At the scream, Calvin nearly toppled into the water; it sputtered as a fizzle of sound that erupted as a frothing swarm of bubbles from the chlorinated depths of the pool.

His horror grew as he attempted to lift the vacuum. Something clogged the hose, a dark mass he could see writhing beneath the surface, distorted and eerie. What was it? A hefty weight dragged on the hose, too heavy for any animal he could think of, but what else could it be? The head of the vacuum finally rose above the water, trailing a thick length of dripping dark hair.

Several scenarios scrolled through Calvin's mind. He wondered if he was hallucinating off possibly spoiled fish tacos from lunch. He pondered if perhaps, he'd somehow offended his ancestors with his semi selfish summer activities and they sent a spirit to haunt him. Mostly he wondered if he'd make it to the edge of the woods before the fish tacos made their reappearance and splattered the freshly mowed grass. It was about then Calvin realized that not only was his pool vacuum clogged with a sickening amount of hair, the hair was still attached to its owner.

A delicate hand broke the surface, grasping for the hose. He guessed by the slim fingers and bright hot pink nail polish it belonged to a girl. It was also bright green. An eye smarting shade of green like the algae blooms that clogged the river every July. Bemused, he thought skin that color should clash with hot pink nails but the colors were strangely harmonious.

An arm followed the hand and seconds later, a furious female burst from the deep end of Calvin's in-ground pool, spitting curses as she tried to wrestle her long brackish brown hair from the grips of the villainous vacuum.

Her attention wasn't on him yet, not until he made the mistake of nudging the off switch with his foot. The suction stopped as a luminous pair of eyes glared at him. A deeper green than the rest of her, cool and dark, like a pool of water deep in a summer forest.

Calvin might have continued to stare into them if she wasn't so angry. She continued to emerge from the water, yanking and shrieking as she clawed at her head. Her tails broke the surface. Tails, two of them, green as her skin with a silver sheen over the big flat scales. He dropped the hose with a thud on the deck, gaping at her.

The creature sneered through the tangled curtain of her hair.

"Free me, you fiend," she snapped. It was enough to break him out of the slack jawed stupor he'd fallen in. He should be scared of some fish woman snarling at him but she didn't seem so fierce with her hair caught in the vacuum cleaner. It was not the most dignified position. The softest snort escaped his lips. The fish woman froze, a range of emotions flickering across her bright green face. Her eye twitched. "Did you dare just laugh at my predicament, human?"

Calvin was a C average student. He had zero social skills. He wasn't all that attractive either. In all areas of his life but one, he was absurdly average. The one thing he had a knack for was reading people, and he knew with one look at the green-skinned fish woman any answer would not help the situation.

"Um, hang on let me see if I can get you unstuck here miss." He waded in, wishing he thought to wear his trunks instead of his favorite pair of jeans. Green ladies popping out of the water to muck up his day and his vacuum were not an everyday occurrence. The fish lady stiffened when he reached her, holding perfectly still as he tried in vain to free her hair from the vacuum head. It felt like wet silk beneath his fingers.

There was nothing for it. Calvin flicked open his pocket knife, a gesture the fish lady must have missed while she was busy grumbling nasty things at him. She also missed him pressing the blade to her trapped hair and severing the link with one hard tug. It surprised him how easily it cut but that was nothing compared to the green woman's reaction when she realized how he had freed her.

Calvin shot out of the pool, propelled by the gout of water, strong as a punch to the gut and the green woman's scream of rage. He landed hard, but thankfully on the damp grass. It wasn't a fun landing but he was unharmed. For the moment.

The woman was screaming obscenities at him from the edge of the pool, gesturing to the extremely uneven ends of her hacked off hair. Another gout of water whizzed by his ear. Calvin had had enough. He folded his arms, staring the fish woman down.

