“Exactly,” I say, voice unconvincing—last night I would have been able to persuade her, to tell her how beautiful it is under the water when a storm passes overhead, how perfect we all are together. Those things are still true, and yet… I try to shake off the sense of longing, a sharp pain that strikes at my chest.
Molly hisses at me, and for a tiny, tiny moment, I think she’s going to attack. She’ll lose—I’m older, stronger. She seems to realize this; she pulls backward like the water itself is sucking her away. Molly folds her arms across her waist as if she’s sick, swims up the ship’s staircase, probably headed to one of the few bedrooms on the upper floor. When I was new, I spent ages sequestered in the back of the largest bedroom, lingering by a sunken-in bed, trying to pretend everything was normal, that this was a normal room in a house on land. I stared at the coral-covered globe, tried to close the curtains—they disintegrated like dead seaweed in my hands. I wish I could help Molly, wish I could tell her that I understand, but that I just couldn’t let her—
“You should have let her have him,” one of my sisters says, our thoughts as matched as our bodies.
“It would have been easier,” another echoes. “Now she won’t realize that it can never work.”
“She’ll understand eventually,” I answer. “She’ll learn to be happy here. We all did.”
Key smiles at me. Her teeth glisten, too sharp compared with the human girl’s. “True, but you had to kill your boy to understand. Now she’ll always wonder.”
I grimace as I remember the boy I killed. That’s one thing that hasn’t faded over time—the memory of his limp body, of pressing my cheek against his chest and realizing his lungs were full of water, not air. Key is right, though; I know she is. I had to try, had to know that getting a soul wasn’t as simple as singing a boy close to you. No wonder Molly can’t really forgive me.
The crowd of my sisters disperses, somewhat. They split off into groups to braid one another’s hair, lie in the sand, race around the Glasgow until they collapse into fits of laughter. The old ones sit on the ship’s deck, occasionally looking up when the new ones zip past but mostly staring endlessly into the sea. It’s like they see something we don’t, deep in the ocean. Like they’re waiting for something they’re certain is coming. For the angels to come back for them. Did the angel who brought me here know who I used to be? Did he know what happened to me? Did he know—
My name. My name, my human name. I had it, moments ago, but… My throat feels tight, my stomach twisted. It’s gone; it can’t be gone. I can’t lose it again. Remember, remember, I have to remember—
Naida.
I exhale in relief. I still have it. I haven’t lost it. I lie back in the sand, dig my toes into it, and close my eyes. If I stare straight up, I can see the light of the moon. The water distorts it, throws it around with each wave that passes overhead. Naida.
I wonder what Naida was like when she came to the sea. I wonder where she was from. Molly was from New York. She wanted to be a singer. I remember those details about her because she cried them to us over and over, all the plans she had for her human life that now had to be forgotten. There was more, I’m sure, but I don’t remember them, and I doubt Molly does, either. We all forget when we come to the ocean.
An old one told me once that we weren’t brought to the ocean because we are ocean girls—we came to the ocean because we were trying to cling to our humanity. She said when we changed, we started to slip, fall away from our human selves, and the angel, he knew the ocean could remind us what being human felt like. It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us. It tosses us around, rakes our backs across rocks, stings our eyes with sand and salt water. The ocean makes us feel everything and, for a little while, makes us feel human again, until finally even the water isn’t strong enough to keep our humanity from slipping away. We become sea creatures, because only the sea loves us, and we give up the silly idea of our humanity.
Yet the girl on the shore, she knew my name. Did I know her? Were we friends, so close that she could recognize me even now? I try to remember her face, place it in my old life, but my mind won’t allow me to hold on to my name and the girl’s face. I let her image slide away. The name is more important. I don’t know why—I’m Lo now, and I’m happy. I’m happy here, right now, in this moment. I don’t need to remember Naida, to fight for memories that are as decayed as the Glasgow.
But… I close my eyes, say the name again.
Should I tell the others about the girl on the beach? About how my feet bled when I stepped in the sand? Most of us wouldn’t care, I’m sure. Molly might. The others would be disappointed that I spoke with a human; unless we’re after their souls, it’s best they don’t see us. I don’t like having a secret, though. Secrets make me different. Secrets make me alone, make me unhappy.
But I decide not to tell them. I close my eyes, let the waves swish my hair up and over my body until the moon drops low and the ocean gets dark, so dark that I know it’s nearly dawn. All the while I repeat the name in my head—no, not the name. My name.
Naida. Naida. Naida.
CHAPTER FIVE
Celia
I take a cab from the hospital back to our dorm. The campus is dark, but it always is during the summer—the old, weather-beaten brick buildings loom like monsters amid the palm trees. The upper dormitories, where my sisters and I live, are the most lonesome of all. Most of the girls who go to Milton’s Prep come from money and spend their summers on islands or yachts or in foreign countries. They return in August with tans and new clothes and accents they claim to have “just developed” in the weeks they were away.
We never leave. We’ve been in our suite in the upper dorms since we got here, a single-story concrete building with ancient couches in the lobby. We tell everyone we don’t go home for the summer because Ellison is boring, but the truth is, we don’t go home because there isn’t a home to go to—there’s just an empty house in Georgia and an uncle in California who sends us an allowance from our father’s estate every month. We were the last of ten children—our parents were already old when we were born, and most of our brothers were long out of the house. Our mother didn’t live to see us start second grade, and raising daughters alone scared our father—not that it mattered much, since his Alzheimer’s meant he’d forgotten us before we made it through our first year here. I read his past once. Thousands of memories, bright, vivid, colorful. I described them to our father while Anne and Jane watched eagerly, convinced that this would fix everything, that he’d remember us, that we’d be a family.