Bluehour (A Watermagic Novel) (12 page)

1. Out of Control
   

I gasped. And then I touched the window with
my hand and Laurent touched the same spot. He was gorgeous, a
stunning figure. Our hands were pressed together with only the
window pane separating us. He smiled sweetly at me. My heart raced.
And then he swam away.

I nearly hyperventilated. I couldn’t believe
what had just occurred. He was so amazing. While we were doing all
the touristy commercial stuff everybody else does, he and probably
the other French exchange students were swimming in the bay,
exploring the beauty without the confines of a boat. I so longed to
be with them, diving in the ocean blue.

“Hey, Grace,” Agatha called down the stairs.
“Aren’t you coming? We’re almost at the dock.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right up,” I called back. My
mind was spinning. I was so shocked at what I had just seen. It
surprised me that he would swim so close to the boat. I would be
afraid of being drawn under by the propeller.

I rushed up the stairs feeling so excited by
the interaction. I couldn’t say anything to my friends. Maybe
Laurent wouldn’t like it if they knew his business.

When we got to the museum, I was still
smiling, but I didn’t see Laurent or his friends inside. A tour
guide led us around and showed us different historical exhibits of
Catalina Island. He talked about the plant life, animal life, land
marks, geological finds, etc... But what fascinated me the most was
when he spoke of shipwrecks near the island and the legends
surrounding them.

He showed us an exhibit of findings from a
French ship that wrecked in the 1700’s off the coast of the island.
According to legend, merfolk lured the captain, crew, and
passengers with their beautiful singing voices into the cove and
caused their ship to crash into a reef where it overturned. The
mers were known to be a deadly bunch. According to legend, they
killed nearly everyone on board saving only selected individuals of
extreme beauty for conversion to their kind.

The tour guide spoke of recovered artifacts
from the shipwreck and pointed them out in the display cases and on
the wall. My classmates took quick looks and moved on to the next
exhibits, but I stayed behind.

I walked over to the display case that
contained a part of a painting that was recovered from a chest
found in the wreckage. It was a torn picture of a teenage boy and
girl in eighteenth century attire. As I looked closer I was
surprised to see that the boy looked similar to Pascal and the girl
whose face was partly torn away looked like Marina.

The only differences were that they seemed
happier, more innocent people than the très beaux I knew and though
they were certainly attractive, they weren’t quite as striking as
the Pascal and Marina that went to my school. The people in the
painting looked like a beautiful couple with normal facial flaws
where the très beaux looked like retouched images in a
magazine.

To make the coincidence even stranger, I
shifted my gaze to the bottom of the painting and saw the name
“Beaudoin” which was Pascal’s last name. My heartbeat sped up. I
didn’t know what to think of that. Maybe he was somehow related to
the boy in the painting.

I moved to another display case about old
sailors’ legends of the merfolk. The tour guide said people don’t
really take the myths seriously, but the stories are still talked
about today.

According to the lore, a fishlike people of
extreme beauty and power inhabit the rocky areas and under water
inlays near the island. These beautiful singers were believed to
possess powers to move objects with their minds. They could
resonate sound to collapse structures with the very vibrations that
resonate the objects themselves. They can swim at very fast speeds.
And they have hypnotic powers capable of bending humans’ wills to
their own.

The mers, as they call them, are vain
creatures of great beauty, elegance, and charm with long flowing
hair and stunning physiques. Throughout the years they have been
spotted sun bathing in nearby lagoons. Most often they are adorned
in sparkly jewels and shells. They gaze at their reflections in
intricately carved hand mirrors that they can turn at will on their
enemies causing them to burn up into flames.

As I read on, goose bumps raised on my arms.
Mers are deadly seducers. Deceptively dark and mysterious, people
fall powerless under their hypnotic voices and stares. The mers eat
human beings as vital sustenance. They are entirely driven by their
lust for the spiritual light force that distinguishes them from the
sons of Adam. Demonic, evil. Both land and water creatures, guised
as beautiful, refined beings, they are the most terrible, dangerous
species in all existence.

