FOR KELLY, WHO POINTED ME IN THE DIRECTION OF GENETICS AND SAID, “IT’S GOOD TO TRY HARD THINGS.”

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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ISBN 978-1-4197-7392-1
eISBN 979-8-88707-298-2

Text © 2025 Susan Fletcher
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. . . DOTH SUFFER A SEA-CHANGE INTO SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST

PROLOGUE

Sixteen years after the first Mer baby was born, scientists tried to put the genie back in the bottle.

—Dr. Nancy Costigan, Out of the Bottle: A Brief History of the Mer

ALL GOOD NEWS

They said it would not be painful. We wouldn’t feel a thing. Only a small black pill every day for a week, and then a simple outpatient procedure. The stitches would dissolve by themselves.

It was the breakthrough they’d been searching for, the doctors said. A total reset—back to Normal.

When some of us protested, they told us we didn’t understand. This was all good news, they insisted.

But they were the ones who didn’t understand. They were saying we were wrong. A mistake. Right from the very beginning.

A reset. Back to Normal. What did that even mean?

And yet . . .

I closed my eyes, breathed in deep. And then the whole of my dim, inner spaces filled up with the bright memory of Kai.

PART I:

BEFORE

It was lung capacity they were after. A tiny gene edit—just a tweak. If their children could dive, swim, sing, run, and do it longer, better, faster . . . well, they’d be extraordinary. And what could be wrong with that?

Nine months later, here came the first of their gen-mod babies, in every way Normal, except for one big surprise: Each had a full set of lungs and gills. Two systems; both worked perfectly.

At least, for a while.

—Dr. Nancy Costigan, Out of the Bottle: A Brief History of the Mer

CHAPTER 1

A SCAVENGER, LIKE ME

MONDAY, APRIL 5

It was the piano that caught my eye when I swam into the flooded townhouse. I’d finned through the front doorway and into the dim entry hall, drawn to the great room ahead, oddly bright. High in the ceiling, a few feet above the surface of the water, a crack had opened up. A shaft of wavering daylight pierced the room, making the blond wood of the piano glow.

Sycamore. Grandmother used to tell us how unusual it was, a grand piano made from sycamore.

A school of herring, glinting silver, flickered past my face. The curtains billowed out like sails in a light sea breeze. A jellyfish drifted in through a glassless window frame, and an octopus slipped under the open lid of the piano and nestled in the wires.

I sculled there, breathing. I studied the bamboo pattern of the curtains’ fabric, the layout of the kitchen cabinets, the design of blue-and-white tiles on the floor.

Yes. This was Grandmother’s house. I’d known it was somewhere in this sector—rows of stucco townhouses, teetering on stilts. But I hadn’t recognized it for sure.

It had been years.

Light and shadow flickered green in the water beneath a high, floating film of debris—leaves, grocery bags, plastic bottles, a sponge, a cork. I made out unfaded rectangles on the wall where the pictures had hung. The one of Grandfather and his guitar. The one of Daddy and Mama on their wedding day. The one of my sisters and me in a little boat.

Gone.

Everything was gone, even the windows and doorknobs and hinges . . . except the piano. Which looked perfect—surreal—in the rippling underwater light. But it was ruined, I knew, and the sight of it struck me somewhere deep—spoke of some tragedy I couldn’t imagine. Why didn’t someone move it before the flooding? Why had it been abandoned?

And Grandmother . . . Where was she now?

The school of herring circled back and gathered round me, tickling my earlobes and ankles and wrists.

The building groaned, way down deep in its bones.

Whoa. That didn’t sound good.

The stilts—starting to go. The door jambs had already gone twisty, and that cracked ceiling . . . And the drones would show up any minute now.

Better get moving.

I tucked my empty plundersack into my belt, switched on my headlamp, and swam through the dim hallway, leaving the herring behind.

Colder here. My lamp thrust a blade of light into the dark back bedroom ahead.

Grandmother’s ancient iron bed. Her wicker dresser, with a top drawer open. Another glassless window.

And, just inside the doorway—Kai.

I didn’t know him then. I didn’t know a thing about him. He was a halo of copper-bright hair. A twist of long, lean, wet-suited body. The dull glint of a scuba tank. A sudden burst of rising bubbles.

A Normal.

With a plundersack hanging from his belt.

So, a scavenger, like me.

Naomi, on lookout, must have missed him. Or maybe he’d been here for a while.

In one hand he held something flat and gray and round. He was staring at it, examining it.

Wait. Daddy’s dive watch?

Could it be?

I kicked hard and lunged for it. The guy turned his head. Behind his face mask, a startled look—unguarded, vulnerable. I tore the watch from his hand and twisted round to go, but he slammed into me. The watch slipped from between my fingers and floated down beneath the iron bed. I reached for it, but he was reaching, too; he shouldered me aside and snatched it up. When I tried to pry it from his hand, he turned his back to me, and the hard metal of his tank knocked painfully against my chest. I hooked one foot on the bed rail and tried to reach around him, groping for the watch, but the muscled mass of his body shut me out.

He had no right.

He thrust the watch into his plundersack. I grabbed for it, but he yanked it away from me, clutched it tight.

Rumbling. A crack. A harsh, grating shriek of metal. The walls shuddered; the dresser mirror spiderwebbed; the ceiling tore open and yawned wide above us. Clouds of waterborne grit poured in. The iron bed lurched, scooted a little way from the wall.

And I was going to leave—I was. Was going to flee the bedroom, stroke right up through the window. But the rumbling came again—a shift, a shudder, a screech. A swirl of dust; a sudden surge in the water. And when I looked back . . .

A dark feather of blood sprouted from the shoulder of the boy—the man, the boy-man who turned out to be Kai. He was flailing—seemed to be stuck—and his mouth opened wide.

His mouth . . .

And it came to me that his regulator, the thing Normals breathe with underwater, was nowhere in sight.

CHAPTER 2

KISS

He was trapped.

His tank, or the harness that held it, had somehow wedged itself in the scrolls of the iron headboard; he was straining to get loose.

And the regulator-thing . . . where was it?

Still attached to the hose, probably, but where? He was twisting and thrashing; the water was silting up . . .

Every nerve in my body was telling me, Get out of here, now! But I couldn’t. Not yet.

I finned toward him, and suddenly, he stilled. His blue eyes, staring at me from behind the mask, were wide, alarmed, like maybe he thought I was going to steal the watch from his plundersack, or maybe he was just scared of me cause that’s how some Normals are, freaked out by the Mer. Or maybe it was the stream of blood blossoming from his shoulder, or the bubbles, just a few of them, escaping from his mouth.

How long could he go without air? Two minutes? Three?

I held up my palms to say I meant no harm, and I wasn’t sure he would understand me, or believe me. And maybe I did intend him some harm, though just a little, just the harm of taking back the watch that was rightfully mine, or at least probably mine, more mine than his. Still, holding up my hands like that seemed to calm him. The panic ebbed back from his eyes, and he quirked the corners of his mouth in a game little smile, as if this running-out-of-air thing was just some private joke between the two of us.

Which got me.

It really did.

I moved closer, close enough to look behind him, see what was stuck.

It was a strap. No, both straps of the tank harness. Wedged tight.

No time to mess with them now. Get the regulator.

I found the place where the hose attached to the tank. I tugged on it, but it didn’t budge. I followed it down with my fingers, all the way to the stuck place, on the floor.

Oh, no.

It was the wheel. The little wheelie-thing at the bottom of the iron bed leg, the caster. It had rolled onto the regulator hose. Squishing it.

I took in a long breath, pulling in water through my mouth and pushing it out, feeling my gills open wide. Then I stroked back up to the bed.

He was flailing again. He’d dropped the plundersack and unfastened the tank harness. He was twisting one shoulder, trying to shrug out of the straps, but it wasn’t working.

Just then, a huge speckled trout darted in through the window, startling him. He let out an explosion of bubbles, all at once.

Was that it? Was he completely out of oxygen?

There was air up near the ceiling, above the waterline. He’d have to get out of the harness, somehow . . .

Even if I had a knife, which I didn’t, the harness straps looked too tough to cut.

I was going to have to air-breathe, fill my lungs. I was going to have to touch him. On the lips. I was going to have to press my mouth against his.

What would he do?

I knew that, to some Normals, we’re repulsive. They called us “Frankenfish”; they made rude jokes about fins and even ruder ones about tails.

But I kicked up to the surface. Sucked air into my lungs. Stroked down again, holding it.

I leaned in close to him. Those blue eyes of his. Freckles. Lots of freckles. I could see that he was near my age, maybe a couple of years older. Seventeen, maybe? Eighteen?

He was still, now. Looking at me.

We weren’t touching, not yet, but I could feel him there in the water—a vibration, a pulse. Keeping my hands straight down at my sides, I pressed my lips to his.

His lips moved a little, made a seal against mine. A little awkward, because of his clunky, high-tech mask, which thumped against my goggles.

I breathed into his mouth.

Then backed away.

He pulled off his mask and leaned in, touched his lips to mine.

Breathe out, Turtle, until your lungs are empty.

Now kick up to the surface.

Fill your lungs.

Stroke down again.

Seal your lips to his. Breathe into his mouth.

His lips were supple, now, and warm. He sucked in air as I pushed it out. I could feel his hunger, hunger for air. His mouth pushed harder against mine and then drew me back, back into him.

Breathe out.

Up to the surface, fill your lungs.

Down again.

Breathe into his mouth.

From the corners of my eyes, I saw one of his hands moving in the water. His fingers brushed against my arm, setting off a ripple of chills, and then strayed up to the side of my neck, to my gills. His touch was curious. Wondering. And tender, so tender.

Breathe out.

Up to the surface, fill your lungs.

Down again.

Breathe out.

And his lips began to move in a different way now, making a dance of it, a game. Making it a thing we were doing together: a duet. And a strange, melting shudder stirred inside my belly. I gasped, pulling back, and his hand dropped away, and he was gazing at me now, still and alert, and I couldn’t look away. It was like we knew each other in some way, we weren’t strangers from alien tribes anymore. Like there was some kind of bond between us.

I forgot to breathe.

A grating creak, a muted bang; the world shivered and tilted. The headboard shoved hard up against him; bubbles burst from his mouth. I heard the high whirr of a sea drone and turned to see it flash through the doorway.

Someone in the window—Naomi. I signed for her to help. And then she was in the room, and Hadley just after. The three of us tugged at Kai’s harness, and he wriggled out at last. He picked up his plundersack and made for the window, but at the last moment, turned back. He reached into the sack and pulled out the watch. He held it out to me, urging me to take it. I tore my eyes away from his and snatched the watch.

Then he was out the window, and gone.

CHAPTER 3

THE WATCH

I turned over the watch in my hands. It was heavy, an antique. Old even before it belonged to Daddy. Which it did. I knew now, for sure. I fingered the initials, engraved on the back. RWM: Rupert William Morgan. He hated Rupert, though. Never used it. Always went by Will.

“I want to keep it,” I said.

“You can’t.” Hadley, sitting cross-legged on the wooden planks, was frowning at me. “Constance would kill us if we let you. Anyway, it belongs to the Mer.”

Late-morning sunlight stretched across the platform, glinting in the collection of jewelry, coins, tableware, and odd tchotchkes spread out on the canvas tarp before us. A pair of wrens chittered in the rafters overhead. Naomi, Hadley, and I had stripped off our fins and goggles and laid out the morning’s scavenging at the Bell Tower, the only above-water part of an old stone church that had been on the far western shore of the island before the Gulf had claimed it years before.

You’d be surprised what got left behind when people had to pack up in a hurry. Today’s haul wasn’t huge, but the coins and a couple of the rings might be valuable.

And the watch.

“Just this once,” I said. “Constance doesn’t have to know. It’s . . . a special case.”

“Why? Cause that Normal gave it to you?”

“Don’t be dumb,” I said. Though the way I felt right now—a little out of breath, a little off balance . . . his lips, the way they had pressed into mine while I breathed into him . . . the touch of his fingers on my arm, my gills . . .

But no. That wasn’t it at all. I’d never defied Constance’s rules before—not the big ones—but . . . ” It’s my father’s watch.”

“What? That’s crazy! How would your—” Hadley began, but Naomi interrupted.

“Whoa. Turtle. That was your father’s house?”

When we’d looked at the sector map, before the dive, I’d recognized the street name of the newly flooded area. Lodged in my brain, a bit of data from a previous life.

“My grandmother’s,” I said. “His mother’s. I mean, it was a long time ago. She—”

“Wait a minute,” Hadley said. “You mean you planned it? You talked us into doing that street because of your grandmother’s house?”

I turned on her. “What’s with you today, Hadley? I just wanted to see it again.”

“Of course, you did,” Naomi said. “Who wouldn’t? Anyway, one street’s as good as another.”

Hadley shrugged. “Whatever.”

She got like this sometimes. Especially whenever my family came up. Or Normals of any kind.

A cool breeze ruffled my hair. Through an opening in the Bell Tower, I looked back toward the island, surrounded by concrete walls. Despite the billions spent to save it—dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees, pumps, floodgates—Spoonbill Island was losing the battle. A long time ago, they spent too many years in denial, then wasted more time arguing politics. The whole Texas coast was in trouble, but Spoonbill got the worst of it. At this point, it was a triage operation, where lowlying neighborhoods had to be flooded to save all the rest.

“It looks old,” Naomi said. “The watch.”

“It’s vintage. A classic.”

I ran my thumb across the surface of the watch. Seiko, the “Grand father Tuna” model. Titanium case, ceramic-coated shroud, tuna-can shape. Daddy’s parents gave it to him when he got his scuba diving certification, when he was maybe, what? Ten? Eleven?

“He loved this old thing,” I murmured. He wore it even though he could have afforded a new one with more cool, high-tech features. I remembered him showing it to me. Tracing the shape of it, saying Just like a tuna can, see?

I breathed in deep to calm the familiar ache in my chest, an ache that was part pain and part something else, something sweeter.

“So, basically,” Hadley said, “you want to steal from all of us, just because—”

“It’s her father’s,” Naomi said.

“So what? When’s the last time you heard from him?”

“Oh, please,” I said. None of us had heard from our families in years. And Daddy . . .

Hadley stretched, began loosening her hair from its thick, sun-streaked rope of a braid. “If he loves it so much, why did he leave it with your grandmother?”

I just looked at her. I didn’t have to say it: He could be dead. How would I know?

A gull cried overhead. I squinted up at it, feeling the salt crust crinkle on my skin.

He was an underwater salvager. Not just scavenging stuff from people’s flooded houses, like us. He went for the big shipwrecks—the bullion, the high-ticket antiquities. Highly skilled, super-dangerous work. Unlike us, he got permits to salvage. And, anyway, it wasn’t salvaging that got him in trouble.

It was me.

He could be dead. Like my mom. But I doubted it. People disappeared. Eventually, you just didn’t hear from them anymore. It was part of being Mer.

“Why don’t we call the watch a gift?” Naomi said. “From that Normal guy. He dug it out of his plundersack and gave it to Turtle. Technically, we didn’t scavenge it.”

I sent her a look that said thanks. My best friend, the peacemaker.

But Hadley snorted. “We saved his worthless ass. And you!” She stabbed a finger at me. “You were mouth-to-mouthing with him—I saw. Disgusting!”

It had felt a lot of things, but disgusting wasn’t one of them. “He was out of air,” I said. “You want me to leave him to die?” Against my will, the memory swept over me again, his urgent lips, the rising warmth in my belly. I hoped he had made it safely home, wherever home was for him. I hoped . . .

Would I ever see him again?

“Yeah, but you two were really—”

“I wonder where Adam is,” Naomi interrupted. “He’s usually not this late. Did you see him, Hadley?”

“No, I was kind of busy with those drones.”

“Busy how?” I asked.

“They were buzzing her,” Naomi said. “A couple of them. One of them actually ran into her, like three or four times. We had to fight them off.”

“Really?” We’d seen a lot of drones lately, but they hadn’t ever attacked us before. “Could you tell who was running them?”

“Nope. Unmarked.”

That was scary. And Adam . . . I hoped he was okay.

“Let’s pack it in,” Hadley said, taking the words out of my mouth. “Adam probably just went back to the Mermaid, but let’s make sure.” She snatched the watch from my fingers, shook it, held it up to an ear.

“Oh, c’mon, let her have it,” Naomi said.

“I think she’s disloyal, is all. All out for herself.”

“Sometimes we have to be out for ourselves.”

“I don’t. I’m out for the Mer. For all of us.” But grudgingly, Hadley held out the watch to me.

I took it. “Thanks.”

“You’ve probably still got their letters, too. The ones they sent when you were little.”

I felt the heat creep up my face. I shrugged.

“I don’t really get why you want to hang on to relics from the past,” Hadley said. “Those people forgot about you, and then you moved on. You have a new family now, and we’re way cooler than those stupid Normals you left behind.”

WHEN WE ROWED back to the Mermaid, at anchor in the bay, Adam wasn’t there. Constance sent his best friend, Cyrus, to look for him, and Cyrus returned with bad news. Adam had been caught—with a full plundersack. He was to be arraigned in the old courthouse the next morning.

CHAPTER 4

LETTERS

It’s a thick stack of papers, held together with a pair of old shoelaces. There were rubber bands, at first, but they rotted, and after that there was the green ribbon Hadley gave me, even though she disapproved. The ribbon fell apart a long time ago.

They’re all different shapes and sizes, mostly cards of one kind or another—postcards, notecards, greeting cards, photo cards. But there’s thinner paper, too, folded in different ways—copy paper, construction paper, lined paper, art paper. Some of them are starting to turn yellow, most have grubby fingerprints, and a few are smudged with food—peanut butter, strawberries, chocolate. Some got wet, and then dried with wrinkly spots. Most are handwritten, but a few came out of a printer.

I liked to curl up on my cabin floor on the Mermaid and read them.

The crepe myrtles are blooming.

The spoonbills are back; one lit down on our fence this morning.

I wish I could show you the wreck we found. We’ve really got our work cut out for us.

My fingers were stiff this morning and the Chopin got away from me.

Betsy had kittens: three calico, one black, and one orange.

Sometimes, I didn’t read, but just looked at them, one by one. Water lilies. Ballet dancers. A flock of roseate spoonbills. A shipwreck. A sea turtle. A dolphin.

Other times, I studied the shape of the handwriting. Daddy’s all-caps printing. Mama’s impatient scrawl. Grandmother’s old-fashioned, flowing script.

At night, in the dark, I passed them through my fingers. Pebbly-textured. Embossed. Smooth. Deckle-edged.

I knew this one was from Mama. That one, Daddy. Here’s Grandmother. Grace. Abby. Aunt Beatriz and Felicia.

Remember when we . . .

The sea turtles were back today, and I wish . . . Next time we see you, we’ll . . .

I love you.

I miss you so much.

I didn’t have to see them. I knew them by heart.

CHAPTER 5

DRAGNET

We were cutting through the crowds in the courthouse halls, Naomi and I, looking for Adam’s courtroom, when someone bumped me—hard. I didn’t quite have my land legs yet, and my sandal caught on a piece of broken flooring. I stumbled into Naomi, who staggered into a group of people who were waiting outside a courtroom. “Fish!” a woman hissed, and I heard the echoing whispers: Gill-neck. Freak. I willed my hands to stay at my sides, willed them not to float up and cover my gills.

I should have worn a scarf. But no, I thought—I shouldn’t. Scarves didn’t fool anybody—not in this weather—and I had nothing to be ashamed of anyway. If some Normals were disgusted by the sight of gills, too bad for them. They didn’t know what they were missing.

Naomi muttered an apology, and a couple of the men smiled at her, either out of genuine friendly feeling or wanting to flirt or trying to show they weren’t prejudiced against the Mer—sometimes it was hard to tell which. Normal guys were always smiling at Naomi. She was pretty and petite—kind of an elfin vibe. Usually, she smiled back. Not this time, though. We set off down the hall again. “I hate this place,” she said.

Me too. But Constance had excused us from K.P. duties so we could watch Adam’s arraignment and report back. Naomi and I hadn’t been caught scavenging—not yet—so we weren’t on anybody’s sonar.

Mobs of waiting people clogged the hallways outside the courtrooms. Mostly they were standing, because so many of the chairs were broken. The floor was a minefield of cracked vinyl flooring, and the bottoms of the drab green walls were dark and grungy from old floodwater, and the ceiling tiles, if you were dumb enough to look, had gone yellow, except where they were crusty with a black, toxic-looking mold.

Deferred maintenance, they called it. Because nobody wanted to put money into a place that wasn’t going to be around all that much longer. There’d been talk of demolishing the old courthouse and building a new one, but that hadn’t happened yet, and I’d heard there wasn’t enough money for it anyway.

“Room one hundred and four, right?” Naomi asked.

I nodded. “There it is.”

It was one of the smaller courtrooms. The door stood open; we walked inside.

The judge was a slim woman with a halo of thick white hair.

“Uh-oh,” Naomi said.

Yeah, no kidding. From Constance’s description, this must be Judge Walker—not a fan of the Mer. She’d sentenced Cyrus to a month in a crumbling cell with no access to the Gulf or even a saltwater pool and with only a cramped bathtub with tap water to sleep in. He wound up with all kinds of nasty digestive issues and a skin rash so bad, it was weeks before he could get into his diveskins again.

I searched the room and found Adam seated several rows in front of us. He sat perfectly still—that straight-as-a-board back of his, those quiet hands—with stretches of empty seats on either side. He looked, well, pathetically alone. But we had a funny kind of history, Adam and me, and I made a point of not cutting him much slack.

“What,” I muttered to Naomi, “no Girlfriend Number Six?”

She swatted me.

He was probably scared, though, because of what happened to Cyrus. I’d be scared, too. I moved forward, thinking to slip in beside him, keep him company—but Naomi took my arm. “Constance said not to,” she whispered.

“She’s always saying not to,” I whispered back. “What harm could it do?”

“I don’t know, but we don’t want to hurt his case.”

I sighed. We sat down on the hard, cracked-plastic chairs at the back of the room and settled in to wait. The judge would assign Adam a public defender today, and Constance would want to know who. We couldn’t afford a private lawyer every time one of us was caught scavenging. But if Walker assigned one of her anti-Mer flunkies (Constance knew who they were), Naomi or I would have to report back right away.

It was warm in the courtroom, and humid. The air conditioning must be on the blink. The ceiling fans hummed, stirring up an anemic breeze, but really, it was just more hot air moving around. Plus, it smelled bad in here. Sweaty. Musty. There were about ten other people in the room, engrossed in their gauntlet devices. I leaned back and shut my eyes while some lawyer droned on at the front of the room. “. . . my client . . . innocent . . .”

“. . . caught in a . . .”

“. . . wrong place at the wrong time . . .”

“Psst,” Naomi said. “Turtle.” She elbowed me in the ribs. “Did you hear that?”

I sat up. Opened my eyes. “Hear what?”

“There was a dragnet.”

Dragnet. “When . . . ?”

“That day. The day Adam was caught. A bunch of cops were cruising the flooded sectors, looking for scavengers. We got lucky.”

A dragnet operation.

The city had a contract with a big salvaging company. As soon as one of the sectors was slated for flooding, the people who lived there had a limited time to clear out their stuff. After that, the company had a couple of weeks before the flooding to salvage whatever was left, including windows, doors, doorknobs, hinges, drawer pulls, light fixtures, wood trim, paneling—like that—plus anything the residents left behind. The company also had exclusive salvage rights for a month after the flooding. Hence, the drones. The architectural swag was mainly what they cared about, but they wanted the rights to everything. They sold what they found for profit and paid the city a fee. So anybody else who took stuff from the flooded sectors . . . they could get sent to jail.

Until a year ago, though, the Mer usually got probation and a fine. The business with the cramped bathtubs and the tap water—that was all recent stuff. Before that, they mostly left us alone. Because we hadn’t asked to be modded, and our funding had shrunk to a trickle, and, clearly, we needed some help.

Also, we were devilishly hard to catch.

But . . . a dragnet. They must really be cracking down.

I was turning that over in my mind when I heard some kind of squall behind us. I looked round to see a clump of people near the door. Two redheaded women. A tall teenage guy in a jacket and jeans. A small redheaded child, a girl. Freckles all over the place. The little girl clung hard to the guy’s legs, and one of the women was trying to pry her off. The kid gave a bloodcurdling scream. A bailiff approached them, frowning; the woman detached the girl from the guy’s legs; the girl let out a shriek as she was carried from the room.

The guy straightened and twisted round, all the tall, lean length of him. That shock of red-gold hair. His face . . .

I knew him at once.

I turned quickly back toward the front of the room, suddenly aware of the beating of my heart, fast and hard.

Naomi turned to eye me curiously. She looked back at the guy. “Wait, is that . . . ?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shorter of the two women and the guy move to the far side of the courtroom and sit down together. The woman—late forties, maybe, the age my mother would have been—laid a hand on the guy’s shoulder, and my whole chest went soft and hurting, remembering . . .

The weight of Mama’s hand on my shoulder. Her perfume, Blue Clover. Her cheek brushing against my hair.

“Is that . . . ?” Naomi began again, but the bailiff, now at the front of the room, called Adam’s name, and I saw that the previous case had ended. Adam rose and made for the judge’s bench.

There was a rushing in my ears, and I couldn’t focus on what was happening with the judge. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the guy. He and his mother—she must be his mother—leaned their heads together and spoke softly. She squeezed his shoulder and took her hand away.

“Oh, good,” Naomi said.

I turned back to her.

“Look, it’s Henderson,” Naomi said.

Henderson. He was one of the sympathetic court-appointed attorneys Constance had mentioned.

“Oh, Henderson,” I said. “That’s good.”

Naomi turned and eyed me strangely.

“It is,” I said. Which was true. I mean, if Adam got one of the anti-Mer judges, his case could still go keel up, but this was a hopeful sign.

Henderson and the judge spoke back and forth a few times, and then Adam and Henderson returned to the front table. I stole a glance at the guy and his mother. They were both looking at a piece of paper she held. He pointed at something there, seemed to ask her a question.

Naomi stood. “Well, that’s that.”

I saw that Henderson was packing his briefcase, saying something to Adam.

“So, they’re set for trial?”

“Are you kidding me? You weren’t listening?”

Umm . . . “I couldn’t hear.”

Naomi rolled her eyes and jerked her head toward the guy, the redheaded guy, the guy of the underwater kiss. “Is that who I think it is?”

I shrugged.

“He was caught in the dragnet, too?”

“How would I know?”

She shook her head. “What happened down there with you two? What happened to you?”

A woman turned round in front of us and put her finger to her lips. “Shh!”

“Adam pleaded guilty. His sentencing hearing’s in two weeks,” Naomi whispered. “Let’s go.”

And I would have gone with her—I would—if the bailiff hadn’t called out another name right then, and if the guy and his probably-mother weren’t making their way to the front of the courtroom. I motioned Naomi to go on without me.

“Turtle, you . . .” She huffed out a frustrated breath, turned her back to me, and followed Adam and Henderson from the room.

But I wasn’t watching her. I was glued to the proceedings at the bench.

And this time, I heard every word.

KAI. HIS NAME was Kai. He had a nice voice—soft, and kind of shy-seeming. His mother—she was his mother—kept interrupting the judge to tell her more. How they’d lost their home in one of the earlier planned floodings, and now they were renting. How the family needed Kai to support them. How he’d never been in trouble before, except for the time when . . . I couldn’t quite hear what she said then, but Kai laughed, and his whole face flooded with it, and I forgot to breathe for a moment, and then I had to suck in a sharp little gasp of air.

The judge smiled, but then cut off the mother’s story—not unkindly—and assigned Kai a lawyer, one of the ones Constance said was competent, but not all that sympathetic to the Mer. The lawyer went back and forth with the judge, and in the end, Kai pleaded guilty, too. They set a date for his sentencing hearing.

April 23. Ten A.M.

I burned the date and time into my memory and ducked out the door.

CHAPTER 6

ANOTHER STUPID QUESTION

“Where were you?” Adam asked that night at supper.

I looked at him across the table, surprised. There was a funny tone in his voice, a tone I didn’t often hear from him.

I ladled myself some stew and passed the bowl to Naomi. “Where was I when?”

Adam eyed me for a moment—that deadpan way he has, where his face isn’t giving anything away, except for a look that’s halfway surprised, halfway questioning, halfway laughing. Well, that’s three halves, but trust me, they’re all there.

Adam picked up his knife and slowly buttered a slice of bread. He dipped it in his stew and took a bite.

Just like Adam not to dignify a stupid question, to let it hang out in the air. We both knew when he meant. When was after Adam’s court date was set. When was after Adam and Naomi left the courtroom and I stayed to see how things fell out with Kai.

“Do you know that guy?” Adam asked.

I was going to say What guy?—another stupid question—but Hadley beat me to it.

“What guy?” she said.

I stabbed a shrimp with my fork and popped it into my mouth. I chewed. Around us, all down the long supper table, rose the clatter of flatware and crockery, the din of the Starfish pod—all twenty-four of us, a quarter of the Mer—eating and talking. Maya was clowning around, acting out something that had happened to her that morning, and people were literally hooting with laughter.

How did Adam know about “that guy”? I wondered. Maybe he hadn’t left before Kai’s case was called. Adam wasn’t on my sonar just then.

“Listen, Adam,” I said. “I—”

“What guy?” Hadley said again. She turned to Naomi. “Do you know who they’re talking about?”

“No idea,” Naomi said.

Down the table, a new burst of laughter and loud voices. It was Adam’s latest, Catarina—Girlfriend #6—with Rory and his posse.

“Do you, like, know his family? Those people who were with him?” Adam asked. “Those other women? The little girl?”

Hadley turned to me. “Who is he talking about?”

“I was just—” I began.

Hadley turned back to Naomi. “Did you see this guy?”

Naomi shrugged. She speared a barnacle and started nibbling.

“What?” Hadley said. She looked at me, and back to Naomi, and back again to me.

“What do you mean, what?” I asked. Stupid question #3.

“The two of you. Something happened you’re not telling. What was it?”

“Nothing.” Naomi and I said it together. A duet.

Hadley turned to Adam. “You too,” she said. “What guy are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled. Definitely sorry he’d brought the whole thing up.

Something came into Hadley’s eyes. “No. Wait a minute,” she said. A knot of dread tightened in the pit of my stomach.

“He wasn’t the one from before, was he? The one Turtle was snogging? Did he get caught, too?”

“We weren’t snogging. He couldn’t breathe!”

“It was him?” Hadley said. “The same guy?”

Naomi sighed. “There was a dragnet, or whatever. A roundup of scavengers. He was arrested in the same bunch as Adam.”

Hadley sat back in her seat. “Oh, ho!” she said. “So what is he, Turtle? One of those guys who likes fish?”

“He likes to breathe,” I said, feeling the blush creeping up my cheeks, trying to nip this thing in the bud. But it was too late now; a little way down the table, somebody picked up on the guys-who-like-fish thing and got it going. And even though it had nothing to do with me at this point—nobody beyond the four of us had heard the rest of it—the stories and jokes kept on coming. Stories about Normal guys who came on to Mer girls. The thing last year when a Normal who wished he had gills tried to join the Pelican Pod. A dolphin, a mackerel, and a Mer go into a bar. Like that. The stuff we go on about to take the edge off of being different.

Girlfriend #6 was leaning in close to Rory, clutching his arm. Uh-oh.

My gaze flicked to Adam. Head down. Spooning up stew as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.

Was he upset about Girlfriend #6? Or was it the trial? Thinking about Cyrus and the bathtub? Sometimes it was hard to remember that Adam could be knocked off balance like the rest of us.

It couldn’t be the thing with Kai and me, could it?

“Adam?” I said.

He scraped back his chair, picked up his bowl, and left without a word.

I turned to Naomi, puzzled. She shook her head, picked up her bowl, stood up.

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.

She gave me a look that told me I’d asked another stupid question, and then followed him out of the room.

CHAPTER 7

FATHER GOOSE

We used to call him Father Goose—the three of us, Naomi, Hadley, and me. A long time ago, when we were seven.

The thing is, there was this goose that followed Adam around. Thought he was her father, or mother, whatever. Somebody had brought the goose egg on board—I can’t remember who or why. And Adam, being Adam, had taken it on himself to incubate the egg, keep it warm and safe. And when the goose hatched out, guess who was the first thing she saw?

Bang! Imprinted.

So for a while, everywhere Adam went, there went the baby goose—the gosling—stumbling along behind. Peeping. Saying, in goose talk: Daddy! Wait up!

Back then, when I first came to the Mermaid, I was kind of a mess. For one thing, I kept running away. Like, twice a week I’d sneak out to the swim platform, jump into the water, and head for Palacios. Sometimes I swam for miles before being caught and brought back to the Mermaid. For another thing, I didn’t sleep all that well at first. I mean, I mostly conked out pretty fast—I was wiped by the end of the day. But then something would wake me—a dream, maybe, or a sound, or . . . something.

And so I would float there for a while. In the sleeping pool, with the others. Listening to the water slap at the sides of the pool, to the creak of the windmill, to the clink of rigging against the masts. Listening to the wind, maybe, or to the sounds of the other Mer kids rising to the surface and sinking down again.

Missing Mama and Daddy and my sisters so bad, it was like one of my arms or legs or kidneys had disappeared, and I didn’t know why it had happened or where it had gone.

And then, sometimes, I heard a quiet voice, soft footsteps, and a high, hoarse, gosling peep.

We weren’t supposed to leave the sleeping pool at night, except to go to the privy on the pool deck. Constance had drilled it into us. But I just felt so alone.

That first time, I pulled myself out of the pool and found them walking nearby. Adam in a T-shirt and trunks, carrying a flashlight and a metal bowl—and the baby goose waddling along behind. Adam caught sight of me and put a finger to his lips, but he didn’t tell me not to follow.

So, I did.

The Mermaid was an old cruise ship, decommissioned years ago. One of the smallest kinds of cruise ships that they made. She had electric engines but could sail under wind power alone in some conditions. Four masts. Four decks. A dining hall, a galley, a lounge, two pools, and upward of a hundred cabins. Not like those huge floating cities—really, not much more than a yacht.

Still, when I was new aboard, she seemed enormous and crazy confusing.

It felt like we walked for miles that first night—Adam and the goose and me. Past the vegetable garden, the windmill, the toolshed. Past the laundry room, the clotheslines, the cisterns. Downstairs, past the cabins where the three other pods lived—the Whales, the Pelicans, the Sharks. At last, we wound up in the galley, where Adam turned on the flashlight, opened a cupboard, and took out a bag of something, some kind of baby goose food, maybe? When he poured it into the bowl, the gosling beelined for it. She bent down her long, butter-colored neck to bite the little pellets, then stretched her whole body up, her beak opening and closing, as if she were chewing. She flapped her tiny wings—more like decorations than actual limbs.

When she was finished, Adam picked her up and held her. She snuggled into him, quiet at last. Adam stroked her neck and her naked, gawky feet.

“Want to hold her?” Adam asked.

I nodded.

“Okay, then. Better sit down.”

I sat cross-legged on the galley floor. Adam leaned down and handed me the gosling.

Her feathers whispered across my fingertips. Soft, so soft. She let out a little peep, and then began pecking at the ribbons on my bathing suit top. I could feel her breathing in my arms.

So sweet!

After that, whenever I woke up late at night, I listened for Adam and the goose. Sometimes, he let me help. Carrying the flashlight, or the bowl. Holding the gosling while he poured out her food. Picking up feathers. Cleaning up poop.

“Thanks, kiddo,” he would say. And tousle my hair, like I was his kid sister. Even though I was only eight and a half months younger.

All that spring and summer, the gosling grew. It was amazing how fast she grew.

In a while, she was full-on honking, not just peeping anymore. She woke the overnight volunteers. She got tall—her head reached past my waist—and strong. I couldn’t hold her on my lap anymore. Also, she was kind of scary. Sometimes she hissed at me. She attacked a couple of kids and made them bleed. And she pooped everywhere. For Adam, it must have been a full-time job.

But still he loved that goose. You could tell.

ONE NIGHT, I couldn’t find him. I looked in the galley. I walked all up and down the stairs. I crept past his cabin. Finally, by the light of a bright half-moon, I saw a heap of T-shirt and arms and legs huddled on a lounge chair near the old shuffleboard court.

The goose was nowhere to be seen.

“Adam?” I said.

No answer.

“Where’s the goosey?” I asked.

No answer.

“Adam . . .”

I touched his shoulder. He leaped up and glared at me. I could see that his eyes were red; I could see the tears.

“Leave me alone! Just go!”

He ran away, far down the deck, until I couldn’t see him anymore.

The wind ruffled in my ears. A wave splashed against the hull. I could feel the loneliness back again, heavy on my heart.

The next night, there was goose for dinner.

Adam stayed in his cabin.

I didn’t eat.

And after that, when I crept out in the middle of the night, I was alone.

CHAPTER 8

GARDEN-VARIETY LIE

Adam’s sentencing happened April 20, two weeks after his arraignment. Turned out, he got Judge Jackson, who liked us, or at least never came down on us very hard. She gave him probation, six months. Which, yeah, was tough. Six months is a really long time. But he escaped the whole cramped-bathtub-and-tap-water scenario—a huge relief.

We celebrated on the Mermaid that night. Adam was wilder than I’d ever seen him, which clued me in on how worried he must have been. He laughed more than he usually laughed and talked louder than he usually talked and danced dorkier than he usually danced. We blasted Octopus Rag, and he danced with every girl in sight—Hadley and Naomi, Maya and Brooke, plus Girlfriends #2, #3, #4, and #5. He danced with me. He held on to me just a few seconds past when the song had ended, and he was looking into my face in a funny way. “Turtle,” he said, and there was a moment then, an unprecedented moment, when I felt that things could tilt in another direction—a crazy, impossible direction. All of a sudden, I felt dizzy.

But then, “Dolphins!” someone called, and there they were, the local pod we all knew well, breaching and whistling beside the Mermaid, looking to play. Adam ran to the railing with the others and dived overboard. I followed. We knifed through the cool depths, corkscrewed, somersaulted, glided, breached. Dolphins torpedoed past all around us. One of them nudged me, coming up from beneath. I took hold of her dorsal fin, and we skimmed underwater, then rose up through a cloud of spray into the air, into the light shed by the Mermaid. I let go of her fin; she sped away. And here came another, regarding me with curious, laughing eyes. Somebody had draped a bandana over his pectoral fin; I snatched it and swam away. He followed me, nosing at the bandana, capturing it. I let go and dove deep. They were all around me now, dolphins and Mer, more felt than seen in the dark. Bodies skimming past, supple and strong, trailing a froth of bubbles and rocking me in their wakes.

It was its own kind of joy. You couldn’t describe it to a Normal. You could get drunk from it.

At last, the dolphins moved past, off to fish in deeper waters. Most of the Mer had gone, too. I climbed back aboard, up to the party deck, where it was quiet now, and dark . . . only to find Adam slow dancing with Maria Ramos. Suctioned together. Cheek-to-cheek.

Girlfriend #7, apparently.

SO, ONE SENTENCING down. But there was another.

I’d been trying to forget when Kai’s was going to happen. Because if I couldn’t remember the date, I couldn’t go, right? The whole thing would just . . . drift by.

But it was, like, anchored in there for good: April 23, 10:00 A.M. Three days after Adam’s.

The other thing I was trying to forget was the kiss, the Kai-and-me kiss, which really was a kiss, though it had started out as something else.

Just forget it, I told myself. Forget him. He was impossible. From another world.

And I was doing okay with that. Some of the time. But other times, the memory of the kiss flooded through me—lighting up all the circuitry in my skin, my fingertips, my belly. If I let myself go, I could just slide right down into it. I could drown.

Our team was scheduled to scavenge on the morning of his sentencing. So, I really couldn’t go to Kai’s trial, could I?

No. Of course not. With the newly aggressive drones. With the whole dragnet possibility.

That would be totally irresponsible. No point in even thinking about it.

Unless . . .

People sprained things. They caught colds. Their allergies kicked in. Maybe . . .

I told myself I only wanted to make sure Kai was okay. He could actually go to jail. I needed to know what happened.

Two days later, I found Constance talking to one of the vegetable gardeners, a guy from the Whale pod. “Constance?” I said. “A minute?”

She held up a finger, asking me to wait.

I did. Of course.

She stooped over the raised bed, took a handful of dirt in her hand. Ropy muscles rippled in her thin shoulders and arms. Her hair—threaded with gray—hung down her back in a heavy braid. These past couple of years, she’d been the only old person living on the Mermaid. Well, old-ish. As in not a teenager. And also, the only non-Mer.

They went on about plant stuff—when to fertilize, when to aerate, how to drain the soil. All like that. When they finished, Constance stood, wincing at a soft pop in her knee. She looked straight at me in that friendly but no-bullshit way she has. She smiled, and I noticed the wrinkles fanning out from the edges of her eyes. “What is it, Turtle?” she asked.

And I lied.

I told her my shoulder was giving me fits, and I wanted to give it a rest.

I don’t think I’d ever lied to Constance before. But it was the kind of lie everybody tells at one time or another. Don’t they? Just a garden-variety lie.

“Can you lift your arm above your head?” she asked.

Well, yes, I could. And, I did. But slowly, and I made a face to indicate that it hurt.

“Hmm,” she said. “Frankly, it doesn’t look all that bad, Turtle. But I’ll try to find a substitute. I’ll let you know.”

That night, she sent Olivia, her number-one gofer, to tell me no one was available to sub. Especially with Adam forbidden to scavenge while on probation.

So I couldn’t go.

Because if I did, I’d be leaving Naomi and Hadley to scavenge alone. Three people were usually safe enough, because you could spare one for a lookout. But a team of two was risky. I’d be leaving my friends exposed.

I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t.

Not to mention the fact that Constance would kill me.

But in the end, something came over me, and the pull was too strong. I kept seeing Kai’s game little smile, and reliving the kiss . . . At the last moment, when it was too late to come up with another workaround, I tied up the long mass of my hair, tucked it into a floppy hat, wrapped a scarf around my neck, snagged one of the inflatable shore boats, and just went.

CHAPTER 9

FUNNY SHOES

I heard them before I saw them—the squeals of children, the thump and scrape of shoes on the cracked and broken flooring. When I turned the corner, there they were, a whole clan of them—mostly redheaded, except for a few who had gone silver, and freckles galore.

These people were all so pale. They must go through boatloads of sunscreen.

I stopped some distance away and sat on a stained and lopsided chair in the hallway. Ducking my head. Pulling my floppy hat down over my face. Not that he would recognize me, or even remember me. But still.

He was sitting on the floor, the filthy floor, with a horde of children climbing all over him. At one point he dumped them all, to squeals of outrage and delight, and started giving them rides on his back. His mother was there—I recognized her from before—and maybe a couple of aunts, and two older people who might be a grandmother and a grandfather.

And it struck some kind of chord in me, seeing them together, the different generations. Because the Mer were all fifteen. Well, a few of us had turned sixteen—there was a nine-month gap between oldest and youngest—but we were all, like, potty-trained but years from our midlife crises, or even having babies. If we could have babies. The jury was still out on that one.

An old memory swept through me: people crowded around a holiday table, surrounding me, talking, talking, talking. Dinnertime smells—sautéed onions, yeasty bread, garlicky shellfish. The clink of silverware on china. The glow of the chandelier overhead. The bamboo-patterned curtains, the family pictures on the wall. Someone sang a bit of an old song, and then a surge of friendly laughter engulfed us. Mama and Daddy. Grace and Abby. Grandmother. Aunt Beatriz and Felicia.

What struck me now was how safe I had felt there. The feeling that I belonged.

And I knew it couldn’t have been perfect, that there must have been feuds and bickering and whatnot. Just like with the Mer. I knew that some of them must have been jealous, and some petty, and some self-involved. Though I couldn’t really remember any of that. Except my sister Abby, who was always bossing me around.

And they rejected me. Or, at least, abandoned me. Or . . . something. They all stopped writing. Even before Mama died.

Constance says it wasn’t rejection; it was for our own good. Our parents opened the door for us to evolve beyond them. Constance says we’re better off without them now. Self-reliant. Free to be ourselves. All the Mer are.

Still, they tugged at me hard, now—all those people. Just when I thought I’d put them all behind me.

“Hey!”

I looked up. A little girl with super-curly red hair was standing right in front of me, staring. Maybe three or four years old. Was she the one who’d clung to Kai’s legs before? Quickly, I glanced back at the other kids, but Kai was still clowning around with them, and the adults were all watching. Nobody seemed to have noticed this escapee from their little band.

“That’s a funny hat,” the girl said.

Er, hard to know what to say to that. “I, uh . . .” I shrugged. Best not to engage. They’d notice her soon—they’d notice me—and then . . .

“Those are funny shoes,” she said.

I liked my shoes. They were the all-toes kind, and they gave me a better sense of the ground under my feet. They weren’t really considered cool, even among my podmates, but that’s partly why I liked them.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“What’s yours?”

“Delia. What’s yours?”

I hesitated, then, “Turtle,” I said.

“That’s a funny name!”

Of course.

To my alarm, Delia shot back toward Kai’s family, shrieking, “Turtle! Turtle! Turtle! That’s a funny name!”

And now they were all looking at me. I thought I should maybe wave—try for a that’s-okay-she’s-so-cute kind of wave—but I really, really didn’t want to call any more attention to myself, so I just sort of nodded and ducked my head so the hat blocked them from sight. Which was stupid. ’Cause it’s not like they couldn’t see me.

“Kai!”

I looked up to see two men standing at the courtroom door. One was the bailiff; the other I remembered from before—Kai’s lawyer. “Come on, Kai,” the lawyer said.

Phew. Good timing.

Kai untangled himself from the mob. He dusted off his hands. His mother walked with him to the door. A middle-aged woman—an aunt?—shepherded the kids together in the hallway.

I headed toward the courtroom, intending to squidge in, unnoticed, a few paces behind Kai and his mother, but Delia called out, “Bye bye, Turtle!”

Kai turned around. Our eyes snagged. A jolt shot through me, electric, sizzling in my fingers and toes. Kai blinked, and then it looked like his glance flicked down to the scarf at my neck.

He knew.

“Let’s go, Kai,” his mother said. They moved into the courtroom.

I hesitated, thinking, I’ll just go back home right now, but the bailiff said, “Come along, miss, we don’t have all day.” He shooed me impatiently inside and shut the courtroom door behind.

CHAPTER 10

THE ONE WHO GAVE ME AIR

The courtroom was nearly empty. I took a seat near the back, alone. I felt restless, all kinds of fizzy and jangly. At the front table, Kai sat between his lawyer and his mother, the three of them talking together, their backs to me. Maybe they’d forgotten all about me. I could hope.

I twisted round to look at the door. No one there. Maybe I should leave now. I could do it. No one would notice.

What was I doing here, anyway? Why did I care?

Just breathe, I told myself.

I drew in air. Released it. Drew it in again.

The judge sat at the head of the room—a different one from before, a judge I didn’t recognize. Youngish—for a judge. The sign said Amelia Hernandez. She was reading, scrolling down a tablet screen, a pair of glasses perched near the end of her nose. The ceiling fans droned, stirring warm air. The air conditioning—still broken.

Judge Hernandez asked the bailiff a question; they conferred in soft voices.

Kai’s mother turned around and swept the courtroom with her gaze, resting for a moment on each one of us in the room behind her—three men, two women, all intent on their gauntlets—and me. When she came to me, she nudged Kai, and he turned around, too.

I slumped in my chair, pulling the hat brim farther down my face. I could feel moisture beading up on my forehead. What an idiot. I never should have come.

The judge cleared her throat, called Kai’s name. He got up and walked to the bench. “You pleaded guilty to scavenging in newly flooded properties,” she said. “Is that right?”

Kai said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Hmm, let’s see.” Judge Hernandez studied her tablet. “In your plundersack, the police found a number of items: a glass paperweight, a crystal sugar bowl . . .”

I leaned forward, listening.

“. . . a silver trivet, a gold lighter, a garnet brooch . . .”

Had all those things been Grandmother’s? I wasn’t sure.

“. . . three silver spoons, and change worth twenty-one dollars and seventy-eight cents.” The judge looked up. “Is that it? Was there anything else?”

The watch.

Would he tell about the watch?

Would he tell about me?

Kai hesitated—too long. The judge frowned, maybe sensing there was something he didn’t want to tell her. Kai’s mother flicked a glance behind her. In my direction?

Oh, shoot. The judge would find out about me and the watch. The police would come searching, and they would discover it in my cabin, and then I’d wind up in court for scavenging. Cue the cramped-bathtub-and-tap-water scenario. And everybody would hate me already for skipping out on my teammates and leaving them exposed, and Constance would be furious about my keeping the watch, and then . . . Just being here was dangerous. I so shouldn’t have come. I was just about to get up and flee the scene, when Kai said, “No, that’s all, Your Honor.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I let out my breath. A trickle of sweat dripped down the side of my face; I brushed it off. Above me, the ceiling fans droned.

“What were you planning to do with these items?” Judge Hernandez asked.

“I . . . I needed the money, Your Honor, because—”

“How much did you expect to get for them, all together?”

“I don’t know, Your Honor. It was my first time.”

For some reason, that surprised me. He’d come after me fast and hard when I took the watch—slamming into me, whacking me with his tank. No hesitation at all.

“Indeed.” Judge Hernandez looked at him a moment. “Aside from the legal issues, do you have any idea how dangerous that was? All alone? In a house on the verge of collapse?”

“I do now,” he said, “Your Honor.”

The judge sighed. “If you don’t mind my saying, you’re not much of a thief, young man.”

“Guilty as charged, Your Honor.” And he gave her that smile. That game-face, private-joke smile I remembered from before, when the air was bleeding from his hose.

The corners of the judge’s mouth flicked up—just for a second—before she turned back to the tablet on her desk.

“I see that, after pleading guilty, you provided the police with a list of the domiciles from which you took the items.”

Oh, so they weren’t all Grandmother’s things.

Kai said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Which mitigates well for you.” The judge lifted her eyebrows, gave him a firm look. But was there a hint of a smile underneath? She turned to Kai’s mother, completely serious again. “Mrs. Brannigan, I understand that you would like to make a statement.”

Kai sat down; I let out a long, slow breath. He hadn’t told. But still. Had he talked to his mother about me? Would she tell?

Now she rose and went to stand before the judge. I recognized her outfit—the same clothes she’d had on before—green blazer, brown skirt, sensible shoes. The copper in her hair was dulled, streaked with filaments of gray. She told how Kai had begun working on a charter fishing boat on weekends to help out when their house was slated for inundation. Then his father had an accident at work—mangled his right arm and hand so badly, he couldn’t fish anymore. Kai had quit school entirely to work fulltime. He was studying at home for the GED test so he could get a diploma, but he’d sacrificed his high school sports and friends and classes. He watched the little ones when she had to work evenings. He helped out with the cooking and cleaning.

To his mom, clearly, he was a prince.

But they were poor. Flood-poor and missing-a-breadwinner poor. Unlike my family—we hadn’t been rich, exactly, but had enough to get by—they were struggling. But still, in his world, he was royalty.

When she finished, Kai’s lawyer said something I couldn’t quite hear over the drone of the fan, and then Judge Hernandez called Kai to the bench again. He apologized for scavenging. He said he’d thought it was a victimless crime, but now he realized that the fee the scavenging company paid to the city went toward the good of all, so he’d unwittingly stolen from his fellow citizens.

And that was their line, the Normals. Of course, he would think that, or at least say it to the judge. But for us . . . well, scavenging kept us going.

The judge nodded. “The court appreciates your remorse and the improvement in your understanding. What I’m not quite hearing is that you don’t get to choose which laws to obey. The law is the law, and you violate it at your peril.”

She stopped and scanned the courtroom. Was it my imagination, or did her gaze linger on me? I slumped farther down.

Judge Hernandez went on. “Nevertheless, this is your first offense, so I’ll be lenient. Six months of probation. If you get into any trouble whatsoever during that time, young man, your family will be deprived of your help and you will be detained. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

And it was done.

I’D INTENDED TO duck out quickly, but just as I reached the aisle to the door, a shoal of Normals surged into the room, blocking my way. I sat down in the nearest chair. Tugged on the brim of my hat. There was a shuffling in the aisle, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Kai’s lawyer edge past me, and then his mother. Kai was next—I knew without looking. I stared hard at my knees, then heard something ring on the floor. A manganese dollar. I looked up, startled, to see Kai bending beside me to retrieve the coin. He turned, looked straight into my face.

“Did you drop this,” he said, “Turtle?”

It sounded so tender, my name, the way he said it. Turtle. Not funny at all. I shook my head in answer, gazing at him, at those blue, blue eyes. So close, he was. Like before, when . . .

We kissed, I wanted to say. Do you remember? Did you feel it, too—what I felt?

“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said. “The one who gave me air.”

My heart beat in my throat. Breathe in, I reminded myself. Breathe out.

I nodded.

“And the watch was yours? Or belonged to somebody you knew?”

I found my voice at last. “It was my father’s.”

Kai looked surprised for a moment. Then he glanced back at the people coming behind him in the aisle.

“Meet me a week from tonight, midnight, at the Yacht Basin, Pier Nine,” he said. “I have something I think is yours.”

He straightened, and in a moment was gone from the room.

I sat there on the hard plastic chair as the next hearing began. Not listening, or even really thinking—just trying to weather the turbulence of my beating heart and my crazy, racing brain. All kinds of stuff had kicked up in the past half hour, and now it came at me like a giant breaker wave, knocking me off-kilter, throwing grit and seaweed and bits of broken shells into my face: The loneliness when I watched Kai with his family. His mother checking me out. The scare with the watch. And then Kai himself, so close. Recognizing me.

Turtle . . .

The one who gave me air.

I have something I think is yours.

What could it be?

I waited until my heartbeat calmed and the dizzy whirl of my thoughts settled a little. Until Kai and his family had had plenty of time to gather themselves up and leave the building.

At last, I stood and, careful not to disturb the hearing, slipped out the back door. I looked up and down the hall, but they were nowhere to be seen.

I sighed with relief . . . or was it disappointment?

Pier 9.

A week from tonight: Next Friday, at midnight.

Some back part of my brain told me it would be foolish to show up there at night, alone. Told me I didn’t really know Kai at all. How did I know I could trust him?

Though it was true that he’d protected me. Hadn’t told about the watch.

But there was Constance, too. I’d ditched scavenging to see Kai; she was probably fuming right now. And Naomi and Hadley . . . I mean, we were out there all the time and hardly ever had trouble. Of course they were fine—they had to be, right? But I’d really been a jerk to bail on them like that. And I was planning to sneak off the Mermaid again, in a week?

That was crazy. Totally unmoored.

But the way he’d said Turtle was still echoing in my ears, and . . .

No. You can’t. Just forget it.

CHAPTER 11

HOW I GOT MY NAME

I have it in my mind that we were swimming in a deserted bay. We were all there in the water—Daddy and Mama, Grace and Abby and me. I was . . . four years old? Maybe five? Old enough, anyway, that they let me play underwater beneath them.

I remember scooting through schools of darting, silver fish. They clustered round me, tickling my earlobes, my ankles, my toes. Above, shafts of sunlight cut through dark columns of waving kelp. I saw my family swimming at the surface, where the sea glowed brilliant green. But the rippling play of light and shadow all around made them waver and stretch, as if they weren’t entirely real.

