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Dedication

To Mom and Dad and Mom, for always letting me pretend to be a mermaid

     Sean     

There are a surprising number of similarities between being a lifeguard and being a movie director. Both sit in a labeled chair to watch everything in their surroundings, their eyes squint just as hard thanks to glaring sun or glaring studio lights, and yelling “CUT THAT OUT!” to kids splashing day-drinking moms isn’t all that different from yelling “CUT!” to actors.

Sitting up here in the lifeguard stand makes me feel in control, like I can direct the movie of my life and everyone in it. Which is why when Dominic comes padding across the faux grass around the pool of the Santa Monica Beach Club—his favorite gold Havaianas in hand so he can feel the turf between his toes—my brain switches right into director mode. I mentally frame the establishing shot of the club, the pool busy with families during the only kid-friendly block on Sunday mornings, servers zooming in and out of lounge chairs and cabanas with brunch offerings for members who’ve just walked in from the beach after dipping their feet in the Pacific. Then my mind camera goes in for a close-up on Dominic, his black hair tousled perfectly, his green eyes locking with mine, his lips breaking into a grin that says so much: happy to see me, wanting to kiss me, eager to relive what we did a couple nights ago after my mom went to bed and we stayed up to “watch rom-coms” and “study their structure.”

Only, that’s not what happens. I do the close-up on my boyfriend, but he won’t meet my gaze. Dominic’s eyes are permanently focused on the ground, a deep scowl furrowed into his pale white forehead as he mumbles something to himself. I’m too far away to know what it is, but it seems like he’s practicing something. He looks like the kids in the drama department, whispering lines to make sure they have them right. And based on the way he looks like he could throw up at any second, whatever Dominic’s lines are can’t be good.

I want to scream “Cut!” like when I’m directing my romance shorts for film class. I want to direct that frown, that nervous mumbling, away from Dominic’s face. Or maybe jump into the ocean with him like we do every weekend and have the salty water wipe his concern away before I pull him into a kiss while the waves surge past our waists.

The dread in my gut increases as Dominic gets closer and his frown gets deeper and deeper and deeper. I fiddle with the promise ring he gave me last Christmas, a nervous habit that normally calms my nerves. But now it does nothing. When Dominic stops at the base of the perfectly polished white ladder that leads to my seat, he finally looks up.

My eyes zoom into a deep focus of his perfectly pink lips just in time for him to say the worst four words in existence: “We need to talk.”

How is it that just four words can make you feel like your whole life is completely ending? Everyone knows what “we need to talk” means. It’s the beginning of just about every breakup scene in any rom-com ever, the genre I’ve watched practically every day the past three years. But breaking up is not how the rom-com of my life is supposed to go. I’m supposed to finish the last couple of months of my junior year with Dominic by my side, have him cheer me on at qualifiers and then state swim meets, premiere my film showcase submission that he’s been helping me put together, dance at prom, help his mom throw his senior graduation party a few weeks later, then spend a perfect summer together before we move him into Cal State Northridge in September. Every last moment was going to make the ultimate real-life rom-com, but I guess Dominic has other ideas.

But wait. He hasn’t actually dumped me. Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding and I’m letting my obsession with movie beats fill in the blanks.

“Sean? Did you hear me?” Dominic’s yelling now and suddenly we’re the center of attention, mojito-drinking moms and the self-proclaimed SFGs (Sunday Funday Gays) whipping their heads in our direction. My face heats up. I purposely want to be behind the camera for a reason. I can’t stand all eyes on me. “I said we need to talk.”

A few gasps echo across the pool. I’m not the only one who suspects what’s about to happen. An SFG even drops his mouth in an overexaggerated O, slaps the side of his face, and says to a friend, “Mary, it’s about to go down.”

It’s best if I go to Dominic so that if he continues to do what I think he’s doing, it’s not going to be in front of an audience. “Hang on. Just . . . wait.”

I shoot a quick text to Kavya, who’s sitting in the stand on the other side of the pool.

I’m taking my lunch.

If I tell her the truth about what’s going down, she’ll make an even bigger scene. She has my back through everything, but the last thing I need right now is for her to make another pool proclamation.

Don’t get a hickey this time.

Kavya has her binoculars trained on Dominic. So she’s about to see what happens whether I tell her or not. Which might be a good thing, actually, because I’ll need somebody to drag me out of here after it happens. Maybe that’s why the club has a two-lifeguards-at-a-time rule, in case one of us collapses from heartache.

