“You don’t know how to play freeze tag?” he asks, incredulous. When I shake my head, he gives me a quick lesson. “When you touch someone, they’ll freeze. Only someone who’s not it can unfreeze them. If we freeze everyone in class, we’ll win.”
“Oh.” I don’t get it. “Okay.”
Brody apparently sees my continued confusion. “Just try and touch as many people as you can.”
Then he takes off, leaving me standing at center court with still no real clue about this game.
I watch him as he chases after a group of freshman girls who just giggle instead of running away. As he touches each of them, they freeze in place. Another girl, a sophomore I think, runs up and touches them, bringing them back to life. But before they can get away, Brody refreezes the freshmen and catches the sophomore, too.
“Get moving, Sanderson,” Coach Pittman shouts. “Or you’ll get a no effort for the day.”
That gets me running. My grades are bad enough without tanking gym. In a complete lack of strategy, I just run for the nearest bodies. They’re fast, though, and escape to the other side of the gym, using some of Brody’s victims as a shield. But while I’m trying to find a way around—or through—the frozen girls, Brody sneaks up from behind and freezes my prey.
“Nice teamwork, Lil,” he says with a wink. And then he jerks his head to my right. I turn and spot Shannen and the junior girl we hang out with during gym sometimes. I’m starting to get the appeal of the game.
“Don’t move, Shannen,” I say, slowly walking toward them as they back away. “It’ll be painless. I promise.”
“No way.” She starts to turn and run but finds herself face-to-face with Brody, who has circled around lightning fast.
“Sorry, girls.” He grins as he touches each of them on the shoulder. To me, he says, “Let’s get the bunch in the corner.”
We set off after the rest of the class. Somehow, I feel like we’re connecting over more than a game. We’re bonding—a nonmagical but still awesome kind of bond. I never knew gym class could be so great.
Brody catches up with me and Shannen as we leave the gym hall, heading for the science wing (I have earth science and Shannen has AP physics). I still feel kind of flushed from all the exertion of chasing my classmates around the gym when Brody jogs up, throws an arm around my shoulder (my backpack, actually), and says, “We make a good team, Lil.”
I exchange an omigod look with Shannen.
“Yeah,” I say, amazed that I’m able to form words. I mean, Brody is practically hugging me! “A great team.”
He squeezes me to his side, like he would one of his swim-team buddies, but I feel little sparks everywhere our bodies connect. “We should partner up more often. No one else would stand a chance.”
He’s probably forgetting my incident with the jump rope and the bloody noses (plural), but I’m not about to remind him.
“Totally.” I’m trying to play it cool—something I have zero experience with—because I learned my lesson about appearing overeager when I asked him to the dance last week. Look how (not) well that turned out.
As we round the corner for the science hall, I sling my arm around him to complete the buddy-buddy hug we have going. Only, the second I see Quince—or rather, the second he sees us—I know that we don’t look buddy-buddy to him. His fury hits me like an emotional tidal wave. His eyes turn bright as flames, and the muscles in his jaw clench so tight, I think he might be in danger of crushing his teeth. I hope he has a good dentist.
“Lily,” he grinds out without loosening his jaw. He said my name, but his burning eyes are trained on Brody. “Bennett.”
It might have been a greeting, but there are two signs that Quince is issuing a warning. First, he got Brody’s last name right. Second, he didn’t so much say the name as growl it.
“Hi, Quince,” Shannen says, as if there’s no deadly tension in the air.
“Shannen.” Quince nods in her direction but doesn’t take his eyes off Brody.
Brody, clearly not as oblivious as Shannen, says, “I better get to class. Winslow will dock my grade if I’m late again, and Coach will kill me if I lose my eligibility.”
Then—I think he might secretly have a death wish—he winks at me before disappearing down the hall.
“Lil—”
I don’t let Quince finish before I launch at him. Throwing my full body weight into it, I slam him up against the lockers. He blinks super-fast, like he’s not sure what just happened.
