Real Mermaids Don't Sell Seashells

by Helene Boudreau

  “What?” Cori yelled. “Are you okay?”

  I could see Dad’s beet-red, sunburned face come into view of Cori’s screen. “Jade! Where are you?”

  “Get me out of here!” Thoughts of my airplane ride over the Atlantic Ocean buzzed through my head. What was worse, I wondered, spiraling downward into a watery grave or plunging to my death in an elevator shaft? “I’m stuck in the elevator and the service phone doesn’t work. Can you call the front desk to let them know I’m trapped in here?”

  “I’m on it!” Dad yelled.

  “You want me to keep you company on the phone?” Cori asked.

  “No. Save your battery,” I replied. Cori hadn’t brought her phone charger. “Hopefully I’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”

  I hung up and leaned against the elevator, sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor, already regretting not staying on the phone with Cori when I had the chance. Then it occurred to me that if I could Video Gab with Cori via the Internet in the hotel, I could probably connect with Luke back home too.

  I found Luke in my contacts list and pressed the Video Gab icon.

  Meanwhile I could hear Cori yelling something down the elevator shaft that sounded like “on the brink.”

  “What?” I yelled back while my phone’s screen showed it was still connecting.

  Cori yelled again about “squeezing a bra through the door,” and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what on earth she was talking about.

  “I can’t hear you!” I looked up to the ceiling and yelled back.

  “Can you hear me now?” my phone called out.

  “Oh, hello!” I said to the screen as the video feed kept loading. I wasn’t sure it was going to connect until I saw Luke’s smiling face staring back. Relief flooded through me. At least if I was going to fall to my death, the last image I’d see was of a super-cute mer-boy.

  “Hey, how’s it going, stranger?” Luke’s smile lit up the screen, and his sandy curly hair fell over his hopelessly blue eyes. “I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you. What’s happening?”

  “You’ll never believe it but I’m stuck in an elevator so I thought I’d call,” I said.

  “What?” Luke laughed out loud. “Is this a joke?”

  “I wish,” I replied.

  “So you’re stuck in an elevator and hoping I’ll come break you out of there?” I could see him smirking. “Not really my area of expertise. Now if you were stuck in an underwater elevator, maybe.”

  I laughed, remembering our latest underwater adventures.

  “Don’t worry. My dad’s got someone coming to rescue me,” I said.

  I picked a piece of ice from the ice bucket and popped it in my mouth.

  “Are you eating ice?” Luke asked with a laugh.

  “It has come to this,” I replied. “Next thing you know I’ll be eating the soles of my flip-flops.”

  “What’s it like down there in your tropical paradise, anyway?” Luke asked.

  “Oh, you know—movie stars and moonlit walks on the beach,” I replied.

  “Save me one of those,” Luke said.

  “A movie star or a moonlit walk?” I asked.

  “Whichever one ends up in a moonlit kiss,” he replied.

  “Well, that could go either way, I suppose,” I teased. “What’s happening back in Port Toulouse?”

  “Nothing quite as exciting as what you’ve got going on down there, apparently. Trey and I got a few more leaf-raking jobs, which I hope we’ll finish up by the time we catch our plane on Friday.” Luke and Trey mowed lawns in the summer, raked leaves in the fall, and shoveled snow in the winter for extra money. “That is if Trey can get his head on straight before then.”

  “What’s up with Trey? Does it have anything to do with Cori?” I asked. Maybe I could get a straight answer out of Luke because Cori wasn’t talking.

  “I’m not exactly sure. He’s just been playing a lot of video games and eating cereal, which is pretty normal, except he keeps crashing on level one and he’s been eating his cereal with a fork. I was thinking of messing with him and putting green food coloring in the milk. I doubt he’d notice.”

  Another yell sounded from upstairs, this time it was Dad yelling something about “rappelling down the elevator shaft.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid!” I yelled up to the ceiling.

  “I was just kidding,” Luke said with a laugh.

