Irreversible (h.s)

Chapter 3

Coralie's POV

        I wake up the next morning feeling like garbage. I probably shouldn't have eaten so many shrimp at the wedding reception.. The memories from the previous night start to cloud my head and I laugh. I have never seen Echo so drunk in my entire life, she was practically floating away. I hop out of my clam and get ready for the day. Every morning my sister and I meet my father so we can eat our breakfast, but now that my sister is gone, it wont be the same. 

        "Good morning." I say to my father as I swim into the kitchen. He gives me a sad smile before he turns back around to make breakfast. "Missing Echo?" I ask as I hug my father from behind. 

"Of course I do." He wraps his fin around me and gives me a kiss on my forehead. After ten minutes have passed, the shrimp and lobster are finally ready for us to eat and I dig in immediately. My father seems hesitant as first, causing confusion to rip through me. 

"Dad, what's wrong?" I question. 

"I told you already, I miss Echo." He says, making no eye contact. 

"I understand that, but there is something else you aren't telling me." I cross my fins and raise my eyebrow. The room seems to heat up while I am waiting for my father to answer a simple question. 

"I need to tell you something." He finally admits. 

"I figured." 

"About your mother." Oh. 

"What is it then?" My voice had seemed to shrink and I felt weak. My father hasn't brought my mother up since she died. 

"I have been lying to you about her. She's not dead honey- well she might be. I don't know for sure." My heart starts to beat a million beats per second. 

"How do you not know if your own wife is dead?" I practically snarl. 

"She crossed the barrier." I nod for him to go on. "Your mother and I were fighting so much that previous month that I suppose she just decided to leave. I watched her cross the border, and swim to the shore." 

"So she just decided to leave her whole family to become a siren? You're lying." I demand, tensing my body. He shakes his head back and forth and grimaces. 

"I'm not lying, I wish I was. After a couple weeks went by I accepted the fact that she was gone. Then a month after the incident I was swimming around the palace to keep guard and I saw something outside the barrier that was suspicious. As I approached it I noticed the similarities between your mother and the creature. I realized that it was your mother, but she was a siren. She was holding another person- but it was a dry-lander. I watched as she took her claws and ripped the heart straight from the dry-landers body and eat it. I was in such shock that I watched the human body sink to the coral reef and keep sinking into a black abyss. When I looked back up your mother was gone, and I've never seen her sense." My father puts his fin to his head and massages it like he has a headache. 

"How could you keep that from me for sixteen years?" I scream. My father jumps back as though I have struck him. 

"I wanted to make sure you were old enough to understand." 

"Father, I am eighteen! I have known about sirens since I was ten. I would've handled it. You let me live my entire life thinking that my mother was dead when she might be out on land killing people! How could you?" I cry out. I swim out of the kitchen as fast as my tail will let me and zoom to my room. I have never felt this betrayed in my entire life. Does Echo know about this? I grab my shell phone and type in her number. 

"Hello?" She purrs. 

"Did you know about mom?" I question immediately. I hear a bang and a gasp in the background as though she hit something. 

"Yes." She whispers. I sit in silence, mustering what to say back to her. "Coralie?" She asks. 

"I hate you." I seethe, hanging up the phone. I swim out onto my balcony and stare at the ocean around me. How could my own family keep this from me? The next hour I sit in silence,  watching the fish and happy merpeople swim around me. My eye latches onto a flounder fish and I notice a shimmer of light coming from it. As the fish swims away, I find myself swimming towards it.

"Come here little guy." I whisper as I near it. It seems as though the fish decided to swim faster at my arrival and I have to keep up the pace to see what is wrapped around it. After ten minutes I finally catch up to the mysterious fish and I latch onto the jewelry that is hanging on him. As I pull it off, I notice it to be a necklace. 

"Now how did this end up around you?" I giggle while letting the fish swim free. I hold the silver chain in my fins, and investigate it. It seems to be a locket, the back is engraved with the letter S. The inside of the locket is empty, but a small quote is engraved on the inside, "Big things often have small beginnings." I smile and clamp the necklace around my neck. I look around at my surroundings and notice that everything seems different. My eyes grow wide in realization as I swim back to my house- or at least try. My body slams into the jelly border, causing myself to be shot back. 

I crossed the border. 

I am never going to be able to go home. 

        I swim all the way around the border three times until I end up in the same spot I was in before. I pull at my blonde hair, this can't be happening. I sit on a coral reef that is beside me and I think about what to do. Should I swim further into the ocean to discover new things? Should I stay outside the border until someone sees me? I look behind me into the newly discovered ocean and I swim into it. 

        An hour later I have found things that my eyes have never seen. The species of animals vary from so many things, not just fish. A big gray fish with a pointy fin and sharp teeth swam by me, causing myself to swim back in fear. As I do that, my tail gets caught in a brown rope. I look up to the surface and I notice a black blur floating at the top. I shake my tail as hard as possible but my tail will not come free. 

I am stuck inside a net. 

I am either going to be killed, or become a siren. 

I'd rather be killed.