A Tale of Two Sisters Read online

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TRIDENT CITY MAP

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  1. TOO MANY TAIL FLIPS!

  2. STAGES

  3. FEELING CRABBY

  4. MINE!

  5. WARTS

  6. ACCIDENTALLY

  7. CRYSTAL’S MESS

  8. DESTROYED

  9. STAR

  10. A PROMISE

  11. FRIENDS

  CLASS REPORTS

  THE MERMAID TALES SONG

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  THE POLAR BEAR EXPRESS EXCERPT

  ABOUT DEBBIE DADEY

  To my brothers, Frank Gibson and David Gibson

  In memory of Christin Mary Barilla, who loved children

  Acknowledgment

  Thanks to the lovely people at the Doylestown Bookshop for all your support!

  Too Many Tail Flips!

  ECHO REEF TUCKED IN HER fins and flipped two times in a row.

  “That was tails down the best flip I’ve ever seen!” Shelly Siren told her. The girls floated outside Echo’s shell in the early morning before school.

  Echo grinned as she stretched her pink tail. “Thanks! I’ve been practicing a lot lately. The Tail Flippers are performing a new routine for Parent Night, and Coach Barnacle wants it to be perfect. If anyone misses even one practice, they won’t be able to perform!”

  The Tail Flippers were Trident Academy’s gymnastics and dance group. Echo was thrilled that she had made the team this year, and she couldn’t wait to show off her new moves on Parent Night.

  Echo and Shelly were in the third grade at Trident Academy, a prestigious school for third through tenth graders. They both lived close to the school, but merstudents from faraway waters lived in the dorms. Many families would be crossing the ocean to visit for Parent Night. Besides the Tail Flippers, the Pep Band and the Trident Chorus would perform, and there would even be a student art show.

  “Coach Barnacle wants the Shell Wars team to play a scrimmage that night too,” Shelly said. “It will be strange playing in front of so many merpeople.” Shell Wars was a game where players took turns whacking shells with whalebones. Echo knew that Shelly was proud to be part of the team.

  Echo grinned. “I’ve never flipped in front of so many merpeople before! It sounds so exciting.” Like Shelly, Echo was used to performing in front of her fellow merstudents, but not strangers.

  “I just know you’ll be totally wavy!” Shelly said.

  “Maybe I’d better practice even more,” Echo said. “There are only a few days left before Parent Night.”

  Echo’s sister, Crystal, stuck her head out of a window of their family’s shell. “Echo, you’d better hurry. It’s almost time for school.”

  Crystal had the same dark hair and eyes as Echo, but she was two years older. Crystal stared at Echo’s sparkly T-shirt. “Hey! Isn’t that my shirt you’re wearing?”

  Echo groaned. Lately Crystal was always telling her what to do.

  “No, it used to be yours,” Echo told her. “Mom gave it to me because it doesn’t fit you anymore. And I’m just going to do one more flip.”

  “Fine,” Crystal replied, “but don’t blame me if you’re late.” She paused. “Oh, hi, Shelly. I like your necklace.”

  Shelly waved. “Thanks. Yours is pretty too.”

  With that, Crystal swam off in a burst of bubbles.

  “You are so lucky to have an older sister.” Shelly sighed. “Crystal is the coolest. She’s always so nice to me.” Shelly’s parents had died when she was a small fry, so she lived alone with her grandfather.

  Echo shook her head. “I wish I was an only child like you, for sharks’ sake. You never have anyone bossing you around. Plus, you don’t have to wear someone else’s old hand-me-downs! I hardly ever get anything new of my very own.”

  Shelly shrugged, and Echo shook out her tail. She was tired of talking about Crystal! Instead she took a huge leap and flipped in a loop three times. Echo was going so fast that she tailspinned into a rather large rock.

  “Argh!” she shrieked, landing with a thud.

  “Are you all right?” Shelly cried, rushing up beside her merfriend.

  “I think so,” Echo replied. She checked her tail and didn’t find any loose scales.

