I lay awake in bed that night, despite being exhausted from the day’s events. My round mattress hung by red vines from the ceiling, which was plastered with glow-in-the-dark suction-cupped starfish, while real sea horses swam on top of my flashy red dresser, grabbing onto the marble cone drawer handles when they wanted to rest. Banned books were stashed under my clothes in a drawer. Beneath my bed, Bubbles slept restlessly as if she’d swallowed the potion, too.
I lay awake wondering about Earth life. We knew that Earthees had legs, and we had fins. Similar, but different. But how different could they be, really, on the inside?
Above my bedroom, above Pacific Reefs, far above the surface of the water, the crescent moon shone two hundred thousand miles away in the starry sky. But I still had fins, just like all my friends who’d drunk Shark Attacks or frog juice tonight—and not a rancid-tasting potion that cost a crystal fortune. But maybe it was best it hadn’t worked. Maybe Earth was too dangerous, as Waverly and everybody else believed.
I closed my eyes, waiting for sleep, thankful that Madame Pearl was an impostor after all, and wondered how I was going to tell my mother I’d lost great-grandfather’s silver necklace.