Hello, my dear readers! ^-^
Hope you've had an amazing week so far. :-)
Thank you for every new reader, follower and fav! And thanks so much for the reviews! I'm so glad that you like the story! :*
Unfortunately, I'm not planning yet to introduce the original cast, so far it will only be my OCs. :)
Enjoy the new chapter and please let me know what you think! :-) xx
- Vanillapancakes :*
Eleanor entered the kitchen of her home faster than necessary while Lucy tried her best to keep up with Eleanor's pace. Even though Eleanor would never admit it, she was feeling a tad anxious about their plan aka not really a plan. The only thing that the two mermaids had decided on was that they'd try to get as much information out of Eleanor's brother as possible without revealing anything. And once they had everything they needed, they would go to Mila and just … confront her? What else were they supposed to do when they stood in front of her in her house? Lucy had suggested to get to know her from far away first, but Eleanor preferred the blunt way. The more time they would let pass, the more options Mila would have to do something extremely stupid and they had to prevent that at all costs. So simply confronting her seemed to be the best idea.
At the same time, a tall but lanky boy with hair as blond as Eleanor's sat down at the modern glass kitchen table. He had a bowl of cereal in front of him and looked as if he had just woken up from a six-year nap.
Eleanor took a deep breath. It was now or never. So she put a smile on her face and walked towards her brother. Acting. She had to act brilliantly or he'd notice straightaway.
"Hey, Tommy! Hope you're having a wonderful Sunday morning!" Eleanor grinned and ruffled through his blond locks.
The boy rolled his eyes. "What do you want, Eleanor?"
Eleanor's grin widened immediately, "Can't I just be happy to see my amazing big bro?" which led to Tommy scoffing, "You're never happy to see me."
"Wha- That is so not true! We love each other, you know that!" Eleanor exclaimed in a shocking manner and acted as if her heart was in tremendous pain, without ever stopping to grin.
Unfortunately, Tommy started to get a little annoyed. He put his spoon on the table and looked straight into Eleanor's eyes. "What do you want, Eleanor?"
As the conversation went along, Eleanor got more confident. Acting in front of her brother was a lot easier than she thought. She kind of had always done it, not in a situation as serious as this one, but for fun. And that practice was paying well right now. The blonde mermaid knew exactly what to do next. Tommy was the reason she learned how to use manipulation to get whatever she desired. Her brother wasn't very strong-minded and sometimes he was also a bit too naïve to see through her plans. So in the past two years, she had practiced some skills she found on the internet and adapted them to him.
"For you to tell Lucy that you love me?" Eleanor smiled innocently.
Tommy turned his head around to realize that Lucy had been standing behind Eleanor the whole time. She gave him a shy wave, he quickly nodded to her before his full attention zapped straight back to his sister. He loudly asked, "No, what do you really want?"
It took Eleanor about 0.2 seconds to understand that her chance was now. She probably only had this one shot so she couldn't fail. Consequently, she decided to start with Step 1: Guilt.
Eleanor abruptly began yelling, "Why is it so hard for you to understand that all I ever wanted in life was your affection?!"
"Because you don't care about my affection! You're just an annoying 17-year-old trying to get what she wants!"
Satisfaction grew inside of Eleanor and she had to smile for a split second about how everything was working out even better than expected, so she chose to begin with Step 2: Deliberate provocation.
"Oh, because you're so much older?" Eleanor wanted to know and the sarcasm in her voice was almost visible.
"I'm 19!" Tommy exclaimed.
Everything was surprisingly going according to plan, Eleanor thought. Now the only thing left to do was getting the information that she needed. She simply had to provoke Tommy even more and subtly guide his answers into the right direction, very carefully.
"Wow, shocker! That's nothing special, all your other friends are too! Noah, Aaron, Aaron's girlfriend, …"
Tommy contradicted, "Nope! Aaron's actually younger than Noah and me, he's 18! And his girlfriend Mila is even younger, she's 16!"
Lucy grinned as she saw the pleased look on Eleanor's face. That was strike one. Her friend was way too good at this.
Eleanor continued, "Then why would an 18-year-old want to hang out with you, huh? Where is Aaron now? Can I ask him? I'm gonna ask him!"
"You can't! He's with Mila and you don't know where she lives!"
"Oh, and you do?"
"Of course I do! Her house is right next to the old Eucalyptus Garden!"
And there was strike two.
Without hesitation, Eleanor grabbed her brother's spoon, sneaked a bit of his cereal, ruffled through his blond locks again and cheerfully said, "Thank you very much, Tommy, that's everything I need to know. Love ya, bye!"
