Battle of the Best Friends Read online

  Sparkling adventures

  under the sea!

  ECHO REEF IS DOING tail flips because she’s going to see her favorite under-the-sea boy band, the Rays! They’re performing at her class mate Pearl’s birth day party, and everyone who goes to Trident Academy is invited. Everyone, that is, except Echo’s best friend, Shelly!

  Echo doesn’t want to miss the Rays, but how can she even think of going to the party without her best friend? Can Echo convince Pearl to invite Shelly? Or will she have to come up with a plan—and a surprise—of her own?

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  KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

  Aladdin

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover designed by Karin Paprocki

  Cover illustrations copyright © 2012

  by Tatevik Avakyan

  Ages 6–9

  Also by

  Debbie Dadey

  MERMAID TALES, BOOK 1:

  TROUBLE AT TRIDENT ACADEMY

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Aladdin paperback edition May 2012

  Text copyright © 2012 by Debbie Dadey Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Tatevik Avakyan All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ALADDIN is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and related logo is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Designed by Karin Paprocki

  The text of this book was set in Belucian Book.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2012930531

  ISBN 978-1-4424-4979-4 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-2982-6 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-2983-3 (eBook)

  To Nixon Fow,

  may you have many adventures

  in your third year

  Acknowledgment

  Thanks to my daughter, Becky Dadey, who brings music to our shell.

  Contents

  1 THE NEWS

  2 PEARL

  3 AWFUL

  4 UPSIDE-DOWN DAY

  5 TRYOUTS

  6 KIKI’S SECRET

  7 NON-RAYS PARTY

  8 GREAT WASP TRAGEDY

  9 PEARL’S PARTY CRASHERS

  10 STAR

  CLASS REPORTS

  THE MERMAID TALES SONG

  SHARK, THE SHARPNOSE SEVENGILL

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  The News

  WHAT IS TAKING SHELLY so long?” Echo asked. She swam back and forth, then peeked around the corner of her shell. If Shelly didn’t hurry, they would be late for school.

  “Too bad I don’t have one of those gadgets humans use to talk to someone who’s far away,” Echo said.

  People fascinated Echo. Ever since Shelly’s grandfather had told her about their machines that capture singing, Echo had wanted to see a human. She even wondered what it would be like to not have a tail.

  She did a huge backward flip and smiled. Having a tail did have some advantages. If she kept practicing her flips, she hoped to make the Tail Flippers team at her new school, Trident Academy. Tryouts were this week. Her best friend, Shelly, had already tried out for the Shell Wars sports team at school. Echo did another flip, this time twisting sideways.

  “That was great,” Shelly said, swimming up beside her.

  “There you are!” Echo squealed. “Have you heard the news?”

  “Yes!” Shelly shouted. “I can’t wait!”

  “Me neither,” Echo said. “Come on, let’s get to school.”

  The two mergirls splashed past the statues of famous merfolk in MerPark.

  “I can’t believe Pearl was able to do it,” Echo said as they swam quickly along.

  Shelly brushed a lock of red hair out of her face. “Pearl?” she asked. “Pearl didn’t even try out.” Pearl was another mergirl in their third-grade class, who seemed to think she was better than everyone else.

  Echo laughed as they reached the entrance to their school. “You don’t have to try out; you just need lots of jewels to pay for them.”

  “You can pay to get on the Shell Wars team?” Shelly asked. “I thought Pearl hated Shell Wars.”

  Echo stopped and stared at her friend. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Shell Wars. Coach Barnacle announces who made the team today. What are you talking about?”

  Echo grabbed Shelly’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “I’m talking about Pearl’s birthday party. She’s invited the Rays!”

  “You’re kidding!” Shelly screamed. There wasn’t a merperson alive who hadn’t heard of the Rays. They were an amazing boy band and they were very, very cute.

  “Didn’t you get your invitation?” Echo asked.

  Shelly shook her head.

  “I bet you’ll get it today,” Echo told her friend. She smiled as they went into the school, but she was a little worried. Pearl wasn’t exactly the nicest mergirl in their class, and she didn’t like Shelly very much.

  What if Pearl hadn’t invited Shelly? What would Echo do?

  Pearl

  I MADE IT!” SHELLY YELLED. SHE AND Echo had finally gotten to the front of a long line of merkids outside the Trident Academy gym. A list had been posted with the names of this year’s Shell Wars team members.

  As soon as Shelly read her name, Rocky pushed her out of the way. “Move it!” said the merboy, who was in Shelly and Echo’s class. “If you made the team, I had to make it too. You stink!”

  Echo and Shelly backed away from the list to let the crowd behind them see. Everyone wanted to know who had made their grade’s team.

  “Congratulations,” said Kiki. She was a small, dark-haired mergirl new to Trident City and a new friend of Shelly’s.

  “You’ll be the best Shell Wars player ever,” Echo added.

  Shelly laughed. “I’d just be happy not getting smacked in the stomach with the shell. But, Kiki, I’m so sorry you didn’t make the team.”

