I awake to the sunlight pouring in from the window, its rays casting the night enclosure in a pale, shimmery yellow.

Every morning, I wake up praying for a thunderstorm. The trainers have no choice but to cancel a performance when the weather is bad, but judging from the cloudless sky, there will be no storm today.

I sigh, reluctant to shift my gaze from the window. It is this window that Crystal and I used to longingly peer out of, desperate to catch glimpses of the world beyond our own. But there is nothing outside of it, just a patch of gray concrete and a tall, white wall we could never see behind.

I spend the morning in a world of my own, ignoring the other girls as we wait for the guests. I open and close my compact mirror repeatedly, catching glimpses of my anxious reflection.

"Aura?"

I look up to see Jewel watching me from the ledge of the pool, her lips pulled into a delicate frown. "Are you all right?" she asks. "You seem tense. Are you still worried about what Muriel said?"

I slam the compact shut, forcing myself to relax my features and give her an easy smile. "No, I'm fine. I just didn't get much sleep last night." It kills me to have to lie to her, but Reece was right about one thing. Telling the girls of my plan would only complicate things. "Are you okay?" I ask.

She lets out a small puff of air from the corner of her mouth. "I don't know," she says, swirling her fingers along the surface of the water. "I just keep thinking about how we're going to get out of this place. Or what the hell we're going to do once we're actually on the other side."

I bite the inside of my cheek, guilt tugging at my stomach. I tell myself over and over that keeping her in the dark is the right thing to do. I know Jewel, and if I were to tell her I'm escaping first, there's no way she'd just nod in agreement.

"We'll figure it out," I say.

"Yeah," she says in an easy voice, but there is a flash of suspicion behind her eyes. She hesitates, looking as though she wants to say something more when she notices the guests. After a final glance, she pushes herself away from the ledge and half-turns to face them, her smile going up like a mask.

At one, Valerie treats the guests who come to gawk at us with a wondrous show. The crowd around us gasp and cheer, delighted when she sends us spinning with a few magical waves and flicks.

The rest of the day goes just as smoothly, though the more time I spend observing Muriel Two, the more I want to leave her behind. I'm not stupid enough to think she's the problem, but her long, blonde hair reminds me too much of Crystal, her name of Muriel, and every time I look at her, every time she speaks, it's as though Marine World is taunting me.

As the day drags on, I find myself asking the kind of questions I'll never have the answers to. What is it that keeps her subservient? What makes her want to submit when I want to rebel? Fear? The uncertainty of our future outside of these glass walls? Or the impossible–that perhaps she enjoys it here; that she thinks of Marine World as home.

Later in the evening, once the park has closed, I use the treadmill as usual, running until I feel as though my legs might give way beneath me. I keep trying to prepare myself for what's to come, but I don't know what's to come, and that's what scares me the most. The uncertainty, the unknown that accompanies freedom. The terrifying notion that maybe my freedom will only make things worse.

Once I've showered and climbed into bed, I open my dictionary, skimming through pages of words I have yet to learn the meaning of. I flick to the F section, landing on a word I often find myself lingering at: Freedom.

"I doubt Marine World gave you that," says a familiar voice.

I look up to find Reece leaning against the doorway, his thick arms folded and his eyes curiously fixed on mine. There is a part of me that is still reluctant to trust him, and I hesitate over whether to tell him the truth.

He cocks an eyebrow as if able to read my mind. "You don't trust me, do you?"

"I'll trust you once you get me out of here," I say, but even that's a lie.

A small half-smile graces his lips. "You tried to kill me," he reminds me. "If anybody should have trust issues, it's me."

I simply nod at the rucksack slung across his shoulder. "What's in the bag?"

His eyes brighten for the first time. He closes the distance between us before reaching into the rucksack and pulling out a few of the items. "A disguise. You and Muriel are going to want to change your appearance as much as possible on Saturday." He shows me a pair of scissors before placing them on the bed. "Maybe cut some of your hair off so it's not so long."

I run my fingers through my waist-length hair, watching as he pulls out two sets of Marine World employee outfits. My hair's been this way for as long as I can remember, and the thought of cutting it is almost as daunting as the thought of leaving my tail behind.

Next, he pulls out a little black box, opening it up to reveal two clear circles with dark brown irises in the middle. "These are contact lenses," he says. "I have a pair for Muriel too. They're going to change your eye color to a more natural dark brown. I'll show you how to put them in another time."