I have it in my mind that the turtles appeared out of nowhere, one by one. I counted them, up to ten, I think, but they kept coming, skimming in close beside me and then sailing on—a welcoming party. They pumped their front flippers like wings, and trailed their back ones behind, like a flock of heavy birds, cruising through seawater instead of sky, inviting me to come along.

I followed.

Mama told me later that the turtles surrounded me so thickly, she and Daddy could barely see me anymore. Scared, they dived down to rescue me. Mama swam through the turtles, caught up to me, clasped me in her arms. Daddy plunged and kicked, shooing the turtles away.

But I didn’t need saving. Mama and Daddy didn’t understand. Was that the first time I ever felt bad for them, because they didn’t belong underwater, like the turtles and me?

The turtles cruised off in different directions. But the biggest one, before she left, came right up to my face and regarded me for a long, still moment with eyes that were ancient and kindly and sad.

Before that day, everyone called me Alice. But ever after, I’ve been Turtle.

CHAPTER 12

ALL ABOUT YOURSELF

Maya was hosing down the deck near the loading bay. She waved to me as I approached and hoisted me up in the inflatable. “Constance wants to see you,” she said.

Oh, boy. Of course she did. But Naomi and Hadley . . .

“Is everybody okay?” I asked.

“There was a scuffle with some drones,” Maya said.

Oh, no!

“But they all made it safely home.”

I let out a breath. I’d had a long time to think on my way back. About those aggressive drones. About the dragnet.

About leaving my friends in the lurch.

“How did Constance look?”

Maya shrugged, made a kind of Isn’t it obvious? face, which told me everything I needed to know.

“Just out of curiosity, where—” Maya began.

“Sorry, it’s, uh, personal.”

“’Kay, fair enough. But I’d avoid Hadley, if I were you. Just till she cools down.”

“Um, yeah, I’ll do that.”

Maya gave me a funny look. “Was it worth it?” she asked. And then she quirked an eyebrow. Like we shared a secret.

Something flashed into my mind, how one time, late at night, I’d seen Maya and Jamal sitting near the cabana together, holding hands, watching the moonrise. She leaned in close, lay her tight pixie curls against his dreadlocks. He turned and kissed her.

Were they . . . ?

Did they . . . ?

I smiled back at her, ruefully. “I’ll let you know.”

BUT THE MOMENT I got upstairs, Hadley showed up. Like she’d been cruising around, trawling for me.

“Where were you?” she demanded.

I tried to dodge her, but she moved to block my way. “Answer me, Turtle. Where were you?”

Yikes. Shark attack! I did feel bad, though, and I’d intended to apologize, but now my back was up. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh!” Hadley stepped back to appeal to Cyrus and Brooke, who were swabbing the deck nearby. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. She leaves Naomi and me without a third to stand watch, with the crazy aggressive drones. We had to fight them off again. And now she doesn’t want to talk about it!”

Brooke and Cyrus looked at us for a moment, and then silently went back to swabbing.

Hadley leaned in to me, got into my face. “What were you doing that was so much more important than looking out for your podmates? Were you with that guy? That Normal?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said through gritted teeth. Barely holding it together. The morning had left me rudderless and jittery, up to here with a churning vibe that was part guilt, part desire, part excitement, part fear, part memory, part sadness. I wanted to scream at her; I wanted to run away.

“Oh, well that’s just nice. You shouldn’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. You shouldn’t have to do anything you just bloody well don’t feel like doing. You can break your promises, just like that, without a second thought. If your podmates get caught scavenging, you can just blow it off, because it doesn’t matter to you, Turtle, does it?”

I tried to leave, but she reached out and grabbed my arm. “Does it?”

“Let go,” I said.

“We were waiting for you.” She shoved my shoulder, hard. “We waited for an hour. Naomi was so sure you’d come, that you wouldn’t let us down. But you—” She shoved again.

“Cut it out, Hadley,” Cyrus said.

“But you did let us down, didn’t you, Turtle?”

I turned toward Cyrus and Brooke, looking for support, but they averted their eyes. Not a lot of sympathy there. Couldn’t blame them, though. I knew I’d screwed up, and, worse, I did it to be with a Normal, a Normal guy. And when that got out . . .

“You’re just all about yourself, Turtle, aren’t you?” Hadley spun on her heel. “Constance’s really gonna let you have it,” she called over her shoulder.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered.

NO DOUBT ABOUT it: Constance was going to call down the consequences, as she puts it. I’d never been on her bad side before, but I’d seen the crappy chores she doled out to people who were. Barnacle scraping was the worst. I’d probably be stuck with that for a while. Still, who I really dreaded seeing was Naomi.

A scuffle with some drones.

I told myself it was only this once. She’d get over it, after a while. You had to accept stuff with friends. I was okay when she canceled some outings we’d planned while she had that thing going with Rory. I ate her experimental scones and ciabatta, even when they came out flat and dry. But . . . that was Naomi. My best friend.

I looked for her but couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in her cabin, or in the galley, or in the pool.

Was she avoiding me?

You’re just all about yourself.

No I’m not. I do care about people. About my podmates, about the Mer. It’s just . . . Sometimes I feel like Cyrus, stuffed into a too-small bathtub. Sometimes I just need more.

CHAPTER 13

THE SHIFT

The last thing I wanted to do was talk to Constance. The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed better to go to her first, before she came looking for me. But the outer door to her suite was closed, the Do Not Disturb sign was up, and Olivia was nowhere in sight.

Hmm. That was odd.

Nearby, seven or eight Whale podders were mending fishing nets and tending the raised gardens. One of them looked up from his work. “Hey, Turtle. Lookin’ good.”

“Aw, Logan, you say that to all the girls,” I said. And he really did.

He winked at me. True to form.

“What’s up with Constance?” I asked.

“She’s in there with a couple of Normals.”

“Normals?” It couldn’t be the state inspectors. They’d come through just a month ago.

“Doctors. They said they have news.”

Doctors. When was the last time I saw a doctor? They used to show up every so often. But now . . . I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one. Maybe since the teachers all left?

And . . . news. From doctors.

“Good news?” I asked. “Bad news?”

Logan shrugged. Looking kind of worried, now. “One of them looks familiar. I think he’s one of the doctors from the Shift.”

The Shift!

A LONG TIME ago, when we were seven, all of us Mer kids started having trouble breathing. Constance hired a team of doctors, who discovered that some kind of shift was going on. And to deal with it—to keep us breathing right—they figured out that we have to spend at least eight hours every day underwater. It doesn’t matter when during the day—it just has to happen. Ocean water is best. Pool water’s okay for a while, they discovered, but it has to be calibrated just so, for temperature and salinity. It has to be oxygenated, like a fish aquarium. Otherwise, we get skin rashes and digestive crud, like Cyrus in that bathtub, and they only get worse over time.

Back then, most of the Mer lived on the Mermaid. Just a few of us, like me, were still living on land. The other land-living Mer had been moved to foster homes, but I was still with my biological parents—the only ones who managed to keep their Mer child hidden from the authorities all that time. Three of the land kids died during the Shift. After that, every Mer still on land moved onto the ship, where Constance pumps fresh seawater into the sleeping pool.

Since then, things had stabilized. We were fine. But every day of our lives, we knew that things could shift again.

CHAPTER 14

STOP DIGGING

Late that afternoon, near the end of my stint in the laundry, Olivia appeared in the doorway. “Constance wants to see you,” she said.

I groaned.

“You better hurry up. She said right now.”

“Okey dokey.” I took my time, though. Folding the last towel. Setting it on the pile.

“I’m not kidding, Turtle, she’s gonna be mad.”

Olivia’s voice had risen to a squeak; she was almost twitching.

What a little mouse. She even looked like a mouse. Small bones. Pointy nose. Mouse-brown hair. You’d halfway want to feel sorry for her, but she’d rat you out to Constance in a heartbeat.

Just get through it, I told myself. Take your lumps and move on.

Constance was working with some papers at her desk. Tall and lean, sitting on a hard, backless bench, her own back as straight as the main mast. It was hard to believe she was old—well past fifty—except for the wrinkles around her eyes and the gray in her hair.

She looked up for a second. “Have a seat, Turtle,” she said, and went back to work.

I squidged myself into one of the three overstuffed chairs in front of her desk. They weren’t quite big enough, anymore—scaled for younger kids. Each chair came equipped with a quilted throw (“blankies,” we used to call them) and a huggable plush toy. This one was an octopus, which I now set in my lap to make room for my fifteen-year-old butt.

I leaned back, let my gaze drift across the collection of dive fins set on narrow shelves on the wall behind Constance. Near the ceiling were the adorably cute ones from the Mer who came to the Mermaid when they were four. The fins got bigger as they ran down the wall, ending with a pair of Cyrus’s fins from last year, which were gigantic. It was a sweet display—pinks and blues, greens and oranges. Some of the little-kid ones had cartoony sea creature designs. There were the ones with yellow LEDs that lit up remotely, so that Constance could see where we were. There were the black ones for night diving, when we wanted to hide from any Normals who might be around. Some of the fins looked practically brand new; others were beat up—mottled, chipped, and cracked.

Constance turned to a file cabinet. Opened a drawer. Took something out.

Making me wait.

I sighed. Turned to the photo wall on my right. There we were, sleeping all together in the pool when we were seven. Gardening with kid-sized rakes and hoes a year or so later. Fishing, swabbing the decks, swimming with dolphins. Then came the group pictures of our pods, which Constance named when we were little: the Whales, the Pelicans, the Sharks, the Starfish.

There was a picture of Constance holding a protest sign back in her college days, and another of a group home where she worked before she came here. I’d never seen one of her as a kid. She was an orphan, got “lost in the system,” is how she put it. She’d dedicated her life to kids who’d been cut off from their parents, one way or another, because, as she told us over and over, “Nobody understands you like I do.”

At last, Constance set down her pen and looked up. “How are you?” she asked. Friendly. Like she really wanted to know.

I almost said, “Fine,” but then I remembered how she used to tell us, when we were little, that fine was not a good answer; fine was a way of holding people at arm’s length; fine said nothing, really.

“I’m . . . okay,” I said, and went on quickly, because okay is no better than fine. “I feel bad about letting my team down today,” I said. “I’m very sorry for that.”

There. I’d done it. Apologized.

Constance smiled. It was partly an encouraging smile, a smile that gave me space to say more. But I could see something else in it, too. Something tougher, something that said, That’s not going to be quite enough.

“What happened?” she asked.

She knew already, of course. But maybe not everything?

So I told her about Kai, and the accident with the regulator. I told her I was trying to save him, and then Naomi and Hadley came, and we helped Kai slip out of his harness and get out through the window. I left out the kiss part. And Kai giving me the watch. I left out that it was my grandmother’s house.

“You’re saying you were trying to save him,” Constance said, “before Naomi and Hadley showed up.”

I nodded.

“How, exactly?”

She knew. No use trying to hide it.

So I told her about giving him air, mouth-to-mouth. She couldn’t blame me for that, could she? I mean, he could have died down there.

“And then?” Constance asked.

“He was in the same courtroom with Adam, for the hearing. And I was . . . curious, you know?”

She just looked at me. Apparently, she didn’t know.

“And they mentioned the date of his sentencing hearing, and . . .”

Her faded-green eyes were still, wholly trained on me. Something popped into my head: When you’re stuck in a hole, stop digging. So I stopped.

She let it lie there for a minute, then said, “Okay, Turtle, here’s where I’m having trouble. What happened between the place where ‘they mentioned the date of his sentencing hearing,’ and the place where you bailed on your teammates? What was going on with you then?”

“I asked if you could find a sub. Remember?”

“And I couldn’t. And then?”

There was a little ache in the hinge of my jaw. My teeth seemed to have clenched themselves tightly together. I pried my mouth open just long enough to say, “I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“So, it’s only the three times you’ve seen him,” she said. “The scavenging, the arraignment, the hearing.”

I nodded.

“And it’s only this Normal kid. No one else?”

“Yeah.” Who else would it be?

“Have you made plans to see him again?”

Friday. Midnight. Pier 9. I hesitated. Shrugged again.

Constance sighed. Rubbed her eyes. “Remember when you first came aboard, those times you jumped ship and ran away?”

“Yeah—”

“Caused us no end of inconvenience. We all got it, though. You missed your parents. You were seven. But you’re well beyond that, now, Turtle. It’s not cute anymore.”

“Well, but—”

“Some people think I love being a spoilsport, Turtle, but I’ll tell you something, just between us: I really hate that part of my job. I do. I want all of you guys to be happy, and I want you to be free. But you know what’s the most important part of my job?”

“I just—”

“Keeping you safe.”

“But I’m not—”

“Meanwhile,” she went on, “stuff is happening, stuff you know nothing about. I’m trying to head off the worst of it for us, but I can only do it for so long. One day it’s all going to hit, and we’re going to have to pull together. All of us. Team Mer.”

Those doctors who had been here. News, they’d said.

“Is there . . . news?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. Not yet.”

That just couldn’t be good.

“You can’t see him anymore,” Constance said. “This Normal guy.”

“But—”

“And, by the way,” she added, “don’t even think about trying to find your father. It’s only rumors, anyway. Nobody’s actually seen him.”

What?

“My father?”

“Oh. You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what? He’s back?”

“It’s just gossip, Turtle. People like to talk.”

People were talking about Daddy?

It knocked me back, for a moment. I’d just found his watch, and . . . Did Constance know about that? Did Hadley tell her?

“Your family knows it’s best if they don’t see you. And they’ve mostly all moved away.”

Mostly?

From the addresses on those old letters, I’d thought they’d all moved away, except for Grandmother.

“Who hasn’t moved away?”

She just looked at me. “What have I been telling you, Turtle? The Normals, they aren’t your people anymore. We have to stick together, look out for the group, in order to be safe, to survive. We all need your loyalty. Do we have that?”

I nodded, sort of dizzy from all I’d just learned: Some sort of scary stuff happening, with doctors. My father. Mostly all moved away.

“Say it. Promise.”

“You do. I will. Be loyal. Of course!” Anything to get out of here!

She looked at me as if that wasn’t enough, wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to hear.

I’d expected her to tell me not to see Kai again. Though she couldn’t really stop me. But the business about loyalty? I mean, she was always going on about loyalty—and I was loyal . . . well, at least mostly. But this felt different, somehow. Making me promise like that.

“I know I can count on you, Turtle,” she said.

Here’s where I should have said, with deep sincerity, “You betcha! You sure can!” But I couldn’t.

Constance sighed. “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call down the consequences for skipping scavenging. You’re on barnacle duty for a week.”

Yeah, no surprise there. Barnacle duty was the worst.

“Also, Emerson’s coming in on Tuesday, and he and Adam could use some help. It’s dirty work. Better bring gloves.”

And with that, the interview was over.

Leaving Constance’s office, I let out a long, slow breath. It had been tough in there. But the thing with Emerson actually sounded like it could be fun, and I’d get through barnacle duty somehow. It definitely could have been worse.

I MADE MY way to the dining hall, still a little off balance. I sat down beside Maya and Brooke at one end of the long table. They turned to me, said, “Hey,” and then Maya went on with her story, something about an oil leak in the engine room, which she managed to make sound hilarious and terrifying at the same time. I ladled out a bowl of chowder and listened for a bit, but I couldn’t concentrate because of the churning of my thoughts.

Kai. Constance had forbidden me to see him, but she couldn’t stop me. There were lots of ways of getting on and off the ship.

And . . . Daddy? Maybe back on the island? And . . . mostly all moved away? So at least somebody still lived nearby?

It had to be Grandmother. Didn’t it? She’d lived on the island all her life; maybe she couldn’t bear to leave, even after her house had been flooded.

Across the room, I saw Naomi and Adam enter together, deep in conversation. It looked like they were heading for the other end of the table. Adam worked with Emerson; maybe he knew what kind of penance Constance had lined up for me there. And Naomi . . .

Was she mad at me?

I caught Adam’s eye and waved them over. They hesitated, exchanged a few words, then came to sit with me.

“We’re on at two tomorrow?” I asked Naomi. “For the scavenging?”

She nodded, not quite looking at me.

Oh, jeez. I’d really let her down. I’d be there at two. For sure. Before long, she’d forget all about today.

But I knew I still owed her an apology, and I was working up to it when Hadley showed up with her tray. “Did Constance talk to you?” she asked me.

I felt my hackles rise. I turned to look at her. Said nothing.

“Well, did she? ’Cause I’m not sure I want to be on a team where you can’t count on one of the members.”

I spooned up a piece of potato. Put it in my mouth. Chewed it.

“Especially when there’s only three of us,” Hadley went on. “I should ask her to replace you.”

“Do your worst,” I muttered.

“What the hell does that mean? You say that like I’m the one who’s being a total spawn. You abandoned your friends; I can’t do worse than that.”

“Oh, leave her alone,” Naomi said.

Hadley rolled her eyes but began to eat.

I looked at Naomi, hoping she would smile, or at least see me. But her eyes slid away to Adam. He leaned close to her and said something I couldn’t quite hear. Naomi laughed.

And a thought struck me.

Girlfriend #8?

But no. It couldn’t be.

But what if . . . ?

If Adam and Naomi had a bond that shut me out . . . I’d be shipwrecked. Sunk. Alone.

CHAPTER 15

CHANGE

After dinner, everyone scattered, including Naomi and Adam, who left together. Which proved nothing.

But still . . .

I felt abandoned. And it made me long to see Kai even more.

I knew I shouldn’t meet him. I’d be in way more trouble if Constance caught me a second time. I wouldn’t skip scavenging again—not ever—but even if I left at night, when everyone was sleeping, Constance could still find out.

All the same . . .

I have something I think is yours.

How could I not?

I scaled the ladder to the highest flat surface of the Mermaid—the flying bridge, with the helipad and the retractable solar array. The sun was sinking, staining the western sky the color of cantaloupe flesh. A small wind had picked up, making the banners flap and crack, jingling the hooks and shackles in the rigging, ruffling the surface of the water. A squadron of pelicans swooped past overhead, and a bank of dark clouds rolled across the sky from the north, bringing the scent of rain. In the distance, lightning strobed.

Storm coming on.

Not a big one, though. Not yet. No need to find a hurricane hole, or even shelter in the lee of the island.

I tried to settle myself, but I was restless, with the sort of choppy gut-level turbulence that comes when I feel a shift in the weather . . . or some other kind of change.

I looked out across the bay toward Spoonbill Island. Legend had it, the early European explorers arrived in the midst of a roseate spoonbill migration—thousands of tall, gangly birds with oddly-shaped beaks, all packed in close together, a vast carpet of pink.

As I watched, the city lights began glimmering on.

Where is Kai right now? I wondered.

And could Daddy be there, on the island, too?

His face had blurred in my memory. I was so young. But I remembered that it was scratchy when it brushed across my skin, and his voice was low and kind of scratchy, too. He chewed flat sticks of lime-green gum, and his breath smelled minty. He looked huge to me back then. He lumbered through the house like a big bear. He bellowed. Though I knew he loved me, I could see that there was something dangerous about him, too.

Was it his idea to have me modded? Was it Mama’s?

Seemed like they’d told me a story about it one time, something about a free diver they’d met somewhere. But I couldn’t remember anymore.

And whose idea was it to hide me—me, and our whole family—instead of turning me over to the government? Whose idea was it for them to risk jail?

When you’re a little kid, you can’t know if your upbringing is crazy weird. It just seems ordinary to you. I never questioned why we lived in a little knot of buildings in the marshes outside Palacios—Mama and Daddy, Grace and Abby and me—and never really much went anywhere, or saw other people. Well, Aunt Beatriz and her partner, Felicia, had lived nearby, and they hung out with us a lot. And sometimes we went to Spoonbill Island to be with Grandmother. But no neighbors, no other friends. Only family.

It wasn’t strange to me. Just how it was.

I did know that I was different, with the gills and all. But it didn’t seem important.

And they might have hidden me forever, if not for the Shift. When my breathing went seriously wonky, they bundled me up and took me to a hospital. And turned themselves in to the police.

The authorities were shocked to discover that there was one last Mer kid still living illegally with her biological parents. So they slapped them into jail right away.

After I stabilized, the doctors had me airlifted to the Mermaid.

And I never saw my family after that.

And now, here came the doctors again. With news.

CHAPTER 16

EMERSON

The storm blew through that night, strong enough to slosh topsoil and seedlings out of the garden beds and strew seaweed along the decks, along with everything else that wasn’t battened down tight. The goats bleated like crazy, and the chickens squawked for hours. Nobody slept very much. The next morning, Constance went through the ship with the carpentry crew, searching out leaks and breaches, and the rest of us spent the day cleaning up.

The Mermaid had served us well over the years, but now she was showing her age. She was built for rich people, the kind of ship where the crew waits on you hand and foot. The opposite of now. When the cruise line retired her, a tech multibillionaire bought her, but he got tired of her after a while. She sat abandoned at a dock in Corpus long enough that it was a tossup whether or not she would be scrapped.

Constance still had a good chunk of federal funding back then, and crowdsourced donations had poured in during the time we’d been media darlings—“The Mer Babies.” With the federal money and the private gifts, Constance was able to patch up the Mermaid and refit her with the seawater pool for gill breathing. She jumped through about a bazillion hoops to get the ship certified as a private group home for Mer kids. Got the state licenses and permits, set up inspections, submitted compliance reports—all that stuff. There was more red tape than usual because this group home was on a ship. But Constance convinced the authorities that a ship was the best place for a bunch of gen-modded kids with gills. And anyway, the system was overloaded. What with the budget cuts, the climate change refugees, and assorted illegal gen-mods, the state of Texas had run out of foster homes and was shipping kids to Oklahoma. It was a scandal at the time. The Department of Juvenile Services was probably over the moon to have Constance helping them out.

Still, all those years spent abandoned had shortened the Mermaid’s life. The shine had gone off the media-darling business long ago, and the federal funds got more anemic every year. These days, Constance was all about independence; hence the gardening, the fishing, the chickens.

And the scavenging.

FOUR DAYS AFTER the storm, Emerson tied up beside us and jumped aboard. He was tall and toothpick-thin, with weird, tangerine-colored eyes that couldn’t be natural. Plus, he had a laugh like none other—a loud, honking bray you would know anywhere. Everybody liked Emerson. He was a trader, our supplier. He was also our fence.

Now, Emerson supervised the Mer team unloading beans and rice and oranges, and then he walk-danced through the ship, giving high-fives and fist bumps, calling out greetings. He knew our names, every single one. He and I had bonded over shoes—he wore all-toes sneakers, too.

I scooted to my cabin, fetched my work gloves, zipped on a pair of grubby overalls, and made my way down to the hold. I’d been there only a couple of times. Dim and industrial looking. Heavy machinery and whatnot, thrumming with the sound of the reverse osmosis pumps. Some way ahead of me, Emerson disappeared down a narrow hallway; I followed to a cavernous storage area with banks of shelves filled with plastic bins.

Adam was there already. Emerson greeted him, went on past. Adam nodded to me. Deadpan, with eyebrows raised and the familiar ironic laughter in his eyes. I nodded back.

Awkward? Just a bit.

Something was moving in the dim light farther back in the hold. As I neared, I recognized Olivia, who was shoving a bin back onto a shelf. She turned to leave, and then jumped when she saw us. “Oh!” she said. Or, rather, squeaked.

“We’re just sorting through the scavenging,” Adam said.

“Well, okay. Enjoy.” Olivia blinked at me as she passed, and then scampered off.

Really. She actually scampered.

“Myrtle-the-Turtle!” Emerson said, catching sight of me. “You in trouble or something? Never seen you down here before.”

I shrugged. “Maybe a little trouble.”

“So, I’m like detention, to you. I’m like, ‘No dessert tonight, Missy.’ I’m like time-out-in-a-corner.”

I smiled. Emerson did that to me. “Hell, no, Emerson,” I said. “You’re a ride on the Devil’s Octopus. Hang on for the thrill of your life.”

He snorted. “Oh, yeah, that’s me, all right.” He handed me his web device—he called it Gladys—and showed me how to keep track of sales. “Thrilled yet?” he asked.

Actually, holding a device with web access was kind of thrilling. Years ago, Constance had made our devices read-only, trying to keep a shipload of kids out of trouble of various kinds. The innocent kind—getting addicted to games, running up charges, posting sketchy photos and complaints about the food, that sort of thing. And also the dangerous kind—falling for scams and predators, running little scams of our own.

Paper is safe, Constance said.

But even after that, there was trouble. We got hacked a couple of times, lost a lot of money. Once, all our data disappeared. So, three years ago, Constance jettisoned our devices and cut us off from the web—except for weather and GPS for navigation.

If we’re online, we’re vulnerable, she said. The more self-sufficient we are, the safer we’ll be.

And maybe she was right.

Now Emerson drew on a pair of heavy gloves and went through the pile of plundersacks, picking up one item at a time and giving me a quick description to key in. He examined each item, made an offer, and then tossed it to Adam, who either accepted the offer or countered. I entered the final price.

It went by in a blur, with stuff flying through the air and prices called out back and forth. I had to key fast to keep up, and sometimes I fell behind. While they waited for me, Emerson clowned around—putting a vase on his head and mugging for us, juggling a variety of mismatched objects, making a lidded stein talk like a puppet. Once, a silver trivet landed near me, and I held it up to my shirt, like an enormous brooch. I pinched my lips in a pleased-with-myself way and batted my eyes. Emerson’s laugh rang out, and Adam smiled, and I felt myself relax in a way I hadn’t for days.

Toward the end, there was some intense haggling over a bracelet and a couple of rings. “Here, Myrtle, look ’em up.” Emerson showed me how to find values on Gladys. Adam took issue with the numbers, citing gem cuts and occlusions, citing previous sales. I snapped my mouth shut, realizing it was hanging open. I mean, everybody knew Adam was plenty smart, but I’d had no idea he knew all that stuff. Emerson snatched Gladys from me and held it up for Adam to see. Adam took it from Emerson, keyed in some stuff, gave it back to Emerson. They argued for a while.

I took a breather, looked around the room. Bins and bins and bins, all labeled in large block letters, easy to read. Constance was a hoarder and a neatnik. Kept everything, just in case, and filed it according to her own system, so we could lay hands on it if we needed to. Fishing line, bandages, life jackets, soap. Bins full of hardware fittings, bins full of light bulbs, bins full of tarps, bins full of nails. There was a vast section of paper records. The bin Olivia had replaced was in the “Taxes” section. Perfectly organized, no doubt. Shipshape.

“Myrtle, catch!”

Emerson tossed Gladys to me; I missed. While I scrambled for it on the floor, Emerson called out some numbers for me to enter, which, frantically, I did. Then he and Adam were packing things into small velvet bags and a couple of burlap sacks. Smiling, friendly as ever.

“Thanks, Myrtle,” Emerson said. “You were a big help.”

“Sorry I was so slow.”

“Hey, practice makes perfect. Just keep getting in the doghouse with Constance and you’ll be up to speed in no time.”

He said it like he was joking, but I wasn’t quite sure. Did he know I’d cut scavenging? Maybe he saw it as a bit of playful mischief, not something really bad. Maybe he wanted me to twit Constance with minor infractions so I could come back down here again to help.

But no. There was something in his voice, the tiniest sting. Emerson’s low-voltage way of telling me he knew what I’d done and didn’t—quite—approve.

STILL, WORKING WITH Emerson hardly seemed like a punishment at all. Unfortunately, shucking barnacles off the Mermaid’s hull was another story. Even with heavy gloves and a scraper, my fingers bled. Bits of shell grit lodged in my ears and hair and teeth. It was miserable. You had to come at the stupid things in awkward positions, and they hung on like grim death, and after a while, your whole body ached. Fingers. Hands. Back. Neck. Shoulders. Butt.

Everything.

And also . . .

I always knew we had barnacles, of course, but I’d never looked all that closely at the Mermaid’s hull. To be honest, it was shocking. There were way more barnacles than I’d imagined. Great swaths of protective paint had flaked off, leaving angry, red patches of corrosion. It looked pretty serious, actually.

When was the last time we’d been in dry dock? I couldn’t remember. Hadn’t Constance said we were due for it pretty soon?

Why didn’t we do that anymore?

CHAPTER 17

NIGHT SWIMMING

All that week, I tried to talk myself out of meeting Kai, but it was like swimming against a mean riptide.

I have something I think is yours.

I’d really screwed up, cutting scavenging. My friends were mad, and I couldn’t blame them. It’s not like I’d ever do that again, but sneaking out to see Kai a second time—at midnight, no less—would look bad if they found out. And Constance would blow a gasket.

A month earlier, I might have been able to resist.

Maybe.

But seeing Grandmother’s house again, and hearing the rumor about Daddy . . . It had awakened an old craving, powerful and deep. For a world where I used to belong. For a part of me I’d tried to forget.

To stay on the Mermaid?

Or to see Kai again?

In the end, of course, I had to go.

IT WAS A long, laid-back swim to the Yacht Basin, on the sheltered north side of the island. The moon had set, the stars shone bright, and the waves were in a lazy, easygoing mood. I’d decided to swim because a shore boat would up my chances of being caught. Nobody saw me throw the rope ladder over the side. At least, I didn’t think so. And, with luck, nobody would notice it before I returned.

Pier 9 stood silent, save for the creak of timbers and the thump of polystyrene fenders as the boats rocked in the gentle swells. It smelled of tar and salt and feathers.

I stopped a little distance away, sculling. I couldn’t see a light or any other sign that someone was there. A surge of worry swept through me. Had I really heard him right, that he wanted me to come here now? Or maybe he’d had second thoughts? Or maybe . . .

He’d fought hard and rough when I’d snatched the dive watch from his hands. And the hunger when we kissed . . .

I didn’t know him at all. Maybe this was stupid.

Still, I’d seen him with the children and his mother. And they adored him, clearly . . .

Ah, look. A light.

It was in one of the bigger boats, on my side of the pier. A cabin cruiser, looked like a charter boat. Must be fifty feet long, probably more. The Escapade.

I sank beneath the water, swam closer.

And now I could see the shadow of someone in the light, someone tall and slender . . .

I surfaced.

Yes. It was Kai. Mussed-up red hair, wetsuit, duffel bag dangling from one hand.

He turned in my direction, saw me, moved to the gunwale. “Turtle,” he said. The way he’d said it before. Oddly tender, soft on the initial “T.” He smiled at me, long and slow, then fumbled around in the bag. “Here,” he said. “Catch!”

Something arced above the water; I snatched it out of the air.

It was about the size of a bagel, wrapped up in a sealed silicone bag. I pushed up my goggles and opened it.

A dive watch case.

Daddy’s?

“It’s, um, possible I may have withheld it from the authorities,” Kai said. “I thought it would mean more to you.”

The waves hissed against the pilings. There was an itchy, tickly feeling at the back of my eyes. I cleared my throat to speak, but—

“Look inside,” he said.

“But—” I already had the watch. What else could it be?

“You’ll need a light.” Kai held up a lantern and pointed to a ladder off the side of the boat. I climbed up. He motioned me to sit on a bench beside him and set the lantern between us. I opened the case.

Inside: a folded piece of paper.

A map. Hand-drawn, like the maps Daddy used to make.

Quickly, I unfolded it.

But, no. It wasn’t Daddy’s. I could see that right away.

The printing was kind of quirky. Not super-neat and all-caps, like Daddy’s. I recognized Spoonbill Island and the contours of part of the Texas coast. To the east, a little way offshore, there was a large, ornate X, and the words Marks the Spot.

A treasure map?

Unlike Daddy’s maps, this one had pictures. A treasure chest. A compass rose. A grinning Jolly Roger. A parrot with an eyepatch and a tricorn hat.

It was crude, really, just a sketch. With the goofy pirate thing going on. But it brought back to me, so strongly, the maps Daddy drew each time he discovered a new shipwreck. He would gather Grace and Abby and me around him, point out the landmarks, the currents, the undersea terrain. He would tell where the ruined ships had come from and how they might have foundered.

I loved those maps.

Because then, after showing us the maps, Daddy would pack us all off to see the actual shipwrecks.

An adventure! he’d say.

Now, I held up Kai’s map. “What’s this?” I asked.

“An invitation.”

“To what?”

“A hunt for secret treasure.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

An adventure.

I looked down at the map again. Had he made it just for me?

Whatever the X marked didn’t look like anyplace Daddy had taken us. And it was too far for me to have gone there with the Mer. It would take hours to swim or row there, and the last of our small outboard motors had died years ago.

So, someplace new.

“You know you have to report shipwreck treasure,” I said.

“It’s not that kind of treasure.”

“What kind is it?”

“Secret, like I said.”

He smiled at me. Kind of a playful, bad-boy vibe.

I blinked.

He was so cute, I couldn’t stand it. And I knew I shouldn’t go with him, for so many, many reasons.

But . . .

A map, and an adventure. It tolled a bell in me, somewhere deep.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

TURNS OUT, KAI had a little speedboat tucked behind the Escapade. His very own boat, the Pieces of Eight. He stowed tanks, fins, and a dive bag in it, and then, flashing that smile of his, hoisted a miniature Jolly Roger off the stern.

“Really?” I said.

“Yo ho ho!”

We headed west, angling toward the mainland, then mostly south along the shore, into a sheltered inlet. Kai dropped anchor near a rocky outcrop, then strapped on fins, mask, weight belt, dive bag, and tank.

I wrapped the watch case in a towel and tucked it into a corner of the bow seat.

Then, we dove.

IT WAS A small wreck, well away from the shipping lanes. So deeply encrusted with barnacles and coral, it hardly looked like a ship at all. In the blue glow of Kai’s headlamp, I could barely make out the shapes of bow and stern and keel. What treasures it had held must have been scavenged long ago. Nobody had taken the trouble to raise it, so it must not be important, historically.

I’d seen a lot of shipwrecks. The Gulf coast was littered with them. On our adventures with Daddy, we’d rise before dawn, have a quick breakfast, head out in his boat. Mama would stay aboard with Abby—she was too young for scuba—and then we’d dive: Daddy and Grace with scuba gear, and me with a wetsuit, fins, and goggles. He’d lead us down to a pirate ship, maybe. Or a German submarine. He’d show us old cannons, lanterns, telescopes, bottles. Once, he reached into a cracked deck plank and handed me a crusty silver coin as big as a sand dollar.

But Kai thought this wreck was special—and it got me, sort of, that he wanted to show it to me. Now he motioned me to follow, and so I did, collecting a school of silvery fish about me. When Kai reached out a curious hand to touch one, they darted away in a flash and scattered in the dark. At the bottom of the wreck, he pulled two dive lanterns from his bag. He turned them on, handed one to me. He shone his lantern straight up, and I did the same, creating columns of light.

And here they came: clouds of plankton, attracted by the light. They swarmed in among the stumps of the old masts and down into the belly of the ship. And then, out of the corner of one eye, I caught sight of a huge and soaring form, winging its way toward us.

Manta ray.

It swooped overhead, twenty feet wide at least. Pale belly speckled with gray, double rows of gills, wings pumping slowly, ruffling at the edges. Its mouth gaped open, vacuuming up the plankton.

And now here came another, and another, and another—a squadron of them—massive, heartbreakingly graceful, with wide-set eyes that were lovely and strange. Above us, cutting through light and shadow, they soared, looped, twisted, spun. It was a feeding frenzy, an aerobatic flying show, a water ballet.

Treasure, for sure.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, watching together. It was a while, a long while. Kai leaned in to me, our shoulders touching. We took turns pointing out things to watch—the baby ray shadowing its mother; two rays that swooped and glided in tandem; another ray, nearly as wide as the main pool on the Mermaid, the biggest ray I’d ever seen. The nearness of Kai’s body made me tingle, made me giddy, disturbed me in an intoxicating way. Once, when he turned to look at me, I thought he might take out his regulator and kiss me again. But right then, one of the rays skimmed across the top of my head, and Kai and I flinched together, and then laughed in a burst of bubbles. Another ray brushed across my back, and yet another one feathered a tickly wingtip along the top of my shoulder. And I don’t remember just how it happened, but after a while, Kai and I were holding hands. And it felt . . . right. The most natural thing in the world.

When we headed back home, two of the rays followed us, gliding under and beside and behind us, before at last, they winged away.

And I don’t know what you do when you have a night like this. I don’t know if you, like, mourn when it’s over, or if you ache for it to happen again, or if you’re just grateful it happened at all. I don’t know if maybe you take it as an omen, some kind of cosmic blessing: Pay attention. This is a sign.

Before we went our separate ways, Kai tied up at a buoy near the Mermaid and asked if he could see me again. He wasn’t sure when he could get away, but there were more treasures he’d like to show me. In a week or so, depending. “I’ll leave you a message, here, on the buoy,” he said. “What do you say?”

And I knew it would be crazy and dangerous to meet him again. Constance was bound to find out and make life miserable for me. Some of the others would be mad, too, just like Hadley. Or they’d mock. Guys who like fish.

But even so . . . An adventure!

I couldn’t give him up.

A week seemed too long to wait. Like forever. And I didn’t want to leave, not yet. But the sun was rising, and we hadn’t slept at all, and people would be missing me, and probably him, too.

“Yes,” I said.

Oh, yes.

CHAPTER 18

SECOND SHIFT

I climbed back aboard the Mermaid a little after sunrise, in plenty of time for the morning’s scavenging, relieved to find the rope ladder right where I’d left it. I still felt all fizzy and glowing, my mind just a cloud full of Kai. But perversely, one of those stay-up-all-night headaches had come to live inside my cranium, and I was starved for breakfast and a cup of strong coffee.

I pulled up the ladder and stowed it, then headed for the dining hall.

Usually, the decks were pretty empty this time of day. Some people got up early—the breakfast staff, the fishers, the navigators—though most people should still be asleep in the pool. But now a rumble of voices arose from the direction of the spa suite.

Odd.

I followed the sound.

It seemed like everyone was there, in the area outside the spa, milling around. There was a funny, something’s-about-to-happen vibe in the air, like when the wind picks up, creaking in the windmill, and when you look out across the bay you see a raft of black clouds looming on the horizon.

The spa door was closed.

What was going on?

I looked for Naomi and found her and Adam in the crowd. Together again. Though they weren’t acting especially romantic, not holding hands . . .

It came back to me in a rush: Kai’s hand in mine.

Naomi and Adam: What did I care?

I threaded through the crowd until I reached them. “What’s going on?” I asked.

They turned to look at me. Relieved? “Where were you?” Naomi asked.

I felt the flush creep up my face. “I’m not late. I said I’d be ready by seven-thirty, and I will.” They exchanged a micro-glance, like they’d been talking about me before I showed up. Then Adam turned and disappeared in the crowd. “What’s going on?” I asked again.

“Maya had . . . an episode.”

“What?”

“It happened last night, but we didn’t hear about it until an hour ago. We looked for you but we couldn’t find you.”

Looked for me. Oh, shoot. I hoped no one told Constance. But Maya . . . “What kind of episode? Is she all right? Where is she now?”

Naomi sighed. “She fainted. They put her in the spa pool, and she came to. But she’s been there ever since.”

“Gill breathing?”

Naomi nodded.

“And she’s okay?”

“They say she’s fine . . .” But she didn’t sound all that certain.

I remembered what Constance had said to me after I missed scavenging. Stuff is happening . . . I’m trying to head off the worst of it . . .

“Did they call the doctors?”

“I don’t think so. Constance kicked them off the ship last time they came.”

“What?”

“Jamal told Adam. I believe it.”

“Why would she kick them off?”

Naomi shrugged. “Self-sufficiency? Independence? She doesn’t trust them?”

“So Maya . . . Does this have something to do with the doctors’ news?”

“Nobody knows for sure.” She hesitated. “Somebody said it could be a second Shift.”

Second Shift. It was a familiar thought, but one I’d been avoiding. If we were going to go through a second Shift, it would likely start with the oldest of the Mer. Like Maya and Jamal. And Adam.

“So, Maya fainted because she couldn’t breathe? Except underwater?”

Naomi nodded.

“Hey! About time you showed up—you’re late.”

It was Hadley.

“I’m not late!” I protested.

“Well, you’re gonna be. C’mon.” We wove through the crowd, the three of us, heading for the equipment room. Looked like I was still on the team. But I’d blown through time for breakfast, and my headache was getting worse.

“Anyway,” Hadley said. “We all know where you’ve been.”

Oh, come on.

“You can’t hide. People see you. Naomi and I saw you lip-locked with that Normal guy, and Rory saw you stowing the ladder this morning.”

Crap!

“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Turtle,” Hadley said. “But you better start showing where your loyalty lies.”

Loyalty again.

“It’s got nothing to do with loyalty,” I said.

Hadley pointed back the way we’d come, at the crowd near the spa suite. “It’s all about loyalty,” she said.

CHAPTER 19

BREATHING

All day long, I expected Constance to summon me. But she never left the spa suite with Maya. That night, I swam into the bay alone. I checked the buoy for messages—nothing, not yet—and then made my way toward the island. I stopped, treading water, a little way from shore.

A thin crescent moon hung low above the horizon. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water and brushed against my face. To the north, I could see trailing white scallops of surf, the dark expanse of seawall, and, beyond, dim shapes of buildings and trees among the island lights. To the south lay the Mermaid at anchor, alight and glittering, a bright chandelier. Beyond her, the dim shadows of abandoned oil rigs, and beyond them, only sea and sky.

I breathed in deep, feeling the cool stream of air in my nostrils, my throat, my windpipe; feeling my lungs expand. The air smelled fresh—of salt and fish and seaweed. A night bird called above the hiss and rumble of the waves.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I dropped below the surface. A warm current swept across my shoulders; a cooler one tickled my knees. The sea wrapped itself around me, buoying me. I opened my mouth and pulled in water, tasting the life in it: Catfish whisker, squid sucker, stingray tail. Flounder sperm, whale fluke, the breathing tubes of scallops. Crustacean armor, seaweed spore, jellyfish goo.

I closed my mouth, pushing the water back across the flat, feathery surfaces of my gills and out into the bay. It was a comforting sensation, borderline ticklish, like sweeping the tips of your fingernails across your scalp.

Strands of hair escaped my braid, swirled slowly in front of my goggles. Sargasso grass eddied darkly to either side, and a school of shimmering herring gathered about me, brushing my wrists and ankles.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

The surf was a muted boom that thrummed inside my body. Above, beyond the skin of the sea, the moon was shrunken, wavering, dim.

I broke the surface, pulled in air through my nostrils to my lungs.

The bright crescent moon. The stars. The wide, arcing horizon, pricked by the twinkling lights of the city.

What if . . . ?

What if Maya’s episode was the beginning of another Shift? What if, someday, our lungs stopped working right, and we couldn’t breathe in the air at all?

There was no way of knowing. Anything could happen. No Mer had come before us. As far as we knew, we were the only ones in the world.

I concentrated on my breathing, each in, each out.

No hitches. No tightness. No wheeziness.

Just breathing. Easy breathing.

I dropped beneath the surface again. The sea closed over me. The horizon vanished; the wide world shrank.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

It was slower, dreamier, here—all soft-edged and rippling. A world where you were known to sea turtles and dolphins, where whalesong echoed in your veins. A world where time flowed not in measured-out hours or minutes or seconds, but in the great, long movements of the tides. Where plans slipped away, and you could lose yourself for hours watching an octopus stalk a hermit crab in the bright undulations of water-fractured light.

But you couldn’t speak, or hear your friends’ voices.

And Kai . . .

If, someday, this were my only world . . .

Kai would be lost to me.

I kicked hard. Broke the surface. Gulped in air.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

No hitches. No tightness. No wheeziness. Nothing wrong.

Not yet.

Maybe never.

The lights of the island shimmered in the darkness. Kai was out there somewhere. And Daddy, too? I wondered. And the rest of my family . . . Mostly moved away, Constance had said.

A sudden wind gust brushed my face, bearing hints of feathers, of dust, of trees. And their faces swam into memory: Daddy. Mama. Grace. Abby. Grandmother.

There was this whole other world, outside the Mermaid. I had belonged there once, and sometimes I forgot about it. But now it was pulling at me, hard.

They had quit writing to me, but somehow it never struck home that I might have seen them all for the last time.

Except for Mama, of course. I knew I’d never see her again.

But if a second Shift came . . .

I would never see any of them. Not ever.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bear it. I had to try to find them, try to see them one more time.

CHAPTER 20

A DEVICE AND A HOTSPOT

The problem was how to find them.

Once, I read about a guy who went back, years later, to visit “the old neighborhood” where he grew up. But on Spoonbill Island, lots of people can’t do that. Like Grandmother, for instance.

Her old neighborhood?

It’s underwater.

Possibly, the compound in Palacios was still standing. But Daddy wouldn’t go there, would he? The police might be watching for him. And the others could be anywhere. I’d need web access to track them down.

Luckily, I just happened to know someone with a device and a hotspot. Someone who didn’t report to Constance.

Constance. Whomp. The thought of her slammed into me. I hadn’t left anybody in the lurch this time, but I had I’d gone off with Kai, and Hadley knew about it, and so Constance would know about it, too. I was in for another lecture . . . or worse.

SHE WAYLAID ME on deck after the next morning’s scavenging. This time, she was quick. I was off the scavenging team for good. Instead, it was barnacle duty from here on out.

“Off the team?” I said. “But I didn’t miss scavenging. I was there.”

“You went to see him, against my explicit orders.”

“But—”

I loved the team. Even Hadley. Well, sometimes. I loved scavenging, exploring. I’d never really thought much about it, except as a job I had to do, but it really hit me how much I’d miss it, now that it was being taken away.

“Look, I’ll do barnacles, too—plus scavenging. Just let me—”

“You defied me,” Constance said. “You betrayed my trust.” Her face was drawn, her voice tight. “Starting now, you’re not to go to the island, or anywhere else. You’re confined to the ship.”

“What? Come on, Constance, I—”

“And don’t even think about sneaking out at night. There’ll be people checking up on you.”

“Spies? You’re setting spies on me?”

She just looked at me. An I’m done with you look with no wiggle room for negotiation. People were walking by, pretending not to see, but I knew they did. We were making a scene.

“You’ve got to ask yourself,” Constance said, “how much you really want to be here. On the Mermaid. With your friends.”

What?

She turned on her heel and left.

Was she threatening to kick me off the ship? Permanently? Like the teachers and volunteers?

She wouldn’t. That would be crazy. And Constance wasn’t crazy.

Even so, this was worse than I’d thought. Totally unfair.

She couldn’t treat me like this. She had no right.

THE NEXT MORNING, Maya’s condition had stabilized. She was resting underwater, though lung-breathing from time to time. So it was just a glitch. No second Shift. At least for now.

That afternoon, I caught up with Emerson as he and three or four Mer helpers unloaded trade goods from his boat—groceries, cleaning stuff, clothing, sunscreen, paper products. I didn’t know for sure if I was going to risk it, but if I was ever going to find my family again, I’d better start now.

“Okay if I help in the hold today?” I asked, falling into step as Emerson headed for the stairs.

“Sure, Myrtle. Thanks.”

“And I wondered . . .” I began, but now a few of Emerson’s fans had showed up; no time for a tricky conversation.

Fist bumping. Fancy footwork. High-fiving.

At last, Emerson turned back to me. “Wondered what?”

I hesitated. I really hated asking for favors. “Can I . . . Okay if I use Gladys? Just for a few minutes?”

He stopped. Narrowed his weird copper-colored eyes. “What are you up to, Myrtle?”

Oh no. I felt so bad. “I’d rather not say.”

Oops. Here came more fans.

“Hey, Emerson!”

More fist bumps. More high fives. At last, when we reached the staircase, Emerson turned to me. “You have to tell me.”

“I do?”

“Yep.”

“Can you not tell Constance?”

He cocked his head to one side. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“It’s my dad,” I said, quickly. “I think he could be back on the island. I just—”

“How long since you’ve seen him?”

“I was seven.”

Emerson winced. “And what is it you’re planning to do?”

“Just . . . find him. Talk to him. Constance said he might be around—”

“Forgive me for asking, Turtle, but what makes you think . . .” He hesitated.

“He wants to talk to me? Is that what you’re asking?”

Emerson just looked at me. A couple of beats too long. Then said, “What makes you think he’s findable? I mean, if Gladys could unearth him, so could the cops.”

I shrugged. “I have to try. Or maybe I could find my grandmother. Or my sisters.”

“Why now, all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know, I just . . . They were my world for almost half my life, and I . . . miss them.”

Emerson sighed. Shook his head. “Yeah, well, don’t get your hopes up too high, Myrtle. The world can be a harsh place.”

“I know.” But I can’t help hoping.

Emerson headed down the stairs to the hold, motioning for me to follow. At the bottom, he said, “I can give you a few minutes with Gladys when we’re through down here. I’ll have an errand upstairs before I go.”

“And you won’t tell . . .”

“Not if you don’t.”

“I won’t. Thanks, Emerson!”

He shook a finger at me. “But if you break your heart over this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

THE WORK WAS fun. Like before. Adam seemed pretty friendly again, and I felt like part of a team. At the end, as Adam left, Emerson handed me Gladys. “Twenty minutes,” he said.

I sat down on a barrel, got to work. Daddy first.

I found some articles about him, about the underwater discoveries he’d made. Lots in the United States, but also Italy and Japan. And then the stuff about the arrest and trial. And his escape from prison.

But that was years ago, and after that . . . nothing. Not a whisper.

Emerson was right. He probably wasn’t findable with Gladys.

So I looked up my sisters. I found Abby in Dallas. Too far to go looking for her, and no contact information, aside from her address. Grace, I couldn’t find anywhere. I found where she had been—on the island, up to last year or so—but not where she was now. I tried Grandmother then, and found several people with her name, but the only one with the right age was in Vermont. Vermont?

Well, shoot. That’s even farther than Dallas.

I’d hoped somebody would be on the island, or at least, nearby. I was getting nowhere.

But I stumbled onto some interesting stuff. Stuff I knew part of, but not all. Stuff about the Mer. Stuff that happened mostly before I was born, and which nobody ever explained to me. Not completely. At least, not in a way I understood.

I got sucked into an article about human gen-mod, about the history of the redline—the legal and ethical boundary most people agreed we shouldn’t cross. It said that years ago, all genetic modification of humans was off the table—that’s where they drew the line. But there was so much good to be done—getting rid of horrible diseases that people had suffered from since forever. So, over time, the line was moved to allow gen-modding humans to cure disease, but not making the changes inheritable. Pretty soon, though, that line was breached, too, because if people could inherit the modifications, you could get rid of those diseases for good. Not just in the developed world, but everywhere.

Not everybody was onboard. Some people were deeply against any kind of genetic modification. They couldn’t come to an agreement nationally, so a lot of decisions were shunted off to the states. It’s a legal hodgepodge, the article said. But most people welcomed an end to so much human suffering, and what could be more ethical than that?

Up till then, it was all about curing diseases, and, later, preventing them. Just about everyone agreed we should stop there. But along came boutique genetics—modding eye color, skin color, hair color, stuff like that. In some states, that line got breached because it seemed pretty harmless, at least at first. Gen-mod spas were springing up all over the place. But in other states, boutique-gen was illegal.

After that came the “enhancements”—stronger bones and muscles, greater pain tolerance, cavity-resistant teeth. The spas sold them as innocent tweaks, like the boutique stuff. But when they got into things like crazy-good night vision and super-high frequency hearing, some people who’d been okay with it all till then began to feel queasy. Now we had edged into territory beyond the limits of human abilities. We weren’t just making people healthier; we were creating superhumans. Playing God. Some countries allowed it; others didn’t. In the U.S., again, it was left to the states.

Enhanced lung capacity was still in the experimental stages, so in humans, it was illegal pretty much everywhere. But more and more people were ignoring the law, hiring DIY black-market gene hackers, jumping on to the next new thing in order to make life better for their future kids.

Which is what my parents did. And the rest of the parents of the Mer.

They were divers, singers, athletes—most of them. Older, too—with the end of their childbearing years coming up fast. They believed that the lung-capacity mod would be approved and legal eventually, but feared it would come too late for any children of their own.

Nobody expected the gills. They were an accident—an unintended consequence.

Nearly everyone was horrified. This was beyond even bloodhound-level smelling or infrared vision. For one thing, we looked different. Really freaked some people out. For another, we could live our lives in ways that no humans had ever lived before. This was really transhuman, a redline very few people were willing to cross.

Nobody made any more Mer babies after the first few were born with gills. In the end, there were ninety-seven of us—the only Mer on the planet, ever, as far as anybody knew.

But they did know it could have been worse. Gen-modding is super dangerous, especially when it hasn’t been properly tested. We could have come out weirdly deformed, unable to survive without respirators. We could all have died.

The government had to jump in. They made the Mer parents pay huge fines, and also threatened them with long jail sentences unless they gave up their modded babies.

The parents, fearing jail and hoping their children would be returned to them in time, reluctantly turned over their modded infants to the government.

Well, all except my parents, who went into hiding with me.

The government put all the other Mer babies in foster homes.

Meanwhile, Constance got to work setting up the group home on the Mermaid and, when it turned out that the Mer babies who lived inland developed health problems, a lot of the foster parents gave up their Mer kids and put them on the ship.

Some of the biological parents started a class action suit to get their children back. Which I never knew before. But the Shift changed everything, because after that, even the biologicals realized they couldn’t take care of the Mer kids on their own. Just couldn’t do it. They needed the Mermaid.

Constance was a hero. Honestly, she saved us. She really did.

The government put away the biohacker for life.

They put away my parents, too . . . after they found me.

CHAPTER 21

SURROUNDED BY FAMILY

I took a moment to let it all flow through me, everything I’d read.

Transhuman. That stuck with me. I mean, I knew our gills made us different, but I’d never really thought about, you know, transhuman.

What did that even mean? Trans to what?

Were we still human?

Of course we were! But—

Beyond the dull throb of the reverse osmosis pumps, I heard footsteps coming through the hallway.

It didn’t sound like Emerson. I clicked of Gladys, stuffed her in a back pocket. In a minute, Olivia appeared with an armful of sealed manila envelopes.

More tax stuf?

She startled, catching sight of me. Then, “You’re not supposed to be down here.”

I felt my back go up. “What are you doing here?”

She hesitated, blinking toward the wall of shelves. “Forgot something,” she muttered, then turned and fled.

That was weird. Who knew what she was up to?

I rolled my shoulders. Stood up and stretched. It was chilly down here and kind of dark; the single light strip above couldn’t quite penetrate the gloom. It smelled of metal, of fish, of engine oil.

I felt restless. Unsatisfied. I should probably pack it in, but . . .

There was one more thing I had to do.

Mama.

I took Gladys out of my pocket. Keyed in three names.

And there she was.

Dulcinea Abreu Morgan. There was a picture of her in her wetsuit. Dark hair pulled back in a bun. Thin nose, with a slightly Roman curve. A bunch of radiating laugh lines. I didn’t remember all those lines. She was smiling, with an expression so warm, I was jealous of whoever she was smiling at.

The obit was dated four years ago. Which I knew. Constance had told me.

It was the breast cancer, back again. The cancer her mother died of, and her mother’s sister. The cancer Grace and Abby and I would never get, because they snipped out the mutation before we were born.

Peacefully at home, the obit said.

So they must have released her, in the end.

Surrounded by family, the obit said.

Except Daddy. He couldn’t have been there. Could he?

And me. I wasn’t there, either. They hadn’t even told me she was sick.

