Gracie Under the Waves, page 1
Dedication
To the young people everywhere
who are working to save our planet:
May the future be in your hands.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Linda Sue Park
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
“Gracie, what are you doing?”
“Researching snorkeling stuff.”
“Snorkeling? Why? Can I help?”
Gracie sighed. “No, because you’d need a tablet. Besides, you can’t type yet.”
Ben flapped his hands. “I can too. I can type my name.”
“You need to type way more than that. And you still don’t have a tablet.”
“But I want to help! I want to help you, Gracie!”
Ben was right next to her, his voice loud and his breath hot in her ear. She shifted her chair to pull away a little.
It would be completely unfair to say that Ben always ruined Gracie’s plans. It would, however, be both fair and realistic to say that Ben always had the potential to ruin her plans.
Ben was four and a half years younger than her. “I’m six, but I’m closer to seven than six,” he liked to say. “Way, WAY closer.” His speech mode was set to LOUD and REPEAT; he was enthusiastic and energetic and never wanted to be left out of anything. He was there every time she turned around. It seemed to Gracie that, except for at school, she lived her whole life with Ben in her space.
“It’s because he worships you, honey,” Mom would say. “Being close to you is his happy place.”
“That’s a real compliment,” Dad would add.
Gracie would have gladly traded being worshipped for being left alone. Like at that very moment, for instance.
She knew what was coming next. He would keep repeating himself, asking about snorkeling, asking to help, getting louder and louder, until Mom or Dad heard him and came in wondering what all the ruckus was about. Then she would have to explain, and their whole focus would be on Ben and getting him to calm down, and her planning session would be totally disrupted.
She had to admit one thing: Ben didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He was rambunctious and incredibly aggravating, but he was also earnest and sweet, which was the reason that, to this point in their lives, she had not yet inflicted him with serious bodily harm.
So she split her screen, putting a photo on the side closest to him.
“Here,” she said. “Isn’t this a cool photo? It’s a reef where I want to go snorkeling one day. Do you think you can draw those fish?”
“YES!” Ben shouted. He ran to get his crayons, and she immediately went back to her planning.
As usual, Ben kept up a running commentary of his every move.
“I’m drawing the outline in pencil now. In pencil, like you showed me before.”
“They have a black spot by their tail, Gracie, see? I’m drawing a spot on all of them.”
“How many fish should I draw? How many? Six, like in the picture?”
Gracie had learned long ago how to respond to Ben while tuning him out at the same time. She would make sounds like “mm-hmm” and “uh-huh,” which, for the most part, seemed to satisfy him.
“Sure,” she said vaguely, her eyes on her half of the screen, “six is good.”
She had been googling the same phrase for years—ever since she was old enough to use the internet—and now she typed it in one more time:
Best places to snorkel.
Gracie’s favorite activity in the whole world was snorkeling. She had snorkeled exactly three times—once in the British Virgin Islands, where they visited Reggie, an old college friend of Dad’s, and twice in the Cayman Islands, when Mom had a work trip and the whole family traveled with her. Three times didn’t sound like very much, but it had been enough for her to know that she wanted to spend the rest of her life snorkeling as often as she could.
It was hard to put into words exactly why she loved snorkeling so much. Some parts were easy enough to explain. The fish! Their colors were so bright and vivid. She had already experienced so many memorable “firsts.” Like her first fairy basslet: she had shouted into her snorkel and inhaled a mouthful of ocean. But how could she not? Half magenta-purple and half blazing gold—she had never seen anything like it.
And its name! “Fairy,” because of those magical colors, and “basslet,” a mini bass: How cute was that?
The first time she had seen a butterflyfish, with the distinctive black “eyespot” near its tail. Her first blue tang, the most intense shade of blue ever. The first time she had actually heard a parrotfish crunching on coral. Her first sea turtle! Her first eel!
Best of all was when she came across a big school of fish. It had only happened to her twice, the incredible experience of having hundreds of fish swimming around her. Both times she had stopped moving, frozen in awe as the fish flowed past her, their scales flashing and sparkling in the clear blue water, a stream of living, moving stars.
Seeing ocean life through her snorkeling mask was the closest she would ever come to witnessing life on another planet. Under the waves, in the oceans that covered three-quarters of the planet, there was a different world, one that she never saw in her everyday life, one that most other people never saw at all, one that she would never get tired of exploring.
It wasn’t a secret, but it felt like a secret. Which was very cool.
The words practically typed themselves into the search box. Gracie was doing a final check just to be absolutely sure about her choice.
Her dream snorkeling destination. Not the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which was surely awesome, but Gracie thought it was too famous as a snorkeling destination. She wanted somewhere that might feel almost like it was her own special place, where she could—
“Where should I put the last fish, Gracie?” Ben asked, practically shouting into her ear. “Where’s the best place for it?”
