Teenage Mermaid

by Ellen Schreiber

  I mean really! I wasn’t daydreaming‌—it was her! Walking on the grass, bright as sunshine, twinkling blue eyes, glistening, sparkling smile, her yellow hair dangling against her porcelain skin.

  All that separated us was the window, a row of hedges, and Seaside’s answer to Troy Aikman‌—Calvin Todd.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I shouted, gathering my books and standing up, without ever taking my eyes off her.

  “Excuse me, Spencer?”

  “I have to go!”

  The class roared with laughter.

  “Seems you’ll be doing more reading in the can than in my class,” Mr. Parker said, referring to the stack of books in my hand.

  “Oh . . . yeah.” I stammered awkwardly, and slammed the books on his desk as I ducked out of class.

  My heart pulsed out of my chest. I felt the adrenaline surge through my body just like when I drive the 3-D mega-speedboat racer at the Seaside Arcade. And just like my boat in hyper-overdrive, I slammed into walls and other obstacles.

  “Hey! Watch out, jerk!” one student yelled.

  What was I going to say when I found her? Would I thank her or just stare into her ocean blue eyes? Or would I mumble nonsense? Or groan in pain after Calvin Todd obliterated me for stepping on his turf?

  Thump thump thump! My engine was throbbing overtime as I threw open the front doors, sped down the front stairs, and raced across the lawn.

  She wasn’t there! I couldn’t swallow, my heart was pulsing up through my throat. Had it been a mirage? But why would I hallucinate Calvin Todd?

  I ran back into the building and started searching the first floor. I passed the senior classes, since she didn’t seem old enough. But why would she be with Calvin? If she were his girlfriend I would have seen her before. Was she a transfer?

  I stepped into Mr. Green’s English class.

  “Yes. Can I help you?” the weaselly-looking teacher inquired.

  “Uh . . . ,” I said, glancing at the students whose heads were buried in texts.

  “Yes?”

  “I . . . uh . . . need chalk.” I stammered, stalling to get a better look at the students. I didn’t see her or Calvin Todd.

  “Chalk?”

  “Yes, chalk!”

  “You don’t have to shout at me,” the Weaselman said, suddenly unweasellike.

  “Uh, sorry, man.”

  “Do you need one piece or a whole pack?”

  “One piece,” I answered quickly, waiting for a blonde girl in the third row to lift up her head. But it was just head cheerleader Linda Wilson.

  I inched my way into the aisles and craned my neck to see the girls in the last row.

  “Here,” the Weaselman said, offering a piece to me, but suddenly pulling back.

  “Is this for a teacher . . . or for graffiti?”

  “No one uses chalk for graffiti, Mr. Green. They use spray paint.”

  “Quite right. Do you need an eraser?”

  “No, thanks!” And I dashed out of class.

  I gasped for breath as I climbed the stairs to the second floor and pressed my face into Franklin’s English lit class. No Calvin Todd, no Cassandra.

  I headed straight for Johnson’s bio lab. I flew up and down the lab aisles while students prepared to dissect frogs.

  “Move!” Sherri Leonard commanded as I backed into her. “You aren’t even in this class.”

  “Yes, Spencer, what are you doing here?” Mr. Johnson inquired. “You have bio on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Need more chalk?” he asked, referring to the single piece I was still holding.

  “I . . . uh . . . seem to have lost my safety goggles‌—”

  “I didn’t see an extra pair this morning,” Mr. Johnson said, trying to remember. “But let’s take a look.”

  He was truly searching for them!

  I tapped my fingers nervously against my jeans, the chalk streaking my leg, while the entire class checked underneath desks and tables, and around beakers.

  “That’s okay, Mr. Johnson. I’ll just use my ski goggles,” I said, inching toward the door.

  “Here they are!” Kim Ling called, swinging a pair of goggles from her fingers.

  I quickly grabbed them, muttered thanks, and ducked into the hallway.

  “Those were mine!” I heard a guy call out.

  The hallways were empty, except for me running frantically through the school with goggles and chalk.

