Diary of a Radical Mermaid by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

a very analytical thinker, with non-fanciful and pragmatic ideas, except for the fantasy world of my books. It was as if everything fanciful about me lived in the Water Hyacinth series, and the rest of me was just a shy little brunette with a bum leg and a penchant for pastel pantsuits. At any rate, the ducks kept heading my way.
    “I thought the Peabody mallards were escorted back to their rooftop pen at five p.m. every day,” I whispered to a publicist.
    “Ordinarily they are, Ms. Revere, but in honor of your booksigning this evening, management left them in the fountain a little longer than normal. They’re trained to stay put until their handler comes to get them. I’ve never seen the whole flock act like this before though. I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”
    I knew what was wrong with them: me. The creature magnet. For all of my thirty-five years, pigeons and squirrels had followed me in parks, dogs turned on their leashes, cats purred at me from their window sills, aquarium fish lined up at their glass walls to look at me, and I dared not visit any zoo or wildlife park for fear every winged or hooved or furred or finned resident would rush my way like sailors headed for a strip club. I had no idea why I had such an effect. Frankly, it scared me.
    “Ms. Revere! Look this way! Ms. Revere, look over here!” Dozens of cameras flashed. I squinted, put on my public smile, and waved awkwardly at the crowd. Even after three bestselling books and one hit movie — the film of my first Water Hyacinth novel had grossed 300 million dollars, with a second film already in the works — I could barely believe the public acclaim was for me. Didn’t they know I was just a Boston librarian who, a few years earlier, had gotten looped on cold medicine during a literary festival and blurted to a book agent, “Just for fun, in my spare time I write stories about children who go to a magical underwater school run by mermaids. I don’t suppose you’d want to read something by yet another J.K. Rowling clone, would you?”
    The answer was Yes. A thousand times yes.
    Now I was in the lobby of the Peabody, leaning on my cane, a dozen ducks zeroing in on me like web-footed cruise missiles, while half-a-thousand fans cheered either the rebel ducks or me or both. Camera flashes blinded me. I saw splashes of color punctuated by green mallards. It was like a hallucination starring Daffy Duck.
    A cool hand suddenly gripped my arm. “Come with me,” a dulcet female voice ordered in my right ear, “before these goofy quackers embarrass us both. And the ducks, too.”
    The next thing I knew, I was being led into one of the elegant shops that lined the lobby. Blinded, squinting, hobbling along unceremoniously with my cane thumping the marble floor like a drumbeat, I have no idea, even to this day, why I let a stranger lead me off that way, or how my escorts and five hundred fans let her, too. She cast a spell. She was no ordinary stranger.
    “My name is Juna Lee Poinfax, and I’m your fairy god-mermaid,” she announced the instant she slammed and locked the shop’s glass door. Before I could absorb that bizarre statement she shoved me into the shopkeeper’s office and shut that door behind us, too. My vision cleared and I stared at her.
    I’d been kidnapped by Hairstyle Barbie. You know. The 1960s model with impossibly long hair you could pull from a hole in the top of her head. But this Barbie was real — amazing, auburn tresses spilled from a tight topknot at her crown and spilled in thick waves to her waist. Winged eyebrows flattened in perfect symmetry in a perfect face as she scrutinized me. Green eyes assessed me as if I were up for auction at a slave market. Her cleavage heaved inside a low-cut silk blouse inside a tailored blue silk jacket. She went Hmmm, in a beautifully musical way, as she drummed perfectly white-tipped fingernails on one hip of her blue miniskirt. A foot, encased in a lethally pointed high-heeled