Sea To Land

Chapter Eight

As Maire and I walked up to school Monday morning, I saw Max getting out of what I had learned was a car. I gave him a friendly wave when he saw me. He replied with a smile before joining his friends.

Maire, seeing this, turned to me and asked, "When did you and Max become buddies?"

"After you left."

"What?"

"I'll explain later." I said ending the conversation.

~

Max and I didn't talk much during the school day and it surprised me. I would've thought we would've become closer over the half-mer fact but we didn't.

Anyways, science was magical as always. Art was messy and fun. The teacher wanted us to make sea landscapes so that was easy. Math was boring. During the small free time we had I read some more. ELA was hard for me. Most of the things said made no sense to me. Computers and the internet was fun, I got to explore a little more. Gardening was messy and hot. And it was cool hearing about human history.

During lunch I finally told Maire about Max.

"OK so what's with Max and when did you become buddies?"

"So after you left I started swimming home," I made sure to keep my voice hushed so no one else could really hear us, and told her what happened over the weekend, including how I wanted to help Max become human again.

She stopped eating and looked at me with an unreadable face.

"What?" I asked.

"He's part merman?"

"Yes, like I said, he was cursed."

She sat back in her chair and was silent for a moment.

"I didn't know that sea witches, A. were a thing, B. could curse someone to be half-mer."

"Yeah, it's pretty crazy and it doesn't have to be half-mer, it could be almost anything."

"No joke." Maire looked pretty amazed at the fact someone could be cursed.

"Wait. Can you reverse a curse? Did you even look into that?" Maire stopped and looked at me.

"I don't know. I haven't gotten that far, I mean,  maybe if Max and I find the sea witch that cursed him, she could reverse it."

"That sounds like such a cool adventure. Too bad I'm a full human." Maire said jokingly.

"I would love to have you on an adventure like that with me." I gave her a reassuring smile.

She gave me a similar one back.

Then the bell rang and I promised Maire I'd go for a swim with her after school.

~

Soon I was on the rocks, waiting for my friends to show up. I first saw Maire and as she was heading for me I saw Max walking onto the beach behind her. I didn't need to wave this time but it would've also been risky with the amount of people who were on the beach.

Maire was in the water in a speedy fashion even though she has to get goggles and flippers on.

Max came into the water, with nothing of course- we didn't need it. Max took a look at Maire and asked, "So she's not part mer?"

"Nope, we aren't even cousins." I admitted.

"Well look at you too, lying to the entire school." Max said jokingly.

That made Maire and I chuckle.

After Max set up his stuff he was wading into the water with us and soon had a tail.