I make my way down the ladder, the whistle around my neck smacking against my chest with each step. It’s nothing compared to how hard my heart is beating.

When I finally make it to the ground and look Dominic in the eyes, I’m positive my suspicions are correct. This is the breakup scene, and even though I know it, I can’t stop myself from saying “Hey, handsome. What’s up?” like nothing’s wrong.

It’s how I’ve greeted him every day for the past thirteen months. Ever since I saw Dominic staring at me from the beach, smiling while biting his bottom lip. I wanted to bite it back so badly, and I just felt this surge of confidence in me like I’d never felt before. “Hey, handsome” tumbled out of my mouth, we flirted for a few days until we had an epic make-out session and I asked him out, and we’ve been together ever since.

Dominic gives me a weak smile at the familiar greeting, nowhere near as bright and vibrant and sexy as that day at the beach. Well, he’s definitely still sexy, still has that brooding-vampire thing about him, and why can’t I stop myself from thinking this when he’s about to dump me?

“I, um . . . Man, this is hard.” Dominic scratches the back of his neck like he always does when he’s nervous. “We’re over, Sean. I’m just not feeling it anymore.” Then he delivers the actual worst set of four words in the English language. “I met someone else.”

I’m pretty sure the mega earthquake geologists keep warning about hits at the exact time he spoke because it feels like the ground falls out from under me. I literally collapse, the unforgiving plastic of the turf digging into my knees. But they’re just pinpricks compared to the knife stabbing my back, my gut, my heart, over and over.

Every single moment of our thirteen months together flashes before my eyes: our first date downtown at the VR arcade, where Dominic nearly threw up from motion sickness; going to his junior prom together in our matching dusty-pink tuxes; losing my virginity that night to this heartless piece of shit who decides to just throw it all away on someone else. And he tells me now? While I’m at work? Surrounded by dozens of drunk parents and gays who sure as hell are not going to feel confident in my lifesaving duties if I freak out poolside for the whole world to see.

Tears sting my eyes, but I will them not to come out with every ounce of strength I have left. But I have too much heartbroken energy and it has to get out somehow. So instead of crying, I start hyperventilating. I want to ask Who? or How? or anything that would give me answers, but I can’t seem to push any words out of my throat.

“Sean?” Dominic still doesn’t move from his place just out of arm’s reach, too much of a coward to face my heartache up close and personal. “Are you okay?”

A flare of anger temporarily pushes away the lump blocking words.

“Does this”—heave—“look like”—heave—“I’m okay”—heave—“to you?”

Dominic scratches his neck again. “Um, no.”

I try to give him an angry laugh, but I’m so out of breath it comes out more like a hiccup. “What was”—heave—“your first”—heave—“clue”—heave—“Sherlock?”

Suddenly a pair of dark brown feet with black-painted toenails burst into view. I look up to find Kavya, chest puffed proudly, her bright orange buoy that we never have to use in the six-foot-deep pool strapped across her chest. “What’s going on? Bee sting? Allergic reaction? Shall I administer CPR?” She can sound like such a cheesy cartoon superhero when she hops into lifeguard action, her hands literally placed on her hips like she’s Wonder Woman or something.

“It’s fine.” Apparently I can handle two-word sentences now without gasping for air.

“Oh.” Kavya’s arms fall limply to her sides. She’s been dying for the day when she finally gets to save someone’s life.

She looks over at Dominic, who still hasn’t moved a muscle since delivering his Richter-scale-10 news. “Hey, dude,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s met someone else,” I say.

Four words. We’re improving. So I try, “Who is he?” The question sends another knife to my soul, but I have to know.

“Miguel.”

He doesn’t have to say more. I know exactly who he’s talking about. Miguel is the most popular guy in school, one of the top swimmers on the team, homecoming royalty four out of four years at Shoreline High. And my former best friend.

“He’s a senior. He’s also heading to Northridge next year,” Dominic continues. “We really clicked at his barbecue. It just makes more sense.”

“Oh,” I breathe. How else are you supposed to respond when someone starts describing your replacement like reasons for upgrading a car? This is not the Dominic I know. He’s not this heartless.

Kavya grabs her buoy and pulls it over her head, dropping it with a hollow clunk at her feet. Then she bends down and touches her toes. Next, she stands tall and grabs her right foot, bringing it to her butt. She does the same with her left.