"Are you finished whining, miss," he said. The 'miss' was an afterthought but it felt wrong being so rude to the strange woman. "If you would be so kind as to get out of my pool, I need to finish cleaning it out for the weekend." He finished. The green woman gaped at him. Twin slits puffed open and closed beneath her chin, revealing ribbons of frilled red flesh. Gills, he realized. He caught a glimpse inside her open mouth, lined with tiny triangular teeth.

After several seconds of opening and closing her mouth, the fish lady set her jaw and mirrored his stance, her two tails braced apart like legs, expertly treading water as she tossed her shorn locks over her shoulder.

"First you trap me with your devious machine," she said, "then you shear away my hair without consent. I am fair insulted, human. How dare you disfigure me without thought to compensation."

Calvin made a face. "Compensation? I don't get my allowance until Sunday. Otherwise I'd spend it all on useless junk," he said, adopting a high falsetto to mock his mother's words. He patted his damp pockets. "I don't have any money."

The fish woman hunched her shoulders. Her skin darkened to a deeper shade of jade, almost as if she was blushing. "My kind are above the need for simple currency."

"Lady, I don't even know what your kind are," said Calvin, wondering what it would take to get his aqua-woman invader to high tail her fishy legs to some other pool. It was hard enough to get his class mates to come over, bribing them with the promise of a pool party.

She put her hands on her hips, thoroughly put out by his attitude. "I'm a nixie, you simpleton."

Calvin held up a finger. "Hold a moment," he said, retrieving his phone from his mostly dry back pocket. After a swipe of his thumb, the screen filled up with a dozen search results for "nixie" Two tails, check, inhabits fresh water, guess swimming pools count, though why she's here instead of the river thirty feet away is a mystery. Angered nixies create havoc and tragedy, yadda yadda, can be appeased by... human sacrifice.

He squinted at her. "I'm not killing anyone," he stated, "I want that clear."

To his surprised, the nixie had come much closer while he was reading the folklore page.

"That little box gave you information?"

"Yes, behold the miracle of google. I'm still not killing anyone for your hair," said Calvin. The nixie rolled her eyes.

"Please, human sacrifice is so 19th century. Doesn't your flat little box tell you anything about my kind?"

Calvin continued reading and blanched. "I'm not marrying you either."

The nixie gave a very unladylike snort and chuckled. "Please, you are no prize either, boy," she appraised him as she spoke, giving him a real look at her face. To his surprise, they appeared to be about the same age.

He sighed through his nose. "Then please, tell me how I can pay you back for hacking your hair off?"

She made a sour face at him but answered. "Take me shopping."

Calvin's eyebrows crept skyward, disappearing beneath the unruly fringe of his black curls. "Seriously?"

"I feel that is a perfectly reasonable act of compensation for this," she waved her hand over the choppy side of her head.

"But you're green," said Calvin. She scowled at him.

"Rest assured boy, I will be passably human when we attend the markets." She began to sink back into the depths of the pool. "Come to me when you are ready."

A surge of panic nearly made him drop his phone in the pool. "Wait, wait! I don't get paid until Sunday!"

The nixie paused, clearly annoyed. "How is that my problem, human?"

"I'm supposed to have a pool party here tomorrow, I invited my entire class," said Calvin, trying to keep the hint of desperation out of his voice. "I can't have a green skinned woman lounging in the deep end."

She raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him, gesturing to the pool at large and Calvin's person. "Honestly, boy, I wouldn't expect anyone to attend." She left him blushing bright red, the sting of her words far too accurate for him to coax a rebuttal before she retreated beyond his reach.

**

No one came to the pool party. Calvin spent the day, waiting on the couch, his knees jogging up and down as he tried to ignore his mother's worried glances. That horrible nixie probably cursed him. That was the hope he desperately clung to as the hours dragged by. It was better than the truth. It didn't matter if his town was experiencing the worst heat wave in decades. It didn't matter his family owned one of three pools in the neighborhood. None of that outweighed his long standing status as a loser. Another year he failed to break the stigma that clung to him like mythical chains of penance. Some bad karma that followed him from a past life to thoroughly muck up his social life.

