Really Truly, page 7
Things only got worse when we reached the lake. The beach was packed with people in lawn chairs, happily anticipating the fireworks to come. My friends spotted our bus as it pulled in and came over to join us.
“Any news?” asked Lucas, screeching to a halt in front of Mackenzie. Scooter was right behind him.
My cousin smiled her Gifford sunflower smile. “About what?”
“The missing trophy.”
Mackenzie looked over at me.
I shrugged. “Don’t look at me—I don’t know anything.”
His main reason for conversation exhausted, Lucas dangled there, growing pinker by the minute until my cousin took pity on him.
“We do have a bit of news, though, don’t we, Truly?” she said.
I shook my head grimly. “Nope. We do not. No news at all.”
She turned to my friends. “Truly and I are going to mermaid camp!”
Lucas was rendered even more speechless, if that were possible. Scooter and Calhoun stared at us. So did Cha Cha and Jasmine, before they started squealing so loudly that they attracted a herd of my younger cousins, who came charging over to see what was going on.
“What the heck is mermaid camp?” asked Scooter.
Mackenzie took out her cell phone and showed our friends the video ad she’d found online for Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy. It sent the boys into gales of laughter—and sent Cha Cha and Jasmine running off to ask their parents if they could go too. The result was that in nothing flat all four of us were signed up and would be heading together to Cape Cod.
“I can’t wait!” exclaimed Jasmine happily. “C’mon, Truly, how could this not be fun?” she added, noticing the sour expression on my face.
Let me count the ways, I thought bitterly. First of all, it turned out that it wasn’t just a camp for teenagers; it was for adults, too, which meant we were going to be spending a week with a bunch of seriously deranged people obsessed with mermaids. Second, I was going to have to wear a stupid clamshell bra, or at least something that looked like one. Competitive swimmers didn’t do bikinis. Okay, maybe some of them did, but not me. And then there was the tail!
Aunt Louise had called the number on the brochure right after dinner. “You girls are in luck—they still have a few open slots this week,” she told us. “Sirena says we’ll have to rush-order mermaid tails for you, though. I’ll have them shipped directly to Cape Cod.”
This was rapturous news to Mackenzie, who had begged my mother to knit her a mermaid tail back in second grade (who knew there were knitting patterns for mermaid tails?) and then happily worn it to shreds. She made a beeline to the computer and found the website.
“What do you think—Calypso, Waverly, Oceana, or Marina?” Aunt Louise asked me. “Those are the styles that Sirena told me were most suitable for teen mermaids.”
I scowled. Like there even were such things!
“Blue or green?” asked Aunt Louise, when I finally settled on Marina.
“Blue,” I muttered.
“Sequins?”
“No sequins.”
Mackenzie went with Calypso in green—with sequins, of course.
My mother sucked in her breath when she saw the price. “Say thank you, Truly,” she urged. “This is incredibly generous of your aunt and uncle.”
Aunt Louise smiled. “How often do I get to spoil my daughter and my niece in one fell swoop?”
The only bright spot in the rest of the evening, was, quite literally, the fireworks show. Well, that and the fact that I got to spend a few minutes alone with Calhoun. While waiting for the festivities to start, I drifted down to the edge of the lake, leaving Mackenzie and Jasmine and Cha Cha to hyperventilate about mermaid camp. I was skipping rocks morosely when Calhoun wandered over to join me.
“Sorry you won’t be around for the film festival,” he said, bending down and picking up a rock. “I was looking forward to it.”
Looking forward to the movies, or to going with me? I wondered, but couldn’t quite work up the nerve to ask. Instead, I just nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
He hurled his stone, and we stood watching as it skipped far out across the water.
“Good one.”
“Thanks.” There was a pause. “I guess your camp thing will be fun, though.”
I snorted.
“You don’t think so?”
“You saw the video! Would you want to spend a week at something called Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy?”
The corners of his mouth quirked up. “I guess not, but mermaids aren’t my thing.”
“They’re not mine, either!”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “I figured since you like to swim so much—”
“Just because I like to swim doesn’t mean I want to be a mermaid!”