“What are you doing?” Dominic asks.

Kavya places her hands at the small of her back and bends backward while exhaling. “Stretching,” she says, her voice wispy as the word escapes with the air in her lungs.

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For chasing you the fuck out of my pool.” A mom gasps and covers her toddler’s ears, while a few of the SFGs holler, “That’s right!”

“Sure you are.” Dominic laughs, and I just don’t get how he could be so cold. He can laugh at a time like this?

Kavya gets in her swimmer’s stance like she’s waiting for the gun to signal the start of her heat at one of our swim meets. She cocks her head to the side to look at me. “Your breath back?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you hold down the fort for a bit?”

I nod.

“Great.” Kavya looks straight ahead, her eyes dead set on my suddenly ex-boyfriend. “Just say the word.”

I look at Dominic, his lingering smile sending chills through my soul. He thinks this is all a joke. He thinks my pain is a joke. Here I am, lying on the turf in front of too many interested club members, devastated after the real life rom-com of my dreams turns out to be some relationship box office bomb, and he thinks it’s all just a joke.

He can choke on a bag of dicks.

“Get him.”

Kavya takes off, the sound of her feet whipping through the turf mixing with the applause and cheers of “Get his ass!” from a couple of the poolside regulars.

Dominic’s eyes go wide. “What the hell?!” He books it, puffs of sand flying behind his feet when he launches over the fake-ivy-covered fence separating the club from the public Santa Monica beach.

“Oh, I’ll show you hell!” Kavya yells, sprinting after him.

So much for being the one in control, being the director to the rom-com of my life starring me and the guy I thought I’d be with forever. Instead, Dominic yelled “CUT!” and recast my role without ever consulting me about it.

Rom-coms fucking suck.

     Crest     

Trying to convince an Elder you don’t need a chaperone is like trying to pry open a great white’s jaws once it’s clamped down on a fresh kill: impossible.

“Look, Elder Kelp, I promise I can get there on my own.” My voice is positively soaked with sincerity. “Seriously. You’ve told me the way a thousand times. I just follow the North Pacific Current until I hit the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, hang a left, then swim until I get to the California coast. I got this. Los Angeles, here I come!”

Maybe my fake enthusiasm will finally get the old crustacean off my fin.

But Elder Kelp just gives a knowing smile and slowly shakes their head. “You know I cannot do that, Crest. It is my responsibility as the Elder of Journeys to accompany you through the Blue until I bid you farewell, legs in place, and your feet firmly in the sand. You will not trick me again, you rotten fiendfish.” They say it with a playfully scolding fin wag, like they’ve caught a merbabe trying to grab a fistful of seaweed before it’s their turn to eat. The last thing I want to do before I’m stranded to live on my own for a month is be treated like a baby.

“Okay, okay, I get it.”

Elder Kelp places a hand on my shoulder, that knowing yet condescending look back in their eyes, which does nothing to dampen my frustration. “This Journey is your rite of passage,” they say. “It’s tradition for all merfolk of Pacifica.”

“Yet you just broke tradition! Fiendfish? Merfolk? Elder Pearl says no mer-isms around us until after our return. Human sayings only.”

“Very good,” Elder Kelp says, a smirk of satisfaction creeping up their wrinkly skin. “That was a test. And it appears you’ve been paying attention in your lessons, my child of Pacifica.”

I hate that word. If I’m such a child, why make me leave my home and live among humans all by myself?

I flick my fin in irritation, an angry orange blur, and nearly whack a passing tortoise. “My bad!” After a year of human-speech therapy, their sayings are starting to stick. Which is exactly what I don’t want. “I know you’ve explained it a thousand times, but I’m just not buying the reason for this whole Journey. I mean, yes, I’ve got to help a human, but after that, I just swim back to Pacifica and Joe Blowhole or whoever forgets I even existed.”

“Which is precisely the point,” Elder Kelp says. “Truly selfless help, like the Blue gave our ancestors. Or have you not been paying as much attention in your classes as I thought? The tradition began millennia ago—”

I curl up my fin to stop him. Every merbabe—I mean child, or kid—knows this story. Thousands of years ago, during the Blue Moon, when the magic of the Blue (ugh, the ocean) saved a band of shipwrecked humans drowning and crying for help by transforming them into the first merfolk. Our ancestors pledged their lives and the existence of all mer to protecting the waters that saved them. We’d also live our lives by the example of the Blue, which led to the creation of the Journey: One full moon cycle on land when we have to help a human, a totally selfless act like the Blue did for the first merfolk all those years ago.

