This summer was going to be the summer I fell in love for the first time. 

I underlined it twice at the top of the first page of my fresh new diary, for emphasis. I love the first page on a blank diary—it’s endless possibilities, but more than that, it’s destiny. A new diary is manifesting that something interesting will happen to you soon, something worth writing down. 

That was something I needed in my life. So I wrote a line of prophecy, a promise of what was to come. Made it past-tense so there would be no arguing with it, no chance to wiggle out of it like the shy little girl I’d been before. No, this summer would be different, and I was willing to do whatever I had to in order to fulfill my little prophecy. 

I was off to a pretty good start already. 

The diary was a part of the shopping spree my older sister, Lena, had taken me on when I’d come begging her for help like she was some fairy godmother. She’d thought the diary was a little childish among the makeup, jewelry, and clothes, but I’d insisted. Ever since I’d watched The Princess Diaries I was determined to keep one of my own, and started a new one with every school year and summer vacation. I didn’t really ever complete them, as each school year and each summer proved to be no different from the mundanities of the previous that weren’t worth recording. The half-empty diaries sat in a sad glittery pastel stack on my bookshelf, never to be filled. But I couldn’t give up the practice, not now that there would finally be something worth recording!

“Hey, are you ready yet?”

Before I could hide the diary and pink pen with the little puffball at the top in my dresser, Lena barged in.

She was my fabulous, gorgeous older sister—as always. Her delicate silver hoops matched the slender silver chain with a single pearl around her neck and the strappy silver sandal heels she carried in one hand, her dark brown hair in perfect beach waves that framed her face perfectly and a pale blue ruffled dress that complemented her tan skin and dark eyes—they all came together to form possibly the most glamorous older sister in the world. 

The few times I complained to my mom about having to compete with Lena, Mom would tell me that it wasn’t a competition, and Lena was two years older than me besides. So she was always going to be more glamorous, more in her element. But the thing was, I never remembered her having an awkward phase like me, where she was wearing the same uniform of a pastel beach shirt, a worn-out hoodie worn every day after the back-to-school shopping haul, and jeans or long-shorts, depending on the weather. She was never shy, at the back of the classroom with a book or manga, unable to look the boys she liked in the eye.

Lena had always been the way she was now, at eighteen, or so it seemed to me. Beautiful bold, all of it effortless.

Maybe that was why I’d never asked her before now. Because I thought she didn’t need to work hard to be that way like I would, so she wouldn’t be able to help me. 

Lena, of course, thought differently. 

“Are you really writing in your diary when you’re about to go to the first real bash of the summer?” She crossed her arms. “Just sitting there writing things isn’t going to make them happen. Come on, stand up, let’s see the fit.”
I reluctantly closed the diary and got off my bed. She circled me, her dark eyes narrowed in concentration as she scanned up and down. I was wearing some platform pink flip-flops with an orange and pink floral dress I’d picked up in one of the beachside boutiques earlier in the day, and accessorized with a pink flower clip, an anklet, and some golden hoops I’d borrowed from Lena’s jewelry box. 

“Not bad.” She nodded in approval. “Is your phone charged?”

“Yes, Mom,” I shot back. “Since when were you the responsible one?”
Lena snorted and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Always have been, Mom and Dad just never realized how responsible I’ve actually been.”

Her expression then grew serious. “Now, Mika, remember to keep a hold of your drink, and if you lose it, find a new one, don’t take any rides from anyone else at the party, and if you lose me, take a rideshare home. It’s better to pay a little extra to make sure you get home safe.”

“I will.” It was already starting to sound daunting. Maybe it would be better to stay home, put on Gilmore Girls or The Summer I Turned Pretty and make cookies. Maybe this whole falling-in-love business was still beyond me. Maybe—

“And Mika?”

I braced myself for more cautionary advice. “Yes?”

Lena grinned. “Have fun, okay?”

I squared my shoulders back and answered solemnly. “Okay.”

Growing up in Wilmington, beach parties and boat parties were a fact of life. I hadn’t really been to many though, and certainly none like the one my sister took me to that night. I still remember pulling up to the marina and seeing other glamorous teenagers like Lena trailing down the docks into the Sirena.

“The party’s there?” I looked wildly between the boat and my sister, then back again. “You said this was a boat party—that’s a yacht!”

Lena just laughed.

“How did you even get invited to a yacht party?” I craned my neck to get a better look. “We don’t know yacht-rich people!”
“You don’t know yacht-rich.” Lena booped my nose with her finger. “I know a friend who knows a friend—and that friend, is yacht-rich.”

I shook my head, a hurricane was rising from the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know about this—I thought this would be like, on a pontoon with some of your friends from class.”

“I don’t have class, I graduated, remember?” Lena pulled her keys from the ignition and grabbed her purse from where she’d stowed it by my legs in the well of the passenger seat. “And I do know some of them from school, promise.”

That didn’t make me feel any better.

“Come on, don’t get cold feet on me now, Mika.” Lena opened the door. “You’re here, and I can’t leave a child unattended in the car, so you might as well come with.”

I stuck my tongue out at the mention of her calling me a child. Even if it was true that at sixteen, I was a child and she was an adult now.

“Look, you want to have a summer romance, you’ve gotta put yourself out there.” She leaned back into the car. “We didn’t go shopping earlier this morning just for you to wear all those new clothes to the library and the house.”

Her voice softened. “Look, I know it seems intimidating, but fake it til you make it, right?”

“Right,” I said in a small voice. I grabbed my own purse, slung it across my body, and joined her outside.

“Atta girl!” She clicked the button on her key-fob that locked her car. “Now let’s go have ourselves a yacht party!”

