It was pretty clear that some kind of disaster had happened here. The back of Signor Ferrando's truck was open, and two boxes of peaches had broken, spilling their contents out onto the cobbled street. This had been a mess to start with, and had only been made worse as people slipped or tripped on the scattered fruit. Mixed with the peaches were a couple of dozen broken bonito fish, the smashed remains of a bass, and a bucket's worth of sardines, which had fallen from the overturned Pescheria cart not far away. The cart had come free from Alberto's bicycle, and one of the wheels had broken off.

Alberto himself was sitting on a barrel a couple of metres away, arms folded across his chest, sullenly silent as Signor Ferrando lectured him for his carelessness. He was waiting for Massimo.

It didn't take long for the fisherman to arrive – indeed, it seemed that every time Alberto messed up the whole town knew within minutes. By now, Alberto knew better than to ask am I fired. Instead, his instinct was to defend himself.

"It wasn't my fault!" he said, jumping to his feet. "I was just doing the deliveries and he came out of the side street from nowhere!"

"I honked the horn!" Signor Ferrando replied. "You would have heard me if you weren't listening to that nonsense!" he pointed to the wreckage of Alberto's radio, then stormed past him to wave a finger under Massimo's nose. "You owe me for the peaches, Marcovaldo!"

"Of course. I will pay you with the money I get for the sale of the fish," Massimo replied calmly, but with unmistakable sarcasm.

Ferrando paused and looked at the fish in the street. Those that weren't broken were filthy, and the neighbourhood's cats, both pets and strays, were already moving in to help themselves. The point was made.

"I don't know why you keep that boy," he declared, and turned to close the back of his truck.

Massimo did not answer him. Instead, he turned to his nephew. "Alberto," he said. "Andiamo."

Alberto righted the bicycle – the yellow one he'd bought with money he'd saved himself, so that he wouldn't have to borrow Giulia's while she was home for the summer – and picked up the broken wheel. Massimo towed the rest of the card, and they started back down the hill towards home.

"I didn't do it on purpose, Uncle Massimo, I swear," said Alberto. He didn't always use that title, but it tended to pop out when he particularly wanted Massimo's attention or sympathy.

"I know, Alberto," Massimo replied, "but you need to pay more attention to what's around you."

"Yeah, yeah," Alberto grumbled. He'd heard that before, too many times, over the past ten months. "I dunno why you do keep me."

Massimo paused a moment. "Alberto. I keep you because we are family."

"I know." Alberto looked at his feet. "Sometimes I feel like that's the only reason."

Now Massimo stopped entirely, letting the cart down so I could put a hand on Alberto's shoulder. "You know that's not true."

"No. I know," Alberto sighed, and kicked at a peach that had rolled after them down the street. Massimo had invited Alberto to stay with him well before they'd figured out the connection between Alberto's mysterious human mother and Massimo's missing sister. They were family regardless of blood, not because of it. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Am I still allowed to go to Napoli?" That was only a few days away, when he was supposed to go meet the rest of his father's family in the Gulf. Being fired wasn't a possibility, but being grounded still was.

"Of course you are, Alberto," said Massimo. "This was an accident. You're not in trouble."

Alberto nodded. He was rarely in actual trouble. Sometimes he almost thought he would have felt better if he were. Massimo never shouted at him, he just told Alberto not to do the bad thing again. It felt wrong sometimes.

There was no further conversation on the way back to the Pescheria, and they arrived to find Giulia and Luca sitting out front on the bench eating watermelon. Luca must have finished his chores for the day, and had come up on land to wait for Alberto. Both of them looked puzzled by what they were seeing, but quickly figured out from the wreckage of the cart and the expression on Alberto's face not only that there'd been an accident of some sort, but who's fault it had been.

"Woah," said Luca. "What happened?"

"I ran into Signor Ferrando's truck," Alberto grumbled.

"I'm glad you didn't do it on my bike," said Giulia. She rinsed her sticky hands under a spigot in the wall, and came to investigate the broken wheel. "It just came off the axel is all. It needs a new bolt. Easy to fix."

