I am wet, almost slimy on my cold feet. The hem of my navy blue jeans looks as if they are dipped in dark paint, but it’s only seawater. Each step I take, moves me closer to the edge of the red cliff, where the sea crashes and sends its waves to the sky above. The wind whips me toward it, throwing my blond hair forward. Every time the pull of the water takes me closer, but my fear is too strong and overrules it. This time is different. I want more than anything to jump into the deep blue abyss, and this time I do.

The water greets me half way, like a hand yanking me to another world. My hazel eyes search the eerie dark water. Towers of green cluster together, reaching far below. I’m in the sea, but the pull is still there, bewitching me, begging me to go farther down, following the path of green vines to the bottom. Pain blooms in my chest. I lack air, but the ocean grips me. Black invades my vision. I try to blink it away, but it stays. Beyond the black I see the end, the bottom of the ocean. I lift my hand to grab sand; the sand lays in my hand along with a white closed shell. I lift my other hand to pry it open. I slip my thumb into the crack. It’s loose. The top lifts and the ocean disappears in white light.


My eyelid is being pried open. I stare into my older sister tina’s face.

“Syra we have been looking for you everywhere. What were you thinking sleeping on the beach? When I saw you, I thought you had drowned and washed up on the beach,” she scolded.

“I’m fine. I didn’t…..” What was I doing, I don’t remember being here, I just remember the cliff and the pull, and then nothing.

“ You didn’t what?”

“ I didn’t….uh, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I stutter.

She gives me skeptical look. “ Really, that’s all?” Her voice is heavy with sarcasm.

“ Honestly,” I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut for lying.

“ Fine whatever, do what you want, but you have to come with me to apologize to Mom and Dad.”

She turned her back on me and started walking. I knew I was expected to follow. I had taken no more than one step when I felt a stinging sensation on my right hand. There was a shallow cut running along the top of it. But what really caught my attention was the glow. On my index finger there was a gold ring with the tiniest white pearl in the center. It was glowing, wrapped in a blanket of light.

“Syra come on!!” My sister’s voice startled me out of my trance. I looked up and started walking. I had barely reached my sister when my mom came running to me. She was yelling and crying so I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but I got the gist of it. I looked past mom’s tangle of hair to find dad, worried but just watching like he always does.

From there it was a series of steps. I was scolded, hugged, and grounded. The drive home from the beach was infuriatingly silent. All there was to do was watch the gray sunset. The clouds hid the sun like they had been doing all day. I was too scared to look at the ring. I replayed what had happened over and over in my mind, but I was unclear as to how I ended up on the beach.

A large bump on the road startled me from my thoughts. I looked out at the road and realized we were only five minutes from home. It never took more than forty minutes to get from La Jolla cove to Encinitas.

I was starting to form a plan in my head to hide in my room for the next day or two seeing as I didn’t have school.

Then my mom said, “ Syra I want you to wait in the dining room so we can talk about this.”

“Okay,” I whispered with resignation.

Why did we have to have a “talk”? All I did was fall asleep on the beach.

We pulled up the sloped driveway and came to a stop in front of our house, an average sized white house with a small garden in the front and back yard. I stepped out of the old blue Saturn, marched across the yard, yanked open the door, and finally plunked down into one of the dark wooden chairs surrounding the bare dining room table to wait for my parents. It did not take long, as they were right behind me.

“Honey we know you don’t think you have done anything wrong, but you really scared us. Wandering off by yourself and not telling anyone is dangerous, especially by the ocean where you could drown so easily,” Mom explained as she and Dad sat down. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tina slide into her own room.

“I have not done anything. How long I was asleep anyway?” I argued back.

“You were out for a good forty minutes before your sister found you,” Dad said.

“Forty minutes, that’s nothing. You guys are ridiculous. You worry way too much. You’re always telling me I’m mature for my age, but you don’t trust me! What makes you think I was asleep anyway? I could have just been lying there. Anyway, I thought you knew where I was.” An alarm was sounding in my head, but there was no going back. I had already put the lie out there.

“Hon, we are not over protective, we just love you,” Mom was close tears, I could see them in her blue eyes.