Lena knew how to party, and so did her friends. As soon as the Sirena took to the open ocean, the surround-sound speakers blasted a party mix that shook the floor and that was when the drinks came out. It was then that I realized that unlike my sister, I was not the kind of girl who liked parties.

She’d disappeared into the floor when the music started, in the center of a sea of people. She shone like the full moon overhead, with that same kind of magnetic attraction. My parents called it vanity, or arrogance, but I always saw it as charisma. Something about her just drew you in, made you admire her in spite of all the reasons not to. She was the life of the party, and I was just the same old wallflower. 

I had no idea where to even begin. Everyone here seemed to know everyone else, which left no room for someone like me who didn’t know anyone. They were caught up in their own half-shouted conversations over the music, or something more intimate in the sea of bodies. 

Besides, what would I even talk to them about? As soon as I even thought I saw a straggler to talk to, I’d just think of something to say, some witty one-liner stolen from a book, and then the words would just die in my throat. These weren’t the kind of people who read fantasy books or watched rom-coms on Netflix or wrote 750k fanfics about their OTPs. I knew they weren’t because they were doing this.

And Lena had abandoned me not ten minutes in because she was having fun. 

That was fine, I decided. I’d have fun of my own. 

I left the dance floor and the bar and headed to one of the side-decks of the yacht, where there were less people. I stuck to one of the soda cans stowed away in one of the mini-fridges, mainly because I was pretty sure my parents would actually kill me if they figured out I’d been to a real rager. 

Then again, maybe they’d kill Lena first for bringing me. But given that she was trying to help me out and all, it would kind of suck if she got in trouble for it. 

I leaned up against the railing, taking in the relative quiet of the side-deck and the darkness of the open ocean at night. The moon was full, a scattering of the stars too bright to be drowned out like the rest from the lights of Wilmington. 

I never should have come. 

When Lena had invited me to a friend’s boat party, I’d thought it would be a fun pontoon cruise, nothing too major and with people who I at least vaguely recognized their faces from my high school’s graduating class. That was the kind of party our parents thought I was going to as well, the kind that they approved.

The Sirena was way bigger than either of us had imagined and it overwhelmed me. 

As I was standing there, watching the night pass me by and feeling sorry for myself and my own inability to change, I saw a strange light in the water. 

It wasn’t the reflection of the moon or the stars, or the city’s glare spread among the wave-caps. It was a bright sea-green, pulsing like a heartbeat. Then a shadow crossed over it, like a long arm, or a tail, or maybe a tentacle. I leaned forward to get a better look. Pinpricks of light like stars or bioluminescent algae we’d studied once in my Biology class danced on the water—but it was that same sea green and not the usual blue or white I saw in photographs, strangely bright against the darkness. 

I started to climb up onto the railing to get an even closer look when the boat jostled.

Screams from the dance floor—the night sky rushing around me in free fall and then—

I screamed a thousand bubbles as the cold pervaded my skin and clothes. I was disoriented—it was so dark down there, I couldn’t tell down from up. I kicked wildly and clawed at the water, trying to propel myself up—or was it even up—

Something wrapped around my waist, a long appendage of some kind that pulled me down. The green light pulsed out again, illuminating the depths for just a moment—enough for me to realize the danger I was in. I couldn’t get a good look at it—but I could see the black outline of the creature against the light. It was amorphous, with too many limbs and nothing like anything I’d seen in the marine biology unit. The pulsing light was a part of it—some kind of heart or eye, maybe, but somehow embedded into it. 

My heart hammered against my ribs in futility as the grim, certain dread took ahold of me.

I was going to die.

No—I couldn’t die, not here, not when I’d never even had a silly summer romance or fallen in love yet!

I pounded my fists on the tentacle wrapped around my waist, as it drew me closer to the light—was it some kind of mouth? But the tentacle held tight. As it pulled me toward the light, I heard this voice. Not a voice, really—an entire chorus, a primeval choir. They sang in an ancient language, like Latin maybe, or older, but full of emotion, overflowing with it. 

I heard it, and it stirred something inside of me. It had always been there, familiar in its dormancy. But with my life in danger, it finally had reason to wake.

This glow came from my chest, where my heart was. It was a soft pink, almost purplish in color. The light grew, spreading over my skin. It was warm, like the waterside sun. Pleasant, but with the promise of danger if it stayed too long. My fingers and toes tinged, as the feeling rushed through me. 

Then I was a star in the sea, as bright as the sun, the pink light causing the monster to wither away from me. But it could not escape my light.

For a moment, I was blinded—and then, all was dark again.

That’s when I realized—I was breathing. Underwater. 

I looked around for the monster. No sign of it, no shifting shadows or aqua-green light. 

Instead, a pair of glowing blue eyes met me. 

As they drew closer, my vision adjusted. The eyes belonged to a boy about my age, with dark hair and markings like tattoos that glowed a turquoise blue—but not so brightly as those eyes. As my own eyes trailed down him, I saw—

A tail?

I squinted, unable to make sense of any of this. 

He didn’t seem to notice my inner crisis, however. Instead, he reached his hands out towards my waist and tilted his head—a clear ask for consent.

I nodded—might as well, if this was some kind of dying hallucination or dream.

He nodded back, and placed his hands on the sides of my waist. 

I remember then the pull, up, up—

I broke the surface spluttering for air.

“Mika! MIKA!”

I looked up to see Lena screaming hysterically over the main deck’s rail as two of her friends held her back.

“Hang on!” One of the boys on the deck called as he grabbed a life-preserver. “We’ll pull you up!”

I nodded. Everything still felt strange, dreamlike to me. I looked around me, but the boy who saved me was gone. Not even ripples on the water were left behind.