There was a little about her childhood in Portugal with Aunt Beatriz. There was a paragraph about her education, her career as a marine biologist. Apparently, she had made some pretty notable discoveries, which I hadn’t known about.

And then, there was this:

She was the quiet, loving force at the heart of her family. She taught her children many things, from how to sing three-part harmony to the concepts of infinity and the carbon cycle. She took them diving with dolphins and sea turtles. She taught them to listen for repeated phrases in the songs of sperm whales. She cooked a million nutritious meals and told her children, over and over, how proud of them she was and how much she loved them.

I drew a long stream of air way down deep in my lungs, breathing into all the bruised and tender spots. And it was hard to say which hurt more—reading about the things I had done with her, like diving with sea turtles, or reading about the things I had missed, like talking about infinity, mastering three-part harmony, and listening for phrases in whale songs. And I knew from just that one bit that Grace must have written the obituary. Abby wasn’t old enough, and who else would know that, to write it that way?

At the end, there was a list of survivors. Daddy. Grandmother. Grace. Abby. And there I was: . . . her youngest daughter, Alice, known as Turtle.

Above, a door creaked open, then shut with a clang. Echoing footsteps started down the stairs.

“Turtle? You still there?”

Adam’s voice—not Emerson’s.

“Just a minute,” I said.

Quickly, I scrubbed the tears from my eyes and then, on a sudden whim, keyed in Rav Mehta, a friend Grace had mentioned in a couple of her letters. Maybe he knew where she’d gone.

And there he was. 24 East Pin Oak Circle.

Grace said he was funny and kind. I didn’t know if they were still friends, or if he knew where she was. But I knew I had to find out. I just needed something to go on.

“Turtle, Emerson’s leaving . . .”

Adam was suddenly there, right in front of me.

He stopped, scanned my face. “You okay?” He reached out, as if to touch my shoulder, then pulled his hand back.

My nose was running, and another tear was about to spill. I gave my whole face a good wipe on my sleeve, then smiled brightly. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.

“You don’t look fine.” He seemed worried. Like it mattered how I felt.

And I almost told him then. About the obituary. About my mom. Though he’d known for a long time that she had died. But then the door creaked above again, and Emerson called down. “Time’s up! I’m outta here, you two, and Gladys is coming with me!”

CHAPTER 22

PIRATES ON THE BRAIN

I was heading back to my cabin when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and there was Naomi.

“Turtle,” she said. “You okay?”

I’d been afraid she was mad at me, but to my relief, she didn’t seem like it. Though she had a right to be.

“Yeah, it’s just. I dunno. Stuff.”

“Adam said you seemed upset.”

“Yeah, well.” I was still feeling kind of raw, but not ready to talk about it. “You heard about Constance?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I’m off the team. Confined to the ship. I mean, I know I screwed up, leaving you and Hadley exposed, and I’m . . . sorry.”

Naomi nodded. Letting it pass, but not really letting me off the hook.

“She’s lost it, Naomi. This is just vindictive. It’s totally unfair.”

“Yeah, that’s harsh.” She didn’t say but, but I could hear her think it. “So, how did it go with, ah . . .”

“With Kai?”

“That’s his name? The Normal guy?”

“Hey,” I said. “You got a minute? We could maybe go to the library?”

The library was where we used to meet up, Naomi and me. When we had secrets to tell. Not that I wanted to tell her everything right now. Or even hear everything she might want to say, especially if it was about Adam. But just sitting together, in the library, like we used to do . . .

When had we stopped doing that? Why didn’t we, anymore?

“Let’s,” she said. “I can’t right now, but . . . in an hour?”

I let out a breath, felt something tight inside me loosen up.

“Yes!”

THE LIBRARY USED to be full of Mer kids and Normal teachers and volunteers. But two years ago, after she’d cut us off from the web, Constance caught one of the teachers spying—taking pictures of us and posting them online. So Constance sent them all packing. We don’t need teachers anymore, she said. Or the navigator. Or the cooks, or the nurses, or the volunteers. She organized the Mer to do the work that Normals had done before.

We were all upset about it, but Constance held firm. It was about self-sufficiency, she said. The less we depended on the Normal world, the safer and freer our lives would be.

For a while after that, the state inspectors descended in droves. They weren’t crazy about what Constance had done, either. She had meeting after meeting with Juvenile Services in Austin, at the end of which she began restructuring the Mermaid from a group home for children to an “independent living contracted provider” for young adults. In other words: Soon, the Mermaid’s main purpose would be to teach us to live without state supervision and support.

After those meetings, Constance had said, “I asked them, ‘Can you do better than this?’ And they can’t. They know it. They’re all out of resources, stretched tighter than a drum. Besides, nobody can take care of you like I can.”

And apparently, she was right.

At the time, the plan was for us to study independently, but that had mostly fallen by the wayside. The books were still here—rows and rows of them, on tall shelves. But mostly, the library was deserted.

Except for Yuka. She came every day. Still studying to be an engineer.

Before the teachers left, hardly any of the Mer had big career plans. I mean, we were thirteen. Constance said that someday we could advance oceanography and marine biology like no Normals ever—but for now, she said, we had to concentrate on survival.

So we became welders, fishers, painters, carpenters, bakers, navigators. Janitors, hull-cleaners, scullery maids.

And also scavengers.

But Yuka, and a few others, held on to their Normal-world dreams.

I couldn’t see how the engineering thing was going to work for her. But so far, Constance hadn’t shut her down.

NAOMI AND I said hi to Yuka as we made our way to the far back table, the one we used to call ours. Yuka smiled and wiggled her fingers in a friendly wave.

It was quiet here, insulated from the usual din and clatter of life aboard ship. I smelled paper and varnish. I felt the rocking of the sea.

“So?” Naomi asked.

“I met him,” I said. “We mostly just . . . swam together, that’s all. But it was . . .”

“It was good?”

“Really good. He made a map for me. Like Daddy used to do. Except it was a pirate map.”

“A pirate map?”

I shrugged. “I dunno, it was just fun.”

“So, are you going to see him again?”

“Maybe.” I hoped so. He said we would. Said he’d leave a message on the buoy.

“But what if you’re caught?”

“What more can Constance do to me?” But her words echoed in my ears:

You’ve got to ask yourself how much you really want to be here.

But she wouldn’t.

Would she?

“She could, like, make me walk the plank,” I said.

Naomi snorted. “You’ve got pirates on the brain.”

“I mean like in those old vids we used to watch on weekends.”

“And then the alligators show up, and they’re really hungry.”

“Sploosh! I’m in the water.”

“It churns like crazy for a while—”

“And all that’s left of me is my plundersack.”

“And one big toe. It’s twitching, like a fat old sea slug, and a flounder snaps it up.”

“Oh, ick! Thanks a lot!”

Naomi was giggling.

“You’re having way too much fun with this,” I said. But it felt good to hear her laugh.

I looked over at Yuka to see if we were disturbing her, but it didn’t seem like it. She was still reading. Taking notes.

Naomi sighed. “I don’t know, Turtle. We can joke about it, but if you get caught again . . . I don’t know what she’ll do. Something’s going on with Constance.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“She says she’s just trying to keep us safe . . .”

“That, and she’s a control freak.”

“But she’s different lately. She’s, like, tense.”

“She’s always been tense.”

“Not this tense.”

Well, maybe not. Maybe just in the past couple of years.

Outside the library I could hear a faint hum of voices, thumps of footsteps, people going about their ordinary work.

“There’s a rumor going around,” Naomi said, “about money.”

“Money?”

“As in, our funds have all dried up.”

“What?”

“Cyrus says there are nav issues that aren’t getting fixed. Constance keeps putting them off. He says it’s been way too long since we’ve been in dry dock. And when Cyrus asks her about it, Constance just jollies him along.”

Wow, I’d been wondering about dry dock. And the barnacles were bad. And . . .

“What about Juvenile Services?” I asked. “Do they know about this?”

Naomi shrugged. “We’re passing inspections. Pretty sure. If we failed, Constance would be all over us.”

Good thing they didn’t send divers down for a look at the hull. If they’d seen what I saw . . .

“You know what she told me?” I said. “The first time I got in trouble? She said stuff was happening, stuff the rest of us know nothing about. She said she was trying to head off the worst of it, but she could only do it for so long.”

“What was she talking about?”

“I thought it had something to do with Maya. What’s happening with her breathing. But she’s better, now, right?”

Naomi nodded. “Yeah, she’s out of the tank. Breathing normally, pretty much.”

“And nobody else has breathing problems.”

“True.”

But they might. It could happen any time.

“I’m worried about you, Turtle. You’re not thinking of doing something crazy, are you?”

“Crazy, like what?”

“I don’t want to give you any ideas.”

“I already have ideas.”

“You’re going to sneak off the ship again, aren’t you?”

More than once. And not just for Kai.

I nodded.

“When?”

“Don’t know. I’ll try not to get caught, that’s all.”

Naomi was looking at me, biting her lower lip.

“What?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“No, what?”

“She’s leaving the ship on Wednesday,” Naomi said.

“Who? Constance?”

Naomi nodded.

“But . . .” Constance hardly ever left the ship.

“She’s got some kind of meeting on the island. I heard from Maya.”

“Then help me!” She pursed her lips.

“Please.”

She sighed again. “Just promise me you’ll be back in time for supper, or I’ll make you walk the plank myself.”

TWO DAYS LATER, when I looked up from polishing the railings, I noticed a small boat near the message buoy.

Could it be?

I’d checked for messages several times over the past few days, but nothing. With everything else that had happened, the night with Kai had begun to feel more and more distant, hard to believe. That he’d gone to the trouble of making that map for me. That he’d planned an adventure, the whole secret treasure thing. That we’d held hands, and the manta rays . . .

Sometimes I wondered: Had I dreamed it? ’Cause that’s what it felt like—some kind of daydream delusion. A fairy tale.

Now I ran to fetch my binoculars from my cabin and found a place on deck where I could be alone.

Oh, yes. The Pieces of Eight.

I had to put my binoculars down and breathe for a moment.

He came. All the way out here. Just for me.

I lifted the binoculars again, and . . . Wait—what was that? The Jolly Roger? Flying off the stern? In broad daylight?

What a goof. That guy is stark, raving bonkers! But still . . .

Adorable.

I bided my time and then, while the pod was having dinner, slipped into the water and swam out to the buoy. A silicone bag was stuck to it with a magnet. Inside, I found a waterproof pen and a note:

Avast ye matey! Saturday night, zero hundred hours. Map to come. RSVP.

Below, he gave me a choice of two boxes to check: Aye, aye, Cap’n, or, Nay, ye scurvy dog!

Would it be another shipwreck? And then, holding hands again, and . . .

Who knew what else?

I checked Aye, aye, Cap’n, sealed the note and pen inside the bag, and stuck it to the buoy.

CHAPTER 23

24 EAST PIN OAK CIRCLE

Wednesday morning, I dragged a shore boat onto the beach on the south side of Spoonbill Island.

It hadn’t been easy. I’d wanted to wear street clothes—look as Normal as possible, so, better to row than to swim. Naomi had helped by launching the inflatable and mooring it to the swim platform. But Olivia followed me around all morning, and I couldn’t shake her long enough to slip overboard unseen. At last, I gave up. I jumped into the boat practically right in front of her nose and headed for the island.

So much for not getting caught.

I couldn’t resist checking the buoy, but nothing was there. Not my RSVP. Not the map.

Did he get my message? I hoped so.

Now, hauling the boat up above the high tide line, I tried not to worry about Constance. She was going to do what she was going to do.

Still, it felt good to be out here, away from rules and spies and schedules. The Mer didn’t come to the island much anymore, and when we did, we were usually on some kind of mission. But with Constance off the ship for the day, I could relax about time. I breathed in deep, and stood for a moment, taking it all in.

The beach was packed with sunbathers and bright umbrellas. Kids ran screaming past with plastic shovels and buckets. Some people were picnicking. I could smell fish tacos and hotdogs and onion rings. Three teenage girls sat on the seawall, swinging their legs and licking drippy ice cream cones.

I climbed the steps over the seawall and struck off across the island to find East Pin Oak Circle.

If you stuck to Seawall Boulevard and the historic downtown neighborhoods, you could almost pretend the island wasn’t sinking. I mean, except for the seawall itself—which was fifteen feet tall—and the constant sounds of pumps and gurgling water.

They’d flooded the outlying areas first, where the ground was low and marshy and the houses far apart. When the water kept rising, they added new sections of wall, one by one, coming closer in to the higher, central part of the island. Sacrificing entire housing developments, like where Grandmother lived.

It was a desperate move to save what made Spoonbill Island iconic. The history. The beach. The quirky Spoonbill vibe. The university extension, the aquarium, the amusement park.

The tourist money.

The island was doomed, of course. Though maybe not for another decade or so. The islanders were hanging on for as long as they could, but everybody knew it wouldn’t last forever. Every year, the storm surges reached farther inland. Every year, the city brought in mountains of sand to replace what had been washed away.

But now, in early May, before the storms began, the party went on. Flocks of tourists drifted past buildings with quirky arches and frills painted in pastel colors: periwinkle, lilac, mint green, lemon. People crowded coffee shops and tiki bars; I breathed in the heavenly smells of freshly roasted coffee beans and coconut-fried shrimp as I passed. Families pedaled herds of bright-canopied surreys, jamming sidewalks and streets. Overhead, among the palm trees and soaring gulls, kites shaped like octopuses, squids, and jellyfish fluttered in the breeze.

If you really looked, though, you could see signs of surrender. Walking up through the old neighborhoods, I passed moss-carpeted roofs, peeling paint, and boarded-up windows. Downspouts rusted. Sidewalks cracked. Vines swallowed lawn ornaments, small trees, and, in a couple of cases, entire front yards.

At last, I came to a quaint, two-story Victorian, freshly painted yellow. 24 East Pin Oak Circle. A large pin oak stood in the middle of a lush, new-mown lawn. Primroses lined the front walk, roses climbed the fence, and geraniums bloomed in cheerful pots near the door.

For some reason, the flowers surprised me most. They didn’t say single guy to me. Though, wait—that was totally sexist. And I’d just assumed, for some reason, that Rav would be single. But he could be married, or living with someone. Or maybe he’d moved. Maybe I had the wrong address.

Just then, a screen door screeched, and a furry bullet came hurtling across the lawn.

“Atticus!” A woman’s voice. “Atticus, come here!”

A big orange cat streaked toward me, followed by a twenty-something woman wearing a cotton sheath and sandals. Her hair spread out in a curly halo around her head. And she was pregnant. Way pregnant.

It had been years, and her hair was a honey-chestnut color instead of plain light brown, and she’d ditched her old retro-punk look for pink-and-green flowers, and there was the baby bump . . .

But I knew her at once.

“Would you grab the cat for me?” she called. She was still running, but the cat had way outdistanced her.

I lunged for it as it passed, but it zigzagged away from me at the last moment and then zipped through the rose bushes, scrambled over the fence, and vanished.

“Shoot!” She bent over, hands on her belly, panting. “He thinks he’s an outside cat, but we want him in.”

Everything had gone blurry. I blinked to clear my eyes.

“We . . . ?” I began.

“Yeah, my husband . . .” She straightened. Turned toward me.

“You married Rav?” And changed her name. That’s why I couldn’t find her.

She wrinkled her forehead, puzzled.

“Grace,” I said.

I saw a flicker of confusion cross her face . . . and then, something else, as her glance slid down to my neck.

“Is it . . .” she said. “Turtle, is it you?”

I nodded.

A little gasp caught in her throat. “Turtle,” she said, and in a few quick steps, she took me in her arms and held me tight.

CHAPTER 24

MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH

She made tea in a chipped, blue ceramic pot and served it with honey in mismatched mugs the colors of flowers—violets, peonies, daffodils. She cleared a laptop off the kitchen table. “Have a seat,” she said.

I did.

A row of lavender plants in clay pots lined the windowsill, and three botanical-themed dish towels were framed and hanging on a turquoise wall. Rustic wood floors. Pastel rag rugs.

Shabby chic.

A pot of soup simmered on the stove, giving off a whiff of garlic and beans. I could hear birdsong outside the window and, from a nearby room, the clunk and swish of a washing machine, smelling faintly of soap and bleach. It was warm—they hadn’t turned on the air conditioning yet—but a ceiling fan wafted a thin breeze across my face, cooling the sweat.

“Cookies?” Grace asked.

“Yes, please.”

She arranged some snickerdoodles on a plate, set it on the faded, blue-check tablecloth, then sat down across from me.

Atticus, home from his adventure, jumped into my lap. I scratched behind his ears and he began to purr, a thrumming, liquid sound that vibrated all through me. I breathed in, and a deep sense of peace seeped down inside my bones. I rested my eyes on the familiar contours of Grace’s pretty face, knowing there were hard, unspoken things between us, things I wanted to know. But oh, how I’d missed her. I wanted to hang on to this moment as long as I could.

So, start with something easy. “Is Atticus the orange kitten? In the letter Abby sent?”

“Yeah, he was the only orange one. The others were—”

“Three calicos and a black.”

“How did you know?”

“Abby said.” It’s funny. Abby could be really bossy sometimes, but the letters she wrote were sweet.

Grace winced, put a hand on her belly.

“You okay?” I asked.

She smiled. Nodded. “You’re going to be Aunt Turtle.”

Aunt Turtle! I so wanted to be Aunt Turtle.

“When?”

“She’s due in two months.”

She. A little girl. My niece!

I never knew I wanted a niece before. But suddenly, out of nowhere, I couldn’t bear not to know this baby.

“Some of my friends say it’s not responsible for us to bring a baby into the world right now. With the climate and all, plus it’s so hard to make a living. But Rav and I figure we might as well hope, right?”

“Oh yeah. I am definitely pro-hope.”

Grace laughed. “I’m going to keep working as long as I can, though.”

“Where do you work?”

Turns out, she was a clerk in the gardening section of a big-box chain store. She’d graduated from a college back east with a degree in English, but had a hard time finding a good job in Texas. She’d settled for the clerking position, but then discovered she loved working with plants. Now, she was taking classes in horticulture. “Someday, I want to be a landscape architect,” she said, “but that’ll take years.”

A landscape architect. That fit, somehow. “Sounds like a good plan, though,” I said. Atticus pushed at my hand with his head, asking to be scratched some more.

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door,” Grace said. “Rav’s working part-time as a bicycle mechanic while he goes to law school, specializing in environmental.”

Wow, a garden store clerk and a part-time bicycle mechanic. That couldn’t pay much. There were probably some serious student loans. And when the baby came . . . My gaze flicked past the chipped crockery, the faded tablecloth, the unmatched chairs. This wasn’t shabby chic. This was strapped—and making the best of it.

I asked about Abby and found out she was a sophomore in college in Dallas. She was studying biology, hoping to get into vet school eventually.

Abby, a vet? Well, she was good with animals. I could see it. She had an air of confidence, and that would help—both with the pets and their owners. And, boy, she’d enjoy being a doctor—the one with the answers.

Aunt Beatriz and Felicia had moved to Oregon, Grace told me.

“Oregon?”

“Felicia’s always had a thing for the Pacific Northwest. She got a job in Eugene and, well, that’s where they are now.”

Meanwhile, Grandmother had put her things in storage and was living in a community for seniors near childhood friends in Montpelier, Vermont.

So that was Grandmother I’d found. But . . .

“Why Vermont?”

“She grew up there,” Grace said. “She wanted to see the leaves change in fall again. And the mountains and the snow. Did you know she used to ski race, cross-country?”

“No!”

But, Vermont. So far away! And Oregon. On the far, other side of the country. I’d been hoping to see them sometime.

“Rav and I helped Grandmother move out before the flooding,” Grace said, “but it was a mess. It came down to a last-minute scramble, and we didn’t get everything.”

“Wow.”

“And there was a screw-up with the piano. I still feel bad about that.”

I remembered it now, the octopus slinking into Grandmother’s sycamore piano. And what with the last-minute scramble, they must have missed Daddy’s watch.

“It took forever to find piano movers. And two days before the move, they bailed.”

“Ouch.”

“No kidding.”

“And . . . Daddy?” I asked.

Grace hesitated. “We haven’t heard from him.”

She picked up the teapot, topped off our cups. Looking down, she said, “You knew he . . . escaped?”

“I did.” I picked up a cookie. Bit into it.

Grace sipped at her tea. I couldn’t read her face.

The thing is, it was all because of me. Why we hid all those years. Why Daddy and Mama were arrested. It wasn’t my fault, but it was because of me.

“Somebody told me he might be on the island,” I said. “Daddy might.”

Grace turned to me, suddenly alert. “Really? Who said that?”

“Constance. On the Mermaid.”

“Well, he won’t come here. I mean, he’d move heaven and earth to see us, but he doesn’t want to get us in trouble. You know, aiding and abetting. So he has to stay away.”

It struck me, all at once: He’d move heaven and earth to see us . . .

“Why didn’t anybody move heaven and earth to see me?” I didn’t mean to say it. Not aloud, not yet. It just came out.

“What do you mean?”

I could drop it now, but I didn’t want to. I had to know.

“I mean, I realize you couldn’t actually come see me.” None of the families were allowed to visit the Mermaid. Or even call or text. Only paper, Constance said. “But everybody used to write me, and then you stopped. All of you.”

“I . . . we didn’t stop. You did.”

“What?”

“You stopped writing.”

“No, I didn’t. I mean, I know my letters weren’t much. I was so little. But—”

“Turtle, I loved your letters. And I loved writing you, too. It felt weird at first—ink and paper, all those stamps. But everybody got into it. I wrote you from college. Mama and Daddy wrote you from jail. I know they did. They loved your letters, too. And then, Mama—what happened—and Daddy’s escape . . .”

“And what? You forgot about me?”

“I was really . . . gutted, so maybe I didn’t write as often. But you stopped first.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I thought you just . . . wanted to move on with your life. Be a Mer, full-out.”

We stared at each other. Suddenly, I felt shaky. Like I was going to rattle apart.

“Look, it was a bad, bad time,” Grace said. “Things must have gotten lost. In the mail or . . . I don’t know. I was moving constantly then. Dorms and apartments, summers with friends—”

A door opened behind me. I turned to look.

A tall, good-looking South Asian guy. Curly hair. Thick eyebrows. One of those stubbly-beard-and-mustache features. Friendly, open, curious.

Rav?

He glanced at me, then moved to Grace, looking worried. He took her hand. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Rav,” she said, “this is Turtle!”

“Turtle!” He turned to me in surprise, and then his whole face lit up in a smile.

“Can you stay for supper, Turtle?” Grace asked. “Please?”

Supper. Uh-oh. What time was it? I looked around for a clock and found one on the wall, a silly thing with a spoon and a fork for hands. 4:30. I was late. Naomi would be waiting at five to sneak me back on board. I’d never make it.

I stood. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I have to go.”

“You’re welcome here anytime, Turtle,” Grace said. “I mean it. Please, promise you’ll come back!”

Things still felt a bit jagged between Grace and me, but I knew I never wanted her to be lost to me again.

“I will,” I said.

And I would. I couldn’t stand not to.

Rav drew Grace in close to him, and I could tell, somehow, that they had that thing together, that thing I’d felt with Kai, that electric thing. And I longed for that, too—now more than ever.

CHAPTER 25

ALL GOOD NEWS

By the time I heard the helicopter, I was nearly home.

It had been a rough trip back. The wind had picked up, the waves were streaming with foam, and the chop in the water made rowing twice as hard. I knew I was way late for Naomi, though I figured it didn’t matter anyway, because by now Olivia would have told Constance all about my not-so-clever escape, and Constance was going to kill me for sure.

But in some other part of my brain, the part that kept forgetting how screwed I was, I thought: What just happened? Seeing Grace again, after all this time. Knowing she was there, wanting to see me again. And she never forgot me, never stopped caring about me. And maybe Abby and Grandmother, too, and Aunt Beatriz and Felicia. And even Daddy . . .

It felt like the small, cramped world of the Mermaid had cracked open wide, and this huge, exciting life was out there, waiting.

It felt like anything could happen.

Even Kai.

Oh, what if . . . !

I rowed toward the buoy, a little way ahead. Hoping . . . And there it was. A sealed silicone bag.

I grabbed it, ripped it open. Unrolled the paper inside. Held it up to the light of the buoy.

Jolly Roger. Treasure chest. Compass rose.

The map.

He’d come back again. Just for me.

And I was all happy and fizzy, searching for the X that marked the spot, but a deep, thrumming sound in the air made me look up.

And that’s when I saw it—the helicopter.

It was just lights at first, coming near. They passed overhead and came to hover low above the Mermaid.

Landing.

ADAM APPEARED OUT of the shadows of the loading bay and helped me tie up. My muscles ached from rowing, and I was dying for a drink of water. The helicopter noises had stopped, but I could hear people calling out to one another and footsteps thundering.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Let’s go. Naomi’s saved us a spot.”

“A spot for what?”

“The announcement.”

“What announcement?”

“Just come!”

We beelined up the stairs but got caught in a crush of Mer all heading in the same direction. Ahead of us . . . a Normal, wearing a uniform, like a policeman or a guard.

People were talking, loud, all on top of one another. Over and over again, I heard the word announcement.

Was this what Constance had been talking about? Stuff is happening, stuff you know nothing about . . . One day it’s all going to hit.

We inched forward in the crowd until the policeman-or-guard disappeared behind us. Soon, the arch of the amphitheater doorway rose above us. Then we were through the bottleneck and into the wide, bright room. I looked for Naomi and spotted her and Hadley in the pool. We jumped in, made our way toward them.

“There you are,” Naomi said. Sounding relieved.

Adam leaned in to her, said something in her ear.

They were tight, those two. Whatever else was happening.

On the pool deck, two Normal guys in white coats were talking, their voices amped up loud. An older one—stoop-shouldered, short gray hair. And a younger one who was movie-star cute.

“Who are they?” I asked Naomi.

“Doctors. Something about our gills.”

Uh-oh.

“Is Maya . . .” I began.

“She’s fine. I don’t think it’s about her. It’s about all of us.”

All of us?

I looked around. “Where’s Constance?”

Naomi shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”

“But—”

“Shh, Turtle. Listen!”

“It will not be painful,” the old doctor was saying. “Not at all. Just a small black pill every day for a week, and then a simple outpatient procedure. The stitches will dissolve by themselves.”

I turned to Naomi. “What is he—”

“Shh!”

“. . . as if your gills had never existed,” the younger doctor was saying. “Think of it as a reset, a reset back to Normal.”

What? A reset? It hit my body with a jolt.

Normal?

“This has been years in development,” the older doctor said. “It’s the breakthrough we’ve been searching for.”

“What do you mean, we?” someone called out. “We don’t want this at all.”

“We like being Mer!”

“There’s nothing wrong with us. We don’t need to be fixed!”

“Take your stupid breakthrough and shove it!”

“You don’t understand,” the younger doctor said. “This is all good news!”

The place erupted; suddenly everyone was shouting at once. Voices echoed off the walls. The overhead lights struck sparks in the pool and splintered in the window glass. I stood blinking. All the crazy stuff that had happened that day washed over me in a bone-deep body-wave, leaving me wobbly and exhausted.

A reset. Back to Normal. What did that even mean?

“You’ve got to decide now,” the older doctor said. “When Constance returns, it’ll be too late. So, it’s yes or no. Mer or Normal.”

As if we could ever decide such a thing.

“Naomi,” I said, “what will you do?”

She turned on me, astonished. “How can you ask?”

But I could ask. I was asking.

Decide.

In the surge of noise and confusion, I couldn’t get my thoughts to line up clearly.

I turned around in a circle, taking it in. Our whole world, in this room, on this little ship, all alone on the Gulf of Mexico. All alone out to the far, curving edge of the planet.

And I felt such an upwelling of love. Even for the people I wasn’t all that crazy about. I loved them for being Mer.

But I wanted to sip tea with Grace again in her cottage on the hill. I wanted to see Abby, and Grandmother, and Daddy. I wanted to hang out with friends on the seawall, slurping ice cream and dangling my feet. I wanted to eat coconut-fried shrimp at a tiki bar. I wanted to go visiting somewhere, somewhere that wasn’t Texas. I wanted to see leaves change in the fall. I wanted to climb a mountain, ski down a hill, make a snowman. I wanted to go to Oregon, or maybe Portugal, or maybe Japan.

I wanted . . .

My fingers reached into my pocket, touched the map in its plastic jacket.

A promise. Holding hands. Another kiss . . .

Adam looked back, pointed to the rear of the pool. I turned and saw three or four Mer getting out of the water, lining up on the pool deck. People were shouting, booing, calling them traitors, begging them to stay. And now the doctors were leading them through the back doorway . . .

I pulled the map out of my pocket. Took it out of its silicone bag. Unfolded it.

Skull and crossbones. Compass rose.

Yo ho ho. That bad-boy smile . . .

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath in, then out. For a moment, I felt dizzy. The room dissolved, and the whole of my dim, inner spaces filled up with the bright memory of Kai.

Our lips are pressed together. His fingers brush against my arm, setting off a ripple of chills.

Wait!

I opened my eyes and began to wade back through the water, through the din, bumping into elbows and knees and hips, until I came to the steps at the shallow end of the pool.

I climbed them, ran across the pool deck, opened the door. Behind me, I heard someone calling my name, and then a scattering of boos. But I was gone now, out of the room, I was racing up the stairs. Above, on the flying bridge, I could see the helicopter, hear the whop, whop, whop of its rotors.

I climbed the ladder. The wind from the helicopter beat at me. Its door was closing . . .

“Wait!” I called. I ran toward it, waving my arms.

“Wait for me!”

PART II:

AFTER

In the early days, they vowed to use it only for curing disease, and never in ways that could be inherited. And it worked spectacularly well. So well that they began to use it for preventing disease and passing it along the human germline. Diabetes, sickle cell, some kinds of heart disease and blindness, certain cancers . . . just gone. After that, it was cosmetic changes, and strength, and bone mass—all carefully within the range of what’s considered normal. Transhuman is off the table, they said. It’s the last red line. We’ll never cross it.

But someone did.

And, once the genie was out of the bottle, they couldn’t put it back.

—Dr. Nancy Costigan, Out of the Bottle: A Brief History of the Mer

CHAPTER 26

HOLD ON

SATURDAY, MAY 8

“Oh, look, she’s done it now.”

“Take the cup away; I told you she wasn’t ready.”

“Sit up, dear. You’re falling off.”

“Hand me that pillow; I’ll prop her up.”

Someone is leaning in toward me. A woman. Her hair, stiff with spray, tickles my face. Her breath smells of stale coffee. She’s shoving something soft against my side. There’s a wet spot on my pants, near my knee. On the floor, a puddle: something dark.

I blink and lift my head. I’m sitting on a bench next to the hairspray woman. It feels a little tippy, the bench. On the other side of me, another woman. Hoop earrings. Bright green blouse. Across from us there’s another bench with people on it, facing us. An older man. A young guy who looks familiar. I know him, from the Mermaid, but his name isn’t surfacing at the moment. A girl, also a Mer. Wait, Yuka? Yes. It is. They’re all gripping paper cups that send up steam into the air. Coffee. Green blouse woman is holding two paper cups—one empty, one full.

Hairspray woman waves her cup in front of me. “They’ll get you another one, dear. When you’re awake enough.”

I don’t feel awake enough. For anything. The room is swimming a little, and I can’t seem to remember why I’m here.

I let my gaze float across the room. Fading, institutional green walls. Yellowing ceiling tiles. Cracked lino floor. Watermarks on the wall. Deferred maintenance all over the place.

We must be on Spoonbill Island.

A nurse comes in. At least, I think she’s a nurse. Blue nurse jacket and a nametag. Pleated skirt, not just scrub pants. Around Constance’s age. Acting like she’s in charge. She motions to the guy across from me and leads him out of the room. Through the glass part of the door, I read backward the words Outpatient Recovery.

So, that must be us. Outpatients who are recovering. The door opens again; the nurse returns with someone else. A gray-haired man.

He’s drooling.

I reach my fingers to my chin. Wet. I wipe the drool away. Or maybe it’s coffee, which I seem to have spilled earlier.

The old man has a large bandage on his cheek. Hairspray woman has a large bandage on her arm. Yuka has a large bandage all the way around her neck, and so does the boy whose name hasn’t come to me yet, and this sparks something in my muzzy mind.

I reach my fingers up to my throat. Something rough there. Round-the-neck bandage.

And I remember.

My gills.

They’re gone.

What have I done?

A total reset.

A wave of sickening dread washes over me. I feel a panicky flutter in my chest. I breathe in deep, just to make sure I still can.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Okay. Seems fine. Doesn’t hurt. Nothing wheezy, nothing phlegmy, nothing raspy. It’s just . . . normal.

I’m Normal now, I tell myself. Normal.

And then Kai swims into my head.

That game little smile when he was running out of air. The tender way he says Turtle. The treasure map he made just for me.

The kiss.

I can feel my face growing warm. I brush my fingers across my neck bandage again, just to make sure I’m not dreaming. I probe the cloth on both sides to see if I can feel the gill ridges. But no.

Normal.

I wonder what he’ll say when I tell him.

But wait. We were supposed to meet. And I missed it.

Yuka is looking at me. Not in a rude way—not staring—just steadily looking. She smiles, touching the bandage on her neck. My mind is beginning to clear, and I remember. She came away with us. With the doctors.

They never said the word mistake, but that’s really what they meant. Our whole lives were a big, fat mistake, and they could fix us.

Yuka stayed in the clinic bunkhouse last night, before the surgery. Now she’s a pariah, too.

The room sways again for a moment.

Steady, Turtle.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

I’ve done it now. There’s no going back. I’ve cut myself off from my old life, my old friends, and I don’t know if Kai will want to be with me, and I can’t make out the shape of what’s to come.

The panicky flutter again.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

“Turtle? Do you want to try again?” The nurse stands before me with a cup of steaming coffee.

I nod, reach out both hands, and clasp them around the warm cup. Hold on, I tell myself. You can do this.

Just hold on.

CHAPTER 27

A FRIEND

“Turtle, your friend is here.” I look up to see the nurse in the doorway.

“Friend?” I ask.

The nurse gives me a worried look. “To take you home,” she says.

I know I didn’t put down a friend’s name on the form they gave me. Just left it blank. There was an argument going on with some lawyers at the time; probably nobody bothered to check. The form had said Preferably not a Mer, and I’d thought about putting down Grace’s name, except . . . Well. I hadn’t talked to her about Changing. It seemed better to tell her in person. Just go there and throw myself on her mercy. You’re welcome here anytime, she had said.

The nurse is still looking at me. “Dear, are you all right? Do you need some help?”

“I’m good,” I say. Carefully, I put down the coffee—which has gone cold and stale. I set my feet solidly on the floor, but the nurse is right there, taking my arm. I lean forward to shift my weight. Stand up.

Not too much dizziness. I think it’s okay.

A friend, though. Nobody knows I’m here. Do they?

A crazy hope blooms in my chest, spreads until it’s warming my face. Kai. It can’t be. That’s ridiculous. How would he know? But what if . . . ?

“Let’s see how you’re walking, dear,” the nurse says. I nod a goodbye to Yuka, but she’s holding out something, a square of folded paper. I take it, puzzled. “Let’s get together sometime,” she says.

Yuka and I were in different pods and had different circles of friends. But there’s something, I don’t know, real about the way she’s smiling at me now. Something straight and openhearted. In my new life, I’ll probably need all the friends I can get.

I nod, stuff the paper in my pocket, take a few wobbly steps toward the door. From the next room, I hear a familiar voice.

Adam.

With the nurse still holding my arm, I make my way between the benches. And then, through the doorway, I see him standing there. He smiles at me, kind of uncertain, like he doesn’t know how I’m going to react. I’m so used to seeing him on the Mermaid, but here . . . He’s wearing clean blue jeans, and a plaid cotton scarf around his neck, and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt. Actual loafers on his feet, the ones he bought for his hearing. His hair is neat, combed into place. He seems taller than how I usually think of him. And at his feet . . . my duffle bag.

“Hey,” I say. I don’t actually intend to smile, but I can feel a smile spreading across my face.

“Hey,” he says.

The nurse lets go of my arm. She’s watching us. It could be my imagination, but it seems like her eyes linger on his scarf. She turns, goes to a desk, and begins clicking through tabs on a computer screen.

“You didn’t put a name down on the form,” the nurse says.

“I . . . I must have missed that part. It was all . . . kind of rushed. You know?”

“Not your fault, dear. We should have caught it.” She turns and looks me dead in the eye. “He is your friend, though. Right?”

“Yes!” I say.

“What’s his name?”

She’s testing me. “Adam,” I say.

“And where is he taking you?”

“Um.” I glance at Adam, trying to read a clue in his expression. Why is he here? Where does he think I’m going?

“Not to that boat,” the nurse says. “The Mermaid.”

“No!” Adam and I both say it at once.

“Then where?”

“To Grace’s house,” I say. “My sister.”

“Where does she live?”

I give her the address.

“She’s expecting you?”

Think, Turtle. Get that rusty mind of yours working. “Yes, she’s, um, expecting. She couldn’t come, herself.”

Adam nods. As if he knew this all along. The nurse opens her mouth to speak, and then apparently changes her mind. I can’t tell if she believes me or not.

“Deborah?” A younger nurse peeks through another doorway. “Could you help me with this . . . ?”

The nurse named Deborah says, “I’ll be right there.” Sighing, she hands me two pill bottles, an appointment card, and an information sheet. She peppers me with instructions—take a black pill every morning for the next five days, don’t do any strenuous activity for a couple of weeks, take off the bandage in two weeks, take two pink pills in case of breath-panic, make sure not to forget the followup appointment because the doctor’s based in Houston and comes in only a couple times a month. She hands me a screen to sign.

I stagger a tiny bit when I hand her back the screen. Adam puts the pills and information sheet in my duffle. He picks it up and takes my arm. Deborah looks at me long and hard. “Sweetheart,” she tells me, “you can apply for an overnight bunk again, if—”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Really.”

She looks like she wants to keep me here, wants to ask more questions. But then the younger nurse appears in the doorway again, and Deborah’s off to help her, and we’re out of the clinic and away.

CHAPTER 28

NOT REALLY ALL THAT FINE

“So,” adam says, “your sister knows you’re coming.” He says it like a regular sentence, but there’s definitely a question in there.

I shrug. “I might have fibbed a little.”

“That’s what I thought,” he says. He flicks me a sideways glance. He smiles—that dry, half-laughing look of his—not like the uncertain smile back in the clinic.

It’s late afternoon, and we walk on the shaded side of the street as much as possible, though sunlight beats down between the trees and houses. The air vibrates with the hum of insects, and my face and my back are already damp with sweat. My legs are mostly working okay, but I’m still a little wobbly.

“So, you said your sister is . . .” Adam leaves it open.

“Expecting. And she is expecting,” I say. “Though not actually expecting me. But she said I’m welcome, anytime.”

Adam nods. “Well, that’s good, anyway.” But he looks doubtful.

We come to an intersection, and I hesitate. Which way? I can’t remember.

Adam pulls a device from his pocket.

“Wait a minute. Is that Gladys?” I ask.

“Emerson let me borrow her. What’s that address again?”

He keys it in, then moves as if he’s going to take my arm, but then reconsiders. “I think it’s that way, Turtle.”

Maybe it’s the drugs, but there’s something oddly comforting about just shuffling along here beside Adam. I mean, I’m relaxing inside, feeling all warm and golden. The thought of Kai had set my heart to pounding, though if he’d come to fetch me, it would have been . . . I don’t know. More exciting, definitely, but harder to navigate. But with Adam . . .

First of all, it’s astonishing he showed up at all. I thought nobody on the Mermaid knew when and where the surgery was going to happen. I figured I could walk to Grace’s myself. And yet, poof!, here he is, and he just . . . sets off walking beside me. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Also, he’s asking no questions. Giving me space. Adam has always had the gift of quiet.

But I feel like I should explain a little about Grace. About why I connected with her in the first place. So I tell him I went looking for my family earlier that week. “I just missed them,” I say. “I mean . . . they’re my family. It just suddenly seemed so weird that we grew up together, when I was young, and now I don’t see them at all. Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”

He touches my arm. “Er, I think we go this way now, Turtle. Here we go.” We tack to starboard.

“Don’t you miss your family?” I ask.

“I can’t remember my biologicals, but . . .”

“Well, then, your fosters.”

“Sure, I miss them, but . . . Turtle, you know how it is. They moved on. Had to.”

He smiles at me again, and this time, it’s a sad smile. A little shaky and wounded. And all at once, with a jolt, I wonder: Is Adam sad?

“Grace was glad to see me, Adam. Really glad.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” he says. Then laughs. Like: Just kidding. Like: No big deal.

“Naomi . . .” I begin. “She’s not, like, mad or anything.” Now I’m doing it: asking questions like they’re sentences.

“Mad? Hell no. But I think she’s really . . . sad. Really missing you a lot.”

There it was again: Sad.

I watch him, looking for a sign. Are he and Naomi . . . together? It had seemed like they were, or maybe heading in that direction. But his face doesn’t give it away.

“To tell the truth,” Adam says, “Constance doesn’t know I’m here. She’s forbidden us from having any contact with you and the others who Changed.”

“Wait. No contact at all? Then how did you get here? How did you get my stuff?”

“Naomi packed your duffle. Emerson dropped me off.”

“So I can’t go back to the Mermaid? Even to visit?”

He shakes his head.

All at once I feel wobbly, again, and kind of sick to my stomach. A question bubbles up, not for the first time:

What have I done?

THE LAST TIME I walked up this hill, it didn’t faze me, but when we reach Grace and Rav’s street, I’m really dragging. Deborah-the-nurse had said not to do anything strenuous for a couple of weeks, but it somehow didn’t compute that just walking up a stupid hill would count as “strenuous.”

It does. My left side has a massive stitch in it, and my legs feel like they’re made of concrete. Adam has taken my arm and is halfway supporting me when we head up the driveway.

And now I see Grace at the front door, watching. She takes a few steps toward us. “Turtle?” she says.

“Hi, Grace.”

She hurries down the walk to meet us. “Turtle, are you all right?”

I nod to her—I’m fine—but I’m not really all that fine, as it turns out, because my knees choose that moment to buckle, and then I’m sitting on the ground.

They’re talking over my head. I hear operation. I hear gills. I hear Bring her inside. And then Adam picks me up—just like that—and carries me into the house. Like I weighed no more than, like, a couple of lunker mackerels.

He sets me down on the couch, and Grace appears with an armload of pillows. And I want to ask her if it’s okay if I stay for a while, but she’s disappeared again, and so has Adam. My eyelids drift shut. I drag them open. They shut again. The air from a fan cools my face. I hear Grace’s and Adam’s voices coming near. Something about pills, a follow-up appointment. I smell cinnamon tea. I drag my eyelids open one more time, just wide enough to see that they’re both safely here in the room with me. Atticus jumps up on my lap, and I scratch his ears. He starts to purr.

Something has been fluttering around in my mind, and now it finally alights: Adam said Constance doesn’t know he’s here with me. He just came.

If she finds out, she’ll call down the consequences.

And I probably wouldn’t have made it here without him. I should say thank you. I really should.

But then my eyelids shut again, and that’s just it for me, for a while.

CHAPTER 29

PINK PILLS

We’re swimming underwater, my friends and me, just coasting. Fronds of rippling seaweed, shoals of silvery fish, shafts of wavy blue light. I feel the tug and flow of the current, its tangled, warm-and-cool strands. A sea turtle appears beside me, and then another, and now three more. They cruise in and out among us, playing.

A shadow passes swiftly overhead.

It’s the Mermaid. Under sail.

All at once, my friends are swimming past me, toward the Mermaid—leaving me behind. The turtles scatter. I stroke hard to catch up to my friends, but they shrink in the darkening distance.

Until they’re gone, and I’m alone.

I’M SUCKING IN air, dragging it in hard and fast, but I can’t get enough.

I can’t breathe.

I twist, sit up, look around me.

It’s dark. I’m alone.

Windows and walls. Ceiling and floor.

Where am I?

Breathe, Turtle. Try to breathe.

And it comes to me: Grace’s house. On a couch in the great room.

I’ve Changed.

Thumping heart, sharp pain in the middle of my chest, knives tearing at my lungs. I’m still sucking in air, but not enough.

Shove the covers aside. Feet on the floor. Head for the kitchen. Turn on the tap; plug the sink.

Water.

I put my face in it. There’s no life in this water, only chemicals, dead and flat. Still, it’s water. I breathe in.

Coughing. Gasping for air.

“Turtle?”

It’s Grace.

“Turtle, what are you doing?”

I choke out, “I can’t breathe.”

“Oh,” she says, “Adam told me this might happen.” She shuts off the water. Leads me back to the couch. “Just wait here, don’t do anything. Be right back.”

I close my eyes and catch the last little bit of the dream again—my friends, swimming away.

I suck in air. Those knives are still tearing at my lungs, shredding them.

What have I done to myself?

What have I done?

I’m about to head back to the sink, but here’s Grace again.

Glass of water, two pink pills.

Oh, right. Breath-panic, the nurse said. Pink pills.

“Take them,” Grace says.

I do.

My breath is still rasping at my lungs, scraping them raw. Hurry up, pills!

But it’s easing, the pain in my chest.

Okay. No more lung-knives. Breathing in and out. Nothing wheezy, nothing phlegmy, nothing raspy.

Slowly, the room comes into focus. Clay pots on the windowsill. Blue-checked tablecloth. Rag rugs.

What a fuss over nothing. What a drama queen.

“Sorry,” I say.

Grace smiles at me. “It’s completely normal, Turtle. They said this might happen.”

Normal. That’s pretty funny.

She pulls up the blanket, tucks me in. “Sure you’re all right?”

I nod.

But I’m not sure. To tell the truth, I’m not sure of anything right now.

CHAPTER 30

TEETERING

I’ve been dreaming, again, but a good dream this time, because I can feel the kiss on my lips when I wake. My fingertips feel extra-sensitized, almost electric, like they’ve been caressing someone’s face or hair, but I can’t remember who.

Kai. It must have been Kai.

I don’t open my eyes, not yet. I hold the dream close.

But now I hear footsteps and the clink of dishes. And something is missing: the murmuring voice of the sea. The feel of it, rocking me.

I open my eyes. Morning sunlight spills across the couch where I lie. I smell lavender, coffee, toast. I sit partway up, take in the houseplants in clay planters, the turquoise walls, the botanical dishcloths.

Grace’s house. Clearly, I slept on the couch all night.

After the panic attack.

I check my breathing.

In.

Out.

In.

Okay. No more lung-knives. Nothing wheezy, nothing phlegmy, nothing raspy.

So far.

I can hear Grace’s voice now, and someone else. A guy’s voice. Rav. I can’t make out every word they’re saying. Something about the baby, and money. Something about Adam going back to the Mermaid.

A sudden surge of loneliness threatens to drown me. I never told him thank you.

I touch the bandage at my neck. So strange and scary not to feel gills there.

I breathe in again, fill my lungs all the way down.

They’re fine.

I hope.

I’m Normal now. Or close enough.

Like my sisters. Like my parents.

Like Kai.

Now we can be together.

If he wants to be together.

I lie back down, breathing, teetering on the edge between two worlds. I want to linger here, in this in-between space, where anything is possible. Just one minute more.

Rav’s voice: “. . . she’s kind of a lot, right now, with the baby on the way.”

Grace’s voice: “She’s my sister.”

Rav’s voice: “And I’m totally fine with it, Grace. Just saying, what if she needs help we can’t give her?”

I sit up.

Footsteps, coming my way. “Turtle? You awake?” It’s Grace. And then Rav appears beside her. They’re both smiling. Like they couldn’t be happier I’m here.

Breathe, Turtle.

Rav reaches out a hand to help me up. I take it. Smile up at him, pretending I didn’t hear what he just said.

But I can’t help asking myself, again:

What have I done?

CHAPTER 31

EVEN IF IT ISN’T TRUE

They do their best to make me feel welcome.

Rav says he’s been worried about leaving Grace alone at night while he’s in class. So he’s glad I’ll be here with her.

Grace says they’ve been worried about money. The sooner she can get her horticulture degree, the sooner she can start earning more than minimum wage. And with the baby coming . . . she can do some of her courses online, but not all. They’ll need help with the baby, which they can’t afford. If I’d be willing . . .

“Of course,” I say. “Please let me help.”

“You’re a dream come true,” Grace says. And I love her for saying it. Even if it isn’t true.

She says I can stay as long as I need to, as long as I want. The nursery will be free for a while; the baby will sleep in Grace’s and Rav’s bedroom.

And it’s perfect, really. Or it would be, if only . . .

What if the panic comes again? And what if it’s more than just panic? What if something’s really wrong?

LATER THAT MORNING, Grace sets me up in the smallish room upstairs that’s going to be the nursery someday. There’s a narrow, fold-up bed and a side table, and that’s really it for furniture. The baseboards are freshly painted white, and somebody’s made it partway around the dark blue walls with a cheerful coat of periwinkle. Paint cans, masking tape, and a couple of rollers and brushes sit on tarps on the floor.

“Sorry about the mess,” Grace says.

“No, it’s great,” I say.

And it is. There’s a tall window facing the front yard, where, just outside, a breeze is ruffling the leaves of the pin oak tree. Sunlight streams into the room and dapples the walls in rippling waves, like how light moves underwater. The window is open, “to ventilate the last of the paint fumes,” Grace says, but I don’t smell paint at all. I smell flowers. I walk to the window and look down, and, sure enough, there’s a honeysuckle vine climbing a trellis just below.

“We’ll finish it up as soon as we can,” Grace says. “There’s an old lamp and a mirror in the garage. We just need a pair of curtains.”

The only place I’ve stayed since the Mermaid was the bunkhouse of the rundown clinic where I had the surgery. It felt lonely there, on the hard, plastic-covered mattress up near the ceiling, after years of bumping up against my friends all night in the sleeping pool. Even though Yuka and a couple of others were in there with me.

I’ll still miss my friends at night, but this is light-years better than the bunkhouse.

“I really love it, Grace,” I say.

Her face lifts a little. I can tell she’s pleased.

I unzip my duffle and begin to put away my clothes in the floor-to-ceiling shelves in the tiny closet. Everything’s gonna fit just fine. I’ve got a pile of neck scarves, the floppy hat, some cotton tank tops and pairs of shorts, two dresses, a pair of jeans, a sweater, a fleece, a rain jacket, five bathing suits, and bras and panties for a week. Plus a pair of sandals, my all-toes sneakers, and the flipflops I’m wearing. Down at the bottom of the duffle: my diveskins, my goggles, my fins.

I sigh. Will I ever wear them again?

But thanks, Naomi.

“Be right back,” Grace says, and heads out the door.

I put my pills and clinic paperwork on the side table—four more of the black pills left to go, and a bunch of the pink ones. My stack of letters comes out next. I set them on a shelf next to the tank tops and slip the clinic card under the shoelaces, so it won’t get lost. I stash the rolled-up map from Kai far back on one of the shelves, because it’s private. And I’m thinking that’s it for the duffle, but then, wait a minute . . .

I reach into my pocket. Find the folded paper Yuka gave me. When I open it, there’s just a scrawled number. Looks like a phone number. I slip it in with the letters.

I don’t have a phone. And Yuka and I were never close, not really. I’ll borrow Grace’s phone and call her when things are more settled.

Grace comes back holding a little purse. “You’ll need this,” she says. “I put in a few bills, just in case. And you might need more clothes, too. I mean, these are great, but, maybe some different kinds of things? I’ve got a bunch that don’t fit me anymore. We can go through them later.”

“Wow, thanks,” I say.

After she leaves, I stare into the closet for a minute. You might need some more clothes. We didn’t actually need very many clothes on the Mermaid. We didn’t actually go anywhere very often. But here . . . What will I do to need different kinds of clothes? Will I eat in restaurants? Go out for coffee? Go to movies? Parties? Concerts?

Maybe with Grace, or Abby?

Maybe with Kai?

I hope!

I didn’t mind looking a little alt, a little waterworld, before. Making a statement. Like when Naomi and I went to the courthouse. But now, I want to belong.

Even more: I want to look nice for Kai.

Atticus pads into the room, beelines for my duffle, jumps in.

Wait a minute. How could I forget?

I reach inside, but Atticus bats at my hand. “Ouch!” I evict him and, in the far, bottom corner, find a knot of cloth.

Ah, the dive watch.

I untie the scarf. Open the leather case. Take out the watch and run my thumb across the glass.

I really ought to show it to Grace. Maybe give it to her—a thank you for taking me in, letting me stay. But . . .

Nobody’s actually seen him, Constance told me. It’s only rumors.

What if they’re true? What if I could find him?

But how?

No idea.

I put the watch back in its case, tie it up with the scarf again, and stow it under the other scarves. My legs feel wobbly, and my mind’s gone to fog. Just unpacking has completely exhausted me.

I curl up on the bed and go right to sleep.

And wake up a little while later.

Because I can’t breathe.

CHAPTER 32

SOAKED

Feet on the floor. Into the hallway, to the bathroom.

Plug the bathtub drain. Turn on the tap. Climb in, lie down flat. Face to the spigot, where the water is.

Breathe.

Coughing.

Choking.

“Turtle?”

It’s Grace.

“Did you take the pink pills, honey?”

Pills?

I need water. Face back into the flow.

Coughing, again. Knife blades in my lungs.

Grace tugs at me, pulls me to look at her.

Glass of water.

Pink pills.

“Take them. Now,” she says.

I do.

Grace turns off the tap; I turn it back on.

She sighs. “All right, Turtle. Just . . . keep your face in the air, okay?”

I scoot down into the rising tub water until it’s up to my ears.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

The water makes me light. It lifts the nightgown away from my body, makes it go ripply and soft. The world goes quiet, except for sloshing sounds and a thin, high ringing in my ears.

I can feel the tight, wound-up places inside me slacken. The pain in my chest is easing.

Breathe.

No more lung-knives. Nothing wheezy, nothing phlegmy, nothing raspy. Only the prickly smell of chlorine in my nose.

Slowly, the room comes into focus. Deep blue walls, antique mirror, frilly curtains on the windows.

Grace. Sitting beside me on the edge of the tub.

“Hey,” she says.

All of a sudden, I realize what I must look like to her. Lying in a full bathtub, in the nightie she lent me.

Kind of a lot, Rav said.

No kidding. I’m a mess.

Why would Kai want anything to do with me?

I turn off the water. Unplug the drain. My hair’s sticking to my head; the wet cotton feels clammy and cold.

“Better?” Grace asks.

I nod.

She leans over, gives me a hug.

“Sorry I forgot about the pills,” I say.

“Yeah, well, nobody can think straight in the middle of a panic attack. Which is not your fault, Turtle. It’s not.”

But it sort of is. I mean, I chose. “I’ll try to remember, next time. I’ll leave the pill bottle in the bathroom, just in case.”

“Maybe there won’t be a next time.”

Yeah, maybe.

Grace starts to say something else, then stops.

“What?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing, never mind.”

“No, what?”

“Well,” Grace says, and it comes out as a sigh. “Maybe Rav doesn’t need to know about this?”

The fear’s like a kick in the gut. If Rav doesn’t want me here . . . what will I do?

“If it happens again, we’ll tell him. But maybe just this one time?”

“Okay,” I say. “I won’t tell.”

