101 Ways to Ruin a Mermaid's Life

Story 8: Cleo (Song(s) Brick by Boring Brick-Paramore)

Cleo's Memory (3rd Person POV)

She stubble as she stood up, everything was so unfamiliar to her. She was alone on a beach, more of an island setting. Things seemed fuzzy. Closing her eyes she saw water, and in her mind she couldn't breathe. She opened her eyes.

"Cleo," a relived familiar voice called.

Cleo spun around to see Zane running to her. He seemed scared and relived at the same time. He came closer and throw a blanket he had hanging over his arm around her. Taking her closer to him, he said, "You've had everyone so worried. Where have you been, and what happened? You look terrible. There is no way you are swimming back like this."

Cleo wasn't processing everything Zane was saying to her. Where would she swim? Why would she swim? Where was she, and how did Zane know where to find her? What had happened?

Thinking back, all Cleo could remember was the water. It was pushing her down. She couldn't get back up. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see anyone, no one was coming to help her.

Then she remembered Emma. She was with her, before the water. There were many of her friends, her school class, on a boat. Her friends, Emma, Zane, Kate, all standing with her, looking out over the ocean at an island, Mako Island. Everyone was smiling, everyone was happy, because they didn't know what would come next, where it would lead, what it would leave some with.

What Cleo remembered was her tragic grade 1 boat trip. That year started off great, all her friends in her class, fun trips, great teacher. But after the boat trip, everything fell, and she couldn't remember anything pass that fall, the crash, the screaming, then the water, lots of water.

"Cleo, we need to get you home," Zane was still speaking to her, leading her to another boat, a smaller one. "I'll call Rikki and Bella, tall them I found you, and that you're safe."

Still in shock, Cleo didn't say anything. She didn't question the things she didn't understand and went along with whatever Zane was doing, or saying.

Once she got home, things started to look familiar. Her house had the same look it did the morning she left for the trip. Zane led her inside, where her father embraced her in a hug as soon as she walked in the door.

"Cleo are you ok?" He asked.

Cleo nodded. "I'm tired," She said slowly making her way to the stairs. "I want to go to bed."

"That's fine, sweetie," Her father said. "I'll see you in the morning."

The next day Cleo was awoken early to a knock on her door. Two girls she had never seen before walked in carrying backs on their shoulders. One was wearing a blue dress and had her blond hair pinned up in a pony tail. The other wore denim shorts, a white top with a flower on it and her hair in two buns, one on either side of her head.

"Your dad said you might not go to school today," the one with the pony tail said.

"How are you feeling? Zane said you were pretty bashed up and out of it when he found you." The one with the buns said sitting down on Cleo's bed next to her.

"Who are you?" Cleo asked scared. She started to pull away from Rikki and stand up out of her bed. "What's going on? Is everyone ok?... Where's Emma?"

"Um… Cleo, what are you talking about?" Bella asked. "You were alone, we don't know what happened, and who's Emma?"

"Emma? With her parents, probably," Rikki answered the only question she could. "Are you ok?"

"No," Cleo answered, shocked neither of her guests were going to tell her what was going on. "I want to know what happened to everyone…. Am I the only one left?"

Rikki looked to Bella, pulsed for a second. Bella throw some things around in her head, and finally came up with a reasonable answer, "Memory loss, Cleo must have bumped her head at some point, now she can't remember some things," She explained to Rikki. "She must be remembering something from her childhood."

"Her childhood?" Rikki questioned. She thought of how Cleo acted when she met her. Cleo was distant, more childlike, afraid of water. But as much as she thought, the most she knew about Cleo before the tail, was that she had been friends with Emma, Lewis, and Zane for quite a while before she came along. "We should call Zane."

"Why?" Bella asked thing what she really knew about Cleo's childhood. She really didn't even know how long she and Rikki were friends, not to mention before that. It was just that for a long time, Bella thought Rikki and Cleo had been friends since they were really little, and she was just proven wrong.

"Because Zane is the only one who would know what happened to her when she was little," Rikki answered pulling out her phone.

After a quick conversation with Zane, Rikki had made him agree to talk to Cleo and find out what was going on with her. It didn't take Zane long to get to Cleo's house, where the teens were alone for Cleo's family already left for the day.

When Zane got to Cleo's house, he found Cleo on one side of her room and the other girls on the other. Cleo seemed like she was doing her best to stay away from them, which to him, was odd.

"What has she been saying?" Zane asked once he saw the girls.

"She's been asking about her class, and some girl named Emma," Bella explained.

"She's acting as if she had been in some sort of boat wreck," Rikki explained. "Asking about everyone, staying away from water, acting as she did when we meet, scared, little, helpless."

"The grade 1 boat wreck," Zane half whispered. He looked up to Cleo and asked. "What do you remember."

Cleo stepped closer and said softly, "Water, and not breathing."

Zane looked back to Rikki and said, "We have our work cut out for us. You know it took doctors five years to get her to an ok place then Emma the rest of the six to get her to where she was when you met her. Then you come along and it's like the whole day never happened."

Rikki and Bella looked to Cleo, who was sitting across the room. Rikki sighed and Bella smiled. "So what, we remind her of everything she has been through since, grade 1?" Rikki asked Zane.

"If that's what it takes for her to remember, then yes we do," Zane answered.

The teens decided to take Cleo to Rikki's Café. They thought if she saw a place she should remember, then it would jog her memory. They were very wrong. Cleo was interested in everything, the way a seven-year-old might. She asked many question, few of which Rikki, Bella, and Zane had the answers.

At the Café, things started to get bad. Cleo found that everything was different and become even more confused with what was going on. When Will walked in, things took a turn for the worse.

"Hey I heard about Cleo's accident," Will told Bella. "How is she."

"She has amnesia," Bella explained pulling Will from the others. "She doesn't remember anything before grade 1."

"So she doesn't remember being a mermaid then?" Will asked.

"No I guess she doesn't," Bella said looking back to where Rikki was following Cleo out of the café. Bella followed close behind as she watched the girls make their way down to the beach.

Cleo was looking at everyone and everything, seeing all the differences there were from what she last remembered. Rikki tried to stay close behind her, keeping her from finding too much out about herself.

"You need to stop her before she goes in the water," Bella whispered to Rikki.

"One no one's around, Two the Cleo I knew at 15 wouldn't go in the water, why would the Cleo at seven, and Three I'm not good with kids, and Cleo's practically a child right now," Rikki explained.

But as Rikki said this, Cleo had stepped just a bit too close to the incoming tide and had gotten her feet wet. Rikki and Bella looked up just as she changed, more surprised now than she was when she re-met Rikki and Bella. The girls raced up to her just to her Cleo ask a more relaxed, "Guys, what's going on?"