The Secret of Algar Bay

‘Can you keep a secret?’

Jaime still kept his eyes closed, just as Nico had asked him to do when he heard his name from the other side of the entrance to the cave that was hidden in the cliffs of the bay.

‘I’ve already told you three times. I’m not going to tell anyone anything,’ Jaime answered, on the verge of losing his patience. ‘Just let me see what’s going on!’

‘Alright, alright… You can open them,’ Nico said, realizing there was no escape. He had to face the situation. ‘But wait! Sit down first. I don’t want you cracking your head open if you collapse when you see this. I can’t take any more tragedies.’

Jaime obeyed. The second he opened his eyes, thousands of tiny drops suddenly covered the lenses of his glasses; he shielded his face with his hands and turned his head to the side to protect himself from the water. When he looked back to Nico, what he saw left him speechless.

He found Nico’s body lying next to him, straight out of the ocean and shaking his hair like a wet dog. His torso still looked normal, human, but from the waist down...

It couldn’t be true.

A long, sparkling turquoise tail emerged from his waist and fluttered on the tiny body of water that penetrated through the only other access to the cave, forming a small shore.

He had heard about this. The myth was real.

He and Nico stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like a lifetime. Finally, when Jaime’s initial shock started to subside and he realized that his friend needed him to be there for him, he got up from the sand feeling a sudden chill at the thought of the others finding out. He then started walking from one end of the cave to the other, biting his nails.

There was so much he wanted to say, but he just couldn’t put it into words.

----

A few hours later, when the golden sunrays of sunset started to illuminate the cave through their reflection on the ocean, the boys were still in there, terrified.

Jaime still hadn't gotten used to Nico's new shape, and he just couldn’t stop staring at him wagging his shiny tail from side to side like a bodiless lizard; but he knew he couldn't let his face reveal the panic that had taken over his entire body. He had to look calm and composed, for Nico.

He had always heard the myths, the legends, but never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he would end up having a merman for a friend. A friend, by the way, he had feelings for, feelings he had never expressed yet.

It all started when Nico arrived at the boarding school and the kids from the Society forced him to go through their usual rite of passage. Jaime knew that the ceremony was based on a series of ridiculous tests that had no other purpose than to humiliate the newcomers, but what he didn't expect was that the jellyfish test would actually take effect that night. For centuries, the pupils of the boarding school had heard the whispers of the rumor spreading through the halls: whoever swallows a jellyfish at midnight on June 24^th will become a mermaid. And the spell didn’t work with any kind of jellyfish; it was believed that you had to swallow the Red Jellyfish of the Algar Bay, a tiny species that once roamed these shores summer after summer. It had been decades since anyone had seen this type of jellyfish, so obviously these days everyone thought it was just a stupid legend. But that hadn’t stopped the members of the Society from performing the ceremony year after year with the harmless, common jellyfish that continued to visit the bay nowadays. However, that 24^th of June, even though nobody noticed it because of the darkness the night, the jellyfish that was forced down Nico's throat was just the right species.

Those bullies, nonetheless, weren’t aware of the fact that, in a way, they had done Nico a favor. When he arrived at the boarding school, Nico didn’t just carry the weight of having lost both of his parents at 14; he had to suffer the inconvenience of having to move around in a wheelchair too. The night of the ceremony, the Society kids were determined to take advantage of the situation and plunge Nico into even greater misery. But the moon had been on his side, and the jellyfish's venom had given him the ability to move again without his wheelchair... only he couldn’t walk; he could only swim. And it didn’t come without some small side effects: the favorable one was that he could breathe underwater; the… less attractive one, so to speak, was his new tail.

The Society never found out what they’d done, since they abandoned him in the cave, on the other side of the hill on top of which the boarding school stood, towering over the whole bay. When they left, Nico started to feel an inexplicable attraction to the water; it was calling him. Almost involuntarily, he crawled towards the sea, and the moment his limbs touched the water, he fainted. When he woke up, he knew that he would never be the same again.

Jaime found him the following day. As soon as the morning brought the light and he saw that Nico wasn’t in his bunk, he ventured out of the building without even thinking about it for one second. He knew just where to look because, a year ago, he had gone through the same rite, and in the exact same place. The only difference being that his body hadn’t undergone any transformation. And now there they both were, hidden, perplexed, afraid, and clueless as to how to face the situation.

They suddenly heard the alarm that announced the lunch break, and Jaime knew that it was time to say goodbye, for now. They couldn't let anyone else find out about Nico's state.

They agreed to meet there at nightfall, and in the meantime Jaime would search for information on how to reverse the spell. He knew it could take days, weeks, or who knew how much longer, and that the teachers, the principal, and their classmates would think Nico had run away from the boarding school… But wasn't that safer than showing the world what he had become?