Present Day...
"Happy Birthday, Bridgette!"
The now sixteen year old Bridgette blew the candles on her birthday cake, as her grandfather Walter, her boyfriend Geoff and her two best friends in the world, Gwen and Lindsay cheered her on.
"Thanks guys!" Bridgette flicked back her ponytail as she began to cut the cake.
"Gifts! Open your gifts!" Lindsay cheered, handing Bridgette an envelope.
"Oh, what's in here?" Bridgette opened the envelope carefully.
"A fifty dollar voucher to Surfside Cafe? Thanks!" Bridgette hugged Lindsay in thanks.
"Enough of that. This is mine." Gwen shoved an indignant Lindsay out of the way handing her a rectangular box wrapped in black wrapping paper.
"What's this now..." Bridgette opened the box to reveal a set of books about plant, animal and sea life.
"You guys know me so well!" The birthday girl smiled.
"If you like those, you'll be sure to like mine!" Geoff grinned, handing her another envelope, which turned out to be a voucher for few hours out on jet skis.
"And I most certainly do like it!" Bridgette gave him a chaste kiss, mindful of her grandfather's presence.
"I'll give you my gifts when you get back from that surfing competition, Bridgette. You'd better go get ready now. It's almost time!" Walter exclaimed.
"Oh my goodness! You're right!" Bridgette's eyes widened and she ran up to her room, grabbed her surfing gear, ran back down the stairs, deposited it in the living room and ran back upstairs with her bodysuit to change.
Slamming the door behind her, she scrambled to get the suit on and took a tumble to the ground.
But she didn't hit it.
Somehow, as she had reached her hand towards the tap in the bathtub, it had turned on and the water flowed out to form something like a giant watery hand to break her fall.
"Oh no!" She thought. "Not again!"
For the past few weeks, water had been behaving oddly around her.
Water moved around her in strange ways and even changed properties without her doing anything to it, but this incident was the weirdest one yet.
Shaking it off, she got back up, pulling on the bodysuit quickly and dashed downstairs to the others, who had already loaded her gear into the car.
"I just hope no more weird stuff happens today at this competition..." She thought as she fastened her seatbelt and they drove off to the site of the surfing competition.
"And here we have Contestant Number Three, Bridgette Summers!"
The crowd at the surfing contest cheers as Bridgette waded out into the water with her surfboard.
Gwen and Lindsay were in their swimwear as well as they intended to go swimming with their friend after the contest was over.
"YOU GO BRIDGETTE! SHOW THEM WHO'S THE QUEEN OF THE WAVES!" Geoff yelled louder than anyone else on the beach.
"Yes, Bridgette. Show them what you're made of..." She thought as she finally started to surf.
Weird problems with water that morning forgotten, she felt the wind blow around her as she did all of her impressive surfing moves and turns.
She wrapped up her routine and made her way back to shore.
"That was great!" Lindsay cheered as she hugged her friend tightly.
"Lindsay... can't... breathe..." Bridgette wheezed.
"Sorry..." She drew back.
"I don't really do affection, so you'll have to make do with a handshake from me instead." Gwen extended her hand.
"Oh?" Bridgette raised an eyebrow as she shook out. "You don't do affection? Explain Cody then..."
"None of your business!" Gwen snapped and her female friends giggled.
"Look, they're about to announce the winner!" Walter exclaimed.
They made their way closer to the stage.
The announcer stood with a table of trophies behind him.
After the announcer gave away various awards, he got to the one for first place.
Taking up a large gold trophy with a wave carved into the front, he walked back to the microwave.
Holding Geoff's hands so tightly he could barely feel them, Bridgette waited for the announcement of the winner.
"And the winner of this year's Malibu Surfing Contest is... Bridgette Summers!"
Bridgette squealed so loudly that those around her cringed and covered their ears as she ran up onto to the stage to accept the award.
"Thank you so much! This makes such a wonderful birthday present since I turn sixteen today!" She exclaimed, holding the trophy high into the air and crowd cheered even more.
"Well then, Happy Birthday, Miss Summers!" The announcer said.
Bridgette nodded happily as she ran back with the trophy to her friends, boyfriend and grandfather.
"I'll take this while you go and have fun with your friends, okay?" Walter took the trophy from her and headed back to the car.
Back in the water once again, Bridgette lay on her stomach on the surfboard as she went out into the water.
Flipping onto her back, she was just content to float as she watched her friends on the shore. Gwen and Lindsay were actually building a sandcastle together despite the former looking rather annoyed with the latter.
Geoff was off talking to some other friends and laughing at some joke.
Her hand traced circles in the water as her mind started to wander off to the strange happenings around water she had experienced recently, especially the incident in her bathroom earlier that morning.
As she was thinking, she wasn't paying much attention to the waves around her and one particularly large wave bowled her over before she could even exclaim her surprise.
When she resurfaced, sputtering, she moved her soaked, dripping ponytail out of her eyes and noticed-
Her ponytail was no longer just blonde.
There were blue streaks in it.
"EEP!" Bridgette ducked under the water before anyone could see that her hair had changed colour.
She looked around the water frantically and glanced at her hair again.
It was still blue.
She let go a breath and when she realised that fact seconds later, she tried to catch her breath again, but she found that she didn't need to.
She could breathe underwater.