“Look, why don’t we call the clinic in the morning?” Grace says. “At least talk to them. Maybe they can get you in early. Meanwhile, I’ll find you another nightie. You’re soaked!”

THAT NIGHT, I’M afraid to go to sleep. Those panic attacks—they all came while I was sleeping. I lie awake for hours, reading, trying to stave it off. But eventually, sleep finds me. I come to in the morning with lights blazing and my book face down on the floor.

No bad dreams.

No panic attacks.

Grace calls the clinic, puts her device on speaker. They say I should keep the appointment I already have, two weeks from now, the next time the surgeon’s in from Houston. The nurse doesn’t sound all that worried. A few of the other former Mer are reporting some discomfort, she says, but the doctors are sure it’s just temporary.

Some discomfort?

You have no idea.

Grace protests that I was really hurting, but the nurse reassures her. It’s expected, she says. People have varying pain thresholds; there are outliers on both ends of the curve. The doctors have researched this transition for years. Everyone’s fine.

Yeah, okay. But something’s still bothering me. The doctors said it wouldn’t be painful. They were really clear about that. It makes me wonder, now, if they really knew what they were doing.

And that excuse about varying pain thresholds?

Surely you jest.

GRACE SETS UP a vid call with Abby, Grandmother, Aunt Beatriz, and Felicia. It’s kind of teary at first, with funny little hitches and pauses in the conversation when people are sniffling or blowing their noses. I’m feeling a little choked up myself. Abby questions my decision to Change, but everybody hushes her, and she drops it after a minute or two. Hearing their voices—so familiar, after all this time—warms me somewhere deep. I’d almost forgotten how much I missed them.

I tell them that I wrote to them, and they say they wrote, too, and everybody’s confused about what happened to the letters. It was a sad and crazy time back then, and nobody was on top of things. In the end, we all promise to stay in touch. Aunt Beatriz and Felicia say they’ll fly out to Texas in the fall, and Grandmother says she’s not traveling much anymore but she hopes to come visit before too long.

Later that day, the breath-panic hits me again. This time when I’m wide awake. It’s not as bad, though, and I get to the pink pills in time. Before I jump fully dressed into the bathtub. Before the lungknives start sawing away.

So maybe that’s good news?

Who knows?

But it turns out, there’s another problem, too.

CHAPTER 33

THE WEIRD OUTSIDER THING

“Did you have school on the Mermaid?” Grace asks. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, taking a tea-and-cookies break.

I bite into a snickerdoodle, remembering. “For a while,” I say. “I mean, we had classes and desks and everything. We did math and reading and stuff.”

“So, like history? Chemistry?”

“Um, yeah.”

“How far did you get in math? Was it like calculus or more like algebra?”

I look at her, puzzled. Calculus? Really?

“I dunno. We, um, calculated stuff. I mean, after the teachers left, we—”

“Wait. ‘After the teachers left’?”

“Constance kicked them off. Like, two years ago. She caught one of them spying, and—”

“She kicked them off? So you didn’t have school at all after that?”

“Constance set up independent study modules. Oceanography, meteorology, agriculture, and stuff like that. There was actually lots of math and science, but I don’t know how you’d sort it all into, you know, school subjects like they have here.”

“What about literature? Did anybody teach you that?”

“Some.”

“Like what?”

I take a sip of tea. Swallow. Look up. “Grace, what are we doing, here? Why do you want to know?”

“It’s just . . . I’m worried. You need an education to get by, to make a living, get a job. And beyond that, to have a good understanding of life.”

“We learned about Shakespeare! And Maya Angelou. And, uh . . .”

“So, you read Hamlet? Macbeth? Romeo and Juliet?”

“Well, we mostly read about them. And, you know . . .” I rake back through my memory for the titles of books. A few rise to the surface. I name them.

“So did you read them, those books?”

“Well, bits of them, mostly. Like Gulliver and Caged Bird. But we read, like, Walden cover to cover.”

“But the other books . . .”

“No, we were kind of busy with eigen oscillations, turbidity currents, and allopatric speciation, really stupid stuff like that.”

Abruptly, Grace stands. She’s still for a minute, hand on her belly, then she picks up the teapot and cookie plate and heads for the kitchen. “I’m not trying to be difficult, Turtle.”

“Really?” I know I’m being defensive; I can hear the edge in my voice. And truthfully, only a few Mer actually get the hard math parts of oceanography. Me, for instance—not so much. Besides, I know Grace is trying to help. But I didn’t sign up to be aggressively mothered this way.

Grace turns on the water in the sink and starts scrubbing. “I’m just saying, to be an educated . . . citizen . . . here, is maybe different than it was on the Mermaid. And trust me, it’s hard enough to get by even with a bachelor’s degree. You’re going to have to go to school.”

I knew it!

“Just give me a list of things to study. I don’t want to go to school.”

“Why not?”

“I’d stick out like a loon in a flock of gulls, Grace, and you know it. To some of them, I’ll always be a freak.”

“But you don’t have gills anymore.”

“They can just smell it, the weird outsider thing.”

“All the more reason, Turtle. I mean, once you get past that, I know you’ll really take to school. I would have loved to run cross-country, like Rav. And maybe work on the yearbook. And the dances . . . My friends still talk about their proms, and I don’t have anything to say.”

Ah, so that’s what this is about. She was pulled out of school because of me. She was ten when I was born and we went into hiding. Mom and Dad homeschooled her for the next seven years, until she left for college.

I was too young to understand at the time, but I get it now. Grace feels like she missed out. Because of me.

“I’m sorry, Grace,” I say.

“Oh, no, Turtle, that’s not what I was saying. It wasn’t your fault—not at all. I just want you to have what I couldn’t.”

Grace turns off the water, dries her hands, crosses the room. She lowers herself into the chair beside me. “Listen, I couldn’t be happier you’ve come to be here with us. But you don’t want to be a hermit. I want you to be with people, make friends, make a life.”

And that’s what I want, too. More than she knows. More than I can tell her right now.

The long, lean length of him. The shock of red-gold hair.

But school!

“Look, I know you want what’s best for me, but we’re different. I will never miss going to school here. Trust me.”

“You need a high school diploma. It’s for your own good.”

“Grace, I’m really happy to be here, but you’re not my mom.”

“See, that’s the thing,” she says. “Mama would kill me if I didn’t take good care of you, prepare you for life. I mean, she would rise up from her grave and throttle me.”

Oh. So that’s what this is really about.

I groan. Lean forward, hold my head in my hands.

A bird is chirping away outside the window. A car hums past on the street. Inside, right next to me, there’s a draggy, sniffling sound.

I sit up, pull a tissue out of the box on the table, hand it to Grace. She blows her nose—with gusto. Gives me a shaky smile.

She’s a wonderful sister. I’m so lucky to have her. But there might be some choppy waters ahead.

CHAPTER 34

FROM CHASTE TO X-RATED

The next morning, Rav and Grace both have to go to work. I want to help, but my domestic skills are mostly limited to the kind of stuff you do on a ship—wielding a mop the size of a yellowfin grouper; stowing rigging and polishing brass; killing moss and breaking up rust; peeling potatoes but never cooking the whole meal.

And I’m still not very strong. I can work for only a few minutes before I have to sit down again. My neck is itching like crazy, and I long for a full-body soak in the Gulf.

Still, I can load and unload the dishwasher. I can make the beds. I can vacuum and dust.

And the whole, entire time, while I’m trying to be helpful, I can’t stop thinking about Kai. I have to find him, as soon as I’m strong enough. I daydream about it constantly. Multiple scenarios. The explanation scenario, when I tell him I’m like him now, I’m Normal. The pirate scenario, with the map and the secret treasure. The doing-everyday-things-together scenario—walking, holding hands. The kiss scenario, in a full range of versions, from chaste to X-rated. There are the paranoid scenarios, too, where he’s really mad I stood him up, or he’s fallen for someone else, or his mother tells him “Never darken my door!” if he dates a former Mer.

I’ve got to stop thinking about him! It’s driving me nuts. I need a distraction.

I pick up the remote, try to remember how Grace showed me to work the big screen over the fireplace in the living room.

There! It clicks on. I find the channel-change button.

Car crashes.

Drones playing rugby.

A guy in an alligator costume, hawking pizza.

Cute kittens doing cute-kitten things.

Armadillos invading Chicago.

A tropical storm out in the Gulf.

And, wait. There she is.

The Mermaid.

The vid must have been taken by a helicopter or a drone, somewhere above. She’s sailing, cutting through the waves. Toward a hurricane hole, an announcer says.

My legs suddenly give out on me. I plop down on the couch, knocked sideways by a wave of homesickness.

Smaller boats tend to haul up on land during hurricanes, and some of the bigger yachts tie up on the leeward side of Spoonbill island. But since the Mermaid’s getting more and more decrepit, she has to bug out, find a place to shelter far from the brunt of the storm. A hurricane hole.

Which is also risky, especially lately. We don’t sail with her all that often, and I’m remembering all the barnacles and the corrosion.

There’s no messing with a hurricane, though. So she’s sailing.

It feels strange to be here while the Mermaid is far away, with the friends I’ve lived with since forever. It feels . . . lonely.

Boy, do I ever miss Naomi!

The announcer is saying something about . . . wait . . . mutants?

“. . . refused all offers of medical help . . .”

“. . . an injunction against outside interference . . .”

Is that how they talk about us? Mutants. That’s so offensive. We didn’t mutate. We were designed. There were unintended consequences, sure, but . . .

I finger the bandage around my neck. Smooth. No gills.

I look around the room, at the couch, the table, the flowerpots.

This is my life now. The life I chose. I can’t go back.

And Kai . . .

He’s the reason I Changed. Well, not all of it. But a big part of it. So I can be with him.

And he doesn’t even know I’m here.

I’m strong enough now, I think. It’s up to me to find him.

CHAPTER 35

ABOUT FIVE THINGS I COULD SAY

The next Monday, nine days after my surgery, I polish off the morning dishes superfast, feed Atticus, and scoop his litter box. I’ve promised to make dinner—spaghetti—and I’m a little nervous about it, because I’ve never made a whole dinner all by myself. But Grace went over the recipe with me before she left for work, and it doesn’t look all that hard.

I didn’t tell Grace what I’m planning to do. She doesn’t know about Kai, not yet. Anyway, she’s kind of a worrywart. And I’ll be back in plenty of time.

I wind a scarf around my neck bandage, grab the little purse Grace gave me, and I’m off to the Yacht Basin, a couple of miles away. I don’t know if the Escapade will be in port, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

It’s a gorgeous morning—sunshine, seventies, a cool sea breeze. That storm did turn into a hurricane, but it veered east, into Louisiana, missing Texas completely. The Mermaid would have been fine just staying put. But who knew?

The whole way to the harbor, I’m toggling between eagerness and fear, imagining Kai’s surprise at seeing me. He stops whatever he’s doing; he’s just staring at me. And then . . .

And then what? Is he mad at me for missing our last date? Or will it be perfect, like before?

But when I reach Pier 9, the Escapade is gone.

Well, shoot.

All the excitement goes out of me, whoosh. I’d known he might not be here, but . . .

Now I’m not sure what to do. I sigh and look around.

A bunch of pelicans are hanging out together on a cluster of rotting pilings. I’m surrounded by boats—trawlers, sport fishers, tour boats. All of them look deserted.

But wait. There’s somebody. An oldish guy, swabbing the deck of a boat in the next slip over.

“Hey,” I say. He keeps swabbing. “Hey, do you know when the Escapade is due in?”

He looks up. Now his eyes are all over me, taking me in. “Who wants to know?”

“One of the fishermen is . . . a friend of mine. I was just . . . hoping to see him.”

“Who’s your friend?”

I hesitate, then answer, “Kai.”

“Oh ho!” he says. And I hate the look he gives me.

There’s no point talking to this guy. But still . . .

I’ve got to see Kai.

“If you see him, will you tell him Turtle came by? Would you tell him I’m living on Spoonbill now?”

He lifts his eyebrows. Not sure what that means. I don’t want to give him my address, but I might not ever catch Kai when he’s here, and how else could he find me?

“Would you tell him I’m at 24 East Pin Oak Circle?”

The guy grunts, and I know Kai will never get the message. Stupid, stupid, stupid, giving him the address. What did I expect?

When I turn to leave, he calls out, “I thought you all took off.” I stop, look back at him. He’s running his hands up and down the sides of his neck. Without thinking, I reach for my scarf. It’s slipped down below the bandage.

So, he can see that I’ve Changed. But it’s not enough. I’m still a weird outsider. Still other.

“Did the rest of the mutants ditch you, or what?”

I think of about five things I could say, all of them snarky. But he’s not worth my breath.

HEADING BACK, I’M feeling bruised, I’m feeling twitchy, I’m feeling hot. The breeze has vanished, and my shirt is damp, sticking to my body. My stitches itch, and the bright sunlight is making me squint.

And I’m dying to see Kai again.

I tell myself it’s just a setback. I’ll come back earlier another day, before Grace leaves for work. Though how I’ll explain it to her, I have no idea.

I spot a food truck just up the street. Breakfast tacos. Wow, could I use a cup of iced coffee! I order one and pay with some of the bills in my purse—thank you, Grace. I sit down on a bench in the shade of a beach umbrella.

The coffee’s weak, but it’s cold, and it feels good just to sit. A small bird is pecking at crumbs by my feet. Flies are buzzing everywhere. A seagull cries overhead.

Life is going on all around me. There’s a little bodega across the street. Vintage clothing store. Pawnshop. Laundromat. People are driving, walking, biking, in every direction. There’s a guy with a cane. There’s a girl on a scooter.

I wonder where they’re all going, all these people.

Well, some of them are clearly tourists. The guidebooks. The picture taking. The T-shirts: “Spoonbill: Stir Up Some Fun.”

But the rest of them . . . it’s ten in the morning. I wonder if they work or go to school or . . . ?

What are their lives like here, in this place? What do they hope for? What do they dream?

For so long, I thought I knew where I belonged. I had a place. I had a tribe.

But now . . .

I breathe in, feeling heavy and hot and . . . landbound. Suddenly, I long to just dive into the Gulf with my old friends. Swim away underwater, in that uncomplicated peace.

A horn honks in the street; the little bird flies away. A tall, thin guy is crossing against the traffic. Something familiar about him . . . Unhurried, he bows to a ticked-off guy in a convertible, then gives him the Vulcan live-long-and-prosper sign. Convertible man blasts his horn again, flips him off. With a loud, braying laugh, the thin guy saunters to the far curb, and I know who it is even before I catch the flash of tangerine eyes.

Emerson!

He heads for the pawnshop. Disappears inside.

And I’m up on my feet without thinking. I wait for a gap in traffic, run across the street, and reach for the pawnshop door.

CHAPTER 36

BLUE RAT

The light is dim inside the shop. I stand still for a moment as the door clicks shut behind me.

Breathing in dust and the smell of sweat. Waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

A row of glass display cases lines the sides of the room, and there’s a long, wooden counter at the back. Behind the counter, a man is sorting old coins. He has huge bat-ears, the biggest human ears I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t look up.

The center of the room is a clutter of tables and low shelves. I see gumball machines full of marbles. Pitchers and vases. A couple of chess sets. Some old woodworking tools—planes, hammers, calipers. There’s a tuba. A French horn. A fishing creel.

Above, a dust-felted ceiling fan pushes the air around, but it’s still too-warm air, humid air.

A middle-aged guy and a college-age girl sit at one of the tables, playing backgammon. Looks like the girl’s winning. Three of her fingers are webbed—the smallest two stuck close together—and the man is freakshow tall. Strange patches of greenish-yellow hair erupt from his neck and hands.

Gen-mod, for sure.

I mean, we’re all gen-mod, right? Nobody gets cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy anymore. Or the breast cancer that killed my mom.

These guys, though, they don’t look legal. They look experimental. Hacked.

Like me.

The young woman looks up at me, then back down at the game. Nobody speaks. Emerson is nowhere in sight.

I’m starting to edge back toward the door when I pick up a new sound beneath the hum of the ceiling fan, the clink of coins on the counter, and the clatter of dice on the game board. A scurrying, scratching sound.

Something creeps out from behind the nearest display case.

A rat.

It’s blue. Like, blueberry blue.

It lifts its nose to sniff, then bolts straight for me.

I scream.

All hell breaks loose. The rat squeals and streaks away across the room. The man at the counter starts yelling. The backgammon players jump up; their board hits the floor and tiles scatter. My hand is on the doorknob—I’m outta here!—when Emerson appears behind the counter. He motions bat-ears to be quiet and squints in my direction. I hesitate.

“Myrtle!” Emerson says. “Is that you?”

“Hi, Emerson.” Now I’m feeling dumb. Boy, did I make a scene. “I saw you in the street, and . . . just wanted to say hey.”

“Well, come on in. I’ve been wondering . . .” He scoots around the counter, moves toward me. “This is my friend Turtle,” he says to the others.

The backgammon players look up from picking up pieces off the floor. They don’t seem especially interested. Neither does bat-ear guy, who’s back to sorting coins.

“From the Mermaid,” Emerson says.

Web-fingers girl looks up at me. Checks me out for a second. Goes back to what she was doing.

The rat, I see, is sniffing at the toe of Emerson’s boot. He scoops it up, scratches its little ratty head. I step back.

“What, you don’t like animals?” Emerson asks.

“It’s a rat.”

“What? Rats are people, too. Anyway, this is not your ordinary rat, as you can see.” Emerson scratches the rat’s chin. “Are you, Waldo?” he says.

Waldo?

“You gen-modded a pet rat?”

“He’s a rescue. I’m surprised to see you here, Turtle. Is everything okay? How did you know where to . . .” He stops, staring at my neck. I reach for my scarf. It’s slipped again; the bandage is out in plain sight.

Emerson’s eyes find mine. “You’re one of them. The ones who caved,” he says.

“I didn’t cave. I chose.”

“Chose . . . to be Normal?”

Something dangerous in his voice. Bat-ears and the backgammon players are staring at me. Kind of hostile now.

I can’t believe it. It’s like Hadley and some of the others on the Mermaid all over again.

“I had to, or I’d never see my family again. I . . .”

Emerson’s face is closed in a way I’ve never seen it. Why am I defending myself? I’m not dissing him. I chose—that’s all.

“Not good enough for her, are we?” web-fingers girl says.

“She’s all, ‘I’m Normal now,’” super-tall guy says. “La-di-dah.” They laugh.

Something shifts in Emerson’s face. “That’s enough,” he says. “I told you, Turtle’s a friend.” He turns to me. “You look like you could use a cold drink and a sit-down.” He jerks his thumb toward a door behind the counter. “C’mon back.”

I hesitate.

“Hey, Myrtle. Talk to me. What happened? I want to know.”

THE BACK ROOM’S just as dusty as the front and even more cluttered. Tools, little statues, planters, exercise equipment, furniture. Plastic crates, cardboard boxes, and trash cans crammed with stuff. Four cots are lined up against one wall, each with a pillow and a folded blanket.

Wait—do people live here?

There’s a cleared-out space in the middle of the room, with a few tattered overstuffed chairs, another gumball machine, a small table, and a rug. There’s also a mini-fridge, from which Emerson produces a surprising assortment of sodas, waters, and teas. “Take a load off,” Emerson says. “Pick your poison.”

I choose a bottle of sweet tea; Emerson pops open a can of Dr Pepper. We settle ourselves in the chairs. The rat climbs into Emerson’s lap. Emerson strokes its head. I hear a horn honk from the street outside, and murmuring voices from the room next door. I breathe, feel the tightness in my shoulders ease a little. But Emerson’s words are still echoing in my ears: You caved.

He takes a swig of Dr Pepper, then turns to look at me. “I haven’t been back to the Mermaid for a while. Thought I’d take a little break, after the raid.”

“Raid?”

“By the Man. When they sent their stormtroopers over and pressured you . . .” He waits, inviting me to explain.

“That’s not exactly how it happened, Emerson. I mean, there was a helicopter pilot and a guard. Plus two doctors. Mainly, they wanted to make sure we could choose if we wanted to Change or not.”

“Or so they said.”

“I’m telling you, that’s how it was. Most people chose not to Change, and that was okay. Well, there was a sales pitch—”

“Which you swallowed, hook, line, and sinker.”

“Listen, I hadn’t seen my family in years, and—”

“Whose fault was that?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“What was stopping them? From coming to see you?”

“Well, my mom died, for one thing.”

He blinks at me, looks down at the rat, swallows. Then looks up at me again. “Oh man. I didn’t know. I’m really sorry, Turtle.”

And he does sound sorry. He really does.

“Yeah, well,” I say. “Thanks.”

We breathe then, for a moment. Both of us. I never realized he’s so . . . I don’t know, almost anti-Normal. I always thought he just liked the Mer. And those people in the other room . . . Is he sheltering them?

“So,” Emerson says, “did you find them? Your family?”

“I found my sister Grace. And her husband. They have a baby on the way. And I talked to my other sister, and my grandmother, and my aunt and her partner. And I want to be able to see them. See all of them. And I want to see my friends on the Mermaid, too. I don’t get why I should have to choose. At least, until . . .”

“Until?”

I shrug.

“Until what?”

“You know about Maya?” I ask. “That episode?”

“It was a glitch, right? They said she’s okay.”

“But that’s how the other Shift started. The one where we had to start spending more time underwater.”

“Maybe so, but—”

“What if there’s another Shift? It could happen. I’m talking about breathing, Emerson.” I can feel the anger bubbling up again. You caved. Not good enough for us. “Don’t say I caved. You have no idea what you’re talking about. What price I’d have had to pay if I didn’t, you know, reset back to Normal. What price they’ll have to pay. It’s not like having people stare at your bat ears or your weird hair patches or your orange eyes. It’s breathing, Emerson. It’s family. It’s walking around on the planet. It’s—”

I’m choking up now. It’s embarrassing. I desperately hope Emerson won’t there-there me or try to give me a hug.

The fan hums, makes little clicking sounds. I can hear the backgammon players murmuring in the other room. Emerson clears his throat and says, “Want to pet a rat?”

I snort out a laugh. “No!”

“You sure? He’s, like, a comfort rat. Unbelievably soft.”

“I am so sure.” I sniff, wipe my nose.

Emerson is petting the rat. Kind of making a big production out of it. He holds it out to me, making a face like, You sure you’re sure? I shake my head. The rat’s back in his lap.

“I heard . . .” he says. And he looks straight at me, not joking anymore. “I heard Constance was off the ship when the doctors came, getting an injunction against them.”

“Oh.” So that’s where she was.

“Constance knew they were planning to dragoon you into having that operation—”

“Dragoon? They didn’t dragoon—”

“—and she’d been fighting a legal battle to stop it.”

Ah! That sort of made sense. Stuff is happening, stuff you know nothing about. I’m trying to head off the worst of it for us, but I can only do it for so long.

“Somebody must have told the doctors she was off the Mermaid,” Emerson said, “and they took their chance to talk to you all without her there. But meanwhile, their fancy clinic in Houston heard that an injunction might be coming down, and they blocked your operation.”

“Yeah, they took us to a crappy clinic on the island instead.”

“But it’s all good for you, now, right?” Emerson asks. “The surgery worked, did what you wanted. You’re with your sister and her husband. Everything’s perfect, yes?”

I hesitate. Nod.

“What?” Emerson says.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s something, I can see.”

I sigh. I don’t want to tell him about Kai. Rav either. Kind of a lot. How I’m afraid I’m just a huge burden. And I’m not in the mood to talk about those breath-panics. So I reach into my sack of worries and pull out something else. “They want me to go to school.”

Emerson makes a face. “School! Ooh, that’s bad!”

He’s twitting me. “I knew I shouldn’t tell you.”

“No, really, Myrtle. What’s so bad about school? You had school on the Mermaid, yes?”

“That was different.”

“Oh,” he says. I’m expecting him to say more about school, press me to defend myself. But he just sits and waits.

I take a deep, long swig of tea. It’s super-sweet; the sugar rush is surging through my system, making me feel a little stronger. It’s so peaceful here, in this dim, crowded warehouse with its hollowed-out cone of light. With Emerson sitting patiently across from me. Seemingly done with his questions. Not crowding me anymore.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

“There’s this guy,” I say.

Emerson looks at me, a question in his face.

“I met him while I was scavenging. His air got cut off, and we . . . Well, anyway, we . . .”

Emerson looks alarmed. “You . . . what?”

I catch his meaning and feel my face grow hot. “No! We just . . . kissed, is all.”

“Just . . . kissed?”

“Yeah!”

“He’s a Normal?”

“Yeah.”

“Ho boy.” Emerson shakes his head.

“What?”

He looks at me. Starts to say something. Shuts his mouth.

“We were supposed to meet again, this guy and me,” I say, “but then everything happened on the Mermaid and . . .”

“Wait a minute.” Emerson turns and looks me right in the eye. “You didn’t Change yourself for him, did you? The Normal?”

I feel myself blush again. “No. Yes. Well, only partly.”

“Ho boy.”

“What?”

He sighs. “You and I, we’re genetic dead ends. Experiments that didn’t quite pan out. Blue rats. There’s a reason they programmed us so we couldn’t have kids, and they won’t be making more like us in the lab.”

“With us, it might be reversible. The infertility chip. Constance said some kind of medical board will meet and decide that when we’re older.”

“Pfft. You really think they’re going to do that?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“They’ll never do it. Not for the Mer.”

“Why not?”

“Because then all their future descendants will be Mer.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“Wait a minute. Did they inactivate your chip when you Changed?”

“Uh, they said it could be inactivated. And they said my kids, if I have them, would be, like Normal. Because the gen-mod’s been reset.”

“Yeah, well, even if that’s true, those Normal people won’t ever marry the likes of you and me.”

I stand up. “I’m not talking about marriage. I’m talking about, just, you know, a boyfriend.”

“But you Changed for him. You changed . . . everything.”

“Only partly for him! There were other reasons. Anyway,” I say, “he doesn’t care. He liked me when I was a Mer—”

Emerson is shaking his head again.

“What?” I ask.

“You better pray he’s not a mama’s boy.”

“Why?”

“’Cause Mama’s not going to like you and him together. Not one little bit.”

CHAPTER 37

JUST HOW IT IS

Coming home, I catch sight of a school a block or so away. I passed it before, on the way to the pier, but I was in a hurry then. Now I’m really getting tired, but it’s so close, and I’m curious in a morbid kind of way. I make a quick detour.

It’s an old brick building, probably late-twentieth century. There’s a flood catchment all around it, like a wide, dry moat. A bunch of courts and fields are in the catchment—tennis, volleyball, lacrosse. There’s a baseball diamond. There’s a big field for football and soccer. There’s a track.

The high school, for sure.

Some kids are out there now—kids my age—playing tennis, kicking soccer balls around, running the track.

It seems odd to me, all those sports. ’Cause on the Mermaid, we only ever had one sport: swimming. And it wasn’t really a “sport,” per se. I mean, we made it into a sport sometimes. Racing, or competing to find stuff on the seafloor. And sometimes it was just play. Exploring. Swimming with dolphins or turtles. But a lot of the time, swimming was work.

I walk to the path that leads to the entrance. I’d like to peek through the glass in the front door, but the parking lot’s full, meaning school’s in session. So I just stand there, trying not to look suspicious but also trying to imagine what it’ll feel like to be the only one in the building who hasn’t been through the standard curriculum and has stitches in her neck.

I can hear Grace’s voice in my ears: You need a high school diploma.

It’s for your own good.

Gah! I’ve got to get out of it, somehow.

I head back toward home again, but then something catches my eye. A red-gold thatch of hair.

Wait.

It can’t be. But it is.

Kai.

He sees me. He’s coming this way. My heart’s hammering away like crazy, but I’m frozen to the ground. I can’t move. I can’t talk.

“Turtle?” he says.

“Hi,” I say. It comes out weird, all scratchy and high. Because I’m an idiot.

“Turtle, I’ve been looking for you. Derek told me you came by.”

That rude guy at the dock. Derek, apparently. He must have said something after all.

And he’s got that long-and-lanky thing going—Kai does—with that shock of wavy red hair. He’s got that quirk with one shoulder, where he hitches it up and squints at you, kind of shy. He’s got that heart-stopping smile.

A bright jet of happiness spurts up inside me, and I feel an answering smile lift my face.

Can’t help it. It’s just how it is.

HE WALKS ME home.

Just like I imagined.

The afternoon light has gone golden. Overhead, pin oaks and crape myrtles cast shade across the sidewalk, cooling us. The humidity has backed off to where the air feels almost perfect.

And he’s not mad at all about my standing him up. He’s been following the Mermaid, what’s been going on there. He’s been wondering what’s happened to me.

I tell him about the helicopter, and the doctors who were there on the ship when I came back from night swimming. “It was crazy,” I say. “They herded us into a big room, and . . .” I hesitate. Should I tell him now? That I’m Changed?

“I was worried,” he says. “You’re . . . all right?”

“I’m fine.” I smile at him.

He cocks his head, as if to say, Really?

“Really.”

“So you’re living here now,” he says. “Here on Spoonbill. Not . . . on the Mermaid anymore.”

“I’m staying with my sister and her husband. They’ve got a baby on the way, and they need me to help.”

They need me. I’m not sure if it’s true, really, but it feels good to say.

“East Pin Oak Circle?”

I nod. Thanks, Derek.

“I went there. Hoped to catch you going home.”

“Well. Here I am,” I say. And the happiness is bright, bright, bright inside me.

But now there’s a little pause, and I sense a question in the air, something he wants to know but is afraid, or too polite, to ask. He must have heard about what the doctors had on offer. It’s been all over the news.

“I’m Changed,” I say.

“You mean . . . ?”

I loosen the scarf around my neck. Pull it down to show the bandage.

I watch his face, carefully.

He doesn’t look, like, turned off, which is a relief. He seems a little worried, but mostly sort of curious. Sort of wondering.

He reaches a hand up toward my neck, and then pauses. “May I?” he asks.

I nod.

He’s so close to me now. I’m breathing in the smell of him—all sea salt and guy-sweat. The light catches on a patch of blond stubble on his chin. His hair is damp at the nape of his neck, where it forms tight little curls. He brushes his fingers across my bandage, and a delicious shiver runs all through me.

I catch my breath. Then breathe out slowly, trying to smooth out the shudder.

“Will there be a scar?” he asks.

“At first. After a while, it’ll fade away.”

He nods. Pulls up the scarf again.

“So you’re . . .”

“Not Mer anymore.”

“And you can’t . . .”

“Breathe underwater, no.”

A shadow of something—disappointment?—flickers across his eyes. But then it’s gone.

“Do you miss it?”

It takes my breath away, the question. How does he know to ask? Yes, I miss it. Sometimes I can hardly stand it.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked.” He reaches out a hand to me; it’s wide, long-fingered, and strong.

I slip my hand in his.

“So, when can I see you again?” he asks.

And the stuff with Emerson, all that bad stuff we talked about . . . It’s like, it doesn’t matter. Not at all. ’Cause it’s Kai and me, together. Just walking. Holding hands. Like in the movies I’ve been making in my head. And cars are swishing by, and people are passing us on the sidewalk, and dogs are barking, but it feels to me like Kai and I are in a happy little bubble all by ourselves.

IT’S NOT UNTIL I see Grace on the front porch that the bubble pops. How long have I been gone? I should have left a note. And I haven’t even started dinner, which I’d promised to do.

And then there’s Kai . . . I haven’t told her about him, either.

Grace is standing there, hands bracing her lower back. Looks like it hurts.

You’re just all about yourself, Turtle, aren’t you? I turn to Kai. “Er, want to meet my sister?”

“Uh,” he says.

“Hey, Turtle,” Grace calls out. “Who’s your friend?”

“I think maybe you’d better,” I say to Kai.

“Okay, sure,” he says. But now he doesn’t look happy, either.

AND SHE INVITES Kai inside, but it just doesn’t get any easier. Even though I’m crazy about both of them, and I’d have thought they’d hit it off. After all, Grace took to Adam like barnacles to a whale. But Grace has been worried about me—she was just about to call Rav—and I didn’t even bother to leave a note, so she’s kind of miffed, too. And she’s worked all day, and the spaghetti sauce I was supposed to make is bubbling on the stove, and it smells delicious, but she’s pretty wiped out, I can see.

“And so how do you know each other?” she asks for the fourteenth time, at least. And neither one of us is doing a great job of answering, because, well, how do you explain it? That we were both scavenging—illegally—and then his air hose got cut off and I was trying to rescue him and then . . .

Well . . . then. How do you explain that?

I’ve already explained why I didn’t leave a note saying where I was going (I just didn’t think); and why I was gone so long (see previous answer). It doesn’t help that Atticus is trying to use one of Kai’s legs as a scratching post, and Grace won’t call him off or even uncross her arms. And then Grace mentions Adam, and calls him my boyfriend, and I say he’s a boy and my friend but not a boyfriend, and Kai is looking past me, out the window, at the sky, like he’s hoping that hurricane will show up right about now and blow him away. And then Rav comes home from work, followed by the standard awkward introductions, after which Kai takes his chance to escape.

And who can blame him?

“What was that all about?” Rav asks. He looks from Grace to me and back again.

I sigh. All of a sudden, I’m feeling wobbly, again. I pull out a kitchen chair and plop down.

“Turtle,” Rav says, “you okay?”

Which makes me feel even worse. Because Grace is the one who’s worked all day, and she’s the one who’s pregnant. And she’s the one who’s just made dinner, because of me.

“I think I’m dehydrated,” I say. Which is funny, when you think about it. Dehydrated: Deprived of water. Deprived of the medium in which I used to live and breathe.

Grace looks like she’s going to say something, but she sighs, too. Her hands go to her lower back; she’s definitely in pain. Then, “Anybody hungry?” she asks brightly.

Rav and I nod.

“I’m starved,” Grace says. “Turtle, there’s cold water in the fridge. And would you toss the salad, please? Rav, if you’ll set the table, I’ll dish out.”

CHAPTER 38

CRAZY-IN-A-BIKINI

We have a really nice dinner, and Rav and I do the dishes, and we all settle in the living room with popcorn and books and music, but I know it’s not over with Grace and me.

And I’m worried about Kai, a little. I mean, I hope Grace hasn’t scared him off. But he wants to see me, I tell myself. He said, When can I see you again? It’s all going to work out. How can it not?

A little while later, when Rav is scrolling through the feed, he sits up straight and says, “Uh-oh.”

“What is it?” Grace asks.

Rav glances at me. “There’s some trouble with the Mermaid.”

Trouble? “What kind of trouble?” I ask.

Rav puts it up on the big screen.

We’re looking down at the Mermaid, which is anchored off a tropical cove. On Sand Dollar Island, the announcer says. She looks kind of battered. Apparently, she caught the edge of the hurricane, and the Mer want to dock and make repairs.

But the shore is lined with people yelling and holding signs. The camera zooms in on them: “Go Back to the Lab Where You Came From!” “No-Mutant Zone!” “Go, Fish!”

Is this the trouble Emerson was talking about?

“Turtle?” Grace asks.

I turn to her. “Isn’t there a game called Go Fish?”

Grace nods. But I know that’s not what they’re talking about.

“Do you want us to turn it off?”

I shake my head.

And it doesn’t look like the Mermaid’s in danger. Not at the moment, anyway. She’s anchored a way off shore, and nobody’s boating or swimming toward her. She’s vulnerable, though. I know what her hull looked like before the hurricane, and now it’s got to be worse. And it wouldn’t be all that hard to board her.

Where did those people come from? I wonder. Do they live there, on Sand Dollar Island? Or are they from around here?

Suddenly, the feed cuts to a camera on the Mermaid. Someone is yelling . . .

Oh, crap, it’s Hadley. She’s prancing around in a bikini, screaming about stupid Normals, about some kind of conspiracy . . .

I flinch.

Stop screaming, Hadley!

“We don’t want to be like you!” she shouts. “Get that through your thick skulls!”

“Oof, just cut away from Hadley, would you?” I mutter to the screen. It’s embarrassing. I turn to Rav and Grace. “They’re not all like that,” I say. “She’s mad at everybody right now.”

Grace smiles. Rav nods. Hadley rants on. Crazy-in-a-bikini makes great video. And, of course, Hadley knows it.

I search the faces on the ship for Naomi and Adam. No luck. But I see Maya. Who looks fine, thank goodness. I see Olivia. I see Cyrus. They’re all out there, far away, and the Mermaid’s in trouble . . .

All at once, I feel like I ought to be with them. Not that I could do anything useful, but . . . At least, it would be, like, solidarity. Because I did sort of abandon them.

The feed pans back again, shows the Mermaid from high above, surrounded by the sea. She’s so small, and all alone.

Now the camera cuts to one of the protesters on shore. “They had their chance,” he says. “They chose to be freaks.”

Yikes.

“Chose? What’s he on about?” I ask.

“He’s stirring up people against the Mer.”

“More than usual? ’Cause I can’t even tell you all the disgusting fish jokes we’ve had to put up with.”

“It’s . . .” Rav begins. “You know. The doctors offered the Mer—you guys—the chance to—”

“Be Normal?” I ask.

Rav shrugs. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but, yeah, basically. And only a few of you took the chance.”

We’ve always had protestors. They mostly turned up at the genmod labs—not near the Mermaid, until now. Our teachers, back when we had them, told us the protestors came in different flavors. There were religious objectors, anti-big-government objectors, anti-big-business objectors, anti-big-money-science objectors. Out-and-out bigoted objectors. There were also some concerned-scientist objectors, and even a few objectors who’d been gene-hacked themselves. Once in a while, things got wild, and a couple of labs were vandalized, but mostly the protestors weren’t violent, and some of them actually made a lot of sense. Gen-mod is really dangerous. We get that.

But these guys . . .

They seem different. There’s kind of a party feeling with these guys, only worse. A mob vibe, a kind of meanness. Or maybe it was there all along with the protestors—I don’t know.

“Keep your genes to yourself!” one of the protestors yells.

“What?” I ask. “They’re afraid they’re going to catch something?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Nobody believes that crap,” Rav says.

Well, it’s mostly crap. But, to be honest: If a Normal had sex with a Mer, and if the Mer’s infertility chip was inactivated, and if they had a baby, the baby would be partly, but not wholly, Mer.

And what would that look like? Nobody knows.

“We don’t want your freak genes!” a protestor yells. Some of the others take up the chant: “Freak genes! Freak genes!”

“Looks like somebody believes it,” I say.

THE NEXT MORNING’S a study day for Grace; she doesn’t have to go to work. After Rav leaves, we check the news feed together. The Mermaid’s headed back toward her anchorage off the island. They don’t say anything about repairs.

It’s kind of scary, though. Seeing the Mermaid from above, surrounded by hostile protestors . . . And some of them are still there in boats, following the Mer back toward Spoonbill.

I guess I never really got how vulnerable we were. I thought Constance had it all under control.

Meanwhile, Grace is still upset. She was worried when I wasn’t home yesterday. She had no idea where I was, or if I had just collapsed somewhere.

“Yeah,” I say. “I get that. I’m sorry.” I’m also sorry she had to make dinner. Sorry she was dead tired. Sorry I’m always letting people down.

“Just let me know where you are,” she says. “Or . . . would you be willing to wear a gauntlet?” she asks.

A gauntlet? What, so she can track my movements?

“So you can call if you get in trouble. So I can call you if I’m worried.”

“Aren’t those things kind of expensive?”

Grace sighs. “Everything’s expensive. But this is worth it.”

Money again. I know they’re strapped; they probably can’t afford it. But . . .

If I had a gauntlet, Kai and I could connect. Make plans.

“Okay,” I say.

I’m hoping we’re done, now, but when I start to stand, Grace holds up a finger. “Just a few more questions,” she says.

Rats.

“How . . . serious is it? With this guy?”

“It’s not like we’re serious, it’s—”

“Has he made you any promises?”

“No, I mean—”

“Did he pressure you to do it? Make the Change?”

“What? No!”

“Did you do it for him?”

“No, I—Well, only partway, I—” I’m floundering here, thrashing around. And again, there’s this tug-of-war going on between the side of me that resents having to account for myself to Grace, and the other side that’s grateful that she cares. “C’mon, Grace, why are you—”

But suddenly, her face looks different. “You did. You did it for him.”

And then I remember . . . She thought it was because of her. That I wanted to be with her. Live in her world.

“You’re only kids. And you change . . . everything? For him?”

The question hangs in the air. She’s sounding just like Emerson. What’s everybody’s problem? I’m crazy about the guy. I want to be with him. I want to have a normal life with a Normal boyfriend. What’s so wrong with that?

I can feel Grace’s . . . what? Astonishment? Disapproval? Worry?

“It wasn’t only for him,” I protest. “It was . . . it was because of you, too. Because of meeting up again with you. Which was so great, Grace, I’m not kidding.” But if I’m honest with myself, the thought of being with Kai was what tipped me over.

So, that makes me full-out fishwhack?

The way I feel when I’m with him. So completely right . . .

“How well do you really know this Kai person?” Grace asks.

This Kai person? All of a sudden, I’m done. “You wouldn’t understand,” I say. “You’ve got Rav. It’s easy for you.”

Grace blinks, looking bewildered and hurt. I scrape back the chair.

Conversation over.

CHAPTER 39

EVERY SINGLE TIME

It feels kind of bruised between Grace and me for the rest of the day. It’s not that we’re not talking; it’s that we’re avoiding talking very much because neither one of us wants to trigger something.

And I don’t know if I should go back to the pier to see Kai again Monday really early in the morning, or if I should wait for him to come to me. And I’m supposed to be resting, and I do for a while, but it turns out that I’ve got lots of antsy energy, and if I don’t do something, I’ll come totally unmoored. So after lunch, while Grace studies at the kitchen table, I head up to the nursery/my room, put on my oldest T-shirt, and pry the lid off the periwinkle paint. I cover a decent swath of wall before I come to the window. Just that much work has wiped me out. It seems like a good stopping place, so I seal off the can, clean the brush, and check out what I’ve done.

It’s patchy. But the part somebody else painted is kind of patchy, too. It’s all gonna need a second coat. My right arm is really sore, and just looking at the expanse of still un-periwinkled wall makes me want to lie down and take a nap.

I roll my shoulders, stretching out the kinks. Still, I did make progress, and there’s something satisfying about that. I feel like, if I can get this room completely painted, I’ll have started to pay Grace and Rav back. I mean, not all of it, just a little. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll mask the window.

Just then, the doorbell rings. I hear footsteps, hear the door open, hear a voice.

Kai’s voice.

Whoopee!

“Turtle!” Grace calls. “It’s for you!”

WE GO OUT on the front porch.

“You need a gauntlet,” Kai says. “I want to be able to . . . get hold of you.” He latches on to my forearm. Getting hold of me.

“Working on it,” I say.

“There’s a shindig at my place next Saturday. Want to come?”

I’m hoping for another adventure sometime. But . . . meeting his family. That’s a good sign. Only now, I’m thinking about clothes. “What kind of shindig?”

“Like a picnic. Three of my cousins have birthdays on the same day.”

“Triplets?”

“No, three different sets of parents. A fluke. We call it Fluke Fest. An excuse for a bash.”

“Will your mom be there?” I ask. Kind of nervous. Remembering her turning to look at me in the courtroom, and then nudging Kai. Remembering what Emerson said.

“Everybody’s gonna be there. I mean, it’s mostly family, but some close friends, too. I want to show you of.”

Yikes.

“And they . . . know who I am? Know I’m . . . was . . . a Mer?”

“I’ve told my parents all about you! How you saved my life. My mom can’t wait to meet you.”

Okay. Okay then. “Sounds like fun.”

I ask him for the address. “I’ll come get you,” he says. “We’ll walk over together.”

Wow. That’ll be great. “I, um, still need the address.” I nod my head toward the door, toward Grace.

“She on your case?”

When it comes to you, she is, I think. But I shrug. “Wants to know where I am. Which is fair, I guess.”

He makes a face. “You used to that?”

I shrug again.

“We’ll have to be resourceful, then,” he says. He writes down the address, plus his text number, just in case. Then he hitches his shoulder and gives me his trademark bad-boy smile.

Which slays me every single time.

THE MORNING OF the party, I peel the bandage off. It hardly itches anymore. And there they are, the rows of red bumps they told us about before the surgery, surrounded by faint bruises. I touch the bumps. They are kind of hard, but not sore, not really.

And I remember: My appointment on Monday. In two days.

It’s been a while since my last breath-panic. Everything seems fine.

Meanwhile, the bumps and bruises aren’t super obvious, but . . .

Hmm. I rub on some makeup Grace lent me, see if it helps.

It does. A little. But if you’re really looking, you’re going to see them.

Grace gave me a shirt, too. And lent me a pair of sandals. She’s trying hard to be supportive.

And now, the big decision: To wear a scarf? Or not?

A scarf in this weather’s pretty obvious. Even if I cover my neck, people are going to know. They might even think I still have gills.

Well, shoot. Can’t hide forever. And his mom knows already. So maybe everyone does.

I’ll just go as myself.

CHAPTER 40

SCRUM

THAT NIGHT, KAI walks me to a smallish house in a neighborhood that floods from time to time, but not so badly that people have given up and left. One of the birthday cousins’ houses, he says. There’s a line of damp along the outer walls several feet up from the ground, and the whole place smells kind of musty. Cars pack the driveway and line both sides of the street. Kai leads me to a wooden gate on one side of the house. I hear music. Dogs barking. Children screaming. People laughing. “Sure you’re ready for this?” Kai asks. “It’s kind of a scrum.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“Statistically, four out of five guests survive,” he says. He leans his head way down close to mine and looks me in the eye—part tender and part playful.

Zotz! A fork of lightning pierces me. My heart gives a little jump. “Good to know,” I say.

The dogs come at me first, near-pony-sized mounds of fluff with hanging-out tongues at one end and tails a-wagging at the other. One jumps up on me; the other crashes into the back of my knees, and wham! I hit the dirt. They’re all over me, now, licking my face and sniffing at everything else. “Hey, you two, that’s rude. Cut it out!” someone says, and the dogs, scrambling and whining, are dragged off me. Kai takes my hand, pulls me up, dusts me off. “You okay?” he asks.

I nod.

“I should have warned you,” he says. “They’re, er, high-spirited.”

That’s one way to put it.

And then it’s Delia, the little girl from the courthouse. She hurtles toward us, calling out, “Turtle! Turtle! Remember me?”

“Hey, Delia,” I say. “How could I forget?”

At least I’m wearing sandals, not my funny shoes. But she points at my shirt, the deep purple zebra-print number Grace gave me. Snug-fitting. A little offbeat. “That’s a funny shirt,” Delia says.

Of course it is.

“Zebras aren’t purple,” she points out.

“Well, yeah, but . . .” I have no idea what to say next.

Kai takes my hand. “How do you know my sister?”

“Oh, we’re buddies. We met outside the courtroom.”

“We’re buddies, Kai,” Delia informs him.

Kai snorts. “C’mon, Turtle. My dad’s busy with the grill, but my mom really wants to meet you.”

Oh, goodie.

Breathe in, Turtle. Breathe out.

We weave through the crowd. They sort of blur around me, all these bodies and faces. Talking, eating, drinking, laughing. Bouncing babies, throwing balls and frisbees around. Music is blaring, and hordes of dogs and screaming children gallop past from time to time. Most of the people have red hair and freckles, but the rest are pretty diverse, like the Mer. I see a big Hispanic family, a few Asian and Black couples, and some dark-skinned kids whose races I can’t quite suss out. Mixed-race, maybe. And probably, like most of the Mer, modded for more melanin, to protect against the sun.

“Are you related to, like, half the people here?” I ask.

He smiles, hitches a shoulder. “About right,” he says.

I recognize his mother when I see her. She’s setting out bowls of food on a big picnic table, not far from a bunch of guys hard at work at a big barbeque grill. She looks up and sees us, comes to greet us.

Emerson’s words come back to me: You better pray he’s not a mama’s boy.

Kai introduces me. She holds out a hand for me to shake. “I’ve heard so much about you, Turtle. Kai told me—” But then a man at the grill asks her a question. She turns away, spends a while back-and-forthing about the marinade. The man nods at Kai, slides his eyes in my direction.

Kai’s father?

Kai and I stand there waiting, kind of awkwardly. His mom turns back again, apologizes. “Now, where were we?” she says.

And she’s nice, his mom. She never glances at my neck, not once. She asks about my family, about my plans for the future. But she’s looking around all the time—she’s the hostess, after all—and pretty soon I get the sense that her smile has congealed on her face and she’s ready to move on. But Kai keeps going—mostly praising me in one way or another. As the one who had saved his life, as the one who had a scary surgery to be with her family. And I begin to get the uncomfortable feeling that he’s selling something, and she isn’t—quite—buying.

When at last she excuses herself to greet some new arrivals, I let out a sigh of relief.

After that, we circulate. I meet two aunts and an uncle, a grandmother and a grandfather. I meet a host of cousins and friends, so many I give up trying to remember their names. They’re all crazy about Kai, I can see. And that old memory comes back to me—people crowded round a table, talking and laughing. I mean, this is way wilder, but still . . . that feeling of belonging, of being known, of being woven into a net of many generations that holds and supports you, no matter what.

But for me, it all fell apart.

And here . . . I don’t really belong here, either. It’s clear the word’s out that I was a Mer. Nobody’s out-and-out othering me, but I catch a few of them staring at my neck, and one guy makes a lame joke about fish, after which his girlfriend jabs an elbow to his ribs. And there’s a whole web of relationships I don’t understand. One girl comes up to Kai, all flirty-eyed and touchy. Though he introduces me, she doesn’t look at me, not once. Kai flirts back with her, just a little, in a mostly just-friendly way. Another time, when Kai leaves me to fetch me a drink, I see him talking to a good-looking blonde girl. She looks ticked off. She points at me, sees me looking, turns away.

What’s going on there? I wonder. But I don’t feel like I can ask.

In the end, though, Kai’s wholly with me. We fill our plates with shrimp and ribs and bread and potluck salads and find a picnic bench where we can sit. Kai’s best friend, Ang, plops down across from us, and they regale me with stories of crazy stuff they’ve done together. Hijinks and capers, they call them. They get me laughing, and my awkwardness and worry slip away.

“When Kai gets his boat . . .” Ang turns to me. “Has he told you about that?”

“You mean the Pieces of Eight?”

“No,” Kai says, “my someday boat. Someday I’m going to own a charter boat, be my own boss. Take people fishing and maybe diving, too. At least, that’s . . .” He shrugs, looks halfway embarrassed. “. . . that’s my dream.”

“It’s a good dream,” I say.

“Too bad the scavenging’s over,” Ang says. “That’ll slow it down.”

Kai shrugs. “It’ll just be a little longer, that’s all.”

It slips by so fast, I almost don’t catch it. Too bad the scavenging’s over. Sounds like the scavenging was ongoing. More than once. Doesn’t it? Though it could mean only once. Maybe they’d only planned for more?

Kai told the judge it was his first time. Didn’t he? Now I can’t remember, not for sure.

I know he didn’t tell her about the watch, though, or the watch case.

But that was for me. To protect me. That’s a good thing, yes?

Meanwhile, Kai’s going on about his boat, his someday boat, and he’s really lighting up. It’ll be smaller than the Escapade. It’ll be older—used—and without the big-screen TV and refrigerator and air conditioning, things like that. But it’ll be his. He’ll be captain. And he knows where the fish are, how to find them.

Could I fit into the life he’s making for himself?

I think so. I mean, if he wants me.

“Tell her about the shipwrecks and the maps,” Ang says.

What?

“He’s got this pirate theme going, to, you know, establish his brand—”

Kai waves him off, but Ang keeps going. “‘We swash and also buckle.’ That’s his motto.”

“She knows all about me and pirate treasure,” Kai says. “Don’t you, Turtle?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. Though somehow . . . I’d thought it was just about us.

But of course he’d worked it all out before. Planning for his new career. That only made sense.

THE PARTY STARTS to break up around midnight. Kai walks me home, holding my hand. The moon’s a clean, sharp crescent, like a picture in a book. The stars are bright. We talk for a while, then walk in silence. The quiet is nice.

Before we turn the corner to Grace’s and Rav’s, he pulls me toward him. He puts a finger under my chin, tips my head up. There’s a still, electric moment, and then we’re kissing, deep and long. I feel my body melting—warm caramel all the way through.

“See you again?” he asks. “Real soon?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

Of course.

And everything is happening perfectly. Just as I dreamed it would. But watching Kai walk away back down the street, a tide of weariness floods through me. I can’t remember when I’ve been more exhausted.

CHAPTER 41

GOOD FOR A REAL LONG TIME

“Hey, turtle!”

I sit up in bed. Footsteps, coming up the stairs, loud and fast. Rav’s, not Grace’s.

“Hey, Turtle, you up?” He opens the door, pokes his head in.

“Not really,” I say. Though to tell the truth, I’ve been awake for a little while. Thinking about that kiss the other night. Thinking about the next kiss, and what comes after that.

“Well, hey, there’s no big rush, but I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“Like what?” I say, then I realize it came out kind of cranky.

“I’ve gotta go to work this morning, but yesterday Grace found a used mini crib in the neighborhood listings and put in a bid. She just got the call—the crib’s hers. She’s really revved and refuses to wait till I come home with the car. Can you go with her after breakfast to pick it up?”

“Sure.”

“It’s only a mile or so, but—”

“Okay, I’m onboard.”

“. . . it’s gonna be unwieldy, with the tiny wheels and all . . .”

“Rav,” I say.

He stops.

“Yes. I’ll go.”

“Really?”

I raise my eyebrows. How many times do I have to say it?

“Great! That’s great! Thanks, Turtle!”

He thunders back down the stairs.

And I know what he’s up to. I’d bet a billion. A little sisterly togetherness to cut the tension between us. An outing, something where we’re working together.

Good idea, Rav. Hope it works.

AND IT SEEMS to, at least for a while. On the walk over it’s a little, well, not tense, exactly, but just a bit awkward. Nobody brings up anything that might be touchy, but we’re kind of reaching for stuff to say.

The house with the crib is a big, two-story, brick, traditional-looking thing with a curving pathway up the hill to the front door and a For Sale sign on the lawn. It’s in one of the neighborhoods where rich people used to live. Nobody rich lives on the island anymore, of course; they’re long gone. But a lot of their old houses are still here.

And people with medium incomes can own them, or rent them.

The woman who opens the door is tall and slim, with dark hair pulled back in a sleek updo. At first glance, she looks maybe in her late thirties. But her face gives away her age—a good decade older than my mother, or at least, older than how I remember her. Fifties, maybe. Grace introduces herself, and then me—“Turtle, my sister.” She says we’ve come for the mini crib.

The woman tells us her name—Sofia—and lets us into a wide, blue-and-white tiled entrance hall.

The crib sits in the middle of the floor. It’s painted white, in perfect condition, and really cute. It’s tricked out in navy—blue-and-yellow duck-print sheets, plus a matching quilt. Hardly faded at all.

“Are the sheets and quilt included?” Grace asks.

Sofia nods.

Something moves in Grace’s throat. She roots around in her bag and pulls out a few bills. She hands them to Sofia. It’s an incredible bargain.

Grace turns to the mini crib and runs her fingers across the rails, across the sheets. You can see what she’s imagining—her baby.

I watch Sofia, watching Grace. She’s really looking at her, now. Something softens in her face. “Is this your first?” Sofia asks.

“Well, there were two . . .” Grace stops, glances at me, looks away.