“You don’t have to be so touchy about it!”
I blew out my breath. “Sorry. It’s just that I’d planned for my summer to go one way, and now it’s turned into something completely different and completely awful.”
We picked up more rocks and skipped them.
“I’m thinking of trying out for the play tomorrow,” Calhoun told me.
This was a surprise. But Calhoun was full of surprises. He could be cool and aloof on the exterior, but he was a bit of a marshmallow on the inside. That much I knew. I also knew that he was almost as knowledgeable about Shakespeare as his father. “I didn’t know you liked to sing!”
He lifted a shoulder. “In the shower mostly. But yeah, I kind of like to sing.” He skipped another stone. “So Mackenzie said you’re not planning to try out.”
I shook my head.
“Not even for the chorus? They just sing and dance in the background.”
“Nope.”
“You play the piano, right? They always need accompanists for rehearsals.”
I shook my head again. “No way. I’m not good enough.”
“Seriously, Truly, working on a show is fun! How about stage crew? They have a blast building stuff.”
I gave him a sidelong glance. Calhoun was being unusually persistent. And he seemed to know an awful lot about theater. But then, he knew a lot about a lot of things. Romeo Calhoun was smarter than he let people know.
One thing I knew for sure—The Pirates of Penzance was not for me.
CHAPTER 9
Exactly twelve hours after the last of the fireworks flickered out over Lake Lovejoy, I was on a bus to Cape Cod.
My cousin and friends and I napped most of the way, worn out from the mad dash to get packed, say good-bye to our families, try out for The Pirates of Penzance (Cha Cha and Jasmine, who actually ended up singing for Calhoun’s father right there at the lake), and stumble out of bed at zero dark thirty to catch the early bus to Boston. Hatcher and Danny traveled with us as far as South Station, where they saw to it that we made our connection before heading off to their wrestling clinic at Boston University.
“Have fun!” Hatcher called over his shoulder to us as he trotted off after Danny.
“You too!” I called back.
A couple of hours after that, we finally pulled into the bus station in Hyannis.
“Oh great,” I mumbled.
Mackenzie yawned, rubbing her eyes. “What?”
I pointed wordlessly out the window. Our ride to Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy was waiting for us. It wasn’t hard to spot. For one thing, the minivan was aqua, the same color as the manicure on the woman standing next to it. For another, there was a huge mermaid painted on its side.
Mackenzie squealed, waking Cha Cha and Jasmine. “Check it out!”
Our friends did, and then they squealed too.
“Wheee!” I muttered, as we gathered our things and clambered off the bus. “We get to ride in the mermaid-mobile.”
“Knock it off, Truly!” Mackenzie sounded exasperated.
I’d been doing my best to suck all the fun out of our upcoming “adventure,” as my mother persisted in calling it, ever since my cousin had roped me into it. I figured it was the least I could do to thank her for derailing my perfect summer.
“Welcome to Cape Cod, ladies!” gushed the woman by the minivan. She trotted over to meet us, her shoulder-length red corkscrew curls bobbing like a buoy at anchor. “I’m Sirena.”
Sirena didn’t look like mermaid material. Not that I knew what mermaid material looked like, but for some reason I’d expected someone with a name like Sirena to be tall and willowy. Sirena was even shorter than my mother and round as an apple.
She helped us load our luggage, then slid in behind the steering wheel. “We’ve got about a half-hour drive ahead of us. You girls just sit back, relax, and I’ll have you there in time for lunch. Most of the other guests have already arrived.”
Mackenzie bounced up and down on the seat beside me. “We’re going to mermaid camp!”
“Mermaid academy, please, mermaid academy,” Sirena corrected, wagging an aqua-tipped finger in the rearview mirror. “This is not camp! What we are undertaking this week is much too serious an endeavor to be trivialized by that term.”
I snorted, and Mackenzie elbowed me in the ribs.
As we left bustling Hyannis, Sirena turned onto a quieter, tree-lined road. It wound along past tidy houses whose white picket fences spilled over with roses and hydrangeas. We passed through several little towns, some of them with village greens nearly identical to the one back home.
