Forgive My Fins (16 page)

“Lily!” Shannen drops a history textbook on my desk, jarring me out of my daydreaming.

Heart racing, I look at her and then the textbook. “Right,” I say, sitting up straight and opening the book to the chapter on the Fertile Crescent. “History project. I’m on it.”

Shannen rolls her eyes at me but turns her desk around to face me so we can get to work. I’m proud of myself for focusing on our project—which is a report, analysis, and re-creation of one of Hammurabi’s laws—for the rest of homeroom. She only has to prod me back to attention once. Or maybe twice.

When the bell dismisses us from homeroom, we head down the hall toward the gym. I hate gym. After spending most of my life in the water, it’s not like land-based coordination comes real easily to me. In fact, it’s a great day when I don’t walk out of gym with some kind of sports-related injury—red welts on my arms from volleyball, skinned knees from track, a lump on my head from a tennis racket. But the one shining light about gym class is that it’s one of the two classes I have with Brody. Sure, it doesn’t show me at my best like news team does—neither does trig, for that matter—but I’ll take any time I can spend with him.

Plus Quince isn’t here to get in my way.

“I think we’re starting a new unit today,” Shannen says as we push through the locker-room door.

“That can only be a good thing,” I reply. “I don’t think I would have survived another week of soccer.”

We change into our gym uniforms—hideous, itchy navy blue shorts and baggy white tees with SEAVIEW in big powder blue letters across the chest. Some girls—ones with more curves than me and less baby fat than Shannen—wear tight SEAVIEW tank tops instead of the baggy tees. If I wore one of those, it would only highlight my less-than-overflowing assets.

“I don’t see any equipment,” Shannen whispers as we emerge into the stinky gym.

She’s right. The gym looks unnaturally plain. The bleachers that usually fill either side of the basketball court have been collapsed back against the walls. The basketball goals are in place, but there aren’t any racks of basketballs next to our coaches, who are standing at center court with their whistles at the ready. The few kids who have beaten us into the gym are loitering along the sidelines, looking just as confused as we feel.

Shannen and I head for the padded wall at the end of the court and slide down to the floor.

“Maybe we’re going outside?” she suggests.

“Usually when we do that,” I say, “one of the coaches is out there waiting.”

But not today. Both of our coaches—the tennis coach, Miss Bailey, who is always ultraperky, and one of the baseball coaches, Coach Pittman, who is the complete opposite of perky—are in the gym, watching us trickle through the doors.

The bell rings and the last stragglers, including Brody, wander into the gym.

Coach Pittman blows his whistle while Miss Bailey claps her hands, shouting, “Circle up, everyone.”

Shannen and I reluctantly get up and move to center court, along with everyone else. I edge us as close to Brody as I can get without making it too obvious.

“Today we are going to start a unit on playground games,” Miss Bailey says excitedly, as if her enthusiasm might be contagious. She ignores the fact that every last one of us groans—I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m groaning because I’m clueless. “For our first game, the rules are simple. Coach Pittman and I will select one of you to be—”

“Freeze tag,” Pittman bellows over Miss Bailey’s instructions. He eyes the crowd for a second before pointing at me and Brody. “Sanderson and Bennett, you’re it.”

Then he blows his whistle and all shellfish breaks out. Kids flee to the four corners of the room.

I’m it? I’m
it
? What does that mean?

“We’ve got this, Lil,” Brody says.

“Got what?” I look around helplessly. “I don’t even know what we’re doing.”

“You don’t know how to play freeze tag?” he asks, incredulous. When I shake my head, he gives me a quick lesson. “When you touch someone, they’ll freeze. Only someone who’s not it can unfreeze them. If we freeze everyone in class, we’ll win.”

“Oh.” I don’t get it. “Okay.”

Brody apparently sees my continued confusion. “Just try and touch as many people as you can.”

Then he takes off, leaving me standing at center court with still no real clue about this game.

I watch him as he chases after a group of freshman girls who just giggle instead of running away. As he touches each of them, they freeze in place. Another girl, a sophomore I think, runs up and touches them, bringing them back to life. But before they can get away, Brody refreezes the freshmen and catches the sophomore, too.