His mother felt so bad she slipped him a couple twenties at three in the afternoon. Calvin stared despondently at the bills in his hand before he trudged upstairs to throw on a decent outfit. He shoved the money in his pocket and headed for the pool.

The nixie was waiting for him.

At least he thought it was the nixie. He stopped short coming out of his head at the leggy brunette lazily kicking her feet in the pool, twirling a flowery paper umbrella over her mostly bare shoulder.

Calvin only recognized her when she turned and looked at him. Those eyes, rich dark green, were unchanged in her human face. Instead of green, the nixie looked sun kissed by a dusky tan. She hid her uneven brown hair in a messy bun.

Dusky all over without a scale in sight. Her toes were painted the same shade of hot pink as her fingernails, complementing the sleek black sundress that hung to her knees. It surprised him that his mother hadn't noticed her but he supposed magical fish ladies had a few tricks for concealment.

When she saw him, a flash of guilt crossed her face. He wondered if she really did have a hand in his epically unsuccessful pool party. "I didn't mean to wish you ill, boy," she said.

He sighed. "Please stop calling me boy. It's Calvin," he said, offering her a hand up from the side of the pool. This time it was a lot more obvious when the nixie blushed.

"And you may address me as Ellianara, hu—Calvin," she said, brushing her dress down. It was longer than he first thought, falling all the way to her ankles and concealing her legs.

"Uh, that is a little odd for a teenage girl, even for today's standards. Can I call you Ellie?"

"Ellie," she said, testing the nickname on her tongue. "That will be acceptable."

He couldn't help staring at her, shocked at her human transformation. The nixie made a beautiful human. Calvin swallowed hard and offered her his arm. "Well, this day isn't a total bust," he murmured. "Come on, I'll take you to the commons."

Their destination was a fifteen-minute walk from his house, the suburbs giving way to a line of boxy brick shops, cobblestones, and fenced in trees that comprised the commons. He thought the heat would make both of them miserable, but to his surprise, a strong breeze and the shade of Ellie's parasol kept him comfortable. The commons were bustling with afternoon shoppers, out enjoying the same breeze. The intermittent street lamps were strung with lights for the summer evening festival, set to light up when the sun went down. Calvin briefly wondered if that was something the nixie would like to see before he remembered this was a punishment. He needed to please her and she would forgive his 'offense'.

"Where would you like to go?" His words were gruff until he stole a glance at her face. Excitement burned in her green eyes, like emerald torches in her tan face.

"That one," she breathed, pointing at an unassuming weathered store front sandwiched between an overpriced boutique and name brand shoe store. He had no idea what it was until she dragged him through the front door, peeling paint catching on his jeans to rain chips on the side walk. Ellie snapped her umbrella shut with a smooth gesture, squeaking with excitement as she burst into the dim recesses of the tiny shop.

Bewildered, Calvin followed her. While the outside appeared rundown, the interior of the shop was neat and dust free. There was a briny scent that reminded him of the sea and a hint of wood smoke, like a beach bonfire. The outside breeze snuck in behind him, teasing the multitude of hanging wind chimes to clack and sing a tinkling metallic chorus. He looked up, smiling despite himself as he realized why the nixie wanted to come in here. An expertly welded copper mermaid winked at him in a patch of sunlight. He picked out other mythical sea creatures he recognized from movies and TV, curling krakens, giant turtles and crabs, mermaids, and other, darker creatures he didn't know the names for. Aside from the wind chimes, there were clocks and snow globes, statuettes and hand carved wooden signs.

Calvin searched for the nixie and found her staring at a display inside a glass case. He joined her, peering at the array of freshwater creatures within, frogs and squatting toads, and speckled brown trout. There weren't as glamourous as the abundance of sea creatures but Ellie stared at them with appreciative awe. A woman appeared through a beaded curtain, as weathered and faded as the front door to the shop, with a knowing gleam in her eye for a potential customer.

"What can I do for you today, loves?"

