Real Mermaids Don't Sell Seashells (11 page)

So that was that. Officer Ensel would find out what happened to Dillon, if anything, and he'd try to keep it on the down-low. Rayelle would be relieved to hear that, and I could finally put it out of my head with good conscience.

“We should head out. Our shuttle to the catamaran leaves in five minutes,” Mom said.

“And we can drop you off at the Eutopia to meet Luke and Trey when we pick up the Martins,” Dad replied. He clapped his hands for us to hustle. “Let's go, let's go. We've got some fish to fry!”

“All right, hold on. We're coming!” I grabbed my stuff from my bed and followed them out the door.

It wasn't until I was in the shuttle on my way to the Eutopia that I remembered I'd left my phone on the nightstand in the hotel room at the Asylum.

And I'd forgotten to email Rayelle to let her know that Officer Ensel was on the case.

I hunted through my bag once we got to Teen Club, checking one last time for my cell phone, but all I came up with were a couple of business cards and scraps of paper.

“Okay, everyone!” Marissa, the Teen Club coordinator, said as she scanned her clipboard. “Fourteen-year-olds and up for Group A today. Ten- to thirteen-year-olds in Group B, and Chance will be in charge of the nine and unders.”

“Aw, too bad,” Cori said. “I was kind of looking forward to seeing Nick and Macy.”

“Yeah. Oh, and I still have that Taylor 'n Tyler autograph for Nick,” I said, holding up the paper.

I kept searching through my bag, willing my phone to appear. “I can't believe I forgot to email Rayelle back. Now I won't be able to get in touch with her until we get back to the hotel later.”

“Just ask Luke for his phone when he gets here,” Cori said.

“That's the problem, though,” I said. “I don't remember her email address.”

“Seriously, Jade?” Cori said. “You've got to let this go. Remember what I told you on the airplane?”

“Yeah?” I said skeptically.

“Not everything is a life-or-death emergency. We're on vacation to relax and have fun. Remember?” Cori asked.

“I remember. But do you remember?” I asked. “The ‘have fun' part, I mean.”

Cori looked at me and scowled. “I know you're talking about Trey, but honestly, the guy just doesn't get it.”

I thought back to the last thing I'd said about Trey to Luke on the beach, about him being boneheaded. It kind of felt like we were ganging up on Trey—well, at least Cori and I were—for just being…Trey. But how could I say that to Cori?

“Listen, Cori,” I said quietly. “Maybe you're expecting too much from Trey.”

“Is it too much to ask to have a boyfriend act like a boyfriend?” Cori asked.

“No, that's not what I meant,” I said, trying to figure out what I actually did mean. “It's just—”

“Forget it,” Cori said. “You have Luke, and everything is all hunky-dory for you guys. I guess I'm just not that lucky.”

“Cori, it's not…” I said, regretting I'd said anything at all.

But by then, Luke and Trey had arrived, and the Teen Club was on the move to our next thrilling adventure.

•••

The weirdest thing happened when we arrived at Dolphin Lagoon. Anytime Luke got close to the dolphins, they freaked out and swam in the other direction. The dolphins were acting so strange and upset that the rest of the dolphin activity had to be canceled and we were stuck at the waterslides for the rest of the afternoon.

Our parents picked us up from Teen Club later that day, and we went straight to dinner at the Eutopia with the Martins. Then we headed to the marina to meet Bobbie and Eddie at their sailboat for dessert. The marina was near the bridge that spanned the harbor between Nassau and Paradise Island, not far from where the cruise ships were docked at the shipyard.

“The Eutopia sure knows how to lay out a delicious spread. What a meal,” Dad exclaimed as he patted his belly while we walked along the series of docks to Bobbie's sailboat.

“Better than the cafeteria line at the Asylum,” I agreed under my breath.

It was nightfall by then and the marina was lit up with strings of white lights like a Christmas tree, adding to the cheery feeling of the evening.

“Those dolphins at Dolphin Lagoon did
not
like you,” I said to Luke as we hung back with Trey and Cori behind the adults in the group. Bobbie wasn't kidding when she told Luke dolphins and mers didn't mix.

