I know when the girl flutters in the door that I'm screwed. Her red-orange spinal fins, the way her eyes curl half-lidded, her thick fingers unfolding from the inside of her flippers.

I drop the whole bundle of price tags and my pencil dances a jig in mid-water since it hasn't gotten the memo that I dropped the whole bundle of price tags--curling over, I grab them from the bumpy floor.

The water vibrates. I peer through the corner of my eye. The girl with the red-orange spinal fins is speaking; I freeze up, but wait, Parro's swimming through the back door and the water vibrates from him, a greeting and a laugh. The girl laughs back.

I stand upright. I scribble numbers on the price tag, stick it sticky-end first to the shelf for Da's wooden bedposts, weighed down with iron nuggets in the feet, I think he got the iron nuggets from one of his brother's friends living in the estuary. Mum once said the estuary had a big iron mine beside it, and Da's brother works there I think.

I swim to the shelf with the hats Mum made, so I can peer over the top at Parro and the girl, talking, waving their fins, eyes going big then shrinking, flat noses on smooth skin twitching, white teeth flashing. I wonder what they say. No I don't. They're probably talking about...I don't know.

I scribble yellow numbers with the pencil on the black price tags and stick them sticky-end first to the shelf beneath the hats. Three yurees for a hat, unless the customer buys five, then it's only thirteen yurees.

Back in school, before Mum pulled me out to learn the cloth business, I read tons of books. I read all the biology and neurology books in the library, but nobody knows, since they never ask, and the neurology of my mind would get so confused and twisted up on how to explain it--I read books, to understand people, but really all I learned is I don't understand people and they like to talk about survival stuff. Money. Dangerous water currents. Earthquakes. Food. People other people know. Working.

I stick price tags on the shelves for the hats, Parro and the girl with red-orange fins talk, but does the girl look bored? Is Parro showing more smiley-teeth than she is? Would the girl like to talk about something else instead, like how the masters learned to craft glass teardrops in the first place, how the city in the deep even came to be? Would she like to hear about the unrealistic idea I have to train jellyfish to carry the cargo, So Wrass or Ange don't have to spend a day each month doing it?

The girl and Parro buzz, they laugh, I go to put sticky price tags on the baby shirts, gloves, wooden storage chests. The girl buys a hat, but not the ones I just priced, she buys one for three-point-five yurees, with a pointy top.

Then she leaves. I peer at her from the corner of my eyes. Yes, I am screwed, this girl with the red-orange spinal fins has fluttered open my heart, somehow.

***

The biology books never discussed this: how to fall in love. How not to. Parro and Ange fell in love. My parents did. Wrass did, twice, I don't know what happened to either boy after that.

I fall in love all the time. I lie in bed--soft quilts tucked under all the corners except one, bed posts weighed down by iron nuggets--and obsess over Girl with the Red-orange Fins, just like four days ago last week, I obsessed over Girl with the Pink Buttoned Shirt, just like three weeks ago I obsessed over You-Halfway-Transitioned-to-Girl with the fluid movements.

I fall in love all the time, and nobody notices, because why would I, who can't hear, who doesn't think right, fall in love with anyone?

I know what people say about me; or I don't, but I know what glares look like, iffy looks, I know why vibrations go soft when I pass by in the travelways. I know people recognize me, that's not hard to figure out.

Mum and Da used to work the wood chopping business together, before she got interested in rice weaving; she could carry twice as much wood as him. Same with about every other Mum and Da in the city. I...well, Parro could carry more wood than me, same with Ange.

Girl-too-small-to-be-a-girl. Girl who can't hear. Girl living with Parro and Ange in the shop in the twilight zone, so she can see.

I know what people say about me.

I go to the travelways in the city, the upper reaches, when Parro and Ange are out on the weekends. It's not like anyone can get lost in the travelways anyway, too many chaotic vibrations, too many rivers of taste, too many disturbed currents of so many people.

I go there to get lost in the overwhelming wash of sensations. Not that Parro, Ange, anyone else would understand that's why. I want to get lost, I don't want to feel so...so found anymore. I'm sick of falling in love.

But usually, the chaotic vibrations, the clashing tastes of metal and chemical cleaner and roasted fish, they get under my skin and make my head ache. So I just go home again, and lie in bed.