by Debbie Dadey
Anna winked as she put Pearl’s clothes on her bed. “Is my little Pearl planning her wedding already?” she asked. “Perhaps you have a crush? The mayor’s cute son, Rocky?”
“No!” Pearl sputtered. “Not me! It’s for a friend.”
Anna smiled like she didn’t believe Pearl. “Sure it is!”
“Really,” Pearl said as she felt her face turning red. “I am helping a friend.” Which Pearl didn’t think was a lie, because she was helping Mr. Fangtooth in a way, and she had tried to be his friend. It wasn’t her fault that he didn’t like her smile or her singing.
Pearl tried a different question. “What was your favorite part of your wedding?” She knew that Anna had been married for more than thirty years.
Anna’s eyes got a faraway look. “The best part was marrying the merman I loved. And having my family and friends all around me.”
Pearl nodded, but she didn’t believe Anna. Her wedding must not have been very good.
Pearl wanted to make sure that Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth would have wonderful memories of their special day. She couldn’t wait to get started!
Miss Fix-It
THE NEXT DAY PEARL COULD hardly wait for school to be over. When Mrs. Karp asked Pearl a question about mushroom coral, Pearl had to admit she hadn’t been listening.
“Miss Swamp,” Mrs. Karp told her. “Please pay attention in class.”
“Yes, Mrs. Karp,” Pearl answered. And she did try to listen as her teacher talked about the stringlike whip coral, but then she started thinking about how clueless Lillian had been about her wedding. Lillian truly didn’t seem to know what she was doing. She needed a lot of help, and Pearl couldn’t wait to fix everything for her. So when the conch sounded to end the school day, Pearl blasted out of her seat and soared to the Trident Plaza Hotel.
She didn’t even glance at the shining brass walls or the green marble floors of the hotel’s lobby. Instead she swam straight to the enormous brass-and-marble check-in desk. A burly merman with a bushy mustache smiled at her and said, “How may I assist you?”
Pearl looked at his name tag and nodded. “Leroy, can you introduce me to the person who takes care of weddings? I am helping Mr. Fangtooth and Lillian plan theirs for this coming Saturday.”
“I am in charge of all the weddings at the Plaza,” Leroy told her.
“You?” Pearl gasped. For some reason she had expected a merlady to be in charge. She nodded her head and said, “I would like to review all the arrangements right away, please.”
Leroy frowned. “This is a most unusual request for someone who isn’t the bride or groom, but since we are not busy right now, I would be happy to go over everything with you.”
Pearl almost giggled. This was going to be easier than she thought.
“Let’s start with the location of the ceremony,” Leroy said. He led her into a dark room that smelled like dirty clothes. “It will take place in here.”
“No, no, no!” Pearl shouted. “This will never work! Did Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth approve this?”
Leroy shrugged. “They haven’t seen it yet.”
Pearl crossed her arms. “Well, I’m seeing it now, and this will not do. What else do you have available?”
Pearl and Leroy spent the next hour checking out different rooms before they found one overlooking a waterfall. An enormous golden chandelier glittering with plankton hung from the center of the carved floral ceiling.
“This is perfect!” Pearl said. “We will move the ceremony to this room. Next, we need to go over the chairs, the flowers, the music, and the special white aisle for the bride to float down. And of course, we’ll need some sort of lovely flower arbor for Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth to stand under.”
Leroy rubbed his forehead. “Is that all?”
“Oh, no,” Pearl said with a smile. “We’re just getting started.”
Perfectly Costly
I HAVE A TERRIBLE HEADACHE,” Leroy said. Pearl had just insisted on shell baskets of sea lavender accented with pearls for the centerpieces. She’d been upset when Leroy told her the hotel’s policy on not using live coral, but the sea lavender would be even prettier. “Are we finished?”
Pearl looked at her list and nodded. Everything was crossed off. Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth were going to be so happy when they saw all that Pearl had done. Of course they would want her to be one of their flower girls!
“All right,” Leroy said, holding up his own list of all the changes Pearl had made. “Let me calculate how much this is going to cost.”
