Somehow

Optimism Vs. Pessimism: The Make-or-Break of a Summer Vacation

Where is my heart beating
Somewhere under that water?
If I dive, will I get over
Will I join the deep?

Civil Twilight (modified)- "Story of an Immigrant"

The water was warm. Too warm. He could feel the heaters working overtime to counteract the chill of his body, rising up in steam clouding the inside of the sealed tank.

There wasn't much oxygen here, and although that was fine and good for now, he knew somehow that it wouldn't be for long.

Phantom couldn't believe he let this happen. Couldn't believe he fell right into the clutches of these humans. He trusted them, and they silenced him by sealing him inside a tank he knew would eventually kill him.

He could see them staring at him through the thick glass of the tank, eyes narrowed into slits and brows drawn together in betrayal. It looked like they were arguing. Mouths forming words he couldn't hear. He didn't care, though – he was miserable. Trapped in a tank, held captive by these humans for reasons he couldn't bring himself to fully understand.

Somehow, he ended up here. And somehow, he was going to get out.

Glancing at the stunned-looking dark haired girl whose expression was a mixture of hurt and wonderment, Phantom felt a glimmer of hope residing in those odd violet eyes that gave almost nothing away.

He knew her. And Phantom also knew that through her, he had his out. But it would take time.

Time he wasn't sure if he had.

Before.

"I have no idea why you're so adamant about this, Samantha."

"Mom."

"I mean just look at all of the other beneficial, useful ways for you to use your time and talents—"

"Mom."

"—You could do so many other things, Sammy. You're a smart girl; you're doing so well. Your father and I are well enough off that you don't require—"

"Mom."

"—A scholarship. Honestly, we both would rather you stayed away from practices civilized women shouldn't bother themselves with. If you—"

"MOM."

"—Would trust us." Palma Manson sighed heavily, sweeping a primly manicured hand through rich strawberry blonde curls. "We could come to a compromise. Honey, we're your parents. We know what's—"

"Don't," Sam held up a hand, glowering, fed up with this months-old argument. It was stale. It was old-news, ancient history. "Don't pull that… crap with me, Mom. We've talked about this before. I know what's best for me – and your input is unnecessary."

Palma bristled at the biting comment, an afterthought on her daughter's part but no-less insulting. "Now you listen here, young lady. I'm your mother. I can call this whole escapade off anytime I want to—"

"No you can't." Sam stated, a low, bitter chuckle reverberating through her vocal cords. "I'm eighteen. You can try as much as you want – I'm not giving up this internship just because you don't agree with it."

"But it's the Fentons, Sammy. The Fentons. Those lunatics are disgraceful. Crazy. They're obsessed, Samantha. I don't want to expose my daughter to the likes of them—"

"The likes of them?!" Sam exploded, feeling on some level personally attacked by her mother's words. "Mother. Maddie and Jack Fenton are geniuses. They're the best marine biologists in the country. Arguably the best in the world! You have no idea how hard it was to land an internship with them. I'm not giving this up, I don't care what you have to say about it."

"You will when this bites you in the ass, Samantha Nicole Manson!" Palma hissed at her daughter, sensing that she had lost this argument – her previous neutral and condescending stance souring into something more hostile. "Your father and I do not support this. We'll find a way to get through to you, Samantha. You best be ready for it."

"Try me." Sam stated, nonplused. Palma did this often – making threats she never kept. Although she talked a big talk, the redheaded woman couldn't hurt a fly.

She'd probably hire someone to do it for her.

"I'm keeping that internship, Mother." Sam stated, standing from her seat with a scowl, shaking the flimsy outdoor garden table she and her mother were seated at. "That's final."

Sam left before Palma could utter another word. God, her mother could be so ignorant. Didn't she understand just how big of an opportunity this was for Sam? It took months for Sam to land this internship. Months. She's talked with countless interviewers, filled out innumerable applications, and submitted every credential she could think of to even be considered for the position.

The Fentons needed only one intern. That intern would be paid, of course, but their job was to help the Fentons in their studies. Hundreds of people along the coast of Florida applied. Most of them were college students. Some of them were graduate students. All of them specializing in one particularly alluring field of study that qualified them for the job: marine biology. Competition was, to say the least, aggressive.

So when Sam got a call saying she, a rising high school senior, got the internship, she was beyond excited. She expected her parents to be too, but when her mother joined her at their garden table as Sam was enjoying the beautiful early summer sun, apparently that wasn't true.

And it made Sam mad.

She thundered into the house, chunky black boots leaving harsh brown footprints on her mother's pristine floors. Sam was making a mess. She didn't care. She only had one thing in mind.

She charged up the stairs and shoved the door of her bedroom open. Grabbing her purse and her keys, Sam left the house in a rage, pulling her car out of the long sloping driveway far faster than she should have.

"'The likes of them.'" Sam mocked in a growl, knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel with enough power to crush titanium.

Honestly, Sam didn't care whether or not her parents supported her success. Her parents never supported anything she did. That wasn't new. If their dreams were realized, Sam would be some complacent housewife to some wealthy douchebag of her parents' choosing. She had practically lit that idea on fire the second it was brought up.

