In the morning, Parro comes in through the box maze by himself and disappears into the storefront without a word even though the storefront isn't open yet.

I glance back to the box maze, but Ange doesn't show up. So I go back to checking the boxes, I don't know what that's about, I don't know what Parro coming in wordlessly and by himself is about; I go back to checking the boxes for changed prices, but all the wooden bed posts, rice shirts and baby socks match the numbers from last month.

Then Parro comes back through the middle door with Ange and our parents. I lower a box to the floor. And stare at them. I bend my fingers back and forth; I haven't seen Mum and Da for years since the surface gives me light-headaches so I don't exactly visit, and they're always busy with the rice paddies and the trees and the business so they don't exactly visit--until now.

But they are the same as always. Simple white clothes, Mum's squarish jaw and Da's roundish one, his expression droopy and her eyes sorta dull. Her big fin movements when her mouth vibrates, Da's way of talking where his arms and shoulders fidget like he doesn't know he's doing it.

Parro motions around the back room, Mum and Da look around at everything; our boxes on the shelves, the boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling for the box maze, the (sort of) bare floor (there's lots of box lids laying around right now from me checking prices and box contents). Mum shows her teeth at me. I slowly wave, what do I say, hi Mum, I haven't seen you for years--but she knows that too, obviously. Or, hi mum, you look like you haven't changed--have I not changed either?

Da says something aloud, his little red arm fins fidgeting, and Ange answers, vibrations pulsing through the room. My swim bladder starts floating me up to the ceiling so I lean against the stiff shelves and hold a hand under one, fist hidden from Mum and Da's view.

Mum always used to say the kids at school would try to make fun of me for accidentally floating or sinking. My heart jitters, I hide my hand further behind my back, she better not ask if the customers or neighbors here make fun of me for that, I don't know if they do.

I don't even know if the neighbors know my name; I don't know theirs, there's a family with one kid who always has his fins painted red even though when it flakes off his black-blue skin it looks odd, there's a trio who keep trying to grow anemones on their roof, the people in the house across the street from ours also have their store across from ours, I've seen them maybe twice on the short little swim down the hill from our houses to the businesses, but they're the "delights of the valleys" people, whatever delights those are.

What if the neighbors do know my name and secretly hate me? My skin prickles and my swim bladder tries floating to the ceiling; maybe the anemone growers catch me outside sometimes, paddling to keep myself from sinking. Maybe the neighbors across the street laughed at me putting up the new store sign, tiny girl who couldn't even keep herself afloat.

I curl my hand behind my back, hooked under the shelf, but my torso starts floating belly up so I have to paddle my ankle fins to keep myself upright and near the floor. With my foot, I scoot the box on the floor sideways a bit so it hides my ankles from sight.

Parro, Ange and our parents keep talking by the middle door, clustered close, not looking at me, but what if--

My eyes widen at the shelf by Mum's head. The roll of price tags sits there, it's still there, the yellow pencil conversation between me and that orange-yellow guy from two weeks ago. My heart goes from jitters to jangles, my right arm twitches and nearly dislodges my hand hooked under the shelf.

So I switch hands, fast, but then my right arm twitches at my side and Mum looks over, eyes half-lidded. "Nudibranc," she signs, showing her teeth. "Come on over here, how have you been?"

My brain wipes itself clean of coherence.

I blink.

My heart jangles, my arm twitches, that price tag roll how do I hide it before Mum or Da see it and ask, everyone's staring at me, my swim bladder plummets and my heels dig into the floor.

"Okay," I sign. And paddle over, swim bladder dragging me down.

"That's great!" Mum signs.

Da's mouth vibrates and Mum says something to him.

I stop in the empty space between Parro and Ange, right in between them, Parro keeps watching me, my right arm twitches, I try to quiver my back fins without anybody noticing, my heels dig into the glass.

Da says something to Ange and he says something back. I flick my gaze between them, I flick my gaze at the roll of price tags, my heart jangles slightly slower because the part with the written conversation faces toward the wall, away from Mum's head.

Da and Mum and Ange and Parro keep talking, Parro keeps glancing at me here on the floor and it makes my skin itch. That roll of price tags keeps dragging me back to it, all it would take is for Mum to turn it around a little bit, I don't know why she'd reach over and do that, but that flimsy defense (that she has no clear reason to twist around and turn the roll of price tags) doesn't help my topsy-turvy inwards.

"I'm going to put stuff out in the store," I sign, fingers darting. I bolt off to a shelf, scan the labels while my jangling heart makes the letters spike up and down to near unreadable-ness, I grab a box of--of--of Wrass's figurines, that cubby's basically empty so, I bolt back to the middle door and squeeze between Ange and Mum and grab the pencil and the roll of price tags and hide those between my wrist fins and the box. I push through the middle door into the store and my heart leaps too late because is the store's open or not but no one's waiting at the checkout counter my heart calms back to a jangle even if there were someone waiting I could open the door up and tell Parro or Ange.

I shake out my legs, it's fine, I swim over the tables and aisles and my heart calms to slower than a jangle and my right arm's twitching slows and the aisles and shelves cover me from the middle door and I roll out my neck and tap my fingers to the box and I set everything down on the floor below Wrass's cubby of wooden figurines and I shake out my legs and tense up all the muscles in my back it's FINE.

***

The waxy paper roll holds price tag stickers, to peel off and stick to shelves or cubbies. I've pulled off approximately a third of the price tag stickers which leaves a long strip of blank waxy paper--this is where I wrote in yellow pencil to some guy a couple weeks ago. Now, I tear the paper right between the conversation and the stickers. It leaves an edge as jagged as a ridged scallop shell, except made of flimsy paper.

