Dawn of the Mermaids

Chapter 4

While watching the shows, whenever one of the mermaids used their powers, I always kind of thought like "but is that all they can do?" So I kinda wanted to expand on what their capable of.
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Sereia

I trudge over to my locker and unlock it. I've just had Algebra 2 and Chemistry all in the morning, before lunch time. When am I ever going to need to know about supplementary angles, or when will I ever use scientific notation in life? It's not like I'm going to become a teacher. Naia breezes to her locker while humming a tune. Easy to be happy in the morning when all you've had is study and photography. "Hey." Is all I can muster right now.

"Hey!" She says before lowering her voice to a whisper, "had any trouble yet?"

"We did a lab in Chemistry today. I just had my partner fill the beakers with water, but other than that it was not bad." I whisper back.

"Hey girls. What're we whispering about?" Isla shoulders up next to us.

"Just if anything has happened so far." I told her.

"Ohh. Nope, nothing happened to me yet." Isla reports. I breathe a sigh of relief.

"Ok good now we just have to keep it that way..." I trail off as I look in the courtyard where McKenna is standing on one of the picnic tables.

"Sophomores listen up! I'm throwing the beginning of the school year party at my house on Friday. Party starts at 6 and remember to bring your swimsuits, because it's a pool party, and everyone's invited!" She yells. I turn to Isla and Naia.

"We have to go. We'll be so uncool if we don't, and we don't get invited to parties very much." I tell them matter-of-factly

"Didn't you hear her? It's a pool party. We can't go!" Naia says to me.

"So? We just won't get in and we'll avoid the pool."

"But there will be water everywhere so it's going to be nearly impossible to avoid. I say we don't go." She turns to Isla and raises her eyebrows.

"I mean, it wouldn't hurt anyone. And it shouldn't be too hard to avoid the water. It isn't like everybody is going to get in. McKenna threw an end of year pool party last year and it was only like her and her clique that got in while everyone just drank or played a game inside or on her lawn." Isla argues back.

"Hey girls, what's going on?" Aspen walks up and stands next to us. We all turn to him.

"Just talking about what to wear to McKenna's party." Is all Naia says.

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Despite Aspen's protests, we decided to meet at my house to get ready. I live about a 2-minute walk from McKenna, so it'd be the best place to get ready. I put on a teal blue bikini with matching bottoms, then slide on a tank top and my jean shorts. Naia has on her baby blue one piece with a cutout on her sides and back. She puts on her regular shorts. Isla is wearing her favorite red bikini and jean shorts as well, plus an oversized red shirt. Whoever said redheads don't look good in red clearly has never seen a redhead wearing red.

"Ok, let's do this." I squeal. We grab our bags and shoes and head out the door. We walk the short walk over to McKenna's and go around to the side entrance to get to the backyard. She has a pretty big backyard. There's a patio with a decent sized pool with floats in it, with a door leading up to her three-story white house with glass sliding doors. To the right of the pool is a huge fire pit with lots of chairs around it. Then there's the rest of her backyard that's just covered in grass and people standing around. There's white foldable tables out with chips and red solo cups. Next to them, are a couple coolers with alcohol and water in them. Just like before, only Mckenna and her friends are in the pool while others are sitting around the fireplace or inside, probably watching something on the TV. Most people are on her lawn mingling with each other. We walk over and join in on the conversations.

After a while. Naia drags me and Isla to the side and holds up her phone.

"The forecast says it's going to rain soon, we should really get going." Usually, I would want to stay longer, but the party is getting boring, and I also don't feel like explaining to my entire grade why the three of us all of a sudden grew tails. We agreed to leave and walk over to the gate. Other people do the same, so they don't get caught in the storm on their way back too. We have just barely walked a few feet when a girl behind me says she felt a raindrop. I turn to the girls.

"Run!" is all I can say before we take off toward my house. Just when my house comes into view, Naia grabs my elbow and Isla's hand then drags us behind some bushes. Just in time it seems, as she sprouts her tail right there.

"I felt a raindrop and panicked." She explains.

"Shoot! Now how will we get back? We can't touch water and any second now we'll transform as well." I say

"Quickly, Sereia, see if you can like control the water around us. Maybe you can stop it from hitting us!"

"What? I've only ever controlled water the few times we've practiced together at the cove, and even then, I can only control it for a couple seconds. I don't think I'll be able to do something like controlling the freaking rain!"

"Please! There's no harm in trying." Isla and Naia look at me with pleading eyes.

"Ok, but just give me a minute to get myself to focus." I turn away from them and close my eyes. Breathing in and out of my nose, I hold up my hands in front of me and push back every other thought that tries to pass through my brain. Whenever I am put in a position where people depend on me, I tend to not do well. But this is not the time for that. This has to work. I repeat that in my head over and over until I'm sure that I have convinced myself it's true. I take one big breath and then I clear my head.

I lock in on the sound of the rain hitting the trees above us. It's smell floating around in the atmosphere. "Sereia!" Naia yells from behind me. I faintly hear the shimmer sound of a tail making its appearance. I shove her voice out of my head and focus once more. I imagine the rain around us coming to a halt. Pausing in the air like someone hitting pause on a movie. I can almost feel the water in the grass under me, and in the air I breathe in. I feel it in the ants under the dirt, and maybe even in my friends behind me. I can feel the ocean thousands of miles beneath my feet, and at the shore of the beach. "Oh my god. You did it!"

Slowly, I open my eyes and look around me. It takes me a couple seconds to fully take in what I'm doing. The rain literally stopped falling down around us, like we had some invisible force shield blocking it from hitting us. It's not exactly as I imagined it, but it'll do for now. "Ok, we need to find a way to dry the both of you off quickly, because I don't think I can hold this for very long."

"I think I may have an idea..." Isla puts her hand on her and Naia's tails and shuts her eyes. A heart beat later, steam starts rolling off of their tails. Another beat later, their tails are gone and their legs are back.

"Isla, that's incredible!" Naia claps her hands together.

"I guess we're all kind of breaking the laws of physics today." Isla winks at me as she says this.

"Ok, let's please hurry to my house."

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We just barely crossed the threshold of my porch door before our shield burst. And with it, we all drop to the ground in relief. As we were speed-walking to my house, the bubble around us was starting to shrink, and we started to get worried that it would pop and we would be back at square one, but this time without any cover for our tails.

"That is enough adrenaline for my life." We all nod our agreements before pushing ourselves off the ground and stumbling into the house.

"Who wants some instant icy pops?" Naia says as she pulls out some pineapple juice from the fridge.