  “Oh, sorry! I wasn’t yelling at you. My dad’s just having a nervous breakdown. Sounds like Trey’s in need of an intervention too. Get the poor boy a spoon at least,” I joked.

  “That would be the brotherly thing to do, but I’m not sure it would help. Things were pretty tense around here last night before you guys left. Trey texted something to Cori and she took it all wrong,” Luke said.

  That’s when my “friend gene” kicked in.

  “Maybe Cori didn’t exactly take it all wrong. Maybe Trey actually said something stupid,” I blurted out.

  “What does it matter? It’s really between the two of them,” Luke said.

  “It matters because Cori is my friend!” I yelled louder than I intended.

  Cori shouted from up above with a “You too, girl!”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” Luke said quietly.

  “Maybe—” I began. But just then, the elevator jerked to a start. “Oh, I think I’m being rescued.”

  “I’m glad you survived to live another day,” Luke joked, but I could tell our conversation had taken a turn for the weird.

  “Too bad the ice didn’t survive quite as well,” I replied, looking down at my bucket of slush.

  •••

  By the time I got back to our room, Cori was bopping off the walls, wanting to know every last detail of my elevator drama.

  “It really wasn’t that exciting. I think I was only in there for a grand total of twelve minutes,” I replied.

  “I was trying to get a drink to you. Could you hear me? Did you see the straw I squeezed through the elevator doors?” Cori asked.

  “That’s what you were trying to do!” I said with a laugh. “I was Video Gabbing with Luke, and it sounded like you were on the ‘brink’ of something and trying to squeeze your ‘bra’ through the door.”

  “Drink! And straw, not bra!” Cori said with a laugh. “And you were talking to Luke? Was Trey there?” A somber look crossed her face so I tried to keep things light.

  “No, I think he was eating or something,” I replied, trying to figure out how Luke and my conversation had gotten so tense and convoluted. Was Luke that blind to the fact that his brother had been acting like an ignoramus toward Cori? Wasn’t Cori supposed to be his girlfriend, not just another one of his skateboarding buddies?

  “Oh,” Cori said quietly, staring at her phone. Then something must have occurred to her because she sprang to life. “Hey! I wanted to show you something.” She pulled up a video on her phone’s screen.

  “What on earth…?” I put a hand to my mouth. Gnashing teeth! Ripping flesh! The most terrifying thing I’d ever seen! “What is that?”

  “A shark dive,” Cori said cheerily. “They have them here in the Bahamas. We should totally go.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I asked. The video showed the leader of the dive feeding the sharks unidentifiable chunks of meat while other divers looked on. The sharks snatched the fish out of the leader’s chain-mailed hand. They even had a Jaws-like soundtrack to add to the effect. “People actually do this?”

  “Yup. Isn’t it awesome? I read on the website that it’s almost a guarantee that we’d see some because Caribbean reef sharks and tiger sharks are really plentiful in the Bahamas.” Cori stared at the screen with a look of amazement on her face.

  “I didn’t need to know that,” I muttered.

  “They even
give you a video to keep at the end of your dive!” she added.

  “I really don’t see that as a selling feature,” I said.

  “Oh, look at that guy!” Cori pointed to the screen. Just then, a shark as big as a submarine went straight for one of the cameramen, teeth gleaming, then zoomed off in the other direction at the last possible second.

  “Turn it off. Turn it off!” I waved a hand across my face to try to un-see what I’d just seen.

  “Honestly, Jade. As a mermaid, you would think you’d want to work on your shark skills.” Cori scowled as she hit Pause on the video. “Don’t you want to do anything fun while we’re here?”

  “If by ‘fun’ you mean putting my life in mortal peril, then no,” I replied, but I could tell Cori was bummed by my reaction. “Also, um. You’ll waste all your phone battery downloading videos like that.”

  A light tap sounded on the door joining our room with Mom and Dad’s.

  “Okay, I think I finally got your dad settled,” Mom said as she entered our room.

