Once again, THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS! It's awesome that all of you are loving this story so much. I know it's kinda weird, but just bear with me.
It's been a while since I updated, and I now officially HATE SCHOOL! You know, once Christmas break was over and I got back to school, they gave me so much homework that I was up literally up till 1:30 a.m. one night!
Note: I changed the summary around a little bit but it's not that big of a deal. Well, here's chapter 4 ;)
It was another boring day. I was at the cafe taking a break from my songs and drinking a strawberry smoothie. Just as I was taking another drink, I noticed Cleo, Rikki, and Lewis, who by the way was back from the states, freeze up and look straight ahead, horrified at the person who had just walked in. It was a woman, who looked about to be in her twenties with long, blonde hair tied in a pony tail. She had on a dark blue shirt with black shorts. I was confused by my friends' reactions when she had walked in but to me it seemed like they knew her.
She walked up to where we were standing around the counter and said, "Cleo, Rikki, Lewis." The woman looked pretty surprised herself when she saw them.
"Dr. Denman," Lewis managed to say after a while. By the look of her and their reactions, this did not seem good.
"Hi, how have you guys been?" Dr. Denman said looking at them.
"Um, okay. What have you been up to?" Cleo awkwardly asked her.
"Well you know, just been doing the same things as I was before. Fish counts and stuff like that. Who's this?" Dr. Denman asked gesturing towards me as I stood on the end next to Rikki.
"That's Bella, a friend of ours." Cleo answered. This was really awkward, something wasn't right here...
"Well, what do you want?" Rikki sternly asked Dr. Denman.
"Rikki!" Cleo exclaimed, elbowing her in the side. Rikki still looked pretty pissed at Dr. Denman and things were going to get worse before they'd get better.
"You know what? I'm just going to go. It was nice seeing you guys again. I'll be around for a few weeks doing more fish counts for a while." And with that Dr. Denman left, leaving behind another awkward silence.
"Who was that?" I asked after a moment.
"That was the evilest, most horrible person you'll ever meet in your life!" Rikki yelled, really upset.
"Well what's wrong with her?" I asked. She seemed pretty normal to me.
"Okay, so when we were sixteen," Cleo started, "this is kinda a long story." She paused. " Dr. Denman was here doing fish population things and stuff like that and apparently she had set up these underwater cameras right by the entrance to the moon pool. As me, Rikki, and our other friend Emma were swimming in, the cameras snapped some pictures of us as mermaids, and our secret was blown."
I was shocked. I never knew anything like this had ever happened! I wondered what else I'd missed before I moved here.
"But wait, there's more!" Rikki sarcastically said as she stepped away to take a customer's order.
Cleo sighed. "She tricked us. One of her workers had taken Lewis' phone and sent us a fake text from him saying that he needed us at Mako Island right away. Right as Rikki, Emma, and I swam in, she was there with her workers and we were exposed."
"Yeah, and one of them had even locked me in a room back on their boat!" Lewis blurted out, really mad.
"Be quiet, Lewis!" Cleo scolded him. "As we looked around the moon pool, we noticed there were lights set up, test tubes, and all that other freaky stuff that scientists use. We were so scared, so shocked that all we could think of doing is getting the heck out of there! Well guess what? She had set up a cage at the underwater entrance to the moon pool, trapping us in!" Cleo stared off into space for a while. Even though it had happened over 2 years ago, she was still haunted by it. They all were.
"What happened next?" I breathed out, curious to know more.
"That's how Zane found out." Rikki said out of no where, walking back over to where we were standing.
"Zane's dad had been working with Dr. Denman for something and Zane was hanging around them. He was standing in the cave when we swam in." Rikki quietly said.
"Oh," I said. So Zane couldn't even be trusted with something back then! He only found out by accident.
"Dr. Denman wanted to drag us out of the pool and do who knows what kind of 'experiments' on us. But before they could do anything Lewis, who had been freed by Zane from Denman's boat, hooked something up to the cage underwater and then hooked that up to his boat. Then he and Zane pulled the cage right off! It was awesome to swim out of there and see the look on their faces!" Cleo exclaimed. I was just surprised of how they got out of there like that. But then something crossed my mind.
"Uh, guys?" I said. "Doesn't Dr. Denman know you're all still mermaids?"
"Oh, I almost forgot!" Cleo said remembering something. "We knew that no matter how many times we got away from them, we'd never be left alone. So then that same night or the next it was an eclipse and we heard that if a mermaid was in the moon pool when the eclipse was overhead, we could give up our powers, for good. So that's what we did."
"But, but, but -" I stammered. "That's impossible! You guys still have your powers!"
"Don't freak out Bella, she wasn't done." Rikki said, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah, don't worry," Cleo assured me. "It turned out we only lost our powers for 12 hours, not forever!"
I laughed and let out a sigh of relief. They're lucky to have escaped that easily without letting their secret be exposed to the world! After a moment or two, I decided it was time to go home.
"I think I'm gonna head home now guys," I said as I started to walk away from them.
"Bye Bella," they said as I walked out of the cafe and headed home.
My mom, dad, and baby brother had gone away to some resort this weekend without me. They said that it would be good for me to have some "time to myself" or something stupid like that. But I'm pretty sure they were just getting sick of me hanging around the house a lot. You know, Cleo, Rikki and I have been thinking about moving out of our houses and buying an apartment together to share as roomates since we're all going to the same college. I don't know how it's going to all work out yet. If it doesn't, maybe I'll just move in with Will, that is, if he ever asks me. I wouldn't want to put too much pressure on him if I was bugging him about it all the time.
Once I got home I instantly flopped on our leather couch, pulled a soft blanket over me, then grabbed the remote and started flipping through channels. The clock above the flat screen tv said 5:34 p.m. I haven't gotten much sleep lately, and it turns out I got a new power. I finally, after lots of experimenting, learned how to control the blue glowing that happens to my eyes when I see my reflection! It turns out that when I make my eyes glow and hold my hand out in a certain way, I can make a bright flash of lightning strike the ground. The stomaches and headaches have finally gone away too, and I'm super happy about that.
After 5 hours of tv, it was dark out. It was pitch black outside with clearless skies, exept for the bright, glowing moon. I don't know what phase of the moon it was tonight, but it for sure wasn't a full moon. I decided to head upstairs to my room and go to bed.
I stood in front of the mirror and smiled at myself for the first time in a long one. My eyes remained normal and I stood aside to take my clothes off and put on my pajamas. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and threw it on my bed and pulled my shorts off and dropped them to the floor. As I stood in front of the mirror in my blue bra and underwear, I saw the room get pitch black as darkness flooded around me. I was extremely confused for a moment, then I saw the reflection of the bright, mysterious moon in the mirror. I was hypnotized, like I was in a trance staring at the moon. I instantly turned around, with a small smile on my face. I felt my eyes glow bright blue as it had before and I headed to the deck connected to the outside of my room. I gently opened the doors, stepped out onto my deck and into the night. I felt the cool breeze brush against my skin and I sighed with pleasure. I stared up at moon, smiled, and jumped 2 stories down to the sand. I looked see if anyone was around, and then took off for the ocean, still in my underwear. That's all I remember before waking up in the middle of Mako Island.