“What do you think—Calypso, Waverly, Oceana, or Marina?” Aunt Louise asked me. “Those are the styles that Sirena told me were most suitable for teen mermaids.”
I scowled. Like there even were such things!
“Blue or green?” asked Aunt Louise, when I finally settled on Marina.
“Blue,” I muttered.
“Sequins?”
“No sequins.”
Mackenzie went with Calypso in green—with sequins, of course.
My mother sucked in her breath when she saw the price. “Say thank you, Truly,” she urged. “This is incredibly generous of your aunt and uncle.”
Aunt Louise smiled. “How often do I get to spoil my daughter and my niece in one fell swoop?”
The only bright spot in the rest of the evening, was, quite literally, the fireworks show. Well, that and the fact that I got to spend a few minutes alone with Calhoun. While waiting for the festivities to start, I drifted down to the edge of the lake, leaving Mackenzie and Jasmine and Cha Cha to hyperventilate about mermaid camp. I was skipping rocks morosely when Calhoun wandered over to join me.
“Sorry you won’t be around for the film festival,” he said, bending down and picking up a rock. “I was looking forward to it.”
Looking forward to the movies, or to going with me? I wondered, but couldn’t quite work up the nerve to ask. Instead, I just nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
He hurled his stone, and we stood watching as it skipped far out across the water.
“Good one.”
“Thanks.” There was a pause. “I guess your camp thing will be fun, though.”
I snorted.
“You don’t think so?”
“You saw the video! Would you want to spend a week at something called Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy?”
The corners of his mouth quirked up. “I guess not, but mermaids aren’t my thing.”
“They’re not mine, either!”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “I figured since you like to swim so much—”
“Just because I like to swim doesn’t mean I want to be a mermaid!”
“You don’t have to be so touchy about it!”
I blew out my breath. “Sorry. It’s just that I’d planned for my summer to go one way, and now it’s turned into something completely different and completely awful.”
We picked up more rocks and skipped them.
“I’m thinking of trying out for the play tomorrow,” Calhoun told me.
This was a surprise. But Calhoun was full of surprises. He could be cool and aloof on the exterior, but he was a bit of a marshmallow on the inside. That much I knew. I also knew that he was almost as knowledgeable about Shakespeare as his father. “I didn’t know you liked to sing!”
He lifted a shoulder. “In the shower mostly. But yeah, I kind of like to sing.” He skipped another stone. “So Mackenzie said you’re not planning to try out.”
I shook my head.
“Not even for the chorus? They just sing and dance in the background.”
“Nope.”
“You play the piano, right? They always need accompanists for rehearsals.”
I shook my head again. “No way. I’m not good enough.”
“Seriously, Truly, working on a show is fun! How about stage crew? They have a blast building stuff.”
I gave him a sidelong glance. Calhoun was being unusually persistent. And he seemed to know an awful lot about theater. But then, he knew a lot about a lot of things. Romeo Calhoun was smarter than he let people know.
One thing I knew for sure—The Pirates of Penzance was not for me.
CHAPTER 9
Exactly twelve hours after the last of the fireworks flickered out over Lake Lovejoy, I was on a bus to Cape Cod.
My cousin and friends and I napped most of the way, worn out from the mad dash to get packed, say good-bye to our families, try out for The Pirates of Penzance (Cha Cha and Jasmine, who actually ended up singing for Calhoun’s father right there at the lake), and stumble out of bed at zero dark thirty to catch the early bus to Boston. Hatcher and Danny traveled with us as far as South Station, where they saw to it that we made our connection before heading off to their wrestling clinic at Boston University.
“Have fun!” Hatcher called over his shoulder to us as he trotted off after Danny.
“You too!” I called back.
A couple of hours after that, we finally pulled into the bus station in Hyannis.
“Oh great,” I mumbled.
Mackenzie yawned, rubbing her eyes. “What?”
I pointed wordlessly out the window. Our ride to Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy was waiting for us. It wasn’t hard to spot. For one thing, the minivan was aqua, the same color as the manicure on the woman standing next to it. For another, there was a huge mermaid painted on its side.
Mackenzie squealed, waking Cha Cha and Jasmine. “Check it out!”
Our friends did, and then they squealed too.
“Wheee!” I muttered, as we gathered our things and clambered off the bus. “We get to ride in the mermaid-mobile.”
“Knock it off, Truly!” Mackenzie sounded exasperated.
I’d been doing my best to suck all the fun out of our upcoming “adventure,” as my mother persisted in calling it, ever since my cousin had roped me into it. I figured it was the least I could do to thank her for derailing my perfect summer.
“Welcome to Cape Cod, ladies!” gushed the woman by the minivan. She trotted over to meet us, her shoulder-length red corkscrew curls bobbing like a buoy at anchor. “I’m Sirena.”
Sirena didn’t look like mermaid material. Not that I knew what mermaid material looked like, but for some reason I’d expected someone with a name like Sirena to be tall and willowy. Sirena was even shorter than my mother and round as an apple.
She helped us load our luggage, then slid in behind the steering wheel. “We’ve got about a half-hour drive ahead of us. You girls just sit back, relax, and I’ll have you there in time for lunch.
