Partway down Essex, Simon stops to talk to someone and Nova is forced to look up from her phone. I feel terrible for her. Without her headphones, she’s way too exposed and vulnerable-looking. All she has to do is bare her teeth and she’s a naked mole rat with anger issues.

The truth is, neither of us are happy about our current living situations. Maybe I could figure out a way to befriend her. My expectations are seriously low on this, but I go for it anyway. “Did your parents name you after the astronomical event?”

“What?”

Nova may be a distant relative of Medusa, as her stare seems capable of turning people to stone. But not me. I’ve lived with too many other foster kids. On the angry-kids spectrum, Nova barely registers.

I gesture toward the hazy sky. “When stars die, they release a bunch of energy and get really bright for a short period of time. That’s called a nova. It means ‘new.’ ”

“You really think they named me for a dead star?”

“Why not?” I say.

She goes back to angrily stabbing at her phone, and I go back to hunting through the crowd for the mermaid.

Good talk.

Simon’s default reaction to silence is to monologue things. By the time we reach Gulu-Gulu Café, Simon has resorted to reciting all the restaurant’s menu items he can remember over the deafening silence happening between us (chocolate orange cannoli waffles! PB&J crepes!), so by the time we get there, I am hungry and actually considering eating breakfast, which might be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse. The café is tucked neatly behind a small park with a statue, and it has a decidedly eclectic vibe, with a gold sign and an enormous dog’s face painted in the front window. There’s a long wait outside, but Simon’s client is already inside, so we make our way in, one after the other, pushing our way through.

“There they are. This way.” Simon waves as I duck, narrowly missing being decapitated by a server carrying a tray of mimosas. Simon is heading for the back corner, and when I spot the flash of red, my heart hammers so hard, it nearly splits my chest. It’s her.

Is it her?

It can’t be her. Except, it is.

I have the urge to rub my eyes or pinch myself, make sure this is real. And it is real. The mermaid is sitting at the wall side of a booth, her head down as she looks through the menu. The mermaid is right there. Right there. While I was busy looking for her, the universe literally delivered her to me.