"Someone ruined the store sign," Ange signs.

I set the box on the back room floor, five yurees for a pair of bowls, the label shows, then I glance at Ange's face, his eyes narrowed to slits and his teeth showing.

"Someone ruined the--" he waves his arms about incoherently.

I go outside through the box maze, I swim around the store to the street. But Ange drops in front of me before I round the corner and I startle.

"You don't want to see it," Ange glares over his shoulder, at the distance.

But I won't know that unless I see it. So I dart around him and swim into the street, avoiding clusters of people vibrating from their mouths.

I hover in front of our store, that's swaying slightly in the ocean currents. I tilt my head at the store sign hung above the door to study it sideways; I don't even know what all the dark paint scribbles are supposed to be.

My head tilts the other way. I wiggle out my fingers, fan out my ankle fins.

I don't even know what it is. A scribbled mess of dark letters so pointy I can't read them has taken over "Parro and Ange's." Or maybe they're just triangles, and not letters.

The red-pink lettering of "ar o" shows through, same with the white outline of "n" in the sign's middle and the red-orange lines of "A e'" but the rest of the wood is just dark and scribbled over. I tilt my head the other way again, but still can't read any letters.

"They ruined it," Ange signs, motions choppy. "How dare they; that's damaging our store!"

I glance over the street, half-busy with shoppers. Three people glance at our store sign; the rest stare at the mud or their swimming fins or someone's face they're talking to.

"Hardly anyone's looking," I sign, but Ange just shakes his head. "Is it supposed to say something?"

"Let's go," Ange points to the side of the store and paddles away. I swim after him.

"Is it supposed to say something?" I ask again.

"Yes," Ange signs choppily. "It says some very bad words about people like me and Parro and our friends."

My heart thumps, wait, this could be a good time--

"What utter--" Ange flails his hands about. "What loser would graffiti some slurs on a local storefront?" he makes a vibrating noise through his closed mouth and glares at some strangers passing by the store.

I sign super fast, "Parro said I should tell you I have a crush on Sta," wait. No. That's embarrassing. Sta and Mackere are together, I shouldn't... I tap my fingers together. "Wait, I meant..." my hands fall to my sides and I stare at the mud. "I meant..." what did I mean? I shrug.

"Wait, Nudibranc, you're into girls?" Ange signs. "Why have I never..." he paddles closer, "oh my goodness, I'm so oblivious. That drummer from the concert?"

I glance up from the mud at his neck gills. "Which concert?" The Sunlit Walkers, or the Monsters of the Deep?

"The..." he shows his teeth. "Actually, basically any of them, you always say the drummer's your favorite."

Is that true? I wriggle my back fins. That wasn't true for the Monsters of the Deep. "Maybe."

"Oh my goodness, can I give you a hug?"

I shrug. "I guess."

Ange wraps his arms around me. My arms shake but I hook them around him anyway. My back fins go stiff, Ange's hands press like hot bowls into my shoulder blades, his taste in the water--like spices in rice--makes me grimace but I try to ignore it since Ange's got more to him than the taste wafting from his body. His heartbeat squishes up to my skin, making it pulse and dance. His head holds down my shoulder, creasing my fin but also radiating warmth down my torso. His arms hold me tight, but not too tight, like the blankets in bed but thick and alive and sheltering.

He lets go. I let go. I stare at the mud, slowly sinking.

"Alright, I'm going out to buy paint," Ange signs. "You stay here and...temporarily close the store," he rolls his eyes. "I was going to say get something to cover up the sign, but that makes it even worse," his motions go choppy, fast. "We'll just deal with having offensive slurs sloganed over our storefront until I get back."

"Okay."

Ange shakes his head, paddling to the back of the store. "At least one of us is calm about this," he glares in the direction of the sign again. "See you later."

"Oh I'm not calm..."

Ange swims off, towards our house on the next street up the hill, probably because he needs money and doesn't have any.

"I don't know what words are on the sign," I sign to no one. "They just look like black scribbles..."

