Chapter 3: It's Nice to Have a Friend

As she paused on the landing, Cleo looked down at Nate. She wanted to get an idea of his mood. He looked just as he always did. She stepped down the last few stairs and placed her hands in her pockets. She tried to remain calm and collected, but she still wasn't sure if he would be open to fully discuss everything.

"You said you'll answer any questions I have?" Nate asked. He held up the memory card. Cleo reached out to grab it, but he pulled it away at the last second. "Answer first, Cleo."

"Not here." Cleo could hear her father's steps coming down the stairs. "I'll be back in a few hours!" She called up the stairs. "I have my phone!" The woman pulled the door open and pushed Nate outside. Maybe she shouldn't have said she'd answer any questions he had. She started down the street, not pausing to make sure Nate was caught up with her.

"Before I answer anything, you swear to give me that memory card?" Cleo turned her head, hand extended to him to shake. She hated to admit that she was surprised when he took it.

"I swear." Nate held his other hand up in the air, causing Cleo to laugh for a moment. A real laugh, one she hadn't been able to do for a few months. She dropped her hand and rolled her eyes.

"So, you said it's been three years?" He asked. She straightened out her shirt, feeling uncomfortable with answering the questions. She had already given up her greatest secret, and now she was giving Nate any information he so chose to get from her. Sure, she could lie, but everyone knew she was a terrible liar.

"Almost four." Cleo could still remember that night as if it were the last. Every moment as a mermaid was burnt into her memory. Almost every happy moment she had in the recent past was there, in the water with her best friends by her side.

"How did you… become half fish?" Cleo stopped in her tracks at his wording. She looked at him with pursed lips for a second before sighing and continuing.

"Before I answer that…" Cleo fought the urge to roll her eyes at him again. "You have to know that I'm not the only one. To answer some of these questions, I'm going to be sharing things about other people. I need your word that this stays between us." She wanted to believe him. She wanted to know that everything she was about to say wasn't going to be shared online in some blog post that Nate decided to share. People likely wouldn't believe him. They'd think he was just some crazy person, but there would always be a handful of people who might actually realize he was telling the truth.

"There's more? How many more?" Nate asked, and Cleo looked at him with a stern expression.

"Take this seriously. Is this just between us?"

"Yes, Cleo. I already swore." He grumbled. "There's more… Wait… Emma? Rikki? Is Lewis..?

She gripped the bridge of her nose between two fingers and sighed. She was making a mistake. That conversation was a mistake.

"Yes, yes, no." Cleo almost wanted to laugh at the idea of Lewis being a mermaid.. A merman? "Do you want to know how, or not?"

"Yes. Tell me." Nearing a park, Nate gestured to a picnic table under a covering. Cleo sat down on one side. Nate sat across from her. She looked around to make sure no one else they knew was around, and she started the story.

"Do you remember that day Zane asked me to help him with his Zodiac, but it turned out someone had just stolen his spark plug?" Cleo asked, only pausing long enough for Nate to think for a moment and nod.

"Rikki had just moved to town. She's the one who stole it. Once Zane had pushed me out into the harbor, she came to my rescue. She jumped on the boat from the dock, put in the spark plug, and we left on a joy ride. We eventually came across Emma, and she joined us. We went out to sea, and well… we ran out of gas close to Mako Island. It was getting late. We didn't have cell service, so we paddled to the island. We tried to climb the volcano for higher ground. When we were crossing a stream, I fell down into a small cave. I couldn't climb out. Rikki jumped in, and then Emma did too. The cave you found me in was that cave. That's the underwater entrance."

Cleo stopped and closed her eyes. She could remember walking into the moon pool for the first time, and she felt a twinge of pain in her heart. She wished that Emma and Rikki were there to tell the story with her. The next part was where everything changed. She built up the courage to tell him exactly how the magic of the moon pool changed them, in fear that he would try to change himself.

"No one knew where we were, and Emma saw the underwater exit. She swam out the tunnel to the sea. It felt like hours before she came back in. She said that it was a short swim out. It was night time, and after much begging, they convinced me to swim out with them. The full moon came over the volcano, and just… it was magic. The water changed at that moment, and we stayed for minutes until the moon passed over. We left, and a coast guard was out there waiting for us because they found Zane's boat on the beach. The next day, we all grew tails when we touched water."

She looked up from her hands to Nate's face. She couldn't gauge what he was thinking. Other than pure confusion, his face was blank.

"Every time you touch water?" He finally spoke after a few moments, and Cleo just nodded.

"So, if I poured water on you, you'd sprout a tail?" He asked. She worried that she had messed up by telling him that detail.

"And if you did that, I'd have Rikki come kill you." Cleo whispered, leaning forward with her brow furrowed. She knew that Rikki, as soon as she figured out that Nate knew, was already going to be on her way back to end him.

"All three of you?"

"Yes."

"Are there more?"

"Yes."

"Not Bella?" The look on Nate's face turned from confusion to pure shock as he realized.

"Yes, Bella. But her story is different from ours, and it's not mine to tell." Cleo didn't know Bella's story as well, and she didn't want to get anything wrong. "She was one before she moved here. We found out when she jumped in the water after us." She was careful not to speak too much about the circumstances regarding discovering Bella's tail. There was too much to explain with the water tentacle and Comet Eva.

"And how does Lewis play into this?" Nate questioned, and Cleo knew it was coming.

"Well, he's my boyfriend." She stated matter-of-factly, as if it was the most obvious thing. "He saved me from the water at Miriam's pool party shortly after turning. He helped us keep our secret, but no, he did not turn into one." Even the thought of Lewis as a merman was hilarious. The conversations had only ever come up in private. He wasn't interested, especially knowing he could only give it up after another 50 years.

"Who else knows?"

"Zane and Will." Emma had told her boyfriend once, but Ash didn't stick around long enough to truly matter in the grand scheme of things.

"Zane knows?" Cleo could see the anger in Nate's eyes. His best friend knew this enormous secret, and he never said anything.

"Did you think Rikki kept it a secret from her boyfriend for years?" Cleo asked. Sure, Rikki and Zane were no longer together, or so they swore, but they were dating for multiple years. Keeping the secret from family was hard, but from a significant other was even harder.

"He never said anything." Nate almost looked sad, but it just showed that Rikki was right in trusting Zane.

"Because it's a secret, Nate. Do you not understand what could happen to us if this got out? We'd be freak shows, put in a circus, shoved into a lab to be studied. That's why I want the footage destroyed. It's not because we like keeping this from everyone we know and love." Cleo's voice was hardly above a whisper, but still harsh. She watched him slip his hand in his pocket, and he slid her the memory card slowly. She took the card and put it in her pocket, happy to have the only copy of the video that would expose her.

"I'm sorry." She couldn't believe the words came from Nate's mouth. Hers opened in shock. She couldn't even think to ask if he had any other questions. He stood up and walked away, leaving her there in full confusion.