Chapter 11: Don't Trust a Flirt
"Wait here for us after school, ok Sydney?" Noah said as he ruffled his younger brother's hair. "If anything happens we'll be right over in this building, it shouldn't be hard to find us. Make new friends and try not to get into trouble again."
"Geeze, you play one little trick on the teacher and you get suspicious of me," Sydney cried out as he threw his hands into the air. "Stop worrying, I'll be fine. It's Patrick you should worry about." He leaned over to watch Patrick trying to open a door that was clearly marked 'push'. "For good reason."
"Go to class Syd," Noah said as he ruffled Sydney's hair again. Sydney waved goodbye before rushing into his school. He stopped by the office to get his schedule and his locker number before following a group of people down the hall before he got to a classroom. He looked at his piece of paper before approaching the teacher.
"Hi. Are you...Ms. Ackerman?" He asked politely, referring to his schedule.
"Yes I am. You must be Sydney Jackson," she replied with a smile and he nodded enthusiastically. She placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face the class. "Class, this is Sydney Jackson. He came here from Los Angeles, California."
"Hi," he greeted them somewhat shyly with a short wave. Some people in the class greeted him back.
"Sydney, you can take a seat next to...Elliot Gilbert," she said as she pointed to the blond haired boy that was sitting by a blond haired girl.
Sydney nodded and made his way to the back of the room. He dropped his bag and smiled his dimpled smile. "Hi. I'm Sydney Jackson," he greeted them.
"Did you say Jackson?" The girl asked as she leaned forward. Sydney's eyes shifted as he nodded. "Do you have sisters in grade 11?" He nodded again. "I have a sister in grade 11 too. Her name's Cleo Sertori. I'm Kim. Elliot has a sister named Emma who's also in grade 11."
"Emma? I've met her. I met her yesterday, actually. Her and a girl named Rikki," Sydney commented.
"She's also my sister's friend. They're really weird." Kim dropped her voice. "They keep disappearing and they won't go anywhere near water."
"They could have Aquagenic Urticaria," Sydney replied with a shrug. Kim and Elliot stared at him in confusion. "An allergy to water. It's not common but it's possible."
"I don't think that's it," Kim replied. "They're hiding something, I know it. They're in a cult or something."
"I'm pretty sure Emma isn't in a cult," Elliot spoke up.
"Or maybe...they're planning on running away with their boyfriends to get married," Kim suggested as Sydney and Elliot gave her odd looks. "It makes sense! They're always with their boyfriends. They spent every day with them; I've never seen them alone. I say we spy on them and then rat them out."
"Does she always jump to conclusions like that?" Sydney asked Elliot as they opened their books.
"Mhm. She always drags you into their schemes too," Elliot sighed. Sydney covered his mouth, stifling a giggle as Kim glared at them.
"Boys," she muttered.
Meanwhile, at the high school, Zane had waved goodbye to his father and started his way to his locker. He spotted his friend Nate and rushed over to him, ready to ask how his previous attempt at asking Riley out went. When he got close to Nate a foul odor filled his nose. "Ugh! What is that smell?" Zane made a face as Nate turned around by his locker, a big smile on his face. "Don't tell me it's you!" He added as Nate rolled his eyes. "It is! God, why are you wearing that stuff?" He held his arm up to his nose to protect his nostrils from the invading smell.
"One sniff of this cologne and Riley will fall for me," Nate replied as he put the bottle back into his locker.
"What about Cleo?" Zane asked.
"Zane, I know now not to mess with a girl who's dating some other guy," Nate replied. "Besides, she was hotter when she was single."
"Let me see if I can understand this," Zane said more to himself than to Nate. "You think Cleo is hot, but you liked her better when she was single, even when she was kind of seeing Lewis?"
"Exactly," Nate replied as he fastened his over the shoulder bag onto himself. "Is it that hard to understand? That's why I'm going after Riley. I know for a fact she doesn't have a boyfriend here or anywhere else. Now I can make my move."
"That's going to be hard, seeing as she hates you," Zane pointed out.
"We'll see. Look, there she is." He pointed across the lawn where Emma, Rikki, and Cleo walked up to Riley, Rhuben, and Crystal. Riley was saying something to the other three girls, who exchanged worried glances. Riley said something else and their faces relaxed slightly before the girls parted ways. "I'll see you later, mate." Nate closed his locker door and raced across the lawn, stopping right in front of Riley who glared at him. "Hey Riley, nice day isn't it?"
"What's with guys and the weather?" Crystal asked Rhuben, who shrugged but remained silent.
"Mhm, it's Sunny with a hundred percent chance of a burn!" Riley replied. Rhuben leaned back and saw Riley slowly raising her wrist so her palm was facing out.
