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“Nice job, Shelly,” Normie mocked. “Of course she knows everything about fish.”
Everyone knew that Shelly’s parents owned the Triton Bay Aquarium. A year earlier, she and her little brother used to love going to work with their parents on the weekends, following their mother around while she managed the feeding schedules and directed the staffers, or hanging with their father in the office while he handled the bills and dealt with guest relations.
But the days of both her parents being at the aquarium at the same time had passed.
Shelly followed as Mr. Aquino led the class to the next tank on the tour. Shelly caught sight of her reflection in the tank’s clear barrier. She had long, curly dark hair streaked with blond highlights from all the time she spent on the aquarium’s outdoor sundeck feeding the dolphins. Her eyebrows and eyes
were darker brown than her sun-kissed skin. Her favorite thing about her appearance was her long, strong legs, which helped her swim fast.
Sunlight filtered through the water, casting strange shadows onto her classmates. She didn’t need to look at the illustrated placard to know what this exhibit housed: spiny lobsters, stingrays, barracuda, and garden eels. The lobsters, looking like giant red insects waving their antennas, lumbered around the bottom of the tank filled with coral reef and sea sponges.
Mr. Aquino held up a white plastic straw. “Now, can someone tell me what this is?”
They all stifled their laughter at the easy question. All except for Shelly, who prevented her arm from rising. She wasn’t going to risk Kendall calling her a nerd again.
“Uhhh, I’m pretty sure that’s a straw,” said Normie. “Do I get extra credit now?”
The class broke into laughter.
Our sea sponges here are smarter than Normie, Shelly thought with a head shake.
“It’s not just any straw,” Mr. Aquino replied, ignoring Normie’s request. He slipped into his full-on enthusiastic-teacher mode, waving the straw around. “It’s a plastic straw I found on the beach this morning.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Did you know that ninety percent of seabirds and fifty percent of sea turtles have been found to have plastic in their stomachs?”
Shelly felt a lump form in her throat. She did know. How could she not? She used to be the head of the Kids Care Conservation Club at the aquarium. Earlier that year, she had spoken to Mr. Aquino about starting a chapter at school. That was before she became friends with Kendall.
“This straw looks harmless enough,” Mr. Aquino went on, gesturing to the exhibit, where a smiling stingray drifted serenely behind the glass. “But it’s no laughing matter. This little straw could kill an endangered animal like that turtle—or poison our precious oceans.”
“Death by killer straws,” Kendall murmured, shaking her iced latte with its two straws at Attina and Alana. “Anything but the Killer Straws!” she added, flicking the tops of the straws.
Attina and Alana giggled at her quip and sipped from their own iced lattes.
Shelly cringed, feeling bad for Mr. Aquino.
Her teacher gave up. “All right, I’ll give you two options—dolphin exhibit or gift shop.”
They all yelled, “Gift shop!” at the top of their lungs.
Shelly kept her mouth shut. She wanted to visit the dolphins—watch the feeders toss fish to Sassy and Salty and maybe even dip her hand into the open-air tank and pet Lil’ Mermy, the youngest dolphin in the pod. But it would just have to wait for another time.
Fit in at all costs, she told herself as she sidled up to her new friends.
“Please,” Kendall said to her posse, then loudly slurped her iced latte through its two straws. “First no more plastic bags, and now they want to take away my straws? No thanks.”
“For realz,” Attina chimed in, fiddling with her sparkly headband, which perfectly matched her sister’s, though Attina’s was pink and Alana’s was blue. “Who cares about boring old fish, anyway?”
“Hashtag BTD,” Alana added. “Bored to death.” She drank from her iced latte.
The three girls turned to Shelly expectantly, each sipping from her drink.
“Right . . . so boring,” Shelly mumbled, forcing out the opposite of what she actually felt.
“Totally,” said Kendall with a smile. “Shells, we love how you’re such a know-it-all.”
Alana and Attina tittered at her remark.
Shelly didn’t know how to take it, so she simply smiled. “Thanks, I think,” she said.
The girls began to trail behind the rest of the class, heading for the aquarium gift shop. Shelly glanced at the front entrance that led up to the main exhibit, and she spotted the new security system and alarms installed on the doors. She’d overheard her father talking on the phone with the police, saying that somebody had been trying to break into the aquarium the past few weeks.
