My date with Jesse had been mostly fantastic and had only solidified my feelings for him. But I hated that in the back of my mind, something was still horribly wrong. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It wasn’t that I wanted to hide from him what I thought about the anomaly. Of course I wanted to tell him everything. But, the night we decided to date hadn’t felt like the right time. And then our very first date together hadn’t felt like the right time, either. I hadn’t wanted to have a beautiful, romantic moment with him and then ruin it by discussing the anomaly.

Or maybe that was just my excuse because I was afraid that he wouldn’t believe me. And, if he didn’t believe me, then nobody would.

But I knew this was a sea monster. It had to be, based on all the old texts I’d found. It was the only thing that made sense. Of all the things I’d read, nothing had clicked like this.

And, if I was right, if this was a sea monster, we needed to act. We couldn’t sit on this information.

So, I was telling Jesse today. No matter how nervous it made me. I wasn’t going to be able to gain the courage to talk to anyone else unless I got him on my side. I needed him on my side right now.

I had told him to meet me in the library once his shift was done, which was any minute now. My heart raced, and I impatiently waited for him to walk through the door.

When he did, it was with a smile on his face. I’d been expecting that. He’d been nothing but happy since we’d begun this relationship of ours. I was jealous of him. I wished I could simply bask in the glow of our newfound attraction, but instead, this anomaly had been haunting me.

Well, I supposed soon he wasn’t going to be able to bask in it either, so I couldn’t complain too much. I was about to take away his carefree happiness.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, as he sat down in a chair next to me.

“We need to talk,” I told him bluntly.

He looked immediately worried. “Oh, no, please don’t tell me you’re doubting this thing between us again. I thought we’d finally worked out all the kinks and—”

“No, no, it’s not that,” I stopped him. “It’s nothing like that. Things are good between us, really. We’ve got to talk about something else.”

“Oh,” he looked surprised. “Well, all right, what is it?”

“It’s about the anomaly. I… I really think I’ve figured out what it is.”

“Okay… well, that’s good, right?”

I frowned at him.

“What? What is it?”

“I think it might be… a sea monster.”

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “Uh, what?”

“A sea monster.”

“There’s… no such thing as sea monsters, Finn,” he said coolly.

“I think there are.” I pulled out a bunch of old articles that I’d photocopied from the books I’d been reading. “Look, I found all these old accounts of very similar ocean events which ended up being some kind of sea monster. I know these texts are really old. I know a lot of people have written off magical monsters as mythical, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’m sure of it.”

He looked at me skeptically. “But, Finn, even if magical sea monsters used to exist, it still doesn’t make sense that this would be one of them. If we currently had them, we’d know by now. They would have turned up. You think we’ve gone a thousand years without ever seeing a sea monster, and now one of them has popped up out of nowhere?”

But I had an explanation for this because I’d thought the same thing.

“I mean, it’s not even that unfathomable! Do you know how large our ocean is? We’re constantly finding prehistoric species down there that we’d never known had existed. And occasionally, one of those prehistoric species floats up to one of the surface layers of the ocean. I truly believe that’s what’s happening now. This sea monster probably lived very deep in our ocean, where he’s gone mostly unnoticed, and now he’s drifted to the upper layers of the sea.”

He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know, Finn, that seems… really farfetched.”

I grabbed his hand hard, a little more roughly than I’d intended, and I looked him dead in the eyes with the most serious gaze I could muster.

“Do you trust me, Jesse? Like, truly trust me?”

He nodded. “Yes, of course I do.”

“Then you need to trust me on this. Because I’ve never been so sure of anything. I’ve read article after article. This exact thing happened once, with the steam and everything. We’ve got no accounts of a perfectly cylindrical column of steam growing in our ocean from any natural event, but we have an account of a magical one. If you’ve ever believed something I’ve told you, please believe this. I’m really very sure.”

He sighed. “Okay, yeah, I trust you. I mean… honestly, it’s hard for me to believe it’s an actual sea monster. Though, I do think that there’s probably a lot we can learn from this past event, but… I don't know. Maybe I don’t want to believe it because it’s so intimidating.”

I nodded. “Yeah, trust me, I know. I’ve been suffering under the stress of this knowledge for days. If it is a sea monster, we have to get out ahead of it.”

“Well, you know what we need to do then, right?” he asked.

“No, what?”

“We need to go to Camden and the others. We need to share what you’ve discovered.”

I groaned. “Yes, I know. But it’s just so scary. They completely brushed me off before when I said it could be a magical event. Now I needed to come to them with information that is even more farfetched? I don’t see how they’re ever going to believe me.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be rough. We’re going to have to do our best to figure out a way to get them to take you seriously. But, either way, it has to be done, Finn— you know it does. Even if I’m not completely confident this is in fact a sea monster, I am confident that this info you’ve found is extremely valuable. The scientists that are working on containing this anomaly need to know it before Santa Oso and Stelline City are threatened.”

I nodded. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know how to get them to take us seriously, but… we have to. We have to find a way.”

I had a mixture of emotions brewing inside me. Part of me was relieved to have finally told Jesse what I’d discovered. And he hadn’t reacted nearly as badly as I’d thought he might. I understood that he couldn’t completely trust it was a sea monster. I probably wouldn’t have been able to either. But he hadn’t discredited me, and that was good, too.

The thought of having to tell the others really took away all those positive feelings, though. I knew Jesse was right— it had to be done, but how?

How was anyone ever going to trust me on this?