Marker; Reads 457 votes 47

AN; For song skip to 0.41

Summer Present
Strings of blue and purple beads flew around me and clanked together loudly, and my long shirt brushed against my ankles while I quickly slipped into our back room at the store. I pretended that I was searching for something among the various boxes that crowded the small dusty room that was used for storage, but in reality, I was hiding. I was hiding from the group of teenage boys that had just walked in.

"Hello?" one of them called out.

"I'm back here. I'll be out with you in a sec!" I called out in the high voice I had mastered with much practice and began to move various things around. I tried to avoid looking at the little black glass ball tucked discreetly in the corner of the ceiling. I instead chose to focus on the splintery shelves cluttered with soap dishing, jewelry boxes lined with seashells, and similar other effects. Still, I couldn't stop my eyes from sliding over to the devilish device. I wondered if he was sitting in front of that screen right now, at his large wooden desk, just watching me with those calculating blue eyes.

"I'll be watching you, Miss Ocean," he had said.

I selected a large mug with the phrase "Go with the Flow" printed on it with large, sprawling cursive letters and exited the room and into the equally cluttered shop space of Whale Tails.

Whale Tails, was the name of the tourist trap where I now spent most of my day. It was wedged between an ice-cream shop with a gigantic plastic ice-cream cone topped with a white and red swirl and a fast food restaurant that served french fries in a brown paper bags through a glass sliding door window. It was about a stone's throwback from the boardwalk, and the blue-green waters of the ocean.

I stepped behind a counter whose wood had been stained to make it look like it had come from a shipwreck, and set down the cup. There was three of them, two boys with lite brown hair, and one with dark brown hair. Their attention was on a wall of T-shirts, but the moment I had walked out all three of their heads had snapped around, and they had looked at me. They all wore mischievous looks on their faces, and I felt my heart sink. Not this again... I grabbed a catalog from under the counter and pretended to leaf through it.

The one with the dark brown hair strode over to me.  He walked past the display of glass sea animals and rested his elbow on the counter.

"So, it's nice outside," he said, tapping on the counter lightly to get my attention, and then pointing towards the open door where the clear blue sky was visible. I heard a serious of stifled laughs. My eyes flew to the other two boys,  who promptly turned their backs to me before I returned to staring at the great blue expanse.

While I gazed outside my sister's musical voice filled my ears suddenly like she was standing in front of me besides the boy  "Marina you must come to me."

I looked up in surprised but found my sister was not there.  What I did see was a pair of amber colored eyes. The boy's expression faltered under my gaze, and I quickly averted my eyes.

Delphine's voice was getting clearer each day when she called me from the ocean.  Either she was getting stronger, or my ears were longing more for the call of home.

"So..." the boy's voice trailed off while he tried to recollect his thoughts which had been scrambled by my stare, "swim," he said softly in a small lost voice.

"What about a swim?" I said calmly, but  I was groaning in dread internally for what was about to follow.  No matter how original humans like to think they were, they weren't.  This is the third time this week I had been asked about "that night" by the locals.

He knitted his eyebrows together, "I'm not sure," he said. "I was walking over here to meet this girl they pulled out of the water three weeks ago by the pier naked, while she screamed something about dolphins?"

I had actually been screaming Delphine's name. The coast guards had mistaken it for dolphin, but I hadn't bothered correcting them, and I wasn't going to correct this other human either.

At this, his friends behind him began to howl with laughter. But the expression on the boy's face remained blank, lost.

I somehow mustered up a smile even though I felt cold on the inside. "Oh, that.." I said and pulled the fabric of the gray cardigan I was wearing further up my shoulder, and my eyes traveled to one of the many sea creatures themed clocks hanging on the wall. The big hand was pointed on the 11, and the small hand was almost to the 6. In five minutes I could lock up the shop and leave and get something to eat. I was so hungry! But based on the fact that the two boys next to the t-shirts now had their phones out and were not so discreetly filming this... I was positive that if this ran its natural course, I would be looking at more than five minutes

The boy in front of me looked like he was slowly coming back to himself, but before he collected his thoughts, I looked deep into his eyes and leaned forward. My long straight black hair fell around us, creating a black curtain around our mouths. I drew his mind into my own, "You look hungry. I know I am. Why don't you and your friends go next door and grab something to eat?" Mounty's has the best fries, or so I heard," I whispered.

