Sink or Swim

by Sarah Mlynowski

  I open my eyes, look for the light, and push my face toward it.

  And then … cough, cough, cough! Ahhhhhhhh.

  Air. I’m breathing air. Gulps and gulps of air. Who knew air could taste so good? Who needs ice cream when air is so incredibly delicious?

  Once I’ve finished gorging on the air — it’s an all-I-can-eat air buffet! — I realize I’m looking at a sandy beach. But I’m not on the beach. I’m in the water, looking at the beach. It’s bright out here, too — around noon. What is going on? I twist around and see that a huge wave is about to smash into me. “No!” I yell, and try, unsuccessfully, to get out of its way.

  CRASH.

  No, no, no, I will not drown! Cough, cough, cough!

  My heart is thumping, and I push myself to my feet before I can get attacked again. What in the world is happening?

  I turn back to face the beach. It’s empty. No tourists, no sand castles, no bright-colored beach towels. Just pure-white sand sparkling in the midday sun. Beyond the beach are trees and beyond the trees are mountains. When I turn the other way, there’s blue ocean as far as the eye can see. Even as far as my stinging eyes can see. Wait a sec. One thing my eyes can’t see is my brother.

  “Jonah! Jonah, where are you?” Where is he? My heart sinks to the ocean floor.

  Just as I’m about to panic for real, he bursts out of the water and gives me a thumbs-up. “How cool is this?” he cries, sopping wet and grinning.

  He’s here! He’s okay! Hurray! “Jonah, get over here now!”

  “I’m fine!” he yells back.

  Unlike me, my brother loves to swim.

  According to my parents, when I was a kid, not only did I refuse to swim in the ocean, but I would cry hysterically when anyone else tried to. My parents. My brother. Strangers. Obviously I’m over that now.

  Kind of.

  CRASH.

  Another wave sends me toppling back under the water.

  AHHHHHHHH!

  Cough, cough, cough!

  Okay, fine, I’ll admit it: I AM AFRAID OF WATER.

  Not hot tubs or baths, but oceans, lakes, and rivers. Also moats, when I happen to come across them. Basically, I am afraid of bodies of water that have animals in them.

  I am also afraid of pools.

  They seem shallow but then BOOM the bottom’s gone, and you’re gulping chlorine.

  Right now, I need to get out of the ocean, pronto, before it sucks me under for good. As I stand, my pajamas feel like they weigh two-hundred pounds. My sneakers are no longer sneakers. They are now bricks attached to my feet.

  “I wonder where we are,” Jonah says, swimming up behind me. “Do you think we’re in Jack and the Beanstalk?”

  Oh! Right! We’re in a fairy tale! There must be a fairy tale reason for the water, then. My shoulders relax. “Do you see Jack or a beanstalk?” I ask. There’s no ocean in Jack and the Beanstalk.

  He scrunches up his nose. Hmm, his nose is looking a little red. He might need sunscreen. Crumbs, I don’t think I packed any.

  Speaking of stuff I packed — where’s my suitcase?

  I spin around and around until I spot it a few feet away, floating in the other direction. “Our stuff! We have to get it!”

  “I’ll get it,” my brother says, diving after it. Except the waves are quick and I can see my red suitcase drifting away faster than Jonah can swim.

  “Forget it, Jonah!” I don’t want him swimming so far out. It’s too dangerous.

  “But I don’t want to lose my Kadima paddles!” he calls.

  “You didn’t pack them!” I yell back.

  “I did when you weren’t looking!”

  Now I know why my suitcase was so heavy.

  Eventually, when the suitcase is nothing more than a red dot in the distance, Jonah gives up and swims back.

  Great. Just great. I have nothing to wear but soggy pajamas and hundred-pound shoes. With a large sigh and a lot of effort, I heave myself onto the dry sand.

  SQUISH. When I pull off one of my sneakers, a piece of seaweed and a gallon of sandy water spill out.

  Jonah is right behind me. “Abby! I see someone! Is that Jack?” He points to the ocean. In the distance, there’s a blob moving toward us.

