if her skin felt
like his.
    She wasn’t too far away and if she’d just
swim by the rock, all he’d have to do was stick out his hand, feel
her skin, then duck back out of sight and she’d never know what’d
happened.
    “If I do it, Rod, I get your torpedo
collection.”
    “What?” Rod socked him in the shoulder. “Are
you out of your mind? I’m not giving you that.”
    “Well then, I’m not going to do it.” Not that
he cared about the torpedoes collection. Yeah, they were cool—for
about the first thirty seconds. After that? They just laid
there.
    But Rod was always collecting something.
Always reading and studying. The guy was a geek. Reel just wanted
to make the bet mean something. Tweak his tail a little. Since, ya
know, he couldn’t tweak his own, being that he didn’t one.
    Yeah, he wasn’t going there. The lack of a
tail was a sore subject.
    “I’ll do your chores for a week if you do
it,” said Rod.
    “Now you’re talking.” Yeah, he’d take that
bet. It’d be like plucking a silverside out of a shoal. “Okay, so
back up. I don’t want her to get a glimpse of you. Me, she wouldn’t
blink at. You with that big ol’ tail, that might be a problem.”
    In more ways than one. Dad would flip a
flipper if he knew two Mers were this close to shore. Pop a gill
that those Mers were his sons. If he had gills, that was. He was
always preaching to steer clear of Humans. That they were
dangerous.
    Well this one didn’t look dangerous. She was
actually kind of cute. Had the bluest eyes Reel had ever seen. They
looked like someone had put the sky underwater.
    Oh, fish. He was a moron. Sounded like his
stupid cousin, spouting poems and bullshark shit.
    “Let her get a breath first,” Rod said. “You
don’t want her to pass out if she gets scared.”
    “Since when did you get to be the big
authority on Humans?”
    “Since I read the anthropology book we were
supposed to read for Mrs. Fishburn’s class.”
    That name is just wrong. Ought to call her
Mrs. Sushi and be done with it.
    “Show off.”
    “Deadbeat.”
    Reel was about to give Rod a good punch in
the arm, followed by one in the gut, but, really, that
chores-for-a-week thing was a pretty good incentive to follow
through on the bet. He didn’t want to blow it by scaring her off.
“Shut up, bottom feeder. She’s coming back this way.”
    “You’ll never do it.”
    “Watch me.”
    “I will.”
    “Good. And you’re going to owe me.”
    She was getting closer, her limbs fluttering
daintily. He’d never seen another set of legs up close. His were
the only ones he was familiar with since he was the only Mer with legs. Yeah, and if that didn’t bite the big kahuna…
    She picked up something else from the seabed
and tucked it in the top of her bathing suit. Reel wanted to laugh.
If Humans thought seashells were a treasure, they’d probably go
coconuts over the big ol’ pile of diamonds dotting the ocean floor
a few hundred leagues off their coastline.
    “Oh, crab!” Rod whispered, gripping his
shoulder and pointing to the giant clam shell at the end of the
rocks. “You left Mom’s gift in plain sight.”
    “Well, duh. It was heavy. Besides, how else
was I supposed to get her over here?”
    “You planned to touch her?”
    “No, idiot. I just wanted to see her. She was
picking up little cowries along the water’s