We Give a Squid a Wedgie Page 3

  “P.F.,” said Oliver.

  “Yes,” said Chris Stickles. “We believe that P.F. was none other than Colonel Percy Fawcett. We believe he sailed in secret from South America, across the Pacific Ocean, heading through Indonesia toward India, with the entire library aboard a ship.”

  “Dude,” said Corey. “Percy Fawcett was murdered by cannibals in the jungle.”

  “There are no cannibals in the jungle,” said Oliver.

  “I auditioned to play Percy Fawcett’s son in a movie,” said Corey. “And the script said he was eaten by, like, cannibals.”

  “I’m telling you,” said Oliver. “We met them and they don’t really eat people.”

  “Chris,” said Dr. Navel. “Everyone knows that Percy Fawcett vanished in the Amazon over a hundred years ago. He was looking for the remains of a lost civilization, a new Atlantis.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Celia interrupted. “We’ve heard this story a million times. He went to find this lost city, but instead he and his son and his son’s friend all vanished forever. The same thing almost happened to us in the Amazon last summer.”

  “Well,” said Chris Stickles. “To make a long story short—”

  “Too late,” said Celia.

  “We believe that Percy Fawcett did not perish in the Amazon. We believe he found El Dorado just like you did, loaded its contents onto a ship in secret and sailed away across the ocean, with ­Plato’s map as his guide, to hide the Lost Library at Atlantis.”

  “Why would he want to hide it if he, like, discovered it?” wondered Corey.

  “In his day, there were many people who would have used the vast store of ancient knowledge for evil purposes. Those people still seek it today.”

  “Like Sir Edmund,” said Dr. Navel.

  Oliver and Celia shuddered at the mention of their nemesis, which was another word they had learned this year. It meant a horrible enemy bent on their destruction. They actually had a whole collection of such enemies, but they didn’t know the plural of the word nemesis.

  Sir Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt III was the worst of them. He used to be a member of the Explorers Club before he left to start a club of his own, the Gentlemen’s Adventuring Society. He was rich and powerful. He had sent an abominable snowman to attack them in Tibet, had enslaved them in Peru, and had tried to kill them in the Amazon. He also used a lot of wax in his giant red mustache and his breath could make professional sewage treatment engineers gag. He wanted to find the Lost Library before the Mnemones did.

  “Your mother and I were trying to retrace the journey of Percy Fawcett’s ship,” Chris Stickles explained. “We interviewed elders in the islands of Malaysia who might have heard stories about him. An old fisherman told us about an island, far out at sea, where the ancients feared to sail. They said that monsters lived there, giant squid with claws and eyes of fire. He said that a generation ago these creatures had dragged a ship to the bottom of the sea. For weeks wreckage washed up on their shores, and among the wreckage they found this.”

  He pulled a small brass plaque from his pocket, the kind that was used to label old luggage. On the back it was engraved with two letters: P.F.

  “You think Percy Fawcett was attacked by the kraken?” asked Corey.

  “Yes,” said the man. “Your mother simply had to know where this place was. She left me behind to sail with a small group of fishermen to find this place, and she never came back. I fear the monsters took her too.”

  “Why come to us?” asked Oliver.

  “Because,” said Chris Stickles, “if she is gone, it is your destiny to complete her quest. You must find P.F. You must find Plato’s map. Sir Edmund cannot be allowed to—” Suddenly, a loud buzzing sound zipped past Oliver’s ear.

  “Ahh!” Chris Stickles screamed and fell back against the couch, clutching his neck.

  Corey rushed forward and pulled the man’s hand away to reveal a large dart sticking out of his throat.

  They all turned to see a Rajasthani fire dancer standing in the doorway to the apartment, holding a blowgun.

  Except he wasn’t a Rajasthani fire dancer at all.

  He was the celebrity impersonator who had tried to kill them in the Amazon while impersonating Corey Brandt. His real name was Ernest, and now he was impersonating a Rajasthani fire dancer. He made the whole idea of playing dress-up quite sinister.

  Ernest gave a cruel wave and ran back down the stairs.

  “That’s my impersonator!” said Corey.

  “He didn’t look like you anymore,” said Oliver.

  “The kraken. The island . . . the map,” Chris Stickles groaned. “Seek your mother . . . seek the Orange Lords.”

  He passed out.

  His hands flopped to his sides and the twins saw his gold ring, inscribed with the symbol of the Mnemones, a picture of an old key with ancient Greek writing below it. It made them think of their mother, who wore the same ring.

  Oliver and Celia feared she might be gone forever this time.

  4

  WE ARE DEFINITELY DAUNTED

  DR. NAVEL RAN INTO THE HALL, chasing the man dressed as a fire dancer. He looked to the left and looked to the right, but no one was there.

  “Dad!” Celia called. “Help!”

  Chris Stickles had started shaking and shivering and foaming at the mouth. It was quite terrifying and quite disgusting at the same time. His face was pale. Even his nose had lost its bright red shine.

  Dr. Navel rushed back into the apartment. He slid the dart out of his old friend’s neck and sniffed it. “A distillation of psilocybin and arsenic,” he said. “This is quite toxic. Corey, call an ambulance.”­

  Corey pulled out his fancy phone and dialed.

  “The Orange Lords,” Chris Stickles muttered again, turning his bleary eyes to Dr. Navel. “Seek out the Orange Lords.”

  “What’s he saying?” Oliver asked.

  “The Orange Lords,” Dr. Navel answered. “He might mean the Orang Laut, a people who live in the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and Indo­nesia. They are a sea-dwelling people, fishermen and pirates. They live most of their lives on their boats. They must be the people your mother went off with to find this Squid Island where P.F. was shipwrecked.”

