Hanna was sleeping in the bathtub again.

Just like every morning, I shuffled into the cramped bathroom to check on her before school, clutching my frayed yellow backpack in one mittened hand. I stood there, listening to the thrum of the electric heater that squatted behind the toilet, watching the miniscule lapping of the water against the cracked porcelain of the tub. My big sister lay at the bottom, fully clothed, her eyes closed and her long dark hair fluttering across her face like tendrils of seaweed.  Now and then, a tiny bubble escaped from her lips and wobbled to the surface of the water, bursting with a barely audible pop. 

“Hi, Hanna.” 

No response.  

“Daddy’s at work already.  I’m going to school now.  I’ll see you later, okay?”  

Still, no answer.  

“Hanna? Please wake up.”  

Nothing.  

I swiped at my nose with the back of one mitten and left, closing the bathroom door behind me. It had been weeks since I last heard her speak. I supposed there were people who would’ve said I was lucky.  Not many people can say they’ve heard a mermaid speak, much less seen one in real life.  I just so happened to have one for a sister.  

Of course, I didn’t know it at first.  All I knew was that Hanna loved to swim.  She always had, ever since we were little kids.  Back when our family lived in Vancouver, she would spend hours at a time in our apartment’s rusty bathtub, twisting about in the murky water until it sloshed over the rim and onto the grimy tiles below.  She always complained that the tub wasn’t deep enough.  One night, she stopped up the bottom of the bathroom door with a towel, jammed the rubber plug into the bathtub drain, and flooded the tiny bathroom with soapy water until it came to her knees.  Our parents were far from happy, but Hanna barely noticed, a beatific smile hovering across her face as they scolded her.  Already I adored my older sister, and all I ever wanted was to see that grin warming her pale, peaky face.  

Usually, though, it was Hanna who made me laugh.  During our first swimming lesson at the run-down community centre, I was too terrified to even dip my toes into the pool.  I stood there, shivering in my bright green swimsuit, the heavy odour of chlorine fogging up my brain.  

Then Hanna ducked into the water below me and began to make faces.  Even at the age of eleven, she could stay underwater for minutes on end.  She puffed up her cheeks like a blowfish, and I began to stop frowning.  She blew a storm of bubbles up to the surface, and I broke into a giggle.  

I was still laughing when the lifeguard blew his whistle and brought the entire swimming pool to a screeching halt.  The swimming instructors were shouting in panic, and all the other kids were pointing at me—no, at Hanna.  She had run out of bubbles and was stretched out on the floor of the pool, pretending to sleep.  She looked so peaceful, that strange smile on her lips.  

The lifeguard dove headlong into the pool and dragged her to the surface, placing her onto the ground beside me with a look of holy horror.  Hanna lay unmoving.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” the lifeguard kept saying.  “She’s dead. She’s dead.”

Everyone else was frozen silent. 

Then Hanna sat straight up with a terrific yell, her arms held out in front of her like a zombie from the movies.  

The room erupted into chaos. Everyone jumped and started screaming, even the adults.  The lifeguard toppled into the pool. Hanna and I could barely breathe, we were laughing so hard.  

That was our last day of swimming lessons.  Before everything changed.

            After Mama died, burned up by a fever that had swept through the ranks of the hospital where she’d worked as a nurse, we moved out to a small town sixty kilometers north of the city.  Daddy still seemed shell-shocked by what had happened.  He disappeared into long working hours, appearing only to leave brown paper bags of groceries in the fridge.  But that was hardly new.  What really hurt me was Hanna’s sudden silence.  Even when she lay beside me in bed, I had the feeling that she was somewhere very far away.  Eventually, she stopped sleeping in our bed altogether, and I woke up every morning to find her in the tub.  She never smiled, not even when she was underwater.  

            Hanna didn’t go to school anymore.  All the students her age were going to graduate in the spring, leave this town, go to college.  Hanna never even left the house, not since the day she had unthinkingly worn a short, sleeveless dress to the school dance.  

For my part, I’d managed to avoid the dance by faking the flu, which wasn’t hard—Dad never even bothered to check.  I spent the evening sprawled on the faded sofa, flipping idly through erratic television channels.  Suddenly, the door downstairs banged open, and frantic footsteps clattered up the stairs.  Hanna stumbled straight into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her, but not until I had seen her legs and arms exposed.  It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Hanna wearing anything other than leggings and long-sleeves for a while now, but that wasn’t the odd thing.  Something glinted in gold patches on her pale skin.  

Scales.

That night, as I was passing by the bathroom, I saw that the door was open the merest crack.  Holding my breath, I peered inside, half afraid of what I would see.  

Hanna sat on the edge of the bathtub, naked from the waist down.  The water at her feet was dyed a bright, violent pink.  I watched as she scratched viciously at the skin on her thighs with her fingernails.  Her legs were a mess of torn, ragged flesh and scales that persisted in clinging despite her best efforts to tear them off.  In some places, the skin was completely gone, exposing the raw, red tissue underneath.   Bile rose in my throat.  I stood there, shivering, unable to look away.

After that night, I would often find loose scales littered on the tile floor, stuck to the sides of the bathtub, clogging up the drain.  Whenever I saw them, faded and dull beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, I was frozen in place by a sort of morbid fascination.  It was a week before I dared to step into the bathtub again, and only because my growing body odour had filled our level of the house, forcing Dad to rouse himself from his habitual silence and order me to take a bath.