Maybe if I knew what words were on there that were offensive, I'd be less calm. Am I calm though? Ange's touch from the hug prickles all over my body; warm and comforting, but also I rub out my touched shoulder fin and rub my cheek where hopefully that taste hasn't lingered.

I swim around front of our store, glancing at the crowds of people swimming between the stores, but hardly anyone's looking at our store.

I tilt my head up at "Parro and Ange's." Squint at the dark scribbles, black and red and blue. But they all look like angry, pointy triangles, not even real letters.

***

Things I do right: I go around to the back of the store, I swim inside through the dim box maze, I grab bundles of rice shirts out of a large gray bin so I can hang them from some shelves, unsuspiciously curtaining over the front door so nobody can see inside.

Or scream rude things through the glass.

That seems like a thing someone would do if they already ruined our store sign.

I go into the storefront with my bundle of rice shirts.

Things I do wrong: I swim into the storefront, and someone's waiting at the checkout counter. So I stop. So I stare. I squeeze the bundle of rice shirts to my body.

He notices me hovering there and flashes his teeth. He says something, voice vibrating.

Things I just end up doing, no clue if they're right or wrong: I drop the rice shirts on the edge of the counter, a few of them slip off to the floor, I point at my ears so the yellow-green guy knows I can't hear him. I sign "I can't hear," but he stares blankly at my wiggling hands.

I pick up the dropped rice shirts and pile them messily on the counter.

The yellow-green guy in his pointy red hat that mismatches his round face frowns at me. Or stares. Or glares.

My stomach flip-flopping, I point at the hats in his hand. He stares. He says something else, mouth moving fast. I point at my ears. My swim bladder sinks to the floor, I check the front door but can't make out anything in the street, screaming people or no, and the guy says something else.

I look at the lockbox. I have a plan--I've had a plan since last time, even though I'm still paranoid about flipping the sign to "closed" whenever I'm the last one in the store--I can just take his money and set it on the shelf beside the lockbox.

The guy's saying something else, mouth wide, he's glaring now with thinned eyes for sure and teeth poking out behind his lips and I just sign, "I can't hear" close to my chest and my stomach flip-flops over and over and another rice shirt slips off the counter so that's bad so I bend down to grab it.

I glance up again, and another guy's swimming over. I blink. He says something. The yellow-green guy twists, and they're both moving their mouths, talking too quietly for hardly any vibrations to reach me. The second guy, orange-yellow, half the fins on one arm torn in tatters, points around the store and motions to me and my fingers go tap-tap-tap-tap and my back fins quiver.

The yellow-green guy says something loudly, and tosses some yurees at the counter. I jump, and he rushes to the exit with the hats, and I stare, and orange-yellow guy picks up round sponges that fell to the floor, swims up to the counter and sets them neatly in a pile, amidst the spray of thin sponges that landed haphazardly.

The orange-yellow guy flashes his teeth at me.

"I can't hear," I sign, and dumbly remember he wouldn't know signing, nobody outside my family knows that, and sorta the group also, so what am I signing it for? I point to my ears.

He nods, flashes his teeth again, waves, and paddles slowly back to an aisle of shelves.

The shelves and cubbies block most of my view of the street but my heart shakes because a big crowd might just be approaching our store, ready to come in or laugh about our sign, so I dart over the counter, leaving the yurees and the shirts all there, swim over the tables and my wake disturbs neat folds of rice shirts, wobbles the hanging baby socks on the ceiling.

I flip the curly-cue wooden sign hung on the door from the front side that says "open!" in neon pink to the back side that says "closed" in bright red, I twist the knob to lock the deadbolt, but wait, at least the orange-yellow guy is still in the aisles so I untwist it.

Through the unpainted front of the store, a few clusters of people swim by and the small of my back itches so I retreat.

