Under Water

Natalie comes back and, true to her word, she brings a kayak. “You really brought one?” Finn asks, laughing as he watches her drag it down the beach with a little difficulty.

“Yes,” she says, trying to sound dignified as she hauls it into the water. “Not all of us are great swimmers.”

“Is that why you won’t come in the water? Can you not swim?” Finn asks, his eyes widening with realization.

Nat pauses to glare at him, but it’s halfhearted. “Maybe,” she says as she attempts to step into the kayak, trying to steady it as it wobbles. Finn swims up to the side and holds it still so she can get in.

“I can teach you to swim, if you want,” Finn says casually. “It’s not hard.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Says the one with a tail.”

He grins and shrugs, giving the kayak a push so she’s out in the water. She picks up a paddle from the bottom of the boat and attempts to steer herself as he follows alongside. “But really, I can. This is no way to travel.”

“Maybe,” Nat says again, so Finn doesn’t push it.

“Where’d you even get this, anyway?” he asks, flicking the side so it makes a hollow clunking noise. “Don’t tell me you bought it just for this.”

“Of course I didn’t buy it,” she scoffs. “I found it in our garage.”

“It looks a million billion years old.”

“What, like you’re an expert on kayaks?”

“I have seen a lot of them in my time out here,” Finn reminds her. “I have also nearly been run down by them a few times too.”

Nat laughs, trying to steer and mostly just turning in a circle. “I’m not as good at this as I thought I would be.”

“You’re not terrible,” Finn says, trying to be nice. “A lot of people fall out. It’s pretty funny.”

“Don’t jinx me,” Nat says, dropping the paddle onto the bottom of the kayak with a sigh. “Maybe I’ll just float for a second.” She lifts her camera up from where it’s hanging around her neck and takes a few pictures of the lake and the trees.

“I like to float,” Finn says idly. “And swim, and catch fish. Those are my three favorite things to do, I think.” He looks up at Nat. “What are yours?”

“Umm,” Nat says, scrunching her face up to think, “I go to school. And I go to work. And I do homework.”

“Those are your favorite things to do?” Finn asks, disgusted.

“Definitely not,” Nat says. “Those are just what I do the most.”

“Well, I asked what your favorite things to do are.”

“Okay, fine. I like to take pictures. I like to watch TV. And I like to read.”

Finn perks up. “What kinds of TV do you watch?”

Natalie looks down at him for a second, like she’s doing some fast thinking. “Um,” she says slowly. “Well. I like New Girl, and Grey’s Anatomy . . . do you know what those are?”

He shakes his head. “Well, New Girl is my favorite. Zooey Deschanel is in it, do you know her?”

Finn shakes his head again. “The plot is great,” Natalie tries. “It’s about this girl, her name is Jess, and she goes through a really bad breakup and then moves into an apartment with three guys. One of them is Nick, and he —”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Finn interrupts. He knows he’s being rude but he doesn’t really care. “I’m never going to watch it anyway.”

There’s an awkward pause as Nat forces a smile. “That’s okay,” she says, trying to sound cheerful. “No problem.”

But it is a problem. Just when he was starting to feel like he was normal, like he belonged somewhere outside of the lake, there was just another harsh reminder that he could never be like her. That he’s here forever, or at least until he becomes a part of the waves like the rest of them. He sinks into the water so only his eyes and forehead are visible, not wanting her to see him anymore.

“Hey,” Nat says after a beat, “I brought you something.”

Finn lifts his head, feeling a tiny smile grow on his face. “A present.”

“Yup. Look.” Natalie reaches into her bag and pulls out a plastic baggie filled with Swedish Fish, gummy worms, and gummy sharks.

He accepts it, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sensing a theme here.”

She laughs, and he wishes he could bottle the sound and keep it in his stash of treasures at the bottom of the lake. “Awesome, right? I figured you might need some variety in your life.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Finn says, but he’s pleased and she knows it. He pulls out a gummy worm and eats it cautiously. “It’s good.”

“Uh, yeah,” Nat says, like it’s obvious.

“Much better than real worms.”

