Beached

5-The Plan

"Why are we bringing him into my house? "

"Because your parents already left for work. April has class in an hour. When she's gone, I'll bring him to my house."

"Yeah, but I'm still unclear as to why we have to bring him inside at all."

"God, Luca, did you listen at all as I re-caped the whole 'memory exchange' ? He needs our help finding the little girl."

I pull the boy backward through Luca's door in my grandmother's old wheelchair. He looks thoroughly frazzled and has a white knuckled grip on the handles.

"Can't we do that from outside? I don't know, you said he's aggressive."

"He knows I'm not a threat."

Luca closes the door behind us. We're in his kitchen.

"Still, there are a hundred things that can go wrong with this. What do I say if my parents come home early for some reason? Like, what if they forgot their lunches?"

"He's my cousin."

"What if your sister sees him?"

"Then he's your cousin."

He rubs his eyes in frustration. I crack a smile.

"What if- what if you wake up tomorrow and he's nothing but a dried husk? What if-"

"Luca," I interrupt. "He is by far the coolest thing that's ever happened to either of us. A merman surfaced on our beach. He chose us. Out of everyone, and all the beaches, us. You can't tell me you're not the least bit excited."

He stares at the boy, arms crossed stubbornly.

"He needs a name." I smile. "And some clothes," he continues, "because if someone walks in right now and he's... like that, I don't think they're gona buy that he's your cousin."

I smile. "You're the best."

He raises his eyes to mine. "Seriously though, we can't just keep calling him 'him' ."

"He doesn't have a name."

"I'm sure he won't know the difference if we give him one."

Hmm. Okay. I study 'him' trying to think of something fitting. "He kinda looks like a Charlie."

"Seriously?"

"What?"

"I was thinking something more... aquatic."

"Like what? Neptune?"

"No," he scoffs.

"Then what?" I laugh.

"I don't know... what about... Sebastian?"

"The crab from The Little Mermaid?"

He shrugs. "It's better than Neptune."

I cross my arms and look at him.

I shrug. "Sure. Why not."

"Really?"

 Crash!

My head whips to the sound. The boy, Sebastian, looks down at the ceramic dolphin he just pushed to the ground, then up at me.

I look at Luca. "I'll buy you another one."

He sighs. "No, it's fine. Let me go see if I can find him a t-shirt."

In a few minutes, we have Sebastian wearing one of Luca's dad's pajama shirts, which is really just a gray T. Luca's clothes were a little slim and he figured a plain gray top wouldn't be recognizable.

The shirt manages to hide the gills cut along his abdomen, but his coppery tail still overflows off the edge of the chair.

"Yeah, that t-shirt makes him look totally normal, Jules," Luca avows. "No one will ever notice."

I turn my head sideways, studying him: Sebastian. He really does look normal, if you don't look below the hem of the shirt and realize that he doesn't talk. You never really realize what language does to a person until you find one without it. It makes him seem like he's... less intelligent. But what if he's not? He obviously has a sense of what's happening. He's trusting us right now; he didn't have to. He... somehow knows.  And yet, he's a big baby. He can't walk, talk, he doesn't know what anything around him is. But just because he doesn't know anything about this world... it doesn't mean he's stupid. I kind of sense that he's not. God,he's cute. He looks like the type of young movie star that teenage girls fawn over and post pictures of on their walls.

I shrug, "It's a start."

"I guess."

"And he can always use my grandmom's wheelchair. Maybe we can cover his tail with a blanket or something.

"So where do we start? We don't exactly have a lot to go on." He leans against his kitchen table.

"I guess we take him to the docks, see if we recognize the boat. We can somehow figure out who owns it."

"Then we can knock on their door and ask if they happened to catch a couple of mermaids and, if so, could they point us in the direction of the missing one?"

I chuckle. "I'm kind of making this up as I go along. You have a better idea?"

He pauses to think. "We should probably check the dock early. You know, less people around."

"It's almost noon," I caution, knotting my mousy brown hair into a bun. I put my hands on my hips.

Luca reaches into the chest at the foot of his bed and takes out a folded blanket. He lets it unravel and hesitantly drapes it over Sebastian's tail. The fin still sticks out at the bottom.

Sebastian looks down at it, then bends his 'knees' up, and rests the fin on the footholds. He tucks the blanket into his side. He looks back up at us, then at the door as if saying come on.