I go back to the checkout counter, on my way I refold the three shirts on a table I messed up in my dash to the door. I pluck up thin and round sponges--dull brown in age--from the counter by as little contact to my fingers as possible. I put them on the shelf by my knee, behind the wood lock box. My brain bounces between rice shirts and the front door; I shouldn't start hanging rice shirts over the door with customers still inside, I hover higher in the water and bend my fingers back and forth, wiggle out my ankle fins.

Someone could come inside even though the sign says "closed," someone could scream through the glass and scare the customers, glare at me. Skin prickling, I swim around and check the aisles, swim along the roof; the orange-yellow guy is browsing kitchen bowls and mixing tools, there's a woman with a kid looking at Wrass's cubby of wooden figurines. Neither of them notice me casually making a round of the store, or if they do, I don't notice that they notice me.

I go back to waiting behind the checkout counter, heart thumping, swim bladder like a stone-knocked shark who can't swim a horizontal line. I keep paddling to stay off the floor; I keep paddling to avoid floating to the ceiling.

The woman (mum?) and her kid and the orange-yellow guy all come up to the checkout counter at the same time. The woman gives me a teeth-showing that lasts the whole time she sets a pair of Wrass's figurines (some long-legged birds) on the counter, and pulls out the money for it from her seashell decorated bag, and sets that on the counter, and waits for me to take it and put it on the shelf, and waits for me to give her back a thin sponge (a dull brown one the yellow-green guy threw) for change since she paid four-point-five and only had to pay four, and waves to the orange-yellow guy, and gives both figurines to her staring-at-me kid, and tugs the staring-at-me kid with her to the door.

I wriggle in discomfort after she leaves, the sight of her white teeth has embedded itself in the back of my eyes.

The guy sets nothing on the counter. He just comes up and mimics something with his hands. I stare. He's vaguely signing about doing something quickly, one hand slashing back and forth, but he doesn't know signing so it makes no sense for him to sign about doing a thing quickly, so...

Oh. He's asking for something to write with. I nod, and swim to the middle door, but stop--this isn't like letting a stranger into the lockbox again, is it? Something I shouldn't do? This isn't on the list of important things I should apparently prioritize, right?

I glance over my shoulder, but he's just waiting there, glancing at the ceiling, and I don't think he can steal all our money just by me giving him something to write with, so I sneak through the middle door and grab the pencil from a shelf and the roll of sticky price tags; he can write on the used-up, stickerless portion of the roll.

I flutter back to the counter. I set the pencil and roll in front of him. He nods, and starts scribbling. I wait. I pretend to study the bare shelves under the counter. He slides the roll toward me, and I tilt my head to read it.

"That guy was saying stuff about the things written on your store sign out front. And started calling you some of those things, after saying you were faking it. Just, thought you might want to check out your store's sign, it sounded like someone's damaged it or defaced it."

I pick up the pencil, carefully, like the essence of his skin has somehow melded to the wood and now I'm touching it. I write back, "I know. My brother's boyfriend left to get paint and I'm closing the store," I slide the roll towards him so he can read it, set the pencil down. I wipe my hand inside one of the bare shelves, like I'm rearranging something, scrubbing off the essence of his skin.

He reads it, and glances sharply up at me. "So the stuff he was saying is true?" he writes back, extra large.

"What?" I cram into the corner, paddling to keep from floating to the ceiling, unable to fit "stuff" in there too.

He reads it, shakes his head. He waves a hand, still shaking his head, and swims away. I tilt my head after him but he just swims out the front door and doesn't look back.

I float frozen until the door swings shut, and the guy swims away, and the street outside the front door clears of friend clusters. Then I grab the rice shirts to my torso and dart to the front door and twist the knob to lock it and my insides calm slightly but I start hanging rice shirts from the shelves and cubbies along the store's front wall to cover the door and window spaces where the glass isn't painted opaque then I go to the back room, leave the pencil and the price tags on the shelf and I scrub my fingers on the corner of the door before it shuts and lie on the floor in the middle of the room, taking careful, slow breaths, and scrub my hands on the edge of my gray shirt, and I take careful, slow breaths, I float to the ceiling too tired to keep myself down and lie there with my face right up against the dark glass.