“She had to leave. Because of the ice. And I’ve been waiting every night, but she hasn’t come back yet . . .” Dorian grimaced as he said it.

Something in Zoe’s face shifted again. “The ice has been mostly gone for like two weeks already.”

“I know that,” Dorian snapped. “I’ve been sitting on the beach freezing for hours every night, okay? It’s not like I haven’t had time to notice.”

“If she really loved you, maybe she wouldn’t leave you waiting around like that.” Zoe stared at him uncertainly, and Dorian could almost feel the words hovering on her lips. He was sure she would leave them unsaid, swallow them down in embarrassment. She exhaled hard, then risked it: “I wouldn’t.”

Dorian looked away, flushing. But he still wanted to know. “Zoe . . .”

Suddenly she looked angry. “Whatever. You don’t have the balls to say it!”

“No, I mean, what I want to know . . . You felt the change starting, right?” Dorian asked gently. The heat inside him was soft and hopeful. Maybe it was really too late for Luce, maybe she would never leave the sea, maybe she was even dead. But it wasn’t too late for everyone.

“I felt it.” Zoe looked down, hard and morose. “Just like melting into really cold water, like you said. Right on my bedroom floor.” She looked up, her face agonized, but somehow there were still flickers of humor in her eyes. Dorian couldn’t help admiring the strength of that. “I wouldn’t have believed anything as retarded as this mermaid bullshit, okay? But I did feel like . . . I mean, I basically knew I could change. Into something.”

“But you didn’t.”

Her pink hair trailed, and Dorian felt an impulse to stroke it back from her face.

“No. I didn’t. I don’t know how it worked. But I pulled back. Like, there was this moment where it was up to me . . .” Zoe’s voice faltered.

“Why? That’s what I need to know, Zoe.” He was somehow closer to her now, and she was sitting with her legs folded under her, halfway kneeling. “Why didn’t you do it?”

“Well, because . . . That’s a tough question.” She tried to smile at him. “Like, if being human is a problem for me . . . it’s still a problem I have to deal with. You know what I mean?”

Dorian stared. “Totally.”

“And so, like, my mom sucks, and my stepdad’s an evil bastard, and there’s all this crap . . . But I want to do a better job than they have?”

“A better job of being human?” Dorian asked. They were both grinning, but the room in front of him was warped by his tears.

“Yeah.”