SirenBorn

Chapter 1

A/N: I know this has been even more anticipated, so here you go...

Selene POV

After the party, I think I'm going to dump him. Daniel Prime, I mean. The most popular guy in Eastern Regional High, and the guy who has stolen and broken nearly every girls' heart. Some boys as well, actually.

I'm one of those girls who hasn't lost her heart to him though. Yes, we're dating. Yes, we've kissed. Yes, sex under the bleachers in the yard. No, I don't actually like him. And I'm the most popular girl in school, so my status is on the line here! Either Daniel actually wants to be with me, or he's on the same page as I am, us being the popular kids and the most popular couple, we kind of get more popular with this.

Anyway, I was going through all the scenarios of Daniel's reactions to being told I don't want to be with him anymore, when your typical popular wannabe walks up to me, and, as with pretty much everyone else in ERH, she blabbers on about how amazing it must be to have Daniel wrapped around my finger like I have him. As usual I didn't really listen, just nodding in the right places like I've been doing, and mastered, since grade four.

Reaching into the back pocket of my miniskirt, I pulled out a piece of gum and popped it in my mouth. The bitch still gushing with envy, I thought, uugh please just go away! And, to my surprise, she shut up and walked down the hall to her locker.

Did I say that out loud?

I was thinking, maybe she can read faces really well, when someone else came up to me. What is going on today? Why does everyone want to talk to me? Well yeah, it was the day before my sweet sixteen, but last year, people only came on the actual day, not right before. I must be more amazing than I thought. Ha.

This guy was cute though. Not Daniel cute, but the kind of cute that makes you wish the both of you were in the same biology class or something. Eww, no. Not biology. Maybe, like, calculus.

I pushed that thought out of my mind as I tried to listen to what he was saying.

He nervously combed his hand through his hair, avoiding eye contact. "I was wondering if you'd, maybe, wanna, um" -is he gonna ask me out? That would be a pretty stupid move, since everyone knows I wont go - "cheat on my girlfriend with me?"

Well. Not exactly what I was expecting, but this'll do. It's great actually! It will give me the perfect opportunity to supposedly break Daniel's heart. Or not.

Not letting the excitement show on my face, I replied, "I'll think about it." which is, of course, what I say to anything anyone asks me, and stalked off down the hall, realizing I forgot to get his name. Oh well.

**

I dove in, barely making a splash, the cool water isolating me from the rest of the world, cocooning me in a bubble of calm. But sometimes the silence gets unbearable, painfully loud in the way that only quietness can.

A sudden pain in my heart, almost like someone plunged a knife into it, made me gasp and choke on the water.

I burst through the surface and coughed, remembering.

My mom.

She used to take me freediving, back before she left.

She fucking left me. Left me here with my dad, left us with the grief and pain of loving someone who didn't love us back. Actually, no one really knows what happened to her, she just sorta disappeared one day and never came back. The case had closed and been declared as a voluntary... abandonment? When they came to tell us, I knew that they hadn't found her, so I went upstairs and moped in my room, only half listening to what was going on.