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Watching the merpeople dance is something else entirely. They make no effort to hide from the rush and push of water around their bodies. They slap their tails down in perfect unison with the music.

It’s liberating, imagining moving my body with the strength I’ve worked so hard to gain, to not feel like I need to restrain myself in the water.

I’m itching to practice.

“This time, when you are sculling, rotate your head to the side so we get the silhouette of your ear,” Javier calls out from the side of the pool.

I nod, reaching back to tighten the strap of my voice filter. It’s hard to breathe above the surface with it on, but I’ve noticed my breathing slows more easily now, as if having Javier around has eased some of the anxiety I’m accustomed to having as a constant presence in my chest.

This practice has been better. Maybe Javier has reached new heights in his coaching abilities, or I’m so fucking turned on by the way his soft, hairy belly peeks out below his shirt when he squats down on the edge of the pool that I couldn’t possibly imagine doing anything other than my best for him.

But I know it is more than that.

My body holds the memory of every practice I’ve ever had in a pool and every suggestion made by my mother and our other coaches. Some of those early adjustments had even been made by Javier himself. Me and my cousins and sisters were perfect copies of each other, breathing together in and out of the water.

When I was a kid, my Aunt Sofía used to tell us stories at night while we braided each other’s hair. “A siren’s first love is her family. Her sisters. One of the reasons we dance so beautifully together is because our hearts and bodies share a bond. They call what we do synchronized, and we are. Your heart will match the beat of your family. Your lungs will breathe with your sisters.”

For most of my childhood, that had been true. I felt it when we swam together, when we sat shoulder to shoulder on the wooden benches in the dining room eating sopa, and especially at night when we lay in our beds. It felt like the pull of the tide, my heartbeat and lungs slowing by some external wave carrying me along.

And then, one day, it stopped. One day, instead of feeling like a part of a whole, I felt like a severed limb with no knowledge of the body it used to belong to.

Maybe it was the growing sense of dysphoria I was feeling each time I felt the weight of my chest or put on the delicate, floral clothing my mother picked out for me. Maybe it was the crushing feeling of abandonment when Javier left the colony and never returned.

I’d never felt so alone.

“Show me.” Javier’s voice reaches me through my tangled thoughts. His voice is more resonant—musical, almost, in my ears when I'm transformed.

I slide onto my back on the surface, my hands working tight figure-eights down by my sides, gently propelling me backwards. I tilt my head.

“There. That is it.”

I smile, feeling like I’m on top of the fucking world.

“Now, finish the transition into the vertical sequence.” His voice is a distant echo, but the words are still clear.

I count through the beats as I lift my left arm from the water, holding my webbed hand up like a sail: five, six, seven, eight. After the eight count, I tip back, flexing my core to lift my tail from the water as my upper body sinks, upside down in the water.

My hands move to scull above my head, the movement keeping my tail lifted above the surface. Being able to breathe underwater is an undeniable advantage many of the water beings in the Tail Division have in artistic swimming. Of course, humans and any of the other two-legged beings have the distinct advantage of moving both legs separately in their routines.

Javier’s words play in my head, weaving between the bright notes of the violin: You have substance. You are strong.

And as I sweep my tail in a wide arch above me, every muscle in my body, every hard-earned hour in the water working together, I believe him.

“Would you mind if some friends join us for dinner?”

I almost trip over my feet on the sidewalk, glancing over at Javier, who is looking at me with an obnoxiously placid expression on his face.

After our practice at the pool had wrapped up, he’d gone off to run errands (whatever that meant), while I went back to the bungalow. I’d planned to nap, but instead I gamed with Damian for a bit.

Now I’m tired—I really should have napped—and I don’t have the energy or brainpower to read between the lines. Why is Javier asking me? I know he has friends here. Of course he does. He’s been coaching away from my old colony for years now—shit, have I been holding him back from being with his friends?

“You should go eat with them, if you want.” There’s a cigarette butt in the mulch at the edge of the sidewalk, and I itch for a smoke. I settle for biting at a stubborn hangnail on my thumb. “You don’t have to ask if you want to see your friends,” I add.

I hear Javier sigh. “I would like for them to join us, sireno.” He stops, and I unconsciously slow beside him, my body is aware of his every move. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

A sharp hiss slips from my lips as the skin peels from my thumb—too much, too far. I drop my hand down to my side. Javier is watching me. I can tell by the way my skin pricks and whatever other sixth sense a guy develops when the man they’re fucking around with stares at them.

What am I thinking?