Free To Catch a Mermaid by Suzanne Selfors Page B

seems so cruel.” She wiped some sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, obviously faked because the room was ice-cold. Her hands had a slightly green tinge.
    “Big fish eat little fish,” Winger said matter-of-factly. “It’s not cruel. It’s the food chain.”
    “Well, I think that the food chain is cruel.” Mertyle lay down on her bed. “I just wish we had lots of raw cod fillets so we wouldn’t have to sacrifice the goldfish.” Boom could have pointed out that a raw cod fillet had once been part of an
alive
cod, but he didn’t. That would be just another unpleasant bit of the real world that lay outside the dirt circle that Mertyle could not deal with.
    Having reduced Boom’s sock to a drool-drenched wad of yarn, the baby burrowed beneath the doll blanket. Winger stepped back and started waving his hands around like a lunatic. “Forget about selling Meet the Merbaby -tickets. Do you guys realize how much money you could make selling this thing to a collector? Do you realize? Huh? Do you?”
    Boom wished Winger hadn’t mentioned those tickets, because Mertyle was staring at him as if she wanted to burn a hole right through him with her laser beam eyes.
    Winger continued. “I saw on the news that some billionaire bought a dinosaur egg for three million dollars because he wants to clone dinosaurs. Think how much some billionaire would pay for a real merbaby. You could have an auction. You guys would be the richest family in the world.”
    Winger was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. That creature could be the best thing that had ever happened to the Broom family. Maybe circling March thirteenth on his calendar had been fate. Boom would be the richest twelve-year-old in the world! He could buy as many Galactic Kickers as he wanted — a different pair for every day of the week. Heck, he could build his own Kick the Ball Against the Wall arena.
    “You told me I could keep the baby,” Mertyle snarled.
    Boom turned away and tried to find something in the room to fiddle with. He hadn’t promised, had he? He had said, “Sure you can keep it,” but he hadn’t said for how long. He hadn’t thought out the bit about being rich. Halvor said the bill collector and bank needed to be paid. It they were rich, they could buy their own bank. If they had money, they could hire a gardener to cover up that horrible dirt circle so they wouldn’t have to be reminded,
every single day,
that a twister had ripped their family apart.
    “But think about it, Mertyle,” Winger pointed out. “You could buy whatever your heart desires.”
    “What my heart desires can’t be bought,” Mertyle said quietly.
    “What does your heart desire?” Winger asked, looking at Mertyle with a goofy look on his face, as though soda bubbles were tickling his nostrils. Mertyle didn’t answer, but Boom knew what she wanted. It was what he wanted too. But it wasn’t going to happen. All the money in the world couldn’t bring back someone who was gone.
    “I won’t let you two sell the baby,” Mertyle declared. “Bad people will put it in a cage or dissect it in a lab.” The baby poked its head out the end of the blanket and started chewing on the edge of the doll cradle.
    Boom continued to imagine all the things they could do as the richest family in the world. He wouldn’t have to go to school because he could hire a tutor to follow him around all day and teach him while he was kicking things in his private arena. They would have enough money to hire a doctor for Mertyle’s mental problems. And Mr. Broom’s, as well. It worried him that Mertyle was starting to fake being sick on a Saturday. She had never done that before.
    “The baby needs stuff we can’t give it,” Boom said, trying to coax his sister toward an agreeable decision. One that would benefit the entire family.
    “Like what?”
    “Well, like an ocean, for instance. We don’t have an ocean in our house.”
    Mertyle hung her head and sadness crept over her