Palenty Cove: Chapter One

Chapter One: Elizabeth Frost

I wake with a start as my sister begins to shake me quickly. "Lizzi, wake up! You're going to be late for school." My eyes open with a start as I swim from my seaweed bed. Jasmine is looking down at me with pleading eyes.
"Jay, why do you want me to go so badly?"
"You know why, Elizabeth, now hurry!" My sister always loves for me to bring back my notes on seaweed paper so that she could learn about the human world, too.
"Okay, fine, but you have to distract Dad."
"Fine. Just hurry!" She swims out of the room and I quickly swim out our bedroom window toward the surface. Ariel is on the beach holding my backpack and throws some clothes on the sand.
"Let's go, loser, we're gonna be late." I quickly swim to the shore and instantly my hair goes back to its natural blonde curl and its perfect make-up. "I swear, Elizabeth Frost, if every girl could do their hair that perfectly and quickly..."
I grab the sundress lying in the sand and quickly drape it over my head. It falls naturally to the curve of my body. Ariel rolls her eyes and threw my backpack at me. I caught it with a gasp of air leaving my lungs for a second from the impact. I swing it over my shoulders and Ariel is already starting to walk up the rocky path of the cliff that leads to town. When we arrive, I enter walking behind Ariel swiftly trying my hardest to not make eye contact. Ariel glances behind her noticing my eyes meeting the floor. She heaves a  deep sigh. "My god, you're hopeless."
I shrug and remain contact with the ground. I wiggle my toes in my sandels and beam as the glirtter in the red nail polish changed color in the light. The color of a mermaid's toes always indicate the color of their tail and thus I never seem to get tired of the color.
Ariel interrupts my thoughts. "Lizzi, are you even listening to me?"
I look up apologetically and she rolls her eyes once more. "Whatever, if you can ever get over your toenails and focus on opening your locker, I'll meet you in first period."
I nod and turn down the hallway to my locker where I spin the code and open it quickly. It swings open and hits something. To my dismay that something is actually a someone and that someone is actually Dean Murphy. He tips his head back trying to stop the blood from hitting his shirt. "I- I'm so very sorry... um, Dean."
"Hey, don't worry about it." He takes off his shirt and presses it against his face. "Happens all the time."
My face is now growing in temperature and I shove my head into my locker trying to hide myself.
"Well, uh, see you around, I guess?" With that he is off and my embarrassment doesn't want to leave with him. I grab my books with more haste then before and sat down in my chair next to Ariel who looked over at me with questioning.
"What the hell happened to you?" I cover my ears quickly and shake my head vigorously. She pulled one of my hands down. "Right, no 'naughty' words around you, but what happened?" I look at her in desperation trying to plead that she wouldn't make me tell the catastrophe that had just unfolded in the hallway, but she knew before anything I had to say had come.
"Oh my god, you talked to Dean, didn't you!?" The whole room looks right at us and if my face could get any hotter, it does right at that moment. Sapphire Murphy smiles and looks down at her oceanography notes. I look at Ariel with one of my saddest looks and she just smirks and shurgs. "Bound to come out sometime." Luckily, the humilation doesn't last long when the teacher stood with someone next to him.
"Class, I'd like to introduce to you our new student, Joshua Meade."