The Tail of Emily Windsnap Ch 1 pg. 1 and 2

                 The Tail of Emily Windsnap
                                        By Liz Kessler
 Everybody has a secret.
 Mine's a little different, thought. I didn't even know about it until the first day of swim class in seventh grade. You see, I'd never been allowed to go in the water before. As it turns out, swimming come naturally to me. Very naturally. In fact, so naturally that you might even say... well, it's true. Here's my secret:

I figured out that I'm a mermaid.

                                         Chapter 1
Can you keep a secret?
Everybody has secrets, of course, but mine's different, and it's kind of weird. Sometimes I even have nightmares that people will find out about it and lock me up in a zoo or a scientist's laboratory.
    It all started in seventh-grade swim class, on the first Wednesday afternoon at my new school. I was really looking forward to it. Mom hates swimming, and she always used to change the subject when I asked her why I couldn't learn.
    "But we live on a boat!" I'd say (we actually do). "We're surrounded by water!"
    "You're not getting me in that water," she'd reply. "Just look at all the pollution. You know what it's like when the day cruises have been through here. Now stop arguing, and come and help me with the vegetables."
    She had kept me out of swimming lessons all the way through grade school, saying it was unhealthy. "All those bodies mixing in the same water." She'd shudder. "That's not for us, thank you very much."
    And each time I asked her, that would be that: End of Discussion. But the summer before I started middle school, I finally wore her down. "All right, all right," she sighed. "I give in. Just don't start trying to get me in there with you."
    I'd never been in the ocean. I'd never even had a bath. Hey, I'm not dirty or anything-- I do take a shower every night. But there isn't enough room for a bathtub on the boat, so never in my life had I been totally immersed in water.
    Until the first Wednesday afternoon of seventh grade.
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                                 TO BE CONTINUED