“Maybe you should sing a shorter part of your song, Splash,” Pearl suggested when he finished.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Splash said with a laugh. “How about this?”
He started again, singing a shorter part. But it sounded just as bad. Pearl winced. What would everyone think if Splash’s terrible song was part of their performance?
“Maybe we should go right from Echo’s song into a duet between her and Splash,” she blurted.
“What?” Flip sounded surprised. “You can’t leave out Splash’s part. This is supposed to be a group project. What will everyone think if he’s the only one who doesn’t have a solo at the beginning?”
Pearl knew he was right. But how could she help Splash improve in just a couple of days?
Before she could figure it out, she saw Splash’s brother, Finny, swimming toward them. “How’s it going?” he asked. “What are you guys doing for your performance?”
“Music,” Splash told him with a sigh.
“Yeah,” Pearl muttered. “At least we’re trying to do music.”
Finny shrugged. “We’re doing music, too.”
“We know,” Flip said. “Mullet told us Shelly’s been working on your song.”
“She already finished it.” Finny sounded excited. “It’s really great! It’s different from any Show Off Day song we’ve ever heard before. Everyone is going to love it!”
“Really?” Flip sounded wistful.
Pearl wondered if Flip wished he could join Finny’s group instead of theirs. She was starting to wish the same thing herself!
No, I’m not, she told herself as Finny swam away. I want to work with my friends. I just wish I was as talented as Shelly. Maybe then I could figure out how to fix our performance …
“I don’t think we should do music after all,” she said suddenly.
“What?” Flip sounded surprised. “What do you mean, Pearl?”
She blew out a nervous stream of bubbles. “I just don’t know if we can practice enough to sound really good,” she said. “We should probably do something else instead.”
She glanced at Echo, expecting her to take over again with her magic idea. Instead, Splash did four quick flips and a spin.
“Great!” he shouted. “I came in third in the bubble burst. That means we’re doing jumping and swimming!”
PEARL’S HEART SANK. JUMPING AND swimming? She was just as bad at that as Splash was at music. What if she looked silly in front of everyone because she couldn’t keep up with her friends? What if she messed up so badly that she made her friends look silly, too?
But it was too late to back out now. Everyone else was listening to Splash as he explained his ideas.
“First we’ll all swim in really fast,” he said, zipping back and forth in front of them to demonstrate. “Then we’ll all do a roll at the same time.”
He rolled over in the water as he swam. It made Pearl dizzy just watching!
“Cool!” Flip said. He did a roll, too. “Then what?”
“Let’s practice that part first,” Splash said. “I’m still thinking about what to do next. And we don’t have much time to practice.”
“Okay,” Echo said. “Should we go in a line?”
“Yes.” Splash swam over next to Flip. “Echo, get on my other side. Pearl, you go next to Flip.”
Pearl did as he said. “Should we get more air first?” she asked. “I might need—”
“Go!” Splash shouted before she could finish.
He and Flip swam forward as fast as they could. That was pretty fast! Echo was a second late getting started, but she did her best to catch up.
“Wait!” Pearl cried. “I wasn’t ready.”
She swam after her friends. By the time she caught up, they’d all stopped.
“What happened?” Splash asked. “I said go.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Pearl swam up to take a breath. “I was low on air.”
“Oh. Okay, then let’s try it again,” Splash said. “Everybody line up!”
Pearl hurried to obey, just like she did when their Jumping and Swimming teacher, Riptide, barked out an order. In fact, Splash sounded a little like Riptide right now. Riptide was loud and impatient, and he never stopped moving. Splash never stopped moving, either. But he usually wasn’t so loud or impatient.
“Pearl!” Splash snapped. “Are you paying attention? We have to get this part right before we can work on the rest of our routine.”
“Yeah, pay attention,” Flip urged. “I want us to be really good, and that means we need a lot of practice.”
“Sorry,” Pearl said again. “I’m paying attention.”
This time when Splash shouted go, Pearl started swimming at the same time as the others. She was a little behind as they all started their rolls, but she did her best.
“Hmm,” Splash said when they finished. “Maybe we can come back to that part later. Let’s move on to some flips and jumps.”
Pearl gulped. “I’m not very good at those,” she reminded Splash.
“You’ll do fine.” He waved a fin. “Follow me, everyone. We’ll start by doing a triple flip underwater, and then swim up to the surface and do a forward jump, and then a backward flip in the air.”
“That sounds pretty hard,” Echo said. “Maybe we should do something easier between jumps.”
“Easy stuff won’t impress anyone,” Flip said. “We should at least try it.”
“Yeah, let’s go!” Splash said. “Everyone follow me.”
Without waiting for a response, he started his first underwater flip. Flip did the same, and so did Echo.
Pearl had never even done a single flip before starting school. She was getting much better at them. But she was still slower than her friends. By the time she finished her third flip, Splash was already zipping up toward the surface for his jumps.
Whew, Pearl thought. I hope I survive until Show Off Day!
They kept practicing for a long time without taking a break. After a while, everyone was exhausted. Well, everyone except Splash. He was still excited about his ideas.
