Chapter Two
Roman Holiday

I was on Mermaid Beach at dawn. I'd go walk down there some mornings after nights where I couldn't sleep and try to spot the mermaids on my own. I saw them less and less the older I got, but I still believed. I saw their conches and seaweed purses and felt like the world still had light. I was on Mermaid Beach at dawn, but I wasn't alone.

There was a boy there. He had pretty brown hair and blue eyes, and he was standing with his feet in the water. I walked toward him, the sun warming my skin as it rose, my toes sinking in the sand with every step.

"You just missed it. I saw a mermaid splash."
"They swim away when I come now." I sighed, crossing my arms.
"They know you belong with them, but that you can't ever join them."

I snapped back to the present, sitting in my classroom across the world on my first day of school—my first ever U.S. History course. I desperately needed to pay attention, but I was so nervous I'd make a fool of myself that I couldn't.

Sometimes my mind tried to tell me things in my daydreams. I couldn't figure out what this daydream was supposed to mean, though. The image of the water and his searing blue eyes wouldn't leave my head.

I tried to focus by noting all the people and places my teacher mentioned that I had never heard of so I could study them, but I gave up on that about three quarters into the class because I already had two pages of it. I would desperately need some help—question and answer sessions with my dad and Beck and an extended visit with the encyclopedias in the library.

The bell rang and I gathered my things to move on to my next classes. I held my books to my chest until I made it to my locker, switching them for the ones I needed next. In Australia most of us simply carried our books from class to class rather than put them in a book bag, but Americans preferred the opposite so I stuck out like a sore thumb. As I turned away from my red locker door, I saw a familiar face turn and walk into the room across the hall. I only had to see a moment of his face to know who he was and that he had seen me too.

Charlie, the beach boy.
And the boy from Mermaid Beach in my daydream. I don't know how I hadn't noticed it before.

I really wished I could talk to him, but I had more important things to think about at the moment—I didn't know where my next class was. I took my schedule from the back pocket of my jeans and unfolded it, books still in my arms, and tried to discern where my film class would be.

That afternoon, I changed up after school and found my way to the olympic sized swimming pool in Eden Hall's sports complex to try out for the swim team. I'd been on the team at home and enjoyed it, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep up here—Americans took sports a lot more seriously.

I swam lap after lap until slower girls were weaned out. They had me try dives and all different strokes before ending the tryout. I think I did well enough, but there was no way to tell. The first thing I did was take my hair out of my swim cap, as dry as it was before, as I made my way to change in the locker rooms.

I walked out the front door to a bench so I could watch for my father, who was due to arrive any minute since tryouts ended on time.

"They know you belong with them, but you can't ever join them."

I couldn't wrap my head around what that would possibly mean. As far as I knew, the mermaids didn't know me, just like I didn't know them personally. And I obviously knew I couldn't ever be one of them.

"Miss Gold Coast!" I heard a boy holler and my eyes snapped to him and his group of friends on the paved walkway—Charlie. "Trying to join the mermaids?"
"You betcha!" I called back. Then I realized he was being sarcastic, and his friends were laughing. I had a harder time hearing sarcasm spoken in an American accent.

It was a difficult thing. I knew he probably didn't mean anything by it, but he also knew I genuinely believed in mermaids. It was a rude thing to say. But he could have just been saying it to look cool in front of his friends. that helped me a bit.

"Trying to join the mermaids?" "...but you can't ever join them."

I still couldn't quite get it, but the parallels were eerier than they usually were to me. It had been a good first day of school, but I was so overwhelmed and overstimulated by that point that it felt like it had been terrible. When my dad picked me up I wouldn't talk to him, I just stared out the window. I cried, and he poked about why, but I told him the truth—that I was just overwhelmed.

"I don't know anything anymore. I don't know who Peter Revere is, or Thomas Jefferson—or was it Hamilton? Or any president before Ronald Reagan. I'm screwed."
"That's Paul Revere, honey. And that's alright. Your teachers know you aren't American, you'll just have to study hard."
"But I'm the only one this clueless!"
"You're the smartest girl I know—you just need time. Time, and a tad more patience than you've got, Bluebell."
"Can we sit on the porch swing tonight? Just you and me like when I was little?"

When I was showered and changed into my pajamas, I met my father on the swing on his back porch, staring off into the green backyard. It wasn't as good of a view as my back door in Mermaid Beach, but it was still nice. It was serene out where he lived in Edina. I leaned my head on his shoulder and thought back to the summers I'd spent chasing dragonflies and running through the sprinklers when they spurned on at dusk.

"Do you believe in mermaids, dad?"
"Of course I do."
"In the way that I do?"
"Yes. Your mother did too... she told me all about it in that hostel in Rome, and I thought she was making it all up until I visited her when you were going to be born." He smiled, seeming to remember his first trip to Australia fondly—I'd heard the stories many times. "She was a mermaid in my mind when I was away."
"I think you mean a siren."
"No, a mermaid—she was my 'girl back home' though Australia was never my home. You and your mother were my home in those years where all I did was broker and travel."
I couldn't help but ask the question I'd asked my entire life. When I was a child, I said it more bluntly—I'd ask my mum when she was going to marry daddy, and push my father to propose to mommy when he wasn't at all planning to. Now I tried to veil it more, to not assume how I had when I was a kid.

"Then why didn't you marry her?"
"Our time in Italy was our Roman holiday. We'll always love each other, we just were only meant to be friends; to have that one week as lovers. You know that, Blue. I wish I had an answer that was easier to reason through, but you'll understand someday."

It was so hard to know that would be the answer I'd always hear. I couldn't imagine loving somebody so hard and then deciding we had to be apart forever. Even though the story sounded like their chance meeting and my conception was all accidental or on a whim, they'd accepted it as a monumental piece of their lives without taking it as their cornerstone.

That night I drew a herd of mermaids and tacked it up on my wall. I used to draw mermaids all the time as a kid, using up the Robin's Egg Blue and Purple Mountain Majesty Crayola crayons drawing the ocean and their tails. I was homesick for them, but the little sketch of them, now in boring American no. 2 pencil lead, was a window to the world that was.

❛ ━━･❪ 𓆉 ❫ ･━━ ❜

𖦹*ੈ riles' shell shack
1451 words

i want to write a whole ass prequel about verona's parents now i cant even its just so interesting

poor girl knows nothing about american history i'd cry

this mermaid metaphorical stuff is interesting... ngl i came up with it on the fly but i like how it turned out here

thank you so much for reading! comments and votes motivate me a lot so i really appreciate them :)