When We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel

Kit recalls a morning when she was seven. She and Dylan had spent the night on the beach. Josie was supposed to join them but hadn’t. Kit talks Dylan into showing her how to surf. When Josie joins them, she is devastated that Dylan taught Kit but not her and uncharacteristically cries until Dylan agrees to show her, too.

Kit prepares to surf at Piha. She thinks back on Dylan and recalls how much he smoked marijuana and drank around her and Josie. She thought at the time it was fun, but now sees it was inappropriate. As she surfs, Kit remembers what life had been like after the earthquake. Her mother rented a small apartment in a bad neighborhood in Salinas for them and worked at restaurants. Her mother was gone constantly, and Josie went out with her many boyfriends, so Kit spent a lot of time alone. She cooked and watched television until she could afford a computer and met friends over Prodigy, an online service that existed from 1984 to 2001. It was her Prodigy friends who convinced her to follow a path into medicine and helped her fill out college applications.