“In the corner,” she said, without even looking.
“Which corner? This one? This one that’s almost empty, right? Good idea, Gracie!”
She clicked on a link halfway down the screen.
The Maldives.
Almost halfway around the world from home. South of India, east of Somalia, in the Indian Ocean. And at or near the top of every single online best-snorkeling list, even though it wasn’t anywhere near as well known as the Great Barrier Reef.
Gracie was well aware that her family could not afford vacations in faraway places. Their trips were mostly local, in and around western New York where they lived. They would spend weekends in cabins or cottages at places like Watkins Glen or the Adirondacks. Once, they had gone to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a family reunion on Dad’s side—a whole week at the beach.
No one she knew had ever been to the Maldives; her friends had probably never even heard of the place. She imagined saying—casually, of course—“Winter break? No, we didn’t go skiing. We went to the Maldives. Oh—you don’t know where that is?” She wouldn’t say it in a mean way, but maybe just the slightest bit boastfully. Visiting the Maldives would definitely be something to be proud of.
She had been waiting forever to go snorkeling again. Last year, the family had been hoping for a return visit to see Reggie, but the trip had been canceled because something came up with Dad’s work. Gracie had never in her life been so disappointed. That made it almost three years since the last time she had snorkeled.
No way was she going to wait another three years.
With Ben chattering away next to her, Gracie began researching air travel to the Maldives.
Her mouth fell open. What she was looking at was so shocking that she quickly repeated the search in case she had somehow typed in something wrong.
Nope. Same result.
The numbers were stupefying. Thousands of dollars for the family to fly there, and she hadn’t even started looking into hotels or meals or anything else. She knew without asking that Dad and Mom wouldn’t even consider it.
How in the world was she ever going to get to the Maldives?
Chapter Two
Baby steps.
Something one of her favorite teachers had once taught her. She had never forgotten it. The third-grade leaf project: collect at least fifteen different kinds of leaves, identify them, make a leaf book. Gracie’s neighborhood was a modest condominium complex with hardly any trees. When Mr. Alvarez checked on everyone’s progress the week before the project was due, Gracie had exactly one leaf prepared. She had been so discouraged that she couldn’t seem to get herself going on the work.
“Baby steps!” Mr. Alvarez said to her. “Two leaves today after school, that’s all you need to do. Show me those two leaves tomorrow, and I’ll tell you what to do next.”
Just two leaves. Way easier than fourteen. And when she had brought in those two, Mr. Alvarez had told her to get two more. And then two more. And then three over the weekend. Until, bit by bit, she got all the way to fourteen, which made fifteen altogether, and a “Muy Bueno!” from Mr. Alvarez scrawled on the cover of her leaf book.
The thought of baby steps made Gracie feel hopeful—for about ten seconds. Because what was the Maldives equivalent of two leaves?
She thought about it for days. It took a while, but slowly, a possible plan took shape in her mind. She had to work backward—starting with the goal in the far future, drawing up steps from there to the present.
The goal: a family trip to the Maldives, to snorkel. Which meant . . .
Getting Mom and Dad to think of snorkeling as a top priority for vacations. Which meant . . .
A trip focused on snorkeling. Not to the Maldives, of course, but to somewhere much closer and a lot cheaper, where the whole family would have such a good time that snorkeling trips would become a regular thing from then on. Which meant . . .
Finding a place like that, AND . . .
. . . convincing them to go there for the next family vacation.
If she could dream up a fantastic snorkeling trip, to somewhere not too far away and not too expensive, and share her ideas with her parents, surely they would see that they just had to go to the Maldives next.
What she needed was a plan.
Gracie loved planning things. Mundane things, like her outfit for the day. Bigger things, like birthday parties and school projects. She worked hard on her plans, spending hours searching the internet for ideas and information, scribbling notes, pondering choices.
But no matter how hard she tried, her plans never turned out quite as she wanted. The list of her failures was a long one, and it seemed to Gracie that Ben was always involved somehow.
Like the time he blurted out the surprise gift she’d spent weeks preparing for her best friend, Virgie—a window box with wildflowers all grown from seed.
Or when he lurched into the table at her ninth birthday party and knocked over the platters that held the decorate-your-own cupcakes, so that every single one of them fell on the floor.
Or spilled a drink on two pages of her leaf project.
The memories were endless, and the only thing she had learned from those experiences was that there was no way to predict Ben’s disasters. Which meant she couldn’t do much to prevent them either.
And that was the most frustrating part.
Gracie had never planned anything as big as a family vacation. It was, to be honest, daunting to think about, so she concentrated on Mr. Alvarez’s advice. For the first baby step, she spoke up after Saturday breakfast, when Mom and Dad were both tapping on their phones.
“Mom? Dad? You haven’t planned anything for spring break yet, have you?” She kept her voice casual.
