Sink or Swim Read Free Page B

dumb questions!”
    “I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking. Just go on with the story.”
    “The Little Mermaid really wanted to swim to the surface but she wasn’t allowed until her fifteenth birthday. She had a bunch of older sisters and they’d already done it. When the Little Mermaid was finally allowed to peek out above the water, she saw a prince fall off a boat. Instead of letting him drown, she brought him to shore and saved him.”
    “That’s what we just saw!” he exclaims.
    “Exactly.”
    Beside us, the prince coughs up some seawater. Both of us spring up, but the prince’s eyes stay closed.
    “So what happens next?” Jonah asks.
    “Well, after she saved him, she fell in love with him.”
    “And then they got married?”
    “No,” I say. “It’s kind of a long story, actually, but what happened is that she hid. She didn’t want the prince to see her since she was a mermaid. So when he woke up, he didn’t know she had saved him. She went back underwater and asked around and discovered that the only way to get a human on land to fall in love with her was to have two legs. And the only way for her to get two legs was to make a deal with the sea witch. So she went to the sea witch and —”
    The prince lets out a loud snore.
    “And,” I continue, “the sea witch offered to give her legs, but the witch wanted payment. So the Little Mermaid gave her —” I stop. This part is gross.
    “Her allowance?”
    I squirm. “No.”
    “Her sneakers?”
    “What sneakers? She had a tail.”
    “Oh. Right. Then what?”
    “Her tongue.”
    “Are you kidding me?” he gasps. “The Little Mermaid gave away her tongue?”
    I nod, trying not to picture it.
    Jonah’s eyes light up. “That’s disgusting! Awesome!”
    My brother tends to like the gross parts of these stories. He has a stronger stomach than I do. He loves roller coasters. Especially the ones that go upside-down. Not me, thank you very much. I prefer staying upright.
    “Well,” I say, “technically, it was the Little Mermaid’s voice that the sea witch wanted. The Little Mermaid had an amazing singing voice. But she gave that up for legs. Forever.”
    Jonah shakes his head. “I can’t imagine never speaking again.”
    “Me neither,” I say. I doubt you can be a judge if you can’t speak. How would you sentence people? “Also, the sea witch added an extra curse to the spell — if the prince married anyone else, the morning after the wedding, the Little Mermaid would … would …”
    “Would what?” Jonah asks. “Have to give the sea witch her fingers? Her nose?”
    “ Snoooort! ” groans the prince, but his eyes stay closed.
    “Worse than that,” I say gravely. “If the prince married anyone else, the morning after the wedding, the Little Mermaid would die.”
    Jonah pales. “But we don’t have to worry, right? Because there must have been a happy ending. The prince fell in love withthe Little Mermaid, they got married, and they lived happily after?”
    “Well …” I hesitate.
    Just then we see a splash in the distance. It’s the mermaid again. The Little Mermaid. Her blond hair, her green bikini top, and her green-and-orange tail peek out of the water and then disappear.
    “I see her,” Jonah whispers. “Should we hide? Maybe if we run away she’ll forget she saw us and the story can continue the way it’s supposed to?”
    “Yeah,” I say, remembering what I’d said back in the basement. That we should stay out of the way so that whatever fairy tale we landed in wouldn’t get messed up.
    Except maybe I want to mess this one up.
    I look at the Little Mermaid and then back at the prince. “Here’s the thing. The ending of the real story of the Little Mermaid isn’t good. It isn’t like the happy ending in Cinderella or Snow White . In the end of the Little Mermaid’s real story, the Little Mermaid doesn’t get the prince. She doesn’t get her happy ending at all. In the end of the real story the prince marries