“Cape Cod looks like an overgrown version of Pumpkin Falls,” said my cousin.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Jasmine replied. “The Cape is one of my favorite places in the whole world! We come here on vacation every year—wait until you see the beaches!”
We drove along in silence for a while. My eyelids drooped. A few minutes later Jasmine shrieked, and they flew open again.
“What?” boomed Cha Cha, and the minivan swerved as Sirena glanced at her in alarm. Cha Cha’s voice always surprised people the first time they heard it.
“It’s the Brewster Store!” Jasmine exclaimed. “It’s like our General Store back in Pumpkin Falls, only better. Their penny candy counter is amazing. And they have homemade ice cream, and fudge, and all sorts of cool stuff for sale!”
Sirena smiled. “The Brewster Store is always a big hit with our guests. It’s just a short walk from the academy.”
A few moments later she turned onto a narrow lane. Up ahead, I spotted Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy. Like the minivan, it was hard to miss, thanks to the sign out front with a life-size mermaid painted on it.
I peered out the window as Sirena pulled into the driveway. The academy was a little more run-down than it appeared in the flyer. The white clapboards of the large house at the front of the property were peeling, and the lawn was ragged around the edges and rapidly turning brown in the summer heat. The window boxes were cheery, though, painted a soft blue and filled with bright red geraniums. And there were matching window boxes on the row of tiny cabins that stretched out behind the main building.
“Here we are,” said Sirena, parking the minivan next to an identical one. She gestured toward the main house. “This is Mermaid Headquarters—Mermaid HQ for short—where you’ll find the dining room, the communal living room, and everybody’s favorite, the screened-in porch. We call it Mermaid Crossing.”
Of course you do, I thought crossly. I was already sick of all the mermaid references. This was shaping up to be a long week.
“And that will be your second home while you’re here!” Sirena pointed toward a large pool beyond the cabins. Its blue water gleamed invitingly. There were bleachers set up on the far side, partially shaded by the fringe of pine trees that I assumed marked the edge of the property.
I caught a quick flutter of yellow on a branch high up in one of the trees, and my spirits lifted a bit. A goldfinch! Maybe I’d end up adding a bird or two to my life list while I was here. That would be some consolation. That and the fact that I’d be in the water most of the day. I wondered if I’d have time to sneak down to the pool for a quick dip before lunch.
“One of the most important rules of Sea Siren Academy,” Sirena warned, as if reading my thoughts, “is to never swim alone. Always make sure you have an experienced buddy to watch you when you’re in the pool. Now, let’s get you girls settled into your quarters. Delphine will be ringing the lunch gong shortly.”
Lunch gong? Seriously? My gaze slid over to my cousin. Normally, something like this would strike Mackenzie as funny too, and we’d share a smirk, if not an outright laugh. But she was oblivious, her eyes shining in rapturous anticipation of all things mermaid.
We unloaded our luggage and followed Sirena down the path toward the cabins. Like the driveway, the path was made of what looked like white gravel, but on closer inspection turned out to be some sort of crushed seashells. They made a pleasant crunching sound underfoot. I figured it must be a Cape Cod thing, as I’d seen a lot of similar driveways on the ride over from Hyannis.
“We’ve put you down at the end, in Whelk,” Sirena told us.
What the heck is a whelk? I wondered. Then I noticed the signs over the doors to the cabins. They were painted the same shade of blue as the window boxes, with each cabin’s name carved into them and painted a contrasting gold: NAUTILUS, ABALONE, OYSTER, and SAND DOLLAR. There was a pattern here, I quickly realized. A whelk must be a shell.
“Your quarters, ladies,” Sirena told us, opening our screen door with a flourish.
It was dark inside. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see that the space was small and cramped. Two bunkbeds, two dressers, two windows in front, two in back. One tiny bathroom, and one even tinier closet.
Good luck with that, I thought, eyeing our collective suitcases.
“Your tails arrived earlier this morning,” Sirena told us, gesturing to a pile of packages at the foot of one of the lower bunks.
