Claire

My First Mermaid - And First Kiss!

My town is not a fun town. It's not a tourist town, or a town that people visit for fun. The people here are not happy that they live here - if they are, it's because they're too drunk to care where they are. We live inland from the coast, so when I tell people I'm from Florida, they're disappointed to hear that I've never actually been to the beach. I live life buzzed, though, just like every other high schooler in this town. Things are bearable.

I like to walk, so after class I make my way down to the river. Well, river is a strong word. I’d suppose it's more of a creek. My brother calls after me to be wary of alligators, but at least an alligator attack would bring me some excitement. Monotony gets boring. Plus, girls totally dig dudes that can fight off alligators. I'd be the talk of the school! My lunch time chatter would finally consist of more than crushes and parties.

It was while I was lost entertaining the thought of a gator attack that I heard the faintest voice in my left ear. I paused. Most residents of Tarry weren’t very fond of nature, so it was strange to run into anyone. Sometimes the forest was used for illegal activities, but the voice didn't sound menacing. It was a girl - definitely a girl. She had a smooth, airy voice, much unlike the ones of the criminals I feared. It sounded like we would naturally cross pass soon. I carried on and hoped I'd catch sight of some pretty girl drinking with a friend. It was odd, but I never heard another voice. All I heard was a soft song.

The trees and bushes around me began to get thinner, and I knew I was approaching the bridge. It smelt like mud, as usual, but there was something fishy to the air this time. The wind was mostly blowing away from me, but the scent prevailed. The voice was gone; she must have thought I was a drug addict and got out of there. I sighed at the lost opportunity, but carried on my way. There was still a chance of an alligator attack, anyway. I returned to my thoughts. It was when I was distracted that the voice returned to me... but this time, it was not a song.

"I-I’m trying to find my way. Could you help me?"

The sweet voice from earlier returned. The abruptness of the voice had caused me to freeze in place; inexplicably, I was terrified to turn towards the voice. Still, I did. That was when I really froze. My vision focused in on the most beautiful pair of eyes that I had ever seen. I'll admit, my mouth gaped a bit, and I was left speechless. She let out a giggle and I felt my heart thud loudly in my chest.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to frighten you.. sirens are supposed to lure men to their death, I know, but I need help! You're not a man, so I'm no obligated to hurt you! It's okay, I just need help!"

Sirens...? My eyes made their way down. To my surprise, I was, in fact, speaking with someone that was not quite human. The sight of a pretty girl was enough to make me freeze; I'm not sure how I didn't die right there. I closed my mouth and tried to process my situation. I licked my lips and tried to return some moisture to my dry mouth. That was when I realized.

"Wait what do you mean I'm not a man?!"

I was probably more offended than I should have been. There were a million things I had wondered about mermaids and mythical creatures, but suddenly, they didn't matter. Either this was a living, breathing, half-fish woman in front of me, or I was entirely delusional. She seemed to find humor in the situation.

"You're young! Youthful, it's a good thing! A young man!"

She laughed nervously. Was she frightened of me? I cleared my throat and, with the slowest steps I could have managed, made my way down to the edge of the water. As I went, I spoke.

"Then uh.. thank you! Of course, thank you!"

There I was. I was face to face with a real life mermaid... and some of the worst awkward tension of my life.

"I'm sorry... this is just uh... kind of jarring? This is a new situation for me."

I rocked back on my heels a bit. I fiddled with my hands and looked at the tree beside me, but quickly found my eyes back on the creature in front of me. Was calling her a creature insensitive?

When my eyes returned, she was smiling. It was a bit of an uncomfortable smile, but I could tell she meant well, and I think she was feeling less afraid. She was saying something to me that I didn’t hear. Somehow, I had stopped listening. I ignored a mermaid.

"... and I just really need to find my way home."

At least I caught the important part? I offered to help her and her face lit up. At this point, I had only seen the top of her tail, where the scales met with her skin. I figured it'd be rude to stare. When I told her I knew how to get her home, I saw it. She pulled herself onto a rock and continually expressed her gratitude. I marveled at the gold scales glistening in the sun; I was so enraptured that I didn't notice that she had, in fact, moved a bit closer. Again, I wasn't listening to what she was saying. I turned my head toward her and, in that instant, realized I had made a terrible mistake. I kissed the mermaid.

Not surprisingly, she handled things well. She laughed a bit and shrugged while a heat spread across my face. I felt like passing out was very much a possibility, at this point. It was hard for me to form any coherent thought, but she stared at me like she expected me to say something. I forced my eyes to unwiden and I began to speak.

