The Runaway

After finding the journal, it is decided the only one interested enough to keep it is Lowell. Everybody lets it as it is. Everybody but Hayden.

The idea of magic and mermaids is a bit more tempting than she thought it would be. She finds herself easily sneaking into Lowell’s residence and finding the journal’s hiding place, and takes it out for some midnight lecture. She goes to an isolated part of the beach, and starts trying to read as much as she can understand from the book, with the help of a flashlight.

Of course, she doesn’t tell any of her ‘friends’ about her habits, or rather, her newfound obsession. She loses countless hours of sleep, which doesn’t seem to bother her, though it makes her rather cranky, but every day, she starts to get, albeit confusedly, closer to understanding a part of herself.

So, for a while, this becomes her routine. Act out normally, take the journal at midnight, return it hours later, and resume the act.

It is one day she finally cracks. Since she was already irritable from her lack of rest, a stressful day at school and some select words are enough to make her go over the edge. The night following, she, just as usual, takes the journal and starts flipping through it, nearly ripping it because of her frustration.

In her frenzy, the journal flips to the final page, where Lacy told her goodbyes and choose the mermaid life. Confused, irritated, and naturally spontaneous, Hayden considers the option of doing so, herself.

She doesn’t return the journal that morning, and sets it on her desk, open at the very same page, as an unspoken message to her fellow merfolk.

She leaves on the excuse she will join her dad in his traveling, and leaves a note for her mother. And then she jumps into the water.