A boy? They think I’m a boy? That is enough to panic me into speaking out loud, because I know too well what these mermaids do to boys who fall into the waters near their home. “I’m not a boy,” I say.
Ondine twirls around me in a circle. “You’re dressed like one.”
“This is how all the kids dress, where I live.”
“Which is where, exactly?” Marina asks.
“In New Hampshire.” I hesitate. “It’s a kingdom pretty far away.”
“What brings you here?” Kyrie asks.
There is no way to explain to three characters inside a book that a world might exist beyond their imaginations. It’s why people don’t believe in aliens, and why no one else believes in Oliver. “It wasn’t exactly my idea to come,” I mutter. “This guy sort ofsummonedme.”
The mermaids look at each other. “Of course he did,” Ondine says.
“Leave it to a man to mess things up,” Marina agrees.
Kyrie shakes her head. “Men. You can’t live with them… you can’t legally drown them.”
Marina slips her arm through mine. “Honey, you’ve come to the right place. Whoever this guy is, you don’t need him.”
My jaw drops open. These mermaids, who are man-crazy in the fairy tale, are… hard-core feminists?
“What did he do to you?” Kyrie asks. “Flirt with another girl?”
“Call you fat?” Marina suggests.
“Talk about his ex?” Ondine says, and the others groan.
“We’ve been there, sister,” Marina says.
“No, none of those things,” I tell them. “He dragged me here against my will. He didn’t evenaskme first.”
“That’s positively barbaric,” Ondine agrees.
Marina nods. “Good thing you managed to get away from him.”
Hearing those words, I feel an ache in my chest. After all this time I’ve spent trying to be near Oliver, it hurts to have swung to the other extreme. “The thing is,” I say very quietly, “I sort of wish I hadn’t.”
Marina sighs. “Love’s a tidal wave,” she says.
“Because it sweeps you off your feet?” I ask.
“No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.”
“But sometimes,” I point out, “it’s the only thing that keeps you afloat.” I realize that as angry as I am at Oliver for doing this to me—ripping me out of my home and my life and away from my mother—I’ve hurt him just as much by saying to his face that I don’t want to be here. After all, on the outside, I have Jules and my mother. Oliver has nobody but me.
“I think this one’s a lost cause,” Kyrie says to her sisters.
Marina sniffs. “If you’re not going to turn your back on that jerk, as least don’t be a doormat.”
“I don’t understand….”
“Make him sweat a little,” Ondine says. “Make him realize what he’s got to lose.”
This reminds me of the end of my first conversation with Oliver, when he bossed me around because he’s a prince and simply expected me to be his subject and didn’t realize I could close the book on him at any time. But now I don’t have that upper hand… not that I’ve needed it. These days, we’re equals.
“Oh, Lord,” Marina says. “She’s gone all moony-eyed.”
