CHAPTER 13

I thrashed around in a panic, struggling to heave the tail into a position that allowed me to stand. The water was only four feet deep, but it might as well have been forty. When the pool hook appeared beside me, I grabbed it and let myself be hauled up.

“I’m not so sure this is a good idea, Delphine,” said Sirena when I emerged unharmed but flustered. “This may be beyond her abilities.”

Beyond my abilities, my eye! I thought. I’d show her beyond my abilities.

Lovejoys are competitive. We can’t help it; we just are.

Taking a deep breath, I let go of the hook, pushed off the wall, and launched myself into a streamline. Arms stretched out in front of me, I undulated back across the pool for several lengths, exactly the same way I’d done a few minutes earlier when Sirena tested my breath control. The tail was heavy, there was no doubt about that. I could feel the powerful resistance as I forced the flukes up and down, up and down through the water. But my legs were powerful too, their muscles honed from years of swim team practice.

Suddenly I felt a subtle shift as I found my groove. I was no longer fighting the shimmertail, and in a flash it went from enemy to ally, rocketing me forward with each dolphin kick. I shot to the surface and threw my arms overhead in the classic butterfly arm stroke, the shimmertail propelling me through the air faster and higher than I’d ever managed on my own before. I almost laughed out loud. So this was what flying felt like!

At the far end, I slapped my hands on the pool’s edge, just the way I would during a race, rotated, then pushed off and swam back toward Sirena and the others.

Right before I reached them, I suddenly reversed into a backstroke position, whipped my tail up and out of the water, and smacked my flukes down as hard as I could.

My fellow aspiring mermaids squealed as a tsunami engulfed them.

“Really, Truly!” sputtered Sirena. “Was that necessary?”

Hayden glared at me. “Show-off.”

Everyone else was laughing, though. Delphine grinned as she marked something down on her clipboard. “You have to admit that was quite an advanced move, Mom.”

Sirena, who was mopping her face, grudgingly agreed. “I guess we don’t need to worry about her abilities.” She turned to the rest of the group. “That’s quite enough tricks for one morning. I want to see laps now and plenty of them. Take it slow while you get used to swimming in a tail.”

Sirena and Delphine put us through our paces for the next hour, alternating laps with stretches and basic ballet arm gestures. Nothing too strenuous, but I was definitely getting a workout, thanks to the heavy shimmertail.

“You’ve danced before, haven’t you?” Delphine said, watching Cha Cha.

My friend smiled. “A bit.”

“Her parents own a dance studio,” Jasmine explained. “She doesn’t just dance—she helps teach.”

Sirena beamed. “We are just overflowing with talent this week! This is going be a standout revue. Definitely one of the academy’s best, I can already tell.” She looked at her watch. “Okay, ladies, let’s take a break! We’ll be back in the pool later this afternoon, and meanwhile, I’m going to give you a choice. You can stay in the water for another half hour with Zadie and Lenore, who are keen to share a few of their synchronized swimming moves, or you can enjoy a little free time before lunch.”

The high school girls opted for free time. So did the Sand Dollar ladies. As Delphine headed for the kitchen, Sirena retreated to a seat by the cabana, as she referred to the shed where the pool supplies were stashed, and kept one eye on us and one on her cell phone. That left Mackenzie and Cha Cha and Jasmine and me in the pool, along with Hayden and her mother.

If I’d ever thought synchronized swimming wasn’t real swimming, I quickly learned otherwise. Zadie and Lenore started with a few basic moves. I already knew how to tread water, but they demonstrated how to do it invisibly, sculling our arms underwater with our elbows glued to our sides as we waved our flukes back and forth. It took a surprising amount of effort to stay afloat.

“Being a good synchronized swimmer takes the lung power of a long-distance runner, the leg strength of a water polo player, the grace and rhythm of a ballet dancer, and the muscle control of a gymnast,” Zadie explained. “That’s what Esther Williams always used to say.”

Next, they had us try the ballet leg double position. Lying back in the water, we drew our knees in to our chests, then extended our legs straight up and waved our flukes in the air.

“See how I’m sculling underwater again to keep myself in place?” said Zadie.

We also tried the oyster, lying flat on our backs in the water and then closing up like clamshells—or oyster shells in this case—by bringing our legs and hands up and touching them together, then sinking down bottom first into the water.

“Good job!” said Zadie. “Now form a circle and try some of the moves in unison.”

Swimming in a tail was a lot harder than the professional mermaids had made it look at the pirate museum. By the time Delphine rang the lunch gong, my legs were aching, and my arm and back muscles were sore from the constant sculling needed to counter the downward drag of the heavy shimmertail.

“This isn’t mermaid academy; it’s mermaid boot camp,” I grumbled as we trooped back to our cabins to change.

At lunch, I nearly fell asleep in my clam chowder. My head was bobbing as Sirena outlined the rest of the day’s packed schedule.

“And don’t forget, we’re all going to reveal our mermaid names tonight after dinner!” she told us. “Get busy on those backstories, ladies!”

Mackenzie and Cha Cha and Jasmine had to practically carry me back to Whelk for our siesta. I flopped onto my bunk as the three of them huddled together to work on their backstories. I was too tired to lift my head off the pillow, let alone lift a pen. They’d been swimming all morning in tails made of spandex and neoprene, not thirty pounds of silicone. I was out like a light in ten seconds flat.

I awoke with a start as Mackenzie shook my shoulder.

“Siesta is over, Truly!”

“Already?” I groaned. “We were supposed to have a Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes videoconference.” I checked my phone. Sure enough, there was a whole string of text messages from the boys.

“We can do that later,” my cousin said. “Hurry up! You’ll miss the movie!”

I texted Calhoun to let him know the change of plans, then headed back to Mermaid HQ, where Sirena and Delphine had giant bowls of popcorn waiting for us in front of the big-screen TV.