This brought fresh squeals from Mackenzie and my friends.
“Please don’t try them on yet,” Sirena cautioned. “The unveiling and tailing ritual is part of our evening activity tonight.”
Unveiling and tailing? My gaze slid over to Mackenzie again, but there wasn’t even a flicker. She was taking this all completely seriously.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said automatically, knowing an order when I heard one. No calling it mermaid camp. Never swim alone. No trying on of tails. Sirena had as many rules as Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy.
After Sirena left, there was a scramble for the bunks. Jasmine and Cha Cha each claimed a top one; Mackenzie and I ended up on opposite sides of the room on bottom ones. I pressed my nose up against the screen on the window at the foot of my bunk and gazed longingly at the pool. Laughter floated over from Sand Dollar, the cabin next door.
“How many other people are here this week, do you think?” I asked.
“Maybe twenty?” Cha Cha ventured. “If the four other cabins are like ours.”
They weren’t, as we learned during introductions at lunch. Not quite, anyway. Two of them, Abalone and Oyster, contained just two beds each. Abalone was occupied by the two eldest “aspiring mermaids,” as Sirena referred to all of us.
“This is Zadie Malone and her friend Lenore Sullivan,” she announced, peering at her clipboard through aqua-framed reading glasses as we took our seats around the dining room table. “They worked together years ago in Los Angeles before marrying and moving to opposite ends of the country—Oregon for you, Lenore, and Vermont for you, Zadie, correct?”
The two ladies nodded.
“But you’ve remained best friends all these years—”
“—and every year we go on an adventure together, don’t we, Lenore?” finished the one named Zadie.
There was that word “adventure” again. Had Zadie been talking to my mother?
Lenore nodded again. With their halos of white hair and wrinkled, smiling faces, the two of them reminded me a bit of Belinda Winchester. I felt a pang of homesickness. If I were back in Pumpkin Falls right now, I’d be hanging out at the bookshop with Aunt True and Belinda instead of a bunch of “aspiring mermaids.”
“Last year we went on a raft trip through the Grand Canyon,” boasted Zadie. “And the year before that we went bungee jumping in Australia.”
“My, aren’t you the thrill seekers,” said Sirena admiringly.
“Next year we’re planning to celebrate the big nine-oh by learning how to skydive.”
Wait. What? I stared at them. “The big nine-oh”—did that mean what I thought it did? As in Zadie and Lenore were eighty-nine going on ninety? I was at mermaid camp with ladies older than Grandma G!
I was still digesting this bit of information when Sirena introduced the mother-daughter duo who were staying in Oyster, the other cabin with just two beds. “Meet Helen and Hayden Drake, who have come all the way from Seattle!”
“We’re here for some special mother-daughter time, aren’t we, princess?” said the mother part of the duo, reaching over and patting her daughter’s hand.
“Princess,” who looked to be around my age, rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
The other guests were a mix of adults and teens. Nautilus was occupied by four girls from St. Louis who’d been given the week together as a high school graduation gift. Sand Dollar, the cabin next to ours, housed four women who didn’t know each other at all, but who were quickly bonding over the tuna fish salad that Delphine—Sirena’s daughter and the academy’s only other employee—had served up for lunch.
“Mermaids eat fish,” Sirena announced, as if it were a fact. She poked her fork into a chunk of tuna and hoisted it aloft. “I hope you like seafood, because you’ll be eating a lot of it this week.”
The conversation ebbed and flowed around me as we ate. I glanced around the dining room. The table and chairs had seen better days, as had the faded seashell-themed wallpaper. The air conditioner in the corner wheezed and grumbled as it grudgingly eked out a coolish breeze. Instructing aspiring mermaids didn’t seem to be a very lucrative business. If the property was a bit shabby inside and out, though, at least the food was good. I wasn’t a huge fan of tuna fish salad, but this wasn’t gloppy with mayonnaise, and it had an unexpectedly yummy twist: chopped apple. I was pretty sure the rolls were homemade, and the gingersnap cookies, which finished off our meal, most definitely were. Somebody knew how to cook—Delphine, maybe?