“How do you know it was me?” Luke asked. “You're a mer too.”

“They were totally fine with me yesterday,” I teased, thinking I wasn't
as
annoying to dolphins because I was part human. “Well, they acted a little weird at first, but I think I have the whole ‘part-human' thing going for me. In fact, I'm kind of a Dolphin Whisperer. You're the one who had them all huddled on the far side of the lagoon today.”

“What can I say?” Luke said with a smirk. “Just call me the Dolphin Hollerer.”

“You could get that on a T-shirt,” I suggested.

Luke held my hand, away from Dad's prying, overprotective eye, and I wondered if he had put our conversation on the beach from the night before behind him. Honestly, that was fine with me. In fact, I tried to block out all the weirdness the trip had brought so far with Dillon and Rayelle, and the tension between Cori and Trey, and relaxed into the moment.

“It's so pretty,” Cori said as we walked along the main dock of the marina, looking for the branch of the jetty where Bobbie's sailboat was berthed. “Almost romantic.”

“Oh, look at that boat!” Trey ran ahead and pointed to a hundred-foot yacht. “Four decks, a flying bridge, and a hot tub. That is so
sick
…”

“See what I mean?” Cori muttered to me.

We turned down one of the branches of the jetty, and soon we reached a dark blue wooden sailboat.

“This is it. Ahoy!” Dad called out as we arrived at the boat.

“Did Bobbie and Eddie really sail all the way from Florida on this thing?” I asked. The boat was about thirty feet long with gleaming hardwood decking. Its white sails were wrapped around two tall wooden masts. I envisioned the boat being pitched around the ocean like a wine cork in a bucket of water. If a three-hour flight had my stomach in spasms, I could only imagine what sailing across the open ocean in a wooden schooner would do for my intestinal tract.

“Hard to imagine, huh?” Luke asked. “But we sailed all the way from Port Toulouse to Florida last spring, remember? And our boat is only a few feet longer than this one.”

I thought back to when I'd first seen Luke at Dooley's Drugstore when he returned from his sailing trip that spring. Everyone at school thought his family had gone on an adventurous sailing expedition—which was partly true—but mostly they had gone to Florida because Eddie's friend Bobbie was a Webbed One (which is a human that started off as a mer). She'd helped Luke with his first human-to-mer transition.

“Ahoy!” Eddie replied, popping his head out from the lower deck and waving us aboard.

A pretty, middle-aged woman with graying hair emerged from the cabin behind Eddie. Bobbie and Eddie were probably the biggest mer experts in the world. They'd been working together for many years, ever since Eddie was laughed off a Florida university's faculty for publishing an article about mers in a scientific journal. Now he preferred to keep his mer knowledge a secret and urged us all to do the same.

“Bobbie!” Luke said, hopping aboard to give his mentor a big hug.

“Luke! I swear you've grown a foot since last spring,” Bobbie said, holding him at arm's length to get a good look at him.

Luke blushed. “Well, not quite a foot but an inch or two, I suppose.”

Eddie introduced Bobbie to me, Cori, and Mom and Dad, and we all sat around the upper deck under the twilight of the moon and chatted.

“So what have you all been doing with yourselves on this lovely island?” Bobbie asked as she served the delicious coconut dessert she'd picked up from a local island bakery.

“Dolphins, dolphins, and more dolphins,” Cori said, beaming as she took the plate Bobbie offered.

“Aren't they the most magnificent creatures?” Bobbie asked.

“Speaking of which,” I interrupted, “Luke was telling me about the link between dolphins and mers. That they can't coexist in the same habitat?”

Bobbie looked impressed and turned to Luke.

“I didn't realize you were listening when I was boring you with all that mer trivia,” she replied. “We haven't been able to pinpoint the exact cause, but our best guess is that it has something to do with the natural frequency mers produce.”

“You mean the thing that keeps passing boats from seeing mers on their sonar?” I asked.

“Yes. Dolphins can't seem to process the sound and find it painful,” Eddie chimed in.

“So, I'm just wondering,” I continued, “have there ever been any mers reported in the Bahamas?”

“Jade…” Cori muttered.

“What?” I asked. “I'm just curious.”