I clutch my book between my fingers, trying to envision what freedom will feel like, but it's a concept too foreign for me to wrap my head around. "It was a present from Alison," I say, closing the dictionary before glancing at the cover. "I think she got tired of me asking her what things meant all of the time, so one day, after the park closed, she gave it to me. Told me to keep it hidden." I look up to see Reece watching me, his arms folded across his chest.

"You cared about her, didn't you?" he asks.

I look at the book again before nodding. "She had a kindness I've never found in the others. A way of making me feel like–" I stop, unsure of how to put my feelings into words.

"Like what?" Reece presses, positioning himself next to me.

"I don't know," I say. "Like I mattered, I guess." I glance at him to see he's watching me carefully, his eyes carefully skimming my features.

After a long silence, he begins to explain his plan for Saturday, a conversation that has me on the edge of my seat. I'm supposed to make it through the park and onto the monorail, which will take me to a parking lot. Once there, I'll head to row C, where a car will be waiting to take me to a motel. But instead of feeling hopeful at the thought of escape, I feel overwhelmed, like maybe I can't do this, after all. I grab my compact mirror from the bedside table, running my fingers along its jewels.

"You hold that a lot, you know," Reece says, nodding at the compact mirror. "Who gave it to you?"

"My mother," I say after a lengthy silence, opening the mirror to study my anxious reflection. "You know, it's strange, but I spent near enough every day with her growing up, and now I can barely remember what she looks like."

Something flickers across Reece's features. "Aura–"

"I know she wasn't my real mother," I say, before he can speak, "but she was the closest thing I've ever had to one."

Reece is quiet for a moment. "What was her name?"

"Teresa." Things fall silent again as he studies the mirror. "Say it."

He looks up, his eyebrow raised into a perfect arch. "Say what?"

"Whatever it is you're stopping yourself from saying," I reply, studying his face with the same precision he is studying mine with.

He shrugs slightly, his gaze intense. "I never met Teresa," he says, "but I know she wasn't a mother to you, Aura. She was just a woman employed to look after you until you were old enough for the enclosure."

I slam shut the compact mirror, causing him to jerk his head. "You're wrong," I say, something unfamiliar swirling within me: a mix of pain, and longing, and denial all rolled into one. "She loved me. She loved me how mothers are supposed to love their children, and I know she couldn't have left me without a good reason."

Reece is quiet, too quiet, and I wonder what it is he is thinking in this very moment. Perhaps that I'm delusional, that I don't understand humans as well as he does. But if so, he's wrong. This year spent watching them has made me understand them better than I ever wanted to.

"The pills they give you," he says after a while, "you need to stop taking them. They're all kinds of anti-depressants. The side effects can be amnesia or haziness and apparently they've been dosing you for years. That might be why you can't remember as well."

I jerk my head up, both angered and relieved by his confession. I'd spent countless nights wondering what was happening to my mind; things had always felt fragmented, like the way the sunlight pools on the water's surface–little shimmers of light here and there, with dark, clouded spaces in between.

If what Reece is saying is true, it is because Marine World tried to numb the memories they deem insignificant to my role as a mermaid: the people I have loved, the ones I have lost, the trainers who I grew to think of as family. They are the very things that shape who I am, and Marine World tried to take them from me.

Nausea begins to tear through my stomach. There is something sickening about the fact my mind has been tampered with; it is the one place I assumed Marine World couldn't reach.

"I stopped taking them after Muriel disappeared," I admit, my voice barely audible. "They made me numb, like I couldn't feel anything, but I didn't want that. I want to think of the times Muriel and I had before she disappeared and be able to feel them."

Reece's eyebrows furrow, an action that forces his long, dark lashes to bend into his brow bone. "Muriel?"

My chest tightens. It seems the only place Muriel exists now is in my memory. "She was my old enclosure mate," I say, clasping my hands together. "I woke up one day and she was gone."

"What happened?" he asks.

I force myself to think back to that night, a strange shudder running through my body. "I don't really know."

Noticing my change in demeanor, Reece reaches out and places his fingertips under the groove of my chin, tilting my head to look at him. "That's not going to happen to you," he says. "We're getting you out."

"But not the others," I say, unable to help myself.

"Not yet," Reece replies. Slowly, he drops his hand and gets to his feet before making his way to the door.

"The world out there," I say suddenly, causing him to stop and turn on his heel. "Is it really how Marine World describes? Hard? Cruel?"

Reece stares back for a moment, studying me in a way that sends a flurry of nerves to the pit of my stomach. "Sometimes," he says, his mouth tilted into what could one day become a smile, "but if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth living," and with that, he closes the door behind him.

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