He’s smiling
down at me and all I can do is look away.
Happiness seems to be such a rare emotion for him, it always has, and I
know it’s only a matter of time until I become the one responsible for that
smile turning into something dark.
He places
his finger under my chin, lifting my head up. “Well, do you regret it?” he asks.
I want to
tell him the truth, that I don’t regret it, that I’d rather have had one day
with him than none at all, but the words don’t come out at first. I take a deep breath and I know that I
have to lie. I have to push him as
far away from me as I can, because I have no other option. So I focus on the part that I do
regret. I focus on the fact that
when offered my dreams to be made true, consequences didn’t even cross my
mind. Not just consequences to
myself, but I also never once stopped to think about how my choices would
impact those around me, how they would impact him.
All I can
think is that my next words are going to shatter everything that both of us
have lived for in the past few weeks.
***
There was only one thing that I ever wished for: to
be human. I always felt like I
didn’t belong. My dad used to tell
me stories about the human world and how lucky I was to live in a place even
humans considered magical. I used
to believe that to be true.
Everything seemed so fun: swimming all day, seeing the different colors
around, and exploring the ships that ended up on the bottom of the ocean. One day, I stopped feeling like that.
My dad and I lived near an island, which seemed to be
owned by one family only; after all, they were always the only ones there. Every summer when they came, I would
swim as close to the island as I could and hide behind the rocks to watch
them. I wasn’t trying to be
creepy, I was just curious about their world.
Years ago, when I was eleven years old, I was hiding
behind the rocks when I saw the boy who looked a little older than me. He seemed so mad. I saw a woman coming out of the house
yelling, ‘Blake! He didn’t mean
it!’
The boy just ignored her and ran toward the other
side of the island. That was the
day my life changed. I hated what
I was because I wanted to go after him and see if he was okay, but I couldn’t.
All I could do was swim back as fast as I could and
hide in one of the wrecked ships that wasn’t too far away from my home. I was so mad about what I was and how
limited I was because of it, that I didn’t want to see anyone.
I finally decided to go home when it started to get
dark. It was only a matter of time
before dad decided to send the whole kingdom to look for me.
On the way back, I ran into my friend Desiree. Like me, she liked to watch the humans
every once in a while. She came to
tell me the humans were leaving and to ask if I wanted to watch them go. I told her I had to get back and that
was it.
That was the last time I saw him that summer, but
they always came back.
Year-after-year, I watched the boy come back to the island. I knew that whenever he was alone, he
was the saddest being I had ever seen.
I also knew that there were a few things that always made him smile. He loved reading and writing, spending
time with his younger brother, and years later, his little sister. I caught
myself laughing with them several times, as he played with her at the
beach. And then there was this
year, the most horrible year of my life… the year I turned eighteen. That was when I saw him with a
girl, both lying down on a blanket at the beach, and I felt things that I had
never felt before. When he leaned
on top of her and I saw his lips touching hers, I wanted to be that girl. I wanted to have legs instead of a
stupid tail. I wanted to be the
one he kissed.