  Dad’s three umbrella drinks and the drama of my elevator rescue must have done him in because Mom had tucked him in to bed. We filled her in on everything that had happened at the Straw Market with Dillon and the cruise ship.

  “Well, between that and the elevator, you’ve certainly had an eventful afternoon!” Mom said. “But it sounds like this Dillon boy is pretty convinced something is going on.”

  “Rayelle’s mom says he’s constantly causing trouble around the market,” Cori chimed in. “Her mother caught him stealing once, and he was kicked out of the market for six months. He’s on probation for now but it looks like he’s up to his old tricks again.”

  “Yes, but we all know how people can be quick to judge,” Mom said.

  It made me think of the ladies back at Dooley’s Drugstore and how they’d said those things about Mom and Dad. I hadn’t told Mom about those ladies because I didn’t want to upset her. Nothing should ruin their happy day. We’d worked so hard to get to where we were, having our family all back together. It was going to be amazing, going back to Port Toulouse after Mom and Dad made their marriage official, no matter what the rumor mill had to say.

  “Jade,” Mom continued, “do you think there’s something to this boy Dillon’s story?”

  “Maybe. I’m not saying it was an actual body, though,” I replied. “Officer Ensel is right—it’s probably nothing. He said they’d call if they needed to ask more questions.”

  “Did you at least manage to get a look around the market?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get any stuff for the wedding, so the whole trip was a bit of a bust,” I said. “How did you do with the planning here?”

  “Well,” Mom said with a sigh. “The Alyssum already has five weddings booked for Saturday and Sunday so the only thing they can do is get us in for a sunset ceremony at the gazebo on the beach for Saturday evening.”

  “Oh, that’ll be pretty,” Cori said.

  “They don’t have any staff to help, though, so the actual planning is up to us,” Mom said, shuffling through the pile of papers and brochures she’d accumulated, trying to sort out the wedding reservations.

  “When is everyone arriving?” I asked.

  “Eddie and Bobbie are sailing down from Florida on her sailboat and should arrive on Thursday or Friday,” Mom said. Eddie was Luke and Trey’s grandfather and apparently had made a bit of a love connection with Bobbie over the many hours of video chat they’d had while trying to come up with designs for a mer-to-human synthesizer, which Dad called the Merlin 3001. Bobbie lived in Florida and she had helped Luke turn into a mer-guy for the first time since he was a baby that past spring.

  “My parents and the Martins are flying in on Friday,” Cori added.

  “So everything needs to get organized in the next five days?” I asked, picking up a brochure for wedding cakes.

  “It’s going to be tight but honestly, I don’t want this to take over our whole week,” Mom said with a smile. “Hopefully we can enjoy a bit of our vacation in the meantime.”

  “Can we go Snuba diving?” Cori asked, leafing through a few of the flyers she’d nabbed in the lobby. “Oh, and paragliding. And, oh right! We can swim with sharks!”

  “Gah! Not the sharks again,” I said with a laugh.

  “Yes—let’s do it all,” Mom said, stroking Cori’s hair. We’re on vacation, after all. Let’s have as much fun as possible and keep our time in the Bahamas as drama-free as possible.”

  Thinking about what had just happened at the Straw Market and how much I’d let my imagination run wild, I had to agree.

  “Drama-free,” I repeated. “Sounds like a great idea to me.”

  “This is probably the worst idea in the history of bad ideas,” I whispered to Cori on Tuesday morning as we got ready for our Snuba-diving excursion off the coast of Paradise Island. I’d convinced her to put off shark diving for a few days (hopefully forever), but there was no way Cori was going to leave the island before we at least went Snuba diving.

  I wriggled my way into a damp, rubbery wet suit and cursed the makers of neoprene with every fiber of my being. It didn’t help that my stomach was grumbling. The boat had left bright and early, so I’d only had time to scarf down a bowl of cereal and a banana since the rest of the hotel’s breakfast buffet wasn’t supposed to be served for another hour. Talk about a letdown!

  Mom and Dad had tagged along, and about a half a dozen other tourists crammed the boat, getting ready for our underwater adventure.

