Mr. Fisherman was as bad as his word. The very next day, after he and Peedee had left for work (Peedee having recovered from his ordeal with the salmon), Ronaldo went downstairs and found his list of chores for the day. He read over it sulkily, but his mood brightened when he saw that one of his tasks was to go grocery shopping. This meant, not only that he could at least go outside today, but that he would have the chance to tell everyone in the village about his encounter with the mermaid.

He thus decided to make grocery shopping his first task. He ran back upstairs to his room and grabbed the painting of the mermaid that he had worked on for most of the previous day. If by chance the villagers did not believe his story at first, he could show the painting to them as proof. He then ran back downstairs and out the door. He returned a minute later when he remembered why he was being sent to town in the first place and realized he had forgotten his father's list and money for the groceries.

During the entire time he was in the village, Ronaldo told his story to everyone from the grocer to the butcher. Every time, he ended the story by showing off his painting as "proof". If truth be told however, the only thing anyone seemed genuinely fascinated by was the painting. They complemented Ronaldo's artistic abilities but, unbeknownst to him, no one quite had the heart to tell him that the story itself seemed like anything more than a dream he'd had.

It was nearly noon when Ronaldo stopped at his final destination: the fish market. The shop was run by a small bearded man called Yellowtail, a retired sailor with whom Ronaldo's father was good friends. When Yellowtail spoke, it was in an unintelligible gibberish sort of language. Most people had trouble understanding him but having grown up around him for most of his life, Ronaldo and the rest of the Fisherman family had no trouble translating his gibbers into proper English.

"Morning, Yellowtail," said Ronaldo. "Got any mackerel?"

Yellowtail went round to the back of the shop and returned moments later carrying what Ronaldo knew to be a fish wrapped in paper. He then said something in gibberish, but Ronaldo understood every word.

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry about yesterday's haul, or lack thereof," Ronaldo said. "But whatever my dad says, it was not my fault, okay? The mermaid distracted me." He had been careful to put plenty of emphasis on the word mermaid.

Yellowtail stared at him and then uttered two gibberish syllables.

"The mermaid, Yellowtail. The mermaid," said Ronaldo.

He then produced his mermaid painting from nowhere and began telling Yellowtail about his mermaid encounter.

By later afternoon, Ronaldo was resting in his bedroom. It had been a long, disappointing day. After trying, and failing, to convince Yellowtail about the mermaid, he had returned home to do the rest of his chores. He had done so, but he had hardly paid any attention to what he was doing. He was too busy thinking about how unconvinced Yellowtail had been. He'd have thought surely Yellowtail, being an old man of the sea, would appreciate a thrilling account of a meeting between a mystical sea creature and a human being. But according to him, twenty-three years of working at sea was enough to convince a person that mermaids were pure fantasy.

He was just about to doze off when he heard the front door open and shut. His father and Peedee were home.

"RONALDO FISHERMAN!" came his father's furious voice moments later. "YOU OPEN THIS DOOR!"

Ignoring the tone of his voice, Ronaldo leaped off the bed and opened the door to greet his father.

"Wow Dad, you remembered to knock this time..."

Mr. Fisherman pushed roughly past him and stomped to the very center of the room.

"Sit!" he snapped, pointing a trembling finger at Ronaldo's bed.

No longer smiling, Ronaldo did as his father said. For a few moments, neither spoke. Ronaldo looked up at his father, who was red in the face and breathing hard through his nostrils. He seemed to be trying very hard to calm himself down.

"Where do you get the nerve?" Mr. Fisherman snarled.

"Sorry?" asked Ronaldo, somewhat tentatively.

"Didn't I make it perfectly clear that I wanted this nonsense about mermaids and unicorns to end?"

Ronaldo raised an eyebrow. "What do you..."

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!" Mr. Fisherman interrupted. "I specifically warned you to stop all this and then you go right behind my back and tell the entire village that you saw a mermaid!"

"And?" Ronaldo shrugged, who could not find anything wrong with this. He'd only been conveying the truth after all.