“What is wrong with you?” I demand. “Couldn’t you see I was finally making headway with—”
“Lily!” Shannen gasps.
“What?” I snap, twisting my head to face her.
She raises her eyebrows and kind of twitches her head down the hall. I see Assistant Principal Lopez talking with Shannen’s physics teacher two doors away.
Holy mackerel, what am I doing? The kind of violence I’m displaying is not only totally out of character, but also grounds for immediate suspension, for sure. I’m still holding Quince against the lockers with my forearms braced on his chest (yes, I know I’m only holding him there because he’s letting me). This roller coaster of emotions or hormones or bond-magic-induced moods is wearing me out. Suddenly overwhelmed by the situation and the secrecy and the emotion flooding through me, I let my head drop forward to rest on Quince’s chest. For some reason—the bond—I feel better just touching him. Like all my anger seeps out of me.
Quince leans his head down next to mine and whispers, “Relax, princess. It’s all part of the game, remember?”
I shake my head.
Is it a game? It’s getting harder to remember the rules.
“You should tell Shannen.”
I jerk back. “Tell Shannen what?”
“Tell me what?” Shannen asks at the same time.
He looks me straight in the eyes as he says, “The truth.”
“I can’t.” Panic sets in. He can’t really mean the truth. The only truth I’ve ever kept hidden from my best human friend. I try to convey with my eyes—and through the bond—how much it hurts me to keep this secret from Shannen—especially when Quince, of all people, knows the truth. I shake my head vehemently. Doesn’t he realize how important the secret is? Of course not. It’s not his secret.
“Then I’ll tell her,” he says.
“No!”
“Tell me what?”
“Lily is—”
“Don’t!”
“—only pretending to go out with me.” He gives me a wry grin. “But I’m not. I’m trying to convince her to choose me over that idiot.”
I sag against him in relief. For a second I had been so sure he was going to blurt out my entire secret in the middle of the hall, where the whole school could hear. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. Not even the time a rogue shark slipped through the Thalassinian border defense.
Now, with my fears calmed, I get a feeling of longing. His words sink in. Was that part of the game too?
“Oh, that?” Shannen waves him off. “I knew that.”
She knew that?
The bell rings, sending Shannen hurrying off to her physics class, leaving me totally stunned in place.
“You know I would never reveal your secret,” he says softly, more like the gentler Quince I saw in Thalassinia. “Never.”
He’s sincere. I can feel it. And he’s a little hurt that I doubted him. Maybe he’s right. I should know better. He might be rude and obnoxious and a major pain in my tail fin, but he’s also honorable. He would never betray my kingdom.
I should feel major relief about that—and I do, really I do. But…there is a teeny tiny (guilt-ridden) part of me that secretly wishes he had done it, told Shannen the truth about me. Because then there wouldn’t be this invisible wall between me and my best human friend, and I could blame someone else if it went bad.
I can’t bring myself to thank him for something I almost wish he hadn’t done. Instead, I focus on what led to this mo
ment—Brody—and fall back on something far more comfortable with Quince: anger.
“Why do you have to ruin every good moment I have with him?” I push away from Quince, putting a few feet between us.
“I don’t like seeing you with him,” he says, sounding irritated that the conversation has returned to Brody. “It makes my blood boil just thinking about—”
“It’s the bond,” I insist.
Maybe Quince was still in shock when I first told him what the magic was all about. I still remember the first time Daddy gave me “the talk” about the bond. He was all awkward and uncomfortable, going on about hormones and commitment and not letting any unscrupulous merboy talk me into kissing him before I was ready. After a while, my eyes crossed, and I’m pretty sure I tuned out the last half of the conversation. So it’s not a major leap to think the details could be a little murky for Quince, considering everything that got heaped onto him at once.
“That’s what’s making you feel jealous about Brody,” I explain. “The bond connects us and amplifies our emotional reactions. It’s designed to make mermates more in love.”
