The Little Mermaid

Chapter 2: Chasing Tail

He isn't sure how it's supposed to work at first, whether he can just show up any time he wants and she'll come find him. She told him that others couldn't be allowed to see her, so he sneaks out late at night when the beach is practically deserted aside from the occasional sleeping bum. And he waits for her, waits until his eyelids get heavy and he begins to lose hope, but she comes, she comes every time. He asks her how she knows, how she knows when to find him, and she explains it to him.

"When mermaids kiss they can always sense each other's presence afterward no matter how far away they are," she says, making his eyes go wide in bewilderment.

"That's why you kissed me," he says as a statement rather than a question and she nods and smiles sweetly. "But I'm not a mermaid, how did you know it would work?"

"I didn't," she admits. "But I had to try."

"So you can just find me, anywhere no matter what?" he says, still not sure if he understood it.

"Anywhere," she assures him. "What about you? Why do humans kiss?"

He shrugs, "Because it feels nice I guess."

"It does," she agrees and then she leans in to kiss him again, softly and sweetly.

That is the second of many kisses, salty sweet kisses that last forever and make them both lightheaded. The first time he slips her the tongue she freaks a little. And when she pushes him away he explains frantically that that is simply the way that humans kiss sometimes. And she leans in timidly and tries it again, putting her tongue in his mouth this time, and it's awesome, and as their lips part she asks him warily if she had done it right and he assures her that she had, even though he has nothing to compare it to. He is 12 at the time and he assumes that she is the same age, although she can't tell him for sure since time doesn't work the same way where she comes from.

They don't only kiss, she tells him stories about where she comes from, a land many miles below the sea where all of the merpeople live together and sing songs and tell stories about the mysterious land above that most of them don't dare to venture into. He asks her if she is a princess like in The Little Mermaid and she assures him that she isn't, that the princess would never get away with sneaking off to the surface. She tells him about her father, a timid merman who greatly fears the surface, she tells him that if her father finds out what she is doing then she'll be greatly punished. He asks her why she risks it, "I do it for you," she says, shrugging like it's the simplest thing in the world and he smiles and kisses her, which becomes so easy in so little time.

He tells her about his life too. He tells her that he has lived on McKinley island since he was born and has never been anywhere else. McKinley is a tiny fisherman's province with fewer than 2000 people living there and no tourism to speak of. If you live there you either catch fish for a living or sell equipment to catch fish with. His own father was a fisherman, it was the reason they were out in the water when the freak storm hit, he had always loved to go on weekend long boat trips with his dad during the long, lazy summers. He lives a simple, uneventful life, but to her it is fascinating. Still, he wants to somehow show her that there is more to life on the surface than what McKinley island has to offer, so from then on he brings books, all kinds of books. It starts off simple, he brings his collection of Hardy Boys and Goosebumps novels, but as the months pass the selection becomes more and more elaborate. Finn isn't a big fan of reading, but when he reads to her he starts to enjoy it, so much that after awhile he finds himself looking for a challenge.

They read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn together and Old Yeller and Johnny Tremain and The Outsiders, and all of the Harry Potter Books, and The Spiderwick Chronicles and A Series of Unfortunate Events, all of which she falls in love with, but they are all boy books and he knows that she would probably like to read a girl book at some point, so he brings her The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, which has a girl's name in the title and Bridge to Terabithia, which makes her cry. It isn't long before she asks him to teach her, and he has to admit that the idea is daunting, he can barely pay attention in class most days, but he agrees, and luckily she is a much better student than he is a teacher, and she catches on fast. So fast that before long she is reading to him, she starts off with the Fraggle Rock books and Frog and Toad and Dr. Suess and works her way up to Superfudge and Matilda. And if they aren't reading or talking or kissing they swim, they race each other to the buoy and she always wins, because she doesn't know how not to, but he doesn't mind so much, because he always beats her at basketball, he used his allowance to buy a net that he attached to the deck and they play some nights when the mood strikes. And he brings music for her to listen to, classic rock songs mostly and she loves them all and she memorizes the songs word for word and sings them to him so beautifully, and they sing them together and she is so much better, but singing with her makes him better. After awhile he's pretty good himself, for a human. They have the perfect friendship, the only problem was it only lasts for an hour or two at a time before they both have to hurry home before their parents wake up.