Luca wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I can help."

"Wash your hands," Giulia reminded him.

Luca held them in the water for a moment and then pulled them out, transformed into green, webbed sea monster claws, which turned back into human hands when he dried them on his shirt. He came to kneel down by the cart as Giulia dragged her father's toolbox over and began looking for the right wrench.

"Here we go!" she pulled one out and handed it to Luca. "Hold this."

"Are you gonna help, Alberto?" Luca asked.

"I'll probably just break it worse," Alberto said, sitting down on the bench where they'd been eating. They'd saved him a slice of watermelon, but he wasn't sure he should it it. He liked watermelon, but after what had happened he wasn't sure he deserved any. Then again, if he didn't eat it, the wasps would gladly help themselves, and one was already circling. Alberto picked up the fruit and bit into it with a scowl.

Luca looked up. "Don't be like..." he was trying to sound reproachful, but his voice cracked in the middle of the sentence and he was forced to stop, clear his throat, and try again, a few notes lower. "Don't be like that, Alberto."

"Yeah, it's just a wheel," Giulia agreed. "Anyway, you get to go to Napoli next week!"

"That's right!" Luca agreed. "I'm excited! Aren't you?"

"Yeah," Alberto said with his mouth full. "Probably not as excited as the rest of the town. They can't wait to get rid of me."

Giulia rolled her eyes theatrically as she grasped the broken bolt with pliers so Luca could get the nut off it. "Well, I'm gonna miss you guys," she said. "I've never been further away than Genova. You're gonna have to tell me about everything that happens there."

"We will," Luca promised. "I've been reading the book I got from the second-hand shop... there are so many cool things in Napoli." He got up and ran to pull the book out of his bag, which he'd left by the bench. "Alberto, you need to see this," he said, sitting beside his friend. "I told you about the castle with the magic egg, and the whole town that was buried by a volcano thousands of years ago, but there's so much other stuff. There's this place called Isola la Gaiola, which is made of two little islands connected by a tiny bridge. They say a wizard used to live there and put a curse on the place, and there's Roman ruins both on the land and under the water."

"That'd be a perfect thing for you two to go see!" Giulia said.

Luca turned a page. "Oh, but it says it's popular with divers, so we can't go see the underwater part..." he looked over at Alberto. "Unless you can."

Alberto shrugged. He was getting better at controlling his shape-shifting, but his body still wanted to be a sea monster in the water and a human out of it, and probably always would. The idea of going to all the trouble humans did for diving, and then on top of that having to focus on not transforming, just seemed like way too much work. "We could go after dark," he suggested. "Humans don't dive at night."

Luca looked unsure about that. "Is that allowed?"

"Who's gonna stop us? It's not like they can guard the place underwater," Alberto pointed out. He was starting to feel some enthusiasm in spite of his desire to sulk.

A few pages further into the book, Luca found something else that caught his interest. "It says there's a place called Paestum that has all these old temples that are still mostly standing up! That's a long way from the city, though. We'd have to take the train. Do you think your family would mind if we did that?"

"Maybe, but what I don't think is that we're gonna see everything in that book in just two weeks," said Alberto.

"Yeah, probably not," Luca admitted, turning the book to the side to take in its inch-thick spine. "It'd be nice to see some stuff, though. Didn't you want to see the world?"

"I'm supposed to be going to meet my family," Alberto reminded him.

"Then it'll be a good distraction if your family turns out to be boring," Giulia agreed, and triumphantly held up the broken bolt. "Aha! Just gotta put the new one in now!"

Luca got up to help again, but paused. "Are you sure your grandma won't be upset that you're bringing me?"

This was at least the sixth time he'd asked that, and Alberto shook his head. "Of course I'm sure. I told her when I wrote to her, and she said if I wanted to bring a friend that was totally fine. I think she wants me to visit so bad she wouldn't care if I said I was bringing the whole town."

