The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [10]
When I came back up, she was staring at me as though she couldn’t believe what she’d seen. I smiled, but she ducked her head under the water. “Don’t go!” I called. But a second later, her tail was sticking up. Not twisting around madly like mine did, more as if she were dancing or doing gymnastics. In the moonlight, her tail glinted like diamonds.
When she came back up, I clapped. Or tried to anyway, but I slipped back under when I lifted both arms out and got water up my nose.
She was laughing as she swam toward me. “I haven’t seen you before,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Me, too. But you’re not at my school, are you?”
“Brightport Junior High,” I said. “Just started.”
“Oh.” She looked worried and moved away from me again.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s just . . . I haven’t heard of it. Is it a mermaid school?’
“You go to a mermaid school?” The idea sounded like something out of a fairy tale, and even though I’ve totally grown out of fairy tales, I had to admit it sounded pretty cool.
She folded her arms — how did she do that without sinking? — and said quite sternly, “And what’s wrong with that? What kind of school do you expect me to go to?”
“No, it sounds great!” I said. “I wish I did, too.”
I found myself wanting to tell her everything. “I mean. . . I haven’t been a mermaid for long. Or I didn’t know I was, or something.” My words jumbled and tumbled out of me. “I’ve never even really been in the water, and then when I did get in, it happened and I was scared, but I’m not now and I wish I’d found out years ago.”
I looked up to see her staring at me as though I were something from outer space that had washed up on the beach. I stared back and tried folding my arms, too. I found that if I kept flicking my tail a little, I could stay upright. So I flicked and folded and stared for a little while, and she did the same. Then I noticed the side of her mouth flutter a bit and I felt the dimple below my left eye twitching. A second later, we were both laughing like hyenas.
“What are we laughing at?” I said when I managed to catch my breath.
“I don’t know!” she answered — and we both burst out laughing again.
“What’s your name?” she said once we’d stopped laughing. “I’m Shona Silkfin.”
“Emily,” I said. “Emily Windsnap.”
Shona stopped smiling. “Windsnap? Really?”
“Why? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing — it’s just . . .”
“What?”
“No, it’s nothing. I thought I’d heard it before, but I guess I couldn’t have. I must be thinking of something else. You haven’t been around here before, have you?”
I laughed. “A couple weeks ago, I’d never even been swimming in a pool!”
Shona looked serious for a second. “How did you do that thing just now?” she asked.
“What thing?”
“With your tail.”
“You mean the handstand? You want me to do it again?”
“No, I mean the other thing.” She pointed under the water. “How did you make it change?”
“I don’t know. It just happens. When I go in water, my legs kind of disappear.”
“I’ve never seen someone with legs before. Not in real life. I’ve read about it. What’s it like?”
“What’s it like having legs?”
Shona nodded.
“Well, it’s — it’s cool. You can walk, and run. And climb things, or jump or skip.”
Shona gazed at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. “You can’t do this with legs,” she said as she dove under again. This time her tail twisted around and around, faster and faster in an upside-down pirouette. Water spun off as she turned, spraying tiny rainbow arcs over the surface.
“That was fantastic!” I said when she came back up again.
“We’ve been practicing it in Diving and Dance. We’re doing a display at the Inter-Bay competition in a couple of weeks. This is the first time I’ve been on the squad.”
“Diving and Dance? Is that a class you take?” I asked, a wish already forming in my mind.
“Yeah,” she went on breathlessly. “But last year, I was in the choir. Mrs. Highwave said that five fishermen