Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings Read Online Free PDF Page B

explain this.” Dad draped a sweater around my shaking frame and covered the tail with a blanket.
    “Try me!” I searched his tortured face. He sat in the chair next to my bed and ran his hand through his hair. Typical Dad stress signal.
    “There is something I haven’t told you because I wasn’t sure I’d ever have to.” He rested his elbows on his knees, lacing and unlacing his fingers. “Your mom and I…”
    “What about Mom?” The sound of her name had me bracing my hands against the mattress.
    Dad squeezed his eyes shut. “Just let me gather my thoughts, will you, Jade? This isn’t an easy thing to explain.”
    “And you think being covered in fish scales is easy? ” My face screwed up in an involuntary sob.
    “Oh, sweetie.”
    “I’m sorry.” I wiped my nose with the sleeve of the sweater. “I’m just…” I struggled to catch my breath “…a little freaked out here.”
    That was the understatement of the year.
    “No, no. Don’t be sorry.” Dad stood and paced the room, letting out a huge, noisy breath. “Don’t ever be sorry about this.” He waved his hand toward the lump under the blanket where my legs used to be.
    “What exactly is this?” I slapped the blanket, sending a sting through my thigh. Ah! Not my thigh. Not anymore!
    Dad cleared his throat. “Your mom and I always planned on telling you. But after she…” He drew in a breath and blinked a few times before continuing. “After Michaela drowned, I wondered if the secret would die along with her.”
    “What secret?” I fought to keep the edge out of my voice, but the scales on the tail began to prickle. A lot. Was searing scale pain normal? I wondered. Then again, could anything about having a tail be considered normal?
    Dad sat and took my hand in his. “Jade…”
    “Yes?”
    He took a deep breath. “Michaela…your mom…she was a mermaid.”
    I looked at him for a full ten seconds before my brain caught up with his words.
    “A…a wha?”
    “A Pesco-sapien. Part fish, part aquatic humanoid.”
    Of all the times to pull the science card on me. I closed my eyes and shook my head in disbelief.
    “I know what a mermaid is! But Mom was a person. A human. She walked upright. She had legs! What the heck do you mean—a mermaid?” None of it came even close to registering. That afternoon, my biggest problem had been trying to find a bathing suit that fit and getting my first period. Now, the complexity of my life seemed to get jacked up by a few hundred decimal points.
    “Well, technically I guess I should say she used to be a mermaid.” He squeezed my hand. “Ah, Jade, I know none of this makes sense. I didn’t understand it either, when I first met Micci.”
    “Then I’m…” I couldn’t quite finish the sentence before being sent down another spiral of disbelief.
    “It seems so.” Dad let out a desperate sigh and leaned heavily against the back of the chair.
    “But how is that even possible?” Then I looked at him seriously. “Please tell me Mom was human when you mether.” I had enough to try to wrap my head around without imagining the obvious.
    Dad let out a little laugh.
    “We met about a year after she was washed ashore during Hurricane Jade.”
    “I was named after a hurricane?” I could believe almost anything now.
    He nodded. “From what Micci told me, she was knocked unconscious and washed ashore during the storm. By the time she made it back to the ocean, she’d pulmo-morphed.”
    I closed my eyes and shook my head.
    “Speak English!” I shifted in the bed, trying to get comfortable, but the scales went from prickling to burning and my whole lower body was a furnace of heat.
    “Her gills and lungs had changed too much from breathing air. It made it harder for her to survive underwater.”
    I brought my hands to my face and shook my head. “This is unbelievable.”
    “There was this group of mer-people called the Mermish Council, I think, who had just taken over the government,” Dad