Summertime was in full force; the sun was shining bright, the heat higher than a convection oven, and the snow from previous months was long gone. The perfect time to go out to the beach for a day trip, or a weekend getaway to dodge the chaos that was city life just for a little while. Jake adjusted his sunglasses as he leaned back in his sun chair and took a big sip from his fresh coconut. He watched as the clear-blue seawater crashed onto the creamy shores of the beach he found himself settled on. Not a single car horn or anything that would have reminded him of the city life he was drowning in just a few days prior for miles. The sizzle of the saltwater against the hot sand, the sound of seagulls in the distance, and the occasional laugh or giggle from the other beachgoers, were the only sounds he heard and he was happy with it.

He continued to sip his coconut, sighed happily in between sips, and set the giant green nut in the sand beside him once he was done with it. As he leaned over the side of his chair to put his coconut down, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. With his hands still on the coconut, he turned to look out at the water in front of him where he saw a striped fin cutting through the waves at an incredible speed. It was a shark fin, and while a shark in the water at a beach wasn’t an oddity, the color of the said fin was orange and had stripes on it, so it was a little bit unusual. He leaned forward from his chair and lowered his sunglasses down his nose. The fin was a good hundred meters away at first, but within a couple of seconds, the distance shortened by a lot. He leaned forward more the closer the fin got to the shore.

Then it disappeared.

Jake furrowed his brow and looked around to see if he could spot where the shark vanished to. He looked left, right, and both directions again, only to bring his eyes back right in front of him where he saw that shark slowly rising up from the crystal-clear waters.

Two sharp ears poked out of the water first, then some brown hair, and then a pair of piercing green eyes that looked right at him. The shark slowly stood up in the water and walked her way toward the shore. Water dripped from her smooth and striped skin, and Jake couldn’t stop staring no matter how hard he tried. The way the water seemed to just roll off her skin and even the swimsuit she was wearing was something not even the people with the strongest of wills could ignore. Each water droplet rolled over her orange and white skin and her thick black stripes that made her look quite peculiar, unlike any shark he had ever seen before. It didn’t help that when she reached shallower waters and started to run out of the water, her breasts bounced up and down in that aqua swim top of hers either. The way she came out of the water was straight-up Bond-girl-esque. She stopped when her feet were only barely hit by the last remnants of the waves crashing on the shore and brought both her hands up to squeeze the water out of her hair. She closed her eyes for a few seconds while she squeezed as much seawater out from her hair and opened them back up as she shook her head to whip her hair into a more natural state. That’s when her eyes locked on Jake’s for a few seconds.

It may have been only a few seconds in reality, but to the boy, on the beach, it seemed like she was staring at him in a similar way that he had been staring at her. He gulped as he swallowed his saliva and slowly sunk back into his chair almost sheepishly.

“Hey Alex!” a voice called out that made the shark girl turn her attention away from the guy she saw in the sunchair. One of her friends waved their hands around from the beach volleyball area that was set up on the beach. “You said you were going for a short swim! C’mon! We’ve got unbalanced teams here!” The “tiger” shark brushed her hair over her cheek and started walking over to her friend. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys are losing without me, just admit it!” Alex shouted back. Before she started jogging her way back to the volleyball match that she was supposed to be participating in, she turned her head over her shoulder and looked back at Jake for another second or two before she smiled and skipped away.