It’s all a bunch of tradition nonsense. Sure, it sounds sweet, but it’s not like humans are transformed by our help. They just keep on crashing oil tankers and catching dolphins in their tuna nets and destroying coral reefs, so why even go through all this shit (confession: human cuss words aren’t all bad)? I just wish I could jump forward to the end, when I get back into the ocean, get named an Elder, and get granted one of the eight powers of the mer.

“There’s growth in doing things for others with zero expectations, Crest. And if the Blue saw something worth saving in our human ancestors all those years ago, isn’t it possible you might see something worth helping up there too? Who knows, perhaps you’ll even decide to become a human yourself.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoff. “Trust me, I will be waiting to dive right back into the ocean as soon as I help the first pathetic sack of bones I find. I will not risk getting stuck on land forever.”

Only one mer didn’t make it back in the last hundred years, and I’m convinced it was all an accident. They probably got trapped in some tank until the magic of the Journey wore off and they were stuck as a human for the rest of their life. Or maybe they didn’t truly help someone. It’s a cruel trick of the Journey. Keep to yourself the whole time, and the punishment is never changing back at the end of your moon cycle.

A humpback whale and her calf drift by, their whalesong high and deep, melancholic and uplifting all at once. I float there and close my eyes, taking in the sound. I won’t be able to hear it for the next few weeks, which feels like a lifetime. All for a stupid tradition to live life among the dirtiest, loudest, most selfish and destructive species this planet has ever known. Yet the Elders act like I should be happy about spending time with them. If I could just shake Elder Kelp before they trigger the Journey magic, I could backtrack and spend a month with the kraken in the Mariana Trench. Then I’d float into Pacifica like, Whew! Humans are the worst. Glad to be back.

I open my eyes and glance around, hoping to see something I could use to distract the Elder and get out of here.

But of course, the old crustacean’s condescending smile is back. “I know you’re thinking of how to get out of this. It is entirely natural to be afraid. But you will be fine, Crest. Or should I say Ross.”

The word makes me cringe. “What is that?”

“Your human name.” Elder Kelp shrugs. “You told me you hated all your options and to pick one for you.”

“But Ross? Blech.” The name is so bad I can practically taste it. “Did you have to pick one that sounds so awful? I’m supposed to go around land with that for a month?”

“One moon cycle will be over before you know it. And countless merfolk have taken this same Journey before you and are now fully committed to the Blue. It makes our species stronger, it makes Pacifica stronger, it makes the water stronger.”

Elder Kelp’s voice calms me with each word. Ideas of how to get out of this dumb tradition float right out of my mind. I get so calm, my eyes even start to flutter shut, like it’s time for a nice nap. Then it hits me, but my eyes are too heavy to snap open with realization.

I’ve been played, and my scales ripple with weak indignation at what’s being done to me. “Come on, Elder. You don’t have to do this.”

Bubbles escape Elder Kelp’s mouth as they laugh. “You and I both know that’s not true.” Their words are still outrageously calming, even though my mind wants to fight them with all I’ve got. But my heart’s not in it. There’s no resisting their powers of Sleep. You listen to a few words from them when the Elder’s turned on their charms and you’re knocked out cold. It’s very effective when dealing with angry hammerheads, or when chaperoning kids resistant to the Journey, apparently.

I try to give Elder Kelp an icy glare, but instead my eyelids give one last flutter, enough to see the Elder wave, smug as a sea slug. “Nighty night.”

With a final burst of will, I’m able to get out the only thought in my head before I completely lose consciousness.

“You’re the worst.”

     Sean     

When a character dies in a movie, everything still moves on. The plot goes forward, the action wraps up, and if it’s written well, it feels intentional. Like that character was supposed to die, as morbid as that sounds. But everything about the past two weeks has felt totally cruel, like the cosmic screenwriter of life just wants to play a terrible trick on me to see what kind of misery they can bring to my story. It doesn’t feel intentional. It feels wrong. Which means any shot of my life movie would just be me bawling my eyes out in different settings:

Cut to me crying in bed.

Cut to me crying in the shower.

Cut to me crying over a tub of Ben & Jerry’s while watching Gina Rodriguez get broken up with in Someone Great and fully relating to her pain.

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