I stuff the written-on portion into the bottom of Wrass's figurine box. Then I carry the roll of price stickers and the pencil up to the cubby, like I need to use them, even though I don't--the price of the figurines hasn't changed. Wait. It hasn't changed. Obviously it hasn't; I knew that back in the back room, oh no I grabbed these things and didn't need them, what if someone notices and asks what I was doing with them since I didn't need them? Why didn't I think this through until now? I dart down to the floor, heart jittery. I scan around the shelves and aisles, I go around the store for something I can stick a price tag to so I have proof that I needed to grab the roll of price tags when I left the back room.

By a shelf of shorts, I halt. The price tag's falling off the shelf. The price hasn't changed, but the price tag's falling off. So I scribble out a new one--four-point-five yurees for a pair of shorts--and stick it over the old one, my handwriting's lopsided but I leave it like that, there, I used the price tags and pencil for something, my jittery heart slows a little but keeps being jittery about the lopsided handwriting but I leave it it's FINE.

I paddle back to the box of Wrass's figurines, and lodge the price tag roll and pencil under one corner of the box so they don't bob away. Then I delicately collect handfuls of Wrass's figurines, balanced in my left hand and on my wrist, and paddle up to the shelf puttied high on the wall.

We only have three figurines still on display here. Something like a bony coral structure, then an estuary bird, and a thin eel.

I shift these three to the side of the shelf, and set my handful of figurines beside them. I bring up another handful, and another, and arrange the figurines from shortest to tallest. Stubby bush and a tiny nautilus close to the front; bird with spread wings and a stripey shark near the back.

I bring up another handful, slowly. The fan coral goes in the middle. I check the middle door; nothing's moved, are they still just beside the door, talking? I put the spiral-snail figurine near the back, even though that leaves only the tip of the shell visible, and none of the snail. Another estuary bird--with a curved neck--goes on the opposite side of the shelf as the first estuary bird.

I go back to the floor, slowly. Take another handful of figurines up, almost emptying Wrass's box, except the shelf has no space for any more wooden figurines. I glance at the door; are they still talking? Have they moved? Can I get back inside without bumping into Mum or Ange, or poking Mum in the back to ask her to move?

How do I keep slowly pretending to stay busy in case someone comes into the storefront and sees me, how do I stay busy so I don't have to bump into Mum or Ange?

I stare at the door, my swim bladder slowly weighing me down, figurines in my arm. Why am I asking? Of course they're still talking, Ange does see Mum and Da every other month but Parro hasn't seen them for at least a year and I...

I...

It hasn't been ten years. Not a whole decade. But it's been close. The last time I saw Mum and Da, it was a few years after Parro, Ange, and I moved to this house on the outskirts of the Teardrops. The last time I saw Mum and Da, us three all went up to visit on the day of my birthday, but I hadn't gone near the surface for so long that just the light of the moons made my eyes pound and my skull ache more than I ever remembered them doing.

So I didn't eat anything the whole day, and I opened gifts in a haze, and we went back home well before dawn, and at home I finally processed that Wrass gave me a giant box of kelp cakes and Mum and Da gave me a bunch of clothes and a blanket and those sleep masks I always wore but stopped needing when we left the surface, then Parro and Ange gave me their gifts at home--two free days off working in the store, and a shirt with a colorful spiral logo on it but missing the rock band's name so I never knew what band it was from but I still liked it, then they baked a cake for me and did a happy birthday dance upside down on the ceiling.

The last time I saw Mum and Da was on my birthday almost eight years ago.

And they're busy talking to Parro and Ange in the back room of the store and I ran away to put things in the store and hide the price tag roll.

I sink to the floor, elbow bumping Wrass's box, left hand holding figurines that don't fit on the cubby.

Numbly, I stare at the tall side of a shelf. The grains of wood run like threads down to the glass floor, reflected weakly. I slump against Wrass's box, but it slips out from under me, sliding away, so I catch myself on my twitching hand. A figurine of a pufferfish rolls off my left wrist, across my lap, to the floor. It stops, upside down on the glass.

I think I should be sad about this.

Sitting upright, I pick up the pufferfish, unharmed but a little dizzy, and pull the box closer. I set the wooden pufferfish in the box. I set the other figurines on my arm back in the box, wholly covering up the paper with my yellow pencil conversation.

Shouldn't I be sad it's been eight years?

Of course, Da never really talked to me, he was always too busy with the trees and the store and teaching Wrass about the trees and the store.

But Mum...she taught the whole family (minus Da) signing because of me, taught it to herself from a bunch of books beside her weaving station. She helped me with homework and went to the school before each year to make sure the teachers there could teach me in writing and basic signing because I couldn't hear, and organized my free periods in the library so I could read and also take books home with me.

So shouldn't I miss her?

I float up from the floor, shut the figurine box but I leave it there. Slowly, I go around the store, checking the price tags, but I haven't checked all of the shipment from a few days ago yet for changed prices so I'm really wasting time doing this.

But I don't want to paddle through the door and bump into Mum or meet her gaze when I don't think I've missed her for most of eight years. She might figure out I'm guilty from my face. She might figure out I'm anxious to see her again, instead of dancing with excitement. (Why haven't I missed her? I think I should've missed her.)

And I don't want to go bump into her, meet her gaze, because--Mum, what if she hasn't missed me either?