I can’t help laughing at the thought of me and Quince in love. It’s such a ridiculous notion that I can’t even imagine a world in which that would happen.
“I don’t believe it,” Quince says with absolute certainty. “I don’t believe anything magical can make someone more in love.”
He jams his hands into his jeans pockets and leans back against a locker, lifting one heavy biker boot to pound on the gray metal door. He looks me right in the eye as he says, “Love is already the strongest magic in the world.”
The laughter drains right out of me. It’s obvious that he truly believes this. He believes in the omnipotent nature of love. I never knew he was such a romantic.
But he doesn’t know my world. There are magical forces he can never understand, and love is not at the top of the list.
“Quince and Lily,” Mr. Lopez says, walking up to us. “You two need to get to class.”
“Yes, sir,” Quince replies, but doesn’t move from the lockers.
Thankful for the reprieve, I turn and hurry to my earth science class. I’m so lost in thought about Quince that I barely register when my teacher says, “You’re late, Lily. You’ll need two sheets of notebook paper for our pop quiz.”
My mind is still out in the hall with that unexpected romantic version of Quince. Where has he been hiding the last three years?
16
Peri is waiting for me beneath the buoy one nautical mile out from the pier. I can tell from the look on her face that she’s eager to hear all the exciting details of my first week as a bonded mermaid. She’s not going to like them.
“Hey,” she says, swimming over to me. “How are you—”
“I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Why?” Her elegant brown brows draw together. “What happened?”
“Quince is being nice to me.”
Her laugh bubbles out before she can slap her hand over her mouth. “What does that have to do with it?”
“He’s never nice to me,” I complain. “Rude, yes. Obnoxious, always. But never nice.”
“That can’t be true,” she says as we swim down to the seafloor. “The boy is obviously nuts about you.”
“You’ve got that half right,” I mutter as I drag my hand through the sand, idly watching a flathead dart from his uncovered hiding place. “He’s definitely nuts.”
Peri twists into a sitting position and pulls her long brown waves over her shoulder. With swift, elegant fingers she deftly weaves her hair into a braid. “I think you’ve got blinders on, girl,” she says, very matter-of-fact. “He was perfectly pleasant last weekend.”
“It must be the bond.” I reach back for my blond frizz—thankfully turned silken in the sea—and start a braid. “It’s messing with our feelings. I’m like a frogging tidal wave of alternating emotions. And he’s no better. He practically bit off my head for walking with Brody yesterday.”
“You were walking with Brody?”
“Yes!” Why am I talking about Quince when I have Brody news? “Coach Pittman made us it in freeze tag, and we caught everyone in class, and then afterward—”
In my excitement, my hands get tangled in my hair. Peri swims to me, moves my hands out of the way, and takes over the braiding.
“—and then afterward he put his arm around me and said we make a great team.”
I twist around to look at her, tugging my hair out of her hands. Ignoring her annoyed scowl, I say, “Isn’t that great? That has to be a good sign. Right?”
“I suppose,” she says, grabbing my shoulders and turning me around so she can finish my hair. “But terraped boys aren’t as easy to understand as mer boys.”
“Tell me about it.” I think back to the afternoon of the swim meet. “I mean, one second Quince and I are arguing, and the next he’s kissing me because Brody’s ex is walking by. Then, at the swim meet, he’s all hugging me and whispering in my ear like we’re true mermates or something.”
Peri gets really quiet behind me. She takes my now-perfect braid and hangs it carefully over my shoulder. I turn around to find out why she’s gone silent, but then I see. A massive Portuguese man-of-war is floating by just a few feet away.
We may live at peace with most of the ocean world, but there are definite exceptions—namely, sharks, poisonous jellyfish, and killer whales (they aren’t all Shamu). We’re no more immune to jellyfish stings than humans—maybe even less so because of our delicate skin.
Without saying a word, I wrap my hand around Peri’s wrist and swim as stealthily as possible in the opposite direction. Man-of-wars aren’t intelligent predators, but disturbing the water around them could send their tentacles into deadly motion.