Chills ran through my body and then I felt a
hand on my shoulder. I swung around. It was Laurent. The rest of
the class had turned down a hall and were out of sight now.

“Are you going to tell me now how you saved
me in the ocean?” I knew I shouldn’t put him on the spot, but it
just came out of my mouth.

His face paled as he smirked. “You should
stay away from me, Grace.” He took his hand off my shoulder.

Already I was lost in the musical qualities
of his rapturous voice. “Why do you say that?”

He clenched his jaw. “I’m not a good friend
for you.” His electric blue eyes bored into mine. His hair was
still damp from the ocean.

“Why not?” I wanted to touch his soft lips
with my finger.

“I’ve tried to stay away from you, but I
can’t do it anymore.” He looked away and continued. “Run away,
sweet mystery. I am powerless.”

Sweet mystery. Who talks like that? “I don’t
understand you? You confuse me.” My head shook slightly; my
emotions were all mixed up.

“You saw what I did with the pencil and with
your teardrop—didn’t you?” His tone was serious.

“Didn’t you want me to see?” My eyes widened
in a mocking expression. “That’s why you did it right?”

“You’re not like other people, Grace. Very
few are like you. I am powerless over you.” He closed his eyes and
turned his head downward. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

I was starting to get angry. “You don’t make
any sense, Laurent. I can’t figure you out. I just want you to stop
torturing me.”

“I will.” He nodded his head lightly. “I
will.”

I don’t know what came over me. I wanted to
kiss him. I wanted to fall into his arms and never let go.

But then he walked away. He turned back for a
moment. “I will, Grace. I will leave you alone.” And then he was
gone.

I didn’t see him board the ferry with the
other très beaux and I didn’t see him at swim team that day.

I felt out of control. My emotions were
overtaking me. After practice, I went to the school office and
broke the window pane in the door with a rock. I removed the
protruding shards of glass, reached my hand over and unlocked the
door. Immediately, I went to the file cabinets and searched for
Laurent’s address. I found the card with his information, but the
address section was blank. My heart tightened. Then I checked all
of the other très beaux’ cards and they’re addresses were also not
filled in. With that, I left in despair.

The next morning when I woke up, I didn’t
want to get out of bed. I was afraid I had lost Laurent forever. If
only I could take back what I said to him the day before. I didn’t
really want him out of my life.

Though a part of me feared that the
mythological folklore about mers that I read at the museum was
true, it was still more likely that the stories were only
fictitious legends. It was strange though that some of the powers
that mers supposedly possessed were the same powers that Laurent
seemed to have. The museum log said that they could move objects
with their minds, swim at super speeds, and hypnotize human
beings.

Could Laurent be a merman? It couldn’t be
possible. Merfolk are just fantasy legends. And Laurent didn’t grow
a tail when he went in water. I saw him swimming in the pool during
swim practice. I even saw him swimming in the ocean when I was in
the glass bottom boat. But, as much as I wanted to deny it, I
feared that he really was a mer. Everything else fit perfectly: his
musical voice, his extreme beauty, the way his body smelled like
the ocean.

Just then Lucy barged into my bedroom. “What
are you still doing in bed!” she complained. “Get up lazy head.”
With her reprimands, she climbed up on the bed and started jumping
on it.

“All right!” I moved over. “Don’t jump on
me
.” Though I was a little annoyed, I got up and grabbed
some jeans and a t-shirt out of my dresser drawer.

She was still jumping rambunctiously.

“You can get out of my room now, wild one.” I
held the door open.

“Ahhhh. I was having fun.” She climbed down.
“Last one to breakfast is a smashed potato.” As she spoke, she was
already running out of the room and down the hall.

As I opened my blinds, I saw that it was
raining out. I wasn’t in the mood for rain boots and umbrellas, but
I grabbed mine anyway.

When I got into the kitchen, Lucy was making
her school lunch while Mom chattered on the phone to one of her
friends from work. Dad had already left for the dock. I just took a
nutrition bar and guzzled down some orange juice.

