Jamie and me, we’re walking barefoot along the beach. Nobody sticks around after Labor Day, so the beach is empty, just two girls with the wind tangling our hair.

We walk towards Dead Man’s Rock. I don’t know if anyone else calls it that, but we do. It’s a big boulder that’s only in the water when the tide’s in. When we were kids, like last summer, we used to climb on it and whoever got to the top first was king of the castle. 

I see something dark partly hidden by the rock. My mom says that there are muskrats around here, but she’s batshit crazy, so I doubt it.

When we get close, we can see that it’s a person, half in the water, face down in the sand. Jamie gives out a little almost shriek, and I grab her arm. We stand there for ten minutes, no really, it’s probably more like three seconds, but it feels really long.

“Do you think they’re drowned?” Jamie whispers. 

I shrug. This is so weird. “Let’s turn them over, then maybe we can tell.”

We decide the best way to do it is to pull one of the arms across the body. They’re still half-submerged in the ocean and seaweed. Are people always this heavy?

Oh. My. God. It’s a man. His black curly hair frames a dark face with a beautiful mouth. But that’s not the interesting part. Turning him over, we pulled him far enough out of the water to see, not what you would expect. He’s a fish-man. A mermaid-man. A merman?

They taught us CPR in our babysitter training class. Jamie kneels down next to his head and starts giving him breaths. I wait to start chest compressions. 

After a couple of rounds, with no change, I notice that Jamie is not giving breaths any more. She’s kissing the guy. 

She looks up at me with that look she gets when she’s thinking of getting into trouble. 

“What? I could use the practice. You could, too.” She motions me to the other side of his head. 

I lean over. He’s definitely not breathing. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and go for it. 

His mouth tastes like ocean. His skin smells like ocean. I feel like a wave is crashing over me.

I stand up. “Jamie! He doesn’t need air, he needs water to breathe!” I bring him some seawater cupped in my hands. I pour it onto his face. Nothing happens. Jamie brings more, and we take turns. Was that a breath, or was it just the wind?

“See if we can push him into the water,” I order. He hasn’t gotten any lighter, so it takes a lot of maneuvering to get him in the right position. 

We see his face under the water, the seaweed swaying over his left ear. His eyes are still closed. 

“Well, we did our best,” I say. 

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees.

Tiny bubbles start to escape from his nose and the corners of his mouth. He takes what looks like a huge breath and opens his eyes. He looks at us, then pushes back with his hands and tail and then unbelievably fast, he is gone.

#

Walking back, I say, “You kissed a fish.” 

“So did you.”

“Last one back is a fish-kisser.”

We try to run, but we are laughing too hard. Breathless, we collapse next to where our moms are sitting in beach chairs for the last of the summer sun.