“Do I have to?” I say, even though I know what her answer will be.
She doesn’t even answer. “Showtime’s in five,” she says, unzipping the tail from waist to fin with one fluid motion. “So I suggest you strip.”
Seven minutes later I’m standing next to Rogers behind a thick covering of glossy plastic pond fronds, which serves as a makeshift curtain. Heather’s already onstage, doing her thing, strutting and flapping her wings and letting the kids pull her tail feathers.
The amphitheater is packed: kids are laughing and clapping, bouncing in their seats, while their parents use the distraction as an excuse to get business done, typing away on smartphones, reapplying sunscreen even as their kids wiggle away from them, puncturing juice boxes with miniature straws. A dog, snow-white and about the size of a large rat, is barking like crazy and making lunging motions whenever Heather gets too close. Its owner, a fat woman wearing a turquoise sweat suit, can barely keep it in her lap.
The mermaid costume is tight and makes it incredibly difficult to maneuver. I had to waddle down the path, taking miniature, shuffling steps while various park-goers stared.
I feel like I might throw up.
“When the tempo changes, that’s our cue,” Rogers says. His breath smells faintly of beer. He bends down and hooks an arm behind my knees. “Ready?”
“What are you doing?” I try and quick-step backward, but restrained by the costume, I manage only a kind of hop. In one fluid movement, Rogers has swept me up into his arms, carrying me the way a groom would a bride over a threshold.
“Mermaids don’t walk,” he practically growls, and then plasters on a huge smile, showing off his gums, as we barrel through the fake foliage and emerge onto the stage, just as the tempo picks up. The kids break out into high-pitched squeals as Rogers bends down and deposits me onto the large, flat rock—actually painted concrete—built for this purpose.
“Wave,” he growls in my ear, before straightening up, still beaming out that smile.
My cheeks already hurt from smiling, and there’s a hard knot of fear in my chest. I’m practically naked on top and wearing a goddamn fish tail, in front of a hundred strangers.
I lift my hand and give a quick wave. When several kids wave back, I feel a little better. I try again, with a little experimental flip of my wig—that’s the worst part of the costume, I think, a massive, smelly tangle of blond hair with seashells plastered to it—and a girl in the front row leans over to her mom and says loudly over the music, “Mommy, did you see the pretty mermaid?”
Dara would love this.
Rogers starts into his song, and slowly my nervousness lifts. All I have to do is sit around and ham it up, moving my legs so my fins flop around on the stone, clapping my hands and swaying with the music. I even join in on the choruses: “Fantasy Land is where dreams come true. . . . Fun-shine, Sun-shine, and new friends too. . . .”
We’ve just reached the last verse when it happens. This portion of the song is a summary of FanLand park rules, and Pirate Pete has just warbled past the interdiction on running and has started railing against littering. When he comes to the line, “Don’t be a bum, pick up your gum!” Heather struts her way to the front of the stage, bends over, and displays her flat, feather-bottomed butt to the crowd.
Everyone goes crazy laughing. The dog in the second row is barking so furiously, and vibrating so hard, it looks like it’s about to spontaneously combust.
And suddenly, disentangling itself from its owner’s arms, the dog leaps.
Heather screams as the dog chomps down on the big round target of her butt. Fortunately, the costume is thick, and the dog only manages to get a mouth full of feathers and fabric. Heather swings around in a panicked circle, trying to knock the dog loose. All the kids are screeching with laughter, apparently not realizing that this isn’t part of the show, as Rogers stands, gape-mouthed, having lost the thread of the music. The fat woman is fighting her way toward the stage, and I stand up to help, forgetting about the mermaid costume and the fact that my legs are suctioned together.
Instead I pitch forward, face-first, landing hard on the ground and cutting my palms on the pavement.
Now the laughter has swelled to an ocean of sound. I can just barely make out cries of The mermaid, the mermaid!—individual voices cresting, then subsumed again by the general roar. I roll over onto my back and manage, after two false starts, to wobble to my feet. The fat woman is still trying to detach her dog from Heather’s ass. Rogers is doing his best to contain the crowd. I waddle offstage as quickly as the costume will allow, totally ignoring the fact that mermaids don’t walk and that the song hasn’t even finished playing, reaching down to try and yank off the tail as soon as I’m concealed by the palm fronds.
A hand reaches out to steady me. “Whoa, there. Easy. FanLand limits its employees to one face-plant per day.”
Parker.
“Very funny.” I snatch my arm away.
“Come on. Don’t be mad. The kids loved it.” I can tell he’s trying hard not to laugh. It’s the first time he’s smiled at me since I ditched the party. “Here. Let me help you.”
I stand still while he takes the zipper and eases it down over my legs, tugging gently to get the fabric free of the metal teeth. His fingers graze my ankle, and a feeling passes through me, like a shiver but warm.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
He’s Dara’s now.
“Thanks.” I cross my arms, hyperconscious of the fact that I’m still wearing the flimsy nylon T-shirt, which makes my boobs look like seashells. He straightens up, slinging the mermaid tail over one arm.
“I didn’t know you were gunning for a stage career,” he says, still smiling.
“I’m actually thinking of focusing more on professional self-humiliation,” I say.
“Hmm. Good point. You do have a knack for it. Although I’ve heard it’s a difficult major.” One of his dimples shows, the one on the left, the deeper one. When I was little, like five or six, he once dared me to kiss him there and I did.
“Yeah, well.” I shrug and look away so I won’t keep staring at his dimple, which reminds me of other things, times I would be better off forgetting. “I’m a natural talent.”
“Seems like it.” He takes a step closer, nudging me with an elbow. “Come on. Let me give you a ride home.”
I almost say no. Things are different now, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
Gone are the days I used to sit with my bare feet on the dashboard and Parker pretended to get mad about the toe-shaped imprints on the inside of the windshield, while Dara huddled in the backseat, whining about the fact that she never got shotgun. Gone are the days of hunting down weird crap in 7-Elevens and gas stations, of splitting a Big Gulp between the three of us or just driving around with no place to go, windows down, while the ocean thundered somewhere in the distance and the crickets cried out as if the world was ending.
There’s no going back. Everyone knows that.
But then Parker slings an arm around my shoulder, and he smells like the same combination of wintergreen and soft cotton, and he says, “You know what? I’ll even let you put your feet up. Even though they smell.”
“They do not,” I say, pulling away from him. But I can’t help it. I laugh.
“So what do you say?” he says, rubbing his nose and then tucking his hair behind his ear, radio-signal code for when he really wants something. “For old times’ sake?”
And in that second I believe, truly believe, that maybe we can go back.
“Okay,” I say. “For old times’ sake. But—” I hold up a finger. “You better not say a word about that stupid video game you always play. I’ve had my pain-share for the day, thanks very much.”
Parker pretends to look offended. “Ancient Civ isn’t a game,” he says. “It’s—”
“A lifestyle,” I finish for him. “I know. You’ve told me a million times.”
“Do you know,” he says, as we start walking toward the parking lot, “it took me two years of play just to build my very first arena?”
“I hope that’s not a line you use on your first dates.”
“Third, actually. I don’t want to seem slutty.”
It’s then, walking next to Parker with that stupid costume swinging between us, throwing light in our eyes, that the plan for Dara’s birthday begins to take shape.