"I just had my first kiss with a mermaid."

That's not quite what I meant to say.

I was faced not only with my first mermaid, but my first kiss! I spent years dreaming of someone so polite and genuine. Had I blown it? She was so poised, so unique! Looking at her felt like gazing at a beautiful sky, with a combination of joy and mysticism. At the same time, I felt oddly misplaced.

She laughed at me when she saw my panic. I was happy, in a way, but wild embarrassment overwrote that. She scratched the back of her neck as she spoke.

“How about we just introduce ourselves?”

I laughed, too, and nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I’m Bennett.”

She took my hand in hers gently, performing what loosely resembled a handshake. Her grip was loose and her arm was slack, but her skin was as soft as could be. I gazed at her slender fingers for a few moments before bringing my eyes back up to meet hers; she smiled again, and I did too. Her eyes were bright blue, as bright as the ocean looked on the television. Mine were brown, colored like the mud we were standing atop, and I felt small as I remembered that. I paled in comparison to such undeniable, graceful beauty. Her lips were soft, and while I knew it was most likely the ocean water, I believed they must be softened by some form divinity.

“I’m Claire,” she intoned, “and it’s a pleasure to meet you. Really, I don’t know what I’d be doing without you… Oh, I tried to follow the river, but Bennett, it’s unbelievable how much is in the way of water travel. There’s so much garbage, and hooks all over the place! Not to mention how many times the river just up and goes a different way, or goes three different ways!”

This time, I was chuckling. She had only ever seen the vast, endless ocean; I had only seen the cramped, bending rivers of Tarry. We had hardly anything in common, yet I felt a sense of familiarity among her that I had never once felt at home. I wondered for a moment how many people she knew, or how many she had met. Did she too have a tribe of siblings, or was she loved and cherished? Did her family let her run amuck, or did they protect her? I smiled.

“Yeah, I get that. It’s pretty sporadic around here. I’m sure the ocean is way cooler.”

She shook her head violently at that, golden locks flying all about. “No way! It’s so green up here! And you people are so strange, what with all your funny rituals.”

“Our rituals?” I questioned, unsure entirely of what rituals she had witnessed yet.

“Oh yes! I’ve read all about it! My favorite is those handshakes, they’re so strange. And high fives! Oh, high fives are so weird! My friends and I always tried, but we weren’t ever allowed to get out of the water to check.” A look of realization made it’s way onto Claire’s face as her eyes lit up. “We’ve got to high five!”

She looked excited, and I decided that this was my chance to act as if I wasn’t completely incompetent with social interaction. I nodded.

“Alright, but do you know why we give high fives?”

All I received in response was a blank stare.

“We give high fives for good jokes, so you’ve got to make me laugh!”

Maybe I wanted to teach her something about humans, or maybe I wanted to hear a mermaid joke, or maybe I was hoping to hear her laugh again. Whatever my reasoning, she was compliant. She nodded violently before holding up a finger to my lips. As she began her joke, however, I heard a familiar clambering behind us. I gasped, and she began to laugh until I repeated her earlier gesture. I held my finger to her lips and leaned close to her ear,

“Hide!”

She looked panicked, but I don’t think she was quite as panicked as I. She easily disappeared below the water while I was left standing awkwardly next to a bridge, alone. When my classmates arrived, they would think I had been talking to myself about high fives. I debated hiding beneath the bridge, but I knew it would do no good. I took a deep breath and placed a hand on my forehead, staring at my feet. Unfortunately, I heard heavy steps approaching. They echoed off of the bridge and a silence filled the forest. It was eerie, no matter how many times it occurred. A whispering began. I sighed and turned to the left.

My movement was interrupted by a heavy fist landing in my shoulder. I took a small step back to compensate for the blow. I looked up to meet the eyes of Titus. I gave him a sarcastic smile and glanced to see which cohort he had brought along this time. It was Grant, a former geek that now overcompensated by beating on people that used to be his friend. He refused to make eye contact at first, but now he stared brazenly into my eyes. I returned my gaze to Titus.

“What, you don’t want to play?”

I shrugged.

“C’mon, Tiger.”

I rolled my eyes. That was a stupid nickname.

“You’re so lame, it’s never fight or flight with you, it’s always just freeze. You’re boring, Benny.”

