Swim Queens

My alarm clock rang and I rolled over to turn it off. 6:00AM. I hit snooze and went back to sleep. I didn’t want to go to school. Especially not a new school where I didn’t know anybody. I had no friends there. All my friends were back in New York, not in some stupid backwater town called Salem Beach, Maine. When our parents were murdered in cold blood in our apartment, my little brother Jack and I had to move to Maine, where Mom grew up. Our grandfather took us in. Though why he would do it now would forever be a mystery. He never was involved in our lives. We never visited him, he never visited us. No letters, no phone calls, no World War II stories while we sat on his knees or at his feet, nothing! No word! He didn’t care a lick about us. I guess he and Mom were estranged. Maybe it was his way of fixing things between him and Mom. Well, I say too little, too late!

“Camille Francesca Bradley!” Grandpa shrieked like a banshee as he kicked open the door to our attic room. “You will get up right this instant or I will be forced to drag you down the stairs! Maybe I’ll drag you to school, hmm?”

“Leave me alone,” I groaned. “Why do you even care?”

“I care because from now on until you graduate and go to college, I’m responsible for your education!” Grandpa shouted. “And I refuse to waste my money on someone who is determined to fail at every turn!”

“Whatever,” I said with a shake of my head. “Can you leave so I can get dressed? I’m not hungry anyway.”

“Fine!” Grandpa said. “Ten minutes! That’s all I’m giving you.”

After that wonderful one-on-one with Grandpa, I decided to take a bike from the shed and biked to school. I couldn’t stand a whole car ride with him chewing me out. I’m sure he hates me and it’s mutual. I parked my bike in an available spot at the parking lot of Salem Beach High School and locked it in place then walked up the steps that led to prison—I mean high school. As I walked across the parking lot, I saw my new schoolmates heading in the same direction. However, I witnessed something very weird. As I cast a glance at a student, I swear I thought I saw her change shape. Her skin was now purplish in color with black veins mapping her decomposing face. I blinked and shook my head and it was gone. Just like that! All I could see now was the girl wearing gothic fashion and nothing else. But that wasn’t the end of it. I also saw a teacher walking the halls of Salem Beach High, but every now and then, he would shift forms and I would see four legs—a horse’s legs—patrolling the halls of this sacred institution. It made clippity-clop noises like a horse’s hooves too! What the Hell is up with this school? What the Hell is up with this whole freaking town?

In my dazed and distracted state, I didn’t notice a girl walking towards me. I only felt her bump into me and push me down.

“Watch where you’re going, you bitch!” she said, almost spitting.

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

“Don’t,” a kind voice said. “She’s not worth it.”

“Who was that, anyway?” I asked the girl in front of me as she helped me pick up my books.

“That was Marissa Greene,” my new friend said. “She’s the women’s swim team captain. I’m Jade, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Camille,” I said, shaking her hand. “Swim team, huh? Are they really all that snooty? I thought the snooty girl attitude was monopolized by the cheer squad. I never expected the women’s swim team to act like your stereotypical cheerleaders.”

“Well, this school isn’t exactly your stereotypical American high school,” Jade said with a laugh so infectious that I couldn’t help but laugh along.

“So I’ve noticed,” I said, as we walked to class together. “I mean, what’s up with the walking corpses and the centaurs around here?”

Jade stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me in shock like I had just grown two heads. She had to pick her jaw up off the floor.

“Hold up,” she said. “You saw a ghoul and saw Mr. Good’s true form? You saw through the Veil! But how?”

“What’s the Veil?” I asked, confused.

“The Veil is some sort of spell,” Jade explained. “A filter. A magical Photoshop, if you will. It hides a creature’s true form. There are only two ways to see through the Veil: be born a witch, or be born Fae. So you’re either a witch or a fairy. I don’t know which one.”

“Maybe it has to do with bloodlines?” I asked. “Maybe I have an ancestor who was a witch or a fairy? I don’t know.”

“Maybe,” Jade said with a shrug.

This was all too much for me. I’m glad I made a friend on my first day, but I sure as Hell am more confused than ever before. I have to concentrate on school first or Grandpa will go ballistic and kill me.

At lunch, I sat with Jade and she explained everything to me.

“Wait, so the women’s swim team is made up of…” I asked.

“Mermaids,” Jade confirmed with a nod of her head. “Yep! And they’re the queens of Salem Beach High. Nobody messes with them. Ever. You do not want to mess with them, trust me. They’re the dominant social class in this order. They’re the head honchos of this school.”

“And what other cliques are there?” I asked.

“There’s the guys on the football team,” Jade answered. “They’re a tightly-knit pack of werewolves. And then we have the Goth Club, which is made up of the vampires and the ghouls. They get along very well. Some have even been known to couple up. Then there are the cave and the mountain trolls. They’re the troublemakers and outcasts. And then there are the humans. Mere mortals with no special abilities or powers whatsoever.”

