Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels by Helene Boudreau Read Free Book Online Page B

thumbtacks aside and dumped the water from the pot.
    â€œI never knew you had a son,” I said in surprise. In all the years I’d known Bridget, she’d never once mentioned any kind of family.
    â€œWe all have our secrets, don’t we?” Bridget dried her hands and looked at me for a moment, then went to her coat hanging on the hook by the back door. She pulled a familiar-looking ID folder from her coat’s pocket, then walked back over to me and opened the folder’s flap.
    She turned the picture toward me. “I believe you kids call him Reese?”
    It was an underwater close-up shot of a teenager’s face. Sure enough, through the shimmering water in the picture, the chubby, cheerful face of a teenage mer-boy I knew smiled back.
    Reese!
    Reese had told me that he’d lost his mother but that he always carried her memory around. Suddenly it all made sense.
    â€œSo that’s why Reese carries your picture in his satchel. He has one of these ID folders, too. I thought he was a klepto, but you’re actually his mom?”
    â€œYup. I had to give him up as soon as he was born. We’ve stayed in touch ever since, but it’s been hard.”
    â€œAh, man.” My mind was about to explode from information overload.
    â€œAre you okay?” Bridget asked, reaching out to touch my arm.
    â€œYes, but if you don’t mind, can I pass on the clams? What I could really use is the biggest Bridget Burger known to man.”

Breakfast was tenser than usual the next morning after everything that had happened at Bridget’s Diner the day before. We sat around the kitchen table, trying to come up with a plan to deal with the possibility that everyone might be dragged back to sea in just over a week.
    Another thing throwing us off kilter was having the fourth seat at the breakfast table occupied by a new member of the Baxter family. But instead of looking worried, Serena looked positively blissful about the prospect of a looming mer revolution. She even tried some eggs instead of her canned sardine standby.
    Dad was freaking, though. He stood quickly from the table with his plate of half-eaten bacon, which, for Dad’s—ahem—healthy appetite, showed exactly how upset he was.
    â€œWe’ll just build some sort of safe house until this thing blows over,” Dad said as he scraped his leftovers into the garbage can.
    â€œA safe house?” I asked. “Like when the FBI puts someone in the witness protection program?”
    â€œNot exactly. I was thinking of something more high-tech.” Dad’s work as an engineer had come in handy when he built us the Merlin 3000. He was obviously back in “mad scientist” mode. “I might be able to use one of our wind tunnels at work to create some kind of reverse force field. Maybe line the tunnel with anti-magnetic foil to block the forces of the moon?”
    I wasn’t sure his brilliant intellect was going to get us out of this one, though.
    â€œThis is the moon we’re talking about, Dad. Not a fridge magnet,” I said.
    Dad’s nervous babbling and enthusiastic plate scraping had me stressed out, too. I pushed my hash browns around my plate and tried to settle the roiling feeling in my gut that came from thinking about the Mermish Council’s plan.
    Serena munched on her breakfast and leafed through the Social Studies books I’d taken out of the library for our school project. She still couldn’t read, but she’d stared at the pictures and made me explain everything as we worked on our project together the night before. I’d never seen anyone so excited about “Rights and Responsibilities of Good Citizenship.”
    â€œDalrymple, honey,” Mom said to Dad as she circled the next supermoon on our kitchen calendar with a red Sharpie marker. Thursday, September 17. Eight days before my life came crashing (or splashing) down around me. “Mermish Laws have