It all began in sixth hour swimming, and thankfully it was the last day of school before spring break. I had been in the class for ten minutes already, and we were just waiting for the go ahead to get into the pool. Everyone had to change and then we had to take roll. Finally, we started taking roll after the boys came out of their locker room. They were probably messing around in there because they always seem to do that.
Today was a free day in class so the boys are probably going to be even more wild. We couldn't really start a new stroke or anything when we would just go to break and forget everything. Not that it really mattered for me anyway, I have been swimming since I was six months old. I know that is kind of young and everything but the younger you are in the water the less it scares you as you get older and start to learn how to swim.
I started swim lessons when I was one because I was in a baby and parent class. Then I went through a ten-station swim program. After I passed the last station I went onto the competitive swim team. I really only took this class because I didn't want to take gym and this was an easy substitute. Plus, I love swimming so it worked out okay no matter what.
Our teacher finally finished doing roll, and she sets her stuff back into the blue cloth bag that she always brings with her to class. She stands up to her full height of five-foot-three. She swishes her blond ponytail back behind her shoulders where it should be. She then stares at us and adjusts her purple tank top, that is matched with black knee length shorts. She sighs then gives us the okay to get into the pool. The class briskly walks to the pool before most of the class jumps in creating a huge wave that drowns anyone that has popped back up out of the water.
I wait until the water calms down then I walk over to the deep end and slide into the water. My skin immediately starts to burn and itch all over my legs. I look down trying to see what is going on with my legs. I rub my legs like crazy trying to get the burning to calm down and trying to satisfy the itch. The more I rub my legs the worse it gets. I decide I need to get out and see if I can put some lotion or something on my legs to calm them down.
I look around for the nearest ladder when I notice that I have drifted about half way out in the deep trying to figure out what was going on with my legs. I quickly swim freestyle with my head out of the water over to the ladder and climb out. I look down at my legs, and I notice that they are all red and irritated. I walk over to my teacher and show her what is going on with my legs. She looks at them and asks me, "Are you allergic to chlorine Sereia."
I look at her appalled that she would even think that. She knows how good of a swimmer I am, I have only been in her swim classes for almost two years now. I answer her, "Not that I know of and I would think that I would know if I am by this point in time."
"OK Sereia, let's get you to the nurse's office just in case you are having an allergic reaction to something. Go ahead and change, then you can walk to the nurse's office." I nod my understanding and start to walk off to the locker-room.
I get to the entrance of the locker room as my teacher calls out, "Remember to come get the pass for the nurse's office before you leave."
I walk into the locker room and quickly change. I grab my bags, then I walk over to my teacher so that I can grab my note. I start heading down to the nurse's office that conveniently is just to the left of the pool. On the down side I have to walk around the pool to get to the nurse's office.
My high school is a fairly small high school, but one of the biggest in my town. It is only one floor and the biggest class is probably around 350 students. We have a lot of space though, so we have a lot of equipment for the arts, and sports programs. I turn out of the pool and walk through the empty cafeteria before I make my way to the breeze way. It has brick columns on each side of it, with a ceiling covering the open walkway.
I then re-enter the school and take a left into the nurse's office. I quickly sign in with the secretary, then I take a seat in the waiting room. It is kind of nice to have a real doctor's office in the school, but it also has its downsides. An example of this is the sterile smell, and the white everything. The white walls, floor, tables, lights... white everything, and they always seem to think that decorating the office with dark brown furniture and a random painting is going to make the office friendlier.
The nurse has looked at my legs and told me that they look fine. I guess it could have been a mild allergic reaction according to the nurse. I told them that I don't feel very good, and that whatever happened took a toll on me. So here I am driving home early from school which is great because I get to go to bed. I get to take a nap, and I got to start spring break early! Yay me!
I park my car in the driveway of my house and open the two-car garage door. I walk through noticing that my mom is home because her grey minivan is parked in the garage. I then make my way to my room, I throw my stuff on the little black futon couch I have in my room. I then plop on my bed and I instantly fall asleep.
I wake up to my mom walking into my room opening my door, talking to me. I stare at her in confusion completely missing what she had said.
"Why are you home early from school today? Was there an assembly or something that I missed the phone call for?" She asks again once she realized I didn't catch what she had asked the first time.