"The craftsmanship on these brooches is excellent. Did you make them?" Ellie looked up at the shop owner. The woman startled at the girl's intense gaze, blinking several times before she answered.

"I did indeed. Is there any piece in particular you would like to see?"

Ellie smiled at her. "Would you happen to have any nixies among your fresh water pieces?"

The older woman blushed, tapping her filed down fingernails against the counter top. "I'm afraid I don't have much demand for them. Everyone always commissions mermaids and selkies."

"Of course they do," said Ellie, muttering 'salty tarts' beneath her breath. The shop owner caught the words, a spark of humor crinkling the corners of her eyes.

"However," the older woman said, retrieving a key from the register draw, "I try to accommodate all water folk in my collection. I've had this one a long time." The shop owner opened the case, reaching down to an unseen second level for a small cardboard box she placed in front of Ellie.

Calvin leaned over her shoulder as she removed the lid, revealing a pewter cast nixie with gemstone eyes, her tails curled upward to connect with the flowing tendrils of hair. The overall shape was a rough circle, hung from a thin silver chain.

"This one," Ellie breathed, "I want this one, boy."

Calvin gingerly picked up the dangling price tag on the chain. Far more than the forty bucks he had in his pocket. "I'm afraid I can't afford it Ellie."

She glared up at him. "You promised compensation," she said.

"Yes," said Calvin, "but I don't have enough."

Ellie slapped the box down on the counter, taking a moment to reverently place the necklace back inside before she stormed out in a huff. Calvin watched her go. He swore she left a trail of water on the floorboards of the shop though she was completely dry. Shaking away the oddity, he apologized to the shop owner. The older woman also stared after the retreating Ellie with an unreadable expression on her face.

"Sorry," said Calvin rushing after the irate nixie.

She stood despondent and disappointed outside the shop.

"I'm sorry, boy," Ellie said, surprising him. "It was unfair to ask for something so expensive. You told me you did not possess great wealth and I ignored you."

"I still owe you for the hair," said Calvin. He shuffled, uncomfortable and awkward. "Come on, I want to take you somewhere."

Her eyes brightened. She wrapped her arm through his as he led her through the crowded commons, stopping outside the salon.

"I can't afford the necklace," said Calvin, "but I might be able to help fix your hair."

The nixie's face softened as she looked at him, her eyes appraising him again. "That is...very thoughtful, human."

He grinned at her. "Try to call me Calvin in here, okay?"

**

Ellie's haircut took nearly three hours. Three hours well spent as he listened to her giggle and chat with the hairdresser. He sat in the waiting area, a bemused look on his face as he watched Ellie's uneven locks turn into a layered wave of chocolate brown curls that feathered across her shoulders. She caught his gaze in the mirror, winking at him. His stomach flipped.

Green skin, he reminded himself, she has green skin. It was difficult to remember that detail as the stylist transformed her into an even greater beauty. The young woman who would walk out of here on his arm. The thought made him feel warm and he realized he didn't care if no one showed up for his pool party.

That is until Kasey Evers walked through the salon door.

Tall, blonde, and flawless, she breezed through the door, flanked by a trio of groupies. Judging by the bags she carried, she chose to go shopping over his pool party. Calvin sank into his seat, hoping she would continue to ignore him when one of the girls whispered something in her ear.

Kasey turned to him. "What are you doing here, loser?" Her tone was incredibly snide, matching the sneer to her glossy lips. Had he really invited her to his party? He was an idiot.

"Waiting on someone," he muttered, unwilling to engage what would certainly turn into joke at his expense. They did not give him the choice.

"Who, your mom?" One of the girls said, causing the others to trill with laughter. They circled him, hyenas looking for weak spots.

Calvin said nothing. Kasey smiled, a mean one, sharper than the nixie's tiny triangular teeth.

"How was your party?" Her voice was honey sweet. He looked up at her as the edges of her smile turned cruel. "Anyone show up?"

The others stared at him expectantly and he knew it wasn't the nixie who ruined his attempt to break from loser status.

