“What do you mean?”
A curious frown. “The way they treat you with complete deference. I never noticed before. Like you’re their boss or something.”
“Something like that,” I say gently. “Join me at the pool?”
I don’t go in but sit on the edge to dangle my bare legs into the warm water. Jenna sits next to me, and even in the shadowy gloom I can see the tension her profile. I like the dark—it will make it easier to tell her the truth about myself. And I don’t want to look at her reaction. I don’t want to see just how scared she is of me.
“First of all,” I say with a small laugh. “I’m not demon-spawn with triple sixes tattooed on my head.”
“Good to know,” she says. I can hear the smile in her voice and breathe a sigh of relief.
“Second of all, I’m Nerissa, your friend.” I need her to understand that most of all. “And I’m a girl. Like you.”
“Well, not exactly like me.”
I shoot a look in her direction but she’s watching the water, swishing her feet back and forth. “No, not exactly.”
“Look, Riss,” she says. “Stop beating around the bush and trying to figure out a way how to say this gently because you’re trying to protect me. I saw you. I saw your weird freaky-looking eyes. I felt your boneless body. I saw you change before my eyes. I know that you’re not...just a normal girl. Are you some kind of witch? A fairy? A shape-shifter? I promise you I’ll be fine. Just tell me what you are so I can stop driving myself crazy trying to figure out why my best friend is not normal!”
I can hear the violent edge of tears in her voice, and that’s what shakes me. I don’t know what I am so afraid of. Jenna isn’t going to run away. She’s already stuck around after seeing my entire body collapsing in on itself.
Then why am I so afraid that I’m going to lose her once she knows the truth?
“I’m not a witch,” I say softly. It would almost be easier to lie. People in this world choose to believe in odd supernatural things. “I’m not a fairy, either. Those things don’t exist, Jenna, and I wish it were that simple. The truth is, I’m not like you. I’m not human at all. I’m...something else.” I almost choke on the last word, but I force it out. “Alien.”
Jenna turns toward me. “Alien as in extraterrestrial or resident alien from Chimichanga in some undiscovered country?”
“The first one.”
Now I have her full attention. I can feel her eyes on me like lasers in the shadows. “What? You mean like the kids from the Roswell reruns?”
I want to laugh at her connections but that’s as good an example as any. I chew on my lower lip. “Sort of, but they were humanoid. And they’re actors on a TV show. We’re not.”
“We?”
“Me, Echlios, Soren and Speio.”
Her gasp is loud in the silence. Slipping back the lens film over my eyes, I can see the expression on her face as if it’s bright daylight. One of the benefits of being Aquarathi—we see in pitch-black darkness. “So are you guys more like the alien visitors in V, then?”
“Seriously, Jenna,” I say. “What’s with the obscure television series?”
“They’re my only points of reference,” she says, making wild gestures with her arms. “It’s not like I’ve seen an actual alien in real life. And now you’re telling me that you’re one. That you’re all freaking aliens.” Her voice is shrill. “Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“Jeez, stop swinging. You’re going to punch me in the eye,” I say, grabbing her wrist gently. She jerks her arm out of my grip as if my touch is acid and studies her wrist carefully in an almost scientific manner. I try not to let her rejection sting but it does. My tone is sour. “What are you looking for, anyway? My touch isn’t going to hurt you all of a sudden, Jenna. You’re not going to melt into a pool of your own bones.”
“What? Can you see me in the dark?” My silence is my assent. “Christ, you can totally see me in the dark. Is that one of your alien abilities?” She peers at me, her expression amazed. Her voice takes on an excited edge. “Your eyes have gone all glittery. What else can you do? Can you read my mind like Edward Cullen?”
I roll my eyes. We’ve moved from TV to Twilight. Awesome. A part of me would have preferred for her to be freaked out instead of so logically curious. “Come on. Now you’re just being theatrical. No, I can’t read your mind. I’m only a different species, not some paranormal creature that doesn’t exist.”
