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Author's Note: Ok so I wasn't planning on posting this one this early, partially because I only have one full chapter written. Lately though, I've been questioning the quality of my writing. Not just as a writer but in general. I really want to know if a story is worth writing before I really get into it or if I should just abandon it and go back to something else. That's what is happening to me a lot lately. I start something, run out of steam halfway through and CAN'T finish it :(. I'm really going to try with this one. The goal here is a short and fun summer tale, maybe 10 chapters or so. I have a pretty good idea what I want to do with it and there's room for more later down the road. This story came about from an idea I had on a walk. Chase is a normal, average teenager with an average life who ends up getting thrust into an extraordinary situation with strange, new and alien things. It might take a bit of any TG element to show up so bear with it for a bit :)

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1.

There was something about the water. It was so serene and peaceful, so relaxing. I felt at home here. Stroke after stroke, gliding from one lap to the next. Not a care in the world. In the water, it felt like all my problems just went away. No teachers, no angry father, no disappointments. It was just me and it. A world of my own. A place where I could be myself, think what I wanted to think, do what I wanted to do. No rules, no responsibilities, not a care in the world.

My place.

I broke the surface for a breath and just long enough to tap the wall before quickly turning and going back. This was sadly only my fifth lap. I was already starting to feel it too, the fatigue. I knew my limit but today I was going to fight through it. I'd been working up to it and trying my hardest to prove I was capable of much more. Sadly I knew my body wasn't. Not without trying though.

That's when I felt it. I was halfway to the other side when I knew I couldn't push it anymore. I inwardly cursed.

“Awesome, Chase, you’re doing great!”

I heard the shout as I stopped, treading water with a pant. Looking around, I spotted my friend Charlie off to the side, waving his stopwatch over his head. He looked so happy and excited. That was Charlie, he the enthusiastic one, always happy, always smiling. I think he was born with one. He was one of those optimistic, “You can do it” kind of guys. In all the years I’ve known him, I don’t think I’d ever seen him upset or angry. We were strangely opposites in that respect. Not that I was an angry person but I’d had my fair share of things to be upset at over the years. Regardless of how upset I got though, he was always there to cheer me up.

Leaving my current lane, I swam over to where my friend was now standing. Charlie reached out to take my hand but hung on the side instead, treading water still.

"I was close," I said, disappointed.

"It was a lot better though," said my friend with an encouraging pat on my shoulder.

"Not good enough though."

It was never going to be sadly.

Charlie bent down, still smiling. Even when I was feeling bad, he was still smiling. Nothing could deter this kid. Here I was upset for not doing my best and he was still smiling. Like I said, complete opposites.

The opposites didn’t end there though.

I was tall and thin, barely enough muscle to keep me moving from one end of the pool to the other. I tried though. It was a sad attempt on my part. I was getting better though. I just wasn't happy with how things were going. Not Charlie though. He was short and stout, like a dwarf from one of those fantasy movies but not quite as tiny. He had that typical Irish/Italian heritage which was pretty common for this area. Whereas I was pushing five ten, Charlie was barely five five. Though he liked to boast he was taller, just so he didn’t feel so short and inferior. That was Charlie too. It was funny really. People always wondered how the two of us could be friends. Walking side by side we looked like the number ten. Yes, there were jokes.

I’d known Charlie most of my life though. We’d been friends since well before I could even remember. Our mothers were friends. They used to go to birthing classes together. It was almost as if we were made to be friends. It was the one constant in the whole world to me. Ok, so maybe the second constant.

The first had to be swimming.

My mother used to say, “I was born to be in the water”. I almost was. Mom went into labor while in the pool. Thankfully Dad managed to get her to the hospital on time for the delivery. She joked about it with me all the time. Well used to joke about it with me. Thinking about her put one of those lumps in my throat. It also made me only want to swim faster. Swimming had been Mom’s thing. She was a World Champion once, nearly Olympic quality. The only thing that stopped her was family. She used to tell me she had no regrets but that didn’t stop me from feeling bad about it.

Mom still liked to swim though.

She got me into it too.