  “Thank Neptune you aren’t hurt!” Shelly said. “But Crystal was right. We’re going to be late to school. Shake your fins and let’s get swimming.”

  Echo nodded and pushed back her hair, only to discover that her glittering plankton bow was missing.

  “Just a merminute,” she said. “Can you help me find my bow? It must have fallen off.” Echo rarely went to school without something sparkly decorating her dark curly hair.

  Echo and Shelly searched the ocean floor for the bioluminescent plankton.

  “I found it!” Shelly said, holding up the glowing creature.

  But Echo had found something too.

  “Sweet seaweed!” she screeched as she lifted a rock the size of a small jellyfish. “Check this out!”

  Stages

  THE TWO MERGIRLS STARED at the strange object in front of them.

  “What is it?” Shelly asked.

  Echo shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s the waviest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Do you think it’s from humans?” Shelly asked.

  Echo smiled. “I hope so!” She loved everything about people and collected objects that might have once belonged to humans, but she had never found anything like this before.

  This object, whatever it was, had two chains that were connected by a round disk. It looked like it was made of pure gold. It sparkled and shone.

  “Uh-oh. It’s getting late!” Shelly warned. “We’d better get to school before Mrs. Karp makes us shark bait!”

  Echo knew her friend was right, but she hated to leave her new find. It was so pretty that she just wanted to keep staring at it all day.

  “Let me put this in my room. I’ll be really quick,” she promised.

  As fast as a sailfish, Echo swam into her shell and looked around for a place to put her new treasure. She decided to hide it behind a sponge chair in her bedroom. Now that Echo had something that was all hers, she didn’t want Crystal taking it.

  The mergirls got to their third-grade classroom just as the conch shell sounded. The eighteen other merkids were already seated at their desks—even Rocky Ridge, who was almost always late. Their teacher, Mrs. Karp, raised one green eyebrow at Echo and Shelly but didn’t count them as being tardy. Echo let out a sigh of relief as the first lesson began.

  “Who knows what it is called when a creature changes so that it looks completely different?” Mrs. Karp asked. “Here’s a hint: It’s sometimes called the stages of life.”

  A pretty blond mergirl named Pearl Swamp raised her hand. “Do these stages have anything to do with the Plaza Hotel’s famous theater?” The Plaza was a fancy hotel in Trident City that often had well-known actors and actresses perform plays on its jewel-studded stage.

  Mrs. Karp stared at Pearl for a merminute before shaking her head.

  Echo’s friend Kiki Coral, the smallest mergirl in class, raised her hand. “Are you talking about metamorphosis?”

  Mrs. Karp slapped her marble desk with her white tail. “Exactly!” she said.

  Echo smiled at Kiki. Even though Kiki was tiny, she was probably the smartest merstudent in the whole class.

  “Another way to describe metamorphosis is ‘life cycles,’ ” Mrs. Karp continued. “Crabs have very interesting life cycles. Later this week, we’ll write reports on our favorite crabs.” The class groaned, but Mrs. Karp continued. “For now, let’s move slowly to the back of the classroom so I can ex
plain the crab’s developmental stages.”

  Despite Mrs. Karp’s instructions, Rocky zoomed through the room and created a wave that washed Echo’s seaweed homework right off her desk. Echo shook her head. She usually thought Rocky was cute, but today he was a pain. After picking up her homework, she followed the rest of the class to the display of crab eggs.

  “These eggs are in the first stage of the crab’s life cycle,” Mrs. Karp told them. “Eventually they will reach the second stage by developing into larvae called zoea. You will see that stage tomorrow when we start our reports, but for now here is a picture.”

  Mrs. Karp kept talking about the other phases of a crab’s life, but Echo’s mind wandered to the amazing thing she’d found under the rock. Did it really belong to a human? How long had it been there? And most importantly, what was it?

  Maybe it was for capturing how something looked. Echo had heard such things were called photographs. She’d also read in MerStyle magazine that humans could talk to one another from half an ocean away. What if the object was something that would allow her to talk to humans? Or maybe it was a music-making machine! Shelly’s grandpa, who ran Trident City’s People Museum, had told her that such things existed. Maybe Kiki would come over to see it. After all, Kiki was really smart. She might know if it was used by humans. Echo hoped people used it for something totally wavy! Maybe—

  “Echo Reef!” Mrs. Karp said sharply. “Can you tell us the name of the crab’s final stage of life?”