Bobbie shook her head. “Florida is the southernmost boundary for mer activity, as far as we know.”

“But aren't there dolphins in Florida too?” I asked.

“Yes but not in the pockets of ocean where mers have staked their claim. Mers tend to stick to very limited territories so it's usually not much of a problem.”

“They just kind of ignore each other,” Eddie added. Then he winked. “It's a big ocean.”

“Is it possible, though, that mers and dolphins share a similar language?” I asked.

“Jade?” Mom asked. “Where is this all coming from?”

Uh-oh. Maybe I should dial it back a bit. I had promised Mom and Cori to give this mer stuff a rest this week, but the weird encounter at Dolphin Lagoon had me thinking. Maybe I should just play it cool.

Who was I kidding? I didn't know
how
to play it cool.

“It's just that I thought I could understand what the dolphins were saying back at Dolphin Lagoon,” I replied.

“Well, that's interesting,” Bobbie said. “I haven't really studied the phenomenon, but I suppose it's possible for mers and dolphins to share some language similarities.”

“Okay, cool,” I said, dropping the subject.

The conversation turned to everyone wanting to know about the sailing trip from Florida. Bobbie and Eddie kept everyone entertained with their tales of canned soup lunches, circling sharks, and the time they intercepted a CB radio message from drug smugglers.

“So we called it in to the Coast Guard and they picked them up near Miami,” Bobbie said.

“The smugglers are getting craftier and craftier with their schemes so it was nice to help catch one in the act,” Eddie added.

“Sweet. Up high!” Trey said, giving his grandfather a high five.

“He thinks everything deserves a high five,” Cori muttered to me, and I could tell it was time to go stretch our legs.

The boat really wasn't meant for a crowd, so when Bobbie went into the cabin to retrieve a bottle of wine and glasses and the conversation turned to drug legislation and gun control, I took it as a cue to make our escape.

“Hey,” I said, turning to Mom, “is it okay if Cori, I, and the guys take a walk around the marina and see if we can spot any celebrities on one of these mega-yachts?”

“It's kind of dark out,” Mom said, looking past me to the adjoining docks.

“They have lights everywhere,” I said. “We'll stick together. We'll be fine.”

“Make sure to take a picture if you see anybody famous.” Dad gave me a thumbs-up and settled in with a glass of wine next to Mom.

“Well, we're only staying for another hour so don't go far,” Mom said with a smile.

•••

The marina itself was kind of big and confusing with a main dock splitting into smaller docks that berthed several hundred boats.

“I wonder who owns this one,” Trey said as he peered through the cheerily lit windows of a gargantuan pleasure craft.

“Oh, maybe Jay Jo is on vacation here to get over her broken heart from Justin,” Cori said. She'd obviously studied the celebrity gossip magazines cover to cover since we'd arrived.

We strolled along the main dock and tried to guess who might be in the huge yachts. All of a sudden, a long horn sounded and we looked down the harbor to see what it was.

A humongous cruise ship was in the process of docking next to a very familiar-looking boat farther down at the shipyard.

“Hey, isn't that the Wonderment cruise ship?” Cori said.

It was dark, but the large ship's upper decks were lit up enough that we could identify it. Sure enough, the docked ship had a big W emblem and a massive waterslide that spanned out over the upper deck, making my stomach quake.

“I think I saw it leave port yesterday,” I said, remembering that we'd spotted the ship from Dolphin Lagoon the day before. “I thought it had left for good. I wonder why it's back.”

“When we went on our Alaskan cruise, we made two stops in Anchorage. Maybe it's something like that,” Cori said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.

“That waterslide looks sick!” Trey exclaimed.

“Now
that's
something we agree on,” Cori said. Without thinking, she raised her hand to give Trey a high five then glanced at me with a sheepish look on her face.

“Why are you guys so interested in that Wonderment ship anyway?” Luke asked. “Are you planning a cruise?”

I wasn't sure what to say. “No, nothing like that. It's just this thing that happened when we first got here,” I replied. “There's this guy named Dillon who sells conches at the Straw Market. He and I both saw something getting dumped out of a porthole on the cruise ship, and Dillon was convinced it was a dead body.”