Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls

Eighth grade. Week two. Assignment one. What I did over summer vacation.
   I chewed the end of my pen and tried to think of something I could say that wouldn’t make Mr. Rollins, my new English teacher, think I’d made
it up.
   I had the feeling that if I wrote I went on vacation to an ice-filled land where I found people’s lost memories in a magical pool, helped unfreeze Neptune’s evil brother, turned him into a mountain, and ultimately saved the future of the world, it might come back with FAIL!
  This is supposed to be fact, not fiction, scrawled across it in red pen.
   So I decided to write about my birthday instead. I had turned thirteen on September 4, just before we came back to school. Yes, I know, I look much younger. I’m the oldest in my class and the smallest as well. Which is kind of weird. Not half as weird as everything else about me, though. And this last year was a bit different from usual, what with discovering I was a mermaid, freeing my dad from a prison out at sea, nearly getting squeezed to death by a sea monster, and having about a million adventures in the ocean. Oh, and getting a boyfriend!
   All of which meant that by the time my birthday came around, I was more than ready to celebrate.
   I set to work writing about my birthday party and wondering what I would be doing if I were at Shiprock Mermaid School right then, instead of Brightport Junior High.
   Since we had come back to Brightport, my parents and I had spent weeks discussing how my schooling was going to work. When you’re half human and half mermaid, decisions like these are trickier than they are for most people.
   We finally came up with an answer just before the school year started. The deal was that I’d go to “normal” school (Mom’s word, not mine. Mom’s the full-time human in the family) from Monday to Thursday. And because “nothing much of any use ever seems to happen at that school on Fridays” (Dad’s phrase, not mine. He’s the merman, and the one who’d like me to be learning siren songs and ocean rhythms every day), I would go to mermaid school on Fridays and Saturdays. Shiprock has school on Saturday mornings, so at least I’d get a couple of days a week there.
   It wasn’t the perfect solution, but it was keeping the three of us happy for now. At least, Mom and Dad were happy. I wasn’t so sure about myself. Every time I sat in class doing things like writing essays about what I’d done over summer vacation, I wished I was with my best friend — and full-time mermaid — Shona, learning about sirens and shipwrecks, or how to make a trampoline out of fishing rope, or the hundred other things that I learned out in the ocean.
   Trouble was, when I was at Shiprock, I spent half my time worrying about what I was missing at Brightport! Mandy Rushton — my onetime enemy, now a good friend — always filled me in, but it wasn’t the same. See, Dad was right. Nothing much of any use ever did happen on Fridays, but it was when people had the most fun.
   Whichever way I looked at it, it seemed I was missing out. The only silver lining was that because Aaron, my boyfriend, is a semi-mer like me, he had the same arrangement. Which meant that he was in the same place as I was, no matter which day of the week it was. And I had to admit, that mostly made all of it better.
   “OK, folks, class is almost over, so finish the sentence you’re writing and put your pens down.” Mr. Rollins shuffled papers around on his desk while he waited to get everyone’s attention.
   A second later, the bell rang. Mr. Rollins called over the noise of chairs scraping on the floor, “Chairs behind your desks, and don’t forget your homework. Oh, and there’s a letter for each of you to take home to your parents. Please pick up an envelope on your way out of the classroom.”
   “What’s this about?” Mandy mumbled as we collected our letters. The envelopes were sealed, so we couldn’t see what was in them. On the front, they just said, To the parents of Brightport Junior High eighth-graders. On the back, each was labeled with the words An exciting Invitation from Fivebays Island.
   As I read the words, I felt a funny sensation inside me — like a tail swishing around in my stomach.
   I had mixed feelings when it came to islands.
   On the one hand, an island, by definition, is surrounded by sea — which is totally fantastic, obviously, as it generally means lots of opportunities for the mermaid part of me to go out exploring in the ocean. On the other hand, I’d had some of the worst experiences of my life on an island, including nearly being squeezed to death by a sea monster — which isn’t as much fun.
   “‘Fivebays Island,’” Mandy read aloud. “Sounds cool.”
   And as I pocketed my letter, I had to agree. All things considered, Fivebays Island sounded very cool.

I forgot about the letter for the rest of the day. It was only once I got home and was unpacking my bag that I remembered it.
   “Oh, Mom, Dad, this is for you,” I said, passing it over to Mom.
Mom took the letter from me and reached for her glasses as Dad popped his head up from below deck.
   We lived on a boat moored in Brightport Harbor. It was a beautiful old ship that had been specially adapted so merpeople and humans could both live in it. 
   “Hey, little ’un, how was school?” Dad asked, flicking wet hair off his face and smiling up at me. I took my shoes and socks off and sat on the edge of the gap in the floor, dangling my feet in the water. Just my toes, so my legs wouldn’t turn into a tail. Part of the new deal was that I had to do my homework before going in the water.
   I shrugged. “OK.” I nodded over to the table, where Mom had opened the envelope and was now sitting reading the letter. “We were given those.”
   Dad looked over. “What is it?”
   “Emily’s class has been invited to visit an island for a geography field trip at the end of this month,” Mom replied.
   I was emptying my bag of all the junk I’d accu-mulated through the day, but my heart thumped down on the table along with my browning apple core. So it was just a geography field trip. The dullest thing in the world.
   “They’ll be studying rare birds and exotic plants and unusual geological formations,” Mom went on. Then she looked across at us and added, “It’s for a whole week.”
   I dropped my homework planner on the table with a thud. A whole week studying birds, plants, and rocks? Really?
   “Oh, and there are shipwrecks and some interesting sea life, too,” Mom went on. “They’ll organize glass-bottom boat trips.”
   Shipwrecks and sea life? That sounded much better! But they could forget the glass-bottom boat trips. If shipwrecks and sea life were in the cards, I wanted to go underwater and see them up close!
   “I think she should go,” Dad said.
   “Me too,” Mom added.
   “Yeah, I think so too,” I agreed. If my record with islands was anything to go by — who knew? — 
perhaps I’d find myself caught up in an adventure while I was there!