A Whale of a Tale Read online

  Contents

  1 OCEAN TRIP

  2 DR. MOUSTEAU

  3 FUNNY NOISES

  4 KILLER WHALE

  5 LUCKY CHARM

  6 TO THE TOP

  7 NO MORE SECRETS

  8 WHALE RIDE

  9 DEEP-SEA DANGER

  10 A BIG DECISION

  11 FLYING

  12 TROUBLE TIME?

  CLASS REPORTS

  THE MERMAID TALES SONG

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  ‘DANGER IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA’ EXCERPT

  To my nephew Damon Gibson,

  who swam with humpback whales

  and was kind enough

  to tell me about it

  Acknowledgment

  Thank you to my husband, Eric Dadey, for putting up with me for twenty-nine years of marriage.

  Ocean Trip

  ROCKY RIDGE WASN’T HAPPY. “Do we have to do another project?” he whined to his teacher. “Mrs. Karp, that’s not fair!”

  In the first few weeks of the new school year at Trident Academy, Mrs. Karp’s third-grade class had already completed reports on famous merpeople and a project where they’d collected krill and shrimp. Every one of the twenty students hoped they wouldn’t have to do another big assignment.

  Mrs. Karp smiled. “This lesson is different. We’re going on an ocean trip.”

  Rocky and the rest of the class cheered. “Yes! Awesome!”

  Kiki Coral gasped. But her mergirl friends Echo Reef and Shelly Siren clapped their hands and swished their tails. For many in the class, this would be their first ocean trip. They would leave classwork behind to learn in a deep-sea environment. “It’s about time we did something fun,” a mergirl named Pearl Swamp snapped.

  “Where are we going, Mrs. Karp?” Kiki asked.

  “An article in the Trident City Tide reported that a pod of whales is expected to be directly above Trident City tomorrow morning. We will visit them. In fact, Dr. Evan Mousteau will join us in a few minutes to tell us about whales and even teach us a bit of whale language.”

  Mrs. Karp continued, “I expect you to be courteous to Dr. Mousteau. After he leaves, we’ll go over surface safety rules. Your parents can feel secure that the guards from the Shark Patrol will be on the alert all morning, not only for sharks, but also for any sign of humans.”

  Echo could barely speak. “Humans!” she whispered to Shelly and Kiki. “I’ve always wanted to see a real, live human. Maybe tomorrow will be my chance!” Everything about humans fascinated Echo.

  “Are you sure it’s safe? My parents have never let me go above water,” Echo said to Mrs. Karp.

  Mrs. Karp patted Echo on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we will only go if it is safe.”

  Then Kiki shyly asked, “Which whale dialect will we be learning?”

  Mrs. Karp raised her green eyebrows. “Excellent question. I wonder how many of you know that whales talk to one another?”

  No one raised their hand except Shelly. Kiki smiled at her.

  “Since the visiting pod is made up of humpbacks, we will focus on the humpback whale dialect,” Mrs. Karp told the class.

  Kiki nodded, still smiling, but in truth she was worried. Really worried.

  Dr. Mousteau

  DR. MOUSTEAU REMINDED Kiki of the bottlenose dolphins that lived near her home in the far-off waters by Asia. He had the same shiny bald head and long pointed nose. Even his eyes were round and black. Kiki wondered if Dr. Mousteau had twenty-five pairs of teeth in each jaw. When he opened his mouth, she got her answer: He had one big tooth in the center of his top gum. That was it.

  “The humpback whale is a wondrous creature,” Dr. Mousteau told the third graders. “The pattern of white markings on the flukes and flippers is different on each and every whale. So no two whales are alike.”

  Dr. Mousteau continued, “Adult humpbacks are quite large and weigh ten times more than a great white shark.”

  “Those whales need to go on a diet,” Rocky blurted out.

  Mrs. Karp frowned, but Dr. Mousteau didn’t seem to mind Rocky’s interruption. He went on, “As you might know, man is the only predator of whales. Thankfully, humans’ captures of whales in recent years have decreased. Still, the humpback population is about one-fifth of what it was hundreds of years ago.”

  Dr. Mousteau reached into a bag and took out a thick piece of skin. “I’d like each of you to touch the specimen I’m passing around. This was taken from a whale that died naturally. I brought it for you to study.”

