Although at first Aquamarine had been happy enough to be free of her sisters, the truth was she’d been coddled and protected for so long that she couldn’t seem to figure anything out on her own. She had never even braided her long, silver hair, for there had always been her sisters’ twelve hands to turn the strands into plaits.

“I look dreadful,” the mermaid said. Indeed, her hair was stringy and her fingertips were puckered and pale. “I don’t even have anything to wear.”

“Claire can solve that problem,” Hailey said.

“I can?” Claire really hadn’t a clue as to what she could do to help out. How could she think straight? Her whole life was packed up and sitting in her grandparents’ garage. When the moving van came to cart everything away, she wasn’t sure she’d even know who she was anymore.

“I’ll get one of my mother’s dresses,” Hailey said, “and you can make

it beautiful, the way you always do.”

Although Claire was pleased by the compliment, she was thoughtful as well. “One problem,” she whispered. “What do we do about the tail?”

“Oh, the tail.”

The girls studied Aquamarine solemnly, staring until she covered her face with her hands.

“I’m horrid,” the mermaid despaired. “I’d be better off falling in love with a dolphin or a shark. It’s no use. It’s hopeless. I might as well stay in this pool until they drain it and take me away.”

At that, Aquamarine sunk to the depths of the murky water. All the girls could see of her were little bubbles rising and popping as they hit the air.

“She’s probably right.” Claire crouched down to peer into the deep end. She splashed her hands in the cold salty water, hoping to call Aquamarine to the surface, but there was no response. Not a flicker, not a fin, not a face. “It is hopeless. How could we ever hide her tail?”

“I’ve got it!” Hailey said. She couldn’t have been more pleased with herself, not even if she’d managed a perfect swan dive. “We’ll say she’s had an accident. She can’t walk, just like your grandfather last winter.”

That afternoon they ran to Claire’s grandfather’s car in the parking lot, threw themselves inside, and begged to borrow Maury’s wheelchair before he could begin to get out the words Susie Q’s.

“Please,” the girls cried. “It’s for a friend, and you don’t need it anymore.”

When they got home, Claire’s grandfather unearthed the wheelchair from the bottom of a pile of odds and ends set out for the moving men. Hailey’s mother found a blue dress at the back of her closet that she had worn to a dance years ago, before Hailey had even been born.