  “You’re just saying that because you got to spend all summer underwater while I was stuck in The Lady Sea Dragon with Mr. Romance,” Cori said as she tucked her dark curls under the strap of her face mask. Cori and Trey had been squabbling ever since the Fall Folly dance when he was supposed to be our date but spent most of his time at the snack table with his buddies. It didn’t help once Cori found out Trey hadn’t actually ordered the corsages our friend Reese had brought to the dance, even though Trey had jokingly taken credit for them. Things sounded like they had sort of gone downhill from there.

  I remembered my conversation with Luke and how I’d practically jumped down his throat defending Cori. Didn’t he realize his brother was being a lamebrain? Guys could be so dense sometimes.

  “So what’s happening with you and Trey anyway? Is it going to be weird when he and Luke get here?” I wasn’t sure if Cori and Trey were still actually dating by the time we left on our trip, but Cori was getting fed up with Trey’s total lack of a romance in the boyfriend department. It might be awkward for me to be dating Luke if Cori broke up with his brother. We all had so much fun together.

  “I dunno. We kind of had a fight before I left, so it’s been weird.” Cori looked sad for a moment, but then her face brightened in a kind of fake-happy way. “But I don’t want to think about that. Come on, Jade. This is my chance to see what you’ve been seeing all this time. I bet it’ll be amazing.”

  “Believe me, being underwater all summer was anything but amazing. Don’t you remember that crazy Dame Council who turned out to be my own grandmother?” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry. Nobody’s trying to rip your arms off around here,” Cori replied. She fiddled with the strap on one of her flippers. “Besides, you already know more about this equipment than I do after all that underwater hockey stuff you’ve been doing.”

  “Sure, I know how to use a snorkel and mask, but I’ve never scuba-dived before,” I said.

  “It’s Snuba diving, not scuba diving. Much easier and completely safe because all of us are attached to a breathing tube connected to that air tank over there,” Cori insisted, pointing to the huge tank of air floating on the water above where we were about to dive. “Totally idiot-proof.”

  “Idiot-proof is good, I guess. What do you think, Mom?” I asked as I put on my flippers. A few breaths of wate
r instead of air were all it took to switch our “mer” gene on and then it was Tail City. Salt water made the change even quicker, but I’d even transformed into a mermaid in the Port Toulouse community pool a few weeks before, so all these water sports were making me a bit nervous. “This hardly seems like a sane choice for people from our particular culture.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Mom whispered to me, looking gung ho. “We’ll only be a couple dozen feet underwater, so we can always hold our breath and swim to the surface if anything happens. I’m really looking forward to seeing the ocean in this part of the world.”

  I could tell Mom was totally into it. I guess if you were a full-fledged mermaid like Mom, seeing a part of the ocean you hadn’t even known existed could be fairly interesting. In fact, most mers never got a chance to swim outside the habitat where they grew up. The mers off the coast of Port Toulouse didn’t even know that other mers existed beyond their pod.

  “Okay, if you say so,” I said with a sigh. If Mom thought Snuba diving was okay, I guess it was okay. I switched to my mer voice so only she would hear. But if we sprout tails, we’ll have to get Dad in a bathing suit for your wedding and I can’t see that ending well.

  Mom smiled at me while the Snuba instructors helped us with the rest of our equipment, and soon we were all set to go.

  “You ladies be careful!” Dad said. His hearing was better but he didn’t want to risk making it worse with Snuba diving because of his swimmer’s ear. He sat on the boat’s deck in shorts, socks, and sandals, with his pasty white legs making him look exactly like the tourist he was.

  “You be careful too!” I yelled before putting on my mask and jumping into the water. “And put on some sunscreen!”

  As we splashed into the Caribbean waters, our Snuba leader gave us last-minute instructions, repeating some of the highlights from our on-land lesson earlier. Then soon we were all underwater, our hair swaying all around us as we dove and swam, taking in the gorgeous coral, colorful tropical fish, and sea life off the coast of Paradise Island.