Forgive My Fins

Leave it to Peri to be all logical in a situation like this. Sharing my room—my room—with Dosinia is like moving in with a great white shark who has a taste for mermaid.

Dosinia and I should be close. Growing up, we should have teamed up against our boy cousins. Kitt and Nevis were (still are) total nightmares who put spider crabs in our beds and jellyfish in our sandwiches. Even though they were just as mean to Doe, she always liked them more than she liked me. Played with them instead of me. I’ve never understood why.

“Maybe I can just sleep out here in the gardens,” I suggest. “We’ve done it before.”

“Be serious, Lily.” Peri picks a caulerpa frond and slides it behind my ear. “With the spring current as strong as it is right now, you’d be in Bermuda by morning.”

“This is so unfair.” I know I’m whining, but I don’t care. “It’s my room.”

“Stop whining.” Peri pulls my head out of the anemones. “You still haven’t told me all the juicy details about your terraped cargo.” She glances at the palace gate, where Cid and Barney are showing Quince how to drive a wakemaker (like a golf cart but water powered). “He’s cute.”

I jolt up. “He is not cute.”

Peri gives me a look that says, You’ve got to be kidding me.

“All right.” I scowl. At her and partly at him. “He’s not hideous looking.”

She lifts one elegantly curved brown eyebrow.

“He’s…” I narrow my gaze in his direction just as the wakemaker takes off, leaving him flipping backward through the water. Rather than act upset or hurt, Quince spins out laughing. His big, bright smile gleams in the bioglow from across the gardens. When he catches me looking, he gives me two thumbs up, like that was the coolest thing ever. “He’s got assets,” I finally—and very, very reluctantly—concede. “He has a nice smile.”

Not as nice as Brody’s, of course, but no one’s is.

“The boy’s a certified hunk,” Peri says, sizing up Quince like a slice of kelpberry pie. Then she turns to me, pinning me down with her gray-green gaze. “But last I knew, you were full-on hooked by Brody the swim wonder. How’d you wind up bonded to the neighbor boy?”

I give her the brief play-by-play—without the part about my fins curling or how nice and warm his lips felt or how he made me kiss him again before going underwater or how he didn’t have to try that hard to make me. When I’m done, she doesn’t say a word. Just plucks another frond, rolls onto her back, and lets it flutter in the current.

“Well?” I prod.

“Well what?” she replies.

“Don’t you think that sucks rotten fish eggs?” Why isn’t my best friend commiserating with me about how awful this situation is? Shouldn’t she be outraged at his forward behavior and agreeing that we should have a pair of dolphins drop him in the Arctic? I kick up from the anemones and twist around so I’m floating in front of her. “I’ve told you the stories. Like about the time he spent a week following me to and from school on his motorcycle—never said a word, just rumbled along ten feet behind me the whole way. And that he slams my locker shut every time he walks by. And how he always manages to ruin every possible moment of progress I make with Brody. I mean, don’t you think he’s the worst slime to ever sink fin on the ocean floor? He’s just so mean and rude and—”

“Floating right behind you,” Peri says, not looking away from her anemone grooming.

I freeze. Maybe she is just messing with me. Or she’s mistaken. Or—

“Talking about me, Princess?”

Of course. I close my eyes and gulp in a deep breath before spinning around. “Quince, I—”

“No harm, no foul,” he says, waving off my apology. He’s playing like it’s no big, but I see something in his eyes—I sense something in him—that says it’s bigger than he’s admitting. I feel it. He doesn’t relent, though. “That wakemaker is some piece of power.” He gestures back toward the gate, where Cid and Barney are now trying to wrestle the wakemaker back into the tower garage.

“Yeah,” I agree, trying to make up for acting like a sea witch by being extra nice. “It takes a little getting used to. The trick is letting out the clutch real slow.”

He flashes me another brilliant smile. “I’ll remember that next time.”

Peri makes a really loud yawning noise behind me. “Time for me to head home,” she says. “Gotta get the little cousins tucked into bed.”

“Do you have to go now?” I spin around, pleading with my eyes for her to stay. To not leave me alone with Quince.

“Yes.” She gives me a meaningful look, one that says, I can’t save you all the time. “Besides, between Doe’s party and your”—she shrugs at Quince—“return, I’m wiped out. I’ll be asleep before I float through the door.”

Then, before I can argue or beg or threaten blackmail, she waves good night and swims away. I watch her disappear through the gates. It’s not like I’ve never been alone with Quince before, but now it feels different. Now he knows the truth about me—the whole royal truth—and I’m beyond nervous about facing him.

Finally I turn around.

“I—”

“I’m wiped, too,” he says before I have to make verbal sense of my thoughts, saving me from saying something stupid. “Your dad said you’d show me to the starfish room?”