The Pearl

Chapter 1

Marker; Reads 457 votes 47

AN; For song skip to 0.41

Summer Present
Strings of blue and purple beads flew around me and clanked together loudly, and my long shirt brushed against my ankles while I quickly slipped into our back room at the store. I pretended that I was searching for something among the various boxes that crowded the small dusty room that was used for storage, but in reality, I was hiding. I was hiding from the group of teenage boys that had just walked in.

"Hello?" one of them called out.

"I'm back here. I'll be out with you in a sec!" I called out in the high voice I had mastered with much practice and began to move various things around. I tried to avoid looking at the little black glass ball tucked discreetly in the corner of the ceiling. I instead chose to focus on the splintery shelves cluttered with soap dishing, jewelry boxes lined with seashells, and similar other effects. Still, I couldn't stop my eyes from sliding over to the devilish device. I wondered if he was sitting in front of that screen right now, at his large wooden desk, just watching me with those calculating blue eyes.

"I'll be watching you, Miss Ocean," he had said.

I selected a large mug with the phrase "Go with the Flow" printed on it with large, sprawling cursive letters and exited the room and into the equally cluttered shop space of Whale Tails.

Whale Tails, was the name of the tourist trap where I now spent most of my day. It was wedged between an ice-cream shop with a gigantic plastic ice-cream cone topped with a white and red swirl and a fast food restaurant that served french fries in a brown paper bags through a glass sliding door window. It was about a stone's throwback from the boardwalk, and the blue-green waters of the ocean.

I stepped behind a counter whose wood had been stained to make it look like it had come from a shipwreck, and set down the cup. There was three of them, two boys with lite brown hair, and one with dark brown hair. Their attention was on a wall of T-shirts, but the moment I had walked out all three of their heads had snapped around, and they had looked at me. They all wore mischievous looks on their faces, and I felt my heart sink. Not this again... I grabbed a catalog from under the counter and pretended to leaf through it.

The one with the dark brown hair strode over to me.  He walked past the display of glass sea animals and rested his elbow on the counter.

"So, it's nice outside," he said, tapping on the counter lightly to get my attention, and then pointing towards the open door where the clear blue sky was visible. I heard a serious of stifled laughs. My eyes flew to the other two boys,  who promptly turned their backs to me before I returned to staring at the great blue expanse.

While I gazed outside my sister's musical voice filled my ears suddenly like she was standing in front of me besides the boy  "Marina you must come to me."

I looked up in surprised but found my sister was not there.  What I did see was a pair of amber colored eyes. The boy's expression faltered under my gaze, and I quickly averted my eyes.

Delphine's voice was getting clearer each day when she called me from the ocean.  Either she was getting stronger, or my ears were longing more for the call of home.

"So..." the boy's voice trailed off while he tried to recollect his thoughts which had been scrambled by my stare, "swim," he said softly in a small lost voice.

"What about a swim?" I said calmly, but  I was groaning in dread internally for what was about to follow.  No matter how original humans like to think they were, they weren't.  This is the third time this week I had been asked about "that night" by the locals.