“You’ve eaten real worms before?”

Finn shrugs. “What else is there to eat? I can’t exactly get up and go to the nearest McDonald’s.” His tone gets a little sharper at the end of the sentence.

She flushes. “You’re right. Sometimes I just —”

“— Forget I’m not human?” Finn snaps, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out so angry but it does. “Because I don’t. Not ever.”

“I know,” Nat says softly. She pushes her glasses up her nose, a nervous habit he’s noticed. “I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say.” Finn doesn’t answer, staring moodily out at the water, so finally she murmurs, “I’m going to go.”

He snaps out of it. “No!”

She looks startled. “No?”

“You don’t have to,” Finn says, a little quieter this time.

“I feel like I’m making things worse,” Nat says helplessly.

“Only a little,” he tries to joke, but she doesn’t smile. “It’s okay. I know you don’t mean to.”

“I just can’t imagine what it’s like,” she says, staring out at the water. “To just be here all the time, all by yourself. Don’t you get lonely?”

Finn shrugs. “Not really. I like being by myself.” It’s a dead lie, of course. He doesn’t mention how when Nat first showed up, he was so starved for human contact that he was scared he was going to fade away just like the rest of them. “Plus,” he adds after a second, “I wasn’t always by myself.”

It’s a tad dramatic, but he enjoys the way her eyes widen. “You mean there are more of you?”

“There were,” he corrects her. “But yeah.” He refrains from asking how do you think I got here in the first place? That’s a story for another day, if he feels like telling it at all.

“What happened to them?” she asks earnestly.

“They faded away,” Finn says nonchalantly. “They’d been here for so long that eventually they just became part of the lake itself.”

She looks horrified. “That’s a terrible way to lose your friends.”

“They weren’t my friends,” Finn says absently. “Not really. More like my companions.” The ones who dragged me into this, he thinks bitterly. The ones who forced a life onto me that I didn’t ask for.

“So . . . if they weren’t your friends, then who was?” Nat asks. Finn stares at her, but she merely looks back at him, completely serious. He wonders what exactly she thinks life as a mermaid is like.

“I don’t have any friends,” he answers finally.

Natalie looks at him sadly before she smiles a little. “Well, I’m here now. I’ll visit you all the time and bring you stuff and hang out with you. We’ll be friends.”

Finn would be lying if he said his heart didn’t soar at her words, but he knows deep down she’s wrong. They can never be friends, because Natalie can feel how cold the water is and doesn’t know how to swim and eventually she’ll have to leave. She’s real and he’s not and he thinks they both know that.

But for now, he merely lets her smile warm him. “Okay,” he agrees. “What do you do when you go to school?”

She purses her lips in a way that tells him she knows he’s purposely changing the subject, but answers anyway. “Well, I’m studying Economics and International Relations. So I take classes that are related to those things.”

“Wow,” Finn says, impressed. “You must be really smart.”

Nat shrugs, ducking her head a little. “Not really. I do okay, but I study a lot. I want to work in the UN one day.” She doesn’t miss the flicker of confusion that briefly crosses his face and adds, “It’s a bunch of different governments from around the world that joined together to make sure everybody gets along. They don’t do a very good job.”

“Oh.”

“There’s just so much suffering out there and I want to help,” she says, staring at her feet. “I feel like everybody these days is more concerned about saving themselves than others and I hate that. I want to help everyone.”

Finn smiles at her. He should’ve known that Natalie was that type of person from the moment they met. “Everyone? he says teasingly. “Every single person on this entire planet?”

“Yes,” she says stubbornly. “And I’ll do it. I know I will.”

Finn knows he’s ignorant in a lot of ways. He doesn’t know anything that’s outside of this lake. He can’t cook for himself, he can’t drive a car, he can’t even walk. But one thing he does know is that Nat won’t be able to save everyone no matter how hard she tries. And even if she succeeds somehow, there will always be him. And no matter what, the only way to save him is impossible.

But he forces these dark thoughts away and instead scoops up a mouthful of water and spits it at her, laughing when she shrieks and tries to row away from him. For now, her being here saves him enough.