  I peeked my head in Michaels’ U. S. history class. “Is Calvin Todd in this class?” I asked. “I have an urgent message for him.”

  “No,” Mr. Michaels replied. “He has this class first bell.”

  I peeked my head into the music room. Students were dressed in white-and-blue uniforms for band rehearsal, tuning squeaky tubas and trombones.

  I was running out of classrooms to check. Soon the principal would notice the lone student sprinting through the corridors, stealing school supplies! I bumped into Mr. Caldwell, a wiry school security guard whose fiery glance could give you sunburn.

  “No running in the halls,” he said, grabbing my shoulder.

  “I’ll have to remember that,” I responded breathlessly.

  “Where’s your hall pass?”

  “My hall pass? I’m on an errand,” I said, wiping the chalk streaks off my jeans.

  “A hall pass is mandatory, even for errands.”

  I glanced past Mr. Caldwell into Hanover’s geography class and glimpsed Calvin Todd sitting in the front row.

  “What class do you have now?” Caldwell demanded.

  “Uh? Class? This one.”

  “Next time I’ll need to see a hall pass or you’ll receive a detention,” he warned, opening Mrs. Hanover’s geography class door for me. I boldly stepped inside. The teacher was using her pointer to highlight Germany.

  Calvin Todd stared at me from the front row. And in the back row sat my dream girl!

  She was a glistening angel girl. The air around her sparkled. My glistening angel girl chewing anxiously on her pencil, staring at the clock above the window, looking frightened and agitated, as if she were late for an appointment.

  I stood frozen as the door closed behind me. I gazed straight at her, but I felt the other students eyeballing me. And especially Mrs. Hanover.

  “May I help you, Mr. Stone?”

  That caught the attention of Angel Girl. Her blue eyes stared up at me with delight just as they had in the ocean.

  “May I help you?” Mrs. Hanover bellowed again.

  The class waited for my answer.

  “Mr. Stone!” she said, tapping her pointer against the chalk board, breaking my spellbound gaze. My own chalk was melting in my sweating hand.

  “Uh . . .” I stammered, glancing around for help. My angel girl had saved my life in the water, but in Mrs. Hanover’s bone dry classroom I was on my own. “I need a map,” I said, noticing all the maps on the wall.

  “A map?”

  “Yes . . . uh . . . for English class.”

  “A map for English class? Whose English class?”

  “Uh . . . Mrs. Brockman’s.”

  “Why do you need a map for English class? What are you studying?”

  My mind was a blank. I desperately scoured the room with my eyes for inspiration. I spied a copy of Hamlet poking out of a student’s book bag.

  “Shakespeare.”

  “The author? Or one of his plays?”

  I glanced back at my dream girl, who was staring back at me with the same glow that had warmed the cold Pacific.

  “Mr. Stone!”

  “Uh . . . Hamlet. We need a map of London.”

  “But Hamlet takes place in Denmark!”

  The class laughed at my stupidity. I scratched my head like an idiot. “Oh, yeah,” I mumbled. “That’s why we need the map‌—no one in class knew where Denmark was, since they don’t play in the NFL,” I joked.

  Everyone laughed, even dream girl. “One kid even thought it bordered Germany!” I announced, hamming
it up.

  “It does, Mr. Stone!” Mrs. Hanover corrected, using her pointer to highlight Denmark and Germany.

  “Oh,” I said, no longer the comedian but the fool.

  The class giggled again, at my expense. Mrs. Hanover fumbled through her metal cabinet and pulled out a weathered world map.

  “Now this is England, where Shakespeare lived,” she said condescendingly. “And over here is Denmark, where Hamlet lived. And this, Spencer, is America, where you live, and are standing like an idiot in front of my class making a complete fool of yourself.”

  Most kids are afraid of bullies. The biggest bully in our school was Mrs. Hanover.

  I was surprised she didn’t hit me over the head with the map. I could see from her glaring eyes she was thinking about it. The giggles continued as she handed me the rolled-up map. I could no longer bear to look at my angel girl.