  Dr. Mousteau gave the skin to Rocky, who felt and even sniffed it. Rocky tried to give it to Pearl, but she shook her head. “I don’t want to touch any disgusting dead whale. It has awful bumps and nasty barnacles on it.”

  “That’s quite normal,” Dr. Mousteau said, taking the specimen and handing it to Shelly. “Every humpback has a long head with knobs such as these. If you didn’t clean yourselves thoroughly, you’d have barnacles too.”

  “I had a barnacle one time,” Rocky said, “but my dad made me wash it off.”

  Shelly felt the whale skin and tried to give it to Kiki, but Kiki’s eyes were glued to Dr. Mousteau. “Here, Kiki,” Shelly said, but Kiki wouldn’t look.

  Shelly shrugged and passed the skin to Echo, who took it with two fingers and quickly gave it to a mergirl named Morgan. Morgan only looked at it for a second before handing it to a merboy named Adam.

  Kiki shuddered. She’d almost had to touch the whale skin. She hoped that wouldn’t happen again. She tried to concentrate on Dr. Mousteau’s lessons on water pressure and whale speech, even though she spoke humpback perfectly. Pearl and Echo giggled as they tried to imitate the strange sounds. Rocky sounded more like a sick seal than a whale. Shelly was surprisingly good.

  After the language lesson, Dr. Mousteau said, “If you are very lucky tomorrow, three things might happen.”

  “What are they?” Pearl asked. “I want to be lucky.”

  Dr. Mousteau smiled, showing the one tooth in the middle of his mouth. “First, you may see a whale jumping out of the water.”

  “That’s known as breaching,” added Mrs. Karp.

  “Cool,” Rocky said.

  “Number two,” Dr. Mousteau said, “you may hear the males sing.”

  “Do the females sing?” Shelly asked.

  “No,” Dr. Mousteau said.

  “That’s not fair. Why not?” Shelly asked.

  Mrs. Karp explained, “The males sing to attract females.”

  Dr. Mousteau nodded in agreement before continuing. “And three, if you are very lucky, you may see a baby whale.”

  Echo looked at Kiki. “Wouldn’t that be great? Babies are so cute.”

  Kiki swallowed hard. “Sure,” she said. But Kiki didn’t think baby whales would be cute at all. In fact, whales of any size absolutely terrified her.

  Funny Noises

  THIS IS AWESOME,” ECHO TOLD Kiki and Shelly in the Trident Academy lunchroom that afternoon.

  Kiki looked up from her lunch of polka-dot batfish sushi in surprise. “What do you mean? This is the worst sushi they’ve served all year.”

  “I’m not talking about the food, Kiki,” Echo said. “I mean the ocean trip. Maybe I’ll finally get to see people! I’d like to see a baby whale, and I’ve never been to the surface before. It’s exciting.”

  Shelly swallowed her octopus legs and licked her fingers. “I can’t wait. I’ve always wanted to swim with whales.”

  “Swim with them? I could never do that!” Echo squealed. “My dad made me do a report on them last year in second grade. Do you know how big they are?”

  Kiki nodded. “Whales are the largest creatures that have ever lived. That’s why Mrs. Karp wants us to study them.” Kik
i didn’t tell the girls that she was scared, but she was glad to hear that Echo was a little bit afraid too.

  “They do this thing called bubble netting, where they trap their food!” Echo told her friends. Kiki stopped eating and stared at her.

  Shelly shook her head. “Don’t worry. Whales only eat fish and krill.”

  Echo flipped her pink mermaid tail. “Excuse me, but don’t we look like big fish?”

  Kiki looked down at her purple tail and gulped. Humpback whales were huge. All they had to do to swallow a mermaid was open their gigantic mouths wide. She was the smallest merkid in their class. What if a whale mistook her for a snack? Kiki closed her eyes for a moment and shuddered.

  “I thought you wanted to see humans,” Shelly said to Echo.

  Echo smiled and pushed her dark, curly hair off her forehead. “You know it.”

  “Well, this could be your only chance,” Shelly said. “My grandfather says humans love to watch whales.”

