Atlantis Tide Breaker

Atlantis Tide Breaker Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Clique Clash

All Atlanteans have water names. Maris was actually Marisabel meaning “of the beautiful sea.” Her two half-sisters were Perlagia meaning “dweller by the sea” and Cordelia meaning “of the sea.” Gill was self-explanatory.

I glanced at Scylla sitting next to me in AP Bio.

Coincidence?

Scylla went by Sky, meaning the blue airy stuff above. Nothing to do with the ocean. Right?

The teacher droned on about the semester’s labs and assignments.

I leaned in closer to Sky. “So, is Scylla a Greek name?”

“Don’t tell me you’re a language expert.” She puffed air out of her mouth moving her bangs. “I can only take so much nerdism.”

Her sarcastic comment hit harder than Ashtyn’s. The pain zinged from my cortex down my spine and landed in my gut. “I’m not a nerd.”

Okay, I was a nerd, but only a few people knew that about me. At Ocean View High I had a rep to uphold. I might take advanced classes, but I kept that on the down-low. The kids at school thought I was fun, flirty, and fab.

Sky seemed to be a geek, too. She was in all my advanced classes. The principal wouldn’t have placed her there if she was stupid.

I wanted her to know that I was more than smart. “I took fifth place in the State swim championships.”

“Jock?” Sky added a touch of disgust to her tone.

Another clique she disliked. Another clique I belonged to. What did she do?

“Do you swim?” Or dive? Or breathe underwater?

Suspicions swam in my mind creating a whirlpool of confusion. The meaning of Scylla’s full name sounded like an Atlantean name. Although who would name their daughter Sea Monster?

“You’re kidding, right?” She slouched further back in her chair. Her nose scrunched in disgust. “I despise the water.” The hatred in her voice cut like a lab scalpel. Too brutal sounding not to be true.

“Why?”

Her lips curled into a snarl. Her gaze slitted. “My mom died because of the ocean.”

Her loss struck a chord of sympathy inside. “I’m sorry.”

Both my parents had always been there for me. And Maris’s mom and dad were like a second set.

“Any questions?” The teacher asked.

Sky let the front two legs of her chair drop to the ground. She picked up the syllabus from the lab table. “It says here we’re going to dissect lamb hearts.”

“In AP Biology we are learning about the biology of the body.” The teacher glanced at her grade book. “Do you have a problem with dissection, Miss Smith?”

A few of the guys laughed, obviously making fun of the squeamish girl afraid to cut open an animal. I’d hated dissection the first time I’d done it, but we were doing it for the greater good. If we wanted to become scientists or doctors or surgeons we had to know how different systems worked.

Sky didn’t turn red or mumble. She was tough. Confident. Like I pretended to be.

“If we’re studying human biology why aren’t we dissecting human hearts?” Her voice was hard like steel.

Shivers scraped my skin like a knife blade. She couldn’t be serious. While I understood the necessity for dissection I was still learning. I’d leave human dissection until college.