“Which movie did you decide on?” Zadie asked Sirena.

“Million Dollar Mermaid, of course!”

Zadie laughed. “I figured you might choose that one.” She patted the sofa next to her. “Come on, Lenore. This is going to be fun.”

The movie was as cheesy as the rest of mermaid camp. Zadie was right, though—it was fun. It wasn’t about a mermaid, but rather a real woman named Annette Kellerman who was a famous Australian swimmer a century ago. She had to wear leg braces as a kid, but overcame them by learning to swim. She went on to win all sorts of prizes before moving to America and becoming a star, performing in this giant aquarium theater in New York called the Hippodrome. I liked how feisty Annette was, sticking up for herself when she got in trouble with the law for wearing a one-piece bathing suit. That was considered scandalous back in 1907, when women were supposed to wear “bathing costumes” that looked like long dresses, or bloomers with stockings.

The best parts, though, were when Annette—Esther Williams—dove and swam. I could tell the minute I saw the muscles in her legs that she was a real athlete. Sirena had been right about that. Esther did her own stunts, and even without knowing much about synchronized swimming, I could appreciate the level of difficulty most of the dives and tricks took.

I had to admit that I liked the choreographed water ballet stuff, too, even if it was over the top Hollywood, with Esther almost always wearing full makeup and something sparkly.

“There we are!” yelled Zadie at one point, and Sirena immediately hit pause on the remote. Zadie sprang out of her seat and rushed to the TV screen, pointing to a circle of girls in gold swimsuits and matching caps who were emerging from the water on a platform. “That’s us, right behind Esther!”

Sirena hit play again, and we watched as the swimmers all rose into the air, thanks to what Zadie explained was a hydraulic lift. Esther Williams was wearing a glittering gold bodysuit and matching crown for this scene, and Zadie and Lenore framed her like a pair of shiny gold bookends.

I glanced from the youthful onscreen images to the two wrinkled faces beaming at us from across the room. Would I look like that when I was their age, I wondered? On the other hand, if I could swim as well as they could when I was nearly ninety, who cared?

My favorite scenes were the ones filmed from above. As the swimmers’ arms and legs moved in changing formations, they created a sort of human kaleidoscope, which was really cool to watch.

“Such precision! Such artistry!” cried Sirena, pausing the movie again a few minutes later when the camera zoomed in on Zadie and Lenore. The two of them were smiling big red-lipstick smiles and laughing as they were towed across the Hippodrome pool by an invisible underwater mechanism.

“That was our big close-up!” Zadie said. “And those smiles weren’t fake—we were genuinely having fun. We thought we had the best job in the world!”

We all clapped after the grand finale, when the two of them were once again lifted out of the water on a platform with Esther Williams and a bunch of other swimmers, this time against a backdrop of fireworks that fizzed and flamed.

Zadie sighed with satisfaction. “Esther really knew how to make an entrance—and an exit.”

“How come they don’t make those kinds of movies anymore?” asked Cha Cha.

“Aqua-musicals, you mean?” said Zadie.

“There’s an actual name for them?” Cha Cha’s deep voice went up an octave.

“Oh yes. Aqua-ballet, aqua-musicals—they even named us in one of the films. We were billed as ‘the Neptunettes’ in Neptune’s Daughter.”

For some reason this struck Mackenzie as funny. She started to laugh. “That could be your mermaid name, Truly—Neptunette!”

I gave her the stink eye. But she’d reminded me that I still needed to pick a name and a backstory. So far, I had nothing.

“Were you ever in the Olympics?” asked one of the girls from St. Louis.

Zadie shook her head. “No. By the time synchronized swimming became an Olympic sport in 1984, we were way too old. But they asked Esther to be an official commentator. She was wonderful! We watched together from my house that year, cheering her on.”

Sirena stood up. “Ladies, you have about an hour of free time until our afternoon pool session. If anyone wants to make a trip to the Brewster Store, the van is available.”

“Or you can walk,” suggested Delphine. “It’s less than half a mile from here.”

My cousin and friends and I chose that option, and a few minutes later we were crunching down the shell-covered driveway toward the road.

“I’m going to live here when I grow up,” Jasmine announced. “Cape Cod is so cool! I love being near the ocean.”

Cha Cha shook her head. “Not me. New York City is where I want to be. It’s the only place for a dancer. Well, that or San Francisco or London, maybe.”

“I’m a Texan through and through,” said Mackenzie firmly. “It’s the Lone Star State for me. You too, right, Truly?”

I lifted a shoulder. I had no idea where I wanted to live when I grew up. I was still trying to get used to Pumpkin Falls.

Just as Jasmine had promised, there was a long counter at the Brewster Store where they served ice cream and fudge and penny candy. I looked around as we waited for our cones. The creaky wood floors and high ceilings and big windows reminded me a bit of our bookstore back home. The rest of it was similar to the Pumpkin Falls General Store, as Jasmine had said, except that instead of selling mostly practical everyday stuff like seed packets and tools, the Brewster Store was geared completely to tourists. The displays were crammed with postcards and souvenirs, sweatshirts and T-shirts and baseball caps with I LOVE CAPE COD on them, plus beach toys and knickknacks and that sort of thing.

“Hey, check it out!” Cha Cha pointed to a sign in the window:

BOOK SIGNING THURSDAY NIGHT!

AMANDA APPLETON, PHD, PRESENTS HER NEW BOOK—

SAGA OF A SHIP: THE LOST TREASURE OF THE WINDBORNE

“Isn’t the Windborne that wreck we learned about at the pirate museum?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Jasmine. “Let’s tell Sirena. Maybe she can schedule a field trip.”

Fine by me, I thought. Pirates were more interesting than mermaids any day of the week.