Two what? I’m thinking.

Sofia is nodding. “You miscarried,” she said. “I did, too.”

Oh. That knocks me back. I’d never imagined . . .

“There are some more things,” Sofia says. “In the attic.”

Grace blinks. “Baby things?”

Sofia nods. “I know I should clear them out, move on with my life, but I just . . .” She shrugs. Smiles apologetically. “Is it a boy or girl?”

Grace puts her hand on her belly. “A girl,” she says.

“Girl things—I’ve got lots. Want to look?”

I can see there’s a battle going in in Grace’s mind, and I can guess what it is. She really wants to see all that baby stuff, but she knows she shouldn’t spend any more money. If I hadn’t shown up, maybe she could afford them, but . . .

“Sure, let’s,” Grace says.

We follow Sofia up the stairs, past several bedrooms and bathrooms. From one of the bedroom windows, I see a big backyard with an empty pool. We come to a square hatch in the hallway ceiling, one of those attic doors with pulldown stairs. But Sofia doesn’t have to actually pull them down, because there’s a mechanism that does it electrically. They’re really wide, for attic stairs, and Grace is waddling, but she manages them okay—though I go up behind her, in case she stumbles.

The attic is huge, with a solid plank floor, a couple of ceiling fans, and gabled windows at the front of the house. Shafts of light stream down from skylights, bathing the room in a soft glow. Sofia leads us past reefs of furniture covered with sheets and stops at the far end of the room.

There’s an old-fashioned oak rocking horse, golden in the light. There’s a bookshelf filled with hardback books and wooden puzzles. There’s an antique rocking chair. There’s a wood train set with painted-wood houses and trees.

Expensive.

Sofia opens a bureau drawer and pulls out an armload of pink. Pink blankets, pink onesies, pink dresses, pink overalls, pink socks. There’s a little pink fleece hat with ears like a lamb. There’s a pair of miniature pink mittens with darker pink hearts.

Grace reaches out a hand to touch them, like she did with the crib. I can tell she doesn’t want to want them, but she does.

And I get it. They’re super cute. And I wish I had a job or something, or just some money lying around so I could buy them for her.

“Your daughter?” I ask Sofia.

She nods. Grace, seeming to wake up, turns to Sofia. “How many children do you have?”

“Two,” she said. “They’re . . . grown up now. On their own.”

And it looks like there might be something else she wants to say, but instead she opens another drawer and pulls out three pairs of shoes—tiny pink gym shoes, and tiny pink patent leather party shoes, and tiny pink penny loafers. “They’re not for actual walking, of course,” she says. “But they were fun. It seems silly now, because . . .”

She stops. Swallows. There’s a little tremor in her lips. Grace and I share a glance. “No, no, it’s not silly, at all,” I say, and at the same time, Grace says, “It is silly, but in a fun way, in a good way.”

Sofia turns to Grace. “She never did like pink. At least, that’s what she told me when she was older. I liked pink for her, but she never liked it. I should have understood. She . . .” She swipes at her eyes.

Oh, jeez. I have no clue what to say, but Grace comes to the rescue. “Sofia, where does your daughter live now?” she asks gently.

“After her father divorced me, she joined one of these . . . radical feminist groups on the East Coast, and her brother . . . he’s in some kind of far-right-wing sect in Idaho. They can’t be in the house together without a huge fight. So angry, both of them. At each other, and at me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Grace says.

“You can pick their skin and eye colors, you can mod them against disease, but you can’t control this—who they become, how angry they are, how they treat you when they’re grown. And then you wonder . . . where did I go wrong? I mean, I definitely made mistakes. But I couldn’t have loved them more.”

How they treat you when they’re grown. And now I’m thinking about my mother . . . Did she get my letters? If not . . .

All of a sudden, I realize Sofia is looking at me. She touches the side of her neck. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but . . . you . . . Changed?” she asks. “Came back home?”

I nod.

“You missed your family?”

“I did,” I say. Though it’s more complicated than that.

Sofia sighs. Picks up one of the pink gym shoes, turns it in her hands. She holds it out to Grace. “I want you to have it,” she says. “All of it.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Grace says. “I can’t pay—”

“I don’t want your money. I want to make you a gift. Please. Please let me do this.”

“No, I—”

“Please.”

They’re looking at each other now. Dust motes are swirling in the light from the gabled window. Nobody’s saying anything. Sofia’s still holding out the shoe.

At last, Grace reaches out, cradles the pink canvas in her hands.

Sofia smiles.

“Thank you,” Grace says.

“It was good,” Sofia says. “While she wore these things. It was good for a real long time. I hope with all my heart that it’ll be good for you.”

CHAPTER 42

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

I’m in a funny mood, walking home.

Grace is thrilled with all the pink baby stuff. She’s chattering away a mile a minute about how Sofia just gave it all to her, and about how darling everything is, and about how she can maybe afford to have a diaper service for a few months, now that she doesn’t have to buy baby clothes. It’s like she’s won the lottery or something. She keeps stopping and reaching into the mini crib, picking up a pink dress or a pink onesie or a pink bootie—just staring at them with a goofy smile.

At this rate, we’ll never get home. Grace is pushing the crib, which is on wheels, but like Rav said, they’re those tiny, in-the-house wheels—not designed for long walks on pavement. And the huge bag of stuff I’m carrying . . . it’s heavy. My shoulders are getting sore.

And I’m happy for Grace, happy for the baby, but I can’t shake how sad Sofia was, and what has happened to her kids, even after happy childhoods. She seemed so abandoned.

And I can’t help but wonder, again, about Mama. Did she get the letters I sent her? Did she feel abandoned?

And Daddy . . . did he?

And I’m also wondering about those miscarriages Grace had. Did that mean she and Rav didn’t get those earlier babies modded, at least for the preventable diseases? Because the standard disease-preventing mods usually catch any weird chromosome stuff that might lead to a miscarriage.

And why wouldn’t they use the standard mods? They’re totally routine and safe.

Sure, some people are opposed to any of it. But I wouldn’t have thought Grace was like that. And that funny glance she gave me . . .

Was it because of me? Because of how things turned out, the unintended consequences?

“Sounds like they all sort of deserted her,” Grace is saying. “Left her all alone in that huge house.”

It takes me a minute to shift gears. She’s talking about Sofia again.

“So maybe the pink’s a bit much, but how could it make you angry?

I mean, like, an angry person?”

I turn to look at Grace. Try to focus on her question. “You mean Sofia’s daughter?”

“Yeah. Sounds like she turned on Sofia when Sofia was only doing what she thought was best for her.”

There’s something going on with Grace. Her mood has changed. Now she seems . . . kind of troubled.

“Maybe the daughter didn’t turn out to be a pink kind of girl,” Grace goes on. “I mean, if Sofia pushed it on her after that, got mad at her for not liking pink, that would be one thing. But Sofia doesn’t strike me as, like—”

“A pink pusher?”

Grace laughs. “You know what I mean.”

“Grace, you’re not seriously worried about, you know, pink, are you?”

She shrugs. “No, but . . .” She stops and, wincing, braces her back with both hands. “I am kind of scared,” she admits. “I want everything good for our daughter. I don’t want to make any mistakes. But it seems like even with the best intentions, you can’t help it. Who knew pink would be such a problem?”

And sure, the whole pink thing is crazy, but it feels like there’s something else, something more serious, happening here.

“Doesn’t it seem like everybody’s angry about something these days?” she asks. “And so many people are angry at their parents, at the decisions they made? Mostly just doing the best they could, but . . .” She hesitates, turns to me. “Are you . . .” She stops herself.

“What?” I said. “Am I angry? About—”

“About Mama. About Daddy. About—”

“About the gills, you mean.”

She nods.

I don’t know. I lived on the Mermaid for so long, gills just felt kind of ordinary. Lots of times, we felt superior to Normals, because we could do cool stuff they couldn’t. “Well, I was mad when they took me away from you guys. I was really sad when you stopped writing. But the gills . . . When you’re just like all your friends, I guess it’s different.”

“Mama and Daddy, though . . . they thought they were doing a good thing, with lung capacity and all. But later, when the unintended consequences kicked in . . . They were scared when you had trouble breathing, and then mad when the government decided you couldn’t live with us anymore. I wonder if they thought they’d made a huge mistake?”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, Turtle, you know what I’m saying. I mean, not that you’re a mistake, not at all. But Mama and Daddy—”

“Hired that illegal hacker instead of waiting for the lung-capacity mod to be tested and approved?”

Grace shrugs. Looks uncomfortable. “If they’d waited, it would have been too late. They thought they were doing a good thing,” she says again, “but . . .”

They screwed up.

It’s the first time I’ve let myself really think that.

My parents screwed up.

It’s true they wanted me to have, like, an advantage. One that could lead to opportunities other kids don’t have. Maybe everybody wants that for their kids, I don’t know. But those unintended consequences . . . you can have what seems like a good idea at the time, and things can still go keel up.

Like me. Deciding to Change.

I made the best decision I could—it was tested and approved—but it hurt like crazy, even though they told me it wouldn’t. And I’m still not a hundred percent sure how it’s all going to work out.

EARLIER, ON THE way to Sofia’s place, we’d hit a longish stretch of torn-up road. Workmen digging trenches in the asphalt, sidewalks blocked off. Some kind of water or sewer stuff going on. There’s no way to wheel the crib back along that stretch. So now, we detour up toward the harbor. Which is not ideal, because it adds at least a mile to our walk. I can see Grace is tiring out, and it’s getting hot.

Pretty soon, someone runs by, heading toward the water. Then more people stream past on either side of us.

What’s going on?

A guy bumps into the crib, knocking it over, spilling pink bedding and baby clothes all over the sidewalk. “Hey!” Grace yells. She rights the crib, and we both start picking up stuff, but even more people are coming now. One of them tramples a sheet, leaving a black footprint; another one kicks a tiny pink shoe to the curb. When Grace lunges for it, somebody knocks into her; she loses her balance, her legs collapse, and she folds onto the ground.

“Hey!” I yell. “Will you watch it!”

I reach out to help Grace up. “You okay?”

She nods, takes my hands, and hauls herself to her feet, just as another runner bumps into the crib, sends it spinning into the street.

“Hey!” Grace and I yell, together.

But now a guy is fetching the crib, returning it to us. And two girls are picking up little onesies and frocks, putting them back in the crib. Then they’re off again, running. One of the girls yells over her shoulder, “Sorry!”

There’s a trickle of two or three slower ones, then they’re gone.

I look down the street, toward the harbor. There they are, gathered in a big clump, definitely way more people than just the ones who’d passed us. And beyond them . . .

The Mermaid.

She made it back. Now she’s in wet dock, at last.

A sigh whooshes out of me. It’s like I’ve been holding my breath and didn’t even know it.

One of her sails hasn’t completely retracted; it’s bunched-up and tattered. And the windmill seems to be missing. I don’t see the raised garden beds or the henhouse, either, though maybe they tarped them or stowed them below. I see a few Mer on deck, but at this distance, I can’t tell who.

I should be there. The thought pops into my mind. And I’m feeling kind of odd and achy, and part of me wants to run down there, to my friends. To be with them. To help.

Grace is riffling through the pink things in the crib. “Look at this. It’s filthy! And, look. The overalls are torn!” Her own pants are ripped below one knee, where her leg scraped the concrete, and blood is seeping through.

I scan the sidewalk, pick up the last of the pink things that spilled out. “C’mon, Grace,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

Down near the Mermaid, the crowd is chanting. Protesting. What are they saying? I listen hard. From here, it’s hard to tell. But in another moment, I think I know.

“Go, Fish,” I say. “They’re saying, ‘Go, Fish.’ ”

“What jerks,” Grace says. “That makes me so mad.”

And it makes me mad, too. But more than that, in the pit of my stomach, there’s a tingle of fear.

CHAPTER 43

GUYS WITH BROAD SHOULDERS

There’s a man on the front porch with Rav. They’re leaning against a post, talking, the way guys do—grown-up guys with broad shoulders, like Daddy. Guys who solve problems and take care of things. They look up together, noticing us at the same time, and I see that the man with Rav is Adam.

Our eyes meet, and a tide of gladness sweeps through me.

Randomly.

Adam. Why is he here?

Rav moves toward us. “What happened to your leg?” he asks Grace. “It’s bleeding.”

Grace shrugs. “It’s fine. We had fun. We got all this stuff, Rav; she just gave to us. This woman, Sofia. We really sort of bonded, and—”

“But your leg,” Rav says.

“We ran into some protestors. Or more like, they ran into us. Some of the baby things might be ruined, or at least they’ll need to be washed, and—” She wipes a trickle of sweat from her forehead. She looks wilted.

“Did you fall? Did they knock you down?” He turns to me. “Turtle, what happened?” Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like there’s the slightest note of accusation in his voice. Like, I thought you were taking care of her.

“It was that protest down by the harbor. The Mermaid . . .”

Then Adam is there beside me. “Hey, Rav, why don’t Turtle and I sort through this stuff and bring it inside in a bit?” he says. He holds out a hand to take the bag from me.

I can feel my back going up. “I’ve got it. I’ve carried it like two miles already.”

“’Kay,” he says. With that deadpan look of his. He leans into me and murmurs, “I think those two need to work this out alone.” His voice is lower than I remember, with a little gravel I’ve never noticed before.

Rav has his arm around Grace. He’s talking to her, gazing straight into her eyes, looking worried. They’re a little island, all by themselves.

I’m jealous. I want that.

I take a deep breath. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

WHEN WE’VE SORTED the baby stuff into piles for Grace to go through later—looks fine, needs washing, needs mending—Adam and I fetch glasses of lemonade from the kitchen and sit down on the front porch steps. I’m still sweaty from the walk home, but the cool drink feels good. I ask him about the Mermaid, and he gives me the news.

They avoided the hurricane, but the ship really got tossed around. The gardens are pretty much destroyed, the goats are traumatized, and a bunch of chickens got washed overboard.

“Is she floating okay?” I ask. “Not listing or anything?”

He hesitates. “No, nothing like that, but . . . We used wind alone most of the way home to give the engines time to recover.”

“Were they working, though? The engines?”

He shrugs. “Some of the time. They’re old. Starting to overheat.” Wow. I don’t like the sound of that.

“We’ll do a quick-and-dirty fix in wet dock for now, which is all Constance can swing at the moment. But the Mermaid needs six months in dry dock. At least.”

Half a year? Where would the Mer live for half a year?

“We’ll be okay so long as we don’t need to move around. But if we’re dodging both hurricanes and protestors . . .”

“I don’t remember protestors mobbing the ship before.”

“Yeah, that’s new.”

And it hits me what a scary-bad place the Mer are in. I never really got that before, not completely. I mean, Constance warned me there was trouble, and I saw that the hull is a mess, but I didn’t know about the wonky engines, and the protestors had been keeping their distance. And . . .

“Wasn’t Constance saving up for dry dock? All that money from before?”

Adam shrugs again.

I’m worried about my friends.

“How’s Naomi?” I ask. And I do want to know, though I’m half-dreading he’s going to tell me they’re together. Which is stupid. Because why would I care? Because I’m with Kai.

Aren’t I?

“Oh, wait,” he says. “I almost forgot. She’d kill me.” He pulls something out of his pocket.

A letter.

“From Naomi?” I ask.

He nods.

I rip it open; I can’t help myself. I read it quickly.

It’s nothing about Adam, not at all. But she tells me about some cool stuff she found scavenging the other day, and passes along the hot ship gossip, and tells me a funny story about trying to corral the floating chickens that got washed overboard, and then kind of frets about how they have to do things differently now, because of the protestors. She tells me she misses me. Says she thinks about me all the time.

I look up. A gust of warm wind picks up a scattering of leaves and swirls them around the lawn.

Wow, do I ever miss Naomi.

“I want to write her back before you go.”

“Okay,” Adam says.

“And what about Maya? Is she—”

“She seems all right. I mean, she’s having some breathing problems—”

“Again?” Oh, no.

“But they’re intermittent. They come and go. Honestly, she seems okay. And it’s not happening to anyone else, like with the Shift. We’re hoping it’s just some kind of glitch.”

A glitch. That’s what Emerson said.

“And Hadley is—”

“Great. Still Hadley.”

“And Constance is—”

“Still Constance. Still not thrilled about you and the others who Changed. Plus, she’s in a legal fight with Juvenile Services. They want more oversight.”

“I thought that was settled.”

“Turns out, no. They really thought most of us would Change and leave the Mermaid. So they want more supervision, but they know they can’t afford to barge in and shut Constance down. She’s an icon, and nobody else knows how to do what she does.”

“Does she know you’re here with me?”

Adam laughs. “I hope not! Officially, I’m doing some errands for Emerson but . . . You never know with Constance. She’s strategic. Not a slave to her emotions. More calculating than I realized when we were younger.”

“Do you think she’d let me visit the Mermaid?”

“Er, no. At least not now. And she can’t know you’re writing Naomi, either. Not yet.”

Wow. Before, I resented Constance for not letting me see my family. But now I resent her for not letting me see my friends. She’s tearing me apart.

“There’ve been some shake-ups on her staff. Hadley’s on the rise.”

“Hadley? But she’s so . . .” Angry is what I want to say.

“She’s ambitious. And totally dedicated to the cause. Plus, she’s smart and tough. We need tough.”

“What about you?” I ask. “You’re pretty tough.”

Adam laughs. “No, that fight’s not for me. Olivia’s shattered, though.”

“She’s been demoted?”

“Cast out of the inner circle.”

“Ouch.” Without Constance to hide behind . . . it might be hard to be Olivia.

Atticus appears out of nowhere, prowls up the stairs. He must have escaped again. He stretches out between Adam and me. We pet him together. Adam’s hands are wider, stronger than I remembered. His hand brushes against mine for a moment; we laugh and pull away.

All at once, I’m aware of Adam’s closeness. I can feel some sort of heat-vibe coming off him. He seems different now. His shoulders. His hands. His voice.

“Adam,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering . . . Do you remember when the letters from your fosters stopped coming?”

“What? The letters?”

I nod.

“I don’t know. I was maybe nine or ten. Something like that.”

“Do you ever miss them?”

“What, my fosters?”

“Yes, Adam. Them.”

“I mean . . . Not for a while. I was upset when I missed my brother’s bar mitzvah, but . . . seeing you with Grace, though, I sometimes wish . . .”

“Wish what? That they’d visited? Or at least kept writing?”

He makes a phhh sound, seems to shake himself. “It’s a natural thing, Turtle. We just drifted apart. It felt crappy at the time, but it happened to all of us.”

“Grace says she thinks my family sent letters at least till I was eleven. She says, after that, they never got any from me. But I was sending letters.”

“Well, I know. We all did, for a while.”

“But Grace says . . .” I sigh. “I mean, it’s true that she was moving constantly then, and Mama was sick, and Daddy . . .”

Was in jail. And then escaped.

No need to say it. We both knew.

“Grace hasn’t heard from him?” Adam asked.

“No. No one has.”

“I’m sorry, Turtle. But maybe they got your letters. You mom or your dad. Who knows what they did with them. It was a long time ago.”

I sigh again. “Yeah, it was.”

Meanwhile, it turns out that Adam wants to show me something. He won’t say what. But he’s brought scuba gear, and he asks if I’ve kept my old goggles, skins, and fins.

I haven’t been in the water—except the bathtub—since I Changed. It makes me a little nervous. But I’m curious, too, which is maybe what Adam’s counting on.

Plus, for some reason, I don’t want to say goodbye to him. Not yet.

I say yes—hoping that Grace won’t nix it.

CHAPTER 44

FIRE IN THE WATER

Turns out, she’s fine with it—as long as I’m with Adam. And so, after dark, we go. Adam has a boat, a small Boston Whaler, fully equipped. It looks familiar.

“It’s Emerson’s,” Adam says. “He let me borrow it.”

Ah.

Adam locks my letter to Naomi in a watertight compartment; we cast off. The air is still, the sky clear. Starlight spills across the surface of the water. We cruise south, into the Gulf, in comfortable silence, broken only by the hum of the motor, the splash and churn of water, the sea breeze whuffing in my ears.

Adam doesn’t tell me where we’re going. But it feels good just to wait, just to wonder, just to trust.

After a while, I see a faint sprinkling of lights up ahead. As we draw near, I can make out the dark profile of an abandoned oil rig.

“Wait. Not an oil rig,” I say.

“Why not?”

That’s it? An oil rig?

I can make out a few small boats moored in the darkness beside it. But well before we reach them, Adam heads for a buoy nearby. He turns off the motor. We tie up.

“Down first,” he says, “then up.”

My old skinsuit feels oddly strange, and yet familiar. It’s still supple, though I haven’t worn it since the Change. I put on my goggles, slip my feet into my fins. It’s starting to come back to me now; feeling natural. I pull up my hood, strap on my headlamp. And I’d be ready to go now, I could just jump in and swim, except . . .

Adam is holding the tank and harness.

It’s a small, sharp humiliation, like training wheels on a bicycle for a kid who used to ride all over town.

But I put it on. Buckle it up.

So heavy. So . . . inelegant.

“Ready?” Adam asks.

I nod.

And we’re in.

And oh, how I’ve missed it. The cool of the water against my skin. The slow, rippling sway of sea anemones clinging to the buoy. The stately procession of a school of giant mackerels swimming into the beam of my headlamp and disappearing into the dark. The slowness of everything, in fact, except for the small and darting fish.

I love it, the rhythm of underwater.

But I’m clumsy with the air tank and all its convoluted apparatus. And I can’t taste the life of the sea, only salt. And my breath sounds unnaturally loud, making all those tacky bubbles. I feel clumsy, gawky, crude.

Like an outsider.

And yet before long, I relax into the flip, flip, flip of my fins; the pull of my arms against the push of the water; the currents playing over my body—a feather of cool, a rush of warm, a tickle of cool again.

I follow Adam toward a constellation of small, flickering suns, an underwater galaxy. Drawing near, I see that each sun is a flame that burns for a while, flickers out, and then burns again.

Fire in the water.

Welders.

Soon, we’re in among them—three or four of them. With their strange and complicated helmets, with their boots, with their fire. No tanks, though, so they must be Mer.

And now we’re finning through a massive steel skeleton, past huge, metal tubes and girders—the oil rig’s understructure—encrusted with mussels, barnacles, anemones, and coral, and teeming with fish. Which are gathering around Adam, at his wrists and knees and earlobes. But they’re staying away from me in droves.

I follow Adam to the surface. I’m struck by how high off the water the platform is. Not skyscraper high, but high enough that it would take a really huge wave to get anybody’s feet wet. Directly above us, there’s a big, square opening in the deck. Beyond, up past the hole . . . a dusting of scattered stars.

Adam tugs on a cord that’s hanging down from the platform; soon something drops down through the hole and splashes in the water.

A hoist chain.

We grab onto it, set our feet on a metal bar. And we’re rising up through the air. Gravity hits me hard; the air tank is heavy.

I spit out my regulator. “What’s this?” I ask.

“We’re calling it the Habitat.”

Habitat. “For when the Mermaid . . .”

“Yeah,” he says. It comes out as a sigh. “Don’t worry about the guards, by the way. They’re expecting us.”

And there’s no more time to talk just now, because the hoist sets us down with a thump upon the deck, and there’s a circle of maybe seven or eight people surrounding us.

Even in the narrow beams of light cast by our headlamps, I can see they’re all modded. Illegally. Biohacked.

Like the Mer, only different.

CHAPTER 45

HABITAT

Some of them look like the people in Emerson’s shop—radar ears, webbed fingers, or super tall with weird patches of hair. Others are like nothing I’ve seen before. Manga-big eyes. Superhero muscles. Crazy-long fingers.

I can’t help it: I’m kind of weirded out.

Adam greets each one by name. He introduces me as a friend.

I fumble with my harness buckle and finally manage to click it open. I take off my headlamp. Pull down my hood. Adam lifts the tank off my back.

A super-tall guy called Antonio switches on a flashlight and leads us through a mess of strange structures and equipment left over from the old oil-drilling days. We climb a ramp to an industrial-looking building—steel walls, three or four stories tall. Then it’s up a flight of stairs to a large, unlit room, mostly just walls and windows, doors and floors.

Antonio takes us through a doorway to more rooms. “Laundry,” he says. “Storage.” “Recreation.” Up another flight, and it’s, “Kitchen.” “Dining hall.” “Offices.” Up a third flight to “Sick bay.” “Bedrooms.” “Nursery.”

Nursery?

And I can’t quite picture what it’ll be like when it’s all finished. When the Mer are here, working and playing. ’Cause it’s pretty much uninhabitable now. Still, I’m starting to understand the vision behind it.

Suspended here, in the space between the sea and the stars, it’s a whole new, separate, world.

BACK IN THE Whaler, Adam sets course for the island. We shed fins and skins, put on dry overclothes, suck down some water, snack on a bag of nuts. Only then does he ask me what I think.

I hesitate before answering. I want to be sure I understand.

“So, it’s a . . . habitat? To replace the Mermaid?”

“Yeah. Even if we could swing enough dry dock time, she’s not gonna last forever.”

The platform seems so far away, though.

So separate.

“Why not another ship?”

“This will be better. Super stable, once the welders finish reinforcing it. Plus, it’s higher off the water. Easier to defend. We can draw up the hoist and close the hatch.”

Yeah, I can see that. It’s sort of like a castle on a hill. Anchored in steel and concrete, way high above the water. And also, a long way from land, which is bound to discourage protestors.

“We’re making a metal net to protect us while we’re sleeping,” Adam says. “So we can just drop down into the water beneath the platform.”

It would be nice to sleep in the ocean. Smells better. Feels better. And with currents to rock you to sleep . . .

“What about hurricane season? What happens then?”

“We’re good up to Category Four. I mean, the garden would get slammed, but there are things we can do to protect it. If it looks really bad, we can evacuate, but that won’t happen very often. This rig’s already withstood Cat Fives, when it was drilling, and we’ve kept the steel structure they built. We’ll just have to be ready to make repairs every few years.”

Kind of like living on the island. “Do we . . . Do the Mer own it?”

“Uh, apparently there’s a lease-to-buy thing, according to Constance.”

“Wow, must be expensive.”

“Yeah, it’s nuts. But it helps that there are still so many abandoned rigs out here, and it costs the Earth to break them down and haul them away. And Constance, she saved a lot of the early money. The government money, the crowdsource money. She knew all along we’d have to find another place to live.”

For some reason, that bothers me. All along? Did she plan for this . . . radical isolation?

And if she has so much money, why can’t they afford dry dock?

And something else . . .

“Did Antonio say . . . nursery?” I ask.

Adam nods.

“But the Mer can’t, you know . . . have babies. Not until that medical board decides to inactivate the infertility chips. If they’re even willing.”

“That may or may not be true,” Adam says.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs.

“You’re saying . . . the Mer could have babies? On our own? Without the doctors?”

“It might be possible, I dunno.”

And it kind of rattles me. I mean, I don’t know why I never really thought about it very much before.

But somehow . . . a separate, viable, transhuman tribe, set off out here, apart . . .

“Turtle. What are you thinking?”

It just comes out: “It feels like the loneliest thing in the world.”

Adam sighs. “You know we can’t live on land, right, Turtle?”

Yeah, I know. I lived on land for years until the Shift, but even with a diving family, I think it was a strain. And the whole Mer community? It would never work.

“And even if we could live on land in separate families, spread out all over, with some kind of sleeping tank arrangement . . . that’s another kind of loneliness, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. I can see that. The Mer need to be together. But—”

“The worst thing is those poor guards, people like them . . .”

“Adam, where did they come from? Antonio, and the others.”

“Same place we did. It’s happening all over the world. Not with Mer—we really are the last of our kind—but the biohackers . . . you can’t stop them.”

“But I mean, how did they get here?”

“Emerson posted them.”

I remember the cots, the pillows, the blankets. “So, they live there?

In Emerson’s shop?”

“Some of them. But there are, you know, thousands. Social Services can’t keep up, and anyway, they don’t do all that well in the Normal world.”

Yeah, I can imagine. Talk about your weird outsiders.

“Mostly,” Adam says, “they don’t live . . . anywhere. They’re hiding. In warehouses, graveyards, under bridges.”

Wow. I never knew. And I feel bad I was freaked out about those guys on the rig.

Maybe that’s how some people feel about us, the Mer. We didn’t decide to be born with gills, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe just the fact of us . . . scares them.

Ahead, the lights of the island are drawing near. They look hard and cold.

“Emerson wants to talk to you,” Adam says.

“To me? Why?”

“He thinks you could help us.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Turtle.”

I could help. My friends are in trouble, and I abandoned them, but Emerson thinks I could help.

“I’d love to, but how?”

“You should talk to him about it. But anyway, you’d be willing?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, there’s Grace and the baby,” I say. “I promised to help them, but—”

“You could come when Grace doesn’t need you. Thursday after dinner would be good, if you can. They’re open late over there. Turtle . . .”

He’s looking at me now—he’s got that deadpan thing going—but all serious now, not laughing at all.

“There’d be a place for you. After the baby comes, and . . . if you ever changed your mind. If you wanted to live with us again.”

“You mean the Habitat?”

He nods.

“But Constance . . . You said I’m banished.”

“If she thinks you can help us, I’m betting she’ll get over it.”

“But I’m . . . I’m Changed. I . . .”

He’s silent, holding my gaze. And there’s something about him, the way he’s looking at me . . . My face feels warm, and I can feel my heart beating a little too fast. And I know I should say something, but my mind has gone completely blank.

He shrugs. “Just sayin’.”

Then he’s checking his nav program, he’s slowing us down, he’s turning toward the harbor.

And the moment has passed.

CHAPTER 46

ACHES AND PAINS

At lunchtime on Tuesday, Grace calls to say we forgot my doctor appointment yesterday.

Oh no. We did. I was wiped out after the long night with Adam and . . . just spaced it.

I promise to set up a new one. Meanwhile, she has a doctor appointment that afternoon, and Rav will pick her up. She asks if I’d make dinner—chili and a salad—and tells me where to find the chili recipe.

“Sure,” I say. And this time, I won’t let her down.

After we hang up, I find the card they gave me at the clinic and dial the phone number. Before I can even say my name, a woman asks for the last four digits of my social.

“My social?”

“Social Security number.” She’s the tiniest bit impatient.

Do I have a Social Security number? I guess I must. Did Constance keep track of those?

“I . . . don’t have that number with me, but—”

“Your insurance number, then.”

I don’t have one. I don’t think. Unless Grace and Rav have bought me insurance. Another expense they can’t afford.

“Listen,” I say. “I had an appointment yesterday, and nobody asked for—”

“You were here yesterday?”

“Uh, no. I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“Uhhh . . .”

“Did you cancel in advance?”

“No, like I said, I forgot.” Voices in the background. Sounds really busy over there. “I’m sorry,” I add. For flaking out. Again.

“Clinic policy,” the woman says, “is pay-in-full for missed appointments unless they’re canceled at least twenty-four hours in advance. So, call back when you get those numbers together, and bring payment when you come in.”

As if.

Click. She hangs up.

I wonder how much it costs. The missed appointment, and maybe buying insurance, too. Grace and Rav are hurting for money, and I don’t have any, at all.

And I’m fine.

I breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

See? Easy-peasy. Nothing wheezy, nothing phlegmy, nothing raspy. No panic attacks, not since really early on.

I’ll deal with the appointment later. First, there’s dinner to make.

I’ve still never cooked an entire dinner all by myself, and I’m a little nervous about it, but it turns out to be kind of fun. I have to rummage around some to find stuff in the kitchen, and then Atticus and I settle down on the couch and watch some cooking vids together. Turns out, people throw all kinds of stuff into chili. Beer. Peanut butter. Chocolate. Molasses. Coffee. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. I use Grace’s recipe, mostly, but I toss in a few tablespoons of dark cocoa powder, ’cause how could that possibly hurt?

And it goes over great. Grace notices something different but can’t tell what it is. “What’s your secret?” she asks.

“My lips are sealed.”

“It’s delicious, Turtle. Thanks so much!”

Rav just says, “Yum!” gobbles down his first bowlful, then goes back to the kitchen for more.

Seems like a good time to bring up the thing about Emerson that Adam was talking about last night. About helping the Mer. And so I do.

I halfway expect Grace to say What about school? but she’s staring down at her chili, kind of unfocused. She looks tired.

“We need your help, too,” Rav says.

“I already told Adam that Grace and the baby come first.”

“Do you think they’ll accept that?” Rav asks. “Once you’ve signed on to their cause?”

“I’ll just make it really clear I can only help Emerson if you guys don’t need me.”

“But even volunteers are expected to be reliable. To be there when they say they will. To do what they say they’ll do, no matter what.”

Ouch. What he’s saying-and-not-saying is that I let them down before.

“I . . . You guys come first, like I said.”

Grace’s still not talking.

“Listen, I’ll just go once, see what Emerson has to say.”

“Who is this Emerson, anyway? How long have you known him?”

I want to say, What is this, the Inquisition? But I don’t. “I knew him on the Mermaid. He was our supplier and . . . sort of a fence for our scavenged stuff.”

“A fence? So, he’s, like, a criminal?”

“No! Rav. Why are you being like this? We had to live somehow, and he was helping. I mean, he was heroic.”

Rav holds up his hands. “All right, all right. I know you had to live. I just . . .” He turns to look at Grace, and there’s such tenderness in his eyes. Her hands are clasped over her belly. She looks worried. Suddenly, I have a bad feeling about why she hasn’t chimed in.

“What is it?” I ask.

Grace looks up. Smiles thinly. “I’ve been having . . . some pains,” she says. “The doctor says I should stay home, not strain myself. Bed rest, he says.”

Oh!

“Are you . . . Is the baby . . .”

“I’m far enough along that the baby’ll be viable, even if she comes early. But it would be best to bring her to term.”

“We need you now, Turtle,” Rav says. “I don’t want to leave Grace alone.”

“Okay,” I say. “I won’t leave her alone. I’ll be there.” And I’m thinking I should just let the meeting with Emerson slide, but there’s one reason why I can’t.

Because he asked for me. Just . . . me. Thinks I could help. I mean, seems like everybody thinks I’m a flake—with reason, I guess—so it feels good to be, you know, trusted.

“Just the one meeting,” I say. “And only if you’re home, Rav. I’ll tell them I can’t commit to anything else right now.”

GRACE AND I spend the next morning setting up for the baby. She mainly stays in bed, and I do the running around. The mini crib goes in Grace and Rav’s room, and all the adorable pink booties, sleepers, dresses, bibs, hats, blankets, and bath towels get distributed to various bureaus and closets. Grace is still over the moon. “Honestly, Turtle, I don’t think we could have managed without Sofia,” she says.

What with the scary stuff about her pregnancy, she’s agreed to put off the issue of school till next fall, but she’s been assigning me books to read. And when Rav comes home the next day, he’s bought me a gauntlet device. So I can be in contact, no matter what.

I feel a little guilty, because I know it was expensive, and Grace and Rav are strapped. I haven’t had a device for years, ever since Constance cut off the web. And yet, when I have time to fiddle with it in my bedroom after dinner, I get the hang of it pretty fast.

Anyway, now I can keep in touch with Kai.

I text him right away. Hello, I’ve got a gauntlet! Rav bought it for me.

I’m hoping he’ll text me right back, but time drags by without an answer.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Still no Kai.

I find my place in a play Grace gave me to read, Romeo and Juliet. The most famous romance in the world, she says. The old-fashioned language was a bit of a headwind at first—held me back—but it’s gotten easier bit by bit, and the story itself is really good.

Right now, this guy Tybalt’s challenging Romeo to a fight. Things are getting tense out there in Verona. But it’s hard to concentrate on the play because Kai still hasn’t answered my text, and my mind has shifted into worry mode. Don’t most people answer texts right away? Seems like Grace does, and Rav. Kai never answered texts from other people when he was with me . . . but that’s not necessarily comforting. What is he doing—right now—that he can’t text me back?

Another twenty minutes.

Whoa. Romeo has climbed up to Juliet’s balcony, apparently with “cords made like a tackled stair.” A rope ladder? And . . . hold on. They’re in bed together!

I put down the book, walk to the window. Underneath, there’s that trellis, with the honeysuckle vine growing on it. Just say Kai wants to come visit some night . . .

He throws rocks at my window; I open it up. He says sweet things to me, and then . . .

The trellis looks fairly sturdy, though it’s hard to tell. No need for a rope ladder, is there?

I go back to the book.

So romantic!

Ten minutes more.

Now I’m wishing I’d never texted Kai. Maybe it was pushy? But how could it be? And when will I see him again? Will he drop by after dinner tonight? Or . . .

There’s a funny pain in the middle of my chest. I know I can’t be having a heart attack; I’m too young. I laugh at myself. What a dope!

Ring!

It’s him!

“Hello?” I say.

“Turtle! You’re connected at last!”

I breathe in his voice. The buzzy little edge of hoarseness. The spoofy undertone, like he’s smiling at something absurd. He sounds really glad to be talking to me. I let out a big sigh, and my whole body relaxes.

“Turtle? You there?”

“Yes,” I say. And, dorkily, “Hi.”

“When can we get together?”

“Tonight?”

But it turns out he’s kind of busy. There’s the fishing, and the getting ready for fishing, and the cleaning up after fishing. You wouldn’t believe, he says, how long it takes to swamp out the boat. Not to mention schmoozing with clients, taking pictures, posting stuff, booking future trips.

And then there’s everything he has to do for his probation. The judge has given him actual homework for the GED. And his mom needs his help, too, with the little kids and general handyman stuff, and . . .

“How about Thursday,” he says. “Thursday after dinner.”

Which is when I’m meeting Emerson.

Turns out, I’m kind of busy, too. Or, maybe not busy, exactly, but tied up because of staying with Grace while Rav’s not home. Though really, tied up isn’t the way I think about it, because I’m happy to be helping.

“We’ll figure out something,” he says. “I really miss you.”

And suddenly I long to see him, with a huge, all-over body ache. I want him to gather me into his arms. I want to breathe in the smell of him. I want to trace his cheekbones and jaw with my fingertips, I want to . . .

“Miss you, too,” I say.

“Let’s get our schedules together,” he says, “and meet really soon. Call you tomorrow, okay?”

I click off, swimming in disappointment. We should have tried harder. He could throw rocks at my window; we could talk like Romeo and Juliet in the balcony scene.

I sigh. But I notice a little quirk in the tide of disappointment—something surprising—a thin, feathery current of something else.

I’m just the tiniest bit relieved.

CHAPTER 47

AMPHIBIOUS

Emerson’s place looks different.

“Hold up a sec, Adam,” I say. I stop outside the storefront and check it out. The windows are covered with plywood, like they’re ready for a hurricane. And, sure, it’s hurricane season, but there’s no special reason to board up right this minute. For another thing, the brick walls, which had been dirty red with a little graffiti here and there, are now white. I mean, totally. I don’t remember how the Pawn Shop sign looked before, not clearly, but it seems different, too. Plain vanilla. Black and white. Nothing quirky or alt about it.

“Turtle?” Adam asks.

“It looks different,” I say.

“It was vandalized. They decided to clean it up.”

Wow, did they ever.

“Somebody threw a couple of bricks through the windows,” he says. “And the walls were covered with anti-Mer graffiti.”

“As in . . . ?”

“Frankenfish, Codzilla, Mermutation. Go, Fish. You know.”

Yeah. I do know. But still. “How do they know Emerson helps us?”

“They just . . . find out. And there was other stuff. Anti-gen-mod in general.”

Wow. Thank goodness the Mermaid’s still okay. On the way over, Adam gave me another letter from Naomi. She said there’d been a few skirmishes at the harbor, but the police had managed to hold off the protestors. When I’d asked Adam about Maya, he said she was still kind of iffy, but mostly okay. And nobody else had symptoms.

I take in a breath, pull myself together. I’m a little nervous. Those backgammon-playing gen-mods, they don’t like me. And the blue rat. Not crazy about that, either. Plus, Emerson was pretty aggravated at me for making the Change, and now, with the vandalism . . .

“You sure Emerson asked for me?”

Adam gives me a long, level gaze.

“Okay. But Adam—”

“Yeah, I know. Grace needs you right now. But it won’t be forever. Just hear him out, that’s all.”

EMERSON IS WEARING a suit.

I mean, it’s not an I-read-the-news-on-the-vidcast kind of suit, and it’s not an I’m-the-best-man-at-my-buddy’s-wedding kind of suit. It’s crazy tight, and it’s started to go rusty the way old black cloth sometimes does, and the lapels are super-thin, like in pictures of suits people wore when my grandparents were kids. It’s a rock-star suit. An ironic suit. A costume.

But it’s a suit.

He’s also wearing dark glasses that hide his weird eyes.

Standing there, behind the counter, he looks almost mainstream.

Well. Maybe almost is generous.

He looks up.

“Good god, girl,” he says. “Good god, girl, you came.”

It rocks me, a little. I mean, he sounds seriously relieved. And Emerson’s not seriously anything very often.

He calls into the back room, and the girl who was playing backgammon before, the one with the webbed fingers, comes out.

She’s wearing a dress.

It’s a dress you would wear if somebody ordered you to wear a dress and you were making a point of showing how much you really didn’t want to. A Dress of Defiance. It’s vintage—an explosion in a florist shop, mostly bright pinky-orange, with huge, poofy sleeves, and acres of ruffles all over.

“Nancy, would you please take over for me here?” Emerson asks.

She nods. Glowers at me.

What did I ever do to her?

Emerson bows to me and Adam. “Come this way.”

THERE’S A REEK of cheap air freshener in the back room, which doesn’t really cover the smells of dust and sweat. An ancient window air-conditioning unit is grinding away, which I don’t remember from before. Otherwise, it looks pretty much the same. Even more cluttered, if possible. Which is kind of a relief. All this sprucing up is making me nervous. Emerson leads us along the narrow path through the crates and boxes and assorted junk to the space cleared out in the middle of the room. He motions Adam and me to the circle of overstuffed chairs under the ceiling fan.

I look at his feet. The all-toes sneakers, still.

Emerson stoops at the mini-fridge and invites us to pick our respective poisons. Me: Sweet tea. Adam: Plain water. Emerson: Dr Pepper.

I look around. “Where’s the rat?” I ask.

Emerson frowns. “Waldo,” he says, “is in a cage. He’s ticked off about that, and I don’t blame him.”

Right.

“Adam says you’re tied up for a little while,” Emerson says.

I nod.

“So, when can you start?”

I look at Adam, and back at Emerson. “Exactly what would I be starting?” I ask.

Emerson turns to Adam. “Didn’t you explain it to her?”

“Well, I didn’t really get into the weeds. I thought you could do it better.”

“Coward.” Emerson turns back to me. “So, Myrtle-the-Turtle . . . As you may have noticed, this whole backlash thing has gone full-out demento. The Normals were mostly okay so long as the Mer were innocent so-called victims, but when the Mer said, No thanks to being like you all, it really stuck in their Normal little craws. And it’s not just the Mer they’re going after—it’s all the gen-mods. Contributions have dried up, they’re enforcing the anti-scavenging laws to the letter, and now it’s talk about putting people in camps, and bricks through the windows in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Was anybody hurt?” I ask.

“Not this time.”

“I’m glad. But what do you mean, camps?”

“I’m not talking summer camp, Myrtle. And not like the Mermaid, either. I’m talking—”

“Internment camps,” Adam says.

Yikes. We didn’t learn all that much history on the Mermaid, but they did tell us about the Japanese Americans during World War II.

Camps!

“Not all Normals are like that. My sister and her husband aren’t, not at all.”

“I know,” Adam says.

“But there’s a movement,” Emerson says, “and it’s growing. Getting scary out there.”

“So, what can I do?”

“First of all, we need a Normal-looking presence in the store. Somebody who can reach out to the neighbors, chat them up, show them we’re nothing to be scared of. We need to project a new image.”

Image? “But my neck . . .”

“A little concealer would do the trick. Anyway, if anybody noticed . . . You made the right decision. By their lights. You chose to be Normal, not a freak.”

“Hey . . . !”

Emerson holds up his hands in a back-off gesture. “Just saying what they’re thinking. I don’t think that. Clearly.”

“So, you want me to, like, work here at the counter.”

“For starters. Pretty soon, we’ll have to find more space. Someplace with bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen. Where people can stay awhile.”

I glance at the row of cots I’d noticed before. How many people are bunking here? Is Emerson?

“I thought you could talk to the donors, too,” he’s saying.

“You’ve got more of a mainstream vibe; you’d put them at ease.”

“You’ve got donors?”

“Yeah, a few. Looking for more. You could, like, woo them—”

“Woo?”

“Make presentations, explain stuff, flog the Mer’s story—”

“Flog?”

“I’d bring you up to speed. Eventually, we could work you up to where you’re in negotiations with people who could offer job training and actual jobs. Maybe legal aid people, too. And you could liaise with the Mer—”

“Liaise?”

Emerson gives me a look. “Don’t mess with me, Myrtle.”

“Some of them hate me.”

“No, really, they don’t. I’ve been over there. I’ve talked to them. Adam, wouldn’t you agree?”

He hesitates. “A few of them were pretty upset at first. But they’ve had time to get over it. Now everyone speaks of you fondly. They want to know how you’re doing. They miss you.”

“Even Hadley?”

“Oh, Hadley’s Hadley, we all know how she is. But yeah, I think, deep down, she misses you, too.”

“Way deep down,” I mutter.

Emerson ignores that.

“What about Constance?” I ask. “She’ll never let me back.”

“We’re working on that. Constance is a partisan, but she’s also deeply practical. And especially with this new crap, the protests,” Emerson says.

“They’re scared,” Adam says. “We’re scared. And . . . I don’t know. Everyone would trust you.”

Even though I’m a flake?

“You’d be like an envoy,” Emerson says.

“Envoy?”

“An ambassador. A go-between. A person who represents one government in their dealings with another.”

“So, like, Mer-to-Normal.”

“And bigger than that, eventually: modded-to-Normal. New gen-mods are cropping up every day, and some people can’t wait for years of testing and red tape to pass on the advantages to their kids. Meanwhile, you’ve got boatloads of underground hackers lining up to take their money, and . . . stuff happens. Intended or not. And people wind up needing help, through no fault of their own. It’s not just here, either, Turtle, it’s global. For now, we’re just putting out fires in our own neighborhood, but maybe someday we can do more.”

I think about it. Wooing donors. Negotiating. So-called liaising with the Mer. A huge global need. I mean, I do really want to help, but this sounds like a grown-up job. Not a job for a kid.

I turn to Emerson. “Why me? There must be somebody else, some grown-up willing to help.”

“For one thing,” he says, “you’re amphibious.”

“Not anymore, I can’t—”

“Myrtle, honey, did you miss the day in English class when they taught metaphors?”

I shut up.

“You’re comfortable with land-people and water-people. You can swim in either world.”

“But Yuka Changed, too. And some others.”

Adam ducks his head. He’s grinning, I can tell. “You’re gonna have to spell it out for her, man,” he says.

“Myrtle, you’ve got sand, in case you haven’t noticed. In case you’re not self-aware enough to see it.”

Great. Some weird kind of compliment, wrapped up in an insult. “Sand?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“Grit. Spunk. Spine. For instance, you took a risk and saved that Normal guy.”

“He couldn’t breathe! Was I supposed to let him die?”

“And you don’t just go with the flow. You took the road less traveled. Even though you knew some of your old friends were going to hate you for it.”

“I thought you said they didn’t!”

“Now they don’t. A while ago, maybe.”

“But Yuka—”

“And the way you got pissed at me that day when I said you caved. You told me where I was wrong . . . and I got it. Though I don’t really agree with . . .” He glances at Adam. “How is Mama’s Boy, anyway? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

I can’t look at Adam. Heat is creeping up my face.

Emerson suddenly goes serious. “Things are bad,” he says. “The Mer are in trouble, and you’re in a position to help. I’m offering you a ride on the Devil’s Octopus, Myrtle, and I hope you won’t turn me down.”

And something is happening now, something new. I feel a little spark flaring up inside me. Just for a moment, I allow myself to imagine what it might be like to be able to help the Mer. Really help them. To be of use. To tell their story to people who might be sympathetic, who might be able to give enough money to make a difference. To go back and forth to the ship, to see Naomi and Maya and even Hadley again.

What was the word Emerson used? Envoy. I like the sound of it. I like the idea of it, of who I might be. But Grace and Rav—

“Emerson?”

Nancy’s at the door, a pinky-orange explosion.

“Are you almost done?” she asks. “Cuz I’ve got about fifteen things I need you for out here.”

“Just a minute, Nance. I’ll be right there.”

But the sight of all that pink . . . It triggers something.

Someplace where people can stay awhile. You know, with beds and bathrooms and stuff.

I could get the number from Grace and make a call. No harm in asking. But better not mention it yet.

Emerson turns back to me. “Well, that’s my pitch, Myrtle. What do you say?”

“My sister Grace is having a baby, and there’s something sketchy going on with her pregnancy. She’s supposed to stay in bed. I’ve promised to be there whenever they need me, and to help when the baby comes. And I really want to help the Mer, too, Emerson. But . . . I promised. I’ll talk to Grace and Rav, see what they say, see if I can get away sometimes when they don’t need me, but . . .”

Emerson looks at me for a long moment. “So, you’re telling me you’re a girl who never breaks a promise.”

I sigh, thinking about all the times I’ve flaked out on people, let them down.

“Working on it,” I say.

Emerson nods and says, “Well, damn.”

CHAPTER 48

THE BABY

The very next day, Grace’s water breaks. The baby is early. By a month. Despite the fact that Grace’s been following the doctor’s orders, staying in bed almost all day long.

But her bag’s been packed for weeks, so in ten minutes she and Rav are off to the hospital.

And I wait. With Atticus. Just about holding my breath the whole time. After a while, though, I start scrolling through chicken soup recipes, and then check to see if we have the ingredients.

We’re fine, with a substitution or two. I start chopping and sautéing, just to do something useful. I let it bubble on the stove for an hour or so, then pack it in meal-size portions for freezing. I clean the kitchen. Pet Atticus. Scrounge around for something else useful to do. Vacuum. Water the plants. Roll more paint on the nursery walls.

I take a break and put in a call to Sofia, though more and more it seems like a crazy idea. She’s not the type to want to associate with Emerson, much less open her house to a bunch of people she’s never met, probably gen-mods of one sort or another. But you never know.

She doesn’t pick up, so I leave a message for her to call me. Talking would be better than texting, I think.

I wish I could call Adam, but of course he doesn’t have a device, except when he borrows Gladys from Emerson. And Kai . . . I dunno. He and Grace don’t really click. Anyway, it’s probably best to wait till we know more.

Another hour passes. Two. Three. I’m still painting and, miraculously, just about done. Though my right arm feels like it’s going to fall off.

I put the last touches on the window trim, then stand back, survey my work.

Not perfect. There are a few dried paint drips on the baseboards, and the big periwinkle walls are kind of streaky. But still. Rav never got back to it, which is okay, he’s been busy and stressed. I finished it all by myself.

My gauntlet rings. It’s Rav. “Your niece has made her grand entrance into the world! She’s tiny, but she has all her fingers and toes and all the other essential accoutrements! She’s unbelievable—just wait till you see her!”

“Wahoo!” I’m jumping around; I can’t help it. “How’s Grace?” I ask.

“Fantastic! Want to talk to her?”

“Yes! But, Rav . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You sure she’s gonna be okay, the baby? Even though she came early?”

“Not to worry, the doctors have this wired. She’s tucked away in the incubator. They want to check out a few things before she can come home, but she’ll be fine. They do this all the time.”

And then I talk to Grace, who sounds tired but happy. “Wait till you see her, Turtle. She’s beautiful.”

And then Rav’s back again, and he tells me he’ll be home later, with stories to tell.

And it turns out they’re the kind of stories that might not be interesting to most people but are fascinating to people who love you. How Grace refused to sit in a wheelchair at the hospital door, even though Rav tried to talk her into it. How the first contractions came while Grace was standing at the registration desk, and she changed her mind about the wheelchair. How Rav found out that he’d parked illegally, and when he came back after reparking, Grace had disappeared, and he had to search all over the hospital to find her. How a nurse named Jasmine has bonded with Grace, and it turns out she’s a serious scuba diver. How the doctor had been out riding her horse when she got the call, and she thought there’d be more time, but she wound up delivering the baby about two minutes after she arrived at the hospital, still wearing her cowgirl boots.

“Jasmine yelled down the hall when the doctor was changing, ‘Doctor, we’re going to have this baby right now, with or without you,’ and so here she comes running, in scrubs and Mercer boots.”

“When can they come home?” I ask.

“Grace—pretty soon. Tomorrow or the day after. The baby . . . it all depends.” He hesitates. “I called Abby. Just to let her know. But it turns out, she wants to help.”

“Here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’ll be great,” I say. But to tell the truth, I’m not one hundred percent sure how I feel about it. Sometimes things were terrific with Abby. She used to take me to the beach and the municipal pool. I remember how good it felt when she slugged my arm—maybe a teeny bit too hard—and called me Sis. I felt so, sort of, sistered. But she could flip at a moment’s notice. Be dismissive. Boss me around. And she hasn’t come to see me since I Changed, even though she’s not super far away.

“What about college? Is she taking leave or something?”

“Dunno. She says she’ll be here as soon as she can get away.”

I’m feeling a little defensive, a little territorial. For weeks, I’ve been helping Grace and planning to help with the baby. Now Abby’s going to ride in on a white steed and rescue us?

“We can make up the study for her,” Rav says. “It’ll only be for a while.”

“How long?” I ask.

“She didn’t say.”

TWO DAYS LATER, Rav and I go to pick up Grace. He promises I’ll get to meet the baby, Hope Mercer Mehta. Mercer, Rav explains, is for the boots.

What Hope is for, I don’t have to ask.

At the hospital, Grace gives me a big hug. She’s dressed and packed and kind of teary. A boatload of pink stuff is coming home with us because Hope won’t need it for a while. A nurse comes in, fist-bumps with Grace and then Rav. She’s got crows’ feet when she smiles, but she’s still really cute. Bright purple scrubs. Starfish earrings. A cornrow French braid ending in masses of thick, curly black hair.

She turns to me. “You must be Turtle,” she says.

“You must be Jasmine.”

She fist-bumps me. Her gaze flicks to my neck, but in a friendly way. “I hear you’re a diver,” I say.

“I hear you are, too.” She grins and quirks an eyebrow. “Want to meet baby Hope?”

“Do I ever!”

Jasmine leads, and the four of us troop to the nursery. We can’t go inside, but some of the babies are lined up in incubators at a big picture window.

“There she is,” Grace says.

She’s tiny, like a little doll. I could hold her in two hands cupped together. She’s got a cap of dark hair, and her head looks way too big for her body. She’s swaddled in a pink blanket, and there’s a tube up her nose that’s stuck to her cheeks with a heart-shaped piece of bandage tape. Her eyes are open, alert. They’re a sort of light brown color, with a warm, coppery cast.

Grace and Jasmine have their noses just about plastered to the glass.

“Oh, just look at her,” Jasmine says. “What a sweetie!”

Grace sniffles. Rav takes her hand.

“We’ll take good care of her,” Jasmine says. “I promise. You and Rav come see her as often as you want. You, too, Turtle.”

Grace sniffles again.

Hope busts out a huge yawn, squeezing her eyes shut, and then opens them. Looks around. Takes it all in.