“Only a different species...” she splutters. “My best friend is an alien. It sounds like some B-movie title.” She shakes her head as if the truth of it is suddenly hitting her. But she’s seen me. Her brain can’t dispute the evidence she’s seen with her own two eyes.
Despite her curiosity, I know that my admissions have to be overwhelming for her. We’ve always known about the existence of humans. After all, our histories tell the stories of how our ancestors fled to this world from our dying planet. But the humans don’t know about us.
“I’m still your best friend. That’s not going to change,” I say. “And, Jenna, you can’t tell anyone. Not even Sawyer.”
A sniff. “I know.”
“You okay?”
“Yes. Just trying to process it all,” she says. “So I’m guessing you guys like water.”
“More like need it,” I say.
She studies the water in the pool. “Echlios told me you were suffering from something called hypertonic dehydration. But I’d never seen or heard anything like that so I looked it up on Google. It’s a combination of extreme water and salt loss.” She turns to look at me, and even though I know she can’t see me, I keep my body very still. “They had you in the pool for a lot of the time. Like the bottom of the pool. I was so confused the first time that I jumped in to get you out.” Her confession startles me. “But Soren stopped me, saying that it was the only thing that would save you. That’s when I faced the reality that you were...not you.”
“But you still stayed.”
“You’re my friend, no matter what,” Jenna says, her voice a soft whisper. “Anyway, after the pool situation, Echlios said he didn’t have permission to tell me more than he did. They’re not the same as you are, are they?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just observation from watching Soren before. And the fact that they all looked terrified when they came to get us at the school. And Echlios kept saying ‘my lady,’ which still makes me want to crack up.” Jenna snorts.
I laugh and swirl my feet in the water. I can feel my skin sucking in the salt like a greedy sponge. “Don’t worry, I feel the same.” The silence stretches into an awkward heaviness between us. It’s a first for the two of us—we never have any kind of silences, awkward or otherwise. Knowing that I can see her, Jenna stares in my direction with an expectant expression on her face. “Okay, my turn, I guess, but first, one last question. Are you sure you’re...truly okay with all of this?”
“Yes. I’m sure,” Jenna says. “I’m not going anywhere, Riss. And you have my word—I won’t say anything to anyone. I promise.”
I take a deep breath, knowing I’m breaking one of my father’s hard and fast laws: humans must never know about us. In fact, any one of my people caught breaking the law will face exile, which is a death sentence. Exile from the trench where we made our home on Earth means fair game to other ocean predators...ones far worse than we are. And any humans who have the misfortune to see us in our true form must be killed. I shiver at the thought.
But this situation is different. Jenna saved me. Surely that has to mean something.
After a searching look, I begin to speak. “My people are called Aquarathi. We came to this planet thousands of years ago when our own planet was destroyed. It was called Sana, and it was a planet similar to this one with immense oceans and slivers of land, only in a different
solar system. What’s wrong?” I ask, noticing her face.
“Nothing,” she whispers. “I mean, you have no idea how outlandish this all sounds.”
“I know,” I say gently. “You sure you want to do this now, Jenna? We could wait...talk later or something.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just so insane, the whole different solar system thing. I mean, it’s not like I don’t believe there isn’t intelligent life out there but seeing it—you—in the flesh right in front of me is mind-blowing. Like I’m going to blink and wake up in my own room kind of mind-blowing,” she says. “Keep going, I’ll be fine. I want to know everything.”
“Okay. Do you understand how evolution works?” I ask her, and she nods. “Okay, so evolution suggests that all living things evolved from one single common ancestor, with billions of years between us, and that we are all connected. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, on Sana, there were two main sentient species—the tetrapods that evolved into hominids, and the chordates—aquatic vertebrates—that evolved into us, the Aquarathi. The hominids, like you, occupied the land bits, and we coexisted with them for many years. But things began to change as the hominids got greedy. They wanted to control us and we resisted, so they poisoned the ocean, thinking to enslave us. Hundreds of thousands of Aquarathi died.”
