How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(14)

I pulled up on my mermaid tail, which thankfully slid up over my hips without any trouble. Usually it was a mission to get the tight silicon to pull up. Today, it seemed that I was getting better at putting it on.

He squinted down at me, his mouth open as if he was about to say something else, then he shook himself and handed the air hose to me.

“Don’t get too much beauty sleep,” he warned. “You might have trouble waking up from it.”

Before I could ask what he meant by that, he turned away and sauntered over to the other side to talk to Alaina, who was having trouble getting her tail on over her burgeoning belly—noticeable only to those of us who knew how tiny she was before she became pregnant. I frowned, thinking how much I was going to miss the other mermaid when she left to have her baby.

I looked back to the dolphin pool to check if I heard anything coming from there. Kai seemed like he was avoiding me and I didn’t feel any deep emotions overtaking me, so maybe I really did dream all of it up.

I squeezed the trigger for the air hose and heard the satisfying hiss of air. I put it in the water, squeezed the trigger again, and air bubbles floated to the top.

“Tara,” Christine said softly, drawing my attention over to her. “Look, I know that I said you’re an adult and that you can make your own choices, but if there’s anything you need to talk about, like birth control...”

“I’m good.” I tried smiling encouragingly at her. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”

She frowned. “Please call me if that happens again. So I know where you are.”

“Of course,” I said. “I promise I’ll do that.” Not that I plan on that ever happening again, whatever it was.

She smiled at me then, the first I’d gotten from her all day. “All right.”

As if remembering that we were about to go on to perform, she glanced up at the clock. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She signaled to Jordyn and Alaina, who gave their thumbs up that their tails were on and that they were ready. She then signaled to the volunteer. “It’s show time.”

All four of us submerged and headed for the stage area.

Underwater, I could hear my heartbeat, like some sort of bass drum that oddly pounded in time to the music. My eyes were open, and I could swear that I could see better than ever before in the water. Everything looked crystal clear.

I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought.

The strangeness made me hesitate briefly before reaching the front glass and pulling myself up the edge of the glass to introduce us to the audience. Christine glanced over at me in concern. Everyone else had reached the glass before me. Usually I’m the first to reach the glass, being so excited about the chance to perform. I gave her a quick nod to let her know that I was all right.

Focus, Tara, I told myself.

The music came on and all four of us waved. We were supposed to push off the wall and do a back flip. I obliged, trying to execute the movement, only I slid through the water like a hot knife through butter and misjudged my trajectory, shooting me down twenty feet, almost to the bottom of the pool. I could hear the gasp of air bubbles above me, and I realized that my fellow mermaids saw my mistake. I quickly recovered and swam back up, aligning myself with Christine.

My troubles didn’t end there. For some reason, every time we twisted, I spun an extra three times. When we did a backflip, I did mine in a quarter of the time. It wasn’t that I was trying to show off. Heck, I was the least experienced out of all of us—I usually couldn’t move as fast as the other three mermaids. Nevertheless, I was spinning and moving like I’d always lived in the water.

Like I was a fish.

Jordyn caught my eyes, and she did a double take. Yeah, I was about to feel that way too. Something was wrong. Yet at the same time, something was oh so right.

I enjoyed it. This reminded me of the first time I put on a tail two months ago. In all my dreams, I had no idea how incredible it was to be a mermaid. Again, I was feeling like I did that first day, only this was far more...empowered.

The adrenaline hit me then, filling me with elation. I gasped when it hit me, and the awkwardness fell off me like I’d removed a cloak.

I suddenly forgot how weird it all was. There was just me and the water. I was going to have fun with this, and take this performance to a whole new level. When we were supposed to spin, I executed the quadruple spin. When we backflipped, I made my circumference bigger, relishing the water supporting me.

The music drew me into a frenzy. I made my movements bigger and bigger, not realizing what I was doing until I dove down to the bottom of the pool, touched the slippery concrete, and then sped back up to the surface, breaching it like a dolphin. I went so high up, I could see the crowd in the arena gasp, the flashes of their cameras hitting me in the air. I bent forward, entering the water hands first, and swan dove into the pool.

The music ended and the crowd erupted into cheers that I could hear underwater as well as I could out of the water.

Only when I surfaced did I realize that I had dropped my air hose somewhere along the way. And then I couldn’t remember when I had used it for the entire performance.

I hadn’t needed it. I did the entire show without taking a single breath.

Christine, Alaina, and Jordyn looked at me like I had literally become a sea monster in front of their eyes. Cthulhu could emerge from the ocean and they would have the same expression that they had now.