Rikki surfaced in the moonlight. Cleo and Emma’s heads popped up just seconds after hers. Their swim had taken up a lot more time than expected. The girls swam all around the reef, playing hide and seek and just exploring the underwater world. By the time the girls thought to go back, they had to locate the coral cave. That took at least another half hour, and there were boats about. Well, just one boat. But they couldn’t make a lot of movement when there was a risk of being seen.
“I found it.” Cleo said. “This way.”
She led them to the coral cave and they swam through it quickly. Rikki hoped Bella was still there. But it was very likely that she’d given up on waiting for them, and swam back to the dorms.
Instead, the lagoon showed a very strange sight. There were two girls in the water, and one mermaid.
“Bella!” Cleo gasped. “What happened?” she swam over to Bella, ignoring the other two girls. Rikki and Emma, however, focused on the two red-heads. Sophie and Charlotte.
“I went to explore and found a land entrance to the cave.” Bella was almost crying. “I came back to the waterfall and the moon was already almost up. I tried to stop them, but…”
Bella actually started crying now. Rikki and Emma glared at Sophie and Charlotte, and swam over to comfort Bella.
“What happened?” Emma asked gently.
“Sophie and Charlotte got into the lagoon when the moon passed over. The water bubbled and everything. I tried to stop them but I dove through the waterfall and hit the rocks.” Bella explained anxiously.
“You’re bleeding!” Cleo said. Bella had a cut on her head, and a few on her stomach.
“I hit my head earlier…” she said, clasping a hand to the cut on her head. “
“What do we do about them?” Rikki asked, glaring at Sophie and Charlotte. They were starting to walk out of the lagoon, their clothes dripping.
“Charlotte might not have got powers.” Emma suggested. “The moonpool took them away forever, remember? That other girl, though…she will probably have a tail tomorrow.”
Rikki groaned. She hated Sophie and Charlotte. There couldn’t possibly be six mermaids.
“How did they get here anyway?” Bella asked. She had calmed down a great deal since they first found her.
Rikki had a realization. “That boat that we hid from while we were swimming. That was probably them. They must’ve followed us.”
“You can stop whispering about us!” Charlotte yelled to them from across the lagoon. Sophie was staring at them wide-eyed. She looked like she didn’t expect them to be mermaids.
“Go away, Charlotte.” Rikki snapped at her. She turned back to her friends. “Let’s meet up at the café tomorrow and talk about this.”
The girls agreed and they swam away, Sophie and Charlotte still staring after them. Rikki wanted to stick her tongue out at Sophie, but didn’t want to make her mad until she knew whether or not Sophie was a mermaid.
Back at the dorms, the girls split up. There were two different dorms for freshman, one for boys and one for girls. Each of her friends were on a different floor. Rikki was on the third. She had only been in her dorm room a few times since college started, just to sleep and unpack. She didn’t like her roommate much.
Her name was Tessa. She was the definition of a spoiled Gold Coast girl, the type of girl she would expect Zane to date. Actually, Tessa reminded Rikki of Miriam Kent.
One half of the room was “pink and chic” as Tessa liked to put it. Then there was Rikki’s half. She wasn’t sure how, but her side was already a mess.
Rikki collapsed on her bed and tried not to stress herself out. Tomorrow they would test Sophie and Charlotte for powers, and there was a chance they wouldn’t have any. But then they would have to deal with Sophie knowing about mermaids…
She took a deep breath and attempted to calm herself down. She would deal with these problems the way she always had, one at a time. They could move past this. They had to move past this.
But if the next few months of college were like her first few days, Rikki wasn’t sure she could.
