Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels (Real Mermaids, 3, Band 3) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

HÉLÈNE BOUDREAU believes mermaids are just as plausible as giant squids, flying fish or electric eels. She now writes fiction and non-fiction for kids from her land-locked home in Ontario, Canada. Her first book of this series, Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings, was a 2011 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award finalist. www.heleneboudreau.com

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Chapter One

Ninth grade. The beginning of high school!

To say I was excited, walking up the steps of Port Toulouse Regional High, would be a bit of an understatement.

Finally, I'd graduated from junior high's mind-numbing field trips, soggy pizza Fridays, and lame school rules, and I'd moved on to the free periods, off-campus lunch privileges, and freedom of high school. Yay!

Sure, our small seaside town of Port Toulouse didn't actually have enough people for separate elementary, junior high, and high schools. So technically I was entering the same gray concrete building I'd been going to since kindergarten, but still.

Now that I was in ninth grade, I got to enter the school through the big blue door on the far side of the parking lot next to the regional library. Oh, and the community rec center.

We Port Toulousians liked to get the most out of our public buildings.

"You ready, Fish Girl?" my best friend, Cori, whispered as we paused at the top of the school steps, about to go inside. She was "dressed for success" in a cool Cori Original outfit she'd designed over the summer—a flowy, sleeveless teal top over batik-dyed jeans. I think a tenth-grade girl actually gasped in admiration as we passed.

"So ready," I replied, adjusting my backpack over my shoulder.

And it was true. I'd just spent the past four months trying to rescue my mermaid mother from a bunch of mer criminals who were keeping her captive in our nearby lake. I freed her from there to the ocean, lost her again, then finally found her in a tidal pool behind Port Toulouse Mall (losing my mer-crush Luke in the process). Then, I had to battle Chamberlain Construction and City Hall and the Mermish Council to get my mom and Luke back on dry land once and for all.

Now that Mom and Luke were safely back home and on their own two feet, I was really ready for things to get back to normal.

Well, as normal as things could get for a part-time mer-girl like me.

"Oh, and you've got to quit it with the Fish Girl stuff," I whispered to Cori, looking around the school yard to see if anyone had glanced our way. "What if someone hears?"

Thankfully, everyone hanging around by the high-school doors was busy texting, talking, or bopping along to something in their earbuds. There were no teachers in orange vests yelling through bullhorns for everyone to get in line, or flags on the school-yard fence to alert everyone whether this was a "pavement" or a "playground" recess depending on how much mud had collected below the slides.

High school = perfection.

"I could call you Fin Face instead, if you really want me to," Cori said cheerily as she swung open the big blue door and we took our first legitimate steps into the legendary halls of Port Toulouse Regional High.

"How about just Jade?" I asked, as we walked by the hallways leading to the town library and rec center and arrived at the windowed high-school office where Ms. Wilma wheeled around in her secretary office chair from her telephone, to the file cabinet, to the teachers' mail slots like a well-oiled bumper car.

"Okay, ‘Just Jade,'" Cori smirked, "but pick up the pace or there won't be any good lockers left."

Another perk of high school? Actual lockers! With doors! A far cry from the open-faced cubbyholes we used to have in junior high. But the lockers were first come, first served so that's why we were already in school at 8:30 a.m., even though the first bell wouldn't ring until nine.

We rushed down locker lane by the school gym (again, shared by the community center), which had the only lockers in the school, and snagged a couple of them close to the girls' bathroom. The hallway was already filled with kids yanking on metal doors to make sure their soon-to-be lockers were free of chewing gum and last year's sweaty gym socks.

"These will be perfect." I dialed through the numbers of the combination lock I'd brought from home and hung it from one of the lockers to claim it. Then I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my brand-spanking-new magnetic mirror, magnetic pen holder, and magnetic white board so I could Pimp My Locker.

"Yeah, and there are two other free ones a few doors down for Luke and Trey." Cori had already taped three hand-drawn Cori Original fashion designs to the inside of her locker door and was hanging beads and a hand-dyed scarf from the hook.

"Wow. My locker is so boring compared to yours." I'd thought my magnetic accessories were the best thing since chocolate-covered popcorn back at Office Depot. I'd even gotten them all in glossy black for that tied-together look, but compared to Cori's randomly accessorized locker door, mine looked plain. Sturdy—but plain. Kind of the same way I felt next to Cori, but I'd pretty much gotten used to having a beautiful friend.

"You dork," Cori exclaimed, sketching a quick dress design on my whiteboard with one of my dry-erase markers. It was girly and mermaidy, looking like it belonged on a red carpet. "I'd kill for one of these white boards! Plus, I call first dibs on your mirror after lunch period. I really don't want a replay of that unfortunate spinach incident from last year."

"Okay, okay." I laughed, remembering the afternoon when Cori had looked like a gap-toothed hockey player by the time I caught up with her after lunch and told her she had spinach stuck in her teeth. I scribbled my lock's combination number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. "Guard it with your life."

"Perfect." She took the paper from me and stuffed it in her locker, then scribbled her combination on a paper for me.

"Hey, where are those Martin guys, anyway?" Cori continued, looking around and over the heads in the crowded hallway for Luke and Trey, our...boyfriends. It was still really weird to think of them that way.

"Luke emailed me last night and said their boat's bow line got slashed and the boat drifted from its mooring," I said.

"Wow, really?" Cori asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "And apparently a couple of Jet Skis sank at Talisman Lake Marina, too. They've had to put a security guard on the night shift."

"Why would anyone want to vandalize a bunch of boats?" Cori wondered. "It's just so random."

"I dunno," I said. "But anyway, Luke said they finally found their boat. It had run aground on one of the lake's islands, and judging by the time of the email, I think they were up pretty late. Maybe they just slept in."

"Well, they're going to get stuck with lockers by the water fountain if they don't hurry up." Cori glanced around the hallway.

"Got it covered!" Trey bounced up behind Cori and grabbed her by the shoulders, making her nearly jump out of her skin.

"Hey!" Cori grabbed his hand and turned to give him a peck on the cheek. "I wanted us all to get lockers together."

"We just kept ours from last year," Trey said. "Mine's at the end and Luke's is across from the gym doors."

"Where is that little brother of yours?" I glanced over by the gym doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of Luke, but he wasn't there.

"If you mean that guy who just dominated at ollies skating over here, look no further." Luke appeared at my side from the other direction, with his skateboard tucked under one arm. He draped his other arm around my shoulder.

My heart did one of those ka-thumpa-thump-thump triple backflips, and a happy feeling spread through me. It had been a few weeks since we'd made our boyfriend-girlfriend status official back at the beach party at Toulouse Point. I still couldn't quite get used to the fact that Luke Martin, mer-boy himself, and I were actually a couple.

An actual boyfriend? Me? There was hope for mankind. Um, or mer-kind.

"Yeah, as if. You only wish you were half as good as I am." Trey jabbed his brother in...