Free Magic Street by Orson Scott Card Page A

Tamika except when she was just going out the door or running around getting ready to go out the door. And she was always wearing a bright red swimming suit because that's what Tamika did—she was a swimmer.
    Quon said she was in competitions all the time, and she outswam and outdived girls two years older than her and people said she was a mermaid or a fish, she was so natural and quick in the water. "She just lives to swim."
    And one time Miz Brown told a story about when Tamika was a baby. "My husband Curtis and I had her in the pool, with those bubble things on her arms, and she wasn't even two years old yet, so we were both holding on to her. But she was kicking so strong, like a frog, that I thought, I'm just holding her back, and Curtis must have thought the same thing at that very moment because we both just let go, and she takes off like a motorboat through the water and we knew right then that she was born to swim. Didn't have to teach her none of the strokes, she just knew them. Curtis says there's a scientist who thinks humans evolved from sea apes, and the way Tamika took to the water, I could believe it, she was born to swim."
    So when Tamika showed up in one of Mack's dreams, he would have thought it was just a regular dream about people he knew. Except that he woke up shivering so bad he could hardly climb out of bed and go to the toilet without falling over from the shaking.
    In the dream she was Tamika, but she was also a fish, and she swam through the water faster than any of the other fish. They swam around her when she was holding still, but then she'd give a flick with her back and just like that, they'd be far behind her. She swam to the surface and flipped herself out and flew through the air and then dived back in and the water felt delicious to her, and she didn't ever, ever have to come up because she was a fish, not a girl. She didn't have legs, she had big flippers, and in the water there was nothing to slow her down or hold her back.
    "Why would a girl want to be a fish?" Mack asked Ceese one day.
    "I know a lot of girls like to eat a fish," said Ceese. "Maybe some want to meet a fish. And if they cooking they got to heat a fish."
    "Playing cards they might want to cheat a fish," said Ceese.
    But Mack was done with the game. "I'm not joking."
    "Whazz wet?—that's how you greet a fish."
    "Tamika Brown, she really wants to be a fish."
    "She likes to swim," said Ceese. "That doesn't mean she's crazy."
    "She wants to get down in the water and never have to come up."
    "Or maybe you crazy," said Ceese. "Give it gummy worms, that's how you treat a fish."
    "I dreamed about her," said Mack "No arms and legs, just fins and a tail, living in the water."
    "You way too young to be having that kind of dream," said Ceese, and now he was laughing so hard he could hardly talk.
    "I'm not joking."
    "Yes you are, you just don't know you joking," said Ceese.
    Mack wanted to tell Ceese about the cold dream he had about Deacon Landry and how it came true in the real world, with Juanettia Post, and nobody liked how it turned out. What if Tamika's dream came true, too? Quon wouldn't want no fish for a sister.
    Ceese would just laugh even more, maybe die from laughing so hard, if Mack told him that he was worried about a girl turning into a fish.
    That's because nobody but Mack ever seemed to have dreams like his. Nobody else knew how real they were, how strong, how they gripped him with desire.
    You don't know, Ceese, how it feels to want something so bad you'd give up everything if only it could happen. But in a cold dream, that's how it feels the whole time, and then it leaves me shaking when I wake up out of the wish.
    Curtis Brown woke up on that hot August night, covered with sweat and needing to pee.
    Happened a lot, sleeping on a water bed. The motion of it sort of alerted his bladder. Either that or he was getting old—but he and Sondra were still young. Their oldest, Tamika, was only ten. Curtis was a long way