Page 17 of Shifting Tides

Sighing, I looked at the keyboard. Maybe I could type notes. What else was I supposed to do?

Leaning against the foot of the desk was a stylish laptop bag with the school’s crest embroidered in shiny, colorful thread. I shoved the keyboard and tablet in the bag and slung it over my shoulder, then took a deep breath before opening the bedroom door and heading out.

The common room was a buzz of activity, with students moving all about. And just as last night, when they saw me enter their space, they all quieted to look at me.

“There she is, thenewmermaid,” I heard one of them whisper, followed by barely stifled giggles.

I pretended not to hear, pretended not to notice them staring, and strode through the common room with my head held high. Didn’t they have anything better to do than gawk at the new kid? This was worse than when we moved to Tucson, and I’d been the only white girl at Sunnyside High.

I pushed through the wave doors into the massive grand hall, trying to orient myself and remember where things were from last night. There was no way I was going to ask anyone for directions, so I was going to have to find the cafeteria on my own.

I removed the tablet from my bag and pulled up the school map, taking a good look at it for the first time. There were the mermaid dorms and the grand hall at the center, from which several hallways branched out. My eyes scanned the screen until they caught sight of the words DINING HALL on the ground floor to the left of the grand hall.

There, that wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t some helpless damsel in distress—I had to remind myself of that after everything that happened yesterday.

I put the tablet back away and smoothed the front of my shirt, then made my way to the stairs that would take me back down to the ground floor of the grand hall.

Unlike in the mermaid common room, when I passed other students, they didn’t stare and whisper. The uniform was doing its job, after all. I did get the occasional up-down look from some of the male students, which on a day like this was a welcome confidence booster.

Many of them were filing into the archways to the left of the grand hall, so I followed the masses, hoping they would lead me to the right place. Once I passed under the arch, I realized there wasn’t much farther to look.

The entire span of the left side of this buildingwasthe dining hall. Tables packed with people filled the open space, and all the way to the back of the room was a huge buffet station. The smell of bacon and eggs assaulted my nostrils, and I realized how hungry I really was, having hardly eaten the night before.

After waiting in line for a few minutes, I left the buffet station with a tray full of delicious-smelling food. Now, I just had to find a place to sit and devour it. I was used to the whole first-day cafeteria shuffle, and I just didn’t care if I offended anyone today by intruding on them. I looked around the large room, scouring for an empty seat.

There was a round table not too far away with two empty seats, and I saw that all the girls at that table were wearing the same symbol on their shirts as mine. Mermaids.

I put on a friendly face and approached the table.

“Hi, girls,” I greeted with a chipper voice. “Mind if I sit with you?”

The three girls stopped their conversation and shot me looks down their noses. The strawberry blond in the middle had a polished beauty, the kind one sees in magazines. She was flanked by a girl with hair so dirty blonde it appeared to have a greenish tint to it and another with long black hair similar to mine.

The strawberry blonde was clearly the queen bee, and I reluctantly wished I’d noted that fact before approaching them.

“This table is full,” said the strawberry blonde in an unashamedly catty tone.

“Ohh-kaay,” I said, pursing my lips. I turned away from the table without direction.

Luckily, I spotted an empty seat at the end of a long rectangular table, and I wasted no time in snagging it and digging into my food. The group of boys to my right were in a loud debate about something, and I was happy that none of them noticed me.

As I ate, I saw that all the students had varying symbols on their shirts—one of the four symbols that made up the school crest.

The boys arguing next to me all had the three red slashes on their shirts. I knew that the blue swirl was for mermaids, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the other four symbols meant.Caesar had said there were nearly a dozen different shifters in the world, so why were there only four symbols?

When my tray was empty and my belly pleasantly full, I rushed out of the dining hall and went in search of my first class. According to the map, it was out the double doors at the far end of the grand hall and across the campus in a big pie-slice-shaped building.

Once again, I followed a flock of students out of the end of the hall and stepped into a scene I hadn’t expected—but then, nothing about the school was within the realm of my expectations.

The campus looked like a regular school campus, complete with the most vibrant green grass filling the space between every connecting sidewalk. Grass was the last thing I thought I’d see under a dome at the bottom of a lake.

There were even fruit-bearing trees standing here and there, offering shade from the surprisingly bright turquoise light that filtered from the surface through the depths of water above The Dome.

I realized I had stopped to stare—right in the middle of the pedestrian traffic on the wide sidewalk—and continued my trek toward the pie-slice building, which in actuality, was much bigger than the digital map could convey.

“James, calm down, man.”

There was a group of boys on the grass that appeared to be in a fight—or on the brink of one. I would’ve ignored them completely if the sound of growling hadn’t caught my attention.

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