“Well,” she said, brightening, “we could go for dinner, or watch a play, or go to a sports game—”
“Whoa. Hold up. A play? Sports? Dinner—like a restaurant? Mermaids have all this?”
“Of course! You think we hunt every meal? You think we do nothing for entertainment?”
“So you go to a restaurant and people bring you—I mean, mermaids—bring you food?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s the idea.”
“And plays?”
“We can go watch a show. Spio and I used to go and heckle. We got escorted out a lot, but it was worth it to see…”
Her smile faded at the memory of her friend.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing her hand. “He’s still out there. We’ll find him.”
She gave me a sad smile.
“What about the sports?” I prompted.
“There are a few different ones we could watch. My favourite is rings.”
“Rings?”
“It’s played with dolphins. They make rings of bubbles and push them around with their noses. Two teams of four merpeople have to chuck a stone through the moving rings while the dolphins pass them around.”
I tried to wrap my head around all of this.
“Honestly, Mee, did you think we lived like fish?”
“I … Of course not.”
But I felt myself go a bit hot with shame for thinking otherwise. I was like one of those people who assumed everyone in Canada lived in igloos.
“Let’s go to a rings game,” I said. “My brother used to let me watch him and his friends play basketball. I even joined in a few times.”
A strange look crossed Lysi’s face. She let go of my hand, but I’d already felt her pulse quicken.
“What?”
She hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Okay. Mee, there’s something I need to tell you.”
I slowed down, my mind jumping to a million possibilities at once.
“Was it the battlefront? Did something happen? Is it Spio?”
“What? No!”
With the air of someone steeling herself for an eruption, she said, “You can’t get mad at me for not telling you. There’s been so much going on and I didn’t want to overwhelm you. I haven’t found the right moment, but I’m starting to think there will never—”
“Lysi. What is it?”
She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “Okay, so I told you the guys from the rebellion each had a connection to humans, right? That was what brought them together; Adaro was victimising former humans who were close to them.”