Cost? Pearl hadn’t thought about the price. She looked at Leroy’s list. It was very long. Pearl hoped all her suggestions wouldn’t be too expensive. Her parents bought her everything she needed, but they gave her a small allowance. Pearl had a few shells saved for a new purse, so she could use those to help with the extra wedding cost if it wasn’t too much.
Pearl looked around the beautiful room she’d chosen. It was so much better than that stinky dark place. Surely Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth would rather be here, no matter how expensive it might be. With a sigh she followed Leroy back to the check-in desk.
Pearl watched Leroy as he added numbers together. Then he added more numbers together. He shook his head and added even more numbers. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Leroy lifted his head and smiled. Only he wasn’t smiling at Pearl.
Pearl turned around and was shocked to see Lillian standing behind her.
“Welcome!” Leroy greeted her. “I have wonderful news. Even though it’s only a few days away, we can easily make all the changes that you want for your wedding.”
“What changes?” Lillian asked, fanning herself with her tail.
Pearl patted Lillian on the shoulder. “Hello! Remember me from MerLinda’s? I’m Pearl Swamp, wedding planner.” She reached into her shell purse and handed Lillian a business card. “I noticed how stressed out you were, so I fixed everything. Don’t worry, your wedding will be beautiful!”
“And it will only cost ten thousand more shells,” Leroy added.
Pearl gulped. “Did you say ten thousand?” That was a lot more than she had in her savings.
Lillian gasped. “But—but I don’t have ten thousand shells.”
“What about Mr. Fangtooth?” Pearl asked. “I’m sure he wants to pay for a nice wedding.”
Lillian shook her head. “But we decided to split the costs. I am paying for the wedding and Mendel is paying for the honeymoon. Oh, Pearl, what have you done?”
Wedding Planner Woes
NOW PEARL HAD A TERRIBLE headache!
Leroy led Pearl and Lillian back into the beautiful room Pearl had picked for the ceremony. Lillian looked at Leroy’s list and shook her head. “All of this sounds lovely, but I just can’t afford it.”
Pearl smiled. “You mean . . . you like my ideas?”
Lillian sighed. “Of course! Just look at this,” she said, glancing around the beautiful space. “Your list, this room . . . it’s as if all my wishes have come true.”
As she spoke, Lillian had a dreamy, happy look on her face. Even though Pearl hardly knew Lillian, suddenly she wanted the librarian to have the perfect wedding. Even if Pearl wasn’t a flower girl.
But where could she get that many shells? There had to be a way! “Don’t worry about the added cost,” Pearl said, trying to sound confident. “I am going to make sure you don’t have to pay extra.”
“You are?” Lillian and Leroy said together.
“Of course,” Pearl said. “After all, I am a wedding planner. Just leave it all to me!”
Lillian shook her head. “That’s sweet of you, dear, but I think we’d better just put things back the way they were.”
Pearl couldn’t stand the idea of Lillian getting married in that dark, dank room with the wrong kind of flowers and no centerpieces. “Could you give me just one day to fix things? Please!”
“All right,” Lillian finally agreed. “But I don’t see how it will work.”
Pearl did
n’t either, but she wasn’t going to tell Lillian or Leroy that. Instead, she twisted her necklace and started thinking.
She thought during her swim home. She thought when she should have been doing her homework.
She was still thinking at the dinner table.
“Pearl, stop playing with your coconut crab legs and eat your dinner,” her mother told her.
Pearl gazed at the portrait of her mother and father on their wedding day. Her aunt Joan had sketched it, and it had hung in their dining room for as long as Pearl could remember. Why hadn’t she thought of asking her mother and father for their advice?
“Mom, did you and Daddy spend a lot of shells on your wedding?” Pearl asked them.
Mr. Swamp laughed, almost spitting out his comb jelly tea. “No! We got married on the budget plan.”
“Budget?” Pearl asked.
Mrs. Swamp frowned at her husband. “What your father means,” she said, “is that we had to be creative and make a lot out of a little. We needed all our shells just to live back then.”
“So how were you creative?”
