Kavya holds up her pointer finger, and even with her back turned to me it looks like a very accusatory number one. “Okay, first of all, you can’t call my mom dumb.” A second finger joins the first. “Second, it can’t be all that bad up here.” She waves her hand over herself while doing slow body rolls. “You wouldn’t get to meet Queen K if you’d have stayed in the Pacific.”

“I’m serious.” I feel like she’s deflecting when I need answers. I never thought this was a possibility before. We’d all heard about that one mer decades ago who didn’t come back, but they never seemed real. She didn’t seem real. But every time an Elder brought up the mer who felt compelled to stay on land, they were talking about Kavya’s mom, and now I finally have the opportunity to know why she chose to give up her home for something totally unfamiliar.

“Mom is an explorer,” Kavya finally says. “She and Mummy are really the perfect match, since Mummy is a marine biologist, and Mom knows so much about the sea. She’s a travel writer now. She stayed behind because she realized there was so much more of the world she’d never get to see if she stayed in the Blue.”

Hearing Kavya use mer lingo sends shivers down my spine. It’s so weird to be talking to someone who knows about my life back home, who, unlike Sean, doesn’t need me to describe everything to them first. Honestly, it makes me feel a little violated. I can’t quite figure out why. Maybe because this whole time I thought I was supposed to be doing this alone, that it was me against the human world. Meanwhile this secret I thought I had wasn’t quite so secret after all. Or maybe it’s the fact that what I thought was such a sure decision—going back to the Blue—isn’t always so sure. What does that mean for me? Should I really be giving a life on land more thought?

“Mom’s followed through on seeing as much as she can,” Kavya continues. “I’m always that annoyingly privileged kid talking about what new international trip my moms are taking me on for spring break. It’s always Mom pushing the pace on where to go, what new city or museum or park to see next. Or animals; she loves seeing animals. Birds are her favorite. She says they fascinate her the most, the total opposite of all the sea creatures she grew up with.”

“Do you think I could talk to her?” I ask. I need to see firsthand how life on land affects a mer. I need to ask if she ever dreams of home, if she regrets staying up here at all.