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Grant joined in now, with a confident voice but a strange delivery. “You’re such a loser, you won’t even fight us. You’re not even a man, man. And - And now you’re out here, like, talking to yourself? I mean, what’s that all about! I bet you were even pretending to be that girl voice too, because you’re a huge loser!”

“Wow, Grant, I’m just shaking in my boots over here. Just kidding. I don’t fight you because two on one really isn’t a fair fight, and even if it was one on one, I just don’t want to. If it makes me a loser, I’m a loser.”

I was, in fact, actually shaking, but my mom always told me to pretend I wasn’t scared because then the bullies would leave me alone. I wasn’t a great actor, but I achieved a decent sense of calm by remembering that nothing I could have said would change what was coming. I could be sarcastic, scared, or sweet, but I was still going to get beat up. I felt a sense of detachment each time I was approached; I just wanted the encounter to be over. I became a husk and ran on auto pilot while the other boys laughed at me.

The fight itself really wasn’t too bad. My lip had been cut against my teeth and bled a bit, but nothing was broken and none of the blows were anywhere that could have killed me. They had knocked me onto my butt and that was all. I didn’t worry that they wanted to hurt me particularly. They just wanted an outlet for their emotions. While I’d have preferred if they painted or wrote poetry, I felt better knowing the problem didn’t lay within me. But then my strength faltered. When I reached for the banister, a pain tore through my side. A grunt escaped me and I settled back down.

I stared out across the water for a bit and noticed my vision losing focus. My chest hurt, but not from the blows. My hands were clammy and my head felt wrong. After a few moments of absolute dread, I again gripped at the banister above me. I forced myself upright and steadied myself on the edge. The winds blew gently against me, but they didn’t carry their usual warmth and love. There was something cold and unfamiliar to them. Nothing felt entirely right; it was as though my mind was elsewhere, allowing my body to deal with the pain all alone. Even my mind had escaped me.

Remembering the matter at hand, I clumsily made my way down the rocks to be beneath the bridge again. When I reached the bottom, I saw no one. My stomach turned. Had she left? I kicked myself - if I wasn’t such a loser, she wouldn’t have left. We would still be talking if those boys hadn’t found it necessary to come pummel me. I knew, truly, that it wasn’t something within me, but I began to wonder. I retracted my earlier thoughts; the problem was with me. Maybe I was an outlet for their emotions, but why hadn’t they chose someone else? Why had they chose me? Something was especially wrong about me. There was something undeniably wrong about me, apparently. If not, why would so many people resent me and ignore me?

I settled myself onto damp moss. My fingers dug into it and I got mud on my hands. Figuring I was dirty enough, I lowered myself onto my side, laying in the coolness of the shade. My heart felt empty and I wondered if perhaps I was crazy. Maybe I had imagined the beautiful girl before me in an attempt not to feel so alone. That’s what people do, I’ve heard. When they’re deprived of something, they see mirages, like when desert travelers see a nonexistent oasis. Maybe that was what happened to me. Maybe I imagined a companion so that my notepad wouldn’t be the only thing in the world that knew I existed. Maybe I just wanted to feel important. The facade was up.

I felt defeated and sad. Now, I understood why I was an outcast. I was weird. I walked into forests and pretended there were things that weren’t real. I pretended there was meaning in trees and that the river had a song. To everyone else in town, those things were stupid. I’d never find a way to express myself that was normal. This moment taught me why people like Titus and Grant harm others. So much turmoil goes on within the mind, it becomes hard to make sense of it all. Morality goes away when we’re in chaos. I let a breath out and closed my eyes. Soon, I was drifting into sleep, feeling my spirit being calmed by the sound of the creek. Maybe it made me a fool to find comfort in the nature of Florida, but I found myself no longer caring. The wind was friendly again.

Claire had emerged from the water at some point, as she had cold water running across my head. I expected to open my eyes to harsh sun, but it was instead rather chilly. I felt goosebumps on my skin and felt the humidity around me amplified by being beneath the bridge. When I went to sit up, I was met with resistance.

“No, don’t hurt yourself! You can’t get up, are you okay?” And with that, she tried to guide me back down to the ground. I waved her hand away in dismissal and sat myself upright on the bank. Sand and soil clung to my jacket; I attempted to brush it away, but I was beat to it by a dainty pink hand. “They were so mean to you. Is that normal for you all?”

“Well, I guess it’s not normal, but it sort of is. It’s normal for me, and it’s normal for a lot of other high schoolers, I think.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but my face hurt and I think my eye twitched instead. Her face grew heavy with concern as she positioned herself to be right in front of me.