  Echo giggled. “Really? Then I can’t miss the trip. I’d do almost anything to see a real, live human.” She clasped her hands together, and Kiki could tell that Echo had forgotten her fear of whales in her excitement about seeing a human. Kiki felt totally alone with her secret. What was she going to do tomorrow? She just wasn’t ready to share her fears.

  “Now that that’s settled, let’s make Mr. Fangtooth smile today,” Shelly told her friends. Ever since school had started a few weeks ago, the girls had tried to make the grumpy lunchroom worker cheer up. On the first day of school, they’d made funny faces at him. That had made him laugh, but it had also gotten them sent to the headmaster’s office. Another time, Kiki and Shelly had walked on their hands in front of Mr. Fangtooth, but that had made him frown even more.

  “I know,” Kiki suggested, glad to think of something besides whales. “We could make weird sounds.”

  “What do you mean?” Shelly asked.

  “At home, when it was time to sleep, my seventeen brothers would make silly noises one by one, and by the time they got to number seventeen, we were laughing so hard my dad would have to yell at everyone to go to sleep. But then he’d make the silliest sound of all, and we’d start laughing all over again.” Remembering those good times made Kiki miss her family. The Trident Academy dorm room was a long way from her home.

  Shelly giggled. “Let’s try it.” Shelly, Echo, and Kiki glided over to return their lunch trays. Mr. Fangtooth stood behind the rock counter, wearing his usual frown.

  “BBBBBLLLLLLLSSSS,” Kiki said as she put down her tray. Her lips jiggled like a motorboat. Mr. Fangtooth didn’t laugh, but everyone else in the lunchroom did.

  “What was that?” shouted Rocky from a nearby table. “Did you hear what Kiki did?”

  A table full of mergirls, headed by Pearl, pointed at Kiki and laughed. Kiki rushed back to her seat and covered her face with her long hair. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Shelly told Kiki. “Rocky will find someone else to tease before long.” Rocky was always making mischief.

  “He’ll be so excited about seeing the whales tomorrow, he won’t think about you,” Echo pointed out.

  Kiki faked a smile for her friends. Trying to cheer up Mr. Fangtooth had made her forget about her fear of whales for a minute. Now she remembered again, and her stomach did a flip-flop.

  She knew she was being silly. After all, whales were known for being gentle. But they were so big! And she was so small. She couldn’t help how she felt any more than she could help how little she was.

  Kiki put her head down. Her stomach was hurting, and it wasn’t from the sushi. She had to think of a way to get out of the ocean trip tomorrow, and she had to think fast.

  Killer Whale

  AFTER SCHOOL, KIKI AND SHELLY met under Trident Academy’s massive entrance dome. A glowing jellyfish chandelier lit up the colorful carvings on the ceiling. “Do you want to come to my dorm room while Echo’s at Tail Flippers practice?” Kiki asked Shelly. Echo and Shelly had been friends since they’d been small fry, but Kiki had met the girls only a few weeks before, when school had started.

  Shelly smiled. “Sure! I’d love to see your room.” Shelly and Echo lived just a short swim away from Trident Academy, but many mergirls and merboys lived far from school and had to stay in the dormitory. Since Kiki’s home was thousands of miles away near Asia, she lived in the dorm.

  “It’s not that exciting,” Kiki admitted as they swam toward the girls’ dorm. It was a short distance from the classrooms, down a long hallway, past a seaweed curtain marked MERGIRLS ONLY. The boys’ rooms were on the opposite side of the school.

  “I bet it’s better than my apartment,” Shelly said.

  “At the People Museum?” Kiki asked.

  “Yes,” Shelly said. “I live with my grandfather. Our place is on the second floor.” Shelly had lived with her grandfather since her parents died. The People Museum was filled with human objects of all sorts that had been found throughout the ocean. Merpeople came from all over the merkingdom to visit and study.

  “Wow, that sounds neat,” Kiki said as the mergirls floated down the hallway to the rooms. Some girls had decorated their seaweed doors with shell carvings of their families. One girl had even braided a pretty gold chain into her seaweed.

  Shelly shook her head. “I think human stuff is boring. Echo loves it. But humans can’t even swim.”

  “I’ve heard that some can,” Kiki said.