"Chill, Riles!" Crystal grabbed Riley's wrist and pulled her away from Nate.
"That's so not funny!" Riley muttered. The three ran away from him, leaving him standing there dumbfounded. He pulled his shirt away from himself and smelled his cologne.
"Strike two," Zane said in amusement as he passed by, gripping Rikki's hand. Rikki smirked at him.
Nate angrily stomped on the ground before he let out a sigh and decided to get to his class. 'Why can't I ever get a girl?' He asked himself as he slowly trudged to class. 'I don't get it. I mean, Zane even managed to get...Rikki. And Rikki hated him so much at first, what changed?' He growled in frustration. 'Girls don't make sense.'
He got into the classroom before the teacher closed the door on him and slipped into his seat. He had study hall first period and the teacher was a pushover so no one really did any work. Nate grinned, thinking it was the perfect time to get some information on Riley to win her over, and who knew her better than her sister or cousin? They weren't there, so Zane was a close second.
"What do you know about Riley?" He asked Zane out of the blue.
"I know that she hates you," Zane replied, opening a notebook. "I'm not going to help you win this bet. That'd be cheating."
"No, that'd be helping you lose," Nate corrected. "C'mon, mate. You've known her since you were nine; you have to know something useful about her."
"I met her when we were nine and I didn't talk to her that much." Zane sighed. "Seeing as you're going to need all the help you can get, I might as well tell you something so it will be fair." He rubbed his temples. "She likes music and she plays the guitar."
"Oh, that's cool. I could give her a lesson." Zane could all ready see the little gears in his head turning.
"Uh, no you can't. She's been playing since she was four. She's really good; she'd be giving you the lesson."
"Oh." Nate thought. "Well, I can serenade her!"
"I don't think that's a good idea," Zane warned him.
"Why not?" Nate demanded.
"Have you seen her muscles? She could knock you out in a single punch!" He exclaimed as Rikki came back into the room.
"What're you talking about?" Rikki asked.
"He wants to get Riley to date him but I'm trying to tell him it's a bad idea," Zane replied.
"No, let him, I think it'd be funny," Rikki said with a laugh as Nate made a face at her. "Why are you being so defensive now? You didn't care before whenever you made a fool out of yourself around a girl."
"It's different," Nate muttered.
"Different how?" Rikki questioned, raising her eyebrows and grinning as she waited for his response. He stayed silent. "You're just going to crash and burn like usual."
"How do you know? She just moved here a few days ago."
"I know her better than you do. Get it through your head, Nate, no girl likes a player and there's no way Riley will ever fall for you."
"We'll see." Nate angrily grabbed his books and moved to the other side of the room.
"Now that he's gone, look at this," Zane said as he put his laptop on his desk and turned it to Rikki could read the screen. "It's more information about super humans."
"This again?" Rikki sighed. "Zane, stop it. There are no such things as super humans." She made sure she kept a straight face so he wouldn't tell that she was lying. She didn't want to give away her friends' secret, not when she promised them that she wouldn't say anything. If she told, then they might turn their back on her and tell the media about their mermaid powers, and that's not what Rikki wanted to think about let alone happen.
"That's like saying there are no such things a mermaids, and look how that turned out," he muttered as he stared at the screen. Rikki glared at him, but he ignored it as he continued searching the web.
"Zane, you're doing it again," she told him. "You're starting to become obsessive over it. If you care more about those...'super humans' than me, then we're done."
Zane held his hands over the keyboard and looked up into Rikki's face, trying to decide if she were serious not. Her blue eyes held his gaze as she crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a hard look. Silence stretched between the two. "Whatever, loser."
"Rikki," Zane called after her, but it fell on deaf ears. He groaned and ran a hand through his hair, letting out a slow breath.
"Trouble in paradise?" Nate asked with a smug look as he passed by.
"Shut up, Nate."
-----
"Guys, I'm worried," Cleo muttered, moving her tail gently so it caused ripples at the surface of the Moon Pool. Emma, Cleo, and Rikki swam there straight after school and right now they were waiting for Riley, Crystal, and Rhuben to join them. Cleo had been worried all day once Riley told them that they couldn't erase Charlotte's memory, but could only alter it. It was now like she had amnesia, she couldn't remember anything about being a mermaid and thought that the only reason she wasn't friends with the other girls was because she tried to take Lewis away from Cleo. Cleo was a little bit relaxed once she found out that they were successful in erasing part of Dr. Denman's memory and that she had gone back to California that morning.
"About what?" Emma asked as she swam over to Cleo.
"What if Dr. Denman's memory wasn't erased entirely? What if Charlotte remembers about us being mermaids? What if she decides to call up Dr. Denman and tell her everything?" Cleo asked, biting her lower lip.
