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and fierce and incredibly loyal, mostly to each other. He told her that they are nocturnal, working the streets and the bars by the Interstate, pleasing men. With that he hocked a loogie and spat over the edge of the tracks. Wendi couldn’t hear it hit the water below, but she watched it fall like a dirty, snotty falling star.
    Pan didn’t speak for a moment, but sensing Wendi’s impatience, began again. “There are six Mermaids now living inthat house, though the number ebbs and flows like the dirty water. Now it’s Siren, the leader, Undine, Melusine, Naiad, Ningyo, and Kelpie. They are, as I said, most loyal to each other, sharing their earnings to make the rent on the houseboat and filling it with as much finery as they can. Before you think them shallow and materialistic, you should know how hard they work for every stitch of dress, and they steal their makeup from the drugstore—but that’s another story. The Mermaids work harder than anyone I’ve ever met, and are the most creative too. They dumpster at the university behind the art building, finding bolts of fabric and rolls of ribbon, which they transform into curtains for each window on the little house and string like billowing walls to create private sleeping caverns in the little attic.”
    Pan didn’t tell Wendi about the Mermaids’ dirty little secret, but I guess he spared her ours too. He didn’t mention the liquor bottles thrown into the river from the attic window, the SOS message of dirty needles. Pan didn’t know it, but Wendi would figure out soon enough that the Crocodile was always after them. The Mermaids liked to think that the Crocodile was their friend, that they had tamed it, and it protected them against their work, against those men. The Mermaids were always making bargains and deals, but the Crocodile always took their money and swam away, leaving them dazed and confused. After all, heroin is heroin no matter what you call it. You can’t domesticate a monster.
    The Mermaids are our biggest allies, but they are separatefrom us. Pan makes sure of that. For all of his love of fluidity, there are lines he just won’t let be crossed. A couple of years ago, right after I came to Neverland, there was a big fight between us and the Mermaids. It was the kind of fight that almost ruined everything about our alliance. Naiad broke some unwritten rule and asked Pan for his cuff. Instead of refusing her respectfully, he laughed, and she left Neverland in tears.
    Naiad had been so good in the way that she had approached him. All winter, she’d been at Neverland, learning how to hold the pigeons and battle with us bois. She knew how to black boots, and her knees were as calloused as ours. She wore old ripped band shirts and a short skirt with her combat boots. Naiad was a femme, but a boi too, and she wanted to leave the Lagoon and become Pan’s boi. All winter, he led Naiad on, letting her battle and dumpster with us. We saw her as one of us, but everything changed the night that she was alone with Pan, us bois in our hammocks listening in. Siren later told me that Naiad had prepared for this moment for months, talked of nothing else. The other Mermaids knew that she wanted to be a lost boi, secure in her place under Pan’s boot.
    Pan must have known what was coming, but he was going to make her come out and say it. He cleared his throat.
    â€œYou wanted to speak with me?”
    â€œYes, Sir,” Naiad replied firmly.
    Silence.
    â€œSir, all winter I have been with your bois, learning the way you like your coffee and how you prefer your boots done. I can hold my own in a battle as well as any boi. Sir, all I want is to join your pack, to be one of your lost bois.”
    We heard a thud that could only be a boi falling to her knees, and then … the horrible sound of Pan’s cruellest laugh. Maybe at first he thought that Naiad was playing, but when she fell to her knees, he