How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(3)
“We need to think of better answers as to why we don’t look and act like Ariel,” I explained. “I even got asked why I didn’t have red hair.”
Jordyn laughed. “At least I have red hair. For the moment.”
No kidding. Maybe her Q&A would go better than mine.
I smirked at my reflection in the mirror. With my over-the-top makeup and the glitter in my hair, I looked the part of an ethereal mermaid. I glanced around at the three other mermaids that were getting ready. We looked like a school of sea nymphs straight from the storybooks.
This was my dream. I was living the life. Sure, there were some moments like my meet and greet where I felt like it was going terribly. Yet to me, this was paradise.
I was checking my phone for messages from my mother when a timid knock at the door caused me to look up. An aquarium volunteer was at the door, smiling shyly.
“You’re on in fifteen minutes,” she announced.
We had to hurry to the backstage area. It would take us ten minutes simply to get our tails on near the tank where we’d be performing. How we put our tails on was a highly personal ritual. One, because our tails were unique to each of our bodies, and two, because we all had our ways of fitting into the tight silicon, like putting baby powder or lotion on or having help with pulling it up. For me, I had to get into the pool first and then put it on in the water, otherwise it would stick to my dry skin.
“Okay, we’ll head out now,” Christine said to the volunteer. She looked back and grinned at all of us. “Mermaids, let’s do this thing.”
CHAPTER 2
I touched my mermaid necklace and said a silent prayer for good luck before I grabbed my tail and headed for the door, following Alaina through the backstage area of the aquarium towards the dolphin tank.
The Houston Aquarium was huge. With six tanks totaling over ten million gallons of water, it put our three tanks at Neptune’s World to shame. On my first day here, someone told me that on its busiest days, the aquarium could accommodate over twenty thousand people, which was mind-blowing. It was November, so it wasn’t going to be anywhere near that many. Yet based on the audience yesterday, we were still going to have more people watching us here than we ever did back home.
The aquarium held every kind of aquatic animal, from Belugas, turtles, and sea otters, to even three whale sharks in the largest tank. The tanks replicated their respective environments in all their underwater splendor, and I was genuinely impressed.
As expected, my nerves flared up. Even though I was prepared for it, still, it made me feel a little nauseated. Though it’s not exactly stage fright, I always get this feeling that I’m going to screw up my routine. It usually passed as soon as I started, a weird, butterfly feeling in my stomach that I had to stomp on in order to be in top mental shape for my performance.
The Dolphin Arena consisted of three open-aired tanks at the back of the aquarium. There were two tanks that housed the dolphins when they weren’t performing, and the performing pool was larger and shallower compared to the other two. A curtain dropped down from the ceiling, bisecting the pool, so that the audience sat in stadium-like seating on one side while the behind-the-scenes work happened on the other side, along with the holding tanks for the dolphins while they weren’t performing.
The backstage area was buzzing with activity, where volunteers and stagehands were busy prepping the stage. Six dolphin trainers were busy petting the cetaceans and feeding them fish, talking to them in low, encouraging tones to get them ready for their own show. The dolphins responded in happy clicks, their eyes trained on their respective handlers. Every so often, one would disappear under the waves and swim a lap to release energy.
It was like babysitting a bunch of three year olds.
Nature’s acrobats, I thought, smiling to myself. This is why I became a professional mermaid. When I did go to college, I was going to study marine biology so I could always be close to the water. I couldn’t imagine life without it.
The coolest thing about the dolphin tanks at the Houston Aquarium was that they backed up to the ocean. The pools led to a landing that extended about eight yards into the Gulf of Mexico. From here, I could see the water and some boats on it, and beyond that, the horizon leading to the edge of the world.
Our boss walked up, his weather-beaten face grinning, and he clapped me on the back.
“Good luck, guys,” he said. He always smelled of the ocean, even though I’ve never actually seen him in the water. I think he could never wash out some of the sea salt that got under his skin.
Neptune—which I don’t think was his real name—was a man of contradictions. He’d built up his fortune as a captain of a fishing boat in the seventies, which must have been pretty lucrative because he made enough money to start his own aquarium. He told me once that he set up Neptune’s World as an apology for all the terrible things he did to the ocean and its animals when he was younger. He wouldn’t go into details, which meant that it must have been bad. Now though, I couldn’t imagine him being a bad person.
“Are you joining us today?” Jordyn quipped.
“Hell, no,” Neptune growled gruffly, although it was good-naturedly. “No one wants to see an old man with a mer tail.”
“Are you so sure?” Christine asked.
“I’d pay good money to see that,” Alaina added.