How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)
Erin Hayes
CHAPTER 1
Anyone who ever bragged about being a good public speaker never had to do it in front of more than thirty kids and their parents while wearing a bikini top and a mermaid tail.
I’d spent the night before in our hotel room preparing my answers, and I still wasn’t ready. I was sitting on a chair in the rotunda of the Houston Aquarium, looking out into a sea of faces and I’d never felt more self-conscious in my life. My friend and fellow mermaid, Christine, stood to my right, a little bit behind me with a few volunteers and ushers from the aquarium to help out.
Every single eye was on me, and a barrage of questions came at me from all directions. I’ve performed our water ballet many times before, although this was the first time I was face-to-face with a crowd. I was a dancer, not a spokesperson.
As a result, my first meet and greet as a professional mermaid was receiving a lot of scrutiny from a bunch of kids under the age of eight.
“How are you on land?”
“Do you swim with whales?”
“Why isn’t your hair red like Ariel’s?”
“How old are you?”
“How did you become a mermaid?”
My answers didn’t make much sense because my nerves were getting the best of me. Throw me in the water, and I can make you believe that mermaids are real. Expect me to entertain a bunch of kids like this, and I drown.
“I was carried here by my helpers, that’s how I’m on land. Sometimes I swim with Beluga whales... I have dark hair, while Ariel dyes hers. I just turned eighteen, and I’ve wanted to be a mermaid since I was a little girl...”
My voice trailed off as I realized that my last answer gave too much away, by nearly admitting that we weren’t real mermaids. Christine shot me a concerned look, like I’d raised the curtain too much and these kids would be able to see behind it.
“What Mermaid Tara means is, she’s so glad to be a mermaid,” Christine said with a warm smile. She was a bit older than me, in her early thirties, and she was a good mentor for my first two months on the job.
The kids seemed to take her at her word, and my secret that I’d had a normal human childhood was safe.
Yet, despite Christine’s save, what I’d said was true.
If you had asked me when I was little what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said “mermaid”. If you had asked me now what I wanted to be when I was eighteen, I would have said “mermaid” as well. Unlike most girls, I was completely serious. Ever since I was three years old and my dad sat me on his lap to watch Disney’s The Little Mermaid, I was enamored with the idea of being a creature of the sea and being able to swim in the water with absolute freedom. I wanted to see the beauty of the underwater world.
I was determined that somehow or another, I would be a mermaid.
My mother had tried to convince me to go into something more sensible. “Tara, you’re smart sweetie, why don’t you become a doctor?” she’d say. Or, “Why not look into being a lawyer?” And lately, it was, “You’re the salutatorian of your class, honey, do you really want to take off a year from college?”
For a chance to be a mermaid, the answer to that last question was a resounding ‘yes’. It’s not a traditional track for the girl who finished second in her class and had scholarship offers from three different universities, yet I had deferred my freshman year to live my dream. After this one year, I could focus on those more sensible things.
If I wanted to.
“How do you breathe underwater?” a young girl asked, tearing me back to reality. She shyly smiled at me and hid behind her mother’s skirt. The poor little thing was anxious too, just like me.
“We have to use air tubes,” I said with a gracious smile. “So we’re able to breathe whenever we want.”
“Ariel from The Little Mermaid doesn’t need air tubes,” another girl protested. “She’s able to breathe whenever she wants.”
I gave a nervous chuckle. I knew it was inevitable that this comparison would come up and I still didn’t quite know how to answer it. How do you convince kids that you’re a real mermaid when you’re not?
“Ariel is a very special mermaid,” I said. “She can hold her breath for quite a long time. But we all have to breathe somehow.” I winked at her, taking a deep breath to demonstrate my working lungs. The girl giggled, and her parents chuckled as well.
“What’s that around your neck?” another girl asked.
As if by instinct, my right hand protectively flew to the pendant that hung around my neck. It was a miniature stone mermaid, carved with startling accuracy and detail. The mermaid had her tail curled around her, her hair flowing like kelp in the sea. It was only about the size of my thumb, yet I cherished it with all my being. After I’d become obsessed with mermaids, my dad gave it to me a few months before he had died of cancer.
I never took it off, even for performances.
“This is a special necklace,” I explained and held it out for the kids to see. “It’s a mermaid. It was given to me by my father when I was about your age.” Strange how even a small mention of it could bring me to the brink of tears. I sniffled, trying to contain it.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Gratefully, I looked up and saw Christine addressing the crowd. She obviously got the hint that I was getting choked up.