  “Um, I . . .” Echo didn’t know what to say.

  “Please pay attention!” Mrs. Karp said sternly.

  Before Echo could say anything else, Pearl squealed, “Mrs. Karp! Look at what Rocky did!”

  Feeling Crabby

  I DON’T SEE WHY MRS. KARP is making me help you hunt for crab eggs,” Echo complained to Rocky after school. “I have Tail Flippers practice, and there is something really important I need to do at home.”

  She hoped they would find the eggs quickly so she wouldn’t miss a merminute of Tail Flippers practice. Coach Barnacle was very strict about showing up on time.

  “It’s not my fault you were daydreaming in class today,” Rocky said. “And I have stuff to do too. I’m supposed to be at Shell Wars practice.”

  “But you’re the one who ate Mrs. Karp’s crab eggs!” Echo snapped as a sea lamprey slithered past her.

  Rocky shrugged. “What can I say? I was hungry,” he said.

  Echo sighed. It was no use arguing with Rocky, so she looked around MerPark for any floating eggs. Some crabs released their eggs right into the water, so finding them wouldn’t be easy. They could be anywhere in the whole wide ocean!

  “There are some zoea,” Rocky said, pointing to small, wormlike creatures near the ocean floor.

  “But we’re looking for eggs,” Echo reminded him crossly. “Honestly, you need to focus so we can finish.”

  “Sweet seaweed, you really weren’t paying attention,” Rocky told her. “Crab eggs hatch into larvae called zoea. If there are larvae, maybe the eggs are close by.”

  Echo was so embarrassed. She really hadn’t heard Mrs. Karp say any of that. She promised herself that she would listen better tomorrow, but right now they had to find some crab eggs. The sooner they found the eggs, the faster she could head to Tail Flippers practice, and the quicker she could swim home. She couldn’t wait to admire her new find!

  “Look!” Echo cried. Floating near a statue of a make-believe merperson named Mapella was a cluster of eggs.

  Rocky flipped his brown tail into high gear and caught the eggs inside a glass jar. “Mission egg search is complete!”

  “Thank Neptune!” Echo said as she turned to leave. She didn’t even wave or say good-bye to Rocky. She just swam as quickly as she could to Tail Flippers practice.

  Practice was even harder than she had expected. Coach Barnacle had all the mergirls do lots of stretches and three times as many tail flips as usual. He even asked Echo to try a very tricky kind of spin called a Scale Dropper. By the time she swam back to her shell that evening, Echo was totally pooped! But she was still excited to look at her treasure.

  Crystal was floating by the front door, tapping her pink tail on the sandy floor. “I need to talk to you!” she snapped.

  But Echo didn’t stop to chat. She knew that her sister probably just wanted to boss her around since their parents were still at work.

  “Later,” Echo said as she soared down the hall to her room. She had been waiting all day to admire her new find. Finally she was going to get the chance!

  Inside her room, Echo moved the sponge chair and peered behind it. But instead of seeing the amazing object she’d hidden earlier, she saw . . . nothing. Nothing but a big, empty space!

  “AAHH!” Echo screamed. “It’s gone!”

  Mine!

  THAT’S WHAT I NEED TO talk to you about,” Crystal said from the doorway.

  “Were we robbed?” Echo asked in disbelief. Nothing else was out of place in her small room, but her special object was missing! Robbery was extremely rare among merfolk, but it was still possible.

  “No, we weren’t robbed. You stole my treasure!” Crystal snapped. She pulled out the two long golden chains. As before, they floated free of each other, but were attached by a round disk.

  “Your treasure?” Echo gasped. “How could it be yours when I found it?”

  How in the ocean had her sister gotten her fins on it? Maybe Shelly had told her about it at school, though that was unlikely. Younger and older students rarely saw one another at Trident Academy.