It was a cold day in the gray of January. Spring break was in the middle of March. Most years, they drove the three hours to Cleveland, to spend a few days with Gramma and Pop-Pop. But this year, her grandparents would be visiting the cousins in Chicago.
“Spring break?” Dad said, without looking up.
“No, honey, nothing planned yet,” Mom said. Gracie saw her glance out the window at the yard full of slush. Then she murmured, “It would be nice to go somewhere warm for a change.”
It was a sign, a good omen!
“Okay if I come up with a few ideas?” Gracie asked.
“Sure.”
“Fine.”
“Thanks!”
Baby step number one, mission accomplished.
The next step was mostly fun: doing the research. It took a few weeks of diligent work in between homework assignments, but soon she was ready to call for a family meeting.
This would not be a baby step. It would be more like a giant leap.
“What’s this about, honey?” Mom asked as she sat down at the table.
“Spring break,” Gracie answered. “Remember, you said I could come up with a plan for it?”
“We did?” Dad looked surprised.
“You sit here, Dad,” she said, indicating the chair next to Mom. Then she opened her tablet and placed it in front of them, so they could both see its screen easily.
“Look,” she said. “This is where I think we should go.”
The screen displayed a map of the eastern half of Central America. The countries of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras were clearly marked.
Gracie clicked repeatedly on the + button, zooming in on a slim green island off the coast of Honduras.
“Roatán, Honduras,” she said.
“Never heard of it.” Dad frowned as he leaned a little closer to the screen.
“It has lots of positive reviews,” she said. She was trying to stay relaxed, which was hard to do when her heart was beating so hard. “The travel sites say—”
“A positive view?” Ben asked. “What’s that? View of what?”
Gracie felt the back of her neck start to itch a little, which often happened when Ben began to pester her. If he started interrupting and asking silly questions, her carefully planned presentation wouldn’t be nearly as effective.
Then a sudden realization hit her—something she had known but hadn’t considered.
Ben had never been snorkeling.
On the trip to the British Virgin Islands, he had been too young. In the Caymans, he couldn’t stand how the diving mask felt and refused to wear it. He had been content to play in the sand and paddle at the water’s edge while Mom and Dad took it in turns to look after him and snorkel with Gracie.
If he objected to a snorkeling trip, Mom and Dad would never take them to Roatán, much less the Maldives. She would need all the skills and experience gained through years of living with him to distract him from his usual habit of repeating himself, getting louder each time until he was agitated and miserable.
Deep breath. “Ben, a positive review is when other people say a place is great,” she explained.
“Why is it great? What’s great about it?”
“I’m going to show you, okay?”
“Come here, Ben-Bud,” Dad said. He had Ben stand next to him and gave him a fidget toy.
Gracie nodded at Dad, then went on. “Roatán is part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef,” she explained. “The second biggest reef in the world.”
“What’s the first biggest?” Ben asked. “Why can’t we go to the first biggest? Look, I’ve kept it spinning for ages!” He held out his hand, the fidget spinner balanced on one finger.
“The Great Barrier Reef—that’s in Australia,” Mom answered. “Do you have any idea how far away it is?”
“Not going there anytime soon,” Dad agreed, “or maybe ever.”
Gracie’s heart clutched a little. The Maldives were almost as far away as Australia. Stick to the plan, she told herself sternly. At least it was looking like she had made the right choice by campaigning for a closer destination first.
She swiped the screen. A collage of beautiful reef photos was next.
“It’s a great place for snorkeling,” she said. Another swipe, another photo, this one of fairy basslets, her favorite fish.
“Look! Look at those fish!” Ben shouted, pointing at the photo onscreen. “They’re half-and-half fish!”
“They’re called fairy basslets, Ben,” she said brightly.
“Fairy basslet! I want to see a fairy basslet in real life! When can I see one? Why are some of them upside down?”
“I don’t know,” Gracie confessed. “How about we look it up after I’m done here?”
“Now! I want to know now!”
“But I want to finish—”
Mom was already typing on her phone. “Hang on, it’s right here,” she said. “Fairy basslets swim upside down under ledges to keep their bellies oriented toward a flat surface.”
Ben ran from the table to the sofa. “Gracie, look! I’m a fairy basslet!” He tried to flip himself upside down onto the cushions, but ended up sprawled sideways, then slid down to the floor and landed with a thump.
“Careful, Bud!” Dad said.
Gracie rubbed the back of her neck in a panic. Things were headed way off track; the moment was becoming about Ben, not the trip.
She cleared her throat. “ROATÁN,” she said.
She hadn’t meant to yell, but the word came out almost a shout. Dad and Mom turned back toward her in surprise. She hurried on. “Um, Roatán is just five hours flying time from here,” she said. “One connection, Miami or Atlanta.” It had been a convoluted and frustrating process to teach herself how to research flight itineraries; she was proud of herself for persevering.