As Giulia had predicted, fixing the wheel didn't take long. They put in a new bolt and tightened it up so the wheel wouldn't rattle, and soon the cart was good as new, ready to be used again the next day. The kids then had the rest of the afternoon to themselves, and decided to get some gelato and then go swimming.

By now Luca and Alberto, along with several other sea monster children, were a usual enough sight on the beach below the town that nobody paid them much attention at all. The only thing that drew stares was when Alberto deliberately changed back to human form for a lesson from Giulia, who was teaching him to swim like they did. It was a lot more effort than swimming as a sea monster and Alberto still thought it looked embarrassingly ridiculous, but he was determined that this August he would do the whole Portorosso Cup race all by himself.

In the evening, they returned to the Pescheria so that Alberto and Giulia could have supper and Luca could collect his things. Massimo was there, paying Pietrina, the teenage girl who minded the shop for him on weekdays while he fished and Alberto made deliveries. She took her money, and then waved goodbye.

"See you tomorrow, Signor Marcovaldo," she said. "Bye, Giulia."

"Bye, Pietrina," Giulia replied,

"Bye, Luca!" Pietrina added.

"Have a good evening, Miss!" Luca replied.

She did not say goodnight to Alberto. Maybe she didn't see him there, as he was behind the other two and was then first in the gate to enter the house. Who could say?

Luca gave his books and a couple of other possessions that weren't supposed to get wet to Alberto and Giulia to hang on to for him, and then returned to the water, still in his swim trunks. "See you tomorrow!" he called to his friends. "Excuse me, Madame," he added to a woman who was sitting on the steps with her grandson.

"You're fine, Luca," she replied with a chuckle.

Alberto and Giulia headed indoors, where both helped as Massimo cooked up a fish stew for everyone to eat. They ate in relative silence – and that was rare these days. Alberto usually had a lot to say, and Massimo had been making an effort to talk more, knowing that his nephew didn't like the silence. Tonight, however, was quiet enough that Giulia apparently felt compelled to ask about it.

"Hey," she said to Alberto. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"For one thing, I haven't seen you this quiet since Signora Bruzzone shouted at you for eating lasagne with your hands," Giulia said.

Alberto winced. A lot more pastas could be finger food than humans usually thought, but lasagna was not one of those... it had been a terrible mess. "I'm totally fine," he repeated.

"If you aren't..." Massimo began.

"I am," Alberto insisted, and put a big spoonful of stew in his mouth to signify that the conversation was over. Humans had a lot of rules and don't talk with your mouth full was one of the big ones.

It worked. The rest of dinner passed in uncomfortable silence. Massimo sat at the kitchen table doing some of the Pescheria's financial books while Alberto and Giulia did the dishes. The summer sun was still visible in the west, but after a day in the sunshine it was already time for bed.

Over the winter Massimo had built a bunk bed so there would be room for both children when Giulia came home from school. As the sun went down that evening, they did rock-paper-scissors for the top, and Alberto won when rock broke scissors. Giulia put the light out, and they both settled down... or at least, she did. Alberto lay awake a while, staring at the ceiling a few centimetres away.

"Giulia?" he asked.

"Yeah?" she said sleepily.

"Uh... do you think my family in Napoli is gonna like me?"

There was a long pause. "I mean... does it matter?" she asked. "They're your family. They kind of have to."

"They really don't," said Alberto. "I don't think my father likes me much." When Alberto thought about it, he wasn't sure how his father felt about him. Giancarlo Scorfano certainly didn't hate his son... but Alberto was something he hadn't wanted and that got in the way, and somehow this could be true at the same time as Alberto's father still loved him.

"I think you'll be fine," Giulia said with a yawn.

"What if I screw up, though?" Alberto did a lot of that. Today had been an excellent illustration.

"They're your family," Giulia repeated. "Papà doesn't care if you screw up."

"Yeah, but that's different." Massimo didn't seem to care that he and Alberto were technically related. He rarely even mentioned it. When they met people, he would just say this is Alberto and let people draw their own conclusions. As he'd been at pains to emphasize earlier in the day, Massimo didn't want Alberto around just because he was his nephew, he wanted Alberto, though sometimes Alberto himself couldn't imagine why.