  Kiki shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ve never really played it before, so I knew it was a long shot. I’ll join some clubs instead.”

  “There are some amazing clubs here at Trident Academy,” Echo said.

  Shelly nodded. “I can’t believe our first Shell Wars game is Thursday.”

  Echo gasped. “That’s when the Tail Flippers tryouts are! I wanted to go to your first game.”

  “I wanted to watch you try out,” Shelly said. “Maybe I can come during halftime.”

  “I’ll watch,” Kiki said, “and cheer for Echo. Next time I’ll go to your game, Shelly.”

  “Thanks,” Shelly said. “Echo, I know you’ll make the team.”

  “Right now we’d better get to class,” Echo said as the conch shell horn began to sound. All the kids in the hall raced to their classrooms. Echo, Kiki, and Shelly slid into their rock desks just as the final sound blasted. Rocky, who was always late, swam in seconds later.

  Pearl was already in class. Echo wanted to ask her about the party. Maybe she hadn’t sent out all her invit
ations yet. Maybe Shelly’s got lost in the underwater snail mail. Maybe Pearl didn’t know Shelly’s address.

  Echo was so worried about Shelly and the party, she didn’t hear a word anyone said until her teacher, Mrs. Karp, announced, “The report is due on Monday.”

  Monday? I’ll just have to find out later what the assignment is, Echo thought. I need to speak to Pearl before I do anything!

  Echo finally got the chance to ask Pearl about the party after school at Tail Flippers practice.

  “I’ll see Shelly later if you want me to give her the invitation,” Shelly told Pearl.

  “No thanks,” Pearl said, gently removing the long strand of pearls she wore around her neck and putting it on a nearby rock. No jewelry was allowed during any after-school sports. “I don’t invite icky Shell Wars players to my lovely home.”

  “But you invited Rocky,” Echo said. She had heard Rocky talking about the party in the lunchroom.

  Pearl giggled. “I know. He’s so cute, and we need boys for dancing.”

  “But Shelly is really nice. You’ll find out when you get to know her better,” Echo said.

  “I know all I want to know,” Pearl said with a sniff. “And from now on, if you want to be friends with me, you can’t be friends with Shelly.”

  Awful

  I CAN’T BELIEVE PEARL!” SAID SHELLY the next morning while the girls made their way to school. “Did she really say that?”

  Echo nodded sadly. “I told her to take her friendship and feed it to the sea turtles.”

  Shelly hugged her friend. “Thanks for sticking up for me,” she said. “But I know you’ve always wanted to see the Rays. You’ve taught me all of their songs.”

  Echo laughed. “I bet you sing better than they do.” Echo had to admit she was a little bit jealous of Shelly’s singing. Every mergirl could sing well, but some had a special gift and sang like sirens of long ago. Shelly had that gift.

  “Maybe we should have our own party,” Shelly said as the girls swam past MerPark. “We could have a Rays sing-along of our own for everyone who wasn’t invited. Kiki told me she didn’t get an invitation either.”

  Echo splashed up and down. “Great idea, Shelly!”

  “We could do that, but I still think you should go to Pearl’s party. I don’t have to do everything you do,” Shelly said.

  “I know,” Echo said. “But if I go, it’s like I agree with Pearl, and I don’t. She shouldn’t be so mean.”

  “But this is the chance of a lifetime,” Shelly argued.

  Echo shrugged. “Mergirls live very long lives, so I’m sure I’ll get another chance to see the Rays.”

  Shelly didn’t say anything. She just nodded.

  Zoom! Something rushed past the girls and into Trident Academy.

  “What was that?” Echo asked. “It wasn’t a shark, was it?” The residents of Trident City were always on the lookout for sharks. Even though they rarely came into waters this deep, the city had shark patrols that kept constant watch.

  “That wasn’t a shark,” Shelly said. “It was Rocky.”

  “I can’t help it,” Echo said with a giggle. “I still think he’s awfully cute.”

  “He’s awful, all right,” Shelly said, remembering the time he swiped a shrimp she was getting for a project, “but I’m not sure about the cute part.”

  Upside-Down Day

  DID YOU WORK ON YOUR famous merperson report?” Shelly asked Echo as they entered the enormous front hallway of Trident Academy. All around them, hundreds of merkids chatted with their friends. A couple of merboys tossed a lemon sponge back and forth until Coach Barnacle told them to stop.

  “What report?” Echo said, swimming around a group of giggling tenth-grade mergirls.

  “Didn’t you hear Mrs. Karp tell us to do a report on a merperson?”

  “When did she say that?” Echo asked. She shook her head and ducked when a fourth grader swam over her in a rush to get to class.

  Shelly stopped swimming. “Wait a minute,” she said. She took a deep breath and faced Echo. “I am working very hard to do my best at Trident. After all, it’s a family tradition. My parents and grandparents all went to school here. It’s really, really important that I do well.”

  “I know,” Echo said. “Don’t worry. You’ll do great.”

  Shelly scrunched her nose up. She looked right at Echo and said, “I can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t even try in school.”