I was in the pool as soon as I could walk. From that moment onward, whenever I got the chance, I was in the water. I would never be a world class swimmer, I knew that. I didn't have the power. Nor the muscle for it. There was also my heart to take into account. I was born with a murmur. It was better now but I'd been pretty sick when I was a child. It kept me from doing a lot of things. The swimming helped though. It just sadly wasn't enough to make me able to compete with others.

That didn’t stop me from trying though.

Its why I was here.

Every day.

Summer was slowly winding down. The new swim season started next month in September. This year I was bound and determined to prove to everyone I was ready for it. I’d been practicing all summer long, a couple days a week. It would have been more but Dad worked most days and I had to stay home to watch my sister, Carrie. She was ten and though she thought she was old enough to stay home by herself for a few hours a day, Dad wouldn’t allow it. So my practice time was when I could manage it.

I was just happy to get any time at all swimming.

I felt at home in the water.

I was still treading water when the door to the pool made a loud banging sound. It echoed off the walls. Turning, I groaned. I must have lost track of time because we were usually out of here before the swim team arrived. They practiced all summer. I usually scheduled my swimming around their time, hoping to avoid them.

Well one of them in particular.

“Hey, it's Ariel, the Little Non-Mermaid!”

Kurt Donner and I have NEVER been friends.

He was a year older than me and never let me forget it. Kurt knew my problems, everyone did. I'd been trying out for the swim teams for as long as I could remember but I never made the cut. I was either too scrawny, too small or not fast enough. Kurt never let me forget it either. He used to like to push me around, harass the hell out of me growing up. He was bigger than me now too, taller with the typical V-shaped upper body that all swimmers craved. It sucked that he was an awesome swimmer too. He was going places. I heard college scouts were already looking at him. There was even talk about the Olympics in a few years. Kurt was a Phelps in training. He shouldn’t have had time for our schoolyard rivalry.

But he was an ass.

That’s how the name “Ariel” came about. It was a dig at my hair. Most of the boys on the team shaved their heads, it was less drag in the water. Me, I had this thing about my hair. Well, actually my mother did. She used to like it when I let it grow long because when it did it was silky smooth and she loved to brush it. I stopped letting it grow ridiculously long in middle school. That didn't stop the name calling though. My hair was reddish brown and it the water---with it streaming behind my back as I swam---I looked a lot like the Disney princess.

Kurt was the only one who still used it though.

To me, it wasn’t a name of endearment either.

Grunting, I pulled myself out of the water. The team was on the other side of the pool, near the entrance to the locker room. I ignored them for the moment. Charlie handed me the towel he was holding, a sour look on his face.

Charlie turned to glare at Kurt. “We could have done without him today.”

Like me, Charlie didn’t have the greatest history with Kurt either. Unlike me though, Kurt was downright nasty to my friend. Being bigger and stronger meant he could push people around. At least in Kurt’s eyes anyway. Charlie was one of his chief targets. Charlie was the kind of kid who took it too. He never fought back, never reported it. He just let Kurt and others like him continue to terrorize him. I tried to help whenever I could but unfortunately, I wasn’t always there to have my friend’s back. That was the problem with the world today, nine out of ten times bully’s got away with it. I know the school had a Zero tolerance policy toward them but only as long as they were caught or reported.

Kurt was slick.

Charlie was still glaring at Kurt. The older teen finally took notice.

“What are you staring at, Tubs!”

“Donner, zip it!” snapped a voice.

Kurt looked surprised, as Coach Grant came wandering out of the locker room. It was nice to know there were some adults out there who cared. Or who noticed. Charlie looked surprised too, probably not expecting the Coach to say anything. That’s not the kind of man Coach Grant was though. Name calling, harassment and especially goofing around. Those things didn’t belong here. He didn’t mind the typical locker room name calling but he knew most of that was in good fun. He also knew the kind of ass that Kurt was. Kurt tried to bust everyone’s balls because he thought he was the best. He was good but there were others who were just as good if not better. I wanted to say something more---maybe even thank the man for caring---but instead I sent Charlie a reassuring smile.

I finished toweling off, giving Kurt a glare of my own.

I didn’t expect a response.