I pause to take a breath, knowing that what I’ve just told her is a lot to take, but despite her earlier interruption, Jenna is listening intently, her face animated. I continue. “But the people were stupid because when the waters started dying, so did the lands. A few insurgents were on our side, but it wasn’t enough to stop the tide and the spread of toxicity. Even the air turned poisonous.” My voice is thick. “Sana is a dead planet now.”
“What did you do?” Jenna whispers. “I mean, you’re here so you must have gotten out.”
“The people working with us located a few planets with a similar topology, but none of them could support life, none with oxygen. According to our historical scrolls, all the probes they sent out came back with negative data. But in the past few days when we were on the brink of extinction, one probe came back showing a planet with suitable oxygen levels.” I gesture with my arm to our surroundings.
Jenna fills in the blank. “Here.”
“Yes. There weren’t many of us left, barely a few hundred. And even less of the hominids. The reigning Aquarathi king at the time taught the remaining survivors how to morph into a humanlike form to make the journey. And that’s how we were able to come here.”
“In a spaceship?” Jenna asks hoarsely.
“Yes, millennia ago. We made our home down in the deepest depths of your oceans. Unfortunately, the people who escaped with us didn’t survive long. They couldn’t integrate with the land dwellers of this world, and in the end, the levels of carbon dioxide, though minimal, were enough to kill them all. The Aquarathi, however, adapted to survive. And we stayed hidden for thousands of years.”
“But you’re here,” Jenna blurts out. “And you look totally human to me.”
“Our ancestors didn’t want to make the same mistake they made on Sana. They had to be involved, but only from the sidelines, just to make sure that we would be safe as a species. We’ve chosen to remain in hiding because of what happened before, but each heir is mandated to learn about your culture during a four-year initiation cycle in human form.”
“Heir?”
This is the part I’m uncomfortable with. I’m trying to think of the best way to say it to Jenna when I hear—sense—someone approach behind us. Echlios, Soren and Speio have all been listening intently, and I can feel their collective distrust that Jenna knows our secret. But it was my call to reveal it, not theirs. I nod imperceptibly to Speio that it’s okay for him to join us.
“Hey, Jenna,” Speio says in a soft voice. At his voice, Jenna jumps nearly a few inches into the air, a fair feat given the fact that she’s sitting. Speio slides down to sit next to her. In the darkness, I see her eyes widen at Speio’s nearness, now that she knows that he, too, isn’t human. Her fear is evident without seeing it reflected in her expression—I can sense it from the water rushing around in her veins.
“Hi,” she manages after a second, struggling to compose herself. She glances quickly in my direction, as if recalling our conversation about my ability to see in the dark, but I look away hastily. “So what were you saying about the Aqathi heir?”
“Aquarathi,” Speio corrects gently. “And Nerissa is the heir. She is the next queen.”
“What? Queen?” she splutters, mouth agape, glaring at me. “You’re a queen? And you didn’t say anything?”
“Yes. Or I will be, if and when I return.”
Jenna doesn’t miss a beat. “What do you mean if?”
I ignore Speio’s warning glare across the top of Jenna’s head. I know that he thinks I’m revealing too much, but I trust Jenna. She’s the only human I’ve ever trusted, and she deserves to know the truth. All of it.
“My father was killed for his throne.”
“Omigod, Riss. I’m so sorry!” Jenna says, hugging me with one arm.
“Before he died, he sent a message for me never to go back there. So I’ve been here this whole time.” I pause. “I didn’t want to go back, so I stayed. Speio and his parents, too, because of me.” I smile sadly in the darkness, my voice soft. My words are more for me than her. “You were right when you called me selfish. More than you know.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
I smile at her fierce loyalty but shake my head. “Thanks, but it’s true.”
