Nova is walking angrily into the surf, her scowl evident even under sunglasses. She looks tiny out here in the water and I realize again how young she is. The expression on her face is particularly angry, and when I turn to see what she’s scowling at, my stomach sinks.

It’s the Morgans. The late afternoon light is starting to tinge the sand a rosy gold, and Simon is walking up and down the beach, three girls hanging off him. Emma is sprawled out on the sand, a giant sun hat shielding her face, and when Simon gets close to her, he says something that makes her look up and laugh.

They look… perfect.

Whole. Complete. Happy.

Without Nova and me there to complicate things, they look like a family from a magazine. And judging from the longing mixing into Nova’s usual angry expression, she’s thinking the same thing.

I feel a pang of loneliness for her. I’m used to not fitting into families because they’ve never been mine. But this one is Nova’s. That must be a special form of miserable.

A rush of protectiveness moves over me. I’m going to get her to talk to me. Even if it’s only for a few minutes.

“Nova?” I drag my feet along the ocean bottom, making my way toward her. She’s staring out at the horizon, arms crossed over her chest.

“What?” She spits the word.

I take a deep breath, digging through my brain for one of the facts I read in her articles. “Did you know that the oldest sloth in captivity is fifty years old? It’s in a zoo in Germany.”

Her face whips toward me. I can’t read her expression behind her dark sunglasses, but her body is tense.

She doesn’t storm away, so I keep going. “They’re hard to track, so scientists don’t really know how long they live in the wild. But this one is in the Guinness Book of World Records. Her name is Paula.”

Very, very long silence. The waves are surprisingly strong, and I have to dig my feet into the sand to stay upright.

Then she pushes up her glasses. “Two-toed or three-toed?” I’m startled by the blue-greenness of her eyes. I had no idea they were that color.

I bite back my smile. “Two. And they thought she was a boy for twenty years.”

I think she’s going to tell me to go away, but instead she folds her arms over her chest. “Oh.”

We almost look at each other for a moment. “I didn’t know you liked sloths,” she finally says.