Her eyes widened at the realization.
It was while she was in this panicked state that she managed to swim even further beneath the surface and encountered a pinkish-silvery dolphin.
"Hi!" It said to her in a female's voice.
"EEP!" Bridgette swam back, startled.
"You don't have to be afraid of me! I won't hurt you!" The dolphin spoke again.
"I must be suffering from lack of oxygen. That's it!" Bridgette told herself.
"How can you if you can breathe underwater, silly?" A girl with dark brown hair in a ponytail even shorter than Bridgette's, a pair of thick-framed glasses, braces and an acne problem swam up alongside the dolphin.
When Bridgette looked her down however, she was startled again.
This girl didn't have legs.
She had a dark purple tail! A... a... mermaid tail!
"Okay, that's it. Enough swimming for me today!" Bridgette declared, swimming up to the surface as fast as she could.
Her surfboard had washed ashore and her friends were standing with it, chattering and looking worried as they did.
"BRIDGETTE! YOU'RE OKAY!" Lindsay cried, running to hug her, but she put out her hands in time to stop another bone-crushing hug.
"We thought you'd been swept out to sea or something!" Geoff kissed her and drew back.
"Um... Bridgey, why is your hair blue?" Geoff asked, puzzled.
"I have about as much an answer to that question as you do, Geoff..." Bridgette ran her fingers through her hair as she snatched her sunhat from Gwen's hand, rolled up her hair and jammed the hat on her head.
"Why do you have to hide it? I kinda like it!" Gwen said in approval.
"When you hair changes colour suddenly, you have to wonder why it did. It's not normal! I'm going home to see if my grandpa has something to make my hair normal again!"
Bridgette ran into the changing rooms, changed quickly into her street clothes, grabbed her gear and ran off the beach, not stopping or slowing down until she reached home.
"Great! You made it back okay! I have the rest of your gifts right here!" Walter smiled at his granddaughter as she dashed through the door.
"Oh... Hi grandpa..." She said nervously, tucking a stray strand of hair back under the hat.
Trying to push the issue of her colour changing hair to the back of her head she sat next to him on the sofa.
"Take this first. The second gift I've saved for last..." Walter handed her an envelope which turned out to contain a voucher to a clothing store.
"And this..." Walter pulled out the jewellery box that Dawn had given him to give to Bridgette sixteen years ago.
"Wow... What is this?" She said in awe.
"A jewellery box. Your mother said you were to have it on your sixteenth birthday..." Walter answered slightly sadly.
Bridgette opened the box and although there were many other beautiful pieces of jewellery inside, one particular necklace caught her eye.
A silver necklace with a silver shell shaped pendant and a tear shaped aquamarine gemstone with a pearl in the centre embedded within the shell.
The same necklace her mother had worn years ago although Bridgette didn't yet know it.
"All of this was really my mother's?" Bridgette asked, still in awe as she removed the necklace and examined it, before putting it on.
"Yes. She told me that your turning sixteen would be a most important day in your life. More than most other girls you would know..."
Bridgette detected a change in her grandpa's tone. "Grandpa? Are you... okay?" She asked.
"I am, but the question is... are you? Have you been experiencing some... unusual changes lately?" Walter asked.
"Wha- what do you mean?" Bridgette asked, startled. He couldn't have known what happened, could he?
"I mean, water behaving weirdly around you, being able to breathe underwater, hair changing colours..." Walter counted off the changes on his fingers.
Bridgette whipped off her hat. "You knew about this the entire time?!" She asked, pointing at her blue-streaked hair.
Walter nodded. "I knew it would happen, your mother being what she was and all. She passed those traits and powers onto you, just like she said would happen when you turned sixteen..."
"Powers? What are you talking about?!"
Walter sighed. "Sixteen years ago, your father fell in love with a beautiful woman named Dawn. She was Queen of a faraway kingdom under the sea called Aquarius. Her sister, your aunt Heather wanted to rule the sea and tried taking it over. You were born only a few days after your father died. Dawn knew you wouldn't be safe from Heather under the sea with legs... so she brought you here..." He paused to take in Bridgette's stunned expression.
"...You see, Bridgette... your mother Dawn was a mermaid, meaning that you are half-mermaid yourself and since Dawn was Queen of Aquarius, that makes you the Princess of Aquarius and as such, heiress to their throne..."
Bridgette shook her head in disbelief. "No, no, no. All those stories you used to tell me about mermaids in kingdoms under the sea when I was little can't be true. They just can't! I am not some freaky half-mermaid princess! I'm just Bridgette Summers, ordinary human girl! NO! No way!"
She ran off to her room, leaving her grandfather to clutch his head in his hands and sigh.
"I know it's going to be hard, my dear granddaughter, but it is something you must do. You can run away from it, no matter how hard you try..."
Meanwhile, Bridgette had gotten ready for bed and sat up in her four poster bed, wearing her favourite blue pyjamas.
She glanced down at the necklace her grandfather had given her that evening, taking in every element of the design, running her fingers carefully over it.
"This necklace can't come from some mermaid queen who turns out to be my mom. It just can't. I'm no half-mermaid princess with freaky powers. These weird things that have been happening to me are all just a really strange dream..." Bridgette yawned and sunk into the bed, her mother's necklace still in her grasp.
"Just a... yawn... dream..."