Instead, Kurt and the team started filing toward the benches along the side, getting ready. I watched them with interest. That should have been me. Coach thought so too. Last year, before my first year in high school, I tried out at the end of eighth grade. The Coach told me I had a lot of heart, I just didn’t have enough of it. Well more specifically, I didn’t have the power to keep up with the other guys my age.
The other guys could do way more and keep it going.

I was a liability they couldn’t afford.

I watched the team doing warm-ups as I meandered my way toward the locker rooms. I was nearly toward the door when Coach Grant walked alongside me.

“Looking good out there.”

“Still not good enough though.”

He sighed. “You know I would let you on the team if I could.”

I nodded.

In most circumstances, the Coach would have tried working with me. There were ways to make me improve. I could pack on the pounds then work it into muscle with a steady exercise regiment. The school wouldn't allow it. Well, actually Principal McKenna. I was too much of an insurance liability. They were afraid something might happen to me and were scared they’d get sued. I could still use the school pool to swim laps if I wanted but I wasn’t allowed to compete in any sports or use the weight room.

It was bogus.

It also killed my dreams of a swimming career before it even started.

“You know my offer still stands,” he said, following me into the locker room.

“No offense sir but I don’t want to be the equipment manager.”

The damn Towel boy.

It was a disgrace.

It would also just give Kurt more ammunition.

“Keep working at it, we’ll figure something out.”

He left me there.

I wandered over to my locker, put in the combination and started to dress. I thought about hitting the showers but I didn’t really have the time. It was Saturday. I just had enough time to catch the bus and make it across town to pick Carrie up from Ballet class. If I shower now, I’d miss it. So instead, I pulled my damp hair back in a tiny ponytail and covered it with my hood. I was still a bit wet as I put on my shoes but I’d been a bit distracted out there. Not just with the Coach and Kurt.

It was Mom.

More specifically the accident…

A knocking on the door drew my attention.

“I’m decent” I shouted.

A moment later, the door opened and Charlie came wandering in.

“You disappeared. I looked away one second and the next you were gone.”

I smirked. “I was avoiding The Kurt.”

Its what we called him. Kurt had a tendency to refer to himself in the third person. “Kurt loves that” or “Kurt is horny.” That kind of stupid thing. So Charlie and I started calling him The Kurt as if his ego defined who he was. It was our own shared joke. The funny thing is, another fellow “bottom feeders” overheard us and started spreading the name, secretly half the school called him that now. Until a couple of months ago, when Kurt himself found out. Instead of being offended, the moron wasn’t in on the joke. He started calling himself that too and even spread the rumor he was the one that came up with the name.

It only made things funnier.

Thinking about it made me smile.

It was nice to smile again.

Charlie gave me a look. “You ok?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t look good.”

“Just thinking”.

“Oh,” he said then softly. “About you...”

“No” I snapped, interrupting him then apologizing.

It wasn’t Charlie’s fault. It wasn’t mine either. It was just one of those things.

“Hey,” said Charlie, trying to change the subject. “You want to head to my house after this, Jay got an advanced copy of the new...”

“Have to get Carrie.”

“Again?”

I sighed. “Dad’s working.”

Its all my father seemed to do lately. He’d always been a bit of a workaholic but after the accident, it's all he did any more. We barely saw him. Everyone deals with tragedy in their own way I suppose and my father it would seem liked to avoid it. I avoided it too but in a different way. Carrie had no problem talking about Mom. Sure she cried just as much as I did but she wasn’t scared to say her name. I couldn’t. Even thinking about her made it hurt. Which of course made me think about her even more. When it happened over a year ago, the school counselor Mrs. Rice wanted me to go see a therapist. Dad wouldn’t allow it though. So I was stuck wallowing in my own little pity party.

It wasn’t fun.

“Maybe you can come over later then?”

I shrugged. “I’ll see what happens.”

“I love your family, Chase,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “And no offense but your dad can be a real dick sometimes.”

I didn’t argue with him.

Instead, I cursed but not because of what he said. He was right. I cursed because I saw the clock on the wall behind him. Carrie’s class was about to get out and I still needed to get to the bus.

Damn it!

