Drowning

Chapter 1

I sat on the couch with my dad next to me. I had been waiting here for ten minutes, and my sisters were taking forever to change into their bathing suits.
We were at our cabin in northern Minnesota. It was late July, and school was only about a month away. The cabin was on a lake on which we swimming on almost everyday. I loved tubing especially and I also knew how to go kneeboarding. I know, I'm pretty talented. I had two sisters and one brother. My brother was at camp at the moment, and my two sisters were getting changed to go swimming.
"Ready?" My two sisters, Emily and Audrey, were standing beside the couch.
"Finally." I murmured.
"Let's go." Emily, the older of the two headed out the door.
Daniel was the oldest of us all. Then it was me, Emily, then Audrey, the youngest.
I jumped in the water with a splash. Swimming was so much fun, and I loved to see if I could find fish or find other things in the water.
I looked around with my beautiful brown eyes. My hair was flowing brown with blonde streaks running through it. I turned my hand over the sand and revealed a white shell with gorgeous pink lines running through it. I got out of the shallow water and observed it some more.
After that, I decided to look for things a little deeper. For some reason, I felt pulled even deeper, to where I couldn't touch. I swam to the bottom to look around.
There was a huge gap in the sand. It looked like a deep pit but it obviously led somewhere, and I was just small enough to fit in. I pulled up for a breath of hair, then swam. It kept going deeper and deeper, and the more I got convinced it was just a hole. Suddenly, the tunnel turned sharply to the left. I followed the way.
My lungs screamed for air and I was starting to panic. Then, the tunnel sped upward. I followed it swimming as fast as I could. I could feel my head get lightheaded, for I was finally out of air.
My head shot out of the surface. I gasped for air and reached for something to grab ahold to. I touched a smooth, rocky surface.
I opened my eyes. I was in a cave that seemed to made out of some kind of dark, purple stone. The pond in the center lit up the hole place and was surprisingly bright blue, unlike the lake. It looked like a hot tub, with bubbles swirling around and steam rising out from the water. But the water wasn't at all hot, in fact, it was very cold. Once I looked around some more, the whole place looked very creepy. The water, ancient stalactites shooting down from the ceiling, and darkness lurking in the corners. I needed to get out of here.
I turned around and looked for the hole. The hole, which had been gaping widely in the center of the pool, was gone. Disappeared- just like that. I was starting to panic. I need to get out of here. Suddenly, everything went black.

~~~

"Amy?"
"Amy?!"
"Amy!"
I heard a familiar voice calling my name.
"I'm here." I groaned. When I spoke, my mouth felt dry and a weird taste was still lingering on my tongue.
"Water..." I commanded.
"Audrey, quick, get a glass of water." I heard Mom whisper in a tense voice. "Are you okay? What happened?"
I turned to her, surprised. "Don't you know what happened?!"
"No. You were just laying on the dock, coughing up blood." She said, confused.
"All I remember is fainting in this weird place, and now I'm here." I coughed.
Audrey hurriedly ran down the stairs with a glass of water teetering on her hand.
"You better get to bed." Mom felt my forehead as I drank the water to wash down the blood in my throat.
"But it's only about 8:00." I argued.
"Sweetie, it's 10:00." Mom corrected.
"But the sun..." I turned around and realized it was gone. "Oh."
"Now come inside, the mosquitoes will eat you alive."
I followed Mom inside, and I convinced myself that the cave was just a bad nightmare.

~~~

Morning.

Glorious Morning.
I woke up to the sun shining through my window. I yawned, then got out of bed.
"Good morning." Dad was frying bacon on the stove. "Mom told me about what happened last night. Are you okay?"
"Oh it's fine. Practically nothing happened. I feel fine, so I'd just like to forget about it."
Dad nodded and returned to what he had been doing.
"Are Emily and Audrey up yet?" I asked Dad.
"Emily is up, but not Audrey." Dad answered.
"Where's Emily?"
"She went swimming with Mom."
I rushed into the bathroom to change into my swimsuit. I put on my one piece orange bathing suit with white shorts slipped on over it.
"Wait!!" I called.
"Relax Amy. We've only been swimming for less than five minutes." Emily replied.
"I just don't like missing out." I sat on the dock, about to put my feet in the water.
"I don't think you should go swimming today." Mom commented.
"I feel fine. It was all a crazy nightmare."
"Okay, but be careful..." Mom said uneasily.
"I'm FINE." I assured her. "See?" I casually walked to the very end of the dock, and then jumped off into the water.
"Okay." Mom sighed.
WOAH. MY LEGS WERE GLOWING.
"Um... Excuse me a minute. I'm gonna go look over there..." I uneasily walked to the deep area, where no one was looking. Then, I gasped.
My legs were really glowing. Then, the glowing stopped. I let out a breath of air. I tried to catch my footing, but something seemed wrong with my legs. I struggled to move them like I had before. I lost balance and fell back into the water. The fall was sudden, and I didn't have enough time to take a gulp of air before I went under. That ended up in me swallowing a whole bunch of water. As the water slid down my throat, it felt and tasted different. Different than it had before. It almost seemed natural. Then, I swallowed some more. It didn't taste like water. It felt like nothing, like air, going down my neck. Soon, I was breathing it, as if it was air.
Then I opened my eyes. My hair was floating around my face. MY hair?! I tugged on it to make sure it was mine. My beautiful light brown hair with blonde streaks was now dark brown, almost black, at the top. The bottoms faded into a dark and sparkly blue. It didn't look bad, but it looked fairly strange to me. I was always used to my hair the way it was.
After staring into my hair, I pulled it out of my face.
MY LEGS.
I DON'T HAVE ANY LEGS.
I HAVE A TAIL.
My mouth gaped. I was a fish.
No... There was a word for this creature...
Mermaid. Right. I'm a mermaid.
I had a glossy silver tail. The scales covered most of my body. They covered all of my stomach and stopped about an inch below my neck. I had scales climbing halfway up my back, with two large, feathered wings sticking out in the center. They were folded up and hardly noticeable.
Wings? Why would I need wings underwater? I can swim. I probably will never use them anyway. I put the thought away and went back to gazing at my tail. Was this what that weird pond did to me? It made me into a mermaid.
Mom would wonder where I was. I needed to get out of the water.
I swam to a place where no one can see me. Behind the house. The house was right on the water.
Wow. I can swim really fast.
I climbed up a row of rocks with my hands, for my tail was of no use on land. I laid myself down on the grassy moss area and wondered how to get rid of this tail.
Something was wrong with me. I could sense it now that I was out of the water. My eyes. They felt really different and weird. I could feel a tingling sensation flooding through them. And my vision was slightly blurred in the corners.
While I was focused on the feeling in my eye, my tail started to glow again.
I started counting.
"One... Two... Three..." My tail stopped glowing exactly when I reached ten, and then I had my own legs back.
Now I understood. I had to be dry to have legs. While I was laying in the sun, thinking about my eyes, I was drying off. Whenever I touch water, I have ten seconds before I got a tail. That wasn't hard. I could do this. I just had to keep this a secret. That would be the hard part.
"Amy!!" I heard Mom call.
"I'm here!" I called back. I rushed back to her in the same swimsuit I had been wearing before I turned into a... Yeah, you know.
"Where were you? Are you okay? Do you feel blood in your throat again? How are you so dry?" She looked at me with concern.
"Mom, I'm fine. I was just swimming. I just dried off because I'm kinda done." I replied calmly.
My Mom scanned me over with suspicion, but then turned back around to swim with Emily.
I let out a breath of relief, then headed back to the house.