I can't sleep tonight. I think Mum and Da must just be waking up; since they live at the surface, they wake up when the stars come out. Da's probably eating breakfast, reading some story about some place halfway across the ocean having another insurrection. Ma's probably at her weaving station--half above water, so the water currents don't tangle the threads, half underwater, so she can breathe--putting together a shirt or something. Wrass is probably sleeping late, like always, but that means she'll be awake late, when Ange goes up to the surface tomorrow.

I can't sleep tonight. But it's got nothing to do with anybody else. I lie, In this bed, this little bedroom painted estuary green, and cannot sleep. The dark always tricks my thoughts into going to dark places too; one night I couldn't fall asleep because I replayed myself in year four at school playing in the tunnels and throwing a rock at a kid who found my hiding spot. I don't know why I threw a rock at him. Why did I ever do that? Again, I replay the scene in my head, re-make it so he kicked me first, which is why I threw a rock. Or maybe I threw the rock and it missed, so I didn't get scared that the teacher would put me in time-out. Or maybe I saw his shadow coming, and reacted more calmly when he found me.

The night drags my thoughts into the dark, I turn and curl up under the quilts, I don't want to think about dark thoughts though. No pain, no shameful stories.

What if I had finished school?

What if I did know about falling in love?

I could show my cave to a friend and gush about the shells; except, wouldn't she just think I'm weird?

Maybe I would like the Squid Trumpets, if I could hear them. Maybe I'd like the color of the sky, if the sun's brightness didn't sear my senses so badly.

But no, nope, wherever I go, I'll be the deaf girl overly frustrated with price tags. The girl who lets total strangers have the key to the lockbox. I'll be stuck doing inventory forever, since I'm not good enough to join any club or make something with my own hands or talk to strangers and turn them into friends who bring brittle cookies to my place just for fun.

I don't want to think about pain though.

Maybe, I could...swim far away. Grow a garden of underwater carrots. But gardening requires weeding and checking for burrowing beetles and digging up the carrots and that sounds worse than dull inventory, counting boxes and writing up price tags.

So maybe I could...

I don't know. I push the corner of the quilt up and down my cheek; it touches my ear and distracts me, it scratches my neck and distracts me, I leave my face exposed and the water caresses it too cold.

I could plan Parro an exciting birthday party with Ange. For two weeks from now. I could string seagrass garlands around the front room, answer the door for all their friends, teach Hamme more signing words than "hi" and "I insist" and "thank you."

Assuming Hamme isn't busy talking to Sta and Anemon and Parro the whole time.

I don't know.

I turn and curl under the quilts, my fins rub wrong on the fabric, the water's under the fabric's too warm, my hip bones ache from lying down for too long.

I can't fall asleep tonight.

***

I go on a late-night swim. In my gray pajamas. I sneak out the door, I take kelp cakes to snack on, I follow the winding street of glass teardrops, anchored on all their four corners by waxy ropes to the sea floor. I pass glass houses painted blue from the inside, illuminated by lantern fish flicking through the street. I pass glass houses painted with yellow and pink stripes, the colors painfully bright. The thrum of the ocean and the city down below vibrates up the seafloor, rocks the sleeping people in their beds.

I swim down to the Teardrops, to lose myself in the travelways, the mill of people whirling all through the night. Only, halfway there, I take stock of my gray pajamas, my bleary eyes, and I lose the craving for the clamoring crowds; I'd just self-consciously hug my clothes and check for staring eyes then come back home because my nerves have bubbled over and my skin started prickling with embarrassed heat and I still wouldn't sleep.

I swim up out of the winding street, parting pockets of lanternfish with my fins, fingers flattened to my palms. Then I swim aimlessly, kicking my legs as one, arms loose by my sides, gills along my neck working, swim bladder floating me subtly higher. The teardrops dwindle below me, lanternfish bobbing between them. Late at night, the open sea closes around me, dark.

I open my mouth and scream. I think. Vibrations catch and waver in my throat, the back of my mouth.

Then I get self-conscious like probably somebody's snuck up behind me or maybe I'm too loud and all the people in the dwindled teardrops have woken up, wincing at the horrible sound coming from somewhere outside, who is out there screaming?

I shut my mouth. I just float there. I open my mouth and scream again, the vibrations waver a little softer in my throat, I think, surely the water wavers with the sound too but I can't stretch a fin far enough away to catch it like I did when tracking the source of the cave, or like every time I pick up movement from outside a door.

I shut my mouth. I roll out my neck, I check over my shoulder and above my head and beneath my feet then I do a roll upside down then I swim back home, fingers flat on my palms, the fins on my wrists spread forward, wide feet and ankle fins kicking.