Greenfield wasn’t a large city but it wasn’t small by any means either. It had on average about twenty thousand people. When you look at that number and the city proper, it was hard to see where they all were. The city itself was not that much to look at, the tallest building was only about eight stories and the only main attraction to draw in the tourists was the large canal that ran smack through the middle of it. We had all the typical things most cities would have: churches, schools, a police and fire station. Except there were no big things. No multi-screen cineplexes or chain stores. Greenfield was a simple place with simple people.

It was also a city of people late to picking up their sisters.

I cursed as I just barely made the bus.

The driver gave me a nasty look as if I was cursing at her.

I rushed to the back of the bus to find a seat, ignoring the driver’s glare. I dropped down next to an older woman, apologizing for bumping her handbag before whipping out my phone. I checked my messages and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find one from my sister. She was wondering where I was. I sighed as I typed a furious reply:

OMW.

She replied a few seconds later with an Annoyed emoji.

I groaned.

Mom would have too.

She always used to hate when Carrie relied on those little things instead of typing. She wasn’t too thrilled with my sister having a phone at all but she knew she couldn’t deny her one. Everyone had their own phone these days. Carrie’s was supposed to be for emergencies only but being a young girl she was probably never off the thing.

USE YOUR WORDS, I typed.

It was a phrase our mother was fond of.

FINE. YOU OWE ME ICE CREAM.

Of course, I did.

That was Carrie. She always made you pay for something you did wrong. She learned that from Dad. When my parents got married twenty years ago, Dad was a young patrolman straight out of the Academy. Mom was just finishing up her teaching degree. The way my mother used to tell it, Dad didn’t even want to date her. They met at a party and he seemed disinterested, almost career driven. Mom softened him up though, wore him down. They were married a year later. A year after that, they had my older sister Becca. She was a freshman in college now. I came two years after that. I’m not saying Carrie was an accident but she wasn’t planned either. My mother loved us all each and in her own way. Dad on the other hand…

My father wasn’t a cold man by nature.

It's just that if Mom was the loving parent then he had to be the hard one. The Disciplinarian. Dad’s form of discipline was where Carrie got her edge from. “You do something wrong, you make up for it.” Carrie was still pretty young to truly understand what Dad tried to instill in us but she got the principle of it. Dad just used a different kind of wording: “You made a mistake, now fix it.” He wouldn’t have been happy with Carrie extorting me for ice cream but he would have been angrier if he knew I was late picking her up. So the ice cream---in his opinion---would have been payment for my screw up.

He carried that with him to work too.

It helped him become the youngest Chief of Police in the state. Dad was ambitious like that too. It made him put the job first. A part of me hated him for it. Especially after losing Mom. Instead of dealing with the problem, he ignored it with more work. His stubbornness almost sidelined Becca’s college dreams. She was ready to drop out and help raise Carrie but thankfully our Aunt Grace---Dad’s younger sister---stepped in. Ten years younger and single, Grace had the time to help. Unfortunately, that help only came on the weekends. Even with her around though, I still picked up a lot of slack. Like with Carrie. Aunt Grace was awesome but when it came to my sister, the woman just didn’t know what to do.

Like I said, she was a lot like Dad.

ICE CREAM, NO PROBLEM.

A smiley face followed.

I sighed, defeated.

I shut off my phone, stuffing it into my gym bag. It was a loaner from Becca’s track days. Whereas I was the sickly, frail one, my sister was the star athlete. She could have gone to school on a athletics scholarship but she chose a scholastic one instead. She wanted to be a lawyer. Another influence of my father’s. He couldn’t be prouder of her. I didn’t envy my sister but sometimes I wished she didn’t try so hard. It made the rest of us look bad. By the rest of us, I meant me of course. I won’t lie. I wasn’t the son my father was hoping for. My heart condition kept me off most sports teams, it also squashed my father’s dreams of me following him into the police force some day.

He would never openly admit to being disappointed in me but I could see it in his face. Every time he looked at me, he always frowned.

It was painful.

I distracted myself from thinking about him by looking out the window. Sadly there wasn’t much to see. There wasn’t anything impressive to look at in Greenfield. The streets were lined with little shops and brick buildings, broken up by the occasional city tree plot, flower bed, and bench. There was a bustle of people but not nearly as many as one might see in the Fall. Greenfield was not a summer town. Most of the people migrated to the far south for the beaches or to one of the many amusement parks in neighboring cities. The rest either stayed indoors where the AC was constantly blowing.