"You told them not to come," he said, feeling very small.

Kasey laughed, batting at his shoulder. "Don't be silly, Kevin, I am sure everyone just had better things to do."

"It's Calvin," he whispered.

"Think he's going to cry?" One of the girls tittered.

"Calvin, I'm finished," said Ellie. The girls fell silent and turned as one, gawking at the lovely nixie. They parted as she walked forward and planted a light kiss on the stunned boy's cheek. "Thank you so much, this was a marvelous idea." She glanced up at Kasey through narrowed green eyes, causing the girl to take a step back. The nixie braced him as he stood, slipping her arm possessively through his as the girls continued to stare. Ellie threw in a toss of her expertly styled hair for good measure.

"What would you like to do next, darling?" She drawled, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Calvin recovered, trying not to laugh at the incredulous look on Kasey's face. "It's almost evening. We could watch the Summer Lights?"

"Sounds lovely. Shall we?" They turned to leave the group, still gaping at them like fish out of water.

"I bet he paid her for a date," said Kasey in a stage whisper. Calvin ground his teeth, blushing to the top of his ears. An ominous groan rumbled from the walls, followed by a screech and squeal as a pipe burst through the wall, dousing all of them with water.

Kasey and her cronies erupted in screams, trying to cover themselves in vain as they were soaked from head to toe. The water didn't spare Ellie or Calvin either, drenching them as well, but it was worth it. The two of them were in hysterics by the time they made it out of the salon. Calvin wiped the water off his face, reaching over to brush Ellie's hair out of her face.

"Your hair cut is all ruined," he said, curling a strand behind her ear.

"It's just hair," she said.

He smiled at her. "Let's go watch the lights."

**

He slipped away while she watched the summer lights come alive in the early evening, returning to the shop.

Calvin cleared his throat. "I would like to put a deposit down for the necklace," he said, fishing a fistful of ones from his pocket.

The shop owner slid the money back across the counter. "Keep it. This necklace has been here a long time you know," she said, her voice distant. Her expression turned calculating. "I can put it on hold for you. How does a fifty percent discount sound?"

He calculated chores and odd jobs in his head. "Can you hold it for a couple weeks?"

The shop owner smiled. "I think I can manage that."

**

Ellie disappeared from the pool the next day, but if he read the mythology correctly, he had a good idea where to find her.

Calvin spent the next week and a half doubling up on chores and mowing a few lawns for an extra bit of cash. That Saturday, two weeks after his date with Ellie, Kasey Evers showed up at his door with her gaggle of girls in tow.

It was a wretchedly hot day, not even a breeze for relief. He opened the door to find them on full display with bright colored bikinis and equally bright smiles. As fake as their spray tans.

"Hey, Kevin," said Kasey, flashing him a megawatt grin. "Can we come over and use your pool?"

He stared at her, all perfect and blonde. She was very pretty and she knew it. "It's Calvin," he said and slammed the door in her face.

After the girls stormed away in a flurry of insults, he retrieved the necklace from his room and headed to the river bordering his backyard.

"Ellie?"

He wasn't sure she would answer him. Perhaps it was all a vivid dream and he spent all his money on more foolish things. He waited, watching clouds of algae float by. A light splashing sound reached his ears.

"These algae blooms are absolutely awful," said Ellie, green as the day they met, kicking her twin tails in the water. She lifted a clump of the slimy green plant off her thigh and flung it back into the river with an expression of distaste.

Calvin bit his lip to keep from laughing and sat down next to her. "I got you something," he said, offering her the simple cardboard box.

Ellie took it without a word, holding it in her hands until the cardboard grew soggy. Finally, she lifted the lid. "Thank you," she said, leaning against his shoulder. He didn't mind her wet hair soaking his shirt, not one bit.

"You know," he said, trying to sound off hand and casual. "The pool is nice and clean. Perfect for a day like this one. You could come over, if want."

He felt her smile. "I'd like that, Calvin."