Stingray City. Ellen Prager

CHRISTMAS IN CAYMAN

      25 RETURN TO STINGRAY CITY

      26 STINKY SAVES THE DAY

      27 GOING HOME

      28 THE GREEN SLIME

       NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       1

       HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

      THE FIVE YOUNG TEENS STOOD HORRIFIED, STARING at the creatures on exhibit. Trailing behind the animals’ glowing orangey-gold bells were white, ruffled feeding arms and tentacles seven feet long! The tentacles reminded Tristan of giant strands of dark-red spaghetti. With one big difference—mega-long pasta wouldn’t sting the bejesus out of you.

      “No way!” Tristan announced. “I’m not going in there.”

      “Like, dude, me either,” Ryder agreed.

      “Not a chance,” Hugh added.

      “Come on, you guys,” Sam chastised. “One of us has to go in and do it.”

      “If you think so, then you go in,” Rosina snarled.

      Sam shook her head. “Are you nuts? I’m not going in there.”

      If you could ignore their potential to pack a terribly painful sting, the sea nettles in the display were actually quite beautiful. Lit up and drifting against a brilliant blue background, the jellyfish looked like slow-motion dancers costumed in long, crimson streamers and pale ruffles. At the center of the tank, however, things were not so pretty. Ongoing collisions had created a jumbled, twisted mess—a massive floating tangle of stinging jellyfish. And it was growing larger by the minute.

      It was nighttime at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the teens from Sea Camp were on untangling duty. Since arriving at the aquarium, Tristan Hunt and his friends had been regular volunteers during the day and on special assignment after dark. But this was an assignment absolutely no one wanted.

      Tristan flicked back the strands of brown hair that constantly fell over his face. He leaned his tall, gangly body closer to the tank, staring at the snarl of sea nettles. His best friends and camp mates, Sam Marten and Hugh Haverford, stood beside him. They each wore jeans and a light-blue polo shirt with the aquarium logo on it. Hugh’s slightly pudgy face looked even paler than usual, especially against his short and neatly combed dark hair. Sam fidgeted nervously, twisting her long, sun-flecked, wheat-colored ponytail with her fingers. Tristan’s other camp mates, Rosina Gonzales and Ryder Jones, had stepped back as if the lengthy tentacles could somehow wiggle their way through the thick acrylic viewing window.

      The aquarium’s senior jellyfish curator was with the teens. He stood nearby, watching. “So, who’s going in?”

      No one volunteered.

      “Figured that would be the case,” the man said. “You’ll be pretty covered up, so the stinging won’t be too bad. No one’s ever died from it or anything.”

      Tristan couldn’t tell if he was joking.

      The jellyfish curator held out a hand curled around five straws. “Whoever draws the short one is the lucky—or should I say unlucky—detangler.”

      Sam closed her gray-blue eyes and chose first—a long straw. Ryder went next. As he stepped forward, his wild, blond surfer hair trembled ever so slightly. He came away smiling, holding a similarly lengthy straw. Hugh then nervously grabbed a straw—long. That left Rosina and Tristan. Rosina remained where she was, so Tristan stepped up. Silently praying, he chose. Relief washed over Tristan as he stared at the long straw in his hand.

      Rosina promptly turned the moldy-green color of cottage cheese gone bad. Shaking her mop of perpetually disheveled brown hair, she muttered, “I . . . I can’t go in there.”

      The man took Rosina’s arm. “This way, young lady. We’ll get you suited right up.”

      The others watched as the young teen was led, shell-shocked and mumbling, to the door that led behind the jellies’ exhibit.

      “Hugh, I thought you could speak jelly,” Sam whispered. “Maybe you could help. You know, just direct them to untie themselves or something.”

      Hugh shook his head. “No, thanks. I may have done some pretty crazy things earlier this summer, like riding that shark. But I was under duress, probably in shock, and that was crazy—this is just plain stupid.”

      Tristan nodded, very glad he wasn’t the one going into the tank. He had enough problems just untying his shoelaces or doing anything that took even a small amount of dexterity. On land, he was still pretty much a klutz.

      The teens could see Rosina and the curator moving around behind the twenty-foot-long exhibit. Tristan decided to check out some of the other jellyfish in the gallery while they waited for her to get ready.

      Famous for figuring out how to keep jellyfish alive and on display, Monterey Bay Aquarium had one of the best collections of both common and exotic species. The first tank Tristan came to was a five-foot-high, transparent cylinder filled with flying saucer-shaped pink moon jellies. Each was about a foot across. He’d seen this species in the Bahamas and Florida. Supposedly, their sting was pretty weak. Tristan preferred not to be the fact-checker on that one. Next to the moon jelly display was another cylindrical tank. This one held dozens of small, white-spotted jellyfish. They were yellowy-brown, mini-cupcake-sized, polka-dotted creatures with clusters of short, frilly feeding arms. Next to the tank, a small speaker blared fast-paced disco music. Tristan leaned closer to the tank. He could swear the white-spotted jellies moved in short, rapid bursts, perfectly in beat with the music. He moved to the next tank. It contained small, plum-colored blubber jellies pulsing to a different tune. Their bells resembled dark-purple, sideways-bouncing, blubbery rubber balls trailing clusters of weird, triangular-shaped arms. Tristan then moved to a darkened corner of the exhibit, where perhaps the strangest of the bunch were on display—jellyfish that lay on the bottom of the tank with bioluminescent pearls of light atop their flattened bells. After staring at the seemingly starlit creatures for a few minutes, Tristan hurried back. He definitely didn’t want to miss any of the action at the big sea-nettle tank. On the way, he passed displays with upside-down, egg-yolk, and lion’s mane jellyfish.

      “Here she goes,” Sam announced.

      Tristan made it just in time to see Rosina climb up a ladder to the top of the sea nettle tank. A wetsuit top and hood covered all but her hands and face. The hood gave her chipmunk cheeks and emphasized her big, fearful eyes. The jellyfish curator stood beside the ladder and urged her on. Rosina paused, looking around. Tristan figured she was probably searching for the nearest exit. Rosina then took a there’s-no-way-out-of-this deep breath and tentatively stuck a hand into the sea nettle tank. She reached cautiously toward the huge, drifting knot of jellyfish. One of the free-floating jellies bumped her hand. Rosina drew back so fast, Tristan thought she would fall off the ladder.

      It was then that Tristan noticed the strands of transparent goo flowing from Rosina’s fingers. “Nice slime,” he said, referring to the mucus that regularly oozed from Rosina’s hands when she was in seawater. When it came to their special ocean talents, she was the only one in the group who had developed mucus deployment skills. Rosina slowly reached back into the tank and gently touched the jelly’s bell, pushing it out of the way. Her hand trembled as she then nudged the jelly’s tentacles and feeding arms away from the massive tangle. The look on her face was not what Tristan expected—puke-inspiring pain. Instead, Rosina appeared pleasantly surprised.

      Rosina reached more confidently into the tank and undid a twist of tentacles