"Yellowtail told me half the village wants me to put you in an asylum! Is that what you want!?" Mr. Fisherman asked, almost pleadingly. "Do you think I want to see you locked up in a padded room somewhere, tied up in a straightjacket?"

Ronaldo blinked.

"Why would they say that?" he said, more to himself than to his father. "What'd I say that was wrong? I told them everything that happened, exactly as I saw it. I couldn't have left anything out. I even showed them that as proof," he added, looking over at the mermaid painting on his desk. "Why didn't they believe me?"

Ronaldo was so deep in thought that he didn't notice his father looking at him with an unpleasant combination of anger and concern on his face.

"I've gotta see her again," he said suddenly, getting to his feet. "Yeah, that's it. I know where to find her. I'll seek her out the next time we go fishing. We can talk. And maybe I can convince her to come closer to shore. Close enough so that shell be in the entire village's line of vision. And then they'll all know..."

"RONALDO, STOP THIS!" Mr. Fisherman roared.

Ronaldo was so startled that he stopped thinking out loud and sat back down so suddenly that one would have thought an invisible hand had pushed him downwards.

"I mean it this time, Ronaldo!" snapped his father, who was now long past controlling his temper. "I am done with this! You hear me!? DONE! You keep up this nonsense any longer and the whole village is gonna think we're all loons! And you keep daydreaming when you should be working, we don't bring in fish, and soon we're out of work! Well it's not gonna happen!"

Mr. Fisherman walked over to Ronaldo's desk, knelt down, and picked up a waste basket that was on the floor. "I'm not gonna have any son of mine living in La La Land, or an asylum," he said, marching over to the nearest wall.

"Dad, no!" said Ronaldo in horror.

"It's for your own good, Ronaldo."

And with that, Mr. Fisherman began tearing down every picture in sight and stuffing them unceremoniously into the waste basket.

"Dad, stop!"

Ronaldo ran over to his father, grabbed his shoulders, and tried to make him stop. But Mr. Fisherman would not be stopped. He kept on stripping the walls of illustrations of mystical creatures, ignoring Ronaldo's objections completely. In a surprisingly short time, every inch of the walls was blank.

After the last picture had been removed from the wall, both Mr. Fisherman's and Ronaldo's eyes fell upon the mermaid painting on the desk. Ronaldo, horrified, made to block his father's path with his body. But Mr. Fisherman overpowered him. He pushed Ronaldo aside, then practically ran to the desk with his hand outstretched.

"DAD, NO!" Ronaldo yelled, nearly straining himself.

But it was too late. Ronaldo watched in horror as his father grabbed the painting, took it in both hands, and began tearing it into tiny pieces. Ronaldo let out a scream.

"Get out of my room," he said. "GET OUT!"

Ronaldo lunged forward and with a mighty heave he pushed his father to the floor.

"GET OUT OF HERE! I HATE YOU! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! FOREVER!"

Ronaldo turned away and threw himself onto his bed. He then buried his tearstained face in his pillow and refused to face his father. Which was rather a pity. If he had faced his father, he would not have seen the ma he had just seen destroying his belongings. He would have seen a man sitting on the floor, looking startled at both what he'd just done and how his son had reacted.

Mr. Fisherman rose slowly to his feet and reached forward to put his hand on Ronaldo's shoulder.

"Ronaldo..."

"I SAID GET OUT!" shouted Ronaldo, his voice muffled through the pillow.

Mr. Fisherman hung his head in shame and silently left the room, closing the door behind him.

Ronaldo was all alone now. Alone in the world as far as he could tell. He felt as though his own heart had been torn to pieces along with the painting. His father really didn't understand him. No one understood him. Not his family, not the people in the village. No one. He felt so alone, but not because of the dead silence of his otherwise empty bedroom. This wasn't where he belonged. Not this house, not this village, not this life. He had no friends. His family didn't seem to care about him at all. And he was not going to stick around and let this misery continue.