“That last jump was better, Pearl,” he said as the whole group finished another set of movements. “We can work on it more later. Because I just had an idea—we should do that tail walking thing Riptide showed us that time!”
“What?!” Pearl cried.
She remembered that day in Jumping and Swimming class. Riptide had demonstrated a fancy move where he lifted his whole body out of the water, with only his tail holding him upright. He’d had the whole class try, but only Splash and a few others had been able to do it pretty well. Pearl hadn’t been able to do it at all!
“We can’t do that.” Echo shot Pearl a worried look. “Some of us aren’t, um, very good at it.”
“I can do it,” Flip bragged. “Watch!”
He zoomed up and lifted himself out of the water. But he was moving too fast, and flopped down almost immediately, crashing into part of the coral wall.
“Ow,” he said. “Oops.”
Old Salty noticed the commotion and bustled over. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “Be careful, young fellow—you nearly dislodged those poor, innocent tube sponges!” He swam closer and peered at the bulbous purple and yellow shapes stuck to the coral wall.
“Sorry.” Flip rubbed a scratch on his side with one fin.
“We were just practicing for Show Off Day,” Splash added.
“Well, you need to be careful,” Old Salty said. “The reef is very delicate, and you can’t just go crashing into it willy-nilly!”
“We’ll be more careful, we promise,” Echo told him.
“All right, see that you do.” Old Salty gave them one last stern look. Then he swam off.
“THIS ISN’T WORKING,” ECHO SAID AS SOON as Old Salty was gone. “Splash, we just can’t keep up with you when it comes to jumping and swimming!”
“I can,” Flip said. “I was keeping up just fine.”
“No, you weren’t,” Ec
ho told him, flicking her tail toward the coral wall. “You just proved that by crashing into those sponges.”
Splash glanced at Flip, then shrugged. “Maybe I can do the tail walking by myself, and you guys can do jumps next to me. I know! I could teach you that cool shark jump I learned. That would look really cool.”
“No!” Pearl cried. It came out louder than she planned, and all three of her friends turned to look at her.
“What?” Flip said.
Pearl blew out a stream of bubbles. “No,” she said more quietly. “I don’t want to learn to do that shark jump. I don’t want to do jumping and swimming at all!”
“Why not?” Splash sounded surprised. “Jumping and swimming is fun!”
“It is for you, because you’re good at it,” Pearl told him. “It’s not that much fun for me, especially with all the complicated stuff you want us to do.” She was so upset that her snout quivered. “I don’t want to look stupid in front of everyone on Show Off Day because I can’t keep up.”
“Well, now you know how I felt before,” Splash said. “I couldn’t keep up with my part in your song.”
Pearl hadn’t thought about it that way. Was singing just as hard and frustrating for Splash as jumping and swimming were for Pearl?
“Come on, you guys, we don’t have time to argue.” Flip sounded anxious. “Maybe we need to go back to the music idea.”
Echo shrugged. “Maybe. Splash, I bet you could sing better if you practiced more.”
“Or maybe we could do a simpler song,” Flip suggested.
“I guess we could try,” Pearl said. “Instead of all of us doing solos, just one or two of us could do them.”
“Or we could skip the solos and just sing together,” Splash said.
“No!” Pearl said. “It wouldn’t be the same without any solos.”
Flip flicked his tail from side to side, looking impatient. “If we can’t agree, maybe we should go back to Echo’s magic idea.”
Echo brightened. “You want to try that again?” she said. “Maybe we could skip the rainbow and just do the light display.”
“Or maybe we could skip the light display, too,” Pearl said. “It’s too hard. Even Bay said so.”
Echo frowned. “But it wouldn’t be the same without that part!”
“Hey, I never said I was giving up my turn to do jumping and swimming,” Splash spoke up, doing an underwater backflip. “I guess we could leave out the tail walking if you guys really don’t want to do it.”
“Okay,” Echo said. “But we’d have to leave out the shark spin, too. And maybe some of the other jumps.”
“What?” Splash exclaimed. “No way! It wouldn’t be the same without that stuff!”
Flip blew out a frustrated burst of bubbles. “We can’t float here arguing all day!” he cried. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do. Otherwise we won’t be ready to do anything!”
Pearl knew he was right. But how would they ever agree on what to do for their performance?
“I don’t mind doing one of your ideas,” she told Echo and Splash. “But not if you force me to embarrass myself by asking me to do more than I can. That’s not fair.”
“She’s right,” Flip agreed. “It won’t really count as a group project if the whole group can’t join in.” He looked thoughtful. “Actually …”
“Actually,” Echo broke in before Flip could continue, “I think you’re right, Flip.”
“I am?” Flip said.
“Yes.” Echo nodded. “If we can’t all agree on an idea, maybe we shouldn’t be a group after all.”
“What are you saying?” Pearl asked.
Echo shrugged. “I’m saying maybe we should each do our own thing for Show Off Day.”
“You mean go solo?” Flip said.
“Sounds good to me,” Splash spoke up. “Then I can do all the tail walking I want.”
“Yeah,” Echo said. “And I can do all the magic I want.”
Pearl hesitated, trading a look with Flip. She didn’t want to go solo. And she guessed that he didn’t, either.