His eyes lost their focus, and he slowly backed away from me. "Okay," he said quietly, and turned around and walked towards the door.

At this sudden departure, his friends stopped laughing.

I watched him walked to the door somewhat guiltily. I didn't enjoy doing stuff like that. It made me feel dirty inside, but hunger dulled that guilt a bit.

"Hey! Hold on! Where're you going!?" one of the boys called after him. He slipped his phone into his pocket and chased after him. He caught up to him right at the doorway and tried to grab his arm, but the boy shook off his friend without even looking at him and kept moving towards the door.

His friend flicked his head in my direction and gave me a long stare, which I didn't meet before he followed his friend outside, along with the other boy. Once they were gone, I retrieved the store's keys from their place under the counter and quickly locked everything up, before slipping it into the pocket of my cardigan.

I made my way past the tourist traps, fast food stalls that fried everything possible in a vat of boiling oil, and all the touristy places until the rickety boards became the sidewalk. I kept walking till sprawling mansions surrounded me, and the oceans roar was lost in the sound of people chattering on their big porches,  while they sipped cold drinks in rocking chairs, and their little dogs barked in fenced-in gardens.

I kept walking until I came to the biggest house of all. It was the color of plums with white gingerbread trimming and three pointed tower's at its top, each tower towering at different intervals of height, staying true to the classic Victorian architecture. Ivy vines crept up its west wall and reached up to its stain glass window of it's tallest tower. The stain glass portrait was one of a mermaid with golden hair, sitting on a rock with her arm outstretched to the sea. I walked up to its white door and pulled out the key ring from my cardigan, inserted one of the keys into the lock, and stepped inside.

I ascend the spiral staircase which greeted you almost immediately when you crossed the threshold. When I reached the top, I turned left down a narrow hallway and walked into the dimly lit room that housed a giant saltwater tank full of fish, only to find the room was preoccupied. There was a stranger standing on top of a ladder over it. He scoped out dead fish with a long-handled net into white plastic buckets on the floor.

"No!" I groaned when I saw that there wasn't a single living fish in the tank. My stomach growled furiously.

The man on the ladder was an older man with tan wrinkled skin, and greasy gray hair pulled into a short ponytail in the center of his head. The man turned his head at the sound of my voice, and his lazy brown eyes fixed onto me.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

Without a word, the man began to descend the four rungs to the ground, "I can ask you the same," he said when he reached the bottom, "Who are you, young lady? I didn't know Mr. Walters had anyone staying at his beach house."

I let my eyes sweep over is baggy jeans, his oversized thin white t-shirt which I could see the outline of his bulging stomach, where I kept my eyes locked. "I'm his niece, Marina. I'm staying with him all summer to work at his store," I said the lines that I had rehearsed so many times in my fake voice.

"One of his stores, "I corrected myself, after all, he owned half the town.

The man scratched the back of his neck, "Oh, I see," he said, his voice filled with a hint of suspicion, "Will you hold on just one second?" he asked, and pulled out a phone from the back pocket of his baggy jeans and turned away from me for a solid three minutes before turning back towards me.

"I'm his handyman, Tom, I'm surprised he didn't mention anything about me to you or you to me, guess he's been keeping us both in the dark. Huh?" he said and let out a short laugh, that didn't sound real to my ears.

His phone buzzed in his hand, and he looked down at it and back at me. Our eyes locked by mistake, my second accidental eye contact that day, but his expression didn't falter, and his eyes remained clear. His eyes dropped from mine and towards the device in his hand. He knitted his eyebrow together at whatever the small glowing screen said, "Mr. Walter says to tell you that he won't be able to replace the fish in the tank until tomorrow afternoon. You're going to have to go get take out."

I groaned in dismay and on cue my stomach growled and a sharp pain stabbed at my gut. I double over, and in a flash, Tom was at my side. I felt his arm go around me, keeping me from crumbling to the ground.