The two girls laughed loudly and almost ran out of the kitchen and left through the back door.
Tommy couldn't cease himself from staring at them in disbelief. "What the hell was that about?" he muttered to himself before he groaned, "Urgh! It's way too early for this. Stupid full moon." He didn't get much sleep last night.
After that, he grabbed his phone and quickly sent a text message to Aaron to warn him saying, "My psycho sister and her bestie are on their way to you and Mila."
A minute later, Tommy's phone vibrated, and he read Aaron's answer: "Mila kicked me out this morning."
The blond boy almost let his phone slip into his cereal bowl. "Shit!" he whispered and dialed Aaron's number.
"I cannot believe how simple it was for you to play your brother," Lucy grinned as they walked through the neighbourhood. The old Eucalyptus Garden was quite close to where Eleanor lived. It would take them about 5 more minutes to get there, all in all they'd only need 15 minutes of walking to arrive. If Lucy wasn't mistaken, Mila was part of the Collins family which was well known to Lucy's mum. Her and Mila's mum used to be in the same choir when Lucy was in still in Elementary School. She remembered visiting the Collins and maybe even playing with a girl in the old Eucalyptus Garden as kids. She wasn't one hundred percent sure, but the girl could have easily been Mila, given that they were the same age. But she hasn't been there in over 9 years, so her memories were more blurred than clear.
Eleanor grinned too, "I know, right? He is and will always be the perfect victim for me to train my skills. Although I sometimes hope he's just playing along. Otherwise we really need to start worrying about his mental state."
"He'll be alright," Lucy laughed and pulled Eleanor around the next corner.
"Guuurl, don't tell me you still have a crush on him?!" Eleanor asked and wiggled her eyebrows.
"I never did," Lucy answered innocently, and Eleanor opened her mouth ready to discuss the topic but closed it again. "Just keep on crushing, Luce. Maybe he'll notice you some day."
Lucy sighed and smiled. "Don't worry about me. I couldn't be with him anyway because I'd either have to tell him about us being mermaids or he'd find out on his own and sue me or something."
"Just because he wants to become a lawyer, doesn't mean he's going to sue you for being a mermaid. We've kept the secret for almost one and half years now. It would genuinely surprise me if that dummy ever found out," Eleanor laughed and squeezed Lucy's hand sympathetically.
Lucy sighed again. "Maybe you're right. But it's still too dangerous. And to be honest, it doesn't really matter, I mean, he almost didn't even notice me this morning so the chances of him ever falling in love with me are close to zero."
The two girls had almost reached the little house of the Collins.
The blond mermaid smiled encouragingly. "Hey, cheer up! Wonders do happen, otherwise we wouldn't have tails. And now, let's focus on meeting Maria."
"Mila."
"That's what I said. Do you want to do the talking? You've met her mum before, right?" Eleanor suggested and Lucy nodded in agreement. "Yep. I just don't know if she'll remember me, but we'll see."
They found the house with the fitting door plate and in fear of hesitating and abandoning the mission, Eleanor immediately rang the doorbell. The girls waited patiently but even after a few minutes nobody answered. That's why Eleanor rang again. Suddenly they heard few noises coming from inside the house, some footsteps and then a brown-haired woman in her forties opened the door. She wore a yellow flower dress and eyed them suspiciously. "Yes, my loves?"
Lucy harrumphed and then smiled brightly. "Hi, Mrs. Collins! I don't know if you remember me, I'm Lucy Dawkins, Barb's daughter, and this is Eleanor. We're friends of Mila's. Is she home by any chance?"
After hearing that, Mila's mum's eyes widened in surprise. "Oh my, Lucy! Yes, yes, of course I remember you! Look at you! You have grown so much! And what a beautiful young lady you are!"
This led to Lucy blushing a bit. "Thank you, Mrs. Collins. That's very kind of you."
"I didn't realize you were friends with Mila. She has never talked about you. How's your mum doing by the way? We really miss her singing with us. Do you mind telling her she can always come back?" Mrs. Collins was so excited to see Lucy that she completely forgot about the actual reason the girls were visiting and Lucy had to giggle. "Yes, Mrs. Collins, I'll make sure to tell her. Even though I suppose she won't be able to return yet, you know, with the twins and stuff. Now that they are six years old, they've turned into big little rascals."
A loud laugh left Mrs. Collins' mouth. "Yes, I can imagine. But please tell her anyway, we really miss her."
"I will," Lucy agreed and smiled again.
