She frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t let him see me!”
“Who?” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Oh wow! Mom’s going to faint.”
Sure enough, the minute she spotted Carson Dawson and his colleague, Sirena let out a yelp and made a beeline across the parking lot. Meanwhile, I scooted across the sand toward the water as fast as I could manage. My fellow mermaids were already sitting in the shallows, shrieking as each cold wave lapped over them. The Atlantic Ocean wasn’t exactly the Caribbean. I inchwormed past them and flung myself into the water without a moment’s hesitation. Freezing to death was a far better fate than facing Carson Dawson.
A few minutes later, Mackenzie finally got up the nerve to join me. “It’s not like Texas!” she gasped, when she came up for air.
“Nope,” I burbled. Stealth mode wasn’t easy under these circumstances, but I was giving it my best shot. I hunched down in the water, only the top half of my face visible. With any luck, I’d be unrecognizable.
Zadie was next to take the plunge.
“Whoooo-eee!” she hollered, surfacing with a whoop. “Now that’s what I call refreshing!”
One by one, the others joined us. Once past the initial hurdle, it didn’t take all that long to get used to the chilly water, and pretty soon everyone was splashing each other and goofing around as we showed off our tails for the audience on the beach. I kept a low profile, staying at the back of the pack. “Pack” isn’t the right word, I thought. Neither was “gaggle.” What was it they called a bunch of fish? I giggled when I remembered the correct term—“school”—then started coughing as I accidentally swallowed some seawater. School of mermaids—mermaid academy—Hatcher and Aunt True would think this was funny too, and I added it to my list of things to tell them.
Swimming in the ocean in a shimmertail was way easier and way more fun than swimming in one in a pool. The salt water was more buoyant, for one thing, which helped offset the weight of the silicone. For another, I could really stretch out and take it for a proper test drive. Staying parallel to the jetty, I butterflied my way out toward the open water, pausing when I reached the end. Then I turned around and swam back.
Breakwater Beach was on the bay side of the Cape, so there wasn’t any surf to speak of, but there were plenty of gentle waves. We all floated in the water for a while, bobbing like buoys and enjoying the soothing rhythm of the incoming tide.
“Yoo-hoo! Ladies!” Sirena called to us from across the parking lot. “Look who I found!”
Uh-oh, I thought, hunching lower in the water as she headed toward the beach with a determined look on her face. Carson Dawson and his cameraman were right behind her.
As the three of them approached the water’s edge, the cameraman trotted ahead and turned to start filming Sirena and the television host.
“Helloooooooo, Boston!” hooted Carson Dawson, launching into the famous opener for his TV show. “Real mermaids, folks! Right here on Cape Cod! And Channel Five is here to check it out!” He smiled his fake smile for the camera, then motioned to the cameraman, who slowly panned over to where we were all bobbing in the waves. “I’m here with Sirena of Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy—say that three times fast”—he paused and chuckled at his own joke—“who assures me that we are in for a treat.”
“Indeed you are, Carson,” Sirena chimed in smoothly, leaning in close to the microphone he had in his hand. “A magical nautical treat.”
“If the mermaid academy thing doesn’t work out, she could always pursue a career on TV,” I burbled to Mackenzie, who shushed me.
“Ladies? Are you ready to strut your stuff?” Sirena’s question caught us off guard, and for a long moment nobody moved. Then Zadie leaped into action.
“Back layout, mermaids!” she ordered. “Tails in, heads out, arms interlocked.”
A soldier’s daughter knows an order when she hears one. I snapped into position. So did everyone else, and within seconds we had formed a circle on our backs in the water, flukes touching in the middle, arms extended to each side so that we were connected shoulder to shoulder. From above, we’d look like the spokes on a bicycle wheel.
“Ballet tails!” called Zadie, and we lifted our tails straight up into the air and flapped our flukes. Carson Dawson and the crowd of onlookers gasped in delight.
Zadie led us through a few other simple formations that she and Lenore and Sirena had taught us for the revue. We ended with surface dives, showing off our flukes again. I made sure to smack the water hard with mine and make the biggest splash that I could, in hopes of drenching Carson Dawson. Unfortunately, he was out of range.
“Mommy! I want to be a mermaid too!” piped the little girl who’d first spotted us.
“And you can do just that on Saturday night,” Sirena told her, whisking the mic from the Channel Five host and smoothly serving up a pitch for our upcoming show. “Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy is located right here on Breakwater Road. We’ll be presenting our all-star mermaid revue this Saturday at seven p.m.—we’re calling it A Tribute to Esther Williams.”
“Esther Williams!” said Carson, reaching for the mic again. I could tell from the creases on his tanned forehead that he was worried his news segment was at risk of being hijacked. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”
Sirena’s aqua-tipped fingers were closed firmly around the microphone. She tugged it toward her. “Yes, the Million Dollar Mermaid herself!” She bent down toward the little girl, who was looking up at her with shining eyes. I recognized that expression. It had been on my cousin’s face all week. Mermaid fever. “Two of Esther’s former protégées will be performing with us and