  I squint toward the water. I see a head! A guy’s head! But it can’t be Jack. Jack climbs; he doesn’t swim. Also, Jack is about my age, and this guy looks like a teenager. Wait! Behind the guy’s head another head keeps bobbing in and out of the water. A girl’s head. At least I think it’s a girl’s head. I can see long blond hair. They’re getting closer … and closer … and … Yup, it’s a girl. And then behind her is something green and orange. A towel? A floatie?

  It’s shiny and triangle-shaped and reminds me of a paper fan I had as a kid.

  Oh! It’s a tail! The girl has a tail!

  Which can only mean one thing.

  “She’s a mermaid!” I exclaim. “We’re in The Little Mermaid!”

  “But who’s the mermaid holding?” my brother asks. “Maybe it’s Jack?”

  “I am one hundred percent sure it is not Jack,” I snap.

  The guy has dark-brown hair and his eyes are closed. His head is rolling from side to side. That’s not a good sign.

  I can’t tell if this mermaid is the Little Mermaid or just a mermaid. I need to remember the original story. My nana read it to me a million times. I just have to focus, and it’ll all come back to me. Too bad there’s no time to focus.

  From about twenty feet away, the mermaid’s head bobs above the surf. She looks right at us, gasps, and disappears under the water. A second later, she pushes the guy toward us and swims in the other direction.

  “We scared her,” Jonah says.

  “Wait!” I call to the mermaid. “Don’t leave!”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to the people in the story!” Jonah exclaims.

  Right. Crumbs.

  No time to worry about that now.

  The guy is sinking under the surface and it’s up to us to save him.

  We jump back into the water and each grab one of the guy’s arms. He’s wearing a yellow shirt and dark-brown pants that are soaked and torn. He’s handsome. Really handsome. Floppy brown hair, chiseled cheekbones. Full lips that are tinged blue.

  Uh-oh, that’s not a good sign.

  “Don’t drop him!” I order.

  Jonah’s eyes are wide with worry. “Is he okay?”

  A wave crashes into my back and I ignore the question. “Let’s just get him to the shore!”

  We pull and we heave, and a few minutes later we lay him down on the sand. I cup my ear against his mouth. He’s breathing! “He’s okay! Just unconscious, maybe?”

  Jonah exhales in relief. “Who do you think he is?”

  As I collapse on the hot sand beside him, the original story floats back to me. Prince … shipwreck … the Little Mermaid saved the prince … “Oh! That was the Little Mermaid! And this is the prince she saved from the shipwreck!”

  “But why was the prince in the water?”

  “Don’t you remember?” I ask. Nana read him the same stories she read to me. Although I paid attention 110 percent of the time and he paid attention about 10 percent of the time.

  He shrugs. “Just start at the beginning.”

  “Fine,” I say. I lie down on the sand and close my eyes, suddenly exhausted. “There was a mermaid. And she was, um, little.”

  “What was her name?” Jonah asks.

  Hmm. Good question. “I don’t think she has a name in the actual story.”

  “Who wrote the story? Was it the Grimm brothers again?”

  “No, it was a Danish guy. Hans Christian Andersen.”

  “He liked Danish? The cheese kind?”

  I open my eyes just long enough to roll them at my brother and then close them again. “No, he was from Denmark. The country.”

  “But the Little Mermaid lived in the ocean, right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why are yo
u being mean?” he whines.

  “Because you’re asking dumb questions!”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking. Just go on with the story.”

  “The Little Mermaid really wanted to swim to the surface but she wasn’t allowed until her fifteenth birthday. She had a bunch of older sisters and they’d already done it. When the Little Mermaid was finally allowed to peek out above the water, she saw a prince fall off a boat. Instead of letting him drown, she brought him to shore and saved him.”

  “That’s what we just saw!” he exclaims.

  “Exactly.”

  Beside us, the prince coughs up some seawater. Both of us spring up, but the prince’s eyes stay closed.

  “So what happens next?” Jonah asks.

  “Well, after she saved him, she fell in love with him.”

  “And then they got married?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s kind of a long story, actually, but what happened is that she hid. She didn’t want the prince to see her since she was a mermaid. So when he woke up, he didn’t know she had saved him. She went back underwater and asked around and discovered that the only way to get a human on land to fall in love with her was to have two legs. And the only way for her to get two legs was to make a deal with the sea witch. So she went to the sea witch and —”

  The prince lets out a loud snore.

