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“Do… you still want to go somewhere?” It took Claira’s head perking up for me to realize I’d asked the thought out loud.
The strand of hair I’d tucked in fell back out from under her hood as her head cocked in interest. “Like where?”
I fought the urge to toe at the rocks, my limbs feeling suddenly fidgety, as if there was a consortium of crabs shuffling diagonals under my skin. Talking to friends never felt this difficult. Was it because she was upset? That must have been it. “I don’t know. Um, I had a lot of fun at the aquatic center last time.”
That got a small laugh, and she leaned back on the side of the building, her chin tilting like she was considering taking me up on my offer. “It’s not your day, you know, and I don’t think my brain can handle checkers right now.”
“Oh.” I paused, wondering what else there was to do. “Well, we don’t have to use our brains to have fun. We could… swim, maybe?”
“You know there isn’t any salt in that pool, Kai.” She sighed heavily and pushed off the building. “Plus, I’ve had enough of pretending to be a mermaid for one day,” she mumbled, her tone deflating. “It, uh, didn’t go well. In case you couldn’t tell.”
I could tell, but I was glad she felt comfortable enough with me to admit it without me prying too deep.
“How about we hang out as humans, then?” I offered, not really knowing what humans did together other than sitting. They sat at the beach, at tables when they ate, in cars when they traveled. But sitting around while Claira taught me how to play checkers had been some of the most fun I’d ever had, so maybe humans were on to something there.
“Ashumans?” She laughed in such a carefree way that it was hard to recall how upset she’d just looked. “And what do humans do, Kai?”
“They swim too, don’t they? You know, by flapping their feet and junk,” I said, paddling my hands like they were flippers to illustrate the technique. “Seems kinda hard to do, actually.”
I thought back to the beaches in California, at how happy the little groups looked splashing and kicking around the waves, and gave Claira a hopeful look. The same big-eyed baby sea lion look I always gave Laverne when she was about to dig into the last herring without offering to share. “Maybe you could teach me?”
“And what good would it do you, learning to swim with your feet?” she asked, a scarlet eyebrow raising in question. A stray ray of sunshine hit her hood, turning her blaze of red hair into a brilliant sunset that circled her face.
“Pretty,” I breathed out.
Her head tilted, and I found myself following the shimmer of sunlight reflecting from her deep-set eyes as her chin turned. “Pretty?”
I choked out a cough. “Pr-pretty sure it’ll be fun.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced. “I did go to swimming pools sometimes when I was younger. I guess it was kinda fun.”
Bending over, I picked up her bags from the gravel. “You still have your swim clothes, right?”
Her eyes rolled, and she snatched the heavier of the two bags from my hands. “Yeah, I guess. They’re all salty and wet, though, but I guess I could rinse them.”
A rush of excitement ran through me. “So we’re doing this, then? You and me? I didn’t have time to go get the checkers box earlier and—” A thought suddenly hit me, and I stopped to snap my fingers. “I still need the key.”
“What happened to the one you had earlier?” she asked, and I rubbed at the back of my neck as I thought about how silly I’d been not to ask if I could keep it.
“We were borrowing it from one of the captains, but wait a minute.”Kles had told me so many useful things about the Atlantic during our games, one of the most important being the location of a captain’s room that was almost always unoccupied.
“Wait here. I think I know where I can get us another one.”
I spun around to leave, but a small hand came around my elbow. “Wait, I’ll go, too,” she said, and her voice went soft. “I don’t really like staying put where people tell me.”
Threading her hand around my elbow, I gave her a smile. “Noted! Thanks for letting me know.” I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “So, my friend Kles told me where he goes to get keys whenever he needs them.” I led the way back into the warehouse and started counting down the rows. “Says that sometimes he sneaks into homes to study the whosits and whatsits. Whatever that means.”
Second row, eighteenth down, was it? A smooth-headed mer that I recognized from lunch took a step out from one opening, and my free arm flew up in a greeting. “Hey, man—” Like a stressed anemone, he shrank right back into the curtain like he was never there to begin with.Weird. I counted in my mind as the curtains passed until I found the one with the crazy swirls near the end of the row. “Ah-ha!”
I peeked in to make sure the room was as abandoned as Kles claimed. “Oh,wow, it’s kinda gross inside,” I whispered. Throwing the curtain back, I poked the end of a collection of bottles at the entrance with my foot. “Actually, maybe you shouldn’t—”
But Claira dove into the opening before I could finish. She must have been eager to get the key and get to swimming! I followed behind her, dragging my feet so I wouldn’t trip on anything, a lesson I’d learned back at the gas station. A smell hit me, one that brought back the memory of bonfires on the beach. Not the smoke or the fire, no, but another smell. Pungent and earthy. Kind of like the bottles I’d used to play Top Lobber.
“Just under th’bedroll,”I said, repeating Klester’s instructions and shaking a finger just like he’d done when he’d said it. I passed Claira and sank down to feel between the coverings and the floor. Something cold hit my fingers, and I slipped out a ring filled with dozens of keys.Dude—how many buildings were even in their territory?
Thumbing through them one by one, I started reading the little pieces of parchment connected to each end. Just as I got down to the a’s, a soft gasp took my attention away from the ring of keys.
Claira stood behind me, staring intensely at an ornament laying in her palm. “Oh, wow. That’s really pretty,” I said, admiring the different sizes and colors of the pearls adorning it. It looked like some sort of decoration, with comb-like coral teeth at one end. Maybe for clothes or for hair? I knew little about fashion in the Atlantic. Or the Pacific, honestly. I kinda just put whatever Freechia asked me to fashion into her hair, but none of her hairpins were as intricate as this.
