The Mermaid Dance Monologue

(Dearest friends . . .
Last year, I got to re-live my most embarrassing moment, on stage (Thanks a mill CDE).
I just found the copy of my monologue.
Just pity eleven year old Claire.
Or play in the pool with me come Monday night's Swim Club)

The space under the water slide makes the perfect secret mermaid cave. It is the command center where I issue orders the other members of my mermaid clan. Age eleven, I have spent the summer swimming happily in the neighbor's backyard pool. I play there with my friends, who are about four years my junior. I never seem to get along with the girls my own age, since they are all too old to play my make-believe fairytale games. Too bad for the girls that won't play with us, because we have the time of our lives dusting the world with pixie dust made out of sidewalk chalk, setting out traps for unicorns, and counting the scales on our colorful fins.

On this hot summer day, I'm busy wiggling around with my mermaid sisters. We make quick escape after quick escape from the terrifying sharks and sea monsters. As we swim faster and faster around the pool to escape the predators, we also begin to get louder and louder. The stakes are raised, the chase continues, but tragically I become thoroughly invested the throes of

a dramatic

mermaid

death scene.

I hear someone call out my name. The voice isn't familiar and it isn't female. Slowly, I stop my noisy splashing and struggling and look up. There in the window stand two boys from my class at school: My little friend's older brother and the boy who I secretly have a large crush on.

I freeze.

There is no possible way that I can save face now. No one my age should be playing mermaids with the little kids in the neighbor's backyard pool. I have been caught doing the most uncool thing a person could possibly ever be doing. I am completely ruined forever. I quickly sink beneath the water and swim along the bottom of the pool to my former perfect secret mermaid cave. But my cave has lost its appeal now.

I sigh the sad sigh of a social pariah.

I begin to grow up.