Chapter Two

Chloe’s POV

After playing mermaid life guard yesterday, I decided to have a day of recovering to rest my body from pulling all of that weight, My idea for relaxation starts on the beach.

I laid belly down on the burning hot sand with my arms serving as a pillow. In my comical ‘red polka-dot bikini’, I looked like an apple, but a very cute apple if anything. My silence was serenity until I heard someone walk up to me. I looked up and lowered my Ray Bans.

No way.

The boys from the boat!

They found me?

A blond curly haired boy knelt down and smiled, revealing pearly white teeth.

 "He got closer and whispered “I know your secret.” A wave of fresh minty air  rushed over me, spreading  goose bumps up and down my body. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pushed my sun glasses back up to my nose and set my head back down on my arms. “Oh, come on. Your hair, our eyes…..I know what you are.” I tore the sun glasses  off my face and stood up, shaking the sand off my bare stomach. He rose to my level. Grasping his shirt collar, I pulled him close so he was only inches away from my lips. “Don’t get involved. You don’t know know what we mermaids are capable of.” Releasing his now wrinkled t-shirt, I grabbed my purse and set my sun glasses on the top of my head. With that, I escaped his intimidating blue/green orbs.

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Ashton’s POV

After she was too far to strain my eyes to see her anymore, I looked at my feet and noticed that she’d left her phone behind. I knelt down and picked it up. Unlocking it (luckily  without a pass code), I discovered several pictures of her and another mermaid. I looked through her messages to find her name was Chloe. Hmmm….pretty.

I scrolled up and examined a certain text. It read something about “κυνηγοί γοργόνα”, which means mermaid hunters. Someone is hunting them?

The boys strolled up to me and I put the phone away, as if I’d never had it. “Anything?” I shook my head innocently.

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Chloe’s POV

I left immediately, never to look back at him. He knows my secret, along with four other boys. Who knows what they’ll make me do to keep my secret safe with them? I’m as vulnerable as skinned tuna!!

I sat at home, in the bath, eating sardines like they were going out of style. I finished off another can and tossed it on to the pile of empty containers on the side of the tub.

A knock on the door startled me. “Chloe? Are you okay in there? You’ve been in there for quite a while.” I sank down in the porcelain tub, relieved that it’s only Isabel. I’ve been much more skittish today with all of this newfound stress. I stuck my hand out and curved it as if my hand were really on the door knob. It unlocked and swung open. “Wow Chloe! You’ve really perfected your powers.” Her smile dropped as she took a look at the mountain of sardine cans. “I know what this means. What happened?” She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one side. “Someone knows” I looked down in shame. “Oh my gosh, Chloe! Who’d you spill it to?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

“I was so mindless…so stupid!” I drifted off. “When you left yesterday, I found one of the boys that were on the beach. He was drowning, so I saved him and the other boys saw me. Today, I was tanning on the sand and ‘blond curly hair’ came up to me and said something like, “Ξέρω το μυστικό σας(I know your secret)” I spoke in Greek to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping.

“Oh no. This is terrible! They could tell the mermaid hunters! That’s just what we need, another reason for them to come after us!”

“We just need to get to know these boys and see if they would do that to us, if anything, we can erase their memory.”

“Why can’t we do that now and get it over with?”

“Just give ‘em a chance.”

She crossed her arms and pouted her lip. “Fine. But if they make one mistake, it’s gonna be bye bye, memory.” I agreed.

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The next day, we went back to the beach and found them flirting with some girls. Being my pushy self, I walked up to them and gave them a dirty look that said, ‘scram’. They walked away leaving me and Isabel with these confused boys.

The colourful haired boy spoke up. “What’s up, tuna fish?” I saw Isabel give him a death glare as he smiled from ear to ear; his dimples sucking inwards. “Please no fish jokes. We just wanted to get to know you.” My hand grazed his shoulder and I stared deep into his eyes. I could feel him melting with a touch of my palm. Three of them stood up defensively. The one with the blond quaffed hair objected to the situation. “I see where this is going…but we have girl friends.” With that, two left, with not another word.

“Guess that leaves the four of us”, colourful pointed out the obvious. I glared at Isabel and spoke in Greek to disguise out plan. “πάρετε σγουρά και θα πάρω αφράτα μελαχρινή” (You take colourful and I will take curly blond). She laughed and grabbed colourful’s arm and pulled him in the opposite direction.

“Hey, I’m sorry if I came on too strong yesterday. It was silly of me. Don’t get me wrong. I would never tell a soul. My name is Ashton by the way.”

“Chloe” We sat in silence for a minute until an idea popped into my head.

“You wanna take a swim?” I smiled as my poisonous words sank deep into my tongue. His excited “Hell Yeah!” formed my smile into a smirk.

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