  Crystal shook her head. “I found it first. I hid it under a rock to keep it safe. I knew you must have gotten it when it was missing. So I looked around your room until I found it.”

  Echo couldn’t believe it. She finally had something of her very own, and Crystal had taken it. She’d even searched through Echo’s things to find it! Echo lunged toward her sister. “Give it back to me. It’s mine!”

  “No, it’s not. It’s mine!” Crystal said, dashing away and racing into the kitchen.

  Echo had only one thing on her mind: to get her prize back! She zoomed after her sister. Echo was going so fast she couldn’t slow down, even when she got to the kitchen table. She slid across the top of the table, still reaching for her sister. Unfortunately, Crystal had already made dinner: a big shell bowl of clam casserole, cups of seaweed juice, and sea-lettuce salad. Echo’s crash sent all the food floating, along with the tableware.

  Half  the clam casserole landed in Crystal’s face, so she didn’t see Echo grabbing the prize. But Crystal must have felt the tug as Echo pried it from her fingers. “Leave it alone!” Crystal snapped.

  “It’s mine!” Echo growled, but she lost her grip on the treasure when Crystal splashed the seaweed juice. Seaweed juice didn’t sting, but it could turn your face an awful green color.

  Echo scrambled after the treasure once more, this time bumping into Crystal. The two mergirls rolled on the floor, crashing into the family’s food storage trunk. The trunk’s lid popped open, and white sea-whip pudding, ribbon worms, pickled sea cucumbers, and crab popovers floated across the kitchen. Crystal grabbed a handful of leftover ribbon worms and threw them at Echo. Echo tossed back two crab popovers. She was reaching for more food to throw at her sister when she heard a shout.

  “What is going on here?”

  Echo and Crystal turned to see that their mother, Dr. Eleanor Reef, was home from her job as director of the Conservatory for the Preservation of Sea Horses and Swordfish. She floated in the doorway with a shocked look on her face.

  “Oops,” Echo said.

  She looked around their usually tidy kitchen and couldn’t believe the mess. Their dinner was a blob on the floor, broken shells and leftovers floated near the ceiling, and her sister’s hair even had a crab popover sticking out of it. Echo was ashamed that she’d been scuffling with her sister . . . and even more embarrassed by the mess. How had it happened so quickly?

  �
�She tried to steal the special object I found,” Crystal explained. “I discovered it last week and hid it behind our shell.”

  “But I found it under a rock this morning,” Echo said. “It’s mine!”

  Dr. Reef held out her hand. “Until you merladies can learn to get along, whatever it is that you’re fighting about belongs to me.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” their mother said. “Give me that thing and get this mess cleaned up. Right now!”

  Warts

  IT’S ALL CRYSTAL’S FAULT,” ECHO told Kiki and Shelly the next day in the science lab. They were supposed to be sketching the different stages of the crab’s life cycle, but so far Echo had only drawn the first three: eggs, zoea, and megalopae. Luckily, Mrs. Karp was too busy helping a merstudent named Morgan on the other side of the lab to notice.

  Shelly scrunched her nose as she drew a leg on a juvenile crab. “Well, if Crystal did find it first,” she whispered, “then it sort of belongs to her.”

  Echo put her right hand on her hip. “Crystal might not have even been telling the truth.”

  “Does Crystal usually lie?” Kiki asked.

  Echo frowned. “No, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t this time.”

  “What exactly does this object look like, anyway?” Kiki asked.

  “It has two chains connected by this pretty golden disk,” Echo explained.

  “Is the disk big?” Kiki asked.

  Echo shook her head and made a small loop with her thumb and forefinger to show the right size. “Do you know if it might have belonged to a human?” she asked hopefully.

  But Kiki didn’t get a chance to answer, because Mrs. Karp suddenly appeared beside them. “Let’s get to work,” she told the mergirls.

  Echo tried to draw the next two stages, juvenile and adult, but she was still so mad at Crystal that she couldn’t concentrate.

  Then she heard Pearl screech, “Get that thing away from me!”