Under the Sea *Book One* Water Trilogy

~Twenty Four~

"Heidi," I laughed in disbelief as she did an awkward looking yoga position. After I had taken the phone from my mom I had apparently sounded depressed so Heidi felt the need to rush on over, insisting that yoga would relax me. If only I was flexible then maybe it would have.

"What? It feels good on my back."

"I can't do whatever it is you're doing."

"Oh, well you should work on that," she said while getting up. "But since you can't do advanced yoga, I guess we can do something else."

"How generous of you," I mocked jokingly and Heidi gave me the playful shut up look. I tied my blonde hair up in a bun, half tempted to cut it to my chin, before walking to the kitchen to heat up pizza rolls. We snacked in peace for five seconds before Heidi started talking again.

"So, Jacob's tackle shop. How's that working out?"

"He called me today. He's keeping the shop closed for the day. He's going fishing."

"Going fishing. You know what that means don't you?" Heidi asked. "He's hunting mermaids today."

My heart thumped and blood rushed to my cheeks. I had to remind myself that Finn was safe deep in Atlantica and the only one who would come here would be Meri and she wouldn't come back so soon. I also had to keep reminding myself that Heidi didn't know the things I knew and she was just picking on Crazy Jim not actually telling the truth.

"Hunting mermaids. That's ridiculous. Mermaids don't exists, Heidi."

"You never know," she said lightly, almost like she knew the truth. I knew she didn't. "You don't know the story."

"What story?"

"The story of Jim and his family." I shook my head. They had their own story? "I'll tell you it. You know how much I love gossip," I smirked.

Heidi did enjoy telling peoples business. "Okay, Jim had a wife named Shelly and a son named Jacob. When Jacob was ten they all went boating, which they did a lot by the way considering Jim was a fisherman. Anyway, Shelly had been acting strange during the ride. I guess Jim had relaxed and closed his eye. When he woke up, they were gone. At first everyone thought that he was crazy and had killed his wife. But he searched at sea for them for a whole year."

"People finally started to believe him so they sent out a search party; but, even if he had killed them their bodies were long gone. So eventually Jim had to stop searching. I mean, you can't live off nothing. He opened a Tackle Shop named after his son. He still went fishing after everything because..."

"Because?" I was on the edge of my seat.

"He thinks his wife and son are still out there. He says his wife sent him some sort of message that they were alright. A day later he thought he saw his wife swimming out there. And on the third day," Heidi was deep into the story telling. "He saw a tail of a mermaid. Anyway, he's been searching for her or some other types of merpeople ever since."

"I-"

"He's crazy," I stopped what I was saying. "Besides, things like that are myths."

"Right, nothing but myths."

"Just promise to be careful."

I let out a light laugh. "I promise."

Heidi left quickly after her mother called to tell her that her sister needed to be baby sat. So I did what I often did, sat on the dock and waited for Meri, a sketch pad and pencil in hand. I had free time often and I wasn't liking it as much as I use to. On the positive side of Finn getting me to finally start swimming, when it was hot I no longer just sat on the dock sweating; I actually got in.