There are also fairies, elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, wendigos, goblins, pixies, harpies, centaurs, and witches, and the very rarely heard of mermen. Jade was right. This was no ordinary high school. As it turns out, it’s no ordinary small town either. Almost every resident of Salem Beach is a creature from what mortals call mythology and folklore. There is even a local bookstore owner who immigrated from the Philippines. She’s a different breed of vampire called a manananggal, a creature that can split its body in half and fly off into the night with large batlike wings to hunt for prey. But out of all of the creatures at Salem Beach High, it’s the mermaids who rule the school. They weren’t nicknamed the Swim Queens for no reason.

Before I could ask Jade anything else, however, our conversation was rudely interrupted by raucous laughter. Some students were slapping their thighs, some were smacking and pounding the table, like it was the best comedy movie or sitcom they had ever seen. The school cafeteria was suddenly turned into a comedy dive bar. In the very center of the cafeteria stood a dejected-looking elf—Tolkien elf, not Santa’s elf. He was quite handsome with long black hair, skin that faintly glowed like the full moon, and piercing blue eyes that could bore holes into your soul and see right through you. I found his pointy ears cute as Hell, too, if I do say so myself. His human form through the Veil wasn’t too bad, either. He had short black curly hair, the same cool blue eyes, freckles, and round glasses like Harry Potter. He’d just asked Marissa Greene to homecoming with a beautiful and elaborate proposal. What did that bitch Marissa do? She rejected and humiliated him right in front of everyone. A simple no would have sufficed, but Marissa Greene wasn’t content with a simple no. She just had to insult and humiliate the poor kid. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody did.

“Have fun back in SPED class,” she said in an insultingly sweet sing-song tone. “Tata!”

But she wasn’t done just yet. She marched right back to where Travis Haywood was standing and poured out her iced coffee on his head.

“Oops, I spilled my drink,” she said with a wicked smile. “Go be a dear and get me a refill, will you? I’m feeling really thirsty.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I got up from our table and marched over to where they were standing and dumped my own iced coffee on her head. That sea witch needed a dose of her own medicine and so I gave it to her. There were gasps of awe and shock all around the room. The football team howled with laughter. Her team stood up and crowded around her in her defense. Of course, they had to protect Her Rotten Majesty.

“How dare you?!?” Marissa screamed. “How very dare you?! Do you know how much this cost?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “And I have a feeling you don’t know how much that costs either. You just ask daddy dearest to buy you stuff and he buys it for you. Am I right or am I right? It must be nice.”

Suddenly, I heard a loud SMACK and felt a sharp sting on my cheeks. Now she’d gone and asked for it. Instinctively, I lunged for her and grabbed her pretty teal hair, pulling with all my strength. I also scratched her face and some of her silvery scales came off and got stuck underneath my nails.

“Try that again and see what happens!” I yelled.

“Is that a threat, New Girl?” Marissa asked with a snarl. “Nobody threatens the Queen of Salem Beach High! Nobody!”

“Oh, trust me,” I said with a confident smirk. “I don’t make threats. You know what I make? I make promises.”

A vampire from the Goth Club found that really funny. But Marissa and her royal court didn’t. Not one bit.

“I am going to make your life here a living Hell!” she screeched. “You hear me? A living Hell!”

“Don’t bother,” I said, chuckling. “My life already is a living Hell. Thank you for your willingness to try though. I really appreciate it.”

“Ooh, snap!” a mountain troll-slash-Greaser said, laughing at my sarcastic quip.

Marissa let out an earsplitting shriek and lunged for me again, but her lackeys held her back, trying to console and pull her away. Our little Drama Club production had caught the attention of teachers and some security guards—which were Minotaurs, by the way.

“Let’s just go,” one of them said.

“Come on,” another said, “She’s not worth your time, anyway.”

After that fiasco at the cafeteria, Marissa and I were both sent to Principal Menzies’s office. Because Marissa Greene had a long track record, Principal Menzies issued her a final warning and a 4-day suspension. Since I was a first-time offender and it was for a noble cause, I got a slap on the wrist. Detention for two whole hours after school, and they would call Grandpa to inform him. I was thankful for the light punishment—for now. The second part? Not so much. In fact, I was dreading it. But no matter how much I dread Grandpa’s tough love technique, I should have dreaded what would happen in between more. I’ll get to that soon.

Detention dragged on and the clock seemed to tick in slow motion. I occupied my time by reading and drawing random things in my notebook. Finally, at 5:00, Mr. Good dismissed me and handed me my detention slip. As I walked through the empty halls of Salem Beach High School to go to the parking lot where I had left my bike that morning, I heard sweet, hypnotic singing. I knew I needed to go home, but I couldn’t resist. There was this strong magnetic pull that opened up a burning curiosity in me. Where was it coming from? Who was singing? I didn’t move my body. My body moved me. It was as though my feet had minds of their own and were leading me down the path to the school swimming pool, where the women’s swim team were practicing. I tried to run but I was mesmerized. I pushed open the door and saw their tails shimmering under the ceiling’s bright lights. Slowly, I walked towards the pool, not knowing what I was doing. I stepped off the edge and made a splash as I came in contact with the water. Suddenly, a whole pod of mermaids were on me, reaching for me and grabbing me, trying to pull me under. They were trying to drown me, perhaps at the behest of their Queen. Realization and horror soon settled in, and after that, darkness and the cold.