  Echo fell backward in surprise. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Shelly said. “I thought about it all night, and it’s best if we’re not friends anymore.” And then she swam away.

  Echo couldn’t believe her ears. What happened? How could Shelly treat her this way? They had been best friends for as long as she could remember.

  ALL MORNING LONG, SHELLY IGNORED Echo during class. At lunch, Shelly turned her back on Echo and sat at a table for two with Kiki.

  “Come sit with us,” Pearl said, pulling Echo’s pink tail.

  Echo sat with Pearl and her friends, but she didn’t say a word. Instead, she watched Shelly and Kiki. They looked like they were having a great time without her, talking and laughing. They even walked on their hands in front of Mr. Fangtooth, the cafeteria worker.

  “They are trying to make him laugh,” Echo said, breaking her silence.

  Pearl looked at Mr. Fangtooth. “He’s such a grouch. They’ll never cheer him up. How ridiculous!”

  Echo didn’t think it was silly to be nice. In fact, she thought it was the best thing in the world. And more than anything, she wanted to make Mr. Fangtooth laugh with Shelly and Kiki. On the first day of third grade the mergirls had made crabby-looking Mr. Fangtooth laugh. Even though they had gotten into trouble, they were glad they’d tried to make him happy.

  Echo stood up. Shelly looked at her. Immediately Shelly and Kiki rushed back to their table and sat down. Echo couldn’t help herself—she quickly swam out of the cafeteria. Then, in the hallway, she cried and cried.

  Tryouts

  THIS IS SO THRILLING!” PEARL squealed as twenty mergirls lined up for the Tail Flippers tryouts on Thursday. The MerPark stands were full of friends and family who had come to watch the after-school event.

  Echo knew she should be excited. After all, she had practiced ever since the first day of school. Her father and mother had taken off work to see her try out. Her older sister, Crystal, even came to watch. Kiki was in the stands supporting her. But all Echo could think about was the way Shelly had treated her. It was the worst time of her life.

  Echo was beginning to think that Trident Academy was bad for their friendship. At the beginning of the school year, she and Shelly had an argument about homework. They never used to argue. “I should just go home now,” Echo said out loud. “I’m never going to make the team.”

  Wanda, a mergirl in Echo’s class and Kiki’s roommate, frowned. “You’ll never make it with that attitude. You have to be confident, Echo.”

  Echo sighed. She wasn’t confident at all. She was way too sad. She missed her friend. But then she heard something that changed everything.

  “Good luck, Echo!” someone shouted. Echo looked up in the stands and saw Kiki. And right beside her, Shelly held a big seaweed sign that read GO ECHO! in red letters.

  Great! Shelly must not be mad anymore, Echo thought, and waved at her friends.

  “All right, merladies,” announced Coach Barnacle. “Let the tryouts begin.”

  The Trident Academy Pep Band played their instruments. Several older merstudents used conch shells to blow tunes while three merboys pounded out a beat on a huge sharkskin drum. Suddenly Coach Barnacle smashed two shells together. “That’s our signal,” Pearl said.

  All twenty mergirls began flipping backward and sideways to the music. The merpeople in the stands clapped along. Echo giggled. It was so much fun. She was doing her best turns and flips. She was happy, but mostly because Shelly was there to support her.

  The music stopped and Co
ach Barnacle chose five girls from the group: Pearl, Echo, and three others Echo didn’t know. Echo felt bad for Wanda and the girls who weren’t chosen. They had worked just as hard as she had.

  “Congratulations! You are the new Tail Flippers team!” Coach said. “We start practice tomorrow after school, so don’t be late. See you then.”

  Echo swam over to her parents and her sister.

  “Your flips were fantastic,” Crystal said.

  “Did you really think so?” Echo asked.

  “You’ll be a wonderful member of the team,” Echo’s mother added. “Your father and I have to get back to work, but we’ll celebrate at home later.”

  Echo’s family left, and she found Kiki. “Thanks so much for coming,” Echo said, hugging her. “Where is Shelly?”

  “Who?” Kiki asked.

  “I saw Shelly right beside you,” Echo said. “I wanted to ask her about her game.”

  Kiki shrugged. “I heard they won, but I think she’s still mad at you.”

  The smile on Echo’s face disappeared. “But she was holding up a good-luck sign. I thought she wasn’t angry anymore. Why would she come to cheer me on? Oh, Kiki, how can Shelly and I be friends again?”

  Kiki looked down at the sandy ocean floor and twitched her purple tail. “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  All Echo wanted to do was go home and cry. She didn’t even care that she had made the Tail Flippers team.

  “Bye,” Echo said sadly as she floated away from MerPark.

  “I’m sorry,” Kiki called after her.

  I’m sorry too, Echo said to herself. Why couldn’t I have paid attention in class? Then none of this would have happened.

  A soft hand grabbed Echo’s arm. “Isn’t it totally fabulous?” Pearl asked. “We made the Tail Flippers!”

  Echo nodded. “Yeah, it’s great.”