“Oh, um,” he says, sweat prickling on his upper lip. He scoots on his butt until he’s out of the trunk and focuses on the starless sky. “You’re naked. I mean, you don’t have clothes on. I mean, I almost saw your—” He slams his lips shut. Kavya, meanwhile, cackles.

I look down and see my towel is perfectly placed over my extra human appendage, which is a bit bigger than it was before. Some of that turned-on feeling must have lingered and is making its presence known, and holy flick, I am a very thin layer of fabric away from dying of embarrassment.

“Get me some clothes, would you?” I’m trying to keep my voice down, but it’s no use. I’m basically shouting from mortification. I’m a confident mer, but that doesn’t mean I want to go showing every single bit of me to the first (and probably only) decent humans I can find. If only clothes came with the change too, like on that first day, but somewhere under the thousands of feet on Hollywood Boulevard is my trampled jeans and body suit.

“There’s a sweatshirt in my duffel bag,” Kavya says through her howling. “And some shorts. God, this is too good.”

I lunge toward her bag and pull out the clothes. “Turn around,” I command, which Kavya does, while Sean respectfully hasn’t declined his head one bit from staring straight up to the sky.

I’ve got to think of anything I can say to get their thoughts away from my human bits. But my brain can’t stop thinking about Sean’s thick fingers working that towel down my fin, and this stiffening eel between my legs is totally betraying me. What I need right now is a good fin slap to snap me out of it. Curse this stupid Journey for making me complete it alone. Where’s another mer when you need one?

That’s when what Kavya said before floats back into my mind. I was too busy worrying about my very public mer display for it to really sink in.

“Your mom is mer.” That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say on land.

“Was,” Kavya corrects.

“Why didn’t she go back? I mean, the Elders say we can stay, but that’s just dumb. It’s always chaos up here! How could she want to live in that?” A million more questions swim to the surface too, like when did she realize she was she and not mer or they, but that’s a story for Kavya’s mom to tell me when she wants. If I ever meet her, that is.