For a few moments they just all stood there smiling at each other until Eleanor raised her voice. "What Lucy actually meant to say was that we've just recently started talking to Mia."
"Mila," Lucy quickly hissed.
"Mila, yes. You could say we're new friends. More like classmates. But we've hung out a few times at school and our PE teacher told us to do a project about the history of ballroom dancing together, so yeah. Is Mila home?"
Mrs. Collins raised an eyebrow. "So you're actually about to become friends with my daughter?"
"Kind of, yep."
"Well, lovely to meet you then! Come in, come in, Mila should be in her room. You're all very dedicated to do a school project on a Sunday. Do you want anything to eat or drink? Big minds need a lot of energy to think!" Mrs. Collins babbled and gave them a sign to come in and take off their shoes.
"I think we're okay for now, thank you very much," Lucy answered and grinned at Eleanor. That was, again, a lot easier than expected. Now only the hardest part of their plan was left: Meeting Mila, talking to her about mermaids and hoping she wouldn't label them as crazy and throw them out.
Mila's mum nodded. "Alright, darlings. Mila's room is up the stairs, the second door on the left. Just knock before you go in, I'll be in the living room if you need me. Have fun!"
The girls waited for Mrs. Collins to be out of sight, looked at each other one last time and started to climb up the stairs.
/ / / / /
I didn't even know how much time had passend since Aaron left. What if I had to stay a fish forever? How was I supposed to go to school tomorrow or even leave my bathroom? Maybe I needed a fish tank and someone to drive me around in that fish tank. Would I have to live underwater for the rest of my life? Fish couldn't breathe on land so why was I not dying?!
I groaned and cupped my chin in my hand. Perhaps I wasn't a fish. Or at least not full fish. The upper half of my body was, except for the scaly bra, still human-me. I had the same face, hair, neck, arms, boobs and belly. To be perfectly sure I was one hundred percent me after all, I counted each finger on my hand twice before noticing that I had toothpaste on them from when I cupped my chin in them. Right, I completely forgot to dry my face after toothbrushing because I fell and turned into a fish.
Somehow I managed to pull a towel off my bathroom shelf and sighed. With this tail I was so immobile. This is how I imagined pregnant women to feel when they couldn't get up because of their huge tummy. Although they still had feet, of course.
The minute I lifted the towel to dry my face, I heard a loud knock on my bedroom door.
Shoot!
"Not now, Mum! I'm busy!" I shouted and my body got filled with panic again.
I heard my bedroom door opening and then footsteps came closer. But it sounded like more than one pair of feet, there were too many footsteps for it to just be my mum. Maybe it was my mum and Aaron? Or the paramedics? Did he seriously call an ambulance?! He would be so dead if he did!
"Leave!" I shouted once more and rubbed the towel over my chin to remove the toothpaste stains. If I was about to be discovered with a tail, I at least wanted to not look like a dork.
Then, someone knocked on my bathroom door, the door handle went down and I hated myself for not locking it when I had still been able to.
I tried to move my tail in front of the door so that whoever tried to get in couldn't open it. Like a whale on beach. God, never have I ever felt so useless in my life.
Suddenly my whole body started tingling again and I witnessed with my own eyes how my tail shrank and formed itself back into my legs. All I did was gazing at my legs.
How …?
But then my bathroom door opened completely, and I quickly jumped up to face whoever entered my privacy without asking. Two girls stood in my bedroom, one of them had long black hair and the other girl was short-haired and blonde. I immediately knew that I had seen them before, just not where.
Their eyes were opened wide in shock. All they did was stare at me while I stared back at them. What the heck were they doing in my room?!
Then their gaze went down on me and I followed their look, only to realize that I was fully naked.
"Oh my god!" I screamed and quickly grabbed the towel from the ground. After changing back from fish to human, I wore the clothes that I had on me before transforming – none. Last night Aaron and I were so tired that we just threw our clothes on the ground and didn't put on any pyjamas.
"What are you doing here?!" I exclaimed and embarrassingly tried to cover myself with the towel.
The black-haired girl turned her head to the blond one before whispering, "Eleanor, why is she naked? Where are her clothes? Did they disappear? This is not how it's supposed to work!"
Damn, I finally remembered them! They were my classmates, Eleanor and Lucy!
Eleanor observed me completely, from top to bottom back to the top. After that, she raised one eyebrow. "You look horrible," she said.
"Wow, thanks," I answered sarcastically, although I knew she was probably right. Everything on me was still dirty, my hair was messy and my elbow bloody. "I was about to take a shower, hence the nudity."
