I knew Mark was right, but not pulling Moku into my arms was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I’d practically raised him after my mother abandoned us for the ocean, would have done anything to keep him safe, and yet now, here he was, injured while I’d been sitting by watching him ride that stupid death trap.
“Moku,” I pleaded. “Please open your eyes.”
Long seconds passed as Mark checked his pulse and tried to determine whether or not he was breathing. While Moku’s heart was beating, his chest hadn’t risen in way too long. Just as I was about to completely freak out—and Mark was reaching for his cell phone to dial 911—Moku’s eyes popped open. Seconds later, his hand went to his chest and he sucked air noisily into his lungs.
“He just had the wind knocked out of him,” Mark said with a grin, his relief palpable.
I barely had time to register that Moku really was okay before my brother grabbed my hand and breathlessly demanded, “Did you see me, Tempe? I’ve never gone that fast before.”
Tears of relief sprang to my eyes, and I beat them back. The last thing I needed to do was start crying like the wimp I was—Moku would never forgive me. “You were awesome,” I told him. “Terrifying, but awesome.”
Mark crouched next to him on his other side. “Does anything hurt?”
“Just my hand.” Moku held out his scraped palm, and I winced in sympathy.
“Let’s go in and fix you up,” I told him, carefully helping him to his feet. As I did, Mark tapped him on the helmet. Never had I been so relieved that I’d insisted on the protection. Moku had thrown a fit when I’d dropped it onto his head, whining that it made him look like a baby. Thank God I hadn’t given in.
Moku trailed me into the kitchen, followed closely by Mark, who looked more sheepish than I had ever seen him. I knew he was expecting me to yell at him about the skateboard, but I just didn’t have it in me. Not when simply being my brother had put Moku in more danger than that stupid skateboard ever could. Besides, if there was one thing I’d learned after being mermaid for nearly a year, it was that things happened—no matter how closely you safeguarded against them.
When we got to the kitchen, my dad was already there, cooking dinner. It smelled great, but as I glanced in the skillet to see what he was making, it was all I could do not to groan. Fish tacos. Again. He’d made them last night too and watched, oblivious, as I’d forced down every bite.
I knew he was just trying to help, trying to make me feel comfortable—after all, this had been my favorite homemade dinner when I was human. But since I’d become mermaid—and been forced to eat fish and sea vegetables pretty much every day—I would have much preferred a hamburger.
Still, in the last few months, my dad had been so determined to act normal, to pretend that nothing had changed since my seventeenth birthday—even though everything had—that I’d found myself going along with it. My choices had done enough damage in the last year.
“Are you guys staying in tonight?” he asked without looking up from where he was beer-battering the next batch of fish.
“Actually, Tempe and I figured we’d catch the football game over at school.”
“Oh. Okay.” My dad looked disappointed, and guilt started to set in—I knew he wanted to spend as much time with me as possible—but Moku got in his face, waving his war wound around like a badge of honor.
For a second, just a second, I saw blind panic flit across my father’s face—the same blind panic that I had felt when I’d watched Moku hit that truck. The look was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, but the guilt that was my daily companion drew just a little more tightly around me.
My dad wasn’t one of those high-strung types who micro-managed and was always freaking out about his kids. A kick-butt professional surfer turned successful surfwear company owner and CEO, he was usually pretty laid back about things. But Moku’s injuries last summer had traumatized him as much as they had me, and these days every little scratch my brother got was cause for a momentary freak-out. We both tried to keep our neuroses under wraps, and while I thought my dad generally did a better job of it than I did, he couldn’t hide it forever.
After swallowing a couple of times, my dad asked as casually as he could manage, “What happened to you?”
Moku grinned, showing off a bunch of missing teeth on both sides of his mouth—proof that the tooth fairy had been busy around here this year. “I crashed and burned. It was awesome—totally shredded my hand.” He said it like it was such a good thing that the three of us—Mark, my dad, and I—couldn’t help laughing.
Reaching out to ruffle his hair, Dad said, “That is awesome. How’s the pavement?”
“It’s okay,” Moku told him seriously. “But don’t worry. I’ll get it next time.”
That was my brother—sweet and tough and so good-natured it was impossible to do anything but adore him. “All right, future X Games champion of the universe,” I said. “Get over here and let me—”
At that moment, the kitchen door opened from the garage, and I stopped midsentence as she walked in. Tall and redheaded with big boobs, long legs, and a smile so sweet just looking at it gave me cavities, Sabrina had been a semipermanent fixture around here for the last few months. And every time I came home it was to find that she was a little more ingratiated with my family, a little more comfortable in what I had always deemed my territory.
Needless to say, I was unimpressed. Especially when everything about her screamed ick to me. And the ick factor only got worse as she announced, “I’m home!”
Chapter 2
Ugh. As if. I stared at her in disgust as the idea of this being her home—of her living here and playing at being the evil stepmother to Moku and our other brother, Rio—made me want to hurl. Besides, this was my family and I didn’t have much time with them. Was it really necessary for my dad’s girlfriend to crash nearly every second I was here?
Moku didn’t have any of my reticence, however. “Sabrina, Sabrina!” He ran over to her, arm extended so she could see the scrape on his palm. If I hadn’t taken a couple big steps back, he would have run me over in his determination to get to her. “Look what happened.”
“Wow, Moku, that is a serious injury!” She squatted down next to him. “What happened!”
“I fell on my skateboard. It was totally awesome. Tempest and Mark saw.”
“Did they! Wow! I don’t know that I would call that awesome, but I’m glad you weren’t hurt worse! Shouldn’t we get that cleaned up before it gets infected!”
I glanced at Mark, who was obviously trying hard not to laugh. He was losing the battle though—it was hard to take seriously a woman who spoke in exclamation marks every time she opened her mouth.
“I was just about to do that,” I told her, holding out the peroxide and shaking it a little.
“Oh, you don’t have to bother yourself, Tempest! I know how busy you are!” Was there a hint of condescension in her happy-happy tone as she took the bottle from me and shooed me out of the way? “Besides, Moku and I have our own little ritual for boo-boos! Don’t we, sugar!”
Moku nodded, dragging her over to stand in front of the medicine cupboard. I gritted my teeth, tried to bear it, when all I really wanted to do was scream at her to get out. To go find another family because this one was mine.