Читать книгу Sam Wu is NOT Afraid of Sharks! - Katie Tsang - Страница 8

From the outside, the aquarium looked a lot like the Space Museum. It was a BIG building and we had to queue up to go inside.

‘Hey, Sam Wu-ser,’ someone further back said with a snort. ‘Do you have a stupid outfit for the aquarium too?’

It was Ralph. Only Ralph thinks it’s hilarious to call me Sam Wu-ser because it rhymes with loser. And only Ralph snorts like that. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what my dad had said to do about Ralph. His advice was:

Ralph pushed his way up through the queue until he was right behind me. He started poking me in the back. ‘Hey! Hey! Sam Wu-ser! I’m talking to you! Hey! Hey!’

This was, as you might imagine, very hard to ignore.

‘He doesn’t have his SPACE BLASTERS outfit on because we’re going to the aquarium not the Space Museum!’ said Zoe.

‘OBVIOUSLY.’

I was, in fact, wearing a SPACE BLASTERS T-shirt, because it is the best show ever. I made it myself. And in honour of the aquarium trip, I’d even drawn on space turtle Stephanie. I didn’t feel the need to point this out though.

Ralph was quiet for all of FIVE SECONDS. But then he barrelled on. ‘Hey. Hey, Sam. I heard there is a submarine simulator in there. Bet you are too scared to get in it. Especially after what happened at the Space Museum.’ He started laughing, but it wasn’t a real laugh, it was some sort of pretend villain laugh. Then he pushed past me, because Ralph always pushes in queues, and went to the front.

‘I’d like to put him in a submarine simulator,’ Zoe muttered. ‘And send it to the BOTTOM OF THE SEA!’

‘Yeah!’ said Bernard. Then he patted me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t listen to him, Sam. Everyone has forgotten about—’

‘Don’t say it!’ I said. ‘We don’t talk about it,

‘Sorry!’ said Bernard. Then he coughed. ‘But, um, you aren’t going to get into the submarine simulator, are you?’

‘Bernard might have a point,’ said Zoe, tugging on her ponytail.

‘I wasn’t planning to,’ I said. ‘But please can we stop taking about it?’

They nodded. Spaceman Jack, my favourite character on SPACE BLASTERS, never has to deal with this kind of thing. He NEVER does anything embarrassing, but if he did, his friends would definitely NEVER bring it up.

‘Come along, you three, hurry up!’ It was our teacher, Ms Winkleworth. ‘We have lots to see – and we don’t want to be late for the feeding at the shark tank!’

THE FEEDING?

AT THE WHAT?

WHAT KIND OF FEEDING?

WHO IS FEEDING

WHO WHAT?

Before I had a chance to think about all the ways a live shark-feeding was more than a little dangerous, we were shuffled into the aquarium.

It was nothing like the fish tanks in Chinatown.

‘See, Sam! How COOL is this?’ Bernard waved his arms around. I tried to look at everything all at once but it was impossible.

It was as if we were underwater but somehow breathing air. It was like being on a spaceship in water – dark and filled with aliens! Luckily, I have lots of experience with aliens from watching SPACE BLASTERS so I was TOTALLY fine. But otherwise I might have been a tiny bit afraid.

‘That thing isn’t a fish,’ I spluttered, pointing at this HUGE PURPLE BLOB that was somehow floating above my head. I could hear Captain Jane (she’s the captain of TUBS, The Universe’s Best Spacecraft) in my head, telling me to take a deep breath and stay calm. ‘What IS that?’

‘It’s a jellyfish!’ said Zoe. Her eyes were huge.

‘LIKE THE POISONOUS KIND?’ I said in a very calm but also very loud way.

‘Yep! That’s right,’ said a friendly voice from above me. I looked up. It was someone who worked at the aquarium. Her name tag said ‘Betty’. ‘That is a jellyfish! One of forty-eight species we’ve got here in the aquarium.’

‘Ohhhh!’ said Zoe and Bernard and everyone else. They all seemed way too excited about the fact that we were now trapped underwater, surrounded by POISONOUS JELLYFISH.

‘Mmmmm,’ I said, nodding as if I too was excited. ‘But, Zoe,’ I whispered, ‘what if it gets out?’

‘It can’t get out!’ she whispered back. We’d been pushed forwards till our noses were almost touching the glass.

‘That’s what we thought about Fang!’ I said in a louder whisper. ‘And we were pretty wrong about that!’

As I’ve told you, Fang is my FIERCE SNAKE sidekick. He escaped from his tank once. With the help of Butterbutt, my sister’s cat. It’s kind of a long story. But the point is, he wasn’t supposed to get out of his cage and he did. So I didn’t think Zoe could blame me for being a little . . . antsy⁷ about the possibility of super-dangerous creatures escaping from their cages.

‘That was totally different!’ she said. ‘And anyway, Butterbutt isn’t here.’

‘You never know with Butterbutt,’ I muttered darkly.

‘Okay, everyone,’ said Betty the guide, leading us over to what looked like a pool of sea monsters, ‘it’s time for the petting tank! Everyone is going to get a turn to touch some of their favourite sea creatures. We’ve got starfish, sea slugs and stingrays! Who wants to go first?’

I stared at Aquarium Guide Betty. ‘Touch . . . a stingray?’ Didn’t Betty hear herself ? It says STING in the name! Who would want to touch a STINGray? That’s like asking, ‘Who wants to pet this SPIKY porcupine? Or this POISONOUS scorpion?’

‘We’ve got a volunteer!’ said Betty. She reached out and pulled me forwards.

‘Sam won’t do it!’ Ralph said with a snort. ‘He’s too scared.’

‘No he’s not!’ said Zoe. ‘Right, Sam?’

‘Right,’ I said. I tried to smile bravely but my mouth wasn’t really working.

It was rubbery and slimy and VERY unpleasant. It felt deadly. And I wasn’t even touching the stinger!

My whole class gasped.

Bernard gave me a thumbs-up. I really hoped the stingray didn’t decide to, you know, STING ME.

‘You all right?’ said Betty. ‘You seem to be a bit shaky.’

‘I’m fine! Fine!’ I said. ‘The water is just . . . cold. Really cold. Brrr!’

Betty raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s room temperature.’

‘SO COLD,’ I said. I wanted to pull my hand out of the water but I didn’t know how to do it without everyone noticing.

‘Um, it is probably someone else’s turn,’ I said.

‘I want to try!’ It was Regina, Ralph’s twin sister. She isn’t awful like he is.

She is actually kind of nice. She also doesn’t snort as much. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her snort even once.

‘Well, come on up!’ said Betty, who still hadn’t let go of my hand.

Regina SQUEEZED in next to me and put her hand straight into the water. ‘This is so cool,’ she said, grinning at me.

‘Oh yeah,’ I said casually. ‘Super cool.’ Then Betty let go of my hand and I whipped it out of the water so fast that I splashed Regina.

‘Sorry!’ I said.

She laughed. ‘That’s okay! It’s just water.’

Just STINGRAY-INFESTED WATER, I thought, but I just nodded as if I wasn’t at all worried about the contents of the water.

I turned around and gave Zoe and Bernard a big grin.

No more Scaredy-Cat Sam here! Spaceman Jack and Captain Jane would have been proud.