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Alice is already twenty feet in front of me "Guess so" She turns around but continues to half step down the path "Wilcox is having a hissy fit, though And don’t even get close to Donna So dose of happy"

"Okay" The sun is blinding Every color looks exaggerated, like so remote I feel weirdly uneasy about Parker, about hoe left things last night Why did I get so upset?

I have another flashback to Dara, to his car, to the night the rain ca off in pieces I blink and shake e the h?" I call out to Alice But she’s too far away to hear me

By 10:00 am, it’s obvious that even Mr Wilcox has underestimated the crowds The park has never been so busy, despite terees I refill my water bottle a half-dozen times and still don’t have to pee It’s like the liquid is evaporating straight from my skin As a special treat, and because our littleof a sensation, at least for the under-six croe’re doing three different shows: ten thirty, noon, and two thirty

In between shows, I wrestle off the mermaid tail and collapse in the front office, the only interior space with a functioning AC, too sick with heat to care that my underwear is visible to Donna, while Heather re the weather and fanning out her underar but a bra and a pair of Spanx

It’s too hot to eat It’s too hot to s through the park gates, a flood of kids and parents and grandparents, teen girls wearing bikini tops and cutoffs, and their boyfriends, shirtless, shorts slung low over bathing suits, pretending to be bored

By the time two thirty rolls around, I can barely keep a s between my boobs, behind my knees, in places I didn’t even know you could sweat The sun is relentless, like a giganticunderneath it The audience is nothing but a blur of color

Heather mimes her attack by the sock puppet At that exacthappens: all the sound in the world clicks off I can see the audience laughing, can see a thousand dark cavernous mouths, but it’s like so but a dull rushing sound in my ears, as if I’m on a plane several thousand feet in the air

I want to say so But this is my time to stand up, to try and intervene, to save Heather fro, and I can’t remember how to speak, either, just like I can’t remember how to hear I push et to ain, not face forward, as I usually fall, but on ers’s face appears above --I can see his ent, while Heather’s face appears next to him, minus the bird head, hair plastered da across an expanse of blue sky, or rocking like a baby in ers is carrying me, the way he does before a performance I’m too tired to protest Mer through the static silence in my brain: "Take a deep breath now"

Before I can ask why, his ar There’s a shock, electric and freezing, as I hit water It’s a hard reboot: suddenly every feeling powers back on Chlorine stings my nose and eyes Underwater, the tail is i of seaweed The pool is absolutely packed with kids and rafts, little legs churning the water to foaht It takes ers has just thrown ht into the wave pool

I kick off the bottom of the pool Just before I resurface, I see her: briefly sub, halo-like, fro to stay afloat and kids diving beneath the crashing of the waves

Madeline Snow

Forgetting I’m underwater, I open my mouth to shout, and just then I break the surface and co the back ofwith everything else; the air is filled with shrieking and laughter and the crash of ainst concrete

I flounder toward the shallows, try and turn around, scanning the crowd for Madeline There must be sixty kids in the wave pool,There are blondes everywhere--ducking, popping up grinning, spouting water from their mouths like fountains, all of theo?

"You all right?" Rogers is squatting at the edge of the pool, still wearing his pirate hat "Feeling better?"

Just then I spot her again, struggling to pull herself onto the deck on ar on the stupid tail, going face forward down into the water and then dog-paddling the rest of the way Soet to her

"Madeline" I get a hand around her ar out a surprised cry As soon as she turns around, I see it isn’t Madeline after all This girl is s cut blunt across her forehead