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too short, the wrong shape. She turned and felt her body, strange and strong, thrash through the shallows, as her back arched.
    In the sunlit water, she glimpsed her reflection, her scales deep gray and alive with rainbows, her fins the bruised violet of twilight, a veil of starlight cast against the darkening sky. She was monstrous. She was lovely.
    It was her last human thought. She was diving into the water. She was curled around … who was this? Eli. The dim echo of a name, something more ancient and unpronounceable, lived at the base of her brain. It didn’t matter. She could feel the slide of his scales over hers as they slipped deeper into the lake, into the pull of the current, together.
    HEART
    When they found her bicycle leaning against a pine near Little Spindle, Annalee did her best to explain to Gracie’s mother. Of course, her mother still called the police. They even sent divers into the lake. The search was fruitless, though one of them claimed that something far too big to be a fish had brushed up against his leg.
    Gracie and Eli had summers, three perfect months every year, to feel the grass beneath their feet and the sun on their bare human shoulders. They picked a new city each summer, but they returned most often to Manhattan, where they’d visit with Annalee and Gracie’s flummoxed mother in a penthouse on the Upper East Side, and try not to stare at their beautiful host with her running-water skin and river-green eyes.
    When fall came, they shed their names with their bodies and traveled the waters of the world. The lake hated to give them up. She threatened to freeze solid and bind them there, but they were two now—sinewy and gleaming—monsters of the deep, with lashing tales and glittering eyes, and the force they created between them smashed old rules and new arguments. They slipped down the Mohawk to the Hudson, past the river god with his sloped gray shoulders, and out into the Atlantic. They met polar bears in the Arctic, frightened manatees near the Florida Keys. They curled together in a knot, watching the dream lights of jellyfish off the coast of Australia.
    Sometimes, if they spotted a passenger leaning on the rails of a freighter by himself, they might even let themselves be seen. They’d breach the waves, let the moonlight catch their hides, and the stranger would stand for a moment—mouth agape, heart alive, his loneliness forgotten.

 

    I don’t realize how early I am until I open the door. The rows of desks and chairs are empty, the room is silent, and Mr. Trout peers at me from behind the podium.
    â€œIt’s been a few years,” he says. “I got a note that you’re auditing this class?”
    â€œYeah. I want to brush up.”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œI don’t know. My future?”
    He laughs. “I’m not supposed to say this, but you don’t really need this stuff for your future. You need it for high school. It’s a box to check, and you’ve already checked it. Perfectly, if I’m remembering correctly.”
    â€œMaybe I just want to feel really good at something.” I cross the room and claim a front-row desk. “Maybe I just happen to love geometry.”
    â€œAll right. Whatever floats your boat, Flora. But I have never in my career had a student repeat a class for fun. And during summer .”
    He turns to the window, the bright morning light streaming in as if to prove my foolishness. But I look instead to the stacks of geometry textbooks on his desk, and I swear, the sight of them sends beams of light straight to my heart.
    â€œI can pass these out,” I offer.
    â€œSure,” he says.
    As I’m centering them at each desk, placing the bright yellow textbook checkout slips inside each cover, I send silent thank yous to Jessica for letting me do this. It was the last week of school, and the impending summer at home with my parents—with both of my best