Chapter 5
Tilikee rested her head on her arm and looked at Ben sideways. “Why did you want to drown?”
Ben closed his eyes. He’d forgotten, briefly, why he came down to the beach today. But his problems hadn’t been washed away. “Why not? I mean, my life sucks. Every fucking day. Now that school’s over I can’t even get out of the house. My mother just wants me to stay home so she can yell at me. Nobody else talks to me. It’s miserable and I hate it.”
“So why do you stay there?”
“Where am I supposed to go? I don’t have a job. No way I’m going to college. If I sneak out she rages at me for hours. Fuck, she’s going to have me locked in a psych ward after this.”
Tilikee’s face wrinkled. “That’s weird. Why doesn’t anybody talk to you?”
“Mother won’t let me go anywhere without her. She’s told everybody – my teachers, other parents – that I’m crazy and dumb and awful. Nobody liked me in school. Now everybody’s gone on to college, or jobs, or wherever.”
“I like you. I don’t know anything about college. I’m learning stuff all the time. Why can’t you get a job?”
“Mom won’t let me get a license. She’s got my birth certificate – won’t even let me see it. I’m trapped until I turn 18. I don’t know if she’s going to kick me out, but I don’t have any way to start my life if she does.”
Tilikee nodded, finally solving the puzzle. “You should leave home.”
“Yeah, right. Where am I supposed to live? I’ve got no money. I can’t even buy food. I sure as hell can’t pay rent.”
“I don’t have any money either.”
“I’m not a mermaid!”
Tilikee’s eyes flicked across his body. “Obviously.”
Ben felt his face redden. One of them had just said something foolish, and Tilikee clearly thought it was him.
—
“So what are you going to do with me?”
Tilikee squirmed through another shrug, or maybe she was just stretching her body. “Don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“Go back, I guess.”
“Why?”
“I can’t live underwater.”
“You are living underwater.”
“Not what I meant. What the hell would I do down here?”
“Not die.”
“I’d starve!”
“I can feed you.”
“With raw fish?”
“Can you cook?” Tilikee started to lurch across the floor again. Ben stood and stepped across the room so she didn’t have to, finding a small galley with a cooking surface of some sort. The controls were labelled with foreign characters, but there weren’t many of them. He could probably figure it out…
Ben shook away the idea. “I can’t stay here forever.”
“If you want to explore the abandoned city, there are some air places left. Or I could take you to the new city. A few humans live there with us.”
“How am I supposed to get there?”
“Don’t know. It’s a few days’ swimming.” She didn’t seem worried. “We could figure it out.”
“I’d be completely dependent on you, or your parents, to take care of me. I have no idea how I’d make a living there.”
Nods. “Same as now. But we won’t yell at you.”
Ben paused. None of Tilikee’s suggestions felt realistic. But he didn’t have any other solutions to his problems. Except one. And…he didn’t want to think about that right now.
—
“So did you decide what you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben looked around the small habitat. He wasn’t cold anymore, and the air had freshened, but there was nothing human here. Fish swam past the windows, casting vertical shadows beneath them. Ben realized that his clothes and his note had almost certainly been discovered by now.
“Tilikee…do you really want to keep me down here?”
“Sure, why not? But I’ll take you back to land if you want.”
He stared out a porthole. He couldn’t imagine what sort of life he could live under the sea. But he had walked into the sea to say goodbye to his life on the land.
“Maybe…maybe tomorrow. Ask me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow” felt like the right word.
THE END
(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this post.
Loading...
0 thoughts on “Sea Change – Ch.5”