No, she wasn't upset about their adverse reaction to her success.

She cared about what they thought of the Fentons.

The Fentons, those "crazy lunatics", were the only dammed reason this town showed up on a map.

Amity Park was already small. It was a fishing town on the coast of Florida, about four-and-some-odd hours outside of Miami. It was small enough to be largely overlooked.

Although hardly a tourist destination, Amity Park was known for its spectacular beaches and marine life. Which of course, is why the Fentons moved here in the first place. Granted, they didn't move far. Key West wasn't too far away from Amity Park, after all, however Amity's shores had a notable leg up on Key West that neither Fenton could deny.

Since their move thirteen years ago, Amity Park's success had skyrocketed. Most of the world admired the Fentons in the same way Sam did – they were leading scientists in their field. They were reputable, absurdly smart, and the most successful independent team of scientists out there.

Getting this internship meant that Sam would be thrust into the world of marine biology by working in close quarters with the some of the best in the world.

And dammit, she was going to let that kind of an opportunity pass her by.

She was on the road for about ten minutes before she finally pulled into a run down parking lot in the on the coast of nearly-nowhere. She stopped the car and flung herself out of it, breathing deep, calming breaths as she stepped onto the beach.

This was her spot. Sam always ventured to this small, nearly abandoned shoreline to calm down after a blowout. It was a rocky beach with rough sand, therefore making it a great ward against passerby and tourists. The uneven shoreline was littered with tide pools, often flickering with life within. Jagged rocks of all sizes tore from the ground like deadly talons and the water itself was always just a notch too cold for swimming.

This beach was one of the harshest ones Amity had to offer.

And Sam loved it.

Sitting down in the damp sand she sighed, eyes flickering to the horizon.

It was only the beginning of the summer. But Sam could already tell that this would be her best one yet, no matter what Palma had to say about it.

Don't ask him how he knew, but Phantom had the sense that this was going to be his worst summer yet.

It was bad enough that the whole Atlantic was being rocked by an incredible dry spell of fish, something that had many fleeing to colder and vaster waters - the Pacific, specifically. Phantom's few friends left for the Southern and Arctic oceans in the hopes of finding a halfway decent supply of food, however he stayed behind. Don't ask him why, either - he wasn't quite sure. Maybe the Atlantic was something of sentimental value to him, maybe he had some vain hope that perhaps without the abundance of predators stalking the ocean's dwindling supply of fish, they would make a return.

Maybe he was just crazy. That's what they told him before they left, which he took to mean "we're going to miss you" in merspeech.

So, that left him pretty much on his own. Not a problem, usually. It wasn't the first time Phantom had been left on his own - he was eighteen years old and fully capable of taking care of himself. He was sure that the fish would return to the warmer, deeper waters. Those losers that left, well, they'd see the error of their ways as soon as they saw him sitting on a pile of meaty fish carcasses he had all to himself.

He'd be a good friend, though, and let the others know when the fish returned.

That was months ago.

Lo and behold, they were nowhere to be found.

Phantom tried to get a hold of his friends - lament over the error of his ways, beg them to tell him their location, throw him a halibut because holy Trident he was starving... He got nothing. No answer. Nothing.

It wasn't until he tried their emergency locator shells did he get any real answers. Their locations brought him to a cave not far outside of their hometown Otobata, where he found the shells strung up on a cord and tied together, tangled and buried in the sand. His friends were nowhere to be found. Ditched.

Phantom berated himself for over a week for not seeing it sooner.

He got over it soon enough, though. He wasn't that close to them anyway. That's what merfolk did - they banded together and they left people behind. Friendships didn't last long among his kind. They came and went, most schools wandering the seas in flocks of not-so-closely-knit merfolk with a common interest - in his case, finding food. There was safety in numbers and that's where the complexities ended. The only real exceptions to this rule were, of course, mates and families - neither of which Phantom had.

Regardless, there was still a major unsolved issue at hand: he was hungry. And there was nothing he could, at present, do about it.

From there, well, the story really took a rather unfortunate turn for him.

It started with a little blunder on his part. He stole a bit of food from some rich merman from a couple towns over - just enough to last a week or two or until he could steal some more from somebody else. In his defense, stealing among merfolk wasn't necessarily... bad. If it was out in the open and you didn't get caught, well, it was fair game.

Unless of course one accidentally steals from - apparently - one of the Atlantic's most notoriously anal land moguls and gang leaders. Who then calls for his personal bounty hunter to bring him Phantom's head on a silver platter. Who had since chased Phantom's tail from the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Bahamas.

When the chase started getting way too close to human territory for comfort, and when he finally ran out of stolen food, Phantom finally threw in the towel after weeks of nonstop dodging spears and bullets and lots and lots of swimming with a real unexpected move.

He went where no merfolk would ever dare venture.

The surface.

Not the surface as in land, surface. That concept was cringeworthy and a little too out there for even Phantom to ponder. No, the surface of the water.

