My Boyfriend Is a Swamp Monster (My Monster Meet Cute #1)

Prologue

Camp Mangrove.

Everyone at camp says to be careful of the water.

We’ve practiced how to zig-zag away from gators. We’ve learned to identify poison ivy and to always have a buddy when leaving the cabin. There are lessons sung in songs by the campfire, but none of the verses say what to do when there’s no one to pair up with.

No one who wants to anyways.

My cousin Jenna may be in the same cabin, but she has her friends. She writes letters to Uncle Orson and Aunt Andrea at night, lamenting that even at summer camp, she has to share with me.

The family baggage following her on vacation.

“It’s not fair.” Jenna often whines about how much I’ve taken—a room in her house, the attention of her parents—and now, a bunk in her cabin.

According to my cousin, all I do is take; she never mentions what I lost to have to be here. Not that I’ve known any different. We grew up together—we should be like sisters, but that’s never been the case.

Most of the time at camp, I’m alone. But today? Today was different, like something out of a story. So instead of starting with “Dear Diary” or “Hey Journal,” that’s how I’m going to write it, okay?

Ahem.

Sent away to camp for the summer, a girl sits on the rocks with no one to play with. She knows her aunt and uncle must be relieved to have her gone, and though her cousin was sent away too, she does what she can to avoid the girl’s friendship.

So, the girl imagines she is in an old novel. A ward sent away to live with her relatives after the tragic death of her parents.

She’s watched enough old movies at the tender age of seven to know the plotline.

Unwanted.

Unneeded.

But, at least in this story she has a tub of cheese balls. Though, what she really wants more than anything is someone to look at her with more than pity. She can’t stand the sad way the counselors stare at her. Luckily, Camp Mangrove is big, and there are lots of places to disappear.

Tired from the summer sun, the girl lets her snack fall into her lap and watches one of the highlighter-orange cheese puffs roll into the spring. It lands with a plop, bobbing on the surface before it’s pulled under—

Plunk!

It disappears, leaving only bubbles, and the little girl wonders if fish like cheese balls as much as she does. She drops another.

Plunk!

It disappears again.

The girl squeals with delight, but no more bubbles rise to the surface. Instead, there’s a big shadow looming in the water.

Maybe it’s not a fish at all.

She hums the song about zigzagging away from gators under her breath, watching wide-eyed as the creature breaks through the surface.

But the scaly snack thief isn’t a gator; it’s a boy. He’s about her age, all green with fins that flair around his cheeks like a puffer fish.

“Got any more?” the fish boy asks. With shaking hands she nods, dumping the entire tub into the water. He ladles them up in his webbed hands, slurping up the mix of cheese balls and water like a gross swampy soup.

“I’m Gale, by the way,” he says, his mouth so full it’s hard to understand. “Are you sure you don’t want any? These are so good!”

“No thank you,” she murmurs, sliding down from the rocks to join him in the water.

Now, writing this, she wonders if she made him up; she wonders if it matters at all.

Because the girl—I finally found someone to play with.