Blueisland (Watermagic Series, #4)

Copyright© 2013 by Brighton Hill

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B
lueisland

Watermagic Series, #4

by Brighton Hill

Sabine’s School of Mers Formed
Twenty Five Years Ago on an Island in the Atlantic Ocean

This is how Jewel, Savannah, Emily, Logan, Andrew, Steve, and Jane became a family

Preface

Back i
n tenth grade my high school only had three baton twirlers and I was one of them. Geeky—that’s an understatement. I must have been crazy to volunteer because everyone thought twirlers were total nerds. At least that’s the way it was at my high school. It wouldn’t have mattered what other people thought so much if they left me alone. But, you know how it is, kids love to bully the underdog.

I should have known that, but at the time
my mind was in other places. Mostly, I just wanted to get my mom who had been a baton twirler in high school to notice me more than her druggy boyfriend who had become her number one obsession. It was my hope that if I followed in her footsteps, she would come to the football games to watch my dances and love me again.

That didn’
t happen. I don’t think she even knew I was ever a baton twirler. I told her, but she just couldn’t listen to a damn thing I said. “Not, now, Jewel,” she sighed waving me away with her hand. Instead, I became the school buffoon all for nothing.

We wore
these out of style maroon colored body suits with lots of sequins and fringe around the hips that made my classmates laugh. I understood because the design made me cringe. I was more of a simple, plain dressed girl with messy brown hair and all that gaudy flash and sparkle wasn’t my thing. And, aside from the pathetic costumes, I was so skinny from malnutrition. Because my mother was so wrapped up in Steve’s life, she kept forgetting to pick up the food stamps from the government office. That year I looked like I was dying. A pale, waify teenager in a goofball leotard wasn’t a pretty sight.

The other two twirlers were
n’t much to look at either. The poor girls were as fat as elephants. Mary had short, curly orange hair that looked like a clown’s wig and Genie wore six pony tails on her head and had glasses as thick as storefront windows. People called them the bun sisters and me the baloney girl. I was the flat piece of meat between the buns. A popular football player named Jake Stevenson came up with that one. What a moron.

Well, one
dark night when the moon was full in the sky and the stars were falling like sad tears, I waited in my baton twirler costume for my uncle to pick me up. Somebody had stolen my backpack with my clothes in it. Everyone had already left the football game except for that jerk, Jake Stevenson. He was standing there under the light of the moon by the back fence that closed in the bleachers. Most everyone considered him good looking with his brown short hair and muscular physique, dark eyes that switched back and forth, but he wasn’t my type.

Jake kept glancing over at me from across the parking lot as he chucked rocks at a metal trashcan. I wished my uncle would hurry up. 
I knew he probably wouldn’t show up like he promised, but I had to wait until ten just in case before walking home otherwise he’d whip me good.

My body tensed as I noticed Jake was walking through the parking lot toward me.
“Razzle, my dazzle,” he called to me, strutting a little more suavely than I was used to seeing. He was teasing me about my last name, Razzen. He liked to make fun of me at school too. “Whatchya doing out here all alone?” He winked as if that was cool or something. What an idiot.

He stopped right before me and leaned his hand against the wooden light pole next to where I stood. Looking at him
made me very uncomfortable and I felt even more awkward talking to him in my French cut costume with the fringe blowing in the night wind.

I swallowed hard
, the heat rising up to my cheeks. “I’m waiting for my ride.” My voice was more of a whisper because he made me nervous. Just because he was popular didn’t make him good.

His shifty eyes
glanced at his watch. “If your folks haven’t picked you up yet, they aren’t coming.” His low voice lifted teasingly. Whatever!

Well, I’m embarrassed to say, t
ears welled up in my eyes. I think the fight I had with my mother’s boyfriend after school was making me feel out of whack. Steve said he was thinking about putting me in foster care. Jerkoff.

But Jake Stevenson
didn’t have to rub it in that my family didn’t give a crap about me. I turned away so he wouldn’t see how I was feeling, being so pathetic and all. “You’re probably right,” I said coldly without looking at him. Before he could respond, I started to walk away.

But he jogged up to me as I crossed the parking lot and grabbed hold of my
frail shoulder spinning me around. We were standing in a dimmer part of the lot now where the light from another lamppost was flickering on and off. The dark shadows and flashes of light on his angular face made me uneasy. There was something about the look in his eyes that were much steadier now that made my skin crawl.

“There’s no one around,” he said, looking through the parking lot and back up toward the stadium.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s obvious.” My voice was sarcastic because I didn’t know how else to act to such an absurd comment.

“Let me give you a ride,” he suggested. “My Camero is over there.” He pointed at the black sports car.

I knew a lot of girls who would die to go anywhere with Jake Stevenson in his Camero, but I wasn’t one of them. “No, thanks. I want the fresh air.”

He smiled, one eye narrowed more than the other. “I’ll roll down the windows. Take off the
T-tops. Can’t get more wind than that.” To my surprise, he took my hand.

That made me even more
uncomfortable. His palms were clammy and hot. “Thank you for the offer, but I think I need some alone time.” I tried to drop his hand, but he clasped it tighter. Even though it was cool out, my forehead was perspiring and a thin stream of sweat rolled down my back where my costume was too baggy.

“I won’t take no for an answer.” He started leading me to his car. “It’s dangerous for a little girl like you to walk home at night. I won’t have it.”

