Warm breezes, sugar sand, blue waves, and salty air. Is there any greater place than the beach?


Snap!


The pop of a mystery stride bubble broke through my serenity.


"What?" my partner, Tyra Trunelli, asked as I glared at her. Uhh! Why did I have to get stuck with her? I'm a good girl, I recycle, and I clean up animal, oil spill victims, what did I ever do to deserve this? Mrs. Carcowski said it's "to help bring out her hidden scientific potential," but its just torture to me. I mean seriously here we are in this amazing beach resort, on our eighth grade trip, our only cool school trip, and I'm stuck with the most annoying, stuck-up, softball player in the whole school.


"Watch this," Tyra said to me. She plucked her gum out of her mouth and flicked it out towards the sea. It shot through the air and landed with a plop.


"What are you doing! You can't do that, it's not sanitary and it's bad for the beach. What would you do if that killed some poor little turtle?


I walked into the water, the wet sand squishing between my toes. There was no sign of the gum in the crystal blue water, so I plunged my hands in and started to search around for it. My hands passed over a scuttling crab, a sea turtle nest, and a sea urchin. Then I felt the annoying rubbery stickiness of gum.


Eww! I thought. Having to touch Tyra's gross chewed up gum should be small price to pay for the life of a baby turtle, but they had better appreciate it.


"What's that?" Tyra asked pointing to my hand while snapping a new piece of gum.


"That is your disgusting habit and fresh dead sea animal," I snapped.


"No you dope. I meant what's that, the gum is stuck to?"


Confused I looked down. She was right. The gum was stuck to the plastic bag I had put on my hand, but stuck to the gum was a bottle, A deep blue bottle that must have been buried in the water and come up with the gum. It was a really beautiful bottle, deep blue, not really dark but like it was made of pure ocean water. It even smelled of ocean, like how petrified wood smells when it's just been found. But by the looks of it, this bottle had been in the water way less, it looked brand new. The bottle had etched in waves that crashed into each other, like a real ocean. A knobbly, dark pink cork was wedged into the top, looking suspiciously like a piece of coral. Lying at the bottom of the bottle there was a darker area, which I could faintly make out to be paper.


"It looks like a note is in it," I voiced looking up at Tyra.


"A note," Tyra snorted, "In a bottle. Who does that anymore? It's like medieval."


She was right. Who would make a note in a bottle nowadays? It's like writing a letter when you're not being forced too. Walking to the store when you have a ten-speed bike, sitting at home. Buying chemically produced pet food when you have a delicious organic recipe at home. Whoever wrote this was either marooned or an old-fashioned pirate.


"Whatever the reason for whoever wrote it writing it, I'm not going to read it," I declared looking Tyra straight in the eye.


"I don't care. It's not like I would've taken it, I'm not a thief," Tyra said indignantly clearly insulted.


"I never said you were going to." I answered sweetly.


Tyra opened her mouth, about to say something nasty, a crude glint in her eye, when someone calling us interrupted her.


"Jeanette! Tyra! Time to go back to the rooms," shouted Mrs. Carcowski from down the beach.


"Okay!" I answered, shoving the bottle into my collection bag.


"You're actually going to keep that thing," tyra asked still miffed.


"Yeah. It would mess up the ecosystem if I left it here and Mrs. Carcowski said we could keep any shell or sea glass we find out here.


"Whatever Tyra shrugged popping another bubble. Just make sure nothing comes crawling into our room while I'm sleeping, for that." She turned on her heel and stalked down the beach to Mrs. Carcowski and the rest of our class who had already gathered. I gave one final look at the ocean, zipped up my bag, and followed suit.