“Do your friends help you?” She asked, and I laughed not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t. I shook my head, and again she spoke up. “Well that’s not too friendly of them, Bennett, you should get new friends.” The conviction behind her voice convinced me that she had never been lonely until she wound up here. She didn’t understand being alone, and how could she with a face like that? I moved my eyes to the ground and shrugged in response. “You don’t have friends, do you?” I was taken aback by her candid.

“Well, uh.. No. No, I don’t.”

“That explains why we ran into one another then, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so, yeah. I come out here a lot because-”

“No, that’s not why, silly!”

“It’s not?”

“No! Don’t you people know about fate?”

I smiled and rubbed the back of my neck. That was unexpected and sweet; possibly unexpected because it was sweet. Still, I couldn’t hide my grin, or the blush that grew across my cheeks. I knew she didn’t mean anything by it, but the idea that I had suddenly become important to someone had warmed my heart. Not only had she taken a liking to me, but she felt we were destined to be together! Not particularly in a romantic way, of course. She was too beautiful for that. Even so, I felt bubbly in my chest and my ears burned in excitement. “Fate?”

For many minutes after that, Claire explained fate to me. I knew what she meant, but something about the ring in her voice made it worth hearing again. Everything was meant to be, she told me between ramblings. As she explained, she told stories; they were stories from the sea, of marine life and underwater landscapes. I listened to her more intently than I had ever listened to a person in my life. She spoke of distant places, but most importantly, she spoke to me, and I was someone important to her. I was riveted.

“Fate made you come here so you could help me go home!” She sounded so cheerful, and she didn’t realize those words nearly broke my heart. Caught up in the moment, I had thought I was special, but I was just a human brought here to take her home. My shoulders and smile dropped a bit, but I still nodded in agreement. “You know why it chose you?” She asked, and I shook my head.

“Because you’re sweet, like candy, and I think we’re both gonna help each other!”

My smile returned when she said that, and grew only farther with her next statement.

“Will you be my friend, Bennett?”

I began to nod before she finished her statement, and she laughed. I joined in until I felt a pain in my side; I still smiled, but I guess it looked more like a grimace to her. She was surprised and moved back slightly. I must have frightened her. I’m sure she was unsure of what to do, but she ended up choosing the best thing for me. She slipped her hand into mine.

“Squeeze as hard as you need!” Her words came across as a demand rather than an offer, but her hand seemed so delicate. I would have felt extremely guilty if I hurt her. I told her I was alright, though it got me nowhere; she tightened her grip on my hand until I returned the squeeze. Then, she smiled at me. The pain faded, and I became a firm believer in Claire. Whether love, beauty, or divinity healed me, I know that the secret lay within her smile. Her eyes crinkled but lit up so brightly. When I straightened up my posture, she seemed relieved. We shared our grins in a moment I could never forget. For the first time in years, nothing else existed; suddenly, I was simply me, and I was full of joy.

There was something nostalgic in the moment, but it didn’t truly feel as if I had been there before. It felt more akin to a dream, where the worries of everyday life melted and my emotions were childlike again; I was happy, and for the instant, that was all. When we separated, I took another look at her face and thanked every god I could think to name that I had met her. Then, I remembered that in my meeting her, there were people who missed her. She smiled with an unmatched vibrancy, but somewhere in the ocean, there were broken hearts waiting for their sunshine to come home. I cleared my throat.

“We should make a plan to get you home now, huh?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose we should.”

There was a bittersweetness to the air as I began to show her the map of my town and a route to the ocean. Truth be told, I had no clue how any of this would work out, but I would find a way. This was fate, after all! Fate would help me find a way. We agreed to meet again the next morning, allowing me time to prepare anything that needed to be done before we headed out. I took off my watch and put it around her wrist; my brothers had laughed when I bought a waterproof watch, but I was set on it, and it paid off. Even after we solidified our plan, we spent a few hours chatting on the bank. I shivered as the temperature dropped into the evening, but nothing could pull me away. It was only when she insisted I go home that I agreed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

I nodded and gathered my bag off the ground.

“Please don’t forget.”

I froze at the realization that someone had broken a promise to this girl before. After settling my bag onto my back, I knelt down to be closer to her.

“I could never forget.”

She smiled and thanked me.

Walking away from that creek was the hardest thing I ever could have done. As the air grew colder, I grew lonelier, but it filled me with hope to know there was someone out there waiting for me. I couldn’t have dreamed of anything more.