  “And,” I continue, “the sea witch offered to give her legs, but the witch wanted payment. So the Little Mermaid gave her —” I stop. This part is gross.

  “Her allowance?”

  I squirm. “No.”

  “Her sneakers?”

  “What sneakers? She had a tail.”

  “Oh. Right. Then what?”

  “Her tongue.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he gasps. “The Little Mermaid gave away her tongue?”

  I nod, trying not to picture it.

  Jonah’s eyes light up. “That’s disgusting! Awesome!”

  My brother tends to like the gross parts of these stories. He has a stronger stomach than I do. He loves roller coasters. Especially the ones that go upside-down. Not me, thank you very much. I prefer staying upright.

  “Well,” I say, “technically, it was the Little Mermaid’s voice that the sea witch wanted. The Little Mermaid had an amazing singing voice. But she gave that up for legs. Forever.”

  Jonah shakes his head. “I can’t imagine never speaking again.”

  “Me neither,” I say. I doubt you can be a judge if you can’t speak. How would you sentence people? “Also, the sea witch added an extra curse to the spell — if the prince married anyone else, the morning after the wedding, the Little Mermaid would … would …”

  “Would what?” Jonah asks. “Have to give the sea witch her fingers? Her nose?”

  “Snoooort!” groans the prince, but his eyes stay closed.

  “Worse than that,” I say gravely. “If the prince married anyone else, the morning after the wedding, the Little Mermaid would die.”

  Jonah pales. “But we don’t have to worry, right? Because there must have been a happy ending. The prince fell in love with the Little Mermaid, they got married, and they lived happily after?”

  “Well …” I hesitate.

  Just then we see a splash in the distance. It’s the mermaid again. The Little Mermaid. Her blond hair, her green bikini top, and her green-and-orange tail peek out of the water and then disappear.

  “I see her,” Jonah whispers. “Should we hide? Maybe if we run away she’ll forget she saw us and the story can continue the way it’s supposed to?”

  “Yeah,” I say, remembering what I’d said back in the basement. That we should stay out of the way so that whatever fairy tale we landed in wouldn’t get messed up.

  Except maybe I want to mess this one up.

  I look at the Little Mermaid and then back at the prince. “Here’s the thing. The ending of the real story of the Little Mermaid isn’t good. It isn’t like the happy ending in Cinderella or Snow White. In the end of the Little Mermaid’s real story, the Little Mermaid doesn’t get the prince. She doesn’t get her happy ending at all. In the end of the real story the prince marries someone else, another princess, and the Little Mermaid …” I take a deep breath. “The Little Mermaid dies.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jonah tells me. “I saw the movie. The Little Mermaid doesn’t die!”

  “The movie isn’t the real story,” I say. “Haven’t you ever heard of a Hollywood ending? When the movie writers give the story a happy ending even though that’s not what happens?”

  “But she can’t die,” Jonah cries, and bangs his fist against the sand. “That’s the worst ending I ever heard!”

  I nod. “It definitely is a bummer.”

  Okay. I think I do want to mess up the ending. “I have a new plan. I think we should change the rest of the story.”

  He twists his lower lip. “I thought that was against the rules.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. “Maryrose has never even spoken to us! Whose rules?”

  He cocks his head to the side. “Your rules.”

  Oh. Right. “Yes, well, technically changing the ending is against my rules. But maybe that rule is a mistake. I don’t want the Little Mermaid to die. I want to give her a new ending — a happy ending.”

  There’s another groan beside me. This time the prince’s eyes flutter.

  “I think he’s waking up,” my brother says.

  The prince’s eyes open all the way. He looks at Jonah and then at me. “Where am I?” he asks, his voice gruff.

  “You’re on a beach,” Jonah says.

  “How did I get here? I was on a ship.” The prince sits up slowly and rubs his forehead. “I don’t remember what happened. Wait. I do remember. There was a storm. I fell overboard. How did I survive?” He notices our soaking wet clothes. “Did you two save me?”

