How to Outswim a Shark Without a Snorkel (13 page)

Wait
.

“It was Ashley!” I blurted. The words came tumbling out before I could stop them, but somehow
saying
them made me realize they were true. “She took my name off the list and undid the lock. I know it!”

Ashley's mouth dropped open. But this time I recognized her fake innocent face. I'd seen it a hundred times before when she'd been trying to ruin my life at school, where her head tilts just so and her eyes open extra wide. I'd also seen it the day of my big reptile presentation when she'd tried to mess that up for me too. There was no way I'd let her fool me this time.

My blood turned to ice.

I'd been so
stupid
.

Patricia swung around with fiery eyes. “Ana, that is a
very
serious accusation to make. Ashley has been a great help here, and I don't think that you have any right to accuse her,” she said, punching every word like she meant it double. I stuck out my chin. There was no way Ashley would ruin this for me. Not this summer.

“But it's true!” The puzzle pieces snapped together in my mind, fitting together perfectly. I had to make Patricia understand. “She's been trying to sabotage me from the start! That's why those sea horses were overfed. She wanted me to get blamed for that too. And I
was
! She
hates
the zoo, and she's been trying to mess things up from the very beginning! I know it!”

Patricia's eyebrows shot up. “All right, Ana,” she said. For a moment, I thought she was going to hear me out. Maybe she knew how Ashley had treated me in the past. But then her face darkened and she looked like my mom does in the store with Daz begging for video game money.

“I've got enough to worry about today. This place opens to the public this Saturday. I don't need any of this childish drama,” she said. “Why don't you go home and take a break for a while?” She waved her hand in frustration. “Ashley and I can handle this. We're almost done anyway.”

“What? You can't send me away,” I said. Yelled, really. Which I totally did not want to do, but why couldn't
anyone
see through Ashley's schemes? Meanwhile, Ashley was still staring at me like she was hoping I'd melt into the floor like a Popsicle.

“Thanks, Ana,” she spat.

I started to fire back an insult, something—
anything
to stop Ashley from lying, but Patricia threw up her hands. “Enough! Ana, take the night and chill out. We can handle this.”

She looked pointedly toward the door, just like Ashley and I had when we'd wanted Danielle to leave us alone a few hours earlier. Only now
I
was unwanted. “I think you should go home, Ana.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, preparing herself to tackle the crabs again. Then she shoved through the door into the exhibit, leaving me standing there like a loser.

Top Five People You Should Never Ever Trust, No Matter How Much They Help You Find the Perfect Swimsuit

1. Ashley.

2. Ashley.

3. Ashley.

4. Ashley.

5.
The lady at Aviana's Bikini Hut
NOPE, JUST KIDDING. ASHLEY.

Starfish are capable of regenerating missing limbs.

—Animal Wisdom

I didn't go home straightaway. In fact, I didn't want to go home at all. I was sure that Patricia would tell my parents about what happened (even though it was completely one hundred percent untrue and sabotage), and I knew they would have that sinking look on their faces like the time I tried to steal a pack of Bubblicious watermelon gum from the store when I was seven.

But more than that, I was
mad
.

It was like all my insides were splintering apart, and it took all of my energy to hold myself together, instead of opening my mouth and
screaming
and letting all the pieces of me go flying out like shrapnel and hitting windows and innocent bystanders.

I wanted to get back at her. I wanted Ashley to feel as stupid as I did for thinking we could be friends. I wanted her to know I had figured it all out from the start, despite her little game of being nice to me and convincing me with swimsuits and mint chocolate chip ice cream. So I did what any girl who lives in a zoo would do when they were mad.

I hid in the crocodile pavilion.

Settling onto my favorite bench, I stared at Louis, the zoo's oldest crocodile. It was crazy to me that I'd been sitting right here a couple of months ago when a little girl named Beatrix asked me about crocodiles. Back then, I was worried Ashley would ruin my presentation.

Go figure that she was
still
being a monster to me now. Patricia's angry words kept repeating in my head, giving me a fresh rush of anger and shame to relive each time I played them back.

I whipped out my Anti-Ashley notebook and cracked the spine hard. Clearly her game had worked for a while, but I knew better now. Gripping a black pen in one hand, I began to scribble in dark, harsh letters. Louis watched me from his watery exhibit with dark, unreadable eyes.

TOP FIFTY REASONS ASHLEY IS THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

A small bubble of satisfaction grew in my chest as I wrote. Too bad Ashley couldn't hear these in her head right now, wherever she was.
Then
she would know how horrible she was.