"No, the nurse sent me home, I had an allergic reaction in swimming today and was completely drained. I only came home an hour early."
"Oh, are you okay? What was the reaction to and what about homework for the class you missed?" She says as I can already see her worrying about my last class which was history.
I am okay, just tired. The nurse didn't know what the reaction was caused by and we were watching a movie today in class so I haven't missed anything."
She nods her approval before telling me "Well just make sure you take some allergy medication so you can get whatever caused it completely out of your system. I am going to go start on dinner."
I nod my understanding and plop back on to my bed. I grab my backpack and start on my homework, the sooner I can get this finished the sooner I can enjoy my break! When I say enjoy I mean watch Netflix and get out of bed as little as possible.
I get my homework done and turn on my TV to start watching Netflix, when I get called downstairs for dinner. I make my way downstairs and my mom has a plate all dished up for me. I grab it and tell her thank you. I then head back to my room and start my Netflix bingeing.
The rest of the weekend went by normally without anything out of the normal. I didn't have any more problems with water or anymore allergic reactions. My mom mostly just wrote that off as a weird incident. So, my break went on, with me rarely leaving my bed and watching so much Netflix that I can't even remember what shows I had started out on. My mom usually leaves some stuff for me to do hoping that it at least gets me out of bed. Which it does but only for like twenty minutes that it takes for me to do most of it.
On Monday the official start of our break some of my friends want to go swimming, and they invited me to go to the beach with them. We all live relatively close to the beach so we will all be walking to the beach. I quick grab what I need and then make my way to the beach. I get there at the same time two of my friends are strolling up.
I wait for them to get to me and then I ask, "Who else is coming?" They respond with a shoulder shrug.
"Okay then well let's get our beach day started!" I shout as I bounce my way down to the sand so I can go find a good place to lay our towel and put our stuff down.
I get my towel laid out and grab the tanning spray and spray myself down with it. I then make my way towards the water and go running in. I take off swimming as fast as I can with the waves being thrown against my body. I notice something shiny partial covered in the sand. The sun shining through the water seems to gleam off of the object. I come back up to the surface and catch my breath. I look around and see my friends laying on their towels with their sunglasses on.
I take a deep breath and dive down to try and see what the object is. I get within arm's length of the object and start shifting the sand away from the object. I get the object cleared off and I see a necklace. The necklace has a silver chain with a clasp on the back. I pick up the chain and see that there is what looks like a mermaid tail pendant. I swish it around in the water some trying to clean it off a little bit.
I eventually decide to go back up to the surface so I can get a better look. I start treading water as I realize that it is indeed a mermaid tail with blue opals making up the tail. I flip it over and see something engraved on the back of the tail. I just can't make out what it says, but it seems on the shorter side. So, I don't think it is a sentence, maybe a name or a meaningful word.
I decide to head back to my friends and stuff so I can put the necklace in the bag. I get to my friends and see that Rose my best friend is sound asleep with a horrible sun burn going on. I wonder if she forgot to put on sun block because she is horribly red. Lilly my other friend was nowhere in sight which was weird because I just saw her. Yes... I realize that both of friends names are flower names. Why? I have no clue and I just happened to be the odd one out, but whatever. No hard feelings here... at all... nope... not me.
Any way I grab my phone and start looking up jewelers who might be able to clean the necklace. It is in okay condition but it has obviously been in the water for a while to. Maybe they will even be able to make out the name and be able to tell me.
My phone starts ringing and I see that my mom is calling. I look at my phone and see that it is five in the afternoon! We have been here almost all day. I look around and see Lilly now on her blanket tanning and Rose is in the water.
"Lilly! It is five! We need to get home now! My mom has already called me and your parents will be furious!"
Lilly jumps up and starts running towards where Rose is swimming. I quickly start throwing our stuff together. I finish just as the two girls join me again. We all grab our bags and take off running in the direction of our houses. One thing we all have in common is how strict our parents are. They give us some freedom as long as we do everything we are supposed to. That includes being home before five thirty no matter what day it is. We have to have permission if we are staying out later than that. Unfortunately, that is something that all of our parents decided on, when we had one of our get togethers.
