Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Angie
She needed the melatonin to kick in, stat. Even still, only a boatload of caffeine would help her survive the day and afternoon.
Silvery threads of moonlight filtered in between her blinds, the thin strands of light doing her no favors in her futile quest to sleep.
Lulu must have sensed her distress because her cat came to her two hours ago and refused to leave her side, pressing her back to Angie’s chest.
The pillows beside her still held a light dusting of Kaden’s crisp, fresh scent, each whiff a sharpened knife piercing her heart.
Why didn’t Kaden tell her once he felt symptoms, or at least once he found out about his condition?
They had been together for two years and had seen or spoken to each other the majority of that time, and she freely confided in him. She thought he freely confided in her.
Apparently, she was wrong.
She faced her Māma withering away once, and now her lover was going to face the same fate, if he didn’t find a cure soon. She couldn’t help her Māma and blamed herself for not being able to find a cure for her from mermaids, at least until she was a teenager.
It shifted to blame on herself when her Māma passed, that she wasn’t around enough to spend her last days with her.
The clock blinked at 5:00 a.m.
Angie’s ringtone blasted through the apartment. With bleary eyes, she reached for it.
Gāisǐ, she had forgotten to turn her phone on sleep mode last night. It came from a number she didn’t recognize, and she fell back into bed, her arm over her forehead. She was woken up three hours after she finally fell asleep by a spam caller. Great.
She had to get out of bed anyway, so with a pained groan, she slid out around Lulu, who had made Angie’s bed her own.
After she was done washing up, she peeked at her phone. The voicemail icon stared at her with a bright red “1” on it. She hated unread notifications, and she tapped it while brushing her hair, putting the message on speaker and resting her phone on the sink.
The call was not a spam call, and she stopped, her brush halfway stuck in bits of her tangled bedhead.
“This message is for Angie Song. I’m Maya Chang from the Seattle Morning Show.
I apologize for the last-minute call, but we’ve had a last-minute cancellation and if you are still interested, we’d like to invite you to be a guest on next Thursday’s show for our community spotlight segment.
We saw you and your friends on a segment of Pacific Pulse, and we would be excited to speak with you more about your passion for raising awareness for merfolk.
Please give me a call back and let me know if you’re able to make it. ”
Beep.
Angie stared at her phone as she brushed her hair and tied it into a loose ponytail.
The Seattle Morning Show was a popular channel broadcast to the Greater Seattle area and if she could get on it, even for a fifteen-minute community spotlight, she could get her name, her face, and her cause out to a wide audience.
Except she had Dr. Williams’ class that morning. She called his office, putting her ear pods in as she got dressed and walked to her car, backpack hanging off one shoulder.
He picked up after two rings. “Ty Williams.”
She opened the driver’s side door of her car and slid in.
“Hi, it’s Angie. I’ll be in class soon, but I got an invitation to be on the Seattle Morning Show next Thursday.
I know we have a quiz then, but could I be excused and make-up the quiz?
I think this would be a great way to get our cause out there.
I wanted to let you know as soon as I found out. ”
There was a pause at her professor’s end as she started up her car, mounting the phone on its dashboard stand. She stared at the phone. Had the call been dropped?
No, his name was still on the screen as “Dr. Williams’ Office”.
“Sorry, I was looking over some class materials.” Shuffling noises came from his end, followed by footsteps, and a stretch of silence.
Was he going to reply to her? What if he wouldn’t excuse her?
“Okay, I’ll excuse you from the class, since you let me know early. But you’re on your own to make up the material you missed.”
Angie let her head fall back on the head restraint, letting out a relieved exhale. “I understand.”
“As for the quiz, come to my office an hour before you leave for the show and you can take it then, alright?” A door slammed, wherever he was now. Her heart soared. “Thank you! See you in class soon.”
Angie’s heart was palpitating by the time she stood in the morning show’s green room a week later, their stylist putting the finishing touches on her hair, a neat partial updo with wispy strands framing her face.
The thought of a live show looming over her head, one where thousands of people would tune in, made her quake in her loafers and all her memorized points fled, like a school of fish scattering when a shark, or person, was in the vicinity.