The doorbell rang. It was Agatha in a big
polka dot rain coat. She was picking me up for school today.
“What’s wrong?” she immediately asked as I opened the door.

“Nothing.” I lifted my eyes. “Bye,” I yelled
out to my mom and Lucy. “See you tonight.”

Mom waved goodbye and Lucy blew a kiss.

“Something’s wrong,” Agatha insisted as we
got in her VW. She started the car. “You have to tell me.”

I sort of frowned as I folded up my drenched
umbrella the rest of the way. I wasn’t sure how much I should tell
her, if anything, about what I was going through in regards to
Laurent. “You know that guy Laurent Moreau?”

“Yeah,” she jutted her chin back in response.
Her voice had a surprised inflection to it.

My tone was hesitant, but I continued anyway,
“Do you remember how he acted toward me at the beach?”

She turned to me even though she was driving
and the windshield wipers were working like mad. “Of course I
remember. Did he do something else?”

“In general his behavior toward me have been
perplexing.”

“Go on.” She nodded as her eyes widened, but
luckily her attention went back to the road and the big water
puddles alongside it.

“Oh, it’s nothing specific. I just can’t
figure him out.” I looked out the passenger window at the drenched
business buildings and fast food restaurants. “I’m afraid I might
have upset him at the museum in Catalina.”

The car rolled to a stop at the light and she
turned to me again. “I didn’t know you talked to him at the museum.
What did you talk about?”

“It was just kind of weird. I said something
stupid and then he said he was going to leave me alone from now
on.” Even though it shouldn’t have, my heart sank at the thought of
it.

She gripped the steering wheel harder. “He
probably just reacted and didn’t really mean it. You’re not
interested in him are you?”

“No.” My voice was emphatic. “Well,
no…maybe…”

She smiled and bounced in her seat a
little.

“I don’t know what I feel. He just gets under
my skin. You know what I mean?”

“I do know. That’s how I feel about Danny.
I’m so confused and I just can’t figure out if he likes me or if he
is just being nice to me.”

I crossed my arms against my chest. “So I
guess we’re both kind of mixed up over guys.”

She laughed and brushed her feathered hair
out of her face with her fingers. It was already starting to frizz
from the rain.

I wanted to join in the laughter, but the
whole topic was too uncomfortable for me. I couldn’t help but
wonder if mers really fed on human beings. Could Laurent and his
friends be killers? I really wanted to talk to Agatha about it, but
I was afraid of what she would think if I told her everything. And
my intuition warned me that maybe if I was forthcoming I might put
her in danger. This sort of thing is just not something you can
talk over with your friends.

“What about Ashton? He’s good looking,
‘normal,’ and he’s really into you.” Her eyes looked
inquisitive.

“I don’t know what to do about him.” My body
tensed a little. “I think if I wasn’t so fixated on Laurent, I
might be interested in Ashton, but for some reason I’m too
distracted to think about him.”

“Wow. It sounds like you have it really bad
for Laurent.” She looked concerned. “You know practically every
girl in school is interested in him since out of all the French
students, he’s the only single one.”

“I thought that maybe he was with
Marina.”

She laughed again. “Oh, no. She’s with
Pascal. You didn’t know that?”

“I don’t know. I just wasn’t sure as I’m not
sure about anything in regards to Laurent or any of his friends for
that matter.”

“You should be careful.” Her eyebrows knitted
together. “I don’t want you to get hurt. The French clan is in a
whole other league. They’re almost like… Oh, I don’t know…” She
paused for a moment. “Movie stars or maybe even royalty. It’s like
they are in a world of their own. They’re like the glamorous people
you read about in magazines or see on TV. You should be
careful.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say about that.
She was right. The très beaux were in another league. They were
intangible. “So I was wondering…” I continued, “…if you could push
Danny into getting Laurent’s address from his father?”

Her face scrunched up. “His father?” She
chortled again. “Did you even hear anything I said?”

“Yes, I heard you, but I can’t help myself.”
I looked down at my hands, feeling a little embarrassed with my
insistence. “Danny’s father is a postman. He could get anyone’s
address if he wanted to.”