"Lewis said she promised she wouldn't say anything. Changing her memory was just...an extra precaution," Emma tried to convince her.
"Yeah, and in a way we're safe. Dr. Denman wasn't after us in the first place. She was after the Jacksons and Crystal all this time," Rikki added as she floated on her back.
"Ahhh, thanks for your vote of confidence," Riley commented sarcastically, stepping into the cave area, followed closely behind by Rhuben and Crystal. Rikki merely shrugged, continuing to float on her back. "But you shouldn't be worried. We've erased memories tons of times before."
"Why?" Cleo asked.
"When someone sees you using your powers in public, well nothing is really a secret anymore is it? Especially in school," Crystal replied, sitting down on the rock ledge above them.
"You got found out at school?" Emma's eyes widened.
"On accident," Rhuben replied with a shrug. "It's hard to keep things quiet when assassins have broke in and are in the process of trying to kill you."
"Assassins?" Emma, Cleo, and Rikki repeated.
"This is going to take a while," Riley sighed, sitting down to get comfortable. "Dr. Denman works part time for a guy named Core. He is the leader of WingzCorp, a group who are trying to get rid of the 'good' Elementals." Riley put finger quotes around the word good. "Under WingzCorp, there are different divisions of people to take down people of that Element. For example, the BlackWolves are a division that goes after Elementals of Fire. The DarkLions go after the Elementals of Darkness, and so on. Dr. Denman is helping Core try to get to us, to him, we're his strongest adversaries. With us out of the way, he can take over and control all of the Elementals of the world."
"So how'd you get found out?" Rikki questioned.
"Well, when someone comes crashing through your classroom window it's hard to stop yourself from going with your first instinct which is to knock their teeth out," Crystal replied.
"You're making it seem like they...stalk you," Cleo muttered.
"That's the nice way of putting it," Riley said dryly. "That's basically what they do, actually," she admitted, running a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. "They hunt us down like animals and attack us, day or night. They don't care who's around, they don't care who they hurt as long as they can get to us." Riley's statement ended with bitterness that drew their attention to her. Her hands were clenched into fists and were shaking from rage. Her jaw was set and her gaze was glued to the floor, even thought it seemed like she was focused on something.
"Are you ok?" Emma asked after a couple of seconds of silence.
"Fine," she replied stiffly before standing. "I gotta go." Without another word, she quickly walked out of the cave. She crawled back up the slope and squeezed her eyes shut from the sudden sunlight that hit her face. Once she was on her feet, she let out a growl and a bush nearby suddenly burst into flame, but it wasn't a normal flame, it was darker and seemed to be out of control. Riley let out a slow breath and the flame slowly went away. "That was too close," she muttered as she looked at her hands, a faint red outline was present.
She jogged back to the beach, instantly spotting her Wave Runner. She swung her leg over it and started the ignition. As she sped across the surface of the ocean, the sea breeze helped clear her mind and calm her down a little bit. She hadn't meant to reveal that much about them, but she let it slip, and instantly hated herself for it. Now she had dragged them into something that they didn't belong in and Koto would use that against her, to try and get a weakness out of her.
Riley clenched her teeth. He knows so much about me all ready; I practically dug my own grave. She mentally slapped herself as she pulled up to the dock. She jumped onto it and tied her Wave Runner to the docks, double knotting it just to be safe.
"Ah, Riley, I'm surprised to see you here."
Oh, not now! Fearing the worst, Riley slowly turned around, only to see Nate smiling at her. "What do you want?'
"Surfing lesson, remember? It's not right for the coach to be late. Someone told me that you were out in the ocean with your cousins doing something," he replied as he rested his surfboard against a wooden post. "I wanted to make sure you were ok. The ocean is an unpredictable place."
Riley studied his face, trying to determine if he were telling the truth or not about wanting to make sure if she were ok. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him as she recounted one of her life rules: Never Trust a Flirt. "Nice try, but I cancelled lessons for today, remember?" The smile faded from Nate's face. "Leave me alone Nate, if you know what's best for you."
"Just give me one chance," Nate begged as he followed her down the docks.
Above them, sitting on top of a building, Koto watched the exchange with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. He absentmindedly squeezed his hands into fists. The pain registered in his mind when he felt his nails puncture his skin. He glanced down at his hands briefly before setting his eyes on Mako in the distance as a slow, sinister smile came to his face.
A/N: I was going to put more Byron, Lewis, and Ash in this chapter but I decided to save it for the next one. You now know a little bit more about Elementals but not enough yet. Also, you can see a little bit of a human side to Nate, which he deserves even though he's a huge jerk in the show. Please read and review.
~Crystal