He was right. It wasn’t safe for a girl to walk home at night by herself. I was used to that sort of thing and had learned to hide in the shadows and run behind the bushes so passing cars wouldn’t notice me. But I knew that was risky all the same. I would probably be better off hitching a ride from the moron. My best friend Savannah would just die to hear I got a ride home with the one and only hot Jake Stevenson. Just giving her that thrill made it worth it. We’d have something to laugh about. But even still, I didn’t feel good about it.

“Come on, come on,” he said, opening the door with a smile on his face.

His insistence surprised me. He acted almost caring. I think that’s what got me to lose my mind and go against my own better judgment. This was not the way I perceived him at all. So even though I didn’t want to go with him, I did. I should have never ignored that warning in my gut because my life was never the same since. For a long time after, all I could hear in my head was his groaning, “You want it, girl. You want it.” And then, there were my screams: “No! No!” The blood was the worst part. So much blood.

Chapter One

Almost Two Years Later

“Party on,” I yelled out to my classmates on the deck below as I edged my way up the mast of the yacht we rented to celebrate
senior prom.

Below me, I heard s
ome football players chanting, “Raz, Raz, Raz…” They saw me as a tomboy and apparently liked to tease me about it. I didn’t care if they thought of me as a dude—I just wanted to get away from it all.

“That whore
’s a geek,” one guy said. My blood boiled at that. I just knew that was Jake Stevenson. He loved to put me down. If I could, I would kill him with my bare hands. Nobody knew him like I did. And I would never tell a soul the truth about him. “Baloney Girl,” he yelled, even though I quit baton twirling after that night that he drove me home.

Some stupid
girls were screaming too. I heard blond, beautiful Emily Monroe crying, “Get her down—she could die!” She was just another one of the phonies I wanted to avoid. We used to be friends in elementary school, but that all changed once she became popular.

Like, I care
d if I died. That was what I wanted, I thought as I took another swig of vodka from the bottle I was holding.

During the dance
earlier, Emily Big Boobs and I had been crowned prom queens. It was the first tie in school history, they said. Whoop-dee-do! What a joke.

I knew
the principal and teachers elected me because of what happened to my mother and that Emily was the real queen chosen by the other students of our senior class. I wasn’t the glamorous, popular type with my shaggy brown mess of hair and childish body in boy jeans. I didn’t even run for prom queen. People who run for those things are idiots. And, anyway, the only reason I even got a date to the dance was because Donny Smith’s so called girlfriend dumped him for Jake Stevenson and he needed someone to go with.

But
Emily was thrilled to get the honor and after the dance she insisted we wear the idiotic crowns the entire night even though I had already changed back into my jeans and t-shirt. Every time I took the dang crown off, she put it back on my head. It was so absurd that it almost became funny. I said
almost
because in truth it was just annoying.

My arms started to ache as I pulled myself up the sleek
lengthy pole. The night wind was thrilling as it thrashed through my tangled hair, but it knocked the crown off my head and onto the deck. Once it landed, Emily let out a loud sob. “Oh, no! Jewel Razzen’s beautiful tiara!”

The clouds were thick above, graying in
the night and the air was fresh and salty. The higher I got, the less obtrusive the sounds below became. And even in my mental state, I relished in the escape. Screw them all—superficial snobs.

With the view around me, my mind drifted to other thoughts.
The ocean is awesome. Since childhood, I’d been obsessed with the vast underwater depths and all its life forms. I used to dream of sailing the seas. In my fantasies I found sparkling treasures and was romanced by the same confusing guy of mythological wonders.

Maybe that was why I found high school a bore with its rules and predictabilit
ies. The social cliques were absurd. Why can’t people just be who they are rather than something that everybody else expects them to be? I wanted adventure, magic, and passion. That’s why I was damn glad that we would be graduating next week, so I could get away from Sunshine Coast.

When I reached the top of the mast,
I guzzled down the rest of the vodka, relishing the burn in my throat. I pulled the note I wrote earlier out of my jeans pocket and pushed it inside of the empty bottle before capping it. And without further thought, I chucked the thing hard and fast out into the ocean as planned. More screams. Jerks were below me. I’m not joking. Like I would smash their heads with glass. I wasn’t such a douche bag.

At that thought,
I broke off the flag flapping violently in the wind. Feeling as free as a bird, I waved my prize in the air. A part of me wanted to just let go entirely and fall through the night, plummet into the thrashing water and drown like my mother did six months ago.

I
pushed the flag in my jeans pocket and grasped onto the mast now with both hands. Two years of gymnastics gave me enough upper body strength to support my waify body for a while. I had filled out some over the last couple of years. The sounds below were muffled now from the approaching storm. It was good to have relief from their jabber.

I yearned to see the stars, but they weren’t visible through the th
ick masses of graying clouds. But then, through the wind, I thought I heard the voice of my best friend, Savannah Kilmore. We went through some unconventional and hardcore Girl Scouts together as kids. Nobody’s been in a troop like ours. This wasn’t some prissy kind of club like you might expect. It was downright dirty. Even our cookie sales kicked ass—#1 in the country.

“
Raz—get the hell down.” The words sort of washed through the wind, so I wasn’t certain if it was Savannah or someone else.

I gazed out at the immense black ocean. The unpredictability of the great expanse
mesmerized me in its vastness. My view was so open and dark with just specks of light on the water. That kind of beautiful kills me.

The yacht started to slow and come to a stop out in the middle of the ocean. It was probably a whale sighting. The captain said he would stop for those.
I heard people running to the other side of the deck away from where I was at.

My thoughts began to blend into the night. A sort of serenity started to take over my senses.
I felt tired, sort of dreamy like I was floating. My mind was on a good buzz. That went on for some time. But just as my eyes started to lower, the strangest thing happened that jarred my senses.