“I’ll tell you,” he says, “in the parking lot after school.”

Then, without any explanation, he spins on his biker boots and walks out of the bathroom. What the heck does that mean? I’m still frowning and trying to figure out what just happened—I was not admiring his chest!—when he sticks his head back in.

“Want to know why I thought Courtney’s little tirade was so funny?”

I shrug, expecting him to say I’ll find that out after school, too. If I meet him, that is. I don’t expect him to answer.

But Quince is nothing if not unexpected.

“She bought me these boots.”

He flashes me a quick smile, and then he’s gone.

And I have the rest of the day to decide if I can risk accepting his offer of help. In three hours and—I lift my wrist to check the time.

Damselfish! I’m nearly fifteen minutes late to art. Shannen’s probably worried about me. I take off down the hall, wondering if I’m actually going to meet Quince in the parking lot. Mrs. Ferraro probably hasn’t even noticed I’m not there.

4

“He did what?” Shannen shouts as she cuts out a picture of Brad Pitt to paste into her collage.

“Quiet,” I snap. I don’t need the entire art class knowing what happened in the bathroom. It’s bad enough they already know what happened in the cafeteria.

Shannen lowers her voice to as close to a whisper as she can manage. “He trapped you in the stall?”

“Yes.” Rescued is more like it, though I’m not about to admit that out loud.

I find a picture of a dolphin in National Geographic and quickly tear out the page. We are each making a “biographical collage” using magazines and catalogs. So far, I’ve got an underwater background, a pair of clown fish, and a Swarovski tiara from Neiman Marcus. Thankfully, Mrs. Ferraro is all about abstract expression. She won’t question the weirdness in my collage, as long as I have a convincing reason.

“You know…,” Shannen murmurs, staring intently at her picture, “Quince kind of looks like Brad. Dark blond hair, square jaw line, piercing blue eyes. I wouldn’t mind being stuck in a stall with him for an hour or two.”

I refuse to even respond to that. Quince Fletcher is as far from Brad Pitt as a sea cucumber is from becoming king of Thalassinia.

“He always wears those tight biker tees, and his jeans are worn smooth in just the right spots—”

“Enough!” I stab some glue to the back of the dolphin picture and slap it down onto my collage. “We are not talking about him. All right?”

“All right,” Shannen says slowly, tucking a lock of dark brown hair behind her ear. “Why did you glue that dolphin upside down?”

Okay, so I’m a little distracted. “He’s doing the back-stroke.”

Shannen shrugs and goes back to her collage. I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of it. She’s not exactly the let-it-go type.

But my mind is less on Quince and more on his offer.

I haven’t felt so conflicted since Daddy asked if I wanted to go live with Aunt Rachel for a while. At the time I’d known for only a few days about Mom being a terraped. All of a sudden there was this whole other side of me that I didn’t even know about. Then Daddy told me Mom had a sister who lived on the mainland off the western edge of our kingdom. Aunt Rachel knew all about us, about me, and when Daddy’d gone to talk to her about me learning the truth about Mom, she’d suggested I might like to go to high school. The same high school my mom had attended.

He asked me what I wanted to do, and I honestly didn’t know the answer. Part of me really wanted to find out everything I could about Mom. She’d died long before I could remember, and the chance to learn more about her was really appealing. Another part of me was scared to death at the idea of moving into a completely foreign world. I’m a mermaid—mer, as in sea. I belong in the ocean.

In the end, curiosity overcame my fear.

My emotions are swirling just as wildly right now. On top of Quince’s bizarre offer, I’m not exactly thinking clearly after the whole I-love-you-but thing.

I sigh as I cut out a picture of a girl with crazy blond hair.

“So,” Shannen says after gluing tons of little pink hearts from a perfume ad around Brad’s head, “are you going to meet him?”

“Meet who?” Since I am blocking Quince from my thoughts, I can’t imagine who she’s talking about. Or at least I’m trying to block him from my thoughts.

She spears me with a don’t-play-games-with-me-I’m-your-best-friend-and-I-know-you-way-better-than-that look.

My shoulders slump. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s consider your choices.” She sets down her scissors and pushes her collage to the side so she can lean closer. “Option A: You do things your way, like you did at lunch, and end up with the same old results.”

Wincing, I shake my head. I’ll pass on a repeat of that moment, thank you very much. Clearly I can’t catch Brody on my own.

“Right,” she says. “Option B: You take a chance that Quince, who presumably has a Y chromosome in his DNA and happens to have insider information from your target’s ex-girlfriend, can actually help you.”

I run a hand through my hair. My fingers get stuck in the mess of curls, and I have to wiggle them free.

“That leaves me with two questions.” I absently glue the clown fish so they are riding on the dolphin’s belly. “One, will he actually help me, or is this just his latest trick to torment me? And two, if he actually does want to help…why?”