But what if the Scorfanos did care? What if because Alberto was one of them by blood, they thought his screw-ups were a reflection on them? From what little he'd gleaned through his grandmother's letters, Alberto could tell that his father was already the family's troublemaker. What if they extended that to Alberto? What if they thought he was just going to be Giancarlo all over again?

Luca didn't have that problem. People always liked Luca, because Luca was the Good Kid. Luca did a lot of things Alberto had always thought were unnecessary at best and embarrassing at worst. He said please and thank you, and excuse me, even to people who weren't polite back. He called people Sir and Madame and Miss. He held doors and didn't interrupt and generally tried not to bother people or barge in where he wasn't want. Maybe... maybe what Alberto needed on this trip was to try to be more like Luca.


Normally waiting for something, like Christmas or Alberto's birthday, meant it took forever to arrive, but the week remaining before Alberto's trip to Napoli positively flew by. Before he knew it, he was standing on the train platform with a bag in his hands, watching Luca's mother fuss over him.

"I know you can't actually manage every day," Daniela said, giving her son another hug, "but you've got to write at least a couple of times a week."

"I will, Mom," Luca promised.

"And you can call!" Daniela added. "You know the number for the phone at Carolina's! I'll check in with her, and if you're able we can work out a schedule."

Luca nodded. "Alberto's grandmother says there's lots of phones in Napoli. I'm sure I can call."

"You promise?"

"I promise! I'll call tonight when we arrive, if I can," said Luca.

Daniela hugged him again.

Massimo, meanwhile, took Alberto aside for a word. "Alberto," he said seriously, looking him right in the eye. "You don't have to stay the full two weeks if you don't want to."

"I'll be fine," Alberto scoffed, waving a dismissive hand and hoping he sounded braver to Massimo than he did to himself.

"If you aren't, then you can telephone," Massimo told him. "Signora Marsigliese has the phone in her shop. She's promised that you can call at any hour of the day or night, and if you need me, she will get me. I also want you to take this." He offered a few folded bills. "This is to buy tickets for you and Luca if you need to come home early."

Alberto took the money and clutched it. "Thanks, but I don't need this. What if something comes up while I'm gone? Money's tight, you know."

"I would rather know you have it," said Massimo. "If you really think you don't need it, then be sure to hang onto it and bring it back, rather than spending it on comic books. Got that?"

"Yes, Uncle Massimo," said Alberto.

Massimo attempted to smooth Alberto's hair, but this was, as usual, impossible – it did whatever it wanted – and then let him rejoin his friends. Giulia gave both boys a hug.

"Don't forget, you gotta tell me all about it," she said.

"We'll bring back postcards," Luca said. "Like the ones Alberto got me in Barcellona."

"Lots of them," Alberto agreed.

She hugged them again. "Have a good trip. A presto!"

"Ciao, Giulia," said Luca, and the boys boarded the train.

That was the first moment Alberto actually felt a hint of panic. There was something about being on a train, about the smell of it and the enclosed spaces, that brought back unpleasantly vivid memories of last fall, when he and Massimo had set out to search for Alberto's father. That trip had included several long, hot, boring train rides with nothing to do but stare out the window and know that home was getting further and further away. At the time it had seemed exciting, and the trains certainly hadn't been nearly so bad as the car rides that followed them, but in hindsight, knowing what he'd been heading for, there was a sense of foreboding that almost made Alberto feel ill.

He shook it off. This wasn't going to be like that. Back then he'd been going to look for his father, a man who'd done nothing but disappoint and abandon him. Now he was on his way to meet a family who were eager to see him, he had his best friend for company, and Luca had his book full of ideas for other things they could do if it all went wrong. Everything was going to be fine.