I glance at the other babies. All sound asleep.

“Wow, she’s a wide-awake little gal,” I say. “Doesn’t miss a thing.”

I feel Rav stiffen beside me. Grace says, “She was sleeping earlier. Wasn’t she, Jasmine?”

Jasmine makes an um sound in her throat, not quite a yes.

“She’s not on her sleeping schedule, yet,” Grace says. “We’ll establish that when we get her home. Isn’t that right, Rav?”

“Oh, definitely,” he says.

And something is bothering me, a little tick, tick, tick of worry. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

I turn toward Jasmine, hoping she’ll weigh in or maybe just say something reassuring, but there’s a blur of purple scrubs moving down the hall, and she’s gone.

CHAPTER 49

ABBY

On Saturday, abby thunders in like a Category Five storm. She must have a door key, because she’s inside before I even know she’s arrived—throwing down her duffle, shrugging off her coat. She blows her long bangs out of her eyes and then swipes a finger across the dust on the front table. “Ick,” she says.

She’s let her hair grow past her shoulders, and it looks good. Dark and thick and kind of swingy. She’s willow-thin, like always.

“Hey, Abby!” I say.

She looks up. “Hey, Turtle. Grace home?” She throws her car key at me; I miss. “Get my stuff out of the car for me, would you?” she says, while I’m scrambling for the key. And then she’s out of the entryway and heading off toward the kitchen.

What?

And it’s like that for the rest of the day. She’s all over the house—inspecting, straightening, asking questions, criticizing. The kitchen’s disorganized, the diaper-changing station’s set up all wrong and, even with the piles of pink plunder, it seems we’re disastrously low on baby supplies. Grace and I both try to explain the system we’ve worked out, but Abby brushes us aside. “I volunteered at a hospital for years. I think I know a little more about medical stuff than you guys.”

“Look, Abby,” I say. “We’re—”

“I’ve got this, Turtle. Why don’t you run along?”

My ears are ringing. I feel a bubble of rage welling up inside my chest. I know Abby can be like this sometimes, but . . . what’s the matter with her?

Grace says, “Turtle’s really been helping, Abby. We couldn’t have managed without her.”

“Yeah, that’s great,” Abby says. “But Turtle’s still adjusting to being—”

“Normal?” I say. And even I can hear the poison in my voice.

“No need to get snippy,” Abby says.

But I am snippy. I’m worse than snippy. I’m totally pissed off.

KAI. I NEED to see Kai.

I text him, and wait.

C’mon, Kai. Would you answer me, please!

My gauntlet buzzes; my heart leaps. But it’s only Sofia, returning my call. I tell her about Emerson, what he said about needing bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen. I’m kind of jabbering, because my head’s not really in it at the moment. But I try not to tell her too much—about the other gen-mods and stuff. Try not to scare her off.

When I’m done, there’s a pause. And I’m sure she’s going to say no; it’s just really not her kind of thing. To be honest, I can hardly imagine Sofia and Emerson in the same room together. They’re almost like different species.

Finally, Sofia asks, “How is Grace?”

I tell her she’s fine, that the baby’s come a little early, and she’s fine, too. I tell her how much Grace loves the mini crib and all the bedding and clothes. How she told me she doesn’t know how we’d have managed without them.

I kick myself. Should have started with that.

“Does she have a rocking chair?” Sofia asks.

“Um, no.”

“Hmm,” Sofia says. “Every new mother needs a rocking chair.”

“Um, do they?”

“Yes, they do,” Sofia says. There’s another pause, a longer one, and for a moment I wonder if we’ve been cut off. Then, “It’s good to be useful,” Sofia says. “Tell your friend Emerson to give me a call.”

Wow. Okay.

Kai texts me back at last. He’s been busy. Working. Of course. He can drop by this evening, though, after dinner.

Oh, fantastic! I long to slip into his arms, and . . . Oh, I hope we can find a way to be alone, at least for a while.

Meanwhile, I can’t stand it here, with Abby pushing, pushing. She complains about the paint drips on the nursery baseboards. She says Grace should have found a way to keep Grandmother’s piano. When I defend Grace, Abby says it again: “Turtle, why don’t you run along?”

Okay. What a great idea. I will.

To Emerson. As it happens, I’m available.

HE PUTS ME to work. He shifts Nancy off the front desk—she’s wearing another Dress of Defiance, this one with layers of crinoline that stick out, like, three feet in every direction.

“Where’s her dress?” Nancy asks, pointing a webbed finger at me.

“Just . . .” Emerson shuts his mouth, moves his hands in a tamp-it-down hand gesture. “You’ve been wanting to work in the back room, Nancy. Now you can.”

Nancy snorts, and flounces into the back room. Putting some extra oomph in the flounce.

“Do I have to wear a dress?” I ask.

“Don’t start with me,” Emerson says.

I tell him about Sofia and give him her number. “I don’t know if it’ll work out,” I say, “but it’s worth a try.”

“Sure is, Myrtle. Thanks!”

He shows me what to do when people come in to buy, to sell. How to look up prices. How to record transactions. How to answer FAQs, and when to buzz the back room for help. He shows me what to do when there are no customers—how to sort things, how to price them, how to organize the dusty merchandise on the dusty shelves. He’s also got three rusty old locked metal boxes that don’t have keys. He picks the first lock with a pen knife, explaining what he’s doing. Then he hands the knife to me.

“See what you can do with the other two,” he says.

“Picking locks? Isn’t that, like, a criminal activity?”

“It’s a life skill, Myrtle,” he says. “You’ll thank me someday.”

He leaves me on my own for a while, and it goes okay. Not many customers, and mostly it’s pretty straightforward. Twice, I have to buzz Emerson, but it’s fine. I manage to open the second box, but the third one stumps me. When I give up on it and run out of other things to do, I dust.

After a while, the super-tall guy with the patchy green hair shows up with the bat-ear guy. They look at me, nod, head for the backgammon table, and don’t say another word.

I stay for a couple of hours.

In the end, Emerson reinstalls Nancy at the front desk and sets me up with an iced tea in the back room. He thanks me and says I’ve done a good job. He shows me how to hack the third box and, as a bonus, demonstrates picking the lock on the backroom door with a bobby pin. “Your everyday bed-and-bath lock,” he calls it, “with a hole for emergency access.”

“Show off,” I say.

He makes a face, then motions me to sit in one of the overstuffed chairs, and sits down beside me. He tells me he’d like to take me back to visit the Mermaid. “To, you know, liaise,” he says.

I snort. “Yeah, right. I don’t know, Emerson. I don’t think they want to see me.”

“Trust me, they do.”

“So, you’ve talked to them? About me?”

He nods. I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.

“What about Constance?”

“She’s okay with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. She’s already thought of some ways you could help.”

That surprises me. I think about going back. What would that be like? I lived there for most of my life, but everything is different now. I’ve Changed. I’m not like them anymore. And I chose it. I bet some of them are still mad at me—though even if they aren’t, it’s not going to be the same.

But I miss my friends. I don’t really have any friends now, in my new life, except for family. And they’re wonderful, except for maybe Abby, but there’s something about friends, especially friends like Adam and Naomi . . .

And it comes to me that it doesn’t matter if they’re together or not. Well, I wouldn’t like it so much—ever since the Father Goose days, I’ve always felt that I was the one with the odd little bond with Adam. But still. I ache for the nights when Naomi and I used to lie out under the stars and talk about everything. Stuff that happened to us before we came to live on the Mermaid. Things that had us worried, things that made us sad. Dreams for the future . . .

I thought it would be enough to be Normal, to be with Kai, to be with my family. To fill up that hole in my life. But now it turns out, there’s another hole.

“Can Grace get by without you for a while at night?” Emerson asks. “Rav will be home, right?”

“Puh. Not sure they need me at all anymore.” I tell him about Abby.

“Does it seem like she’ll be able to help Grace?” he asks.

“Well, she seems competent enough. But super bossy.”

“Does Grace mind?”

“Maybe. Some. But not as much as I do.”

“How long will she stay?”

“I don’t know. Not sure if she’s just missing classes for a week, or dropped the semester, or what.”

Emerson chews on that for a minute. I take a sip of tea. I should go now, I really should. But it feels good, just sitting here with Emerson. The fan hums, sends a cool breeze across my face. I lean back, rest my head against the chair.

“So she’s really a pill, eh?” Emerson asks.

“You can say that again.”

“Has she always been that way?”

“I mean, she always liked to be in charge. But sometimes she was fun. And I got the feeling that she liked me, mostly. She used to call me ‘Sis.’ Like, ‘Back atcha, Sis.’ Like, ‘You got this, Sis.’ But now, she seems just grim.”

“Maybe she’s having a hard time right now.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Maybe she’s jealous of you.”

“What? Of me? Her freak kid sister?”

“Isn’t your father a diver?”

I look at him. “What are you saying? Did you . . . Do you know my dad?”

Emerson shrugs. “I hear stuff, that’s all.”

Weird. This is the second time lately that someone’s mentioned Daddy.

But Emerson’s comment about jealousy has triggered an old memory. Of Grace and me coming back from exploring a wreck with Daddy while Mama and Abby were waiting in the boat. And Abby’s crying. Really full-out bawling. Mama says something . . . “She tried to follow.” And I don’t remember what happened after that.

So maybe she was jealous. And I was too young to understand.

“What do you hear about my dad?” I ask. “Did someone see him? Is he around?”

Emerson looks at me a moment, then stands, pulls a coin out of his pocket and slots it into the gumball machine. An orange gumball clatters down the spout. He holds it out to me. “Here you go.”

“What’s that for?”

“For you.”

“What, instead of paying me?”

“No, I’ll pay you. End of the month. This is a bonus.”

I sigh and take the gum. The candy coating is cracked and going white in places. I wonder how old it is. Years, probably. Ancient gum.

“Listen, Myrtle,” Emerson says, “I hear all kinds of stuff, and most of it’s wrong. But think about it. Turns out, you’re pretty good at this. Good with the customers, good with the stock. And there’s more to do, in connection with the Mermaid. Come along tonight, if you can. If you can’t, we’ll do it some other time. Either way, I understand. Eleven o’clock. I’ll wait fifteen minutes after that, and if you’re not here by then, I’ll take off.”

CHAPTER 50

FIRE, SOOT, AND ASHES

At dinner, abby kicks back. She has a few glasses of wine; before long she’s pretty lubricated and her voice is getting loud. Rav thanks her for her help and asks how long she can stay. “Are you on break now? Or . . . ?”

Abby blows her bangs out of her eyes. “Those bastards,” she says.

Rav looks at her, raising his eyebrows. A question.

“Their little rules and regulations. How many classes you can skip, even if you have good reasons. How many points you can miss on their silly quizzes. And if one of them randomly doesn’t like you, god help you.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Rav asks, and I can tell he’s trying hard to be tactful.

“The college powers-that-be. The professors, the deans—all of them.”

“So, they—”

“I’m not going back. I’ve decided. I don’t need that kind of crap.”

“Not going back!” Grace says.

“Anyway,” Abby says, “you guys need me now. Even more when the baby comes home. Those little critters . . . they’re a lot of trouble. Trust me on this one. Especially preemies.”

“Abby—” Grace begins, but Rav puts a hand on hers. I’m watching his face, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s a careful face. Nothing shows. They’ll talk about this later, for sure.

I clear the table, take the dishes to the sink. I wash them, set them in the drainer to dry. Abby doesn’t try to take over or tell me I’m doing it wrong. She seems done with work for the day. She’s talking even louder now, waving her hands around. Going on and on about taking care of babies, and the jerks who had it in for her at school.

I’ve made a fruit cobbler for dessert. I check the time. Seven o’clock.

Kai said he’d be by at about quarter after. I put on a pot of decaf.

I’m a little nervous, to tell the truth. Grace doesn’t like Kai all that much, and I don’t know what he’s going to think of Abby. She’s clearly drunk. I’m secretly hoping, though, that she’ll see that somebody likes me, thinks I’m interesting. A big, good-looking, guy. And maybe she’ll entertain the radical idea that I might not be completely worthless.

I wipe down the counters again. Set out plates and forks.

The doorbell rings. It’s him.

I head for the door, but Rav beats me to it. Kai comes in.

He’s glorious. The light catches his hair, which has gone wavy and is getting long, and it’s red-gold, shining like a halo, like one of those gold-leaf halos in medieval pictures. He’s wearing a tight T-shirt, which doesn’t do a thing to hide how well built he is. His jeans are slung low on his hips. He’s holding a bouquet of daisies, which only makes him look more golden and incredible.

“Well, hello there,” Abby says. And the way she says it sets off a fire alarm in my chest.

Kai turns to her, smiles slowly.

“Are those for me?” Abby asks.

He advances into the room, pulls out a daisy, holds it out to her. She reaches for it, brushing his hand with her fingers. They look at each other a beat too long.

Two beats too long.

Three.

I’ve turned into a lump of clay. A stupid smile is plastered on my face. I can’t move.

At last, Kai looks up. “Hiya, kid,” he says. He kisses the top of my head and hands me the bouquet. The rest of it.

Kid?

And then Grace is up, too, and we’re scooping cobbler and putting it on plates, we’re taking it to the table, we’re pouring decaf, we’re all sitting down. Kai is in the chair between me and Abby. He digs into the cobbler, compliments my cooking, and answers some questions Rav asks him. And it’s all normal, it’s all fine, but there’s something between Kai and Abby, some kind of force field, something I can actually, physically, feel. Every so often their eyes find each other, and I pick up a kind of zap, a kind of charge. And it turns out they know some of the same people, some parasailers. And the conversation tacks in that direction, to parasailing and these people they know, and I don’t know anything about these people, anything about the sport, and they’re talking about technical parasailing stuff, laughing at stories about this one guy in particular, telling about his various “exploits,” which mainly seem to fall into two categories: taking stupid risks and making fools of other people. They’re talking in this clever, witty way, a way I don’t know how to talk. Rav jumps into the conversation—he knows a little about parasailing—but Grace and I don’t have anything to contribute; we just sit there like a couple of sea slugs, Grace looking kind of worried. And then Abby asks to see Kai’s watch, and he holds out his arm, and she’s touching him again, grazing his bare arm with her fingers. And now she’s leaning in close to him, face to face. She’s running her fingers through the hair on his head. Saying what a great color it is, how it catches the light. And he doesn’t stop her. Just smiles into her eyes and lets her keep on doing it.

And the fire alarm inside my chest is now an actual fire. Well, not an actual fire—that’s a metaphor, thank you, Emerson—but I can feel it burning through my body, feel my face growing hot.

Kai leans back. He puts an arm around me. He looks down at me and smiles.

Breathe, Turtle. Breathe.

When it’s time for him to go, he kisses me at the door. On the lips this time. But it’s quick. And I’m hoping he’ll say, “Let’s get out of here for a minute,” or, “C’mon, I’ve got something to tell you.” I’m hoping he’ll take my hand, pull me through the doorway, put his arms around me, kiss me for real. At the very least, I hope he’ll say something about Abby, something that will make it all right, though I don’t really know what that would be. I think maybe I should say something myself, but we’re there just down the hall from everybody, and I have no idea what to say. Kai promises to see me again soon, and then he’s gone.

THEY SET UP the study for Abby to sleep in. On an air mattress on the floor. Later that evening, when I go downstairs for a glass of water, I hear Grace and Abby talking in the kitchen. Grace sounds upset. I stand out in the hall, listening.

“But he came to see Turtle,” Grace is saying. “He’s her boyfriend.”

“Isn’t that for him to decide?” Abby says.

“And he’s younger than you,” Grace adds. “I thought you liked older guys.”

“Isn’t that for me to decide?”

“What’s gotten into you, Abby? I don’t understand you anymore . . .”

I creep back upstairs. I’m weak, hollowed out, a gutted house after a fire, soot and ashes raining down.

I tell myself that he did put his arm around me at the table, that he kissed me on the lips, that he promised to see me later. Am I paranoid? Am I pathetically insecure? But Grace noticed, too. Or at least, she noticed what Abby did. And now I remember the girl at the fluke fest. The girl who looked angry and pointed at me.

Stop obsessing, Turtle. You’re a maniac.

I pick up Romeo and Juliet, but things don’t go well there, either. To say the least. Juliet cooks up a scheme where she fakes her own death so she and Romeo can be together. But Romeo thinks she’s really dead, so he takes poison and dies. And then Juliet, seeing he’s dead, offs herself.

This is the most famous romance in the world?

I hurl it across the room in disgust.

CHAPTER 51

PROXY WAR

At 10:30, the house is mostly quiet. There’s silence from Rav’s and Grace’s room down the hall, and I can hear Abby’s music, faintly.

I can’t sleep.

I told Emerson there was no way I could go to the Mermaid in the middle of the night. But I’m restless, mad at Abby, mad at Kai, all wired-up and jangly. I feel cooped up. Claustrophobic.

I push open the window. It sticks halfway up, but finally releases with a crack. I listen, to make sure nobody’s coming to see what made that sound.

A light breeze ruffles the leaves of the pin oak tree and wafts in the smells of honeysuckle and cut grass. Moonlight glazes the tree leaves and puddles on the ground below. Faintly, I can hear the thrum and gurgle of the pumps that keep the sea from overwhelming the island.

Nobody comes.

Carefully, I remove the screen. Pull it inside. Scoot it under the bed.

I shouldn’t.

I know I really shouldn’t.

But I do.

I put on shoes. My gauntlet. I shrug into a jacket.

At the last minute, I scrawl out a note and leave it in the middle of my bed.

Don’t worry. I’ve gone to see Emerson. Back in a couple of hours.

And then, feet first and on my belly, I slide through the open space between the sill and the window sash. I hang on to the sill at first and then, as my toes find places to grip the trellis, grab on to thick ropes of honeysuckle vine. I make my way down.

The trellis is more fragile than it looks. I can feel it shifting under my toes and, when I grab it, the wood feels rough and splintery. With a crack, it gives way beneath one foot, and I have to cling to the vine for dear life while my toes search for another place to perch. But at last, I feel solid ground beneath my feet.

The street is empty. A chorus of frogs and cicadas trills from somewhere nearby, and a dog barks in the distance. The breeze cools my skin. I feel a little thrill of excitement at taking off on my own, without asking anybody’s permission.

Funny, how a little while ago I was sneaking off the Mermaid. And now I’m sneaking back.

I think about seeing Naomi again, and the rest of my podmates. Suddenly, I can’t wait. I love Grace—and Rav, too—but I’m lonely for my friends. Even Hadley, though the thought of her stirs an anxious little flutter. I hope she’s not still mad.

And Adam, will he be there?

Don’t get your hopes up. It pops into my mind, out of nowhere. But I can’t help it. I hope.

Kri kri kri! A nighthawk calls overhead, startling me out of my thoughts.

I look up at the house. The lights are off in Rav’s and Grace’s room, but on in Abby’s.

If Rav and Grace find out I’m gone, even with the note, they’ll be super worried, and also mad.

But there’s something pulling me back toward the Mermaid, pulling hard. I need both worlds, the island and the Mermaid, to be whole.

I text Emerson that I’m coming and strike out for his place.

THE DOOR OPENS before I have a chance to knock. Emerson fist-bumps me, then hustles me inside. “Adam, we ready?” Emerson asks over his shoulder.

Adam?

Adam is here?

He appears in the doorway to the back room. Flashes a smile. Somehow, everything seems, I don’t know, easier. He hands me three letters. “Naomi, Maya, and Brooke,” he says. I just look at him. “They miss you,” he says.

A funny tingling behind my eyes. I miss them, too.

“C’mon,” Emerson says. “Time to go.”

So it’s the three of us in the Whaler, heading out to the Mermaid, back at anchor in the bay.

Emerson tells me I’ll have plenty of time to greet my old friends, but he might drag me into a meeting later.

“With Constance?”

“Yep. She’s got some ideas.”

Okay . . .

“By the way, Myrtle,” Emerson says, “thanks for putting me in touch with Sofia. Seems like we might work something out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She said talking with you convinced her she should help.”

“Really?”

“Is there an echo out here?”

A little way on, Emerson cuts the running lights and slows way down. I see the Mermaid’s lights ahead, a little dimmer than I remember. But there are other boats buzzing around her. Five of them, maybe six. Faintly, I hear music.

“Protestors?” I ask. “Out here, too?”

Adam nods. “It’s constant, now. Night and day.”

“What about scavenging? How do you get past them?”

“We have to scavenge after dark.”

“Are they . . . threatening the ship? Or just agitating?”

“I don’t think they’re planning to board. Yet. They just want us to leave.”

“To go where?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“But they didn’t want you at the hurricane hole, either. Or the harbor.”

“They don’t want us anywhere, Turtle.” And I remember. Camps.

“What’s really fun,” Adam says, “is when the pro-Mer protestors come out and start harassing the anti-Mer protestors.”

“What? That’s crazy!”

“Classic proxy war,” Emerson says.

“Huh?”

“The Mer are the patch of Earth where a larger battle’s being fought,” Emerson says. “Korea. Viet Nam. Afghanistan. Ukraine.”

I don’t quite get what he’s saying.

“It’s not really about the Mer,” he explains. “Or not only about you guys. It’s the larger societal argument: the anti-gen-mods versus the Human 2.0ers. Should we keep things the way they’ve always been—keep it ‘normal,’ warts and all? Or should we try for a better world—and risk making things worse? Maybe a lot worse. It’s the now version of a question that’s been with us forever. The Mer just happen to have landed smack dab in the middle of it.”

“Yeah, well, one of these days, somebody’s gonna do something batfish stupid, and nobody knows where it’ll end,” Adam says.

It seems to take, like, a week to get to the Mermaid, because the protestors’ boats are moving around, and we have to go way out of our way in the dark to avoid being seen. Up close, their music is loud. I mean, they’re really blasting it. It’s not that it’s bad music, but . . . all day and all night! How can the Mer stand it?

When at last we pull up beside the ship, the loading bay door is open. “They’re expecting us,” Emerson says. “Turtle, after you.”

I take in a breath.

Adam puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “It’ll be fine, Turtle.

You’ll see.”

CHAPTER 52

COHORT, POSSE, POD

And it is fine, mostly. More than fine. Naomi greets me first, just about knocking me over with a hug. Hadley, next in line, really gloms onto me, too. I’m sort of surprised. When she lets go, she rolls her eyes, like it was all a big a joke. But it wasn’t. I can tell. Maya and Brooke get in on the hugging action, too, and so does Cyrus, and I’m starting to feel like a rock star. If they held the Change against me at first, they seem completely over it now.

But we can’t hear all that well out here because of the protestors’ music, so we move along the deck toward the stairs to the lounge. Naomi takes me by one arm, and Maya takes the other, and I breathe in the smell of them, the familiar smell of Mer.

Briny, like the sea.

I pull Maya close and ask how she’s doing. She says fine. Never better. And she looks great. There’s a kind of light about her; she’s radiant. Hadley lays a hand on my shoulder, says she has to go now but she’ll see me later. And everybody’s talking at once, though I can make out only bits of it—who’s feuding and who’s snogging; a cool thing they found scavenging; the tricks they play on the protestors to get off the ship unseen.

I can’t help but notice, in the moonlight, that the Mermaid is grubbier than she used to be.

Splotches of green film the outer walls; I feel grit under my shoes. More ominously, the paint’s peeling in places, a couple of windows are cracked, and there’s rust on the fittings of the railings and hoists.

And it hits me all at once, the way it never did when I lived here, how fragile the Mermaid is. The walls and the windows; the light fixtures and ceiling fans; the stairways; the built-in cabinets; the kitchen stoves . . . They look so solid. But all it would take is the full force of a Cat Three wind to shake this whole little kingdom apart.

No wonder Juvenile Services is fighting for oversight.

Someone touches my shoulder as we head into the stairwell. I turn around. It’s Adam. “You okay?” he asks.

I nod.

“I’ll be with Emerson,” he says. “Catch you later on the Whaler.” Cyrus waves goodbye and, together, they disappear into the dark.

Everyone else is climbing the stairs, but Naomi has stopped. She’s looking at me funny.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.”

“No, what? Are you and Adam still . . .”

She clicks her tongue. Shakes her head. “We never were, Turtle.

Don’t you get it? With Adam, it’s always been you.”

“What? No, it wasn’t. He had all those girlfriends—”

“Those weren’t really girlfriends. They were just sort of . . . I dunno, flings. Not even quite flings, is my guess. Just-pretend girlfriends. My theory? He was just biding his time, waiting for you.”

“What . . . ? What are you talking about?”

She shrugs. “Maybe even Adam didn’t know what he was doing.”

“But—”

She cocks her head to one side. Gives me a funny look. “Never mind, Turtle. C’mon.”

We settle down in the lounge—sitting, lying, sprawling, rocked by the sea. Like we’ve done forever. When you’re with people you’ve known that long, it’s like relaxing in a warm, sunlit cove. You can feel the hard little knots of tension ease; you can let down your defenses and just be you, because they all know who you are anyway. They saw you cry for your mother. They saw you throw hissy fits; they saw you stomp off to sulk. They know if you talk too much, if you’re vain or irresponsible, if you’re bossy, if you’re a scaredy-cat, if you worry and obsess. And the ones who’re still with you after that . . . those are your friends. And there’s nobody else like that. Nobody. Grace and Abby are my sisters, and that’s its own thing too; the bond there is like iron. But there’s no one in the world like your cohort, your posse, your pod.

Brooke asks me where I live now, and I tell her about the house with Grace and Rav. Naomi points to my gauntlet. “Do you have pictures?”

I do. A shot of the house comes up; everybody crowds round to see it. They want to see the yard—front and back. They want to see my bedroom, the bathroom down the hall. They love the great room—the pastel walls; the shabby-chic, nonmatching plates and bowls and mugs; the lavender plants on the windowsill.

“Who does the cooking?” Naomi asks.

“Mostly Grace, but Rav and I help. The other night I made chicken soup. From scratch.”

“From scratch?” Naomi says. “You?”

“For three people, not a hundred. But, yeah. It turned out okay.”

I show pictures of Grace and Rav and Atticus. Brooke says Rav’s gorgeous; Maya says she can see that Grace and I are sisters; and Olivia, who has just turned up, says she wishes she could have a cat of her own.

“Do you ever see Yuka?” Maya asks. “Or the others who Changed?”

“Um, no. Not yet. I have Yuka’s number, though, so I’ll call her sometime.”

“Did Grace remember you?” Olivia asks.

And it kind of knocks the breath out of me, that question. Because I know she must be wondering if her family remembers her. Everybody’s wondering that. It’s this giant, sucking chest wound we all share, even Olivia. “Of course she remembered,” I say.

“Did anyone else?”

“Everybody did. I talked to my grandmother and my aunt and her partner. My sister Abby came to visit . . .”

“But you were with them years longer than we were with our fosters. Probably nobody remembers us,” Brooke says.

“I bet they do!”

“I hope so,” Olivia says.

“My foster mom,” Maya says, “she used to read to me every night—”

“Mine, too,” Naomi says.

“My foster brother,” Brooke says, “taught me how to tie my shoes.”

“Mine taught me how to do somersaults,” Naomi says.

“But my fosters stopped writing,” Olivia says.

“Everybody’s did,” Naomi says.

We never talked about this stuff before. Well, hardly ever. At least, we haven’t for a while. But it seems like the pictures of my family have cracked something open, some kind of unspoken taboo.

“You know,” I say, “Grace told me my family was writing me up till pretty recently, so maybe—”

“Oh my god!” Brooke breaks in. She points to a picture of Grace. “Is she pregnant?”

“Get out!” Maya says. “She is!”

“Not anymore,” I say. “Look!”

The pictures of Hope drive them insane. They’re oohing and aahing, fighting for closer looks, and I’m afraid they’re going to rip my arm right off my body. Maya’s dabbing at her eyes, and Brooke says, “Wow, I’ve never seen an actual baby in the flesh before.”

Maya says she heard there was a guy, and I pull up a picture of Kai.

More insanity. “He’s gorgeous!” “Smokin’!” “Like some kind of warrior god.” And et cetera, until heat floods my face, and I know I must be blushing.

Then Naomi asks to see the scar on my neck. “Do you ever miss it?” she asks. “The gill breathing? Do you ever . . . have regrets?”

And I say, “No, I don’t regret it.”

And I don’t.

Except . . . sometimes. Right now, for instance, a wave of questions is flooding my mind.

Was I wrong to abandon my friends?

Or right to find my family again?

Is this where I really belong, or—?

“Turtle!”

I look up. It’s Hadley. “Constance wants to see you,” she says.

I dread it, meeting with Constance. But I can also feel an odd tingle of eagerness. To find out something I can actually do to help.

CHAPTER 53

THE PRICE OF SEPARATION

Hadley opens the door to Constance’s office without knocking. “Here she is,” she says.

Inside, Constance looks up from her desk. “Thanks, Hadley. See you in half an hour.”

Hadley snaps me a mock salute and heads off. I remember what Adam said about her. On the rise.

Constance gives me the once-over, her gaze lingering, a little longer than necessary, on my neck. “Hello, Turtle,” she says. There’s a funny, borderline-hostile tone in her voice. It kind of shocks me. I mean, she sometimes got mad when we disagreed with her, or disobeyed, but it was always like she cared about us, too. This feels different.

“Have a seat,” she says.

I sit in one of the too-small chairs. Move the plush dolphin and the blanket. Put them on my lap.

“Emerson and Adam seem to think you want to help us,” she says.

Seem to think. I let that pass. “I do,” I say.

“But you left us. You separated yourself from the Mer.”

I’m thinking, Did you ask me up here to attack me? Or do you really want my help?

But I don’t say it.

“And how do we know you won’t just flake out when you feel like it? Or abandon us when something better comes along?”

Ouch. Score one for Constance. “I wasn’t dissing the Mer,” I say. “It’s just that I, you know, fell in love.” It sounds funny when I hear myself say it. I mean, it felt like love. It really did. But now I’m not so sure that’s what it was. “Also, I missed my family.”

“I wonder,” she says, “if that’s all it was.” She lets that sit there for a moment.

What is she implying? That I was ashamed to be Mer?

I’m starting to get pissed. I want to stand up and walk out the door, just to show her. But . . .

I’m still flush with the warmth of being with my friends again. I don’t want her to cut me off.

I can hear the throb of the protestors’ music. It’s distracting, to say the least. And there’s another sound, a deep, groaning sound, something way down in the bowels of the ship. I don’t remember that.

“So,” Constance says, “how’s the whole love thing going for you?” Is she kidding? Making a joke? I can’t read her anymore.

“Constance,” I say. “I want to help. Please tell me how.”

She rubs her eyes. Opens them again.

Faded green. Wrinkly around the edges. Looking tired.

Still, she seems to loosen up a little. “We’ve got a couple of problems to work through. If you can see a way to pitch in, we can let you on board to visit your friends.”

“That would be great.”

“Don’t count your chickens. It all depends.”

“Okay, so, what’ve you got?”

“First of all, there’s Maya. She’s had episodes, she’s had breathing problems, she’s had a series of little seizures. She has to go into the pool to breathe at unpredictable intervals, not just at night.”

Oh, no. Maya told me she’s never been better. And she looked great. “Still?” I say.

“Maya likes to put a good gloss on it, but, yeah, it’s still happening.”

“How bad is it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Could it be . . . another Shift?”

“No, it’s just Maya. So far.”

That’s good. But poor Maya!

“In any case,” Constance says, “we need a doctor. One who’s sympathetic to our cause. Not like the ones who Changed you, with their Normalist agenda.”

“Normalist?”

“Bigoted. Anti-Mer. You-have-no-right-to-be-what-you-are . . . ist.”

“So you want me to . . .”

“Find me a doctor. One who really wants to help, not so-called ‘fix’ us.”

Us? You’re not a Mer, Constance.

How long has she been including herself when she talks about the Mer? Why didn’t it bother me before?

“Seems like the medical profession doesn’t want to deal with us anymore. There’s just . . . bad blood. We can’t get it done. You’re out there, in the Normal world. You look Normal, more or less.”

“Er, thanks?”

“The fact you took that as a compliment says a lot. Anyway, you can ask around.”

“But how would I know what they think of the Mer?”

“Use your ingenuity! Ask your doctor.”

“I don’t have a doctor.” Not yet.

“Someone you know must have one.”

“My sister Grace has an OB-GYN, but—”

“Perfect!”

“An OB-GYN?”

“OB-GYNs are trained as generalists, too. For women, they’re practically the same as family doctors.”

“What?” I don’t know much about doctors, but I know that’s not true. What if you had, like, poison ivy? Or a sinus infection? What if you had tennis elbow?

“Look, just get me a list of possibilities. Doctors, physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners.”

A nurse. Jasmine? She probably knows a bunch of doctors and stuff. She’d talk to me. It would be a start.

“Okay. I’ll ask around.”

“You can try to be persuasive.”

I look at her. “Why are you so—?”

“Because you left us, okay? You left your friends. You were disloyal.”

“I fell in love! So sue me.”

“Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to fall for a Mer? But we aren’t good enough for you, are we? You bailed on your scavenging team. You left us to go searching for your family. You Changed yourself so a Normal guy would deign to be with you. And you expect us to forget that? That’s the price of separation, Turtle. We might forgive, but we can’t forget.”

“What do you mean we, Constance? You’re not Mer, no matter how much you want to be.”

She blinks. Jerks backward, for a nanosecond. And I see I’ve hit the mark.

I feel kind of bad about it. She’s done so much for us. Really saved us during the Shift. And some of what she said is true. I did separate myself, at least partly because of Kai. And I was irresponsible. But it wasn’t that the Mer aren’t good enough. It was that they aren’t . . . enough. There’s always been that empty hole in me where my family used to be, and I don’t see why I should have to give them up.

The deep, groaning sound comes again, louder this time.

“Whoa, what’s that?”

“What do you think?”

“That’s the Mermaid?” Constance nods.

“She never used to do that.”

“Nothing lasts forever, Turtle. Problem number two: We’ve got a massive need for funds. Before too long, we’ll have to move off the Mermaid, which will cost a bloody fortune. Scavenging doesn’t scratch the surface; we need someone to put the squeeze on some of the Normals. Emerson’s done a lot—he literally doesn’t sleep at night—but he’s not exactly mainstream, and he freaks out some of the Normals who might be inclined to help us. We thought maybe you could go out and try to get support.”

Like Emerson was talking about. Woo. Flog. Liaise.

But I still don’t quite get it. “So I’d, like, just go knocking on random doors?”

“Well, not random doors.”

“Like what doors?”

She shrugs. Seems to be making up her mind about something. “Well, we were thinking, you could maybe approach the parents. Some of them have money. They might be willing to give.”

“What parents?”

“You know.”

“Wait a minute. The fosters? Parents of the Mer?”

“Yeah. And the biologicals, too.”

“You know where they are?”

She opens a desk drawer. Pulls out a stained and tattered-looking file. Drums on it with her fingers. “Record keeping is part of my job here, Turtle.”

“But . . .” That file looks really old. “I mean, is it current?”

“Well, for some of them, we’ve got letters . . .” She stops. Seems to realize she’s made a mistake.

Letters.

“From the families?”

Reluctantly, she nods.

“Wait, like recent ones? With contact information?”

She hesitates. “For some.”

“Paper letters? You have them here?”

She just looks at me.

But . . . letters. Like the ones my family sent me. And some of the families were still sending letters?

The protestors are growing louder. Their anger vibrates in the air, beats against the walls. I can feel it invading me, making my heart pump faster, making me feel hot.

“What about the letters we wrote to our families? You told us you were sending them. Did you lie about that?”

“You still have no idea what I’m dealing with, do you?”

“I thought they abandoned me, forgot all about me, but they were writing, and kept on writing. For years. And they thought I didn’t care enough to write back. They—”

“Listen, Turtle—”

“So, the fosters and biologicals wrote letters to their kids for years? And some are still doing it? And you’re keeping them secret? Letting my friends think their families don’t care?”

Constance’s face hardens. She just stares at me.

“Okay, you want me to pump the families for money. Can I give them the letters from their kids?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“And you lecture me about separation? When you’re separating the Mer from their families? From the rest of the human race?”

“It’s what’s best for us! How can you even doubt it, with those monsters out there blasting their music, yelling at us? They hate us, Turtle. And you know it’s going to escalate; these things always do. If the rest of the Normals gave a rat’s ass about us, they’d be protecting us from those maniacs; they’d be increasing our funding instead of letting it dribble away. But no. They don’t care.”

A rat’s ass? I’d never heard Constance swear before. And I know I should shut up now, but I want to keep going, I want to push.

“But even before the protestors, you still kept the letters from us.

It’s not about the protestors. It’s about power. It’s about control.”

“It’s about integrity. About being fully who we are.”

“Maybe I’d believe you if you weren’t hiding those letters.”

The Mermaid groans again, like something’s coming apart at the heart of her. There’s a loud screech. My heart jumps.

“You really don’t get it, do you, Turtle?” She rises to her feet. Her fists clench, making the ropy muscles in her arms and shoulders pop. Her eyes aren’t tired anymore. They’re fully awake—and enraged.

“The Mermaid was damaged in the hurricane,” she says, her voice low, controlled. “When we took her in for repairs, they told me she needs dry dock immediately, but we can’t afford it. Maya’s having a medical crisis. We’re in a brawl with Juvenile Services, the lawyers are bleeding me dry, and those protestors are threatening us day and night. So, sorry—I don’t have time to debate the finer points of moral philosophy at the moment. Right now, it’s all about survival.”

And she’s right. I can see that. It’s really scary here. More and more I can see that this whole little world is held together with spit and polyurethane, and it wouldn’t take much to blow it apart.

“You can’t ever tell them,” Constance says, “about the letters.”

“What? But they deserve to have them, they deserve—”

“No!”

She strides to the door and yanks it open, dismissing me. And I realize she’ll never let go of those letters, no matter what I say. Because they’d find out how she’s lied to them—betrayed them. Which she couldn’t stand.

The protestors’ music surges louder; somebody’s really close.

Suddenly, I just want to get out of here. “All right,” I say. “Give me the list, and I’ll do my best with the parents.”

But she’s shaking her head.

“What?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t trust you.”

“Constance—”

“Forget it. This meeting’s over. You’re no longer welcome aboard this ship.”

CHAPTER 54

ZOOMING APART

“What did you do, girl? You sure ruffled somebody’s feathers.”

I’m standing in Emerson’s boat, having been hustled off the Mermaid in, like, four seconds. Constance clapped her hands, and Hadley and some of the others in Constance’s inner circle came from all directions, surrounding me. And nobody hurt me, not in the least, and some of them looked sorry, even Hadley, but they nudged and jostled and tugged, and before I knew it, I was out on the loading bay, heading for the Whaler. No goodbyes to anyone. Just . . . gone.

Emerson showed up a few minutes later.

“Myrtle?” he asks now. “You okay?”

“Apparently, I’m dangerous,” I say.

“Oh, honey, we all knew that. Sit down now, and we’ll make our escape.”

“I thought Adam was coming.”

“No, he has work to do.”

“But he said—”

Emerson shrugs. “What can I tell you?”

Well. So much for Naomi’s theory. But there’s something dark and draggy happening in my chest; I breathe into it. It’s not like I’ll never see him again.

Or is it?

Emerson starts the engine. We pull away, carefully skirting the protestors. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what’s just happened, and what I now know for sure. Constance confiscated the letters. The ones going out to the families. The ones coming in to the Mer. People were writing, and we never knew.

We thought they didn’t care about us anymore.

But they did.

And they didn’t know that we cared, too.

I’m thinking about my friends looking at pictures of my Normal family. Wanting to know everything about how I live. Going gaga over the baby. Remembering their own families—how they taught them to do somersaults, to tie shoes. Wondering if their families even remembered them.

And Constance cut them off from that. She out-and-out lied to us all, for years. With good intentions, maybe.

But you don’t throw people away. You just don’t.

When we’re well beyond the protestors, I turn back to look at the Mermaid, no longer the bright and glittering chandelier I remember from the days before I Changed. She needs dry dock immediately. She looks dim, tattered, vulnerable.

But maybe she always was.

The wind has picked up a little. I shiver, wishing I’d worn a heavier jacket.

“I hope I didn’t screw things up for you, Emerson. With the powers-that-be.”

“Oh, I know how to wiggle out of a tight spot. You, though. It’ll be a while before they welcome you back.”

“Maybe never. I know too much.”

“You can never know too much, Myrtle. You can just . . . show too much of what you think about what you know.”

That’s a little twisty. I take a moment to unwind it. Then I look at Emerson, wondering what he knows. Does he know about the letters? Has he known all along?

“Sometimes you have to make a stand,” I say. “Don’t you? When there’s something wrong going on. Something that tricks people, that keeps them apart, people who care about one another. How else are things going to change?”

“And there she goes again, bucking the tide.” But he smiles at me. It’s okay.

And I’m sure it’ll be fine, for Emerson. Constance would never cut him loose. What did she say? Emerson’s done a lot. He literally doesn’t sleep at night.

Most people, when they say the word literally, they’re using it wrong. By He literally doesn’t sleep at night, they mean, He mostly doesn’t sleep, or He works until late and starts in early, or just He gets a lot done. But something is nagging at me, so I ask.

“Emerson, do you ever sleep?”

He laughs, shaking his head. “I do keep myself busy, all right,” he says.

“No,” I say. “I mean, do you sleep?”

“I’m a night owl, that’s for sure.”

“Emerson. Don’t mess.”

He turns to look at me. Really look.

“Constance said something,” I say.

“Well,” he says. “Turns out, sleep is overrated.” What does that mean? He doesn’t sleep at all?

Yikes.

I thought he was boutique-gen, with the eyes and all. But no sleep at all would be . . .

Transhuman.

“Did your parents—?” I begin.

“Boy, you ask a lot of questions.”

I sigh, and it hits me: I love Emerson. I really do. Not love-love, not like Romeo and Juliet. Not like it is with Kai. Still, I love the guy. But he’s mysterious. Doesn’t really let you in.

The Mermaid is just a smear of light now, receding. Like a scattering of dim stars, barely visible. I lean back, look up at the moon, now high in the sky. Gibbous, waxing to full. I take in the bright stars in the dark sky all around.

They say the universe is expanding. How they figured this out is beyond me. But somehow, they’re certain about it—the astronomers—certain that all the stars are zooming away from one another. Actually accelerating, faster all the time. So, in a thousand years, a lot of the stars I’m looking at right now will be so far away, we won’t be able to see them anymore. Except with telescopes and stuff. To the naked eye, those stars will have vanished.

In some of those cheesy old sci-fi vids Daddy used to show us, humans have conformed to be exactly alike and have all melded together into a massive, single organism. The Borg. Hive Mind. Like that. But that’s not what’s happening now. It’s the opposite. We’re modding ourselves to be different. Special. Not just the Mer, and not just the backgammon players in Emerson’s shop and the Habitat guards. We want more lung capacity, we want superhuman endurance; we want fast-twitch muscles; we want insensitivity to pain, whatever. We can’t have it all in a single package, not yet, so we’re splitting apart. Meanwhile, there are the anti-modders, and the people who would mod, but they can’t begin to afford it. We’re all in our own little cliques—lonely tribes who don’t talk to people in other tribes. Zooming apart, like the stars. Pretty soon . . . will we be able to see one another at all?

“They were trying to smooth my way,” Emerson says.

I blink, jolted out of my thoughts, and turn to him. I can make out his profile in the moonlight. Not looking at me, but staring straight ahead.

“This biohacker convinced them I’d have a leg up, a better chance to compete. Though his idea of ‘better’ and my idea of ‘better’ turned out to be two different things.”

Ah.

“They thought I’d need, like, five or six hours of sleep a night as a newborn, decreasing to three or four after that. And they had it right, for a while. But then I started sleeping less and less, and now it’s like fifteen minutes a pop, maybe three times a day. Switching off. They say it takes care of the delta waves, REM, all that stuff. Just does it really quick. You’re not tired anymore. You’re good to go.”

Wow. “But you never just . . .” I stop. I’m asking questions again.

“Never just what?” he asks.

“I mean, can you sleep on purpose, if you want to? Or just, sort of . . . zone out? Like for a couple of hours?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The wind picks up; I hug myself. After a bit, he says, “No can do. I tried drugs. Couple years ago. But they caused more problems than they solved. Then a guy I know taught me to meditate. That, and, you know, prayer, come closest. But sometimes I wish I could . . . zone out, like you’re saying. Take a break from it. A break from my mind. It’s . . . relentless.”

He turns to me, gives me a wry smile.

So he was covering up, before. Overrated.

“Is there a reset?” I ask. “Like with gills, for the Mer?”

“That’s the only gen-mod reset I’ve ever heard of. And that took more than a decade, plus huge infusions of cash, to develop. Nothing was too good for the Mer-babies. For a while.”

“Sorry,” I say. “But thanks.” Because he let me see him, a little. And for a moment, I don’t feel like we’re zooming apart. For a moment, I feel like it’s maybe possible to reverse the momentum of the universe and lean in a little closer together.

But still, there’s a tick-tick-tick of worry way back inside my mind, and I can’t seem to let it go.

CHAPTER 55

CAN’T GO ON FOREVER

Three days later, on Tuesday, baby Hope comes home. Grace clings to her, a pink-swaddled bundle, and though Abby and Rav and I keep offering to hold her, it’s clear that Grace doesn’t want to let her out of her arms. So Abby moves on with her takeover of the rest of the household. She reorganizes the refrigerator and the pantry. She questions the “sleeping arrangements”—meaning mine—and makes inroads into the nursery, pushing my things aside and stuffing her clothes on the closet shelves.

When he’s at home and not staring at the baby, Rav escapes to the yard. He mows the lawn, trims the hedges, fertilizes the flower beds.

I wait. Sometimes I sit beside Grace on the bed and just sort of take in the baby. Those tiny fingers, tiny fingernails. Those ears, like swirly seashells, just heartbreakingly perfect. Those copper-brown eyes—always curious, always looking around. What does little Hope make of all of this? What can she be thinking?

Once in a while, I catch her nodding off. But not very often.

The first night, Grace stays up with her, and Rav sleeps on the couch in the great room. Grace doesn’t trust the monitor, wants to watch all night to make sure Hope’s breathing, and Rav agrees. Abby tells them the monitor will do a better job, says there’s no need to watch her all the time. But Grace insists that she and Rav are going to watch for a week or two until they’re sure little Hope’s okay.

The next day, Grace is exhausted. On the second night, Rav stays up with Hope, and Grace sleeps on the couch. The next day, he’s toast. Abby pushes the monitor again, and we both offer to take a turn, but Grace and Rav insist on taking the night watches themselves.

And there’s that tick-tick-tick of worry again. Is there something they don’t want us to see?

By the beginning of the next week, they’re zombies.

Abby and I offer again to take a night watch. No dice.

But I know this can’t go on forever.

MEANWHILE, KAI CALLS to ask if he can drop by. He apologizes for being so busy lately. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says. “I’ll come by for you, okay?”

And it turns out I’m a complete psycho because, on the one hand, I’m all bouncy and light and happy, dying to be with him. But on the other hand, I’m dragging, thinking about him and Abby. I don’t want to go through that again. And I can’t help thinking . . . maybe he only wants to see her, and he’s using me as an excuse?

But no. It’s just right between us. At least sometimes.

Isn’t it?

And the thing with the pirate maps and the adventures. Whatever happened to that?

“Turtle?” Kai says. “Okay if I come by?”

“It’s crazy around here right now,” I say. “The baby’s home from the hospital, and we’re still settling in. Maybe this weekend?”

“That long? Jeez, I really miss you!” And, truly, he sounds like he does.

Turns out he’s jammed the whole weekend except for Saturday night. We make a date.

CONSTANCE KICKED ME off the Mermaid, but I still want to help Maya. If I can dig up the names of a few sympathetic doctors, Emerson can relay the information. I could call Grace’s doctor, but she has no idea who I am, and I don’t want to involve Grace, if I can help it.

So I call the hospital and ask for Jasmine.

“She isn’t in,” the receptionist says. “Can someone else help you?”

I think about it, but no, I want Jasmine. I like her, and I can tell she’s simpatico.

“Um, no,” I say. “I’ll just . . . wait for Jasmine.”

“Are you sure no one else can help you?” the woman asks.

“I just . . . no. Would you ask Jasmine—”

“Are you in some kind of trouble, dear?”

I can tell from her voice that she knows I’m a kid. Is it that obvious?

“Look, please just tell her Turtle called.” I give her my number and hang up before she can ask anything more.

ON THE NEWS feed, the protestors are still hounding the Mermaid. Looks like more of them than before. The pro-Mer protestors have shown up, too. There are reports of fights.

Proxy war.

I call Emerson, and he says the Mer are all okay, as far as he knows. He’s due to go back there in a couple of days. Which is comforting . . . but I sure wish Adam and Naomi had phones.

I long to hear their voices.

AND THERE’S SOMETHING else.

Constance as much as admitted to me that the fosters and the biologicals have been sending letters, which she’s not passing on. But it’s not one hundred percent clear to me if she’s been sending the Mers’ letters to their families, because with my family, everything was so messed up. I mean, I’m assuming she probably hasn’t. But I know who would know, for sure.

Yuka.

She gave me her number, back in the clinic, right after the operation. Where did I put it?

I rummage through my closet shelves and, seeing the letters, remember slipping Yuka’s number in with them, under the shoelaces.

And there it is.

I feel kind of bad that I didn’t call her earlier. Hadley’s voice echoes in my ears:

You’re just all about yourself, Turtle, aren’t you?

Yeah, well. I’ve had a lot on my mind.

I key in her number.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, when Abby’s in full-out “I’m-in-charge” mode, Yuka picks me up in a little sports car. She zips through the Spoonbill traffic at lightning speed—I’m hanging on to the grab bar for dear life—then cruises across the causeway to the mainland. Turns out, Yuka lives in a gated community on a hill, in a house three times as big as Grace and Rav’s, with an elevator, a spa, an in-ground pool.

In other words, she’s rich. Not tech-zillionaire-rich—far from it—but rich enough that she doesn’t have to worry about money.

We take a dip in the pool and then sit on the steps in the shallow end and splash our feet, drinking sweet iced tea. Masses of fluffy white clouds drift across the sky, casting patches of blessed shade. If not for the smell of chlorine, which I can’t get out of my nose, it would be glorious.

Yuka’s easy to talk to. She’s got that openhearted vibe I remember, that easygoing smile. She’s pretty relaxed for someone who studies so hard. Which she’s still doing. Her fosters have enrolled her in a private college prep school; she’s aiming for Caltech or MIT.

But what she has to say about the letters is disturbing.

Because her fosters didn’t get any of the ones that Yuka sent. At least, not since the letters stopped for all of us on the Mermaid, when we were ten or eleven years old. Yuka has spoken with a couple of other Mer who Changed, and their families’ letters stopped coming around then, too.

I tell her about my visit to the Mermaid, and what Constance basically confessed: that she confiscated the letters our families sent to us. And then she kicked me off the ship.

“That bitch.”

The venom in her voice startles me. Up to now, Yuka has seemed really even-keeled. But clearly this ticks her off.

Well, me too.

She asks me if I saw her best buddies when I went to the Mermaid that day. But we didn’t move in the same circles. I didn’t see them.

She tries to smile, but I can feel her disappointment. “How was it out there?” she asks. “Are they doing okay?”

I hesitate. “It’s worse than it used to be. The hurricane did some damage.”

“How much damage?”

“Constance says the Mermaid needs dry dock time, like right away, but there are funding issues.”

“Yeah, funding issues is putting it mildly.”

Turns out, Yuka’s been trying to drum up support for the Mer. She’s heard that they’re flat out of money, she’s seen the vids of the protestors, she wants to help. The families of the Mer who Changed—at least, the ones she’s contacted—are definitely willing to chip in, but there aren’t that many of them. Yuka’s been trying to find the families of the Mer who didn’t Change, without much luck, and the few she has found are reluctant to get involved. They tried in the past to get in touch with their kids—some even hired lawyers—but they were rebuffed. They think they’re not wanted.

“Pretty sure Constance has a list of them,” I say. “She was going to give it to me, but, well, then she kicked me off.”

“A list? Are you kidding me? I’d kill for that list.”

I tell her about the Habitat, trying to ease her mind. But that worries her, too. “So, are they actually building out there? Or just planning to build some day?”

“I know they’re doing underwater welding. Adam said they have some kind of lease-to-buy arrangement.”

“Lease-to-buy? So they don’t own it?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“Then the Habitat’s a fantasy. They’re broke, Turtle. No way can they keep up those payments.”

“But Adam said—”

“I don’t think he knows how bad it is,” Yuka says. “I don’t think any of them do. Except Constance. My family has a few connections. We’ve done a little digging.” She sighs. “Some of the parents have money. A couple of them, a lot. If only they’d gotten the letters, things would be different.”

SHE TAKES ME home in time for dinner. We promise to get together again soon. And I hope we will. I really like Yuka. I have Kai and my family and Emerson, but for the first time on the island, I feel like I have an actual girlfriend.

But in the end, the day’s been kind of unsettling.

For one thing, I’m even more scared for the Mer than I was before.

For another . . . Yuka’s been working so hard to help them, and what have I been doing? Mooning over Kai. Resenting Abby. Obsessing over my own future.

You’re just all about yourself, Turtle, aren’t you?

I sigh. Though it’s not completely true—I have been helping Grace and Rav. Even so, it rings true enough that it sort of makes me want to cringe.

CHAPTER 56

AWAKE

On the eighth night after the baby came home, I set a silent alarm. It vibrates me awake at three A.M. The moon peers down through tree branches outside my window; streetlights cast long, quivering shadows across the walls and floor. I push the sheet aside. Put on my slippers, my robe.

It’s dark in the hallway, but a faint light seeps out from beneath Grace’s door. It’s her night to watch the baby. Rav’s downstairs on the couch.

Grace must be exhausted. Maybe . . .

I tiptoe down the hall. I stop at Grace’s door. I listen.

The thrum and gurgle of the pumps. The light scrape of tree branches against the side of the house. And another sound. Snoring?

I put my ear to the door.

Yes. It’s faint, but it’s definitely snoring.

I put my hand on the doorknob. I give it a twist and push the door open a crack, just far enough to see.

Grace is sprawled out across the bed.

Asleep.

I stand there, watching her a moment. Her mouth is open, one arm flung wide. Just completely zoned out and defenseless.

And it kind of breaks my heart. Grace tries so hard, but she can’t do everything. She can’t stay up all night to watch the baby, and make sure I get educated for Normal life, and keep up her coursework at school, and go back to her job at the garden center. I love her for trying, but she can’t.

I open the door and step inside. It smells of baby lotion, and potpourri, and a kind of funky, milky smell. I tiptoe to the crib and look in.

Awake.

She’s swaddled in the special electric blanket Grace bought, the one that vibrates like a mother’s heartbeat. To train her to self-soothe, Grace explained to me. To be content by herself for a while, when nobody’s holding her.

Hope is looking around, her glance drifting across the ceiling, to the windows, to me. An expression crosses her face, something like delight, and her little arms shoot out toward the sides of the crib. But the delight—or whatever it was—is gone in a flash, and now she’s frowning up at the mobile over her crib, looking thoughtful.

The color of her eyes . . . That kind of hazel—coppery cast . . .

Like Emerson’s.

Newborns are supposed to sleep, like, twelve to sixteen hours a day. This one’s not even close.