I know why Peri is petrified. When she was six, her younger brother was killed in a man-of-war attack that left her badly scarred but clinging to life. It took the palace medical staff weeks to nurse her back to health. They never could erase her scars or her nightmares.
When we get out of range, I place my hands on either side of her face.
“We’re okay,” I say reassuringly. “We’re safe now.”
Her eyes are wide and unseeing.
“Peri.” I move my face in front of hers. “Peri, come back to me.”
Slowly, gradually, I see her return to the present. I’ve been with her during sightings before. I don’t know where she goes in that faraway look, but I always bring her back.
“I—I’m—”
“It’s okay,” I say, hugging her close, forcing myself not to cringe at the feel of the scars lacing across her shoulders. I see them in my mind as clearly as I’ve seen them with my eyes a thousand times. Dozens of thin, pearly white, almost iridescent lines crisscrossing over the copper mer mark just beneath her neck. I’ve always been proud of her for not hiding them. I don’t know if I could ever be that unself-conscious.
When she squeezes me back, I know she’s all right.
“I’m s-sorry,” she stammers. “I wish I didn’t go into a panic like that. Won’t do me a drop of good if I freeze up in their path.”
“Well,” I say, trying to lighten the mood, “we just have to make sure you never face one alone. I’ll always be there for you.”
When she leans back, her eyes sparkle with the same copper shade as her scales.
“You know that’s not possible,” she says, fidgeting with the braid still draping over my shoulder. “But I appreciate the sentiment.” She gets a little bit of that far-off look again, but this time it’s different. “You are such a caring merperson, Lily. You deserve someone who will love you as much as you love your friends.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Considering my current romantic mess, it’s either that or cry. And if I go home with puffy red eyes—sparkling or not—Aunt Rachel will know something’s wrong, so I break out in the giggles.
“I’m working on that,” I say. “Just as soon as Daddy separates m
e from the lug-nut biker boy, I’m confessing everything to Brody.”
Her eyes—sparkling a little less—flash.
“Not everything?” she clarifies.
I hadn’t really thought about it until this moment, but it’s fast becoming the only option. My birthday is only five weeks away, and once he’s my mermate, he’ll have to know the truth anyway.
I nod.
“Lily, you can’t,” Peri argues. “If you tell a human who hasn’t been given aqua vide—”
“I know. It’s a risk when Brody hasn’t begun the change to water life.” I sigh, thinking of Brody with his arm around me, flying through the water as if he were born to it, smiling down at me from my homeroom TV screen every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every thought of Brody is more perfect than the last. “But he’s worth it.”
Peri doesn’t look quite satisfied, but she doesn’t argue. She knows as well as anyone—except maybe Shannen—how long I’ve loved Brody. If Quince hadn’t made a mud puddle of everything, Brody might already be mine.
“I need to get home,” I say, thinking of my pile of homework for tomorrow and of Peri swimming back to Thalassinia in the waning sunlight. “Will you be okay getting back?”
“I’ll be fine,” Peri insists.
I hug her once more, just because. “See you tomorrow night.”
Hopefully, twenty-four hours from now, my bond with Quince will be a distant memory. Brody will be mine before Monday.
17
“I’m home, Aunt Rachel,” I shout as I burst through the kitchen door after school on Friday. “I’m just going to drop off my backpack, and then Quince and I are heading for—”
I stop midsentence when I see the messenger gull sitting on our refrigerator.
Prithi is positioned in front of the fridge, tail curling slowly back and forth, silently daring the gull to leave his perch.
Aunt Rachel walks in from the hall. Nodding at the gull, she says, “He’s been here for two hours. Wouldn’t let me take the message.”
I roll my eyes. The note isn’t private, or the kelpaper around his leg would be pale pink instead of green. Messenger gulls are our primary means of communicating with our land-based and landlocked kin, but they aren’t always the most reliable. This one probably read a signal wrong and thinks this is a top-secret message.
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