"Are you alright Marina? Are you feeling sick?" he asked, leaning his face close to mine. I straightened and pushed him away. I shook my head, and as I did so, I caught the glint of gold from his left hand. "

"I'm fine, just a little hungry," I said. "Are you married or have kids, right?" I asked him, pointing to the gold band on his finger

"I'm I married or have kids?" he repeated back to me, probably caught off guard by my out of place question "I don't have any kids," he answered, "I've been married to my Marry for forty-five years." By the way, he had said my Marry; I could tell that his love for her was great enough to protect against my magic. Good, that meant I could at least relax around the handyman.

"But you know, it's bad to starve yourself," he continued, "It makes a person all weak and angry....and a little loopy."

I nodded. "I'm not starving myself intentionally, but you're prolonging my hunger, excuse me," I said letting my voice fall into its natural tone and hurried out of the room and into the narrow hallway, all the while I could feel Tom's eyes glued to my back.

This time, I turned right and walked all the way down to the end of the hall. I opened the little blue door and began to climb the attic stairs to the highest of the three towers, which served as my room.

Sunlight streamed in from the bright afternoon sun outside and filtered through the round stain glass portrait of the mermaid still beckoning towards the sea, causing the simple round room to be filled with rainbow light. I quickly walked over to the white dresser adjacent from the small bed I slept on every night and took out a pink polka dotted bikini. I slipped out of my clothes, bra, underwear, and kicked off the flats I had been wearing that day, and changed into the bathing suit. I pulled on a pair of shorts and stuck my feet into a pair of yellow flip flops. I got down on my hands and knees and retrieved a cardboard box from under my bed. Inside, I found my net I had woven from seaweed and kelp, never thinking I would have to use it. I fingered it gently before slipping it into a white cloth bag with rope handles.

I ran down the steps, taking two at a time. When I passed the saltwater room, I saw that the door was closed. Just as well. I hurried down the rest of the steps and back outside. I made my way back to the boardwalk, but inside of going towards Whales Tails, I headed towards the gentle call of the sea with my net at my side.

I crept towards where the legs of the pier rose out of the water. Here, broken shells littered the sand and the waves crashed harshly into the shore, which discouraged tourist from coming but made an ideal place to slip from the ocean and come to land without anyone noticing. Hopefully, it would prove to be a good fishing spot too.

I looked to my left and my right, no one. I took off my flip flops and laid them on the sand beside me and waded into the water until it was up to my thighs. I took my net and cast it into the sea. The shallows were murky from a storm that had rolled in the previous night, and I could not see the sandy bottom. I hummed the tune of hunting under my breath quietly and hopped it was silent enough for other ears in the sea to miss it.

I pulled in my net after a few short minutes and smiled when it came back full. I reached into the wriggling, splashing mass of my net and graded a silverfish. I brought it to my mouth and bit into it. I swallowed the fish in five bites and felt the hunger pains subside a little in my stomach. I reached into the net to grab another fish when I felt something grab my ankles.

I screamed in surprise and fell backward, temporally going underwater before finding the surface again, coughing and sputtering. My sister's pale face emerged from the water in front of me, and I stared back at her angrily. Something I found was becoming a habit.

"What are you doing!?" I hissed, and looked around frantically, grateful that I spotted no one insight. "You are you trying to be seen by humans!? Are you going insane!?"

I stood, and my sister rolled her eyes at me, "No humans have ever come here, relax that's why you chose this fishing spot.  As too why I came, you gave me no choice. You kept ignoring my calls," my sister said, and shot me a spiteful look, "So I decided to make my own answer."

I glared at her "That's because I've said all that I had to say to you or dad or all our other sisters! I refuse to do what you want it's wrong and I can't..."

I trailed off when I noticed Delphinia's eyes widen at something behind me. I heard the frantic splashing of someone enter the water. Delphine quickly disappeared back underwater and left me to fend for myself against the unknown approaching threat.

I had a just enough time to turn around and see a boy in a floppy hat, t-shirt, and swimming trunks, running towards me through the shallow water before he threw himself at me and slammed into my body, hard.