Looks like Emerson was wrong about being a genetic dead end. Wrong that they wouldn’t be making any more like him.

I stay for an hour. Hope closes her eyes for maybe five minutes, total. The rest of the time, she’s wide awake. Curious. Looking around.

Transhuman.

And I know why they’ve done it. Or at least, I’m pretty sure. After the miscarried babies, which may not have been modded at all, they went in the opposite direction. They wanted a healthy kid, and maybe it didn’t seem like all that much to throw in a small, not-quite-legal frill. Because they’re struggling. If they didn’t need much sleep, they could do their regular jobs and study all night for the jobs they really want. But it’s just so darned hard, and they don’t want that for their daughter. They want to smooth her way, same as Emerson’s parents. Like giving your kids math tutors, or surgery so they won’t need glasses, or aligners to straighten their teeth.

They must have scraped up every penny. They must have gone even deeper into debt.

A dark undertow drags at me, pulling me down. I’m sad for Hope, because of what Emerson said: Sometimes I wish I could zone out. Take a break from it. A break from my mind.

But I’m also sad, in a way, for the world. Because if Grace and Rav did this, a whole bunch of other people will, too. Not just the trendy hackers, looking to push the envelope, see how far this thing can go. Not just the parents hoping to have kids who grow up to be star athletes. Not just the Human 2.0ers, looking toward evolution to a higher plane. But regular, struggling people, too. They’ll buy whatever advantage they can afford for their children. Separating them from the mainstream—if there is a mainstream anymore. Leaving other kids behind.

You could argue that’s really all you can do—help one or two or three children to live better lives so they can bring more good into the world.

Maybe.

But . . . what unintended consequences will flow from this?

Will we divide ourselves into separate genetic tribes, and maybe, over time, different species?

And who will we be, as humans, at the end of it?

And will there ever be an end to it?

No one knows.

CHAPTER 57

ONLY IN BOOKS AND MOVIES

When the doorbell rings, I’m finishing up with the dinner dishes.

It’s Kai. Right on time.

“I’ll get it!” I say, but Abby beats me to it. She blocks the doorway, standing between me and Kai. Her voice gets high and flirty. She’s gesturing a lot with her hands.

I catch a quick glimpse of Kai’s face in the narrow space between Abby and the doorjamb. “Hey, Turtle,” he says.

Abby reluctantly turns to look at me. But she doesn’t move.

Kai reaches to one side of Abby and holds out a hand to me. I take it. Abby edges over.

“Well, excuse me,” she says, sounding offended. “I guess I’m in the way.”

“Turtle and I have a date,” Kai says. “We’re going for a walk.”

I catch a quick glimpse of Abby’s face as I slip past her into the night.

She’s pissed. But I see something raw there, too. Something surprised and unprotected.

I don’t feel any triumph, though, and I don’t feel one hundred percent . . . secure with Kai. He’s a flirt, that’s for sure. But then, lots of people are. Casey flirts with everybody, and Peyton doesn’t seem to mind. Logan is always flirting, and Eliana definitely minded.

I can’t quite figure it out, how the whole flirting thing works. Maybe Kai’s just super friendly, wants everybody to like him. Or maybe he was nervous the other night, picking up Grace’s dislike of him. Who knows?

“You’re looking serious,” Kai says. “Everything okay?”

I look up. Nod my head yes. We’re holding hands, walking uphill now, into the fancier neighborhoods. The air seems less oppressive, somehow, maybe a little cooler than it’s been. Beyond the chirping of the cicadas, I can hear the hum of the pumps, the gurgling of the waterworks.

And before I can stop myself, it comes out. “I was kind of . . . upset about you and Abby. The other night.”

“Upset?” he says. “Abby and me?” He lets go of my hand.

I can see that I’m not going to get any help here.

“Well, it seemed like you two . . . liked each other.”

“Yeah, she’s okay. That all right with you?” There’s a little edge to the question.

“Yeah, sure. Only . . .”

“I mean, she’s not as good looking as she seems to think she is. Not as good looking as you.” He leans down and waggles his eyebrows at me, inviting me to laugh.

I smile, but an uneasy feeling is welling up inside me.

“Oh, c’mon, Turtle, we were only having fun. And who am I with now?”

Yes, he’s clearly choosing me over Abby. So what’s my problem? I kick at a rock on the sidewalk. I slap at a mosquito. “It made me uncomfortable, that’s all. In front of Rav and Grace. They think you don’t really care for me all that much.”

“Listen, I can’t control what they think. They’re gonna think what they think, no matter what I do.”

I can’t argue with that. I don’t want to. But there’s something he’s not saying. You’re the one, the only one. I want to be with you.

“I just wonder if you really want to be with me.”

“Of course I do,” he says, too quickly. “Do you want to be with me?” A challenge.

“How can you even ask? I mean, look what I gave up for you. I gave up my friends, my ability to breathe underwater, my whole way of life.”

“Don’t hit me with that. I never asked you to.”

Which is fair. He didn’t. I did that on my own. And also, it wasn’t just for him.

Breathe in, Turtle.

Breathe out.

And now I’m looking ahead, all down the long years until we’re old enough to really be together, like Grace and Rav, and I can’t see how we can keep it going. Something’s not there. And it turns out, I’m not really all that surprised. I think I’ve known it for a while.

I stop, right in the middle of the sidewalk. My whole chest feels dry and brittle, like it’s cracking apart.

“It’s just,” I say, “I thought . . .”

His face softens, a little. “What, Turtle? What did you think?”

“I thought it would be like . . . I dunno. Sort of like Romeo and Juliet. You know that play?”

“Yeah, they made us read it in English last year.”

“Well, I thought you and I were maybe, soulmates. Like those couples in books and movies who fall in love when they’re teenagers and never fall out. I thought that after we came together, we’d never, either of us, want to look at anybody else.” It sounds silly when I say it, though. Adam’s face flashes across my mind, and I feel my own cheeks grow warm. I had looked at him, lately . . .

“And so you fake your death as part of your plan to be with me, but I think you’re really dead, so I take poison and keel over, and then you off yourself for real?”

This time I do laugh. “Okay, so I revised it for a happy ending.”

He’s smiling at me now, but it’s a sad kind of smile. “Thing is, Turtle . . .” He hitches his shoulder, hesitating.

Uh-oh. I don’t like where this is going.

“The thing is, I had a girlfriend before you, um, turned up here. And I was so, sort of caught by you, I thought . . . well, I broke up with her. But then . . .”

That girl at the party. The angry girl.

“Now you want to be with her again,” I say.

“Turtle . . .” he says. And it’s all right there, in his voice, in his eyes.

And I’m . . . embarrassed. That I was so dumb. To change everything about myself for him. Before we ever knew each other at all. What a dope! What an absolute flipping fool! And I wonder if it was just me that wasn’t enough for him? Or was it that I’m still other to him, even though I Changed? And I feel really stupid and babyish about my soulmates fantasy, too. Probably in real life it doesn’t ever happen that way. Maybe not even with Grace and Rav. Maybe it’s only in books and movies—a story you tell little kids so you don’t disappoint them about life too soon.

I’m crying now. Not full-out bawling, thank goodness, but lips trembling, nose dripping, blinking back tears. Which is bad enough. Kai takes me in his arms and hugs me, but it’s different now, a brotherly hug.

He walks me back home, and we say goodbye soon after that. Nobody’s mad anymore, but we have no plans to see each other again.

CHAPTER 58

A FAINT AND DISTANT CONSTELLATION

I wait on the porch steps as Kai walks away. Lights are blazing in the house. Through the windows, I can see Rav reading on the couch and Grace at the kitchen table with her computer. I know the baby’s in a basket on the floor near her feet. There’s a light on upstairs in the study, where Abby hangs out most evenings.

Nobody knows I’m even here. They’re completely fine without me. Abby’s taken over pretty much everything, including helping with the baby, which is what I was supposed to do, and she knows way more about that than I do. I’m just . . . in the way. Eating up groceries when they need every penny for themselves.

Kai disappears around a corner, and there’s this great, gutted shipwreck in my chest where my heart used to be.

I know Grace and Rav will wait up for me, but my eyes are still leaking, my nose is still dripping. I’m not ready to face them. Not yet.

I’m kind of antsy and kind of numb, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t go inside, and I can’t just hang around here. There’s nowhere for me to be.

I start to walk. In the opposite direction from Kai.

There’s a light breeze now; it feels good. My shoes kick at pebbles and weeds growing in cracks in the sidewalk. I pick up the pace, and then I’m running. The streetlights have come on; I move through pools of light and then back into darkness. My breath is loud in my ears.

I run. Past the shabby clapboard houses in Grace’s neighborhood. Through a corner of Sofia’s area, stately mansions gone to seed. And then it’s down through the Saturday night crowds of milling tourists and locals—past the bodegas and tiki bars, the old hotels, the souvenir shops, the bicycle rental kiosks. Shaved ice. Shrimp tacos. Saltwater taffy. Gelato-on-a-stick.

A seagull calls. The salt wind freshens against my face. I hear the roar of cruising traffic on Seawall Boulevard, the hum of pumps, the gurgle of hydro-engineered sea. And beyond, faintly, the hiss and suck of lapping waves.

And now at last, I know where I’m going.

I want water. Not bath water or pool water. The sea.

I wait for a break in the traffic, then dart across the boulevard. Up the seawall stairs and down again, on the other side. Running. Along the narrow path through the riprap, the seagrass, the crushed pop cans, the shattered glass. Past the pelicans, the gulls, a cluster of roseate spoonbills. And now it’s sand, at last, and the sea.

The stars are bright above the Gulf. The surf is gentle; the water, shallow, bath-warm. I kick off my shoes, wade in past my ankles, past my knees, past my waist. I keep walking until the water rises to my chest. I’m buoyant now, a little. The sea floats my shirt and billows it all around me, like a jellyfish.

I push off, glide out across the surface of the water. When I reach the nearest buoy, I dive, stroking down and down and down. Searching for something . . . some kind of feeling I used to have. When I belonged.

A shoal of silvery fishes flees from me. I stroke deeper, deeper.

But I can’t taste the life of the sea all around me. Just the saltiness, like tears. And my lungs are getting tight. The current wants to shove me back toward land, and I don’t want to go there. I kick hard, strain against it.

But it’s not home for me here anymore.

My lungs are full to bursting. They hurt.

I’m breathless.

I need air.

I kick back up to the surface.

Gasping now. Holding onto the buoy to stay afloat.

The breeze whuffs in my ears. Somewhere behind me, a chorus of insects are chirping. A spoonbill lifts off from another buoy, skims across the water, and then disappears among the stars. Out in the bay, I can see the lights of the Mermaid, a faint and distant constellation.

It’s strange. I’m having this sudden, calm sense of utter clarity. I took a chance with my life, and I lost. I Changed myself, changed some of the most important things about myself. I cut myself off from my podmates and the Mer, cut myself off from the sea, even cut off breathing underwater—and mostly for a guy I didn’t really know. A guy who, it now turns out, was never serious about me to begin with. And I didn’t even ask. I just assumed, or hoped, or fantasized, or . . . something.

I thought I was in love with him, and maybe I was, but . . . maybe I was in love with the idea of him. Or the idea of who I would be with him. Someone else. Someone not-me.

I gave up everything.

Except . . . well, not everything. I got Grace back. I got Rav and Hope. Even Abby. In spite of everything, I’m so glad not to have lost her completely.

I just . . .

Wanted a bigger life. Needed a bigger life. But it didn’t work out.

And now there’s no place for me on the island, not really, and there’s no way back to the Mermaid. There’s nowhere I belong.

And Adam . . .

If Naomi was right about him . . . 

What have I done?

Breathe in, Turtle.

Breathe out.

Just keep breathing.

Something is buzzing. On my arm. A little light is flashing. My gauntlet.

It’s a phone call.

I blink down at it. A number I don’t recognize.

I press the button. “Hello?”

“Turtle?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes,” I say cautiously.

“It’s Jasmine.”

Jasmine! I’d forgotten all about her. “You called,” she says.

“Um, yes,” I say. “Yes, I did.”

“Turtle, are you okay?”

No, I’m not. Not really.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

It’s taking me a minute to come about, to tack in a new direction. “It’s not about me, though,” I say. “It’s a friend of mine, a Mer.”

“Ah,” Jasmine says. “Tell me what I can do.”

“My friend needs a doctor. Someone who won’t just want to ‘fix’ her, or the rest of them. Someone who’s on their side.”

“Hey, Turtle, you know I’m not a doctor, right?” She’s kidding, sort of, I can tell.

“Well, yeah, but . . . you know doctors. And you must hear stuff about different doctors all the time. And maybe you know some who are geneticists, because my friend doesn’t just need like a doctor doctor who can take care of the day-to-day—she needs somebody who can maybe . . .”

Maybe what?

“They don’t know what’s going to happen. How it’s all going to unfold as they get older. Like now, my friend is having trouble breathing, sometimes . . . in the air, I mean. They said an OB-GYN would be okay, but really they need . . .”

I stop. I’m floating here, clinging to a buoy in the Gulf of Mexico in the dark of night, and I can’t quite pull everything together so it all makes sense. But then, suddenly, part of it does.

Maya’s pregnant.

That’s why Constance was practically lobbying for an OBGYN. That’s why Maya seemed so excited. Radiant. That’s why she looked at me like we shared a secret when I came back from being with Kai.

Maya and Jamal.

And the Habitat Adam showed me. The nursery.

They must have inactivated the infertility chip. Somehow, without a doctor. Constance must have been involved . . .

So they can all be self-sufficient. On their own, forever.

But I can’t ask Jasmine to find an OB-GYN for the Mer. That’s not just crossing a redline—that’s obliterating it.

“I guess . . . just, if you could recommend a few names,” I say. “That would be great.”

The hiss and rush of the waves. The insects chirping. Nothing on the other end of the line.

“Jasmine?”

“Yeah, Turtle. I’m going to have to think about that one, ask around. I’m sure we can turn up something.”

“Okay, good. You’ll call me, then?”

“Well, actually . . . I’ve been wanting to talk to you, too,” she says. There’s a pause. “About your father.”

My father?

“I’d like to see you in person. When can we meet?”

CHAPTER 59

ESTRANGED

“There was this guy,” Jasmine says, “who came in to look at the babies at night.”

She stops to take a sip of coffee; a dozen silver bangles jingle down her arm, flashing in the light.

A jolt of excitement zings through me. I’m thinking: This guy. Is that him? Is that Daddy?

“I mean,” Jasmine says, “I love those little critters, myself, can’t get enough of them. But we like to know who’s in the nursery, and he didn’t seem to be with anybody. Seemed like he was coming in just to look.”

We’re sitting at a table in the Fire Ant Café, one of those funky tourist places with Texas-themed knickknacks and odd combinations of food. Margarita-and-lime-spiced muffins. Barnacle-and-chipotle quiche. I’ve ordered a pecan pie latte, and it’s delicious. There’s a buzz of conversation around us, a clattering of cups and plates.

Jasmine squints at me, takes another sip of coffee. Seems like she’s working out something in her mind. No scrubs today. Tight, black jeans with pointy-toed mules. Plum-colored off-the-shoulder top. Silver necklace with a dolphin charm, those silver bracelets, and long, dangling earrings that look like squids. No French braid; now, she’s rocking an afro.

She looks good. But if she doesn’t get on with this, I’m gonna explode.

“Did you talk to him?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah. On the third night, my supervisor was thinking of asking him to leave, but that didn’t sit right with me. I mean, I hadn’t seen the guy yet at that point, but he hadn’t done anything. And they said he was clean. You know, laundered-and-showered kind of clean. Late fifties, looked like. Clear, level gaze, not druggy or anything. So I said, ‘Let me talk to him.’

“I didn’t recognize him, at first. He grew a beard, and he’s older—has some gray hair going on. But when I heard his voice, I knew.

“Turns out, I knew him a long time ago, in my twenties, when I volunteered on some of his salvaging dives. He had super-high standards—knew everything. But he took time to get to know the crew, to teach us stuff. Everybody looked up to him.”

Daddy.

I can feel my heart beating in my chest. At the next table, someone barks out a laugh. The espresso machine hisses.

“He was a presence. I mean, back in the day, half of us had crushes on him. Not that he encouraged it,” she adds. “He was obviously smitten with your mom. Anyway, it took a minute, there at the nursery window, but then he recognized me, too. So I offered him a cup of coffee and . . . we started to talk.”

Jasmine twists a finger in a coil of hair. “The next few nights, during times when I wasn’t busy, we . . . just talked. And then, one night, when it finally felt okay to ask him, Why are you here?, he pointed to little Hope and said, ‘My granddaughter.’”

A thousand questions are bubbling up in my mind. Where’s he been all this time? How did he know about Hope? Why did he want to see her and not the rest of us? Was he afraid to get us in trouble, like Grace said?

“Now, bear in mind, Turtle: I’d never known he had a Mer daughter. You were born after I stopped volunteering with him. And even after Grace told me about you, I never guessed he’d refused to turn you in and was put in jail. It must have been in the papers, but . . . that was years after I’d lost track of him, and anyway, we all knew him as Will, not Rupert.”

“Everybody does,” I said.

“I found out all that later. But right then, when he told me about Hope, I wanted to ask him, you know, Why don’t you come when your daughters are here? But that would have been rude, and anyway, it happens all the time. People become . . . estranged.”

Estranged. What an odd word. People “made strange” to one another. Fathers “made strange” to daughters. Friends “made strange” to friends. Usually you think of estrangement coming from some argument or betrayal, but you can be “made strange” to someone just by being out of contact. Being apart.

“Long story short,” Jasmine says, “we’ve been seeing each other.”

What?

“You’re dating my dad?”

She smiles and ducks her head. All of a sudden, she looks shy. “I guess you could call it that.”

Phoof! I try to wrap my mind around that one. Jasmine and my dad! She looks way younger than my mom would be now. Early forties, maybe? I mean, Mom’s been gone for four years, but . . . Yikes, do they . . . ?

Don’t go there, Turtle.

“It just—caught fire.” Jasmine shrugs, almost like she’s apologizing. “Sometimes these things happen. We bonded really fast.”

I nod. Like I know all about that. And I do know about fire and fast. Maybe not so much about bonding.

“Anyway, he’s keeping it together,” Jasmine says. “Mostly. In case you wondered. But sometimes . . . well, he’s got . . . uh, legal problems, for one thing.”

Yeah. Because of me.

“I don’t know how much you remember about your dad, Turtle. He believes in taking care of things himself. Doesn’t want anyone telling him or his family how to live.”

That sounds familiar.

“In a weird way,” Jasmine says, “he’s an idealist. All about righting wrongs. I love that about him.”

Righting wrongs. That’s exactly what Grace said.

“But he doesn’t always pay all that much attention to the finer points of the law if he sees an injustice. Or even, sometimes, the really huge points of the law.”

“Like escaping from prison, you mean.”

“Yeah, well. So, basically, he’s on the lam. He was going to turn himself in once or twice, but just . . . never did.”

“Is he . . . in danger?”

“Of course. But no more than he’s been all these years. Doesn’t seem like they’re actively looking for him. But if they stumbled on him . . .” She takes a sip of coffee. The bracelets jingle and flash. “Could be bad.”

“So, you’re saying he’s, like, okay then, right?”

“Well . . .” She shrugs again. “That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you. He’s been isolated for a real long time. That does strange things to people. Plus, it just about did him in when he found out about your mom, that she, you know . . .”

That she died.

Jasmine hesitates. I can’t seem to make any words come out of my mouth.

“Turtle, he misses you and your sisters like crazy. He searches for you guys online. He knew all about your operation, for instance, and that you’re living with Grace and Rav—”

“Did he say anything about the operation? That I chose to . . . Change back?”

“That doesn’t matter to him. He’s just worried about you, Turtle. Wants to know if you’re okay. Your sisters, too. He’s been checking. Watching. I mean, not in a creepy way. He wants to know what you’re doing and all, but it’s also, like . . . protecting.”

Watching. Has he seen me with Kai? I wonder if I’ve maybe seen him and didn’t know it was him. I know it ought to feel weird, that he was watching me like that, but somehow it doesn’t, not at all. It feels . . . comforting, actually.

“But the main thing you’ve got to understand about your dad,” Jasmine says, “is that he doesn’t want to get you guys in trouble. Aiding and abetting, all that.”

“Yeah, that’s what Grace said.”

“So, he’s had to stay away, and it’s just about driving him nuts.” She twists her finger in another coil of hair. “I mean, not certifiably nuts. He hasn’t, like, come unglued. But he’s not completely . . . glued, either.”

“Did you tell him you and I were meeting?”

She hesitates. Then, “No,” she says. “Not yet.”

“I want to see him.” It just comes out, without any thinking beforehand. But the moment I say it, I can feel that it’s true.

Jasmine sighs. “I was halfway hoping you’d say that. And halfway hoping you wouldn’t.”

“Just tell me where he lives, okay?”

But she’s shaking her head. “He doesn’t answer the door unless it’s prearranged. And I really don’t think he’ll agree to see you. He’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep you and your sisters from knowing he’s here. For your own good, like I said. To keep you safe.”

“Well, then what? What can I do?”

She bites her bottom lip, gazes down at her hands. She’s ripping up her napkin. Little bits of paper sprinkle the tabletop, litter the floor. She lifts her head, looks me straight in the eye. “We could . . . force the issue. I could take you with me next time I go.”

“You mean, like, trick him?” I don’t like the sound of that.

“Turtle, if you want to see him, it’s the only way. And he might just throw you out. But if you want my opinion, he needs to talk to you. You, or someone else from your family. He’s not, frankly, doing all that super well.”

“But . . . won’t he be mad?” I ask.

“Mad? Oh, yeah. He’s gonna be royally pissed off.”

CHAPTER 60

BALCONY SCENE

I’m lying in bed, thinking about Daddy, about maybe seeing him again, when the first pebble hits the window. I figure it’s a tree branch or something, maybe a bird. It’s just a light clack, and it’s almost lost among the other night sounds: the tapping of rain on the roof, the throb of Abby’s music in the study, and the back-and-forth creak of Grace’s new rocking chair in the bedroom.

The second pebble is louder. It gets my attention. I sit up.

A ripple of fear rolls up my spine. Throwing stones is something protestors do. Maybe they’re protesting me.

But that’s silly. I’m not even Mer anymore.

The third pebble hits. Even louder.

That’s it.

I fling the covers aside, pad across the floor to the window.

Someone’s down there on the ground. Looking up.

Adam!

I unlatch the window, open it. The screen’s still under the bed; I forgot to put it back.

“I need to talk to you,” he says.

“Um, okay.”

He could have knocked on the front door. But he didn’t.

All of a sudden, there’s this weird thing happening to me. I’m feeling bizarrely light and happy.

“Do you want to come down?” he asks. “Or can I come up?”

A giggle escapes me; I can’t help it. Come up? To my bedroom?

And he’s down there, looking kind of like a drowned rat, because it’s raining and he’s not dressed to be soaking wet. And when you’re a Mer, you spend a lot of time being soaking wet, but you’re not usually wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, so the drowned-rat thing isn’t happening.

And now, the whole Romeo-and-Juliet-ness of the situation hits me. The balcony scene. I mean, I don’t actually have a balcony, but there he is, under my bedroom window, and we’re, you know, talking and stuff.

Do I want to be alone with Adam in my bedroom?

“Come up!” I say. Then, to mask how eager that sounded, I add, “You look like a drowned rat.”

And now he’s climbing.

He seems to be having a lot of trouble, though, maybe because of the rain. His shoes keep slipping off the trellis, and once, a piece of honeysuckle vine rips off in his hand and he lurches away from the wall, and then when he swings back again, the trellis snaps in his hand and he’s saying words I’ve never heard from him before. I worry about somebody hearing, but Rav’s downstairs working at the other end of the house, and Abby’s cocooned with her music, and Grace has taken to wearing earbuds at night, ever since Abby came. At last, Adam drags himself up over the sill. He’s dripping; a puddle forms on the floor around his shoes.

“Ow,” he says. He holds up a finger. “I’m bleeding.”

He is bleeding. A little.

“No, seriously,” he says. “There was a nail. I could get tetanus.”

Pretty sure Romeo never said that.

“When was your last shot?” I ask.

“I don’t remember.”

“I thought tetanus was when you don’t bleed.”

“Is that really a thing?”

“Um, I dunno. Want a Band-Aid?”

“Yes, please. If you can get it without waking people up.”

They’re awake already, but there’s a first aid kit in the hall bathroom, and Abby’s music’s so loud, I think I can go there and back without anybody knowing.

Which I do.

I wipe Adam’s cut with an antibacterial swab, then squeeze some antibiotic cream on it. I take the paper off the bandage, then wrap it around his finger.

I can feel his nearness, like an electrical field. He smells like the sea.

“You broke up with that guy,” he says. “The Normal guy.”

My heartbeat is loud in my chest. I’m done with his finger, but I don’t back away. “Wow,” I say. “News travels fast.”

“Emerson told me.”

“Emerson? How did he know?”

“Nancy told him.”

“Nancy? How did she know?”

“Sofia heard it from Grace the other day, and Sofia told Nancy.”

Sofia and Grace. That must have been when Sofia brought over the rocking chair, a gift for Grace. But Nancy . . .

“Nancy’s working with Sofia,” Adam says. “They’re turning Sofia’s house into a shelter.”

“Nancy?” I say again. “With Sofia?” Talk about an odd couple. I mean, I know I connected Emerson and Sofia, but I never expected . . . 

“Don’t underestimate Nancy. Nobody beats Nancy Costigan at backgammon. Ever. Even Emerson. Or at chess, either.”

I take a minute to let that sink in. But . . . a shelter? “I thought Sofia was selling her house.”

“Not anymore. Turtle . . .”

And there’s something new in his voice when he says my name, something private and shy, and it lights me up inside.

He moves in a little toward me, and he’s close, so close. He hesitates, as if to give me a chance to back away, but I don’t want to; I won’t. He leans in, and then, like magic, we’re kissing. I can feel his wet shirt through my nightgown. I can smell him: musk and brine. I can feel his hand against my back. I can feel . . .

And I’m remembering that dream I had, way back, right after the operation. The dream of kissing. I’d thought it must be Kai, but now . . .

No. It was Adam.

Has it been Adam all along?

And now I’m crying.

Adam leans back, a little. “Gee,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Something I said?”

I choke on a giggle. And cry some more.

’Cause it’s just so damn sad. I Changed myself—changed everything—for the wrong guy. And now the right guy’s here, but I’m a different, like, species from him, and Constance won’t even let me visit where he lives anymore.

“Hey.” Adam brushes a tear from my cheek. He’s smiling. “Sometimes I have that effect on people.”

“Like your other girlfriends?”

“They weren’t really girlfriends.”

“Sure looked like it.”

“They were, I don’t know, flirtations, experiments in growing up. For them and for me. Honestly, none of them took me seriously.”

I sniffle. They did seem to get over him really fast. Like, immediately. But . . . is that what’s going on now? With me? Another experiment?

“I used to believe in soulmates,” I say. “I had this crazy thought in my head that two people could fall in love really young, and that would be it, you know, that each would be The One for the other, forever. But now I know that’s a stupid idea. It’s a fairytale thing that never happens in real life.”

“Doesn’t it?”

I stare at him. He’s looking back at me. I’m holding myself still, still, still. Trying not to hope too hard.

“I think it can happen,” Adam says. “Not often. But sometimes.”

I can hardly breathe. “Is it happening now?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. Don’t you?”

“But my gills.”

“I don’t care. Do you?”

I shake my head.

“The thing I get now,” he says, “that I didn’t understand before . . . I was sort of marking time. With the others. Waiting for us—you and me—to grow up.”

That’s what Naomi said.

He’s just looking at me now. “Here’s where you say you’ve been marking time, too, waiting for me,” he says.

Another giggle bursts out of me. I reach for a tissue. Blow my nose. And he’s waiting, and I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to lie. But maybe . . .

“I . . . Listen, Adam, I . . . Do you remember the goose?”

He nods.

“Ever since then, I’ve had this, like, thing about you . . .”

“What kind of thing?”

“The kind of thing where . . .” I take in a deep breath, then just say it. “Maybe I was waiting for you all along, and didn’t know it?”

“Just maybe?” he says. But he’s smiling.

And now I am, too.

“I talked to Constance,” he says.

“What about?”

“About you. Living with us. On the Mermaid. And later, in the Habitat.”

I bet that went over well. “What did she say?”

“You can!”

What?

To be with Adam, every day? Not like before, but really with him, boyfriend and girlfriend. Holding hands in the hallways. Diving together. Making out in the rain . . .

Oh, delicious!

“But she has a few conditions.”

Pop! My fantasies fizzle. “What conditions?”

“Well, you’d have to choose, once and for all. To live with us, rather than with your other family.”

“But I could visit them, yes?”

He shrugs. “She says no, but . . . I’m sure she’ll relent on that one, just give her time. The other thing is the letters. You can’t ever mention them. To anybody. Constance says you have to swear to it.”

Wait. “You know about the letters? But last time we talked about them—”

“She had to tell me. It was one of her conditions.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Adam sighs. “I think we have to stick together. Like Constance says. Especially now, with the protestors. And with the Habitat needing so much more work.”

“Yeah, but . . . what if she takes the letters somewhere off the ship? Or destroys them? Or the list?”

“What list?”

“The list of biologicals and fosters. She has it. She showed it to me.”

“Turtle, I just don’t want to blow up the community. Wind up like those people Emerson’s protecting. The guards on the Habitat, the people in his shop. Hiding on the edges of life, with no place that’s really home.”

I can see that. Without a community, the Mer are sunk. Still, something about the whole letter thing is hitting me wrong. “So we’re in on this deep, dark secret.”

“Right.”

“That nobody can ever know.”

“Well, maybe someday—”

“C’mon, Adam. She’ll never let us tell. And what about our families? They’ll always wonder why we stopped writing.”

“It’s different for yours. You were with them a lot longer. And Grace and Rav . . . They’re fantastic. If they were my family, I might feel like you do.”

“You might anyway, if you connected with your family again.”

“I don’t know, Turtle. You could be right. But for me, and most of the rest of us, what’s done is done. And maybe it’s for the best. But listen,” he says. He’s looking straight into my eyes, and the wanting in him slays me. “We can be together. I mean, if you like.”

And I do like. I like it so much. But . . .

If I moved back to the Mermaid, to be with Adam, I’d be the only Normal there. Well, the only person without gills. The only outsider. Except Constance, of course. Who wouldn’t let me see my other family.

And something is starting to feel . . . familiar. Because that’s what I did before, with Kai. Changed myself. Moved to a different world where I didn’t quite fit, hoping to be with him. Left my friends in the pod. Cut myself off from them.

“Turtle?”

I am so, so confused. But I know what I want right now.

“I’m such a wreck, Adam. I don’t want to talk about Constance. Please, would you hold me? Would you kiss me some more?”

And he does.

CHAPTER 61

DOOR IN A WALL

It’s just A door in a wall.

We’re on a commercial street, Jasmine and me, one of those streets that used to be nice, with boutiques and bakeries and stuff, way back in the day when my parents were kids, before the sea rise got really bad and everybody knew they’d have to leave the island someday. So it’s rundown now, like just about everywhere else. The door sits on a long, blank stretch of wall between a liquor store and a bail bonds dealer. It’s a deep forest green, though the paint is cracked and chipping. There’s a peephole at about the level of my forehead. There’s a watermark at about the level of my belly button.

There’s no knocker, of course, but there’s a doorbell-looking thing, a black circle set in a donut of rusty metal, in the brick wall beside the door.

I point to it, look at Jasmine. She nods.

I push it.

Nothing. No sound at all.

I hate that. When you push a doorbell and you don’t hear anything, and you’re not sure if it’s broken or if it’s ringing someplace else where you can’t hear.

“So, does this thing work?” I ask.

“Yep,” she says.

We wait.

Nothing.

“Should I push it again?” I ask.

“Just wait,” Jasmine says.

“What if he’s got music on, or the TV, or the phone just rang, or—”

“Turtle, no. He’s going to be mad enough as it is.”

And the dive watch is burning a hole in my pocket. I’m just so set on pulling it out, returning it. To my father. To my dad. And I don’t even know what it’s going to feel like, if he’ll really be Daddy to me anymore, but suddenly I just want to know. And I’m wondering if he got any of the letters I sent him, any at all. And I wonder if he sent some to me. And now I’m thinking about all the undelivered letters, back and forth, from parents to kids and back again. All that undelivered love. Or even not-love, because it could be anger, or fear, or loneliness. It could be why-won’t-you-come-and-get-me. It could be just here’s-what-I-did-today. It could be what-do-you-think-about-this? But whatever you call it, it’s the opposite of separation. The opposite of estranged.

And all of a sudden, the thought of him—Daddy—sitting up there and not hearing the doorbell or not answering because he thinks maybe we’re the cops, or some politician who wants votes or money, or a nosy neighbor . . . all of a sudden, it makes me mad.

I ring the doorbell again.

And again.

Come down here, dammit.

Jasmine grabs my arm. “Stop it, Turtle, just—”

The door swings open.

And there he is.

I know him at once. I would know him anywhere. A big bear of a guy. He kind of looms. He’s got a full, bushy beard, and his hair’s sticking out in all funny directions, and he’s wearing an old camo T-shirt and some stained cargo shorts. He’s barefoot, and he’s yelling, “Jasmine, dammit, would you cut it out already, you know I can’t—” And then he stops. He blinks at me, a groundhog in February coming out of its burrow at last.

We stand there, looking at each other. Forever.

“Turtle?” he says. His voice is soft, and kind of breaking underneath.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“You . . .” he says. And something stops him, a little hitch in his throat. And for a second, I think he’s going to hug me. And I ache for it, ache for the feel of his arms around me, for the minty smell of his breath, for the scratch of his shaggy whiskers on my forehead.

But people are coming down the sidewalk, three women. They’re talking, laughing loudly. Daddy flicks his eyes to look at them. He doesn’t move.

“Please, Will, let us in!” Jasmine says.

He seems to rouse himself. He steps aside. We scooch into a tiny space at the foot of a narrow flight of stairs. Jasmine shuts the door behind us.

He wheels on her. “I told you not to bring her here; it’s not safe for her. What were you thinking?”

“I’m thinking of you. You can’t just be like this, all by yourself, never seeing anybody, never talking to anybody. It’s not good for you, Will. And you can’t keep away from your kids forever.”

“That’s not your call, Jazz. I can’t believe you went rogue on me. You betrayed my trust.”

“Because I care about you. And—”

“It’s my life! I can live it however I damn well please. As soon as it’s clear out there, I want you gone.”

“It’s my life, too,” I say.

“What?” He seems startled. He turns to me.

“It’s my life, too. I don’t have a father, I don’t have a mother. I haven’t seen my grandmother in years. I had to choose between my family and my friends on the Mermaid, because for some reason I can’t have them both, and now they’ve banned me from the ship and I can’t see my podmates anymore. I’m ripping apart here. I’m all in pieces.”

He looks at me, and I see something shift in his face.

“C’mon, Will,” Jasmine says.

“It’s dangerous for you to be around me, Turtle,” he says. Pleading. Not mad anymore. “Don’t you see?”

“I don’t care.”

He sighs, and I think maybe he’ll hug me now. But he says, “Well, come on up, then,” and heads up the stairs.

It’s not exactly what I’d hoped for. But I’ll take it.

CHAPTER 62

IT’S NOT RIGHT

He’s clattering around in the kitchen, supposedly making coffee. Bang! A cupboard door slams. Clank! A coffee mug smacks down on the counter. Crash! Sounds like action in the silverware drawer. Clearly, he’s not through being mad.

Jasmine and I sit on the couch together, waiting. It’s a largish open space with the couch and chairs and a coffee table on one end and a tiny kitchen on the other. The furniture looks like the kind of stuff people leave out on the curb. There’s a narrow hallway with two more doors—bedroom and bathroom, I’m guessing.

“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” I mutter.

“That’s not it at all,” Jasmine says softly. Nervous, she tugs at an earring. A jellyfish this time.

“What is it, then? He’s barely said two words to me.”

“Oh, Turtle, it’s just . . . a bunch of things.”

“Like what?”

“I hear you!” he calls out. “What am I, invisible?”

Jasmine puts a finger to her lips, shakes her head at me.

I sigh, and look around the room.

There’s scuba stuff everywhere. Tanks, fins, wetsuits, regulators, a couple of underwater cameras. Plus piles of clothes and towels and magazines. We had to clear things off the couch in order to sit down. The hardwood floor is rough, and not level. If you dropped a bunch of marbles, they’d all beeline for the wall nearest the street. Dust bunnies drift along the floor molding. A stack of dirty dishes teeters in the sink, and a leaning tower of empty pizza boxes sits on the kitchen floor.

There’s no framed art on the walls, no pictures of family or friends. Just photos that look like they’ve been torn from scuba diving calendars and push-pinned to the sheetrock. Shipwrecks, flooded ruins, underwater caves.

On the lam. What a lonely way to live.

After a while, he walks over with three coffee mugs and sets them on the table. “There’s sugar, if you want it,” he says. “No cream.” Daring us to complain.

“Black is good,” I say, quickly.

“Same here,” Jasmine chimes in.

I reach for a mug. It’s chipped, and not a hundred percent clean looking. I Heart Whales is printed on one side. Doesn’t seem like a Daddy kind of thing. But . . . didn’t Mama have a coffee mug like that? Seems like I remember it. Has he kept it all this time?

No pictures to connect him to family. But that mug.

He sits down on one of the chairs. Kind of overfills it. Not that he’s out of shape—he’s just scaled larger all over than most people.

We drink.

And he doesn’t seem mad anymore—at least, not quite as mad. But there’s so, so much territory to cover, and all of a sudden, it feels impossible. It’s been so long, I don’t even know him anymore. And maybe he feels the same, because like me, he can’t seem to dredge up a single thing to say.

And then I remember.

The dive watch. Grandfather Tuna.

I pull it out of my pocket. Take it out of its case. Set both on the table in front of him.

“What’s that?” he says. He leans forward. Picks up the watch. “Is it . . . ? Well, I’ll be a barnacle’s aunt.” And there’s this look of, like, wonder on his face. He moves his fingers across it, turns it over, turns it back again. “Where?” he asks. “Where did you get it?”

“We were scavenging,” I say. “After Grandmother’s house was flooded.” And I tell him what happened. I skip the kissing part, but I explain how Kai and I fought over the watch, and what happened with his regulator, and that I helped him get away. “And in the end,” I say, “he gave me the watch, but I wasn’t supposed to keep it.”

“Why not?”

“What’s scavenged belongs to the community. We . . . well, the Mer. They need the income. But I told my podmates I wanted it. I told them it was yours. And they . . . let me keep it.”

He nods. Holds out the watch. Offers it back.

“No. It’s yours,” I say.

“But you wanted it.”

“’Cause it was a piece of you. I don’t need it if I . . .”

If I have you.

I don’t say it aloud, but the unsaid words ring in the room.

He sets the watch down on the table. Takes off the newer watch he has on, one with lots more features. He picks up the Grandfather Tuna. Buckles it on. Then he looks up, holds my eyes for a long moment. “Thank you,” he says.

My lips are trembling. I press them together. There’s a warm, mellow light inside me.

“So these . . . podmates of yours,” he says. “They’re your friends? The ones you can’t be with anymore?”

I nod.

“Why can’t you be with them?”

I tell about Constance. About being kicked off the Mermaid, and why.

“Wait. You never got my letters?” he asks.

“They stopped when I was, like eleven.”

He stares at me. Blinks. “That’s when yours stopped, too. But I kept sending them. From prison, and then . . . later. Long after yours stopped coming. Every week, no matter where I was. For a couple of years.”

I swallow hard. I knew Constance was confiscating letters. But to hear it like this, with no question about it, no doubt. Daddy was sending me letters. Every week!

And I thought they’d all abandoned me.

What it would have meant just to know they were thinking about me.

“I sent them, too,” I say, “for a long time after I stopped getting yours.” Steam is rising from our coffee cups, stirred by the overhead fan.

Something is happening to Daddy’s face. It’s gone absolutely still.

“So, I’m trying to get this straight, Turtle.” His voice is unnaturally quiet. “Constance confiscated the letters. Didn’t send them at all. Either from you to us or back the other way.”

“That’s right.”

“Did she confiscate other people’s letters?”

“Everyone’s, I think—both to and from their parents.”

“Why in the world would she do that?”

“She doesn’t trust the Normal world. She thinks the Mer are better off being self-sufficient. As much as possible, on our—on their—own.”

“But you did get letters for a while. What changed?”

I shrug. “Constance caught one of the teachers snooping on us, posting pictures and information online. So she kicked all the Normals off the ship—the teachers and the other helpers. Then there were the protests at the gen-mod labs, and—”

“She was cooking the books,” Jasmine says.

“What?”

“It came up on the news feed a few days ago. One of the teachers went through the financials and caught her, and that’s why she kicked them all off.”

“What?”

I do a search on my gauntlet, and there it is.

“What does it say?” Daddy asks.

“Looks like one of the Mer who Changed happened to bump into one of our old teachers, who knew about the fraudulent books. Somehow, it leaked to a reporter . . .”

I read ahead. I can’t believe it.

“And?” Daddy says.

“Constance claims the state funds went for valid expenses, but the records are wonky. It’s not certain if she was embezzling or just hiding the true financial situation from Juvenile Services and the IRS. Anyway, all the money’s gone.” Like Yuka said.

The Habitat. If they can’t keep up the lease payments, they’ll lose it. And only dry dock time can keep the Mermaid afloat, and that costs money, too.

Nowhere to go.

I cross my arms and hug myself. I’m afraid.

“Can they raise more money?” Daddy asks.

“They used to be able to, but not anymore.”

“Any idea what kind of condition the Mermaid’s in? After the hurricane?”

“Not good.” I tell him about the rust and barnacles on the hull. I tell him what Constance told me, that she needs six months in dry dock immediately.

“They told her ‘immediately’?”

“That’s what Constance said.”

“When’s the last time she was in dry dock?”

“I can’t remember. A long time ago.”

He huffs out an impatient breath. “That’s grossly irresponsible. They could lose the Mermaid anytime.”

“Anytime?”

“Well, she may have a while yet. But at this point, it wouldn’t take much to sink her. And what about the other parents?” Daddy asks. “Are they helping?”

“Like I said, they didn’t get any letters, either. Not for years. And most of them have, like, given up.”

And then something pops into my brain, something else Yuka told me. I say it aloud: “If they’d gotten the letters, things would be different.”

“Yeah, maybe they’d contribute. Some of them had money. But there’s probably no chance in hell that Constance still has some of those letters lying around. Or even the names of the fosters and biologicals.”

“She has the names. I saw the list. She keeps it in her desk. But letters . . . I don’t know. She told me she had some.”

“Really? Why would she keep them?”

“She keeps everything she can’t sell. Even stuff that’s broken, stuff we’re never going to use.”

“So she’s a hoarder?”

“With a really good filing system.”

“Any idea where she might hide a bunch of letters?”

I shake my head, no. But then, I remember.

Olivia coming into the hold with an armful of envelopes. How jumpy she was. Like she was doing something secret.

“It’s only a hunch, I say, but . . .” I tell him what I’m thinking.

He’s scratching his chin. There’s the hint of a smile coming into his eyes.

Jasmine’s been leaning back against the cushion, just letting us talk, but now she sits up straight. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she says. “You can’t be thinking—”

“How hard could it be?” he says. “Just another recovery mission.”

He wants to steal the letters.

“C’mon, Will,” Jasmine says. “It’s only a hunch, Turtle said. She doesn’t know they’re there. And even if they are, it’s too risky.”

And yeah, it’s crazy risky. But I’m thinking about the protestors, the rusty hull. I’m thinking about what Adam said about the other gen mods, living in warehouses, under bridges.

Still, if Constance finds out about this, she’ll never let me near the other Mer again.

And Adam . . .

I get an ache when I think of him, an ache down where I breathe.

“Turtle,” Jasmine says, “your dad is on the lam, in case you’ve forgotten. He’s in a very dangerous position. He can’t go traipsing out there to the Mermaid and steal stuff off the ship. You have your sisters, and your father, at least for a while. You don’t need those letters.”

“But they do. They’re out there all alone,” I say, “and they need help. They think nobody cares about them, that their families just let them go, forgot all about them.”

“And you think a bunch of old letters will fix that? I mean, if the letters are even there?”

“They might. Their parents think they, like, ghosted them, Jasmine. When they find out they were wanted all along . . . I’m sure they’ll help. They’ve got to, right?”

“So you’re going to . . . what? Raid the Mermaid, steal those old letters—if they’re there—and then go back and distribute them later? And what about Constance? She’s going to just sit around and let that happen?”

Well, yeah, there’s that. But . . . “Once we have the letters, we’ll work it out.”

“This is insane, Turtle.” She turns to Daddy. “Will, honey, please!”

And it is insane, I know it. But it slips out of me: “It’s just not right. To not even try. It’s not right.”

Daddy nods at me, slowly. “No, it isn’t,” he agrees.

And that seals it.

We’re on.

CHAPTER 63

COLOSSALLY, UNFORGIVABLY

Except it’s not we, in the beginning. Daddy wants me out of it.

He starts up again with this “aiding-and-abetting” stuff: I can’t come to his place anymore because it puts me in legal peril; he’ll take it from here with the letters; we say goodbye now and never see each other again, until . . .

“Until when?” I say.

“Until things change.”

“How will things change?”

“The letters will make things change.”

“Not for you, though. You’ll still think it’s too dangerous to see me.”

“I’m sorry, Turtle. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“They’re not gonna put a fifteen-year-old girl in jail for so-called aiding and abetting her father in stealing a bunch of letters.”

“They’ll get you for not turning me in.”

“I’m fifteen. You’re my dad. I just don’t think so.”

“Don’t be so sure. Anyway, you’ll be banished from the Mermaid if they find out you were helping me.”

“Too late. I’m already banished.”

“Turtle . . .”

“Besides, how will you find your way around the Mermaid without me?” I ask.

“Believe me, darling, I know how to find my way around a ship.”

“And what will you do with the letters, once you have them? You need me for that.”

“Jasmine can get them to you.”

“Just leave me out of it, you two,” Jasmine says. “This is totally insane.”

“Okay,” Daddy says, “I’ll put them in a storage locker and send you the code.”

“I’ll stand on the sidewalk outside your door and make a scene,” I say. “Don’t think I won’t. They’ll arrest me, and then they’ll find you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Daddy says.

“I would.”

“C’mon, Turtle.”

“C’mon, Daddy.”

“I think I’m beginning to see a family resemblance, here,” Jasmine says.

At last, he gives up—but he loads on a bunch of conditions. Like, I have to do whatever he says, without arguing; and I can’t say anything about any of this to anybody; and no way is he letting me back on the Mermaid, period.

But I’m in.

OVER THE NEXT few days, he comes alive. Somebody’s abusing power, and he’s all about making things right.

He pulls diagrams of the Mermaid off the web. He wants to know sleeping schedules, and exactly when and where the night watch is posted, and how wide is the staircase to the hold.

He puts the scuba stuff and towels and magazines in cardboard boxes, shoves the furniture against the walls, and lays out more equipment on the living room floor. None of it looks especially new, and some of it looks really beat up. But there’s a lot. Ropes and pulleys and electrical tape. A truckload of electronic gizmos. Hammers, screwdrivers, drills. Crowbars, torches, lock picks. Hairspray, a broomstick, Styrofoam bricks.

He takes notes. Makes lists. Looks up more stuff online.

I begin to understand, first of all, why he was so good at underwater recovery. And second, why he got in trouble. ’Cause he’s pretty much obsessed.

Jasmine is worried. She frowns a lot. Mutters to herself. I ask her how it’s going with the doctor for Maya, and she almost snaps at me, tells me that’s harder than I think. One night, when we’re walking home, she says to me, “You could stop this, Turtle. Just tell him you don’t want to do it.”

But I do.

Mostly.

“He’s happy now,” I say. “Don’t you think? He wasn’t doing very well before—you told me, yourself.”

“I love seeing him happy, too, but he’s a wanted man. This is crazy.”

And it is. I know it. But it’s kind of . . . joyful, too.

I tell myself that Daddy’s really good at not being caught. How many years has it been? And the Mermaid’s rusting out, and the Mer don’t have enough money to keep up the lease on the Habitat, and the letters have got to help bring in some funds.

Anyway, they deserve those letters. All of them—the Mer and their families and friends. They’re their letters. Everyone’s walking around wounded, feeling abandoned—no matter how well they think they’re handling it. And without those letters . . . We’ll all be separated forever, zooming apart, like the stars.

But there’s something else, and when I’m honest with myself, I admit it. I like teaming up with Daddy. I don’t want to wreck that or disappoint him. I don’t want to lose him again.

And Adam . . .

I can hardly bear to think about him, it hurts so much. But I do think about him, all the time.

Constance won’t let me near the Mermaid again, ever, after this little caper. She’ll know I was in on it. But even if, by some miracle, she let me live with the Mer again . . .

I’m different now. I’d always be an outlier. And if she didn’t let me see my family . . .

I wish things were simpler! I long to just be with Adam—snuggle together in a lounge chair, slow-dance on deck, duck into a dark corner to kiss . . .

But things aren’t simple for Adam and me. They just aren’t.

FOR ABOUT A week, I spend most of my time with Daddy. We make preparations, go over our plan. Jasmine joins us from time to time, but she’s got a heavy work schedule, and I have the feeling she’s given up trying to get us to quit. Meanwhile, Grace and Rav think I’m helping Emerson, and I let them think it. Abby’s helping them, all the time; she’s pretty much made me redundant.

Sometimes, as we work, Daddy asks about Grace and Abby and Rav. He wants to know how they spend their days, about their plans for the future, if they seem happy. He asks about Hope, and, though I’m not sure if I should, I tell him about the sleeping hack.

He stops packing his sea bag. Looks at me. Looks away.

And it’s just lying there, in the air between us. That’s what he did. Had me biohacked, illegally. Which led to the whole string of events where, first of all, I was separated from my family. And after that, trying to corral the severed parts of me and make myself whole, I separated myself from my pod.

He goes back to packing. I go back to stacking boxes on the floor. Neither of us is brave enough to face it aloud, not just yet.

But late in the afternoon of the day of our raid on the Mermaid, he’s ready.

“DULCINEA AND I,” he begins.

Dulcinea. I haven’t heard him say her name, not since I was taken from my family and sent to live on the Mermaid.

“Some years before you were born, we were excavating a seventeenth-century paddle steamer near an island off Japan. One day, when we were about thirty feet down, Dulcie tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. I turned and saw, a little way off, a diver I didn’t know. A small woman dressed in a loose, white garment of some kind, and a white scarf. But the astonishing part of it was . . . she had no breathing gear. Only an antique mask and old fins. No weights, either, but she was walking on the seafloor, like she was out for a morning stroll. She picked up something and then kicked back up to the surface.

“By this time,” Daddy went on, “everybody in our group had noticed her. She didn’t have a boat—it looked like just an inner tube up there, attached to a net or something to hold her catch. She dove again, and then Dulcie tapped my shoulder, pointed a little farther out . . . and there was another one. A small woman, dressed in white . . . with no air apparatus.

“I’m telling you, I was completely floored. They went maybe three, maybe four, maybe five minutes without surfacing for air. A couple of dolphins showed up, and a bale of sea turtles, which just sort of hung out with them.

“When the women headed back to shore, a few of us followed. We just wanted to talk to them, find out who they were. But nobody in our party spoke Japanese, and they didn’t speak English, and anyway, they had zero interest in talking to us. They packed their catch into rusty shopping carts and hustled off. I started to go after them, to see where they went, but Dulcie said, ‘No, let them go.’ Later, we found a translator, and we were hoping to find them again. But that was the last we ever saw of them.”

“Were they . . . modded?” I ask.

“Far from it. We asked around, and it turns out, they’re part of an ancient Japanese tradition. The ama—women of the sea.”

“So they’re just, like, free divers?”

“Essentially. The art is passed down from mother to daughter. They learn it young. I’ve read that their lung capacity is greater than average, but otherwise, they’re like everybody else. There was a time, centuries ago, when they were pearl divers, but now they mostly fish for abalone.

“Anyway, they really got to us. They just looked so free down there. We read up about them and found out that the business with the dolphins and the turtles isn’t unusual. The sea creatures treat them as if they were just, you know, other sea creatures. As if they weren’t visitors, like us, but belonged there. In a way that we, with our breathing apparatus, never could. It was like that with you, when we dived. Those sea turtles. Remember?”

“I do.”

“We took a freediving class—Dulcie and me—but I guess we were too old or too scared, because the blackouts and the bleeding and the convulsions were too much. But meanwhile, people were modding for bone strength, they were modding for eyesight, they were modding for endurance, and we were thinking: Lung capacity is just around the corner. Just another tweak; how hard could it be? With that, and some early training, who knew what would be possible? You could be down there . . . half an hour, maybe, or even more. My god, the freedom! And to belong like that. You could communicate with whales and dolphins and who knows what else, in ways we can’t even imagine. It could be . . . magic.”

Yeah, well . . . it is.

“Turns out,” he went on, “some scientists were working on lung capacity, but government approval looked to take decades. And Dulcie and I and some of the other divers . . . we couldn’t wait that long. We wanted that kind of magic for our children. For you. So, when we heard about what that hacker was doing . . .”

He shrugs. “We blew off the warnings about unintended consequences. It was a risk. We were used to assessing risks. We told ourselves the nanny state was getting in the way of progress. We told ourselves the infertility chips would be inactivated after a while. If we’d seen what was coming, I swear, we wouldn’t have done it. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Turtle. We were colossally, unforgivably stupid.”

He’s done now. Just looking at me. Waiting.

“Daddy,” I say, and then I’m caught up in a bear hug, the one I’ve been wanting for so long.

In a while, he releases me. “Go home,” he says. “Have dinner with Grace and Abby and Rav. I’ll see you back here at midnight.

“I want to get this one thing right.”

CHAPTER 64

SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE

The house is oddly silent. There’s no one in the living room, no one in the kitchen. It’s Abby’s turn to cook, but it doesn’t smell like food. I see a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, but no sign of cooking, anywhere.

“Grace?” I call. “Are you here? Rav?”

No answer.

But then, I do hear something. Fussing. Hiccoughing. A baby’s screaming cry.

Hope.

I climb the stairs and head down the hall. I hear a tinkly nursery jingle from Grace’s and Rav’s room, and now, another voice.

Abby’s.

She’s cradling Hope in one arm, bouncing her a little. With her free hand, Abby brings a clown doll close to Hope’s face.

“See, Hopie?” Abby says. “It’s funny Jack!” Hope screams bloody murder.

Abby drops the doll to the floor and collapses on the rocking chair, still cradling Hope.

“Abby?” I say.

She turns to me. Blinks. “I can’t get her to sleep,” she says.

She looks exhausted.

Hope is still screaming, full-out. The floor is littered with toys and pacifiers. The heartbeat swaddling blanket lies crumpled in the crib, but the mobile above is still spinning, cranking out its cheerful little tune.

“Where are Grace and Rav?” I ask.

“Out to dinner. I talked them into it.”

Abby seems different. Completely wrung-out. Soft and defenseless.

“I thought I’d tire her out and get her to sleep,” Abby says. “But she just won’t.”