It helped a bit that the train went in the opposite direction this time. Instead of keeping the sea on the left and heading west for Genova and beyond, they put the water on the right and went east and south, to the first train change in Pisa. Luca must have been reading about this place, too, because he told Alberto a story about a famous church tower that looked like it was about to fall over. He said that during the war, American soldiers had been told to knock down as many towers as they could, so that their enemies couldn't use them as lookouts. They'd left this one alone because they thought it wouldn't stand up much longer anyway, but here it was, fifteen years later, still leaning at an impossible-looking angle. Luca had hoped it would be visible from the train station, but it was not.

Their next train change was in Roma, and if Alberto had thought he'd seen some busy train stations in Lione and Barcellona, they were nothing compared to the masses of people running every which way at Roma Termini. Luca found a poster explaining that the station was called Termini because it was across the street from the Terme di Diocleziano, a place that had been built by an ancient Emperor so that everybody in the city could take a bath. Those ruins were visible from the entrance, but they were on the other side of a broad piazza and there was no time for a closer inspection as they ran to catch the next train.

This was the one that would take them to Napoli, and while the first two legs of their journey had seemed quick, this one dragged on. The fields of Lazio rolled by outside, flat and green with faraway hills looking blue on the horizon, and Luca flipped through his book until he eventually leaned his head back and fell asleep. Alberto could not sleep on trains because the constant movement kept jostling him awake again, so instead he stared out at the landscape and thought more about what he was going to do when they arrived.

He was going to have to try to be a Good Kid. Fortunately, a year of being around people had taught him enough about what was considered 'good' by both humans and sea monsters that he was pretty sure he could do it. He knew what was too much and what was not enough, and what would make a mess. He would just have to make himself follow those rules. No shouting indoors. No taking things that weren't his, at least not without asking if it were allowed. No rude questions, and no words that would have made the priest in Portorosso go all pale and mutter a prayer. He wasn't going to brag or lie no matter how much he might want to, or talk about things nobody wanted to hear just to fill up a silence. They would have to like him.

Finally, with the sun getting low, the train rolled into Napoli Centrale and groaned to a stop. Luca blinked sleepily and lifted his head, surprised by how dark it was after the sun had been shining in his face for most of the trip. "Are we there?" he asked, yawning.

"Yeah, we're here. Get your stuff," said Alberto, grabbing his own bag.

They were here, and Alberto was going to be good, and his family was going to like him... so why did it feel like his stomach was turning itself inside-out as they stepped down onto the concrete platform? Maybe it was because this was just such an unfamiliar place. Alberto was used to the warm colours and soft contours of Portorosso, but the train station at Napoli was cool and sharp, a ferociously modern place made of metal and glass instead of stone and plaster. It was swarming with humans like crabs gathering to moult, and Alberto was half-afraid that if he lost sight of Luca he'd never find him again. He was grateful when his friend clung to his arm. It saved Alberto from having to do the clinging himself.

The crowds and commotion left them with a problem they hadn't anticipated – how were they supposed to find anybody? The two boys were in the middle of the platform with humans shoving by them on both sides, shouting and rushing to meet more trains. Alberto wasn't sure he could have found Massimo in this chaos, never mind relatives he'd never seen before! He'd met his grandmother but she'd only visited Portorosso for a couple of days, and it seemed worryingly possible that he wouldn't recognize her if he saw her again.

It was Luca who figured it out. He saw a break in the crowd and pointed, calling out, "Alberto, right there!" Alberto followed his finger and saw a group of four: two women, a man, and a little girl. The man was holding up a handwritten sign that said Scorfano.

These people noticed the boys looking at them, and smiled and waved. Relieved, Luca and Alberto waved back and went to meet them.

Sofia Scorfano was in the lead, and Alberto was relieved that he did recognize her. Out of the water she looked like a plump woman in her sixties, with bright hazel eyes and streaks of silver in her brown hair. When Alberto had first met her she'd been dressed in what he thought of as fairly fancy human clothes, and he'd wondered where she was going that required it. It certainly wasn't something anyone would wear for him. Now he decided that must just be how she liked to dress. Today she was in a dark green skirt and a matching jacket that closed with wooden toggles, and she was wearing a hat with white cloth flowers on it. She came up and gave Alberto a quick, formal hug.

