It catches me like a wave of seasickness - or homesickness - but just as quickly as I smell it, the memory is drowned out by a thousand kinds of cologne and body wash - not nearly enough deodorant - and I retch.

“Woah. What’s the matter?” Mandy drops to her knees beside me, her forehead wrinkling with worry, as I try to reorient myself with the room around me.

“The…Jheri curl,” I mumble murkily, trying to laugh like I’m just overreacting. “It smells terrible.”

And that’s true enough. But my laugh sounds strangled as my nose burns with the sharp scent of chemicals and damaged hair.

How can she…stand it?

Mandy is trying to get me to look her in the face, but I avoid it, keeping my eyes closed until I can reabsorb the tears.

“Yeah…it’s honestly pretty gross,” Mandy cringes sheepishly. “I mean, no offense to Marilee, of course, but I really wish someone would tell her that Jheri's curls are just wrong. They’re almost as criminal as black lipstick, if not more so, though, I’m one to talk here looking like a mangy stray. She’d look a million times nicer without it, I think. She’s got a cute face.”

I can’t honestly say I noticed her face. But now I wish I had.

If that scent I caught was coming from her-

No Mora, focus.

That’s illogical. It’s…it’s phanosmia. Or…something.

“You can’t talk to anyone about this, even if you think they’re another phant. It’s a death sentence for both of you to dare to ask anyone.”

But if…

Another mermaid is so close I can smell it-

Ma- Grandma-

I can’t remember the last time I even caught a whiff of mermaid that wasn’t stemming from my own skin as I tried to mask my scent with cheap perfume samples.

I just want to know if she really is.

Like me.

I don’t need to talk to her. 

I don’t need to find out if there are others - or become friends - or have someone to vent to about all this mess and stress- just to know-

It’s the not knowing that drives me crazy.

It’s a one in 10 thousand chance to run into another phant at all. Let alone another mermaid.

But I…can’t…it’s…

I’m probably just going crazy.

Already am crazy.

Right?

That’s what Judith always says…

I’m so disassociated from all that I remembered and stressed out and lonely, worried by everything going on and teased by some after effect of the bath salts that I’m starting to imagine things the way I did back in the Rookery when I could have sworn I heard someone singing a song my grammy used to sing when she came to check in on me while I slept.

“Hush-a hush little one. Says the whistle in the leaves. Taste the sweetness of the tree. Breathe deep, and grow wings. Nectar…”

Everything burns.

I’m drying out. I’m anxious. I’m achey. I’m tired. I miss my grandmother.

But that’s something Judith couldn’t teach me a fix for - some psychology nonsense to imagine it away.

I’m not sure if I’m just a bad learner or even The Wizard has a few gaps in her genius.

Mandy assists me up a short flight of stairs, though I don’t need help walking, and to a little bench by the side of a vending machine, all full of water and fruit juice, since the school refuses to carry soda.

There are five minutes until we need to get to Miss Marko’s class…

Fine, whatever. I’m fine. I don’t care. I’m just glad it’s the last class of the day.

I need to get out on the track.

I take a deep slow breath and press my folded hands to the bridge of my nose, trying to calm down my rapid heart rate as much as I possibly can, the way Judith taught me, and Mandy stands awkwardly with the bottle of water she bought me until I smile my thanks and take a drink

“I can take you to the nurse if you like,” she offers, sliding onto the bench next to me, eyebrows still furrowed.

Too close. 

The hair on my arms stands up on end.

“Or we could call your foster parents.”

That definitely doesn’t make me feel any calmer.

I don’t even pretend to try to respond - just cross my arms on my knees and let my hair screen my face from the light filtering through the huge wall-length window, feeling my skin turn leather.

“Berry…are you…?”

I don’t wait for her to finish the question.

“I miss my grandmother. A lot.”

That’s not a lie, and Mandy bites her lip.

I shouldn’t ask.

I…

Take the first plunge.

“What did you say that girl’s name was? The one with the Jheri curl?”

***

Marilee, Marilee, Marilee.

I mutter it under my breath like it’s some kind of summoning spell.

It’s not a phant name, that’s for sure, at least not one I’ve ever heard, and Grammy kept a big book of them I used to flip through. Not a biography exactly, but a list of names with short descriptions of who they were, and what kind of phant they were classified as.

Vivyaenne (sometimes spelled Vivian) (See also: The Lady of the Lake.) Titania. Oberon.Tojoros (see also: The Pied Piper)

But no one in their right mind would go by their phant name in mixed company, though it does kind of sound like the sort of name we would make. Probably one with a meaning like “the sound of silver bells.”

A much prettier meaning than my real name has.

With my face buried up to my nose in my shirt sleeves, I watch my fingers drum up and down on my desk and my mind seems to leave me to dance around the overly warm room that smells like overcooked wood and hot dust.

Like summer days in the Rayford’s second attic…

“-ora Glas. Mora Glas. Are you not paying attention?”

I look up suddenly to see Miss Marko red up to the roots of her hair with a frustrated posture that I know all too well. 