“How could we have known where you were if you never told us where you were going?” Dad questioned.

“I don’t know, I just figured you saw me go off or something. But I can take care of myself!” I yelled

“We never said you couldn’t, but it’s not that simple. You could have drowned, and it doesn’t matter how old you are. Water can overpower anyone at anytime,” Mom sniffs.

I hate it but she’s right. “Fine. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Happy?” I huffed.

“You are grounded for two weeks, nothing but school and sports. No friends, and no going anywhere without my permission,” Mom said firmly. She was no longer crying.

“What? That’s so ridiculaous. I didn’t…”

“No argument. Go to your room,” Dad cut in.

I was too shocked to argue. I walked slowly to my room. I didn’t even yell at Tina for having her punk music turned up way too loud. Mom and Dad had never done anything like this to me. I slammed the door to my room and set my iPod on full volume just to annoy Tina, Mom and Dad. That’s when they came, the wet streaks falling from my eyes. Too many lies had been told today, and none of them could be taken back.

I finally looked down at the gold ring fitted perfectly on my index finger. The tiny pearl in the center, pure white. In all of its beauty, it stirred something, something that I should remember, but didn’t. I looked away and the feeling was gone. It was a tingling sensation that made me look back at the ring. But the ring was gone. Instead there was a gold thread waving up my right arm. At the top was the white pearl, but the most surprising thing was as the gold looped up my arm it sunk into my skin. It was like a tattoo. It didn’t hurt, and I guess that’s why I wasn’t screaming for help. That and I would have to unravel all the lies I told. The pearl stopped at the tip of my shoulder and seeped into my skin till it looked like nothing more than ink. White blinding light surrounded me. It was the same color as the pearl. Then my room was gone. I was standing on the sea cliff at La Jolla. My heart started to pound.

The waves spiraled into the rocks and sprayed up over the cliff. I was far enough from the edge that I was not in danger, but as soon as a water droplet hit me, I sank to my knees. Blinding pain ran through my head. Images were running through my mind, ones that I recognized: one of me at the age of two sliding on a playground; then me when I was three, four, and five. But as I reached the present there was one image that that was not mine. It was of a girl on this cliff, but she was walking toward the edge. Like m, she has blond hair and has my navy blue jeans, and black tank top. But she can’t be me, because a second later the waves rise up and swallow her into the sea.

Then I see my Tina find me, her face full of worry and anger, and wake me. My parents are hugging me. Then the image shifts to where I stand with the rock and the ocean. I realize that the girl, the one that dived from the cliff, is me! It had to be because now, now I was feeling the same pull to the sea. But it was different this time-- a push more than a pull, like the ocean had sent the wind to shove me into the waves.

I shouldn’t listen. I know I shouldn’t. But I do, I take a step and then another until I’m at the edge. The wind has the final word and sends me down to the water. The water hits me like a wall, slamming me into the dark. In the second that I stop tumbling in the ocean, I see a woman. Her waist-length, blond hair frames the upper part of her body, giving the impression that she’s glowing. The lower part of her body is iridescent blue fins and scales. I openly gape at her. She points to me and I hear a voice. It’s not mine, but it’s in my head.

It says, “You are of the sea and land. You have the powers of the ocean, yet you have the body of a human. Syra, you are different, living with a foot in the sea and a foot on land. But not for much longer, you must choose between a new life and your home.”

“How can I choose? Why would I leave my parents and my sister? Is it you speaking?” I pointed at the woman.

“ Yes. If you choose land, you will always feel the pull of the water, but you can never go to it. If you do, you die.”

“What do you mean I will die?”

“It’s the rules of the ocean.” The mermaid gives me a look that reminds me of pity.

“Do I have to choose now?’

“Yes,” I hear her answer

I am so mad at my family right now, but the thought of leaving them behind is too much, besides they were just worried right?

“Then you choose land?”

“I …….I can’t believe this but, yes.”

“Then I leave you and speak of this to no one.”

Her last word was said, and I was back on the cliff. I looked at the mysterious ocean with longing. I looked down to see the ring once more on my hand. The pearl gave of a white light, and I was back in my room with my family. The pull of the waves is strong, but I’m not leaving, not ever.