Lucy grinned. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Well, good for you that you aren't then. Can you go now? As you might have noticed, I'm naked," I stated while getting really annoyed. Who bumps into the bathroom of a person that they've never really talked to and then refuses to leave?!
Consequently, Eleanor started laughing. "We couldn't care less about your skin, Maya. And, by the way, we have PE together. We've already seen you naked more than once."
"It's Mila," Lucy reminded her.
I felt my anger growing bigger. "That doesn't make it any better! I don't know you! How did you even get in here?! What the hell do you want from me?!"
"But we know each other, Mila! We've played together a lot when we were children," Lucy tried convincing me.
"That was nine years ago! And after that you didn't even look me in the eye when we met each other in school! I don't care about you!" I exclaimed and then continued, "And I also don't care that you're Tommy's brother, Eleanor! He's Aaron's best friend, not mine!'
"You're just confused." Eleanor leaned onto my bathroom wall.
"And why on earth would I be confused?" I asked angrily.
"Because you're a mermaid!" Lucy shouted and she was so excited that she almost hugged me.
My face dropped. Shirt. Shirt, shirt, shirt! Freaking shirt! Did they see me with that tail? How could they possibly know?! The door was closed the whole time! Were there any cameras in my bathroom?! And would did they mean by mermaid? I definitely wasn't a mermaid! Things like mermaids only existed in my fantasy novels!
"Get out," I said coldly.
"It's okay to be scared, Mila. We can help you." Lucy tried taking my hand.
"Don't touch me. Get. Out!" I yelled and slammed my bathroom door right into their faces.
The girls knocked onto it again. "Mila, please open up," Lucy said, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible.
Eleanor added, "You're only making things more complicated than they have to be."
"Shut up!" Tears ran down my face.
"Look, we know it's hard to believe at first. But do you have a different explanation?" Lucy asked, still trying to be the good cop.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh Mila, come on!" Eleanor groaned. "Don't play dumb. We know that you grow a fish tail as soon as you touch water."
"No, I don't," I denied.
"And we also know that you fell into the moon pool on Mako last night. So open up, please. There is no way you can hide from it." Now even Eleanor's voice sounded a bit friendlier.
"Did Aaron tell you?" was everything that I wanted to know.
Lucy gasped, "No, he didn't. Did you tell him? Please tell me you didn't show him your mermaid-form!"
I clenched the door handle before I objected, "I didn't tell him anything! I kicked him out, just like I should kick you out for entering my room without permission!"
A big sigh left Eleanor's mouth. "Relax, okay? We're not the bad ones here. We want to help you."
"Well, maybe I don't need help!"
"So you're saying you got it all under control?"
"Yes, I do!"
Eleanor laughed loudly, the sympathy in her voice was gone again. "That means you know exactly how to handle spilled drinks, showering, rain and everything else in life that involves water without dropping onto the ground with a tail like a fish on land, revealing yourself to everybody out there?"
"I AM NOT A MERMAID!" I yelled, louder than I had ever yelled before. My whole body was shaking from tension and fear and despair. It couldn't be true. Sure, I thought there were werewolves on Mako Island but there was a huge difference between big bad wolves and people who were half fish and lived underwater!
"Great, scream even louder," Eleanor said sarcastically, and I heard Lucy hitting her not once, but twice. After that, the black-haired girl said, "I'm sorry, Mila. We're all overwhelmed by the new situation. At first I didn't want to approach you because I thought you were weird. It was until I realized that we were good childhood friends once that I scolded myself for not giving you a chance. But we share a secret now, if you want to or not. So we should stick together. Okay?"
They didn't really want to be friends with me. They never, not once, talked to me in school. They ignored me and pretended I didn't even exist. And now, because I turned into a fish (which I assumed they could do too), they decided to be my friends. But they couldn't fool me that easily.
"We are not a team," I stated.
"Okay, then we're not a team. But let us at least explain some things to you," Lucy begged.
An explanation would be amazing, that much was true. Just not right now. That's why I locked my bathroom door.
"Mila …"
I moved away from the door and threw the towel onto the floor. "I'll take a shower now."
"Mila, you really shouldn't –"
"Let her do it, Luce," I heard Eleanor whisper and then continuing louder for me, "Take your time, Mila. We'll wait here in your room. Just call if you need anything."
It was clear that they weren't gonna go before I talked to them. All I could do was to accept that fact.
I stepped into my shower and hesitated for a moment. So what if Eleanor and Lucy were right? What if I would turn into a mermaid whenever I touched water? I shook my head. I didn't want to be scared of water for the rest of my life.
Next thing I knew my hands automatically turned on the shower.
