Salmonella

Chapter 16

🫧Sixteen🫧

"You've never been in my room, have you?" Gen realizes one day when I'm at her place. I've been visiting her more often lately, whenever we're both free. It's hard to imagine a time when she wasn't in my life. "Wanna see it?"

She's inviting me to her bedroom, when no one's home? Telling myself not to blush at the implications, I agree anyway, because I remember it looking nice from what I saw during our tour.

Her room is bright pink and lonlass-themed, with a beautiful canopy bed just like I remember the girls mentioning. The bed posts are shaped like the tree branches of an enchanted forest, a sequined pink cloth dangling from them and fake flowers decorating the entirety. Everything in the room is pink and sequined, in fact, minus the jelly lights along the wall that flash the colors of the rainbow. Gen leads me across the room into a giant swim-in cavern that holds an entire line of extravagant attire. Sparkling pastel-colored gowns catch my eye, their skirts large enough I could fit my entire body under one. The girls would have an eel day if they could see this. One would probably distract Gen while the other grabbed some dresses and swam off with them to sell and get rich.

When I finally peel my eyes away from the clothes, I notice the glass case in the center of the little room, sitting inside a circular bench; inside the glass are a pair of silicone lonlass fins propped up on a stand, the legs a lovely shade of lavender lined with orchid flowers and leaves. I press my face to the glass, staring at them in awe, and it takes me a second before I realize, those aren't just any lonlass fins... They're the ones from Gen's most recent music video.

"Are those the walking fins from 'Shore'?" I cry as she stops beside me.

Gen's most recent single "Shore" is this sentimental indie track about the alienation of fame. In the video, she plays a woman who's been living as a lonlass for many years, but who pines for her old home in the sea. She keeps returning to the same beach all the time with a distant look on her face, like she's searching for something but doesn't know what it is. From how I interpret it, the land symbolizes her life in the limelight while the ocean is either her childhood before all the attention or some imagined life she wishes she could have. I liked it a lot. It was creative and honest.

Gen's face goes through several stages of shock: exaggerated crying, blushing, sad guppy eyes, and then explosive delight. "You know SHORE? You watch my VIDEOS?"

I pause in embarrassment. The truth is, "Shore" is the only video I've watched, because it's trending right now so I just saw it out of curiosity. I should probably go home and watch more in case she ever mentions other songs and I have no idea what she's talking about.

"I mean... It's kinda impossible not to, with how much it's trending on TideTok." Not to mention they play it on the screens at school and at the dolph station and in YouTide ads and on the radio and just about everywhere. "Everyone's talking about your ethereal lonlass look, and all these girls are trying to recreate it, but they can't get their hands on these limited edition walking fins." I turn to stare at those very fins now, transfixed at how expensive they look. "I didn't realize you'd have them at your home."

A smile flits across her face and she does a happy little flap of her hands. "Mmh yeah, my costume designer let me keep them. Wanna try?"

I stare at her, thinking I must have heard wrong. "Try them on?"

Gen lowers herself to the cushion to unlock the case. "Yeah! They might be a little big on you, but..." She turns to stare at my tail, holding two fingers a width apart and moving them along the length of my tail. "If you want to..."