“Get moving, Sanderson,” Coach Pittman shouts. “Or you’ll get a no effort for the day.”

That gets me running. My grades are bad enough without tanking gym. In a complete lack of strategy, I just run for the nearest bodies. They’re fast, though, and escape to the other side of the gym, using some of Brody’s victims as a shield. But while I’m trying to find a way around—or through—the frozen girls, Brody sneaks up from behind and freezes my prey.

“Nice teamwork, Lil,” he says with a wink. And then he jerks his head to my right. I turn and spot Shannen and the junior girl we hang out with during gym sometimes. I’m starting to get the appeal of the game.

“Don’t move, Shannen,” I say, slowly walking toward them as they back away. “It’ll be painless. I promise.”

“No way.” She starts to turn and run but finds herself face-to-face with Brody, who has circled around lightning fast.

“Sorry, girls.” He grins as he touches each of them on the shoulder. To me, he says, “Let’s get the bunch in the corner.”

We set off after the rest of the class. Somehow, I feel like we’re connecting over more than a game. We’re bonding—a nonmagical but still awesome kind of bond. I never knew gym class could be so great.

Brody catches up with me and Shannen as we leave the gym hall, heading for the science wing (I have earth science and Shannen has AP physics). I still feel kind of flushed from all the exertion of chasing my classmates around the gym when Brody jogs up, throws an arm around my shoulder (my backpack, actually), and says, “We make a good team, Lil.”

I exchange an omigod look with Shannen.

“Yeah,” I say, amazed that I’m able to form words. I mean, Brody is practically hugging me! “A great team.”

He squeezes me to his side, like he would one of his swim-team buddies, but I feel little sparks everywhere our bodies connect. “We should partner up more often. No one else would stand a chance.”

He’s probably forgetting my incident with the jump rope and the bloody noses (plural), but I’m not about to remind him.

“Totally.” I’m trying to play it cool—something I have zero experience with—because I learned my lesson about appearing overeager when I asked him to the dance last week. Look how (not) well that turned out.

As we round the corner for the science hall, I sling my arm around him to complete the buddy-buddy hug we have going. Only, the second I see Quince—or rather, the second he sees us—I know that we don’t look buddy-buddy to him. His fury hits me like an emotional tidal wave. His eyes turn bright as flames, and the muscles in his jaw clench so tight, I think he might be in danger of crushing his teeth. I hope he has a good dentist.

“Lily,” he grinds out without loosening his jaw. He said my name, but his burning eyes are trained on Brody. “Bennett.”

It might have been a greeting, but there are two signs that Quince is issuing a warning. First, he got Brody’s last name right. Second, he didn’t so much
say
the name as
growl
it.

“Hi, Quince,” Shannen says, as if there’s no deadly tension in the air.

“Shannen.” Quince nods in her direction but doesn’t take his eyes off Brody.

Brody, clearly not as oblivious as Shannen, says, “I better get to class. Winslow will dock my grade if I’m late again, and Coach will kill me if I lose my eligibility.”

Then—I think he might secretly have a death wish—he winks at me before disappearing down the hall.

“Lil—”

I don’t let Quince finish before I launch at him. Throwing my full body weight into it, I slam him up against the lockers. He blinks super-fast, like he’s not sure what just happened.

“What is wrong with you?” I demand. “Couldn’t you see I was finally making headway with—”

“Lily!” Shannen gasps.

“What?” I snap, twisting my head to face her.

She raises her eyebrows and kind of twitches her head down the hall. I see Assistant Principal Lopez talking with Shannen’s physics teacher two doors away.

Holy mackerel, what am I doing? The kind of violence I’m displaying is not only totally out of character, but also grounds for immediate suspension, for sure. I’m still holding Quince against the lockers with my forearms braced on his chest (yes, I know I’m only holding him there because he’s letting me). This roller coaster of emotions or hormones or bond-magic-induced moods is wearing me out. Suddenly overwhelmed by the situation and the secrecy and the emotion flooding through me, I let my head drop forward to rest on Quince’s chest. For some reason—the bond—I feel better just touching him. Like all my anger seeps out of me.

