She wanted to feel part of something bigger and better than the regular world. Like me, she lived in a little town in England where nothing much happened at all. But in other ways, I related to her so badly. She was skinny, for starters, and she lived on a boat, and she turned into a mermaid when she was immersed in water. I read the whole thing in a day and I was gone.Įmily Windsnap wasn’t much like me in most ways. Mermaids were lame by then, of course, the same way unicorns and play-acting were. I liked thinking they were out there, I guess - a little bit of magic the ocean was holding onto, keeping safe from the rest of us. I liked the cover, with its shiny fish tail, and I’d always had a secret adoration for anything to do with mermaids. It was a cold day when I picked up The Tail of Emily Windsnap at the library. As long as I was reading, I could be anything at all, so long as it wasn’t myself. I could fascinate people, charm them or kiss them or kill them. I fought villains, loved heroes, and was loved in return by both.īest of all, I was beautiful. I became a dragon rider and a woman knight and a witch at a school for magic. I trailed behind all the girls I knew: last to a mobile phone, last to getting my ears pierced, last to make-up and tight tops and boobs.īefore lessons and in the playground and at home in the evenings, I cracked open books and left my last-place life for as long as I could. My laugh was penetrating, my shyness crippling, my body not a body anyone could want. I was trapped shuttling between the two poles of a spectrum I could never reach the middle of, always either too quiet or too loud. I had already learned to hate myself by then. When I was twelve years old I turned into a mermaid. This time, we asked : What’s a book that almost killed you? Novel Gazing is Electric Literature’s personal essay series about the way reading shapes our lives.
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