  I crouch beside him. “It wasn’t us. It was the Little Mermaid!”

  His eyes crinkle. “The what?”

  “The Little Mermaid!” I point to the water. “She was right there a few minutes ago.”

  He twists to look but the water is smooth. “What’s a mermaid?”

  “You know,” Jonah says. “Half fish, half person?”

  The prince shakes his floppy hair, and I wonder if he lost his crown in the ocean.

  “There’s no such thing as a half person, half fish,” he says. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It isn’t,” I say. At home, I’d have to agree with him. If one of my new friends told me that she’d seen a mermaid at the beach I would have to ask her if she’d hit her head recently. But we aren’t in Smithville. “Where I live, you’d be right,” I say.

  “You don’t know that,” Jonah tells me. “We might have mermaids at home.”

  “We do not,” I say.

  Jonah shrugs. “You don’t know for sure. He thinks there are no mermaids here, and he’s wrong.”

  Fair point, I guess. I motion around me. “Where are we, anyway?” I ask. From the beach, I spot a path that leads toward a big stone building in the distance. Just as I’m trying to figure out what it is, a bell rings from it. A school?

  The prince stretches his arms up above his head. “The kingdom of Mustard.”

  Jonah and I both laugh. “Seriously?” I ask.

  The prince squints into the sun. “Why would I joke about the name of my kingdom?”

  “Your kingdom is named after something you put on a sandwich?” Jonah asks.

  “Maybe they don’t have mustard here,” I tell Jonah. “Like how in Floom they didn’t have brownies.”

  The prince shakes his head. “We eat mustard. It’s our favorite condiment. We eat brownies, too. We even dip them in mustard.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I say.

  Even Jonah agrees. “Yuck,” he says. “I wish we were in the kingdom of Ketchup.”

  My brother is obsessed with ketchup. He puts it on everything. Fries. Mac and cheese. Plain bread.

 
; Seriously, plain bread. Now, that’s disgusting.

  “Brownies in ketchup,” Jonah says. “That I’d try.”

  Now, that’s really disgusting.

  The prince wobbles to his feet. “Who are you?” He eyes our outfits. “You didn’t escape from a prison, did you?”

  I look down at our matching pj’s. Our matching black-and-white-striped pj’s. We do look like inmates.

  “No,” I say quickly. “We’re just in our pajamas.”

  “So if you two didn’t save me, how did I survive? Maybe a fisherman brought me in? Or I washed up on a piece of driftwood? Or are you two just being modest?”

  “No,” I say. “I can barely swim. It was the Little Mermaid — we just dragged you in.”

  “Aha! So you DID save me! Then I, Prince Mortimer, am in your debt. Would you please accompany me back to the palace so you can be celebrated?”

  “But Prince Morty … can I call you Prince Morty?” Jonah asks hopefully.

  “Only my parents call me Morty.”

  Jonah pouts, then continues, “But Prince Mortimer, it really wasn’t us who saved you.”

  Hold on. I elbow Jonah in the side.

  “Ouch!”

  “I just need a minute to talk to my brother,” I say, and yank him a few feet away. “We may as well go to his palace,” I whisper. “We might not be able to find the Little Mermaid tonight, and we’re going to need somewhere to sleep.”

  Jonah shrugs. “I’m game if you are. But we’re definitely going to mess this story up.”

  I look out at the water. “Let’s hope so.”

  We’re walking up the path toward the building when we run smack into three teenage girls. They all start shrieking the second they see us.

  At first I think they’re making fun of our matching prison pajamas, but then I realize they’re shrieking at the sight of the prince.

  “Oh! My! Goodness!” swoons one.

  “It’s him! It’s him! It’s him!” cries another, looking like she might faint.

  Jonah and I aren’t the only ones dressed in matching outfits — the girls are all wearing white collared shirts, yellow skirts, white kneesocks, and yellow patent-leather shoes. A uniform? I guess the building is a school after all.

  “Prince Mortimer!” the third girl cries out. “Everyone is looking for you! I’m, like, so happy that you’re okay!” The girl has a mouth full of bubble gum and super-curly brown hair. Each curl looks like a Slinky.