Quince leans his head down next to mine and whispers, “Relax, princess. It’s all part of the game, remember?”

I shake my head.

Is it a game? It’s getting harder to remember the rules.

“You should tell Shannen.”

I jerk back. “Tell Shannen what?”

“Tell me what?” Shannen asks at the same time.

He looks me straight in the eyes as he says, “The truth.”

“I can’t.” Panic sets in. He can’t really mean the
truth
. The only truth I’ve ever kept hidden from my best human friend. I try to convey with my eyes—and through the bond—how much it hurts me to keep this secret from Shannen—especially when Quince, of all people, knows the truth. I shake my head vehemently. Doesn’t he realize how important the secret is? Of course not. It’s not his secret.

“Then I’ll tell her,” he says.

“No!”

“Tell me
what
?”

“Lily is—”

“Don’t!”

“—only pretending to go out with me.” He gives me a wry grin. “But I’m not. I’m trying to convince her to choose me over that idiot.”

I sag against him in relief. For a second I had been so sure he was going to blurt out my entire secret in the middle of the hall, where the whole school could hear. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. Not even the time a rogue shark slipped through the Thalassinian border defense.

Now, with my fears calmed, I get a feeling of longing. His words sink in. Was that part of the game too?

“Oh, that?” Shannen waves him off. “I knew
that
.”

She
knew
that?

The bell rings, sending Shannen hurrying off to her physics class, leaving me totally stunned in place.

“You know I would never reveal your secret,” he says softly, more like the gentler Quince I saw in Thalassinia. “Never.”

He’s sincere. I can feel it. And he’s a little hurt that I doubted him. Maybe he’s right. I should know better. He might be rude and obnoxious and a major pain in my tail fin, but he’s also honorable. He would never betray my kingdom.

I should feel major relief about that—and I do, really I do. But…there is a teeny tiny (guilt-ridden) part of me that secretly wishes he had done it, told Shannen the truth about me. Because then there wouldn’t be this invisible wall between me and my best human friend, and I could blame someone else if it went bad.

I can’t bring myself to thank him for something I almost wish he hadn’t done. Instead, I focus on what led to this moment—Brody—and fall back on something far more comfortable with Quince: anger.

“Why do you have to ruin every good moment I have with him?” I push away from Quince, putting a few feet between us.

“I don’t like seeing you with him,” he says, sounding irritated that the conversation has returned to Brody. “It makes my blood boil just thinking about—”

“It’s the bond,” I insist.

Maybe Quince was still in shock when I first told him what the magic was all about. I still remember the first time Daddy gave me “the talk” about the bond. He was all awkward and uncomfortable, going on about hormones and commitment and not letting any unscrupulous merboy talk me into kissing him before I was ready. After a while, my eyes crossed, and I’m pretty sure I tuned out the last half of the conversation. So it’s not a major leap to think the details could be a little murky for Quince, considering everything that got heaped onto him at once.

“That’s what’s making you feel jealous about Brody,” I explain. “The bond connects us and amplifies our emotional reactions. It’s designed to make mermates more in love.”

I can’t help laughing at the thought of me and Quince in love. It’s such a ridiculous notion that I can’t even imagine a world in which that would happen.

“I don’t believe it,” Quince says with absolute certainty. “I don’t believe anything magical can make someone more in love.”

He jams his hands into his jeans pockets and leans back against a locker, lifting one heavy biker boot to pound on the gray metal door. He looks me right in the eye as he says, “Love is already the strongest magic in the world.”

The laughter drains right out of me. It’s obvious that he truly believes this. He believes in the omnipotent nature of love. I never knew he was such a romantic.

But he doesn’t know my world. There are magical forces he can never understand, and love is not at the top of the list.

“Quince and Lily,” Mr. Lopez says, walking up to us. “You two need to get to class.”

“Yes, sir,” Quince replies, but doesn’t move from the lockers.

Thankful for the reprieve, I turn and hurry to my earth science class. I’m so lost in thought about Quince that I barely register when my teacher says, “You’re late, Lily. You’ll need two sheets of notebook paper for our pop quiz.”

My mind is still out in the hall with that unexpected romantic version of Quince. Where has he been hiding the last three years?