Oh jeez.

And now the whole class is looking at me, waiting for me to reply. I start to formulate an excuse, but before I can say anything, I notice motion out of the corner of my eye.

I shift my gaze without turning the rest of my head and see Mandy motioning subtly to the teacher, her mouth a round ‘o’, breathing out “no no no” rapidly.

Miss Marko looks from Mandy to me, and then she seems to be struck dumb by a sudden realization or memory.

“Oh,” Miss Marko’s lips part suddenly, an uncomfortable flush replacing the irritated one, “You’re that…”

She stops herself before saying ‘foster kid.’

“...New girl…right? I apologize for rushing you. Please take your time.”

Several of the other students make a face, looking back at their textbooks with a few stray mutters here and there. Maybe they were hoping something interesting or exciting would happen if I got in trouble, but this town and this school are much too small for that. Every teacher who wasn’t specifically informed by the principal has still heard through the grapevine to be particularly patient with me because of the ‘loss of my parents’ and my recent ‘relocation.’

Do they just have a factory for these lies? A little Ministry of Truth somewhere in the back rooms of the Rookery?

I don’t have parents, ‘plural,’ unless they’re counting mother and grandmother.

Well, I suppose if I think about it that way, I have three parents. Or had…three.

I only have one grave for sure and certain, though it’s been burned now.

I’m not sure the doubt isn’t more taxing on my sanity.

“All we can do is leave our feelers out,” as Mr. Alcott says. “If they’re not just in hiding, someone in the crew is bound to find some trace of them eventually.”

But how soon is ‘eventually?’ How far away is ‘eventually?’

Will I even live that long?

By the time we leave class, I feel like I’m about ready to wilt.

Mandy is looking at me sideways with a worry in her eyes bordering on actual fear.

“Maybe you should pass on track today, Berry. You really don’t look good. Why don’t you call the George’s to take you home?”

Because it ISN’T home. It’s just a house full of ‘nice’ strangers who might not even be ‘nice,’ and the sooner I go back the sooner I seal my fate in one way or another.

I let it be a Schrodinger's cat mystery.

At least the unknown hasn’t had all the hope bled out of it yet.

So as flattering as it is to be told I ‘really don’t look good,’ there’s no way I’m passing on track.

If I don’t do something about this panic attack, I won’t sleep tonight.

“I’m really fine,” I smile reassuringly, pushing back the biting anger that feels oddly like tears I'm definitely not allowed to cry, and making myself stand a little more upright and relax my posture so I’ll appear more legitimately relieved. 

“I’ll just go to the bathroom and…splash my face or something to help myself calm down. Then I’ll be right as rain.”

I wish it would rain. 

The rage on my insides makes my dehydrated skin sting, and the dry air only makes it a thousand times worse.

Mandy is still looking at me sideways, but she lets go of my arm, nodding slightly

“If you’re sure.”

I give her a quick thumbs up but keep my other hand on the stair’s banister, half for her sake, just in case she’s afraid of me tumbling down the stairs. And half for my sake, because I’m afraid of me tumbling down the stairs.

We’re three steps from the bottom when I notice the strong, though not distasteful, scent of a familiar shaving cream and orange zest.

Christopher George.

Immediately, the pleasant sensation is replaced by goosebumps, as the curly-haired boy he’s walking with nods politely to me and Mandy and I hear Mandy ring out “Hi, Christopher,” in an unnaturally high-pitched and cutesy voice like she thinks she’s Strawberry Shortcake.

Oh gross. Don’t tell me she’s into that creep.

Christopher just raises his hand in acknowledgment, not looking over at Mandy or saying a word and she actually looks disappointed as soon as the guys are out of earshot.

You have GOT to be kidding me. I know “Red Flags 101” isn’t part of most people’s basic education, but Bird Brain would unsettle the most dauntless of people. 

Well, not Mandy-level dauntless, I guess.

Some people really can ignore anything for a handsome face.

I do my best not to roll my eyes, but lean forward and whisper as not-harshly as possible, “Yo, Miss Mandy Face, you actually like that guy?”

“Maybe,” Mandy shrugs away from me, a little embarrassed. “Is that a crime? He’s hot.”

I sort of laugh, shaking my head and Mandy looks at me sideways, pushing my shoulder like she thinks I’m putting on airs or something.

“Oh, be serious. You can’t tell me you actually disagree.”

I roll my eyes but opt out of arguing that futile course of conversation.

“He’s just not…my taste.”

And now it’s Mandy’s turn to roll her eyes.

“Ooh. Athletic girl thinks she’s too smart to be interested in boys.”

I start to rebut but stop myself.

I’m not allowed to tell her, and I’m not sure I’d want to anyway.

“I have no reason to be interested in boys.”

And I’m not allowed to be. Judith put me under strict orders not to date ANYONE until I’m no longer under Rookery care.

Life is too much of a risk. Relationships are too much of a risk, and the more you add into your circle, the greater the risk becomes.

“When you come of age, you can just birth yourself a little copy to keep you company. That’s what your kind does, right?”