Jenna stands and walks to the edge of the patio to turn on the fairy lights decorating the trees at the edge of the property. She stops for a second to stare at Echlios and Soren, who are both in the kitchen, being very careful about not looking in our direction. Quietly, I hear Soren whisper in our language, asking whether I’m okay. The sound of it is the whisper of a pulse on the wind, and nothing that Jenna or any other human can hear. I click back that everything is fine just as Jenna turns around and makes her way closer to the pool. She doesn’t resume her position between Speio and me, but instead leans against a table a few feet away on my left, studying us in the light.
“So my best friend is an alien sea princess,” she says in a soft voice, “who transforms into human form but can’t go back home just yet.” I recognize the tone of when she’s in hunker-down, game-face mode, and I bite back a grin. She’ll assess the facts logically, as impossible as they may sound, no matter what. “Where is home exactly?”
“Ever heard of the Mariana Trench?” I ask her, and she nods. Of course she has. She’s Jenna, Jeopardy! champion of the world. “Well, it’s the deepest part of your oceans. We make our home there...where we’re safe, untouched by humans.”
“But you come here to learn about us if you’re the heir? Like you did.”
“Yes. To not make the same mistakes of the past.”
“But you’re stuck here because your father was killed,” Jenna says.
“Yes.”
“Are you’re not going back?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I have people there still, but it’s complicated. There are others who want us all dead. Speio and his family most of all, because of their loyalty to me.”
Jenna gulps, glancing at Speio, but he’s staring at the pool surface lost in his own thoughts. She moves to sit again next to me at the edge of the pool, crossing her legs beneath her. Her eyes narrow as she studies my face, fascinated. Belatedly, I remember that the protective film is no longer over my own alien eyes, so I blink to engage it. It’s kind of like the nictitating membrane of a shark that goes over its eyes when it’s in attack mode, only ours is more of a defense mechanism to protect us from discovery.
“No,” she says. “Leave them the way they are. Ple
ase.”
I comply but frown. I know what she’s seeing—the pale gold sclera, normally the white part of the human eye, and the larger than normal multicolored irises rimmed by an electric gold ring. Does she want to remind herself that she’s not talking to something human? Will she look at me differently now that she knows what I am? Aware that I’m second-guessing the actions of my friend, I silence my inner demons.
“They’re beautiful, your eyes,” she whispers after a while. “But definitely not human. Anyone could see that. But even so, you could be wearing psychedelic contacts or something. I mean, you look so normal otherwise.” Her gaze flutters to my arms, torso and legs. “I’ve seen you in the locker room after hockey games. You look just like me. Just like all the other girls.”
“We mimic,” I say. “To blend in.”
“Mimic?”
“I can manipulate the water in my body into any form I wish, for short periods.”
“Any form?”
“Yes, but human is the simplest.”
Jenna tips her head to one side, chewing on her lip as if scared to ask the question lurking on her lips, but eventually she does. “What do you really look like?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to see that?” Speio’s voice is cool. He doesn’t trust that Jenna won’t go running to the local authorities and out us all. But he doesn’t know her like I do. Every drop of water in me knows that I can trust this girl.
“She’s ready,” I say, meeting Jenna’s eyes. Speio sucks air through his teeth, a disrespectful gesture that I ignore, and stalks back into the house. But it will be better without him. I stare at Jenna, and she holds my gaze without flinching.
“He doesn’t like that you told me, does he?” she asks. I shake my head.
“Do you trust me?” I whisper.
She nods. I meet her eyes for a long time before I decide both our fates—hers for knowing, mine for telling. Then I slip into the water, feeling the weight of human bones inside of me dissolve into water and then elongate once more into the delicate skeleton that shapes my Aquarathi form. Like humans, we are more liquid than anything else but our spinal column is similar to humans. That’s where the similarity ends. The rest of our skeleton expands outward like coral webbed fins, hard but soft at the same time.
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