  In my fantasies of our reunion, I had imagined her running toward me on the beach as I waxed my surfboard, embracing me with passion‌—not watching me drown again, this time in a sea of geography. She had seen me get hit in the head by my own surfboard and get hit over the head by Mrs. Hanover’s sarcasm. She must have thought I was the biggest dork in the world. After trying so hard to find her, I suddenly wanted to be anywhere else but in front of her eyes. She should have let me sink to the ocean floor.

  I jumped up from my seat. I was really getting used to these legs. But Mrs. Hanover got to the door first, her pointer extended‌—blocking my way.

  “I’m in the middle of my lesson,” Mrs. Hanover growled. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “It’s an emergency!” I said.

  I hadn’t recognized Earthdude when he’d first entered class, with his dark-blue hair, black Abbey Road T-shirt (just like my CD!) and torn jeans, instead of dark-red hair and a wet suit. But when I saw those velvet lips, that chiseled jaw, I knew I had my Earthee! He was quirky and totally lunar, changing his hair color with the changing tide. I laughed when he didn’t seem to know anything about Earth at all. And then he was gone.

  “Find your seat!” Mrs. Hanover commanded. “You’re disrupting my class.”

  Mrs. Hanover walked back toward her desk, but I didn’t move and she bumped into me. Her pointer dropped to the floor.

  “Child!” she said with an evil glare, bending her titanic body over, leaving a clear path to the door.

  I raced out of the classroom and into a hallway filled with glittery white-and-blue students wearing huge feathery hats and carrying musical instruments that sounded like bellows from a whale. I pushed my way through. Which way had Earthdude gone? Left? Right?

  I chose left and raced down the stairwell, where a teacher was holding the door open for her musical students. “Did you see a guy in a black shirt with blue hair?” I asked desperately.

  “The guy kicking the lockers from one end of the hall to the other?”

  I nodded my head with a cheeky smile.

  “I told him to get a drum,” she said, pointing toward the exit.

  Where were the senior bullies when I really needed one? To shove me into a locker and put me out of my misery! I’d blown everything. In one period my humiliation would have spread like a computer virus! Chainsaw and Robin would have ten minutes of new jokes on me. But really, what did that matter? Only her opinion mattered. And she had seen everything through those angel blue eyes.

  I had to get away. The beach was my only solace, my surfboard my only friend.

  Why did Earthdude run off? Maybe he didn’t recognize me. Did I blend in that well with the other Earthees? Maybe Madame Pearl’s potion had worked too well.

  I ran to the back of Seaside High, where I finally found the stadium. Thirty Earthteens sprinted around the track. Everyone was wearing white shirts and blue shorts. And not one of them sported blue hair.

  I saw a group of students sitting on the steps.

  Exhausted, I tried to catch my breath. A girl sitting on the first step was engrossed in a book.

  “Did you see a guy with blue hair?” I asked her. She shook her head, not taking her eyes off the book. Seaside’s white-and-blue band could have noisily paraded right by her and she wouldn’t have looked up.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  She held the book with one arm and extended her other, exposing her watch. Eleven forty-five.

  I couldn’t see the ocean from here, but I could feel it calling me. I had been so close to completing my mission, and now success seemed so far away. I couldn’t spend any more time scouring the Earth. My necklace and my Earthdude had disappeared.

  I only had one choice. I had to go home! Tell Waverly all my new experiences‌—Earthdudes in blue jeans, Earthdudettes with different-colored toenails, and me walking through a crowded corridor instead of swimming through a winding tunnel. But worse, I’d have to confess to the crime of borrowing and losing a family heirloom. Take all that was due me, and remember my Earthly experience with melancholy, far underneath the waves in a frigid boarding school in the Atlantic.

  I could feel the ocean’s waves inside me. I took off my shoes and walked down Seaside High’s warm paved road, wanting to feel all there was to feel through my Earthly feet for the last time. I found the warm, grainy sand comforting, yet sad. I was leaving my dreams behind, as I made my way down the sandy beachfront. I passed the lifeguard stand and raced along the tide, not letting it catch my feet. Out of breath, I climbed up on the rocks underneath the pier, my sandals swinging from my fingers. I leaned over the water’s edge, imagining what it would be like to have the water tickle my toes.