I make it to my house at five twenty. I see Rose make it to her house which is about seven houses down from mine at five twenty-five. I start heading in because I know if I wait much longer my mom will be getting mad, plus I never did answer her phone call when she called around five. Opps.
I walk into my house and look around for my mother.
"Mom I am home... Where are you?" I call out after I saw that she was not in the living room or kitchen.
I hear her yell back from somewhere in the house. "Go get cleaned up and then I will meet you in the living room. I need to talk to you."
I do as she says as I make my way to my room. I sigh as I think about what I could have possibly done wrong now. Whenever she says we need to talk it never ends up being a good thing. The last time she was like we need to talk I ended up getting grounded because one of my classes grade slipped to a B. I quickly put my stuff down in the shower and shake out any sand. I clean up what I need to and take a quick shower once everything was put away. I quickly changed into a pair of yoga pants and a baggy shirt.
I make my way down stairs towards the living room and see my mom making her way into the living room. I go and sit in my normal spot, the love couch by the window. I can curl up here and look out the window if I did something to make someone really mad. Mom goes and just picks a seat in the living room. We sit in awkward silence for a while as I was looking out the window.
Mom eventually sigh, "We need to talk. I just want you to know you are not in trouble. I just need to tell you something I probably should have told you a while ago."
I look over to her and sit up. I don't think we have ever had a talk without me being in trouble. She seems like whatever she wants to talk about is really weighing on her. I give her a reassuring smile to continue what she is trying to tell me.
She hangs her head a little. She eventually looks back at me and says," Your adopted."
I gasp and I don't even really know how to respond to what she said... Wait! She is joking right. I start smiling because I figured it out! It is the joke to make right now anyway.
My mom looks at me and realizes that I really think she is messing with me. She looks really confused and looks conflicted.
"Honey I am not joking, I need to tell you a story. When your dad and I were on our second wedding anniversary we were on a sailboat exploring the coast. We saw a basket floating towards us so we tried to steer the boat towards it. As we got closer we heard what sounded like crying. Your father got into the water to get the basket and when he brought it aboard the boat we found you. The only thing on you was a necklace that had Sereia engraved on the back of it. We reached out to so many agencies and people and never heard anything back. One day we were finally able to get the papers processed for adoption because by that time no one had any leads on where you came from."
I don't even know what to say. How do you respond to that and she seems like she is not joking. I have so many questions to ask but I don't even know where to start. How do you even process something like that? "What... How?" I squeak out.
"Well when we got you to the doctor's they estimated that you were around nine months. They pinned it down to two dates for your birthday. So, we picked the last day, May 1, 2005. Later when you were approaching your sixth birthday you started getting sick. The only time you felt okay was when we would take you to the water and you would play. You would act like nothing was wrong when you were in the water. You would then be okay for the next two weeks or so and then it would start all over again. The doctor's couldn't figure out what was wrong and since we knew nothing about your medical history we were all lost. All we could figure out that was different was that during those couple months was your swim teams break. On your sixth birthday you wanted to go to the beach so that is where we took you."
I nod I remember that birthday I loved swimming around with my parents watching me. Mom did leave at one point but I never got to ask her about why she left.
"Someone was calling to you but me and your father couldn't pinpoint it. We looked around for a while and you never seemed to notice that there was a female voice calling for you. I eventually left at one point so I could try and find the voice. I walked forever and then a woman come out of the water and asked if I was the one taking care of you. She told me that she was your mother and explained that she couldn't keep you because you were in danger. To sum it up she was the next in line for the crown and was a mermaid. You weren't showing any of your powers or changing so people were starting to threaten you. I guess she had been watching us and sent you to us so you would be safe. She said if you were going to start changing it would be around your sixteenth birthday that is in two months. I just need you to be prepared."
"Mom? What do you mean I don't understand?"
How could this be true? My whole life has been a lie. I am not who I thought I am, then again who am I now? I think I need to go to my room and think this over, I don't even know how to process this. I excuse myself from my mom and head straight to my room.
"I am a mermaid?" I say out loud as I sink into my bathtub taking comfort from the water.
A/N:
Hi everyone! I know I have not written in a while, but here you go. I am going to try working on these some more. I feel like I am improving! Let me know what you think?! This one doesn't have a prompt again. Please comment, vote, and enjoy!!
Marie