That made me frown a bit more.

Lazy people bothered me.

I think it had something to do with being cooped up in the house a good portion of my young life. Well until I was ready to go to school anyway. With my heart murmur and a very nervous mother, I spent a lot of time in my room in bed or playing video games. Things changed when the murmur cleared up on its own but it still didn’t stop my mother from being overprotective. Swimming was the one and only constant in my life. It helped me stay active. That’s why it bothered me so much to hear a lot of my friends talking about playing this game or that when they could be outside, walking or running.

Doing something active. Something besides shooting imaginary zombies or bragging about their multiplayer kill death ratio score. Things I didn’t really and never would truly understand. Losing oneself in a game or on your damn phone all the time, it was counterproductive.

I looked away from the window for a moment and scoffed at what I saw. There was a girl my age across the aisle playing a game on her phone. She was the perfect example.

My scoff must have been louder than I thought though because she turned and locked eyes with me. I tried turning away but her eyes were mesmerizing. I think they were green but they looked almost gold too. It had to be a trick of the light or contacts or something. It was strange though because, with her hood up, her eyes were the only thing I really noticed.

The bus came to a stop an instant later but she was standing ever before it did. Weird. She stuffed her phone into a carrier bag and started down the aisle before anyone else. I watched her go, transfixed for a moment more. Others started to file off behind her.

The bus driver shouted at me, “Kid, this your stop!”

I blinked and jumped to my feet a second later.

I thanked her before running out the door.

The bus stop was a couple block from Madam Gertrude’s Studio of Fine Elegance. No, I’m not being an ass, that’s actually what the place is called. Rushing down the sidewalk, I barely noticed that mystery girl was standing in front of me. I nearly bowled over the top of her because she was stopped dead in the middle of my running path. We fell together in a tumble, me on top of her.

Bumping into her had knocked off her hood and I finally got a better look at her. She couldn’t have been much older than me. She had short dark hair, shaved on the sides and streaked red. She had a single ring in her nose, and several in each earlobe. It helped sell the punk look she was trying to embrace. Like her dark makeup, which only helped to enhance those strange “gold” eyes of hers more.

"Are you ok?' I grunted, pushing myself off of her.

"Watch where you're going!"

"Me?" I said, annoyed. "You're the one who was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring into space!"

This time she grunted. She snapped to her feet quickly. Scary fast in fact. As soon as she did, she turned to glare at me. I quickly pulled myself up, embarrassed. As soon as I did, I was surprised that she was actually taller than me. It was rare to find a girl taller than me. She was at least two inches taller, which meant...wow.

There weren’t too many six foot girls around here.

Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to her before.

It wasn’t just her height though.

She was ripped. Her hoodie was sleeveless and I could see her arms. They were well muscled. It kind of surprised me more. This girl was clearly some kind of serious athlete. Judging by her height and those arms, I’d say Volleyball player easily. It was strange though because I’d never seen her before. Greenfield wasn’t exactly a bustling tourist town so for her to be from another city, it was pretty rare. I suppose she could be here to see the canal but why get off a bus here? I looked around. Wasn't the canal in the other direction too?

“You are tall enough,” she said, after sizing me up. “Perhaps you could take me in a fight.”

Fight, what?

“I don’t want to fight you!”

She smirked. “Smart boy, you’d lose.”

What the hell?

I was about to say something else but my phone buzzed.

I cursed.

Pulling it out of my bag, I checked my message:

WHERE R U?

Crap.

I looked at the time. Carrie’s class got out ten minutes ago.

Damn.

Dad was going to be pissed already.

I looked at Giant girl, shaking my head. “Have fun with whatever?” I said, stepping around her.

If she said anything, I was already too far away to hear.

It was all weird. I finally meet a girl that was semi-interesting and the first thing she wanted to do was kick my ass. Must be my lucky day. I rushed away, typing a quick apology as I did. She replied with a couple more disapproving emojis and more demands. I sighed. I would probably end up catering to them all or face the wrath of both her and Dad. Dad I could deal with, Carrie scared the hell out of me.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Thanks in advance...EOF