  I wondered if I would now be a famous merexplorer, celebrated throughout Pacific Reefs history as the one who made it back, winning awards, featured on talk shows, pictured in encyclopedias‌—but knowing in reality that I’d only be able to tell Waverly of my experience. I stood up and, for one final time, gazed back at my new world and all its beauty‌—Seaside High peering over the hill, palm trees extending their branches to the sky, happy tourists sunning underneath the glistening sun.

  And outside Mickey’s Surfboard Hut‌—one Earthdude with illuminating blue hair!

  It couldn’t be.

  I raced back over the rocks, jumped onto the warm sand, and ran as hard as I could.

  “It’s me!” I proclaimed, waving my arms. “It’s me!”

  Out of breath, I finally reached my Earthdude, who stared wide-eyed, like he was drowning again.

  I didn’t recognize her sweet voice at first. I’d only seen her‌—glistening underwater, sparkling through an algebra classroom window, and giggling in Hanover’s class. Now she was standing in front of me almost out of breath herself.

  What could I say to her now that I had the chance? I had waited what seemed like an eternity to see her again. Hadn’t I made a fool of myself enough today?

  Still, I was elated. While she recovered her breath and pushed back her hair, I wished it were my hand exposing her perfect face. A million questions raced through my mind. Had she seen my ad? Where was she from? What was she doing in the ocean yesterday? I could barely believe that this beauty had pressed her savory lips on mine! But the words turned to alphabet soup when I opened my mouth.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked forcefully.

  I now realized why she was here. Not to let me thank her, like I’d originally intended, but just to get her necklace back.

  I nervously fingered the chain in my pocket, as if I had ripped it off from a jewelry store. “I waited at the stadium. Did you get my note?”

  “Yes, but I overslept. I looked all over school for you,” she said, agitated. “But I thought your hair was dark red.”

  “I change it every week.”

  “Is that normal? Do you change your name every week, too?”

  “It’s normal for me. But my name’s always Spencer.”

  “Well, Spencer, can I have the necklace?” she asked suddenly.

  If I returned it to her now, I’d lose her.
She’d show up for school tomorrow, hand in hand with Calvin Todd. I’d be destined for the rest of my high-school days to watch her sparkling smile radiate toward him at football games as he scored touchdowns and more. I only had one choice. “You saved my life, and I don’t even know your name,” I said urgently.

  “Well . . . people around here call me Candy.”

  “Candy, I wanted to ask you something first. Before I give you back the necklace,” I began, my grip slipping on the surfboard as I tried to muster up courage. “I’d like to pay you‌—”

  “I don’t want money,” she insisted. “I want my necklace.”

  “But I want to thank you, properly. After school . . . Take you to the pier for dinner . . . Then I’ll give it back.”

  She didn’t respond, but impatiently looked toward the ocean.

  “What’s your favorite restaurant?”

  “I can’t stay for dinner,” she blurted out.

  I glanced around, wishing Chainsaw were here. What would he say now? Then I noticed the Starbucks on the pier. “Then how about a cup of coffee now, on the pier?”

  She looked up with sudden interest. “I’ve never been on the pier before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I said, leading her to my favorite hangout.

  I had a few hours left before my potion lost its effect, but for safe measure my plan was this: spend a little time with Earthdude‌—I mean Spencer‌—make him feel he’s not indebted to me anymore, and at the same time catch a few more Earthly sights, smells, and tastes. After half an hour, I’ll say, “It’s been great, thanks, gotta go.” He’ll hand over great-grandpa’s necklace, and when he looks away for a second, I’ll dive safely back into the water.

  I was overwhelmed by the pier’s magical brilliance. Previously I had only glimpsed it from the rocks below or viewed it from the ocean, miles away. And now it was within my reach. A huge white wheel with red and silver dangling chairs stood in the distance, nautical shops lined the boardwalk, and tiny huts sold T-shirts, sunglasses, and shell necklaces.