  “I hope so,” Shelly said. “I can’t imagine not being able to swim. Wouldn’t it be horrible?”

  Kiki stopped in front of a bright-blue shell curtain, pulled it back, and said, “Here’s my room.” One side of the room was filled with fluffy pink coral and tube sponges. Sparkling jewel anemones covered one wall. Merclothes littered the floor. “That’s my roommate Wanda Slug’s side,” Kiki sighed as she looked at the mess.

  “Is this yours?” Shelly asked, and pointed across the room to an enormous skeleton. “Is that a shark?”

  “It’s my bed!” Kiki explained. “It might look like a shark, but it’s actually a killer whale. Come on, you can sit on it.” The two girls crawled inside the ribs of the huge skeleton and sank into a nest of feathers.

  “Wow, this is soft,” Shelly said.

  “My mermom saved gray heron feathers for five years to make this bed for me,” Kiki said.

  “You should come over to my apartment for dinner sometime,” Shelly suggested. “My grandfather, Siren, would enjoy meeting you. He loves learning about faraway waters.”

  “Your grandfather is the famous C. Siren, right?”

  Shelly nodded. “Yes, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “I think it would be cool to have a human expert in the family,” Kiki said.

  “I’m more interested in how you got this skeleton,” Shelly said. “I bet Echo would never crawl inside this in a hundred years. Sharks and killer whales give her the creeps.”

  “Wanda hates it too. She says it gives her nightmares,” Kiki told Shelly.

  Shelly laughed. “I bet it was funny to see her face when she got a look at this.” She gently patted one of the big rib bones.

  “Are you scared of killer whales and sharks?” Kiki asked.

  Shelly shrugged. “I’d be crazy not to be. They’re pretty dangerous. But skeletons can’t hurt you.”

  “That’s true,” Kiki said. “But what about whales? Are you scared of whales? They’re enormous!” Kiki held her breath as she waited for Shelly’s answer. Maybe she’d be able to tell Shelly how she really felt.

  “Of course not. Why would I be?” Shelly said. “Whales are amazing. My grandfather taught me to speak the humpback dialect. I’m going to try to talk to one tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Kiki said. “I can speak humpback too!” Languages had always come easily to Kiki. Her father was an expert linguist who had taught her more than fifty undersea languages.

  “Awesome. Tomorrow, let’s talk to the humpbacks together,�
�� Shelly said as she got off the bed and floated to the front curtain. “Unless… unless you’re afraid of whales. Are you?”

  Kiki stared at Shelly. If Kiki told her the truth, Shelly might make fun of her and tell all the other third graders. How would Kiki ever go to class again?

  “No way,” Kiki answered. “I can’t wait until tomorrow. I’ll be there early!”

  AFTER SHELLY LEFT, KIKI STAYED ON HER skeleton bed, safe and secure in the soft feathers. She had never felt smaller or more afraid. What will I do about the class trip? she thought. Those whales are so gigantic! They could swallow someone my size in one gulp. I wish my parents were here to help me.

  Kiki put her hand under her pillow. She felt around for a few seconds, then took out a small coral-colored shell purse. She opened it up. Inside was an orange starfish, tiny and delicate. Kiki held it up to her cheek. Her mother had given it to her before Kiki set off for Trident Academy, as a reminder of home and as a good-luck charm.

  Kiki hoped its luck would help her tomorrow. She would need it more than ever.

  Lucky Charm

  THE NEXT MORNING, MRS. KARP’S third-grade class arrived at Trident Academy earlier than usual. Everyone was excited about seeing the whales, and there was a nervous buzz in the swirling waters.

  “Quiet down, quiet down, and listen closely,” Mrs. Karp told her students as they gathered outside the school. “I am handing each of you an ID tag to clip to your tail. This is your identification for the Shark Patrol.” She handed out gold coins that had been folded to snap onto the students’ tail fins. The coins were marked with the Trident Academy symbol.

  Mrs. Karp was counting the mergirls and merboys. When she got to Shelly and Echo, she stopped. “Has either of you seen Kiki?”

  Shelly answered, “No, Mrs. Karp. She told me yesterday she’d be here first thing in the morning.”

  “We won’t leave without her, will we?” Echo asked. “Please, let’s just wait a few more minutes.”