“Well,” Mrs. Swamp said, “it was a long time ago, but I remember feeling lucky that your grandfather was in the Shark Patrol. We got lots of discounts because of that.”
“Grandpa Swamp was in the Shark Patrol?” Pearl asked. The Shark Patrol protected merfolk from sharks and any other dangers in Trident City. And Pearl knew that Mr. Fangtooth was a retired colonel from the Shark Patrol.
“No, my father. Your grandfather Whipray,” Mrs. Swamp said. “Because the merfolk of Trident City appreciated his hard work protecting us from sharks, they gave him discounts on plenty of things—food, manta ray trips, and even his shell home.”
“Didn’t you and your sisters make the decorations for our tables, too?” Mr. Swamp asked his wife. “They were very pretty.”
Mrs. Swamp smiled at her husband. “And I loved how you put starfish all over the room.”
Suddenly Pearl’s head no longer hurt. She was forming a plan, but there wasn’t much time to get everything together before the wedding.
Pearl crossed her tail fins and hoped her plan wouldn’t be a total disaster!
Pearl’s Plan
THE NEXT MORNING PEARL arrived at school extra early. She swam back and forth in the front hall of Trident Academy. She didn’t even bother to look at the colorful carvings that filled the high ceiling. “Where are Kiki, Shelly, and Echo?” she muttered to herself.
“Hi, Pearl,” Wanda said, floating up to her. “What are you doing here so early?”
Pearl grinned and hugged Wanda. “I have a fin-tastic idea. Will you help me?”
Wanda shrugged. “Of course! But what’s your idea?”
Luckily, just then Pearl spotted Echo and Shelly chatting with Kiki on the other side of the enormous hall. “Come on,” Pearl said, pulling Wanda along. “We need their help too.”
“Hi, Wanda! Hi, Pearl. What’s up?” Shelly asked.
“What’s up is that Lillian’s wedding is going to be a total flop unless we all work together to save it,” Pearl told them.
“What are you talking about?” Kiki said.
Echo put her hands on her hips. “Pearl! Are you just saying that because you want to take over?”
“No. And I don’t care about being a flower girl anymore either,” Pearl said, which wasn’t exactly true. Of course she’d love to be a flower girl, but now she realized that some things were more important—like making Lillian happy. “Listen to this.”
Pearl went on to describe the horrible dark room where Lillian was going to have her wedding, as well as all the beautiful things that Lillian couldn’t afford.
“But with the Shark Patrol discount—and if we make the centerpieces and flower arrangements ourselves—we can still make at least some of Lillian’s dreams come true,” Pearl said. She kept her tail fins crossed, hoping the mergirls would want to help. There was no way she could do it by herself.
“My mom works at the Conservatory for the Preservation of Sea Horses and Swordfish, which is inside the hotel. She might be able to convince them to donate the room for the ceremony,” Echo suggested.
“Grandfather Siren might have some things in his storage closets that we can use for decorations,” Shelly said. Shelly’s grandfather ran Trident City’s People Museum and was known for having unusual objects for the mergirls to borrow for school projects.
“Shelly, since you have such a pretty voice, could you sing at the wedding?” Pearl asked.
Shelly’s face turned red, but she nodded. “Sure.”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” Kiki said. “My grandmother taught me how to arrange flowers. Of course, we never use paddle weed, since I’m allergic to that.”
“We’ll all help,” Wanda agreed. “This is so exciting! There’s only one problem. . . .”
Dr. Bottom’s Gift
SCHOOL WAS THE PROBLEM! Pearl and the mergirls wanted to get started on their wedding ideas, but instead they had to sit in class and listen to Mrs. Karp discuss creatures that live near coral reefs. Pearl was deep in thought when Wanda poked her tail.
“Look at those,” Wanda whispered. “Wouldn’t they make perfect centerpieces for the tables?”
Mrs. Karp held up what looked like a delicate white flower vase. “This is a reef-forming sponge. Dr. Bottom was kind enough to donate one for each of you to study.” Dr. Bottom was Trident’s Academy’s fourth-grade teacher, but he often taught Mrs. Karp’s third graders science. “While not coral, they are similar in some ways.”