1. She acts so special and mature, but really she's only trying to make up for the fact that her sister, Rebecca, is, like, a zillion times prettier and better at everything.

2. Rayna and Brooke don't even like her. They're probably using her because Ashley was already popular when they got there, so Ashley is a free ride to being popular, without ANY work.

3. She's the most two-faced person on the planet. She will say anything to make herself look better, and then turn around and throw it in the other person's face like they don't matter AT ALL.

4. I bet no boys will ever truly like her. They'll think she's pretty and everything, but then when they get around her, they will learn she's horrible, and she will grow up bitter and have nobody who wants to kiss her…

I wrote and wrote and wrote. Eventually, my hand got cramped, but I kept writing anyway. People swarmed around me, knocking against my knees. But the words kept pouring out of me until I felt like I could breathe again. When I was finished, I had a scribbly mess that filled four pages. The pressure in my chest started to lighten as I leaned against the bench, focusing on the whir of the air around me and the chirping birds in the thick trees overhead.

Closing the notebook, I drummed my fingertips over the cover. It's funny how books seem to get heavier after you've written in them. Like the words you wrote somehow weighed more than the pages itself, holding all of your heavy emotions for you. I felt better after writing the list, but couldn't shake the feeling that the dark cloud over my head was now a rain cloud, pouring buckets of water all over me. What happened to my awesome summer?

I stuffed the notebook back into my bag and checked my watch. My parents would be worried if I wasn't home soon.

But of course I don't live in some movie where I can come home and have a heart-to-heart to figure out all of my problems. When I got home, the television was blaring a Shark Week program and the whole house smelled like burned popcorn.

Patricia hadn't called.

Nobody knew a thing.

A relieved, bleary numbness settled over me as I threw my backpack by the door and sank down next to Dad on the couch.

“Hey, Peanut. Where were you? I thought you finished earlier today? Bella called, by the way.” He offered me the bowl of popcorn that was sitting beside him. The noises of Mom putzing around in the kitchen were loud above the sounds of thrashing great whites on the screen.

“Hey, Dad. Yeah, sorry. I went for a walk around the croc pavilion,” I said, sinking down beside him. The sofa was so comfortable I wanted to sink into the cushions forever. Since when was summer so exhausting? “What's for dinner?”

Dad's lip curled slightly. “Your mom got some new recipe from Gail at work, but…” He looked forlornly toward the kitchen. “I really don't know,” he said finally. The smell of something tangy snaked out of the kitchen toward us.

I smirked. I didn't mind that Mom wasn't a great cook. It meant we had lots of Michaelangelo's pizza, and how could you go wrong with that?

“Ooh, check that out!” Dad said suddenly, making me jump.

“What?” I blinked at the TV. A man in a life vest was leaning over the edge of his boat, pointing at the massive shadow of a shark beneath the water. Then the camera flashed to the inside of a lab, where another guy in a white lab coat was peering through a microscope.

“New research,” he explained. “They've discovered that some sharks live a lot longer than we thought.”

“Huh,” I said blankly. Snuggling back into the cushions, I let my eyes unfocus. I'd always thought sharks were cool, especially great white sharks. They seemed to swim around the ocean like they owned it. I shoved a handful of popcorn into my mouth. The buttery saltiness made me feel a teensy bit better.

“How come you think they're so good at it?” I asked aimlessly.

Dad thumbed the volume down on the controller. “Good at what?”

“You know,” I said, picking a popcorn kernel from my teeth. “Good at being so
awesome
like that. They always seem so…in control.” I watched in awe as a great white launched itself from the water, plowing into a seal like a freight train.

I mean, I felt bad for the seal and all, but still. I tried not to think about the little seal family that had been left behind after the great white turned him into dinner.

Dad sniffed. “It's true. They're basically the perfect predator. They've evolved to be great, I think.
Every
creature in the ocean knows better than to mess with them,” he said with admiration. “They take charge, you know? Kick butt and take names!” His mustache wriggled.

A flicker of something stirred inside of me. Was that how I'd gone wrong with Ashley? Obviously I'd been dumb to even think we could be friends, but maybe I needed to take charge like a shark?

I mean, if I actually thought about it, that's pretty much what
Ashley
did, right? She'd gone and opened the lock and swiped my name off the journal to make it look extra bad for me. That was a
total
great white shark move. One hundred percent predator.

