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and yet… I try to shake off the sense of longing, a sharp pain that strikes at my chest.
    Molly hisses at me, and for a tiny, tiny moment, I think she’s going to attack. She’ll lose—I’m older, stronger. She seems to realize this; she pulls backward like the water itself is sucking her away. Molly folds her arms across her waistas if she’s sick, swims up the ship’s staircase, probably headed to one of the few bedrooms on the upper floor. When I was new, I spent ages sequestered in the back of the largest bedroom, lingering by a sunken-in bed, trying to pretend everything was normal, that this was a normal room in a house on land. I stared at the coral-covered globe, tried to close the curtains—they disintegrated like dead seaweed in my hands. I wish I could help Molly, wish I could tell her that I understand, but that I just couldn’t let her—
    “You
should
have let her have him,” one of my sisters says, our thoughts as matched as our bodies.
    “It would have been easier,” another echoes. “Now she won’t realize that it can never work.”
    “She’ll understand eventually,” I answer. “She’ll learn to be happy here. We all did.”
    Key smiles at me. Her teeth glisten, too sharp compared with the human girl’s. “True, but you had to kill your boy to understand. Now she’ll always wonder.”
    I grimace as I remember the boy I killed. That’s one thing that hasn’t faded over time—the memory of his limp body, of pressing my cheek against his chest and realizing his lungs were full of water, not air. Key is right, though; I know she is. I had to try, had to know that getting a soul wasn’t as simple as singing a boy close to you. No wonder Molly can’t really forgive me.
    The crowd of my sisters disperses, somewhat. They split off into groups to braid one another’s hair, lie in the sand,race around the
Glasgow
until they collapse into fits of laughter. The old ones sit on the ship’s deck, occasionally looking up when the new ones zip past but mostly staring endlessly into the sea. It’s like they see something we don’t, deep in the ocean. Like they’re waiting for something they’re certain is coming. For the angels to come back for them. Did the angel who brought me here know who I used to be? Did he know what happened to me? Did he know—
    My name.
My name, my human name. I had it, moments ago, but… My throat feels tight, my stomach twisted. It’s gone; it can’t be gone. I can’t lose it again. Remember, remember, I have to remember—
    Naida.
    I exhale in relief. I still have it. I haven’t lost it. I lie back in the sand, dig my toes into it, and close my eyes. If I stare straight up, I can see the light of the moon. The water distorts it, throws it around with each wave that passes overhead.
Naida.
    I wonder what Naida was like when she came to the sea. I wonder where she was from. Molly was from New York. She wanted to be a singer. I remember those details about her because she cried them to us over and over, all the plans she had for her human life that now had to be forgotten. There was more, I’m sure, but I don’t remember them, and I doubt Molly does, either. We all forget when we come to the ocean.
    An old one told me once that we weren’t brought to the ocean because we are ocean girls—we came to the oceanbecause we were trying to cling to our humanity. She said when we changed, we started to slip, fall away from our human selves, and the angel, he knew the ocean could remind us what being human felt like. It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us. It tosses us around, rakes our backs across rocks, stings our eyes with sand and salt water. The ocean makes us feel everything and, for a little while, makes us feel human again, until finally even the water isn’t strong enough to keep our humanity from slipping away. We become sea creatures, because only the sea loves us, and we give up the silly idea of our humanity.
    Yet