Pearl’s hand shot up in the water. “Mrs. Karp, I have a very important question to ask the class. It’s about someone who works at Trident Academy, so it’s related to school.”
Mrs. Karp sighed. “What is it, Pearl?”
“Could we borrow every student’s reef-forming sponge for Mr. Fangtooth’s wedding? We’d give them back right afterward.”
Mrs. Karp raised a green eyebrow before saying, “Let’s take a vote. Raise your hand if you are okay with Pearl borrowing your sponge.”
Everyone raised their hand except Rocky. Pearl, Echo, Shelly, and Kiki glared at him until he raised his hand too.
“Thank you! That will be a big help,” Pearl said. “Now, we just need to get some sea flowers to fill them.”
Rocky shook his head. “I think jewel anemones would be much prettier. There are a whole bunch floating beside Zollie’s corral. You could use those.” Zollie was Rocky’s sea horse.
Pearl couldn’t believe that Rocky was being so nice. “Thanks,” she told him.
“May I also suggest some pink lace bryozoan?” Mrs. Karp added. “I have been saving some for a special occasion, and I’d love to help Mr. Fangtooth.”
“Mervelous! Thanks, Mrs. Karp,” Pearl said, and she meant it. School hadn’t been a problem after all. In fact, being in class had actually helped them with the wedding!
“Let’s work on the centerpieces and everything else after school,” Echo whispered as Mrs. Karp continued the lesson.
Pearl smiled. “We can meet at the Trident City Plaza. I’m going to explain everything to Leroy and beg him to give Lillian a discount.” Pearl hoped that the fact that Mr. Fangtooth was in the Shark Patrol would be enough to give Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth a wonderful wedding on a budget.
Genius
PEARL COULDN’T BELIEVE the scene awaiting her at the Trident Plaza Hotel after school. Instead of four mergirls, it looked like half of Trident City had turned up to help with the wedding.
Echo floated up to Pearl. “I hope you don’t mind,” Echo said. “I told a few merfolk about decorating today, and they all wanted to help.”
Pearl raised an eyebrow. “A few merfolk?”
Echo shrugged. “The word must have spread. Are you mad?”
“Are you kidding?” Pearl asked. “This is shelltacular!”
When Leroy saw the large group of Shark Patrol guards, librarians, and Trident Academy teachers in the lobby, he agreed to
give Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth a huge discount on the cost of food. Echo’s mother convinced the president of the Conservatory for the Preservation of Sea Horses and Swordfish to donate the beautiful room for the ceremony.
Mrs. Karp arrived with an armful of pink lace bryozoan. Rocky rode in on Zollie, carrying kelp bags full of jewel anemones.
“Look what we found in MerPark,” Kiki said, showing Pearl a huge bouquet of deep green mermaid’s wineglass. Shelly followed her, holding feathery white sea lilies.
“Those will be so pretty for Lillian and her bridesmaids and flower girls,” Pearl said with a nod. “I think they are even more elegant than sea lavender.”
She felt a little pang of sadness that she wouldn’t be one of the flower girls, but she took a deep breath and brushed those feelings aside. There wasn’t time to worry about it!
“Let’s get busy!” Pearl said.
And they did. By the time they were finished, the Shark Patrol guards and librarians had made a fabulous arbor covered with flowers. The Trident Academy teachers decorated the aisle leading up to the arbor with pink lace bryozoan. Pearl and her merfriends had made lovely arrangements using the reef-forming sponges, sea anemones, and some fake human pearls that Shelly’s grandfather had donated for the event.
“It’s all so pretty,” Wanda said. “I wish we had one of those human objects that could take a picture.”
“A picture! Of course!” Pearl shrieked. “Wanda, you’re a genius!” She had forgotten all about her parents’ wedding portrait. She needed to make sure Lillian and Mr. Fangtooth had a picture to remember their wedding day too.
Pearl floated over to where the Trident Academy teachers were placing some flowers around the shell chairs. “Miss Haniver, would you mind drawing a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Fangtooth on their wedding day?” she asked the art teacher.