Merfolk thrived in the deep. It was really the only place they could survive. The lack of sunlight, cold water and the constant pressure were must-haves for them. Their bodies acclimated to it - developing cold blood, night vision, and a weak version of sonar.

There were roomers and scary stories told among mer families and communities that the overabundant sunlight and oxygen of the surface caused delirium and insanity. Eventually, everyone said, one would become a mindless savage, resorting to hypnotism and cannibalism. They would forget who they were. Eventually, they would die.

Even if the bounty hunter - Skulker, he said his name was - knew where Phantom was, he wouldn't go to the surface. He wasn't that stupid. He'd leave Phantom for dead and swim back to Walker the Gang Lord with his tail all ruffled up exclaiming how Phantom had gone off the shallow end and went nutso.

However, the truth? Well, those stories didn't scare him. Not one bit, considering the fact that he came to the surface all the time.

Upon occasion he would even put his head above the water. Not because he needed to, he just felt... compelled to do it. Drawn to the surface. Unaffected by the atmosphere. The sunlight felt warm on his back and his eyes relished in the abundance of light and color. Often Phantom felt as if he could wash right up on the beach and leave the water forever.

He didn't really let that thought cross his mind too often, though. That line of thought was a little too human for him.

But there was also another reason why he came to the surface as often as he did - once every couple of months or so. Unlike other merfolk, the depths of the ocean after a while made him feel... sick. He quite frequently fell ill when in the deep for too long. Didn't know why - his guardian was the only one who had any real answers and Phantom could never get the old geezer to fess up.

It started when he was about twelve, when merfolk hit their "puberty" and grew at rapid rates. The gills on Phantom's neck and back did not grow to accommodate his maturing body, remaining underdeveloped and slightly unfit to survive permanently in an area of the ocean with such little oxygen and so much pressure. His ideal climate, his guardian had told him, was shallower sunlit waters - where other merfolk could not survive. However the risk of getting captured by humans was too great, so Phantom would have to make do with what he could and settle for visiting the surface every now and again.

It wasn't all bad though - he definitely had accumulated many stellar hangout coves and secret caves all over the Atlantic - all uninhabited by humans, all to himself.

It was where he was now, actually. Lounging in a cave on some small, uncharted island in some body of water he heard being called the "Florida Straits" or something (or maybe that was the name of the island he had found, or the group of local islands he saw nearby, or something, he didn't know) the merman finally found some semblance of peace.

The island didn't look like much from the outside. Just some shapeless mound of dirt rising just a few feet above the waterline, creating a sandbar a few miles in diameter. The tricky part about it, and why he chose here of all places to hide, was the access point. It was deceptive in the sense that no, the island he had found wasn't a useless sandbar. It was an underwater cave one could only really get to from below. It was a little dark, but Phantom didn't mind. There was a shallow cove and a beach riddled with seaweed and tide pools filled with small fish and crustaceans he could use to stunt his appetite until he could find real food.

It seemed as though the humans had fished this area out - perhaps after he took a breather, he could make his way to the Gulf of Mexico and try his luck there. Phantom didn't know any merfolk in the area, but Gulf natives were known throughout the Atlantic to be very hospitable. Warm, just like the waters. They could give him food, maybe. Spare an underwater cave for refuge. Give him a job to pay the rent?

Phantom sighed, laying his head against the rock he was perched against. He knew this spot was close to the humans - knew it too well, probably. It was probably the closest to human-inhabited waters that he has ever been. But he was in a tough spot - that hunter would stop at nothing to get Phantom's hide. Even though Phantom was the fastest merman in the Atlantic with a special skill-set up his metaphorical sleeve (and why he had earned the name "Phantom"), he was no match for Skulker in a battle of brute strength alone, which is likely what that brawl would resort to. He had to wait it out, until the whole thing blew over in the North Atlantic before making his return.

That could be weeks. Months. Until then, he really saw no other option other than fleeing to the Gulf, but what then? If he were caught there, he'd be backed into a corner, and he's made more than enough enemies in the Caribbean to eliminate that escape route as an option entirely.

He'd have to lie low. This island-cave was something, but not a lot. Phantom would have to move on eventually.

He scoffed, running a webbed and scaly hand through his shocking white hair. At least he didn't have much to loose. He didn't have a family, he didn't have friends.

Phantom had himself and nothing but time.

He suddenly grinned to himself, tearing open a clam and picking the meat out with his bare hands. Yeah, that's right. He didn't have anything to lose, did he? He no longer had any friends to tie him down. His guardian was gone. He didn't abide by Atlantis's "laws", so who was to say he couldn't hang around here for as long as he wanted? Not like any merfolk would find him. There were probably more fish here, anyway.

The only thing he really had to worry about were the humans - and they were just a mild inconvenience. One sees a merman and the others call 'em insane. Phantom could handle it. Somehow.

Right?

Hey all! I'm back at it again, this time with a story that I honestly totally forgot about until I found it in my computer archives a few days ago. Decided to revamp it and post it for kicks, idk. Let me know your thoughts in a review, thanks fam!

Peace,

Rookey