She already hated public speaking when she had time to thoroughly prepare and rehearse her speech over multiple weeks.
But going on live television with a week to prepare? What if she bombed it? Couldn’t find her words? Sat there like a grinning fool with an empty cavern for a mind? An opportunity like this might not come around again.
“Nervous?” the makeup artist asked, dabbing her forehead before applying primer.
“My drenched face gives it away?” A high-pitched chuckle escaped her.
He let out a lighthearted laugh. “It’s normal. My boyfriend is an actor, and he still gets nervous before getting on that stage, and he’s been doing it for ten years. Just go out there and have fun. You’ll do great.”
His pep talk settled her, and she did several rounds of box breathing before they called her on set.
Here went nothing.
“Before I let you go, Angie, thank you so much for coming on with us today,” the news host said, her smile as bright and wide as it was when Angie first sat in front of her fifteen minutes ago. “Are there any last words you’d like our audience to know?”
After a rough start where Angie fumbled, she had succeeded in shoving down her fight or flight response and allowed herself to lightly tap her fingers on her lap to manage her anxiety.
“I hope this can be a positive step forward for treating the merfolk the way they deserve. They’re not animals for us to use and discard as we please, not that it’s right to treat animals that way, either.
” A hard swallow, and her next words tumbled out before she could stop them.
“You should see their world. It’s gorgeous and there’s so much we can learn from them.
They love so deeply. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
Even when our people were fighting, I never felt safer than when I was with my Mer-Prince. ”
Before he betrayed your trust, a niggling voice whispered in the back of her head.
“That’s beautiful.” The news host’s eyes were misty.
Angie shook Kaden out of her thoughts. “Anyway, as both a human being and a friend of the mer, I will continue my efforts to raise awareness and hopefully make progress in promoting peace toward our species.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat, making a conscious effort to sit straight and look confident.
Applause rippled through the audience, and the news host stood to shake Angie’s hand, thanking her again before the producers cut the cameras.
Angie stopped by her apartment after the segment to change out of her blazer and slacks, donning a comfortable long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans.
She texted her friends and family the good news of her relatively successful interview before her gaze fell to her top cabinet, housing her seaflute.
On instinct, she wanted to pull it out and tell Kaden, but stopped halfway reaching for the cabinet handle, her hand floating in midair.
The thought of hearing his voice sent a gut punch to her abdomen and created a dull ache in her chest—a painful reminder he had lied to her.
Still, she wanted to get a message to the Mer-King and Mer-Queen, and she flipped through her notepad to where she had written down Serapha, Varin, and Cassia’s names in Renyuhua, which Kaden had given to her in case of emergency, and he had given them Angie’s.
With a careful hand, she wrote Cassia’s name over the seaflute’s body. “Queen Cassia, are you there? It’s Angie.”
Silence for a torturous minute.
“Angie?” Cassia’s melodic voice filtered through, even and calm, like the Mer-Queen herself. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m okay. Um, I’m calling because I spoke to–” She paused. How would she describe a news show to the mer? “I went on an interview and talked to them about mer rights. And some humans are open to peace with you.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to try and get an audience with our leaders next. Would you consider speaking with our leaders, and hopefully moving forward to find answers together?” She sucked in her breath, anticipating Cassia’s answer.
“Hmm,” the Mer-Queen murmured. “Meet Varin and I when the tides shift to low suntide. We’ll wait for you in the throne room. I will send Calora to meet you at the surface and escort you. She just got back.”
That meant she had until early tomorrow morning, and Angie checked her schedule quickly.
Tomorrow, she had afternoon classes only, and if she could be back from meeting Cassia by eleven a.m., she would make her first class.
She already missed one class today; she couldn’t miss another tomorrow. “Yes, I’ll meet her at the shore.”
“Very well. I’ll see you then.” Cassia went silent on her end, and about to put her seaflute away, another voice came through.
Kaden.
Scorching tears burned the backs of her eyelids, but she wiped them away before they could fall.
She put the seaflute back in the cabinet and slid it shut.