Killer Whale

AFTER SCHOOL, KIKI AND SHELLY met under Trident Academy’s massive entrance dome. A glowing jellyfish chandelier lit up the colorful carvings on the ceiling. “Do you want to come to my dorm room while Echo’s at Tail Flippers practice?” Kiki asked Shelly. Echo and Shelly had been friends since they’d been small fry, but Kiki had met the girls only a few weeks before, when school had started.

Shelly smiled. “Sure! I’d love to see your room.” Shelly and Echo lived just a short swim away from Trident Academy, but many mergirls and merboys lived far from school and had to stay in the dormitory. Since Kiki’s home was thousands of miles away near Asia, she lived in the dorm.

“It’s not that exciting,” Kiki admitted as they swam toward the girls’ dorm. It was a short distance from the classrooms, down a long hallway, past a seaweed curtain marked MERGIRLS ONLY. The boys’ rooms were on the opposite side of the school.

“I bet it’s better than my apartment,” Shelly said.

“At the People Museum?” Kiki asked.

“Yes,” Shelly said. “I live with my grandfather. Our place is on the second floor.” Shelly had lived with her grandfather since her parents died. The People Museum was filled with human objects of all sorts that had been found throughout the ocean. Merpeople came from all over the merkingdom to visit and study.

“Wow, that sounds neat,” Kiki said as the mergirls floated down the hallway to the rooms. Some girls had decorated their seaweed doors with shell carvings of their families. One girl had even braided a pretty gold chain into her seaweed.

Shelly shook her head. “I think human stuff is boring. Echo loves it. But humans can’t even swim.”

“I’ve heard that some can,” Kiki said.

“I hope so,” Shelly said. “I can’t imagine not being able to swim. Wouldn’t it be horrible?”

Kiki stopped in front of a bright-blue shell curtain, pulled it back, and said, “Here’s my room.” One side of the room was filled with fluffy pink coral and tube sponges. Sparkling jewel anemones covered one wall. Merclothes littered the floor. “That’s my roommate Wanda Slug’s side,” Kiki sighed as she looked at the mess.

“Is this yours?” Shelly asked, and pointed across the room to an enormous skeleton. “Is that a shark?”

“It’s my bed!” Kiki explained. “It might look like a shark, but it’s actually a killer whale. Come on, you can sit on it.” The two girls crawled inside the ribs of the huge skeleton and sank into a nest of feathers.

“Wow, this is soft,” Shelly said.

“My mermom saved gray heron feathers for five years to make this bed for me,” Kiki said.

“You should come over to my apartment for dinner sometime,” Shelly suggested. “My grandfather, Siren, would enjoy meeting you. He loves learning about faraway waters.”