But Echo and Splash were already swimming off in opposite directions. “Oh well,” Flip said. “I guess we’re not a group anymore.”
Then he swam away, too, leaving Pearl all alone.
PEARL COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. DID HER FRIENDS really care more about impressing everyone at Show Off Day than they did about working together? Shelly had told them they were compatible, and Pearl had thought she was right. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe the four of them didn’t belong together after all. At least not when it came to Show Off Day.
“I wish I’d agreed to take out those solos,” she murmured to a passing angelfish. “Maybe then they’d still want to try doing my song idea.”
The angelfish gave her a confused look and kept swimming. Pearl blew out a sigh of shivery bubbles, then swam slowly up to the surface to take a breath.
When she returned, she looked around. Way across the cove, she could see Echo working alone, surrounded by a cloud of magical sparkles. In the other direction, Splash was doing all kinds of acrobatic flips and spins by himself. Pearl didn’t see Flip, but she guessed he was working on his Show Off Day performance, too.
“Whatever that is,” she muttered, trying to remember which idea Flip had liked the best. Then she shrugged. It didn’t matter what Flip was going to do. If she was going solo, Pearl needed to focus on her own performance now.
Other students were also practicing all around her. Harmony, Wiggle, and the other two dolphins from their school pod were laughing as they did flips and jumps together. The sound of Mullet, Shelly, and Finny’s singing drifted along toward Pearl on the current. Another group of older students was creating an interesting light display, smiling and touching fins as they joined their magic together.
Everyone is working in a group and having fun with their friends, Pearl thought. Everyone except us.
She swam to a quiet corner of the cove and started to sing the song they’d been working on earlier. Then she stopped, realizing it wouldn’t sound right as a solo. She would have to come up with a different idea for a song to sing on her own.
Pearl started again, trying a different melody. A reef squid that was floating nearby floated closer, waving its tentacles along with the rhythm as Pearl sang. But after only a few notes, she stopped singing and sighed. Getting ready for Show Off Day just didn’t seem like much fun anymore.
At that moment Flip swam over. “Hi,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to work on a song,” Pearl said. “But I just keep thinking about our argument.”
“Me too,” Flip said. “I wish we could be a group again.”
“Are you sure?” Pearl asked. “You’re good at everything, remember? Maybe it will be easier to impress everyone on your own.”
“Maybe.” Flip shrugged. “But it won’t be as much fun.”
Pearl smiled. “I know what you mean.” Then her smile faded as she glanced at the other two. “But Echo and Splash don’t agree, so that’s that.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we should give up on our group,” Flip said. “I still think we’d be better together than apart.”
“Me too,” Pearl said. “But how can we convince Echo and Splash to try working together one more time? And even if we do, won’t we just have the same problem all over again? We can’t seem to agree on which idea to do.”
“Actually, I had a great new idea about what we could do for our performance,” Flip said.
Pearl groaned. “That’s all we need—one more idea to argue about!”
Flip laughed. “No, listen. I think everyone will like this idea.”
“Really?” Pearl eyed him doubtfully. “Because I didn’t think you even cared what we did. You seemed willing to do magic when that was our plan. Then when we switched to music, you were happy to do that. And jumping and swimming, too.”
“Right,” Flip said. “That’s my idea!”
“Huh
?” Pearl stared at him, confused.
Flip grinned. “Why can’t we do ALL those things?”
“All of them?” Pearl echoed, still confused. “What do you mean?”
“Nobody said we had to do only magic, or only music, or only jumping and swimming, right?” Flip said. “I bet we could come up with a display that uses all the stuff we’ve been learning in our classes. Then everyone will be happy, because everyone will get to do something they’re good at. Plus it will make our performance really cool. It’ll be like when Echo started to do magic when she was singing, remember?”
“But she wasn’t supposed to do that,” Pearl reminded him. “Trying to do both at the same time just distracted her and made her sound bad.”
“That’s because we didn’t plan it that way.” Flip waved his fins excitedly. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I know how we could do it …”
He talked fast, explaining his plan. The more he talked, the happier Pearl felt.
“What a great idea!” she exclaimed when he was finished. She was impressed—Flip was the only one who hadn’t given up on their group. Besides that, he’d figured out the perfect way to bring all their talents and opinions together. “Your plan could really work!”
“I know!” Flip swished his tail with excitement. “Come on, let’s go find the others!”
“I’M SO NERVOUS!” ECHO EXCLAIMED, swimming in a small circle.
“Me too.” Pearl shivered and glanced at the stage. A group of older students had just finished an interesting Ocean Lore demonstration about the different kinds of coral on the school reef. Now Mullet and his group were swimming into the center of the cove.
Pearl glanced around. The familiar school cove looked very different today—Show Off Day! Dolphins of all shapes and sizes were there, gathered in a big circle to watch the performances. There were so many dolphins crowded inside the school walls that Pearl could hardly see the coral behind them!
She spotted her own pod floating at the edge of the kelp forest. Her little sister, Squeak, saw her looking and waved a fin. Pearl waved back and smiled.
Flip's Surprise Talent Page 3