Maybe I needed to learn a lesson from Shark Week. You know how they say you have to fight fire with fire? Well, maybe the same went for fighting sharks. You had to
be
a shark to win it.

I toyed with the idea some more. “What about people taking charge like that?” I asked hesitantly. “You know, acting like a shark?” I waited for him to shake his head and tell me it was a horrible idea. But instead he raised his eyebrows.

“You know,” he said, “there are probably worse animals you could be like. For example, you could be like a dung beetle and spend your life preoccupied with rolling in poop. Or you could be like a starfish and vomit up your own stomach every time you eat.”

I made a face, squirming. “Ew, Dad,” I said. “Now I can see where Daz gets it.” I shoved him.

But despite Dad's poop/vomit talk, I knew I was onto something.

When Ashley started hanging out at the zoo, I'd tried to adapt, but really I'd been like a tiny fish, trying to avoid getting eaten by the big nasty shark, played by Ashley, of course. I did my best to keep her from messing me up, and for a while there, it
almost
looked like we could be friends. Well, not friends, but something
like
friends.

But after today? It was pretty obvious that it was all some big cruel joke so she could sabotage me at exactly the right moment.

I couldn't argue with Dad's shark logic. Being weak like prey had only worked for so long because Ashley is a Sneerer and I'd obviously forgotten about that. Now it was time to stop acting like a tiny fish.

It was time to act like an aggressive predator.

It was time to be a
shark
.

A couple hours later, I was towel drying my hair, enjoying the feeling of having washed that horrible day off my skin. I didn't have my perfect shark plan for Ashley yet, but I
had
gotten to have the longest bath in the world because Daz was out and wasn't around to pester me by knocking on the door and complaining that he needed the bathroom every ten minutes.

Of course, that didn't stop him from knocking on my bedroom door pretty much the second he got home.

No. Not knocking.

Pounding
.

As in, he was
mad
.

“Where were you?” he demanded, storming into my room. He still had his shoes on and was carrying a tattered plastic bag. “I've called a bunch of times!”

“Excuse me?” I snipped, draping my hair towel over the end of my bed. “What are you yelling about?” Like I hadn't had a hard enough day without Daz getting on my case with his weirdness. “Go call Kevin if you need some subject for your robot experiments tonight,” I said icily.

He dropped the bag on the floor with a thud. “Um, pretty sure I
would
if Kevin hadn't just spent the entire night helping out at an old-age home
selling
Bella's cookies
!”

My heart screeched to a halt.

Bella.

The cookies.

Her
bake
sale!

“No!” I yelped. I collapsed onto my bed and held my head in my hands. “I didn't! I mean, I didn't mean to!
Oh
noooo
,” I wailed. “I totally forgot!”

He sat down beside me, with his shoulders drooping. “I tried to cover for you,” he said grimly. His voice softened a notch. “But it was sort of hard since she knew you weren't busy tonight. Kevin said he tried calling, but that Dad said you weren't back yet.”

I shook my head, swallowing down the guilt. “I feel terrible. I had such a bad day, and then—” I thought back to my spontaneous trip to the croc pavilion. I'd been writing an awful list about Ashley when I should have been setting up tables of cookies and bread for my
actual
friend.

“I got…distracted,” I admitted. “Then when I got home I sort of zonked out on the couch with Dad.”

He sighed. “Well, she's pretty upset.”

I grimaced. I could practically see Bella's disappointed face already. She was always such a good friend to me, and I went and messed it up because I was too preoccupied with stupid Ashley.

“I'm such a jerk,” I said. The truth hung in the air like a stinky dog towel on a rainy day. “I'll call her. I promise. Did she sell a lot?”

His frown turned to a devilish grin. “We did.” He stuck out his chest. “People even liked the sweet potato thingies,” he said. “She was completely sold out. She saved these for you because she knew you liked them best.” He nudged the container to me.

Relief rushed through me. At least she had done well.
Without
my
help
at
all
. I leaned against my pillow. It was Ashley's fault that I'd missed Bella's big night. I mean,
technically
it was me who forgot about it. But how could I not be distracted by her doing something so
awful
?

“Hey, Daz,” I said, stretching over to kick my door closed.

“If I were to ask your help with something…” I ventured. “Would you do it?” I didn't know
what
I was thinking.

He raised his eyebrows. “You are not testing out makeup on me,” he said, leaning away. “Or doing some weird dance routine…?”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What exactly do you think girls
do
all day? Put on makeup and choreograph dances? Please.”