Today was yet another gray, interminable day at school, indistinguishable from the rest.  I should have made some friends long ago, but everyone was so unspeakably boring compared to Hanna—or at least, the old Hanna.  When the bell finally shrilled in the hallways, I shoved my backpack onto one shoulder and walked home without a backward glance.  

Home: A shabby two-story shanty that had once been painted white.  The merciless onslaught of snow and sleet off the ocean had battered the frail walls until the house looked like a faded old newspaper, crumbling with age.  I trudged up the steps that led to our rooms on the second floor, tapping gently on the bathroom door before peeking in.

The bathtub was empty.

I went to our bedroom.  The lights were out, the bed untouched.  

Something in my chest twisted uneasily.  

A breath of cold air touched the back of my neck, like the merest ghost of a finger.  I shivered.  The door to the balcony was slightly open, and a sudden blast of wind blew the curtains inwards.  I caught a glimpse of a white hand.

“Hanna?”

Trembling, I forced myself to pull the musty curtains back all the way.  For a moment, I was blinded by the bright silver sunlight that shouted its way into the dim room.  

Then I screamed.

Hanna was lying flat on the balcony floor, completely naked, wet snowflakes stuck all over her blue body like bits of glass.  The soles of her feet were scraped, and I saw blood rusting on the balcony railing.  She must’ve slipped and fallen backwards before she could jump.  

I screamed and screamed until the neighbour from downstairs came running.  He burst through the open doorway, swore when he saw Hanna outside.  He forced the balcony door open and, with difficulty, pulled my sister up off the ground.  Her body came free with a horrible tearing sound; it had partially frozen to the wet cement.

I couldn’t stop screaming.

            Two hours later, I sat on the closed lid of the toilet.  The air in the bathroom was thick with humidity, the peeling walls slippery with condensation.  Hanna lay underneath the warm water, faint tendrils of steam still curling off of her frozen skin.  There was no hospital within thirty kilometers.  There was no time.  I was numb.  My sister was dying.  

            The golden scales had spread since I had last seen them, covering her legs and stomach and even her arms in a fine, delicate sheen.  Her pale skin was still visible in papery patches, her hollow cheeks like empty bones scraped clean of meat.  But her hair was still as beautiful as ever.  Watching the dark silken strands dance slowly across her face, I suddenly remembered that day in swimming lessons, remembered the laughing glint in her eyes as she sank to the bottom of the pool and pretended to sleep.  

I swallowed hard.  I knew what had to be done.

I padded softly into the living room.  Daddy was sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands.  

I drew a deep breath. “Daddy, I’m gonna need you to take us for a drive.”

He didn’t ask where.  He looked hollow, too.  “So.  It’s time, then.”

I nodded.  I suddenly felt very old.

Carefully, Daddy lifted Hanna from the tub and patted her dry with a fraying towel.  I brought an oversized nightshirt for her to wear.  Then Daddy wrapped her in the thin blankets from our bed, carried her downstairs and out to the car.  I pulled on my jacket and followed.

Daddy drove as slowly and carefully as he could, but the roads were rough.  As the car jolted and rumbled, Hanna’s eyes flickered open.  For a moment, she looked panicked.  

“Where are we going?” 

I wrangled my features into a wobbly smile.  “We’re gonna go for a swim, Hanna.  Would that—would that make you happy?”

She looked up.  The black waves of the Pacific Ocean loomed ahead.  Her voice was very small.  “If I go, I—I don’t think I’ll be able to come back.”  

“I know.” I curled up tightly against her in the backseat, and she stroked my hair.  By the time we reached the shore, we had both cried ourselves clean.

The sea was a basin of liquid basalt beneath the darkening sky, the waves tossing and turning in majestic slumber.  I heard Hanna catch her breath at the sight and smell of it.  Then the tires crunched on wet sand, and the car ground to a halt.  

It was a brilliant night.  The moon was sharp and cold, and I shivered a little at first.  But when Hanna and I stepped onto the shore, the water about our ankles was warm and inviting.  

Daddy unwrapped the blankets from around Hanna’s shoulders and kissed her forehead softly, his mouth trembling.  Hanna squeezed my hand, wiped the freezing salt water from my cheeks.  Then she waded out, looking like a child in her nightshirt, the rich emerald water surging and foaming about her bony knees, pulling her in.  She reached up and pulled the shirt off, and her body was blue, almost translucent, in the moonlight.  The golden scales shimmered and swam in and out of my blurred vision, a thousand tiny candles against the night.  

Hanna raised her arms straight up to the sky, skinny and wraith-like.  She looked back at me, and I saw that her eyes had turned to pools of pure black. She smiled that strange, slow smile of hers. 

A flash of light on water.  

Then she was gone.

Daddy and I stood there for years, hand in hand, watching the roiling ebony waves.  I thought about Hanna twisting her limbs to fit into the bathtub.  Even in that run-down community pool all those years ago, the water had never been deep enough for her.  Looking out at the endless expanse of ocean, I drew a shaky breath and nodded.  

“I don’t think even Hanna could ask for a bigger bathtub, Dad.”