I nod.

“Then I don’t see any way for him to make it anything other than what it is.” She tilts her pretty brunette head to the side. Even when she’s on land, her long, silky chestnut hair flows in elegant waves down her back, lucky mergirl. “Do you?”

“No.” I shake my head slowly. “And that makes me nervous.”

Because it wouldn’t be the first time that Quince did something I hadn’t even remotely anticipated. But she’s right. At this point I don’t really have anything to lose.

“I almost forgot,” Peri squeals, taking my hand in hers. “I have something to show you.”

She pulls me along the edge of the reef, down deeper near the seafloor where the sunlight above starts to fade. When we reach the sandy bottom, Peri tugs me to a small cave opening that looks like nothing more than an oversized crab hole. Without another word, she releases my hand and kicks into the hole. She disappears into the reef.

I’m not surprised. Peri loves to find secret spots, especially ones that are totally hidden from view.

Swimming after her, I duck into the hole and find myself in a very narrow tunnel. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic or, you know, afraid of drowning. After about ten feet, the tunnel opens onto a big cavern.

“Wow,” I say with undisguised awe.

It’s beautiful.

Even though the cavern is fully enclosed by reef, the entire space is full of light. I float up to the top. The ceiling is actually a paper-thin layer of coral that looks like solid reef from above, but still lets in plenty of sun. Just like a skylight.

“Check out the walls,” Peri says, drawing my attention away from the nearly transparent ceiling.

I twist down, studying the side surfaces of the cavern. They are covered with a rainbow of starfish. Orange and red and yellow stars overlap to make a sunset-colored wallpaper on the coral walls.

“I totally want this on the walls in my room,” I say.

Peri smiles, swimming over to the starfish-covered surface and running her fingertips over their prickly backs. “I thought you might like it.”

Boy, do I miss her. Without our once-a-week meetings, I don’t think I’d be making it through my time on land. Thankfully, that won’t last forever.

“As soon as I get back,” I say, trying to think positively about the future, “we’ll decorate my bedroom in flames of starfish.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she replies. “Now you just need to hurry up and hook your terraped boy so you can come home.” She sounds all teasing and jokey, but I know she’s secretly serious.

She’s missed me just as much as I’ve missed her.

“I promise,” I tell her. And myself. I want to get back to life as planned, too.

Tomorrow night at the dance, I’m going to make it happen.

6

Aunt Rachel manages to take what feels like two hundred thirty-eight pictures before I leave for the dance, and I think Prithi meowed her way into about two hundred thirty of them. I’m excited, too, but I think the first hundred captured every last detail for posterity.

“Your father will love these,” she says, snapping a couple more.

Glancing at myself in the front hall mirror, I’m not so sure. After pulling on the skirt and blouse from Quince’s bag-o’-costume-fun, I found some accessories in the bottom of the bag. Big gold hoop clip-on earrings. A red bandana headband. And a brown leather beltlike thingy that turned out to be more of a corsetlike thingy that laces up the front. If Daddy saw me like this, he’d strike his trident to the seafloor with enough force to start a minor tsunami, for sure. That whole idea that mermaids swim around topless? Totally untrue. That’s why we invented the bikini top.

I’ve untucked the blouse and tugged it up a few inches in order to pass Aunt Rachel’s chaperone test. No way she’s letting me out of the house with my cha-chas hiked up for the world to see.

“You look like a pirate princess,” she says, setting down the camera and stepping closer. She gets that sad look in her eyes, and I know she’s thinking about Mom again.

I never knew my mother, but I’ve seen pictures. I know I got my blond curls from her—although hers never looked frizzy. I know she was always smiling. Always at the beach or in the pool. And I know that, until three years ago, I thought she was a mermaid. When I found out she was human, it was like my entire world crashed against the shore. Imagine finding out at fourteen that you were adopted and your real parents were the king and queen of France. (I know France doesn’t have a monarchy anymore, but this is a hypothetical imagining.) That’s how amazed and startled and confused and excited I was.

Some merfolk hate terrapeds. They think humans are a plague upon the seas who should be banned from the waters they so often abuse. But not me. And not Daddy, obviously, since he fell in love with one. I’d always been a little intrigued by humans and their culture—how very Little Mermaid of me, I know—but when I found out I was half human, then my interest became more personal. The longer I live among them, the more connected I become. I don’t even think of them as terrapeds (the mer term for humans) anymore. That connection I feel will never go away. I belong in the sea, but hanging out on land has its perks (aka Brody, Aunt Rachel, Shannen, and, you know, lip gloss). Plus, it makes me feel closer to Mom.

The look in Aunt Rachel’s eyes now is the same look she had when I first showed up at her front door. Sorrowful joy.

“Thanks,” I say quietly.