"Alberto, it's so lovely to see you again," she said. "I think you've gotten taller already! And this must be your friend."

"Luca Paguro, Madame," said Luca, offering her a hand.

She took it with a polite smile. "Sofia Scorfano. I'm delighted to meet you."

The rest of the group joined them. The woman was now carrying the little girl, although she was squirming in her mother's arms. The man, who was barrel-chested with a moustache and dark hair cut very short, was the first to introduce himself.

"We're the Gennaris," he said. "I'm Michele. I can't keep track of how everybody's related, so you can just call me Mike."

"And I'm Carlotta," the woman added, shifting her grip on her daughter so that she, too, could shake hands with Alberto and Luca. "I'm a Scorfano on my mother's side and a Merluzzo on my father's." The family resemblance was noticeable – she had a narrow face and a long nose, like both Sofia and Giancarlo, although her eyes were brown instead of gold. The thing Alberto tried not to stare at was that there were patches around her left eye and on her cheek and forehead where the skin was abnormally pale, and where these reached her scalp, the hair that grew there was snowy white instead of dark brown. Her left hand, still hanging on to the girl, was also white, as were the first two fingers of her right.

It must be something like Massimo's missing arm, Alberto decided, something she'd been born with but got along fine. Staring was rude, so he made himself look right at her face as he shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, Madame," he said, knowing now that this was the proper greeting.

"And I'm Celia!" said the little girl, tired of listening to the grownups say their hellos. She squirmed out of her mother's arms and grabbed Alberto's hand in both of hers. Sofia Scorfano might not have dressed up just to meet Alberto, but looked like Celia certainly had: she was wearing a dress with pink flowers on it and a wide white collar, and her sleek dark hair was up in pigtails. "Piacere !" she said, " Girolamo Trombetta!" And to Alberto's astonishment, she performed the associated hand motions.

"How did you know that?" he asked.

"Everybody knows that!" Celia replied.

"It's a family joke," Sofia explained. "There's an older superstition around her that you mustn't ever tell a human your real name. Instead of telling them his name was Scorfano, your grandfather used to call himself Girolamo Trombetta. He'd heard the word somewhere and he liked the way it sounded. It was years before anybody told him it was a musical instrument. The kids thought it was funny, and it became a joke that this is how you introduce yourself to a human."

Alberto grinned. His father had taught him the greeting, and Luca had told him what each individual word was, but they didn't add up to anything that made sense. Now it meant something. He looked at Luca and found him smiling back, equally delighted by this discover.

Celia was bouncing on her toes, her pigtails flapping in time. "Can you show me your Change?" she asked.

"Not in front of all these people, Guppy!" said Carlotta, reaching to take Celia's hand again. "He can show you when we get home. Mi dispiace," she added, to Alberto. "She's been dying of impatience ever since she learned you were coming."

"I asked every day if today was when you arrive," Celia said, not apologetic at all.

It was impossible not to smile at that. Nobody had ever been so excited to meet Alberto of all people, but then again, he and Celia had something very special in common.

"Do you boys have your things?" Carlotta asked.

"Right here!" Luca held up his bag.

Outside the station, Mike brought around a yellow car, and Alberto had to fight down a moment of panic again. The last time he'd been driven anywhere, it had been his father at the wheel, and he hated the way cars sounded and smelled. But if he made a fuss about it, they might decide he was weird, so he made himself climb into the back seat. Carlotta put Celia in the middle, with Luca and Alberto on either side of her, and Sofia leaned in the window to say goodbye.

"You're not coming?" asked Luca.

"I don't like cars," she replied. "I'll come see you boys tomorrow morning, and you can come meet the rest of the family."

"Zia Sofia gets sick in the car," said Celia with a giggle.

"I do," Sofia admitted. "See you soon, boys!"

"Bye!" said Alberto, and shut the door. So far, so good... the people he was going to be staying with seemed to like him, and that was an important start. Tomorrow he had to make a good impression on the rest of them.