“I know.”

“I thought she was hungry, so I made her a bottle, but she wouldn’t take it.”

Hope’s scream stutters. Fades. She hiccoughs again.

Eyes wide open.

“She doesn’t sleep very much,” I say.

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“No, I mean . . . It’s not normal. How little she sleeps.”

Abby stares at me. “You mean . . . ?”

And I know it’s not my place to tell her. Grace should tell her. Should have told her already. Should have told both of us. But it’s too late for that now.

“You mean she’s modded?”

I nod.

“To not sleep at all?”

“To need less sleep. A lot less.”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

“I haven’t asked them. But I’m guessing . . . for Hope. So life won’t be so hard.”

“What do you mean . . . ?” And then I see in her face that she gets it. “Oh. She’d have more time . . .”

Hope squirms in Abby’s arms and begins to fuss.

And something is happening with Abby. She closes her eyes, lets out a deep, long breath. “It’s the stupid math,” she mutters.

“What?”

“I just want to take care of dogs and cats.”

“Okay . . .” I say.

“I mean, eventually. Why should I have to do all that math? It takes me longer to learn than some people, all right? I know I could have gotten it if they gave me enough time, but I ran out of extensions. I fell farther and farther behind, and this whole freaking wave of math problems kept coming at me, day after day, and then . . .”

She flunked out? Is that what she’s saying?

“Now I have to start all over, come up with a new plan for who to be in life, and I don’t know how.”

She turns and really looks at me. “Like, with you. How do you do that—start over? Give up the person you thought you were headed toward being? Find somebody else to be?”

I shrug. “If I knew how, I’d tell you.”

Hope ramps up the screaming again, full-throttle. Abby groans.

I hold out my arms. “Here. You’ve put in your time.”

“No, I—”

“C’mon, Abby.”

She slumps. Closes her eyes. Then opens them and hands Hope to me. She gets up from the rocking chair and heads out of the room, but turns back at the door. “Thanks,” she says. And then adds, “Sis.”

I breathe it in.

Hope is a tense, stressed-out little bundle. She’s thrusting out those tiny arms, kicking those tiny feet. Her face has gone red and blotchy. It’s amazing how this whole earsplitting racket can come from such a small package. I try to think through the plans for later tonight, but the screaming rattles my brain, sends every thought flying.

After a while, though, she winds down. She hiccoughs a few times, and then her breathing slows. She’s still awake, but her whole little body relaxes; she makes a contented, cooing sound. She’s warm honey in my arms. A delicious, peaceful feeling seeps through me.

Together, we rock.

“TURTLE?”

My eyes open. Grace is standing in front of me.

And I remember: Meeting Daddy. Have I overslept?

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Ten o’clock.”

Phew!

Grace holds out her arms. I look down at Hope—still awake—and hand her up to Grace.

“What happened to Abby?” Grace asks.

“She, uh, tried to tire Hope out, so she’d fall asleep.”

Grace blinks.

“I told her,” I say. “You’re going to have to talk to her about it. It’s only fair.”

“Told her what?” Grace asks.

I just look at her for a moment. “I know,” I say. “It’s okay. You just want to give her a better chance. So she can compete.”

Grace turns away from me. She runs her fingers across Hope’s face, through the feathery tufts of her hair. At last, she turns back. “Turtle, I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just thought . . .”

And I’m sorry I can’t tell you about Daddy. And about what we’re doing tonight.

“And it’s not about competition,” she says. “It’s about . . . a gift. A gift we wish we had. More time to do . . . whatever she wants, whatever’s of value to her. More time . . . just for life. And we’re training her to self-soothe, though that’ll take months . . .”

“It’s okay,” I say again. Though I don’t know if it’s really going to be okay. I don’t know how it will all work out for little Hope, or how a whole bunch of other things will work out, either. Those unintended consequences . . .

“Love you, Grace,” I say. Something I do know for sure.

“Love you, too, honey. Boy, do I ever.”

CHAPTER 65

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON

There’s A stiff breeze in the Gulf when we head out in Daddy’s boat, the Runaway, a sweet little Solar Excursion. The water’s choppy; the air’s warm. The moon floats round and high, above.

Before long, I see lights swarming in the distance. The protestors’ boats—lots more than before. The Mermaid’s just a faint glow in the midst of them.

“It’s a mob scene out there,” I say.

Daddy grunts. “With luck, it’ll distract them from us.” He cuts our running lights.

He’s stuffed a good-sized backpack with things from the mountain of equipment on his living room floor, and coils of rope hang off the sides. He’s wearing a vest with lots of pockets; who knows what he’s got stashed in there. There’s a bunch more gear in the bottom of the boat, including tanks and fins for the two of us, just in case.

In a while, I can hear the protestors’ music throbbing in the distance. And soon, we’re weaving in and out among them.

We’re lightless and silent; nobody pays us much attention. They’re whooping it up. Shouting, singing, dancing, each boat blasting its own music. But nobody’s in super-close to the Mermaid, nobody looks like a threat.

“They don’t seem all that dangerous,” I say.

“It’s early,” Daddy says. “Just wait.”

The Mermaid looks quiet. And they’ve dimmed the lights.

Is everybody asleep?

But some of them must be awake. And they must have posted extra sentries because of the protestors. They’d have to, right?

Daddy sidles up near the starboard stern of the Mermaid, in the shadow of the moon, where we’re dark-on-dark, less likely to be seen. I throw out the bumpers.

We’re in plain sight of the protestors, if they were looking. But it seems like they aren’t.

Daddy cuts the engine. He extends the telescoping pole, the one with the hook on one end and little bars that fold out to make steps on either side. He reaches it up and hangs the hook high on the bridge deck railings, then seats the bottom end of the pole in one of the Runaway’s gunwale clamps.

He straps on his backpack. “Here goes,” he says. “You know what to do. And if I’m not back in twenty minutes, you leave.”

“Okay.” As if I could actually do that.

“If I come back with cargo and then leave again, give me another twenty minutes. Do not, under any circumstances, try to find me. Whatever happens, I can take care of it.”

“Yeah, got it.” But I don’t like it.

My first job is to hold the Runaway steady while he climbs up. I’m afraid it might be dodgy because of the wakes of the protestors’ boats, but it’s actually easy-peasy. He’s up the steps, over the railing, and attaching the rope ladder and the block and tackle in, like, five seconds. He throws down the bottom ends of the rope ladder, and I secure them to the Runaway’s mooring cleats.

By the time I look up again, he’s disappeared.

I check my gauntlet. 12:45 A.M.

I free the hook and retract the telescoping pole. The Runaway rocks in the light chop. I wait, keeping her close and parallel to the Mermaid without letting her slam into the Mermaid’s hull. I watch for sentries. Listen for Daddy’s footsteps, or for signs of trouble. Check the time.

12:53.

He could be in the hold by now. If nothing has gone wrong. He’s got to find the letters—or boxes labeled “Taxes”—and get them up the stairs without being seen.

A warm breeze carries the smells of dirt and leaves and feathers from the garden just above me. I hear the creaking of the windmill, the clucking of chickens, the thrum of the reverse osmosis pumps. Faintly, I smell cooked fish and garlic and spices from whatever they had for dinner. Metal polish, laundry soap, the disinfectant we used to swab the deck. A rubbery hint of fins and skinsuits.

A wave of homesickness crashes through me.

I wonder where Adam is now. So close . . .

If there were time, if it were safe . . . I could climb up the rope ladder. I could tiptoe across the deck. I could slip into the sleeping tank beside him, wake him up slowly. I could touch his face, his hair, his lips. We could kiss, and then—

A flare of angry voices. I look out toward the protestors. More boats, now. Bigger ones. Swanning around. Churning up the water.

1:05. That’s twenty minutes.

Hurry up, Daddy!

And then, there he is, on the deck above.

I let out a breath; my whole body goes slack.

Daddy sets the block and tackle hook and sends a box down the line. I maneuver the box into the Runaway. Detach the hook. Wave to say, Got it. Pull on the line, sending the hook back up.

Daddy disappears, again.

I check my device. 1:12.

There’s a label on the box: Taxes #1.

There we go. Slick as anything.

I’m dying to look inside. But I’m under strict orders not to turn on a light of any kind. Not till we pull away from the Mermaid, blend in with the crowd. I can hardly stand it—I so want to know what’s in that box. But I settle down to wait again.

The protestors are definitely getting rowdier. They’ve cranked up the volume on their tunes, for one thing, and their voices are louder, too, and now it seems like all of them are cruising, sweeping their floodlights back and forth—passing so close to one another, I’m amazed they aren’t colliding. It’s feeling less like a happy party now, and more like an angry mob. Or two angry mobs, both spoiling for a fight. The chop’s gotten worse, and it’s hard to keep the Runaway steady. The waves are slamming us against the Mermaid, and water’s sloshing in.

1:20.

1:33. That’s more than twenty minutes. No way I’m leaving, though.

1:40.

1:46.

What’s taking him so long? I’m staring up at the Mermaid, hoping to see Daddy appear over the rails, but imagining everything that could’ve gone wrong. They’ve tripped him and tied him down, like Gulliver and the Lilliputians. Constance has caught him in her office; she’s reading him the riot act. He’s had a heart attack. He’s fallen down the stairs and broken his leg.

1:50.

1:55.

There he is! Finally!

A box, gliding down the line. I unhook it, set it down beside the first one.

Splash!

The entire block and tackle system drops from the Mermaid’s railing into the water beside us. Daddy’s coming down the rope ladder, fast. He jumps into the Runaway and starts pulling in the block and tackle. “Quick! Untie the ladder,” he says. I want to ask if he got all the boxes, if he has the list—but I can tell by his voice that this is no time for questions. Move. Do it now.

By the time I’ve untied the ladder from the mooring cleats, the motor is running. We slip away from the Mermaid with the ladder still attached to her deck railing—not part of the plan. Daddy’s weaving us in and out among the protestors’ boats. Which is dicey. It’s chaos out here. They’re coming at us from all angles.

“What happened?” I ask.

“They saw me. Look.” He points to the Mermaid’s garden deck. Lights. Moving around. Lots of them. As we watch, the rope ladder is dragged up over the railing and then disappears.

“Pretty sure I saw Constance. She might have seen me. There was one more box, at least, but I couldn’t get it. Anyway, they’re looking for me now and they’d spot me in a minute. Too big, too old, stick out like a sore thumb.”

I want to ask about the list, but maybe this isn’t the time.

“Here.” He tosses me a flashlight. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

I open the first box, pull out a file. Lots of numbers. Capital gains and losses. Depreciation. Net short-term gain. Returns and allowances. Repairs and maintenance.

Shoot. “It’s really taxes.”

“All of it?”

I pull out a couple of files from the middle and back of the box. All the same stuff.

“Nothing but taxes.”

“Try the other box.”

I move to Taxes #2. I pull out even more files than in the first box, but it’s all the same.

“Anything?” Daddy asks.

“No.”

He swears.

If the letters were in there, I’d have run into one by now.

I hesitate, but I can’t help myself. “The list?”

“Didn’t have time. I wanted those letters so bad.”

Me too.

So, it looks like we’ve got nothing. We’ve failed.

Crap!

I’m breathing. Looking out across the horde of boats buzzing around the Mermaid. She’s surrounded, but also completely alone.

Alone . . . because of Constance.

My friends are in there. Out of money, out of allies, out of options.

When the Mermaid runs out of time . . .

Warehouses, graveyards, under bridges.

Camps.

“Screw her,” I mutter.

“What?”

“Screw Constance. I want that list.”

“So do I,” Daddy says, “but . . .”

“Then let me try. I won’t stick out. With my hood up, I look like everybody else. In the dark, I can just . . . fit in.”

“No, Turtle. If anything happened to you, I’d—”

“Even if I’m caught, nobody’s going to lock me up.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“And Constance banished me already. Honestly, beyond kicking me off the ship again, what more can she do?”

He hesitates. He’s got to see my point. “We should just cut our losses,” he says at last. “You have to know when to cut your losses.”

Yeah, maybe so. But I can tell he doesn’t want to, and neither do I.

“There’s still a chance,” I say. I’m pleading, now. “We could still get this one thing right.”

He shakes his head. And I’m sure I’ve lost the fight, but then he says, in a hoarse whisper I can barely hear, “Let’s do it.”

CHAPTER 66

ABOARD

Daddy empties HIS pack and, zipping and unzipping the various compartments, fills it with more equipment. A second rope ladder, a flashlight. A multitool. A crowbar and wedges for prying open doors and drawers.

I’ll climb up to the deck using the telescoping pole, like he did. The Mer will be looking for ladders now. Best not to leave one hanging while I’m aboard.

With luck, Constance will be out of her suite, searching for a large, male intruder.

If not . . .

Well. I’ll just have to deal.

When I’m finished, Daddy and I will find each other by setting our gauntlets to blue strobe.

He starts the motor, and we creep toward the Mermaid through the crush of boats. The protestors’ music swells and ebbs around us. We head for the portside prow this time, far from the ladder we left behind.

The Mermaid’s still mostly dark. They haven’t illuminated the outer decks, and it doesn’t look like the interior lights are on. But other lights—flashlights and lanterns—are moving around, sweeping across the surfaces of the ship and probing the water nearby. Clearly, they’re searching for somebody.

“We’ll pick our moment,” Daddy says. “You’re going to have to really zoom.”

Between the boats out here and the lights on the Mermaid, it seems like the moment will never come. But then, suddenly, for a split second, we’re alone.

“Now!” he says. He ratchets up the pole, hooks it on the railing, and I’m climbing, climbing fast. The backpack is heavy, but my blood is pumping; my breath is up; I’ve got energy to spare.

Here’s the railing.

One leg over.

Two.

I’m aboard.

Coming toward me, a little way off . . . two Mer with flashlights.

I tug my hood low over my eyes. Pull the flashlight from the pack. Turn it on. Pretend to search, like the others.

Their faces, coming near, are shadowed. I can’t see them clearly.

And then they’re past.

Just like that.

Constance’s suite is down two levels; I click off the flashlight and head for the nearest staircase. I reach for the railing—and hear footsteps below. I step away from the stairs. Four or five Mer, carrying flashlights, explode up onto the deck. I hold up a hand in greeting, then tack toward the portside railing.

I’m jittery, taut, raring to run. But I rein it in. Force myself to walk.

There’s another staircase, amidships. I’ll take that one instead.

But no. Someone’s coming up.

I wave a greeting. Keep moving toward the garden staircase.

Walk, Turtle. Like you belong here. Don’t run.

Below, the protestors’ boats are circling. Seems like more of them. Even closer.

And now, at last . . . the garden.

Windmill creaking.

Chickens clucking.

Goats bleating.

Footsteps: Mer with flashlights. Searching.

I stay as far from them as I can. I turn on my flashlight and pretend to search.

They move on by.

I turn off the flashlight again. Bolt down the stairs.

To the next deck down.

And the next.

And now I’m running through the dim, door-lined passage, toward Constance’s suite. Nobody in the hallway. Almost there. I look behind me—nobody following. Just when I think I’m going to make it, I hear feet clattering on the prow staircase ahead.

Well, crap.

There they are. Three of them, coming this way, their flashlights scanning the walls, the doors, the floors.

But I’m so, so close.

Constance’s outer door is usually unlocked, but if she’s locked it, I’ll have to pass these guys, shoulder to shoulder. Somebody’s light’s going to hit me in the face. Chances are, they’ll recognize me.

What I want to do is turn and run away, as fast as I can.

Instead, I reach for Constance’s doorknob. Twist it.

The door swings open; I shut it softly behind me.

And I’m in.

CHAPTER 67

LIFE SKILL

It’s dark. Nobody here.

I lean against the door, catching my breath, feeling my heartbeat thumping in my chest. Outside, the footsteps pass and then fade to silence.

On the far side of the room, there’s a faint crack of light beneath the door to Constance’s living quarters.

Constance is a demon for turning off lights. Is she in there? Or maybe it’s just a nightlight, like the one in Grace’s and Rav’s room?

Doesn’t matter. It’s now or never.

Get going!

The desk is a murky shape on my left. I creep toward it, not wanting to turn on the flashlight—not yet. There are three desk drawers, and only the top one has a lock. I test it.

Yep, locked.

I shrug off my backpack. Pull out the crowbar and the wedge.

I hear a murmur in the next room. Uh-oh. She’s in there for sure.

The crowbar-wedge combo’s going to be loud. I’d be caught in, like, ten seconds. On the other hand, trying to pick the lock would be way slow, and I might not be able to do it at all.

Two bad options.

Choose.

I unzip one of the small pockets, looking for the multi-tool.

Nope.

I unzip a second pocket.

There it is.

I open it up and find the tool that looks most like Emerson’s pocketknife blade. I turn on the flashlight and, with one hand, train it on the lock. With my other hand, I twist the blade slightly to the left while jiggling it up and down, pushing it slowly in and out.

Nothing happening.

I twist the blade to the right. Jiggle some more.

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! What made me think this was even doable?

And then I feel it, the first tumbler, clicking into place.

It’s a life skill.

They’re coming, now, slowly. I hear a rustling noise from the other room.

Hurry!

At last, the lock releases; I open the drawer.

Thanks, Emerson.

Pencils, pens, paperclips, Pink Pearl eraser. Pencil sharpener, stapler, staples. A toffee tin full of keys. A fishing tackle tin with quarters, fifty-cent pieces, manganese dollars.

No list. No file.

It’s not there.

And that’s it. The end.

And I know—I know—she’d keep that list locked up; it’s explosive. But I’m filling up with a desperate, jittery energy, and I can’t give up, not yet.

I push the top drawer in; it catches on something; I shove it shut. I yank open the second drawer, rummage through it. Rubber bands, eyeglass case, eyeglass cleaning kit. Chapstick, hand lotion, mini-wipes. Post-it notes, tape dispenser, breath mints. Ruler, measuring tape, pocket-sized notepad.

Zippo.

Third drawer: Nothing but paper and files. I pull them out, a bunch at a time. Skim through them. Toss them on the floor. Bank records, legal records, government forms and regulations. I know it’s useless, but I can’t help myself, I can’t stop.

The overhead light snaps on.

“Turtle! What in the world?”

It’s Constance. Standing in the doorway to her living quarters.

She sees the files on the floor, and something changes in her face. “Oh, the list. And you thought I’d keep it here, in my desk, where anybody could find it?”

Yeah, I’m an idiot. But I had to try.

“It’s over,” Constance says. “You’ll never find that list.”

“But Constance, we have a right to—”

“Oh, spare me your so-called rights. Have you seen what’s going on out there tonight? One of them managed to climb aboard, and—”

She narrows her eyes.

“How did you get aboard?”

I shrug.

“No, wait,” Constance says. “That man. I thought I recognized him. Your father, right?”

“No!” I say.

“You’re such a bad liar.” Constance smiles and shakes her head. “I’ve got no time for you, Turtle. You had an amazing gift, but you threw it away. You—”

Thud.

The floor lurches beneath my feet; paper slides out of the file folders, spills across the floor. I grab on to the desk; the flashlight drops to the floor.

What was that?

Constance is clutching the doorjamb. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her look rattled.

Rory bursts into the room. “We’re hit,” he says. “One of the protestors’ boats rammed us, full-out.”

I head for the hallway.

“Nope, I don’t think so, Turtle,” Constance says. She lunges for me, grabs my arm. I try to get away, but her grip is iron. “We can’t have you running around, stirring up trouble. Not right now.” To Rory, she says, “Help me get her into the closet.”

What?

Rory hesitates.

“Do it!” Constance says.

Rory takes my other arm, but now Hadley’s here, too. “What?” she says. “What are you doing?”

I’m flailing, trying to twist away—but Constance and Rory halfpush, half-carry me into Constance’s private quarters. They stuff me into a closet, shut the door.

I hear Hadley’s voice . . . protesting? Then the outer door shuts, and I’m alone.

I test the closet door, just in case. Locked.

I can’t believe it.

She’s actually locked me in her closet!

She’s crazy. Fishwhack. Over the edge.

It’s dark in here. Not totally dark; a thin line of light leaks in under the door. I check to see if I can call or text Daddy, but I can’t connect.

I sure wish I had that flashlight, but my gauntlet has a light. Way dimmer, but at least it’s something. I turn it on and train it on the doorknob. Which is one of those “bed-and-bath” numbers like the one Emerson picked with a bobby pin. Locks from the outside but has a small round hole on the inside. For emergency access, Emerson said. With a multi-tool, it shouldn’t be all that hard to crack. But the multi-tool is sitting where I left it on Constance’s desk.

I’m definitely an idiot.

I beat on the door. “Let me out!”

As if that’s going to help.

Dimly, I hear shouting, and the thump-thump of footsteps. I listen for the sound of running water, but nothing.

And then . . . the alarm.

Loud. Hurts my ears. Not the one-tone alarm for bail out now. It’s the two-tone one for salvaging. It’s the one that means, We’re sinking—but there’s time.

Daddy. He’s going to lose his mind. What will he do?

And Adam . . . if he knew I was here, he’d come get me.

But he doesn’t.

I pound on the door again. “Help! I’m in here! Let me out!”

But I can barely hear myself over the alarm.

She won’t leave me in here forever. She can’t. She’s got to show me who’s boss, of course, she’s got to punish me for my sins, but she’ll let me out soon.

Won’t she?

CHAPTER 68

CRAZY WISHFUL THINKING

It’s five steps from the locked door to the wall on the opposite end of the closet. Shelves and cubbies to my left. A combination of shelves and clothes on hangers to my right.

I sweep the far wall with my gauntlet light, hoping by some miracle to find a hidden hatch or doorway, and then I sweep the ceiling and the floor. I get down on my hands and knees and root around behind the hanging things, behind the shoe racks.

Nothing. No backdoor. No trapdoors, windows, hatches.

Well, shoot.

I strain to hear beyond the sound of the alarm, which, by the way, is giving me a splitting headache. I can’t hear very much else, but it’s like I can feel sounds in my body: A thump of footsteps. A grinding of stressed metal. A gurgling sound?

Water?

Do I really hear water, or am I imagining it?

And, wait. Something else.

I smell smoke.

Definitely smoke.

I pound on the door. “Help! Let me out!”

Nothing. No one’s there.

Hadley, though. If Constance doesn’t let me out, she’ll tell someone.

Pretty sure.

Constance’s clothes and shoes and accessories line up on either side of me like ranks of good little soldiers, obedient and neat. I yank things off plastic hangers, rummage through pockets, searching for something I can use to pick the lock. It has to be long and thin—small enough to fit into the hole, but sturdy enough to put pressure on the locking mechanism. Bobby pin. Paperclip. Swiss army knife. Ballpoint pen. Toothpick.

Something.

I pull boxes off the shelves and empty them: scarves and sashes, tote bags and hats. I turn every shoe upside down and shake it. I use hangers to reach the top shelves, knock those boxes off.

Nothing.

Absolutely not a freaking thing.

My headache’s amped up to a jackhammer throb. The alarm’s scalding my eardrums, it’s scrambling my brain.

Can’t think straight anymore.

Just . . . can’t do this.

I curl up on the floor, close my eyes, cover my ears with my hands. Just for a minute, I tell myself.

That’s a little better. The noise doesn’t hurt so bad.

Breathe, Turtle.

Breathe.

I still smell smoke. Which can’t be good. I ought to get up.

But I don’t.

And it’s not that I’ve given up hope, not yet. I can feel it there inside me, a small and burning spark. But I’m getting a taste of the strange peace that comes when you stop trying and just accept that you’ve failed. Because we have failed, Daddy and me. We’ve got zip.

And there’s something not-quite-right about how it feels, lying here, rocking with the faint swell. Something wrong about how the floor sits. Just a degree or two, nothing you’d notice if you were up and moving around. When I uncover one ear and press it to the floor, I can hear creaking, groaning sounds, like metal complaining. I can hear water gurgling, and I’m not imagining it now.

And I’m thinking about the layers of Mermaid below me—metal and air. And below that, Sargasso grass, fish, sea turtles. I’m thinking about octopuses, crabs, manta rays. I’m thinking about the sea bottom slanting down into deep plains and gullies, where the bones of old ships are rusting away.

I breathe.

Something is niggling at me now, some random little thing that doesn’t make sense. The locked drawer. With nothing in it that needs to be locked up. Why lock up your pencils, your erasers, a few dollars in loose change?

Maybe there’s something gone from the drawer, something that’s usually there and ought to be locked up. Keys, maybe. A flash drive. And maybe Constance locks the drawer out of habit.

Or maybe . . .

That drawer didn’t want to close all the way. It hung up. I had to push hard to shut it.

Something taped there? To the upper frame inside the drawer? Don’t they hide things there sometimes in detective movies? Isn’t that even kind of a cliché?

I open my eyes. Sit up. Take my hands off my ears.

Ouch, that siren’s loud! The headache comes roaring back.

But what if . . . What if it’s the list?

I mean, that’s crazy wishful thinking. La la land. Unmoored. Borderline delusional. And I’d have to get out of here first, which, at the moment, isn’t looking all that likely.

But I sweep my gauntlet light around the closet again, and that’s when I see it: a ballpoint pen on the floor.

It wasn’t there before. I know it wasn’t. I searched the floor really well. It must have been in a pocket. I must have shaken it loose.

I pick up the pen, pull off the cap, unscrew the other end, take out the ink cartridge.

And at last, I have my tool.

CHAPTER 69

LISTING

It’s trickier than I thought because it turns out this lock’s one of the twisty kind instead of the push-button kind Emerson picked when he was showing off that day. I sweep the ink cartridge around in a tight, rotating motion—clockwise, and then counterclockwise, and then back clockwise again—until it finally catches on something. I jiggle the knob, pushing with the ink cartridge, which slips off of whatever it’s onto, and I have to start all over again. By the third time around with this, I’m beginning to get that sinking, losing-hope sensation in the whole middle part of my body, when all at once, something clicks, and, bang! The door is open.

And I’m out.

THE SMOKE SMELLS stronger here, and something funny’s going on with the floor; it’s definitely slanting to starboard.

We’re listing.

The alarm’s just as brain-numbingly loud, but it’s switched to the next level: bail out now.

I click the light switch, but nothing happens. Another bad sign. I should go.

But I have to know what’s causing that drawer to stick.

I stumble through the mess of files on the floor near Constance’s desk and tug on the drawer handle.

Locked, again.

Shoot!

I sweep my gauntlet light around the room, looking for my stuff—Daddy’s backpack, the flashlight, the multi-tool. But they’re gone.

Constance!

But now I hear footsteps approaching. There’s banging at the door, a crack. Adam’s voice?

“Adam?” I call.

The banging stops. “Turtle! Unlock the door! Let me in!”

I do.

And I’m in his arms. Clinging. And he’s clinging back.

“Do you mind?” Hadley says. She’s standing behind us with a crowbar in her hands. “We’re sinking, here,” she says. “Let’s go!”

Adam releases me.

“Just a sec.” I take the crowbar from Hadley. Wedge it under the bottom of the drawer. The lock refuses to release, but the wood cracks, breaks open.

“What are you doing?” Hadley says. “Let’s get out of here!”

I reach into the drawer. Up, up, to the top. There we go. Something taped there. I get a fingernail under the edge of the tape to loosen it, and then strip the whole thing away.

It’s a brown envelope, wrapped in a silicone bag. Not too thick, probably several sheets of folded paper. I really, really want to look, but—

“Turtle, let’s go!” Hadley says.

I tuck the bag under my shirt, and we’re out the door.

The alarm is louder here, the smoke thicker. We thread through shoals of Mer flowing through the hallway carrying clothes, blankets, lamps, side tables.

At last, we reach the stairs . . . and slow to a maddening crawl. They’re packed. I wedge myself in between a guy lugging a rolled-up area rug and a girl with more cook pots than she can handle. The rug whacks my shoulder, and the hard, metal edge of a wok keeps knocking at the backs of my thighs.

And then I’m outside, on the deck.

Where’s Adam?

I search for him, but the deck is mobbed. I can’t see him, or Hadley, either.

A plume of dark smoke drifts across the face of the moon. A yellow-orange light—fire—rims the starboard railing and the sky beyond. Just below us, the Mer are loading the lifeboats. Some of the protestors’ boats have come up super close, and the Mer are tossing down pillows, shoes, an ottoman, framed pictures, fins—everything they own—to strangers?

Constance has drilled us to within an inch of our lives, but people are scared; they’re panicking; it’s all starting to fall apart.

I weave through the press—dodging, squeezing, shoving. At last, I make it to the portside rail.

Where’s Daddy?

I scan the boats. Can’t find him.

Wait. There he is. Strobing blue.

I set my gauntlet to blue strobe. Hold it up high.

And he’s coming, making his way toward me.

I’ve lost the rope ladder he packed for me, but down there in the Runaway he’s got the telescoping pole. It’s unfolding, stretching up. I reach for it, hook it to the rail. But people have noticed; they’re crowding around, jostling against me.

“Get back!” a voice says. It’s Adam. “She goes first.”

Someone grabs for the pole; Adam pushes him away. “Go, Turtle,” he says. “Now!”

I climb over the railing, set one foot on the pole’s top rung, then my other foot on the rung just below. The ladder’s wet and slippery. My feet have to feel their way this time because I can’t see where I’m going.

Suddenly, the pole begins to shake and jerk around.

I stop. Hug the pole. Look up. They’re fighting with Adam, trying to wrest the pole away.

Just one foot after the other, Turtle.

But with a lurch, the pole swings away from the Mermaid. My feet slip off the rungs—both of them—and I’m hanging on with both hands, swaying back and forth. One hand slides off; my fingers are slipping; I’m falling, falling . . .

Splash!

The shock of cold water jolts me all over. But then I’m back up at the surface, and there’s Daddy, holding out his hand.

Splash!

A body knifes through the water beside me.

I take Daddy’s hand, clamber into the Runaway, twist back to look.

And there he is—Adam—shaking water out of his eyes.

“You know this guy?” Daddy asks.

“Yes, he’s my . . .”

My . . . what? My friend, my ally, my podmate, my love?

“I’m her boyfriend,” Adam says.

A giggle bursts out of me. Appallingly.

“Is this true?” Daddy asks.

I nod.

“Well, then, I guess he’d better come aboard,” Daddy says.

CHAPTER 70

BREACHED

Daddy guides the Runaway through the swarm of protestors’ boats, and then, when we’re well past them, he cuts the engine. The three of us look back.

For a while, nobody speaks. The breeze is cooler now. My clothes are wet, sticking to my body, and I’m shivering, a little. The Mermaid’s unlit, and the moon’s low in the sky, but still, I can see her clearly—the crown of firelight, the thick smoke plume. She’s really listing, now—breached, taking on water. I can see the boat that hit her, bizarrely sticking out of her side, like the swollen back end of a bloodsucking tick.

The Mermaid’s doomed.

They’re still loading the lifeboats. One hovers in mid-air, dropping slowly toward the water. I hear bleating, and see a cageful of goats inside.

But the protestors have gone still. Not circling, not shouting, not blasting their music.

Just watching. Keeping their distance.

And the geography of a million memories is about to disappear. Where we ate, where we slept, where we played, where we learned. Where we worked, where we laughed, where we fought, where we danced.

Lost, now. Like Grandmother’s house on the island, and all the other flooded neighborhoods. Like the letters. Like the list.

No, wait. The list.

I reach into my shirt, pull out the silicone bag. It’s wet, and inside, I can see spots of moisture, or maybe grease, on the envelope. I unseal the bag, tear open the envelope. Lift out four sheets of paper, folded in half. Turn on my gauntlet light.

And there it is. Hand written, in Constance’s small, neat, cursive letters, a bit splotchy where the ink has run in places, but mostly legible. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Coded “B” for “biologicals” and “F” for fosters.

I close my eyes. Clutch the paper to my chest.

“What is it?” Daddy asks.

“The list.”

“The list?”

I nod.

“Let’s see,” he says.

I hand it to him. He scans it, gives it back. “That’s my girl,” he says. He doesn’t ask where I got it, how I got it, anything. His face is serious, but his eyes, taking me in for a long moment, are warm.

I’m not shivering anymore. I’m golden inside.

“Oh, and that reminds me,” he says. Bizarrely, he sounds kind of cheery. He points to the boxes. Jerks his head toward Adam. “Does he know?”

“That you guys came aboard to steal the letters?” Adam asks. “Yeah, I guessed.”

Oh.

“Anyway,” Daddy says, “it is taxes on top, but, stored flat in a layer underneath . . .”

He opens one of the boxes. Pulls out a file. Hands it to me.

And it’s letters. Letters written in ink, in pencil, in crayon. On lined paper, printer paper, construction paper, greeting cards.

“I don’t think we’ve got all of them,” Daddy says. “But it’ll be enough to prove the lie.”

Enough so that at least some of the Mer will know they weren’t abandoned. Enough to know that they were loved.

“Um, Turtle,” Adam says. “Would you text Emerson? Tell him what’s going on?”

I look up. The Mermaid has begun to heel over, in extreme slow motion. How long has she got? I wonder. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?

The last of the lifeboats is still hovering; the others have reached the water; they’re encircling the Mermaid at a safe distance.

I text Emerson, then turn to Adam. “Where will everybody go?” I ask.

He shrugs. “We knew she wouldn’t last forever, but we thought she’d hang in a while longer. The Habitat . . .” He looks out across the dark waters, to the south. “It’s not livable yet. Maybe with tents . . .”

And I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s not theirs, it’s only leased, and there’s not enough money to keep it going.

“Emerson’s been setting up a few safe houses,” Adam goes on, “and—”

“Uh-oh.” Daddy’s pointing up at the sky. And I hear it now. A helicopter, coming our way.

The Coast Guard? The police?

Adam takes my hand. “I’m off, now,” he says.

“What?”

“I have to.”

And I’m breached, like the Mermaid. There’s a hole in my chest; I’m taking on water. And he’s looking at me like he wants to kiss me, and I wish we could—really kiss. But I’m afraid I’d just start bawling again, like I did last time in my bedroom, and anyway it’s super awkward, with my dad, like, two feet away. I want to say something, but I don’t know what. Maybe, Don’t leave me. Maybe, When will I see you again? Maybe, I love you.

But it’s just not the right moment.

Will there ever be a right moment for us?

He leans in to me; I feel his breath in my ear. “Talk to Emerson.

He’ll know how to reach me.”

He slips into the water, and he’s gone.

“Ho, boy.” Daddy’s pointing toward shore. Two boats, really bright lights, coming super fast.

Coast Guard for sure.

He’s buckling on his tanks, pulling on his fins.

Wait. He’s leaving me, too?

“Tell Jasmine to ditch the explosives in the apartment.”

What?

He hands me the keys to the Runaway. “She runs like a dream. The papers are in the side compartment. I’ve signed her over to you.”

What?

“Daddy . . .”

Don’t leave me.

When will I see you again?

I love you.

He grasps both of my hands in his and looks at me. Taking me in. Taking me in completely. And I want to cry again, but now is not the time for crying. It’s the time for listening. For being fully here, right now, so I’ll never forget. “Tell your sisters I love them,” he says. “I love you—all of you—more than you can know.”

And then, before I can say, I love you, too, he flips backward over the side of the Runaway, and I’m alone.

CHAPTER 71

ONE THING RIGHT

THURSDAY, JULY 9

“I don’t know why I let you guys talk me into this,” Hadley says.

“C’mon,” Hadley,” Naomi says. “At least it’ll be interesting.”

“Interesting like toe fungus. Like a tapeworm. Like a swift poke in the eye.”

“It’ll be over before you know it. Just, you know, be a sport.”

“That’s me,” Hadley says. “What a sport!”

We’re walking up the curving path to Sofia’s front door, the three of us. I can hear the Mer who live here temporarily—twenty girls, all sardined together—splashing around in the backyard pool.

When we reach the door, Hadley stops.

“We’ll be with you the whole time,” Naomi says. “If you want. We’re your team.”

“You’re my real family,” Hadley mutters.

And I’m wishing, again, that Hadley wasn’t first. But it just worked out that way. Some of the other Mer were really hyped to get together with their families after we distributed the letters. But there were logistical issues you wouldn’t believe after Constance’s arrest and, what with one thing and another, Hadley’s fosters just happened to be ready first, a week after the Mermaid went down.

So here we are.

I knock, and soon the door opens. Sofia greets us and motions us inside. Then she crosses the blue-tiled entry hall to the parlor.

Now Hadley’s moving again. Slowly.

How long can it take to cross an entry hall?

And just for a moment, I wonder if it’s right to ask her to do this. In the first couple of days after she read their letters, she seemed okay with meeting her fosters. But, really, she’s never talked about them. Never. Could they have been abusive? Could they have hurt her, or shamed her?

Sofia settled them in the parlor an hour ago. She didn’t say anything about them. But I’m imagining a tribe of pirates with swords and eye patches. I’m imagining a Mafia don and his evil hench-family. I’m imagining Lady Macbeth and a whole clan of Macbeth-juniors, all scrubbing the blood spots off their hands.

What I’m not expecting is the wheelchair.

It forms itself against the mist of sunlight slanting in through the wide parlor windows. I’m behind Sofia and Naomi, so I can’t see it very well. But when I’m through the doorway and I step to one side, I do.

It’s a little-kid wheelchair. With a little kid sitting in it.

A boy.

He must have been a baby when Hadley left.

There’s a woman, too, sitting in a wicker chair. And beside her, in another chair, a man.

And now Hadley’s walking toward them. No hesitation. Standing up straight, with her trademark Hadley swagger.

I start to follow, but Naomi takes my arm. “Wait,” she says.

“But you said—”

“I know. But just wait.”

The woman and man stand. She’s small and bent, maybe shaking a little. She’s smiling, kind of scared. He’s balding, potbellied, favors his left leg. He’s not smiling, but he looks, maybe, hopeful.

The opposite of pirates.

They’re talking now, the three of them. The woman’s hand flutters toward Hadley’s arm, then settles back without quite touching her. And now they’re all turning toward the wheelchair.

Hadley walks up to the boy. She kneels on the floor at his feet. He leans forward; the light shines in his cap of dark, close-cropped hair. He reaches out his hands to her.

She takes them.

And I know it’s going to be okay. I don’t know how. I just do.

But I also know it’s going to be complicated, moving forward, with the families. Because families are complicated. They just are.

But still. This is a start. And I’m hoping . . .

Hoping it will snowball with the fosters and the biologicals. Hoping that, though the Mer will have to live apart, they can grow close to their families. Hoping to break down all the old taboos and prejudices and tribalism that separate Mer and Normals. Hoping . . .

Naomi pokes me. “Hey, look what you did,” she whispers.

“No, I didn’t—”

“Yeah, you did.”

I really didn’t. Not by myself. There was Daddy, of course. And also Adam, and Emerson, and Jasmine, and Sofia, and Nancy, and Naomi herself, and . . . well, so many people. And I still feel the weight of how much more we have to do. But I’m breathing now, blinking in the morning sunlight streaming in, and I know that, whatever else happens, we’ve done this one thing right.

EPILOGUE

They made A snip in the string, the string that tied the Mer to their parents, to their grandparents, to their grandparents’ grandparents, and way farther back than that, back into the ancient, long-forgotten past. The string of random meetings and accidents, of true love and hookups, of miracles and disasters, of adaptations and extinctions. The string that goes all the way back through the eons to some eyeless, boneless, jawless sea creature. All the way back to microbes. And now the Mer are untethered, drifting toward a future we can’t even imagine.

—Dr. Nancy Costigan, Out of the Bottle: A Brief History of the Mer

ENVOY

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18

The knock comes just after dinner. I open the door.

Rain is pounding on the roof, clattering in the downspouts. Jasmine’s dripping. I step aside to let her in and then shut the door behind her.

“Did you find . . . ?” I ask.

“Yes. He’s in the car.”

“You’re the best! And . . . you trust this guy?”

She shrugs. “Everyone says he’s the one.”

I take in a breath. Okay.

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Best not to know.”

I pull on my boots, shrug into my rain jacket. Sofia appears from the kitchen. “Promise you’ll be careful!” she says.

Nancy comes thundering down the stairs. “I checked the weather,” she says. “It’s supposed to ease up in an hour.”

Sofia hands me a paper bag. I smell ginger and molasses.

“Thanks,” I say, to both of them. The odd couple. Though they’re not really a couple. But they work together really well, part of Emerson’s team. They’ve become friends. In fact, Sofia’s sending Nancy to college; she starts next year. Wants to be a writer.

We call it the Refuge now—Sofia’s house. Since the Mer left in August, there’re just the three of us living here permanently—Sofia, Nancy, and me. Though, of course, we take in refugees from time to time, mostly homeless gen-mods.

“C’mon!” Jasmine says. We dash out past the red-and-green lights in the doorway, past the plywood snowman by the front porch, past Rudolph-the-reindeer with his electric nose. Splashing through puddles in the blowing rain.

The car windows are fogged, but I can see a shape in the shotgun seat. I open the backdoor and slip inside.

Just in front of me, in a yellow slicker, sits the doctor. Roundish shoulders, with kind of a stoop. Short gray hair.

An old guy. Not quite what I expected.

It’s a short drive to the harbor. Jasmine parks, and I help them haul their bags to the Runaway. I distribute the life jackets and break out the sea anchor, hand pumps, and flashlights.

Out of habit, I scan the dock and the area all around. Just in case. Sometimes I get a feeling, mostly here, near the Runaway . . . that he might be out there somewhere.

The police haven’t come to question me about him. Which means that Constance, for whatever reason, didn’t tell.

Nothing’s moving that I can see, except for the rain and us.

He’s not here.

Jasmine squeezes my hand. I see she’s been looking for him, too. “C’mon, Turtle,” she says. “Let’s go.”

I start the engine and key in our coordinates. Jasmine casts off. We huddle together in the cockpit. Rain hammers on the small square of metal roof above us, and it’s tricky, maneuvering out of our berth in this wind. But I’ve done it a hundred times.

When we’re safely past the pier, I glance round at the doctor.

He looks familiar, but I can’t place him. “You might want to sit,” I say. “It’s going to be kind of rough.” Old people don’t like to stand for very long, I don’t think. Especially in a heavy chop.

He nods. “Thanks,” he says. He sits.

And it is rough, out beyond the harbor. Buffeting wind. Driving rain, which makes it hard to see. Whitecaps, streaming foam, knocking us around. I’ve really got to concentrate, keep my eye on the sea every second.

Jasmine gets out the bag of ginger cookies, offers them around.

After a while, lights appear on the horizon ahead. The Habitat. By the time we reach it, the wind has eased and the sky has mostly cleared. I nose the Runaway into the hoist and cut the engine. The straps creak, tightening around us. They lift us sixty feet up onto a sheltered part of the deck.

Among the gen-hacked guards, I spot Adam.

And I get that quick burst of happiness, like always when I see him.

I throw him a line. “How is she?” I ask.

“Okay. Things could change at any moment, but it looks like we have a little time.”

Adam nods at Jasmine and the doctor. We tie down the Runaway, gather the bags, and then jog across the platform toward the door.

This place looks way different from the first time I saw it. Different even from how it was later, after the Mermaid sank and the Mer set up camp. It’s still far from finished, but the solar arrays, cisterns, and desalinization tanks are all installed, and the windmills are up, and there’s a start on a garden. Puddles of light spill across the dark surfaces. The steel walls of the main structure have been reinforced, and new, stronger windows have been put in, though nothing’s been painted yet. Inside, they’ve got plumbing and electricity, which work most of the time.

The biggest difference, though, is people. The Habitat’s crawling with people. Normals and Mer—and other gen-mods, too—all hauling things, pounding things, sanding things, welding things, cooking things, digging in the dirt of the raised gardens.

And the teachers are back. Some of the same ones we had before.

Eat your heart out, Constance.

I was glad to see her go. And I hope they jail her, or fine her, or whatever it takes to say, That was wrong, what you did. That’s not allowed. And to keep her from doing it to someone else.

But the whole thing makes me kind of sad. She did a lot for us at first, before it all fell apart. Saved us, really. Her trial’s set for early next year; maybe then, we’ll find out where the money went.

Still, ever since we distributed the letters, money’s been rolling in. From families, from friends of families, from friends of friends of friends. The protestors are still out there. But scholars are studying us, students and retired people are volunteering with us, and we’ve gone viral on the web.

Now, as we come in the door, people are smiling, calling out. But there’s no time to socialize. Adam hustles us up two flights of stairs to the sick bay. He points to an open doorway. “You’ll find gowns and masks in there, and a place to scrub up. She’s in the room just beyond.”

Jasmine disappears through the doorway, but the doctor hesitates and turns toward me.

And all at once, I know who he is. He’s the older doctor, the one who tried to talk us into Changing, way back in May. One of the doctors who helped the Mer during the Shift. Everyone says he’s the one.

“Turtle,” he says, “if I may . . . I wonder if I could see your neck?” And it hits me. “Did you do my surgery?”

“I did,” he says.

I look at Adam. He opens out his palms as if to say, Your call. I undo the clasp on my rain jacket, pull down the zipper. The doctor moves in close, peers at my neck. He holds up his hands and, with a look, asks my permission.

I nod.

He touches where the stitches were. Where the gills were.

“Does that hurt?” he asks.

“No.”

“Does it ever hurt, or itch?”

“Not after the first couple of weeks.”

“Do you ever have trouble breathing?”

“Not anymore.”

“Do you ever feel breath-panic? Feel like you can’t get enough air?”

“I did for a while, but that ended months ago.”

He nods and steps back. “Thanks,” he says. “You’re looking well. I’ve been wondering. It’s good to know.”

So, he was expecting me. To do that follow-up appointment. Which I blew off.

But . . . “Could I have been not all right?” I ask.

“We researched the reset procedure for just about as long as you’ve been alive. But to tell the truth, we’d never done it on human subjects, and we were running out of time. We were very confident . . . but this was cutting-edge, and the cutting edge can be rough.”

“You didn’t really tell us that, though, did you? At least, not that I remember.”

“Me neither,” Adam says.

And something else is bothering me. Maybe this is the wrong time to bring it up, but I can’t help it, I have to ask.

“Before, you were all high on having us all Change right away, and now you’re delivering a Mer baby. Why?”

“Well, this baby didn’t have a choice in the matter, did she?” The doctor looks steadily at me, seeming to wait for an answer.

I shake my head. No, she didn’t. I didn’t. None of us did.

“This is not what I would have chosen,” the doctor says. “I’m not comfortable with it. And there’ll be hell to pay—just you wait. We’ve transgressed too many red lines. And this one—having babies, going off on a biological branch all their own . . . The unintended consequences are coming, and I dread them.” He sighs, collapsing into a deeper stoop. “But maybe it was inevitable. We’re humans; we just couldn’t resist.”

“But someday we might need different kinds of people,” Adam says. “People who can see in the dark, or hear different frequencies. Or survive space travel or nuclear war.”

“Or people who can live in colonies underwater?” I suggest.

“Maybe,” the doctor says. “Though I’m not convinced. Anyway—not like this. Not illegally, not without years of research. That’s anarchy.”

I hear a door open, beyond the scrubs-and-sink room. I hear footsteps. Adam goes to the door to look.

“Listen, Turtle,” the doctor says. “Do you think you could talk the rest of them into not deactivating their infertility chips? To leave it here, with just the one baby? To limit the damage . . .”

He stops, and I can see by the look on his face that he regrets the word damage. And I really don’t think that’s how he sees us. As just damage. As just unintended consequences. But still . . .

That’s the thing. The Mer don’t see themselves as damaged, and neither do I. We don’t care that nobody intended the gills. The Mer are who they are. They don’t need to be cured or reset.

Jasmine pokes her head in through the doorway. “Doctor?”

But he’s not finished, not yet. He leans in toward me with sudden urgency. “You could try,” he says. “It would be huge.”

“I don’t think they . . .” I begin. How to explain it to him? That the Mer have been thinking about the future lately, more than they used to. And most of them someday want babies, want families, want legacies that go on.

Like everybody else, right? It’s, you know, normal.

And maybe I ought to try to persuade them not to have babies. Maybe it would be best, I don’t know. But I’d probably get nowhere. The desire for family is too strong.

“Doctor,” Jasmine says, “we’re going to have this baby right now, with or without you!”

The doctor smiles at me, kind of sadly. Then he straightens up so he’s hardly stooped at all and, walking surprisingly fast, heads toward Jasmine. They disappear into the next room, leaving Adam and me alone.

WE WAIT. WE sit in that cold little chamber, holding hands. After a while Jamal comes in, suited up in scrubs, and begins to pace.

And I’m thinking about Maya, in the room beyond us. And I’m thinking about Adam and me. I mean, when we’re older. Will we . . . ? Can we . . . ? Should we?

Or is this part of the anarchy the doctor’s talking about? Mixing Mer and not-Mer. Giving rise to who knows what kind of unintended consequences. Maybe even changing what’s Normal, over time.

Is that wrong?

I don’t know. It might be.

Or maybe not.

Possibly, I could do something. Get people to slow down and consider, anyway. I don’t know how but . . . I’ll work on it.

In the end, though, maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe, like the doctor said, we can’t resist.

I hear a door open. I hear crying—screaming. A baby.

“Wow, no problem with her lungs,” Adam says.

And he smiles. We both do.

How can we not?

Jamal looks like he going to jump right out of his skin, and now Jasmine’s at the door.

“Come,” she says. “Come look!”

And I can see in her face that everything’s okay.

And maybe it will be okay, even later. In spite of everything.

We might as well hope.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Years ago, long before I was attuned to the threats of climate change and for reasons I can’t entirely fathom, I began collecting stories about flooded cities: Old legends of drowned Welsh villages. Atlantis. True accounts of small towns and settlements inundated when dams were built to provide electricity. News stories about ancient cities swallowed up by the sea and newly discovered by modern explorers. Over time, I piled up pages and pages of notes.

To be honest, I did have an agenda. I was hoping to find a story in there, as has happened many times before. Something randomly catches my interest—an anecdote about dreams, a historical tidbit about a bear, a memoir about a girl growing up in a harem—and I follow it onto the web, into bookstores, into the library, and into conversations with experts, with friends, with acquaintances. For me, that’s how a new book is born.

But in this case, it turned out that I needed something else, some other element, in order to animate this odd fascination into a novel.

Time passed. My daughter, who was in primary school when I began collecting these stories, grew up and earned a PhD in engineering and microbiology. She told me that exciting things were happening in the field of genetics and encouraged me to explore.

I began to read. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book The Gene: An Intimate History was a joy and a revelation, and I recommend it to everyone. I read other books, searched the internet, read everything on genetics that cropped up in my news feed, and haunted science podcasts. I can’t remember exactly when I first happened upon the gene-editing technique called CRISPR, but I know that not long thereafter, my old “flooded cities” fascination resurfaced and flowed into the genetics idea. I decided to do a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” set in a future time.

CRISPR is a technology that makes it possible for scientists to edit DNA in ways that can fundamentally change plants and animals, including the human race. It will lead to breathtaking medical miracles and to knotty moral quandaries. Over the years when I was writing Sea Change, scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on CRISPR, several excellent nonfiction books for general audiences came out on the subject, and CRISPR became a hot topic in the daily news. Meanwhile, spurred by the global pandemic, scientists raced to develop treatments, and CRISPR research made possible a new kind of vaccine, now running in my veins.

As I write, CRISPR is being used in humans to treat sickle cell disease, certain cancers, and blindness. Coming soon, perhaps: resistance to Alzheimer’s disease, to diabetes, to elevated LDL cholesterol, to HIV, to acute myeloid leukemia and to infection in the next pandemic, whatever that will be. And after that . . . increased muscle mass? Alterations to skin color? Resistance to aging? The ability to smell as well as a bloodhound? See as well as a hawk? The ability to travel through space for decades, immune to the harm of gamma rays?

What should be off limits? Should we confine ourselves to preventing and curing disease, or try to evolve beyond human limitations? If the latter, how far should we go? Should we draw the line at gene-edits for one person at a time, or open the door to gene-edits that can be inherited, passed down forever? More importantly, who should decide? Given the relative ease of using CRISPR, how will laws against rogue hackers be enforced? Will we prioritize safety or, spurred by the excitement of discovery and impatience for new miracles, rush into a nightmare of unintended consequences?

In A Crack in Creation, Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg say that we can now edit the DNA of every human alive, as well as the DNA of future generations. In other words, we can direct our own evolution. “This is unprecedented in the history of life on Earth,” they warn. “It is beyond our comprehension. And it forces us to confront an impossible but essential question: What will we, a fractious species whose members can’t agree on much, choose to do with this awesome power?”

Sea Change is a work of speculative fiction. It doesn’t predict the future, but asks what if? While Turtle’s accidentally hacked gills and “reset” are fantasy, the potential benefits and risks of human gene editing are imminent and real. I wanted to explore questions about what is “normal,” about inclusion and exclusion, about the ties of family—genetic and acquired. On another level, I wanted to raise questions about the rapid advances in CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies, with which, during the lifetimes of today’s young readers, humans will be transformed in ways we can hardly imagine now.

For more on CRISPR, and the science of underwater worlds, I recommend the following books:

• A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson

• Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, by Jamie Metzl

• The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

• Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, by Jonathan White

• Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, by James Nestor

—Susan Fletcher, July 2024

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Years ago, when I began writing books for children and young adults, the connections I made with other children’s writers made a happy sea change in my life. Over many decades, writers have become my dearest friends, have celebrated good times and propped me up during hard ones and, more germane to the topic at hand, have taught me how to make my own work better.

Sea Change is the most challenging book I’ve written, and I needed a little help from my friends. Well, make that a lot. Some read and commented on the entire manuscript; others responded to individual chapters as part of group critiques. My heartfelt appreciation goes to Kathi Appelt, Carmen Bernier-Grand, Anne Bustard, Carolyn Conahan, Rose Eder, Rebecca Hickox, Pamela Smith Hill, Eric Kimmel, Lindsey Lane, Diane Linn, Winifred Morris, Nicole Rubel, Liz Scanlon, and Cynthia Whitcomb. I am especially grateful to Ellen Howard, Marion Dane Bauer, and Margaret Bechard, who, in pointing out exactly where I’d taken a wrong turn, helped me to find the true shape of the story. For the time they devoted to this book, and for their wise and thoughtful responses, many thanks to my friends.

I am grateful to my agent, Rubin Pfeffer, who waited patiently until the manuscript was ready, and then left no stone unturned in finding just the right home for it. And to agent Amy Thrall Flynn, who stepped up at a critical time and couldn’t have been more helpful, responsive, and all-around great to work with.

Many thanks to my editor, Maggie Lehrman. With her close attention to the text and brilliant critical eye, she helped me turn the manuscript I sent her into the book it wanted to be. I’m so grateful for her faith in my story. Thanks, too, to the whole Abrams team, including Megan Carlson, Micah Fleming, Maggie Moore, Lily Rosen Marvin, and the cover artist, Carolina Fuenmayor.

My daughter, Kelly Fletcher, called my attention to fascinating developments in the field of genetics. She, too, read the manuscript and made valuable comments and suggestions. An ultramarathoner and Ironman athlete, Kelly lives the dictum that “it’s good to try hard things.” She encouraged me, in daring to take on this challenging subject, to do so as well.

Finally, I’d like to thank my husband, R.J.Q. Adams, for his constant belief in me and for making it possible to devote the time I needed to this work. I praise the day when, searching for a British historian to vet my last novel, I sought him out online and pressed send.

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