  “You think that Mom went off with pirates?” Oliver was worried.

  “Your mother is a very trusting person,” said Dr. Navel. “And the Orang Laut are a complex and misunderstood people.”

  “What happened here?” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg burst into the apartment. He scowled at Corey Brandt. “It is not even midnight and you have thrown an octopus at the Sumo Wrestling Champion of the World and knocked a man unconscious in the Navels’ living room. I should have known teenage celebrities were trouble.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said Corey Brandt. “That me-impersonator, like, shot this fish scientist with poison!”

  “Oh dear,” said the professor. He turned and shouted to a group of motocross racers who had given him a ride back from the New Year’s Eve gala. “You all! Search the building! Find this impersonator. He is an enemy of the Explorers Club, and does an impressive Corey Brandt impression!”

  “Found him!” one of the motocross racers shouted, running into the Navels’ apartment.

  “That’s the real Corey Brandt,” Celia said. “The evil one is dressed like a fire dancer. His name is Ernest.”

  “Right,” said the motocross racer, and ran back into the hall.

  “I fear that Sir Edmund and his Gentlemen’s Adventuring Society are growing bolder in their attacks on our work,” the professor said. “What was this all about?”

  “This guy broke into our apartment,” said Oliver. “He smashed our television and told us that Mom ran off with some Orange Lords to find an island surrounded by giant monster squid where a long-lost explorer hid Plato’s map to Atlantis and that we had to go help her or else Sir Edmund would find it first and then he got shot with a poison dart and then you came in and now we’ll never see Madam Mumu perform ‘C
heese Arcade Magic.’”

  “Oh,” said the professor, as if that made perfect sense.

  “This would explain the wet suits my wife sent to Oliver and Celia,” said Dr. Navel. “I think she wants us to follow her.”

  “No way,” said Celia.

  “No way,” said Oliver.

  “Cool,” said Corey Brandt. “I’d like to help. I’m, like, The Celebrity Adventurist, right? And I need to discover something to prove I’m a real explorer so I can, like, join the Explorers Club, right?”

  “That is true,” said Professor Rasmali-Greenberg,­ tapping his finger on his chin as he thought.

  “Well,” said Corey, “I’ve got a sailboat. We could all go together to meet the Orang Laut and follow Mrs. Navel’s path to this Squid Island.”

  “It’s Dr. Navel,” Oliver corrected. “My mom has her PhD. And it’s not a Squid Island. That scientist said it was surrounded by kraken, demon-monster squid things. Which makes it a Kraken Island.”

  “Corey,” said Dr. Navel. “You are only sixteen. I’m not sure it would be right to bring you along on this expedition.”

  “Oliver and Celia are only eleven, and they are two of the best explorers in the world,” Corey said.

  “Are not!” objected Oliver.

  “Eleven and a half,” said Celia. She was not about to let her brother make her sound like a child in front of Corey Brandt. They would turn twelve in the spring.

  “We are so not going,” said Oliver.

  “Well.” Celia blushed and looked at Corey. “We could maybe . . . you know, tag along.”

  “What?” Oliver’s mouth dropped open.

  “Oh, Celia!” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg clapped. “I am so glad to see you are undaunted!”

  “Undaunted?” Oliver asked.

  “Fearless,” said Celia. She smiled at Corey.

  “Oh,” said Oliver. “Well, I am definitely daunted. Way, way daunted.”

  “You know,” Dr. Navel thought out loud, “finding Plato’s map and rescuing my wife from an ­island surrounded by giant killer squid would be . . .”

  “Insane,” said Oliver.

  “Educational,” said Dr. Navel. “It would be the discovery of a lifetime, in fact.”

  “You say that about every discovery,” complained Oliver.

  “I think Corey is right.” Dr. Navel ignored Oliver. “I think we should all go together.”

  “But Daaad,” Oliver whined as loud as he could. “We can’t go sailing in kraken-infested waters looking for a lost explorer’s stolen map! We’re eleven!”

  “And a half!” corrected Celia.

  “I can call your teachers,” their father said. “They’ll understand that you have to miss school. It’s for your mother. And for science! You’ll meet the Orang Laut. You’ll learn about marine biology! You’ll become expert mariners!”

  “I don’t even want to know what a mariner is,” said Oliver.

  “It’s a navigator of the sea,” said Celia.

  “I said I didn’t want to know!”

  “We’ll start training right away,” said Dr. Navel.

  “You have to be kidding me,” said Oliver.

  “No,” he answered. “I have to be teaching you how to sail!”

  “But—” Oliver looked to his sister for help.

  They heard a clattering in the hallway. A chorus of shouts erupted. They rushed out to see Ernest, the celebrity impersonator, throwing the helmet off the suit of armor where he had been hiding. He headed for a window at the end of the hall with a loud clatter.

  “Catch him!” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg shouted.

  Ernest threw off the top of his armor, breaking the window. He was dressed like a Rajasthani fire dancer from the waist up and like a medieval knight from the waist down. The explorers chased after him, but he leaped out the window and crashed into the street with a grunt, sprinting as fast as his armored legs could carry him.

  Just then, the New Year struck and fireworks lit the city sky.

  “The Orange Lords,” muttered Chris Stickles as they waited for the ambulance to come. “Seek the Orange Lords.”

  5

  WE GET GAS

  THE NEW YEAR’S EVE party at the Gentlemen’s Adventuring Society had been a smashing success.

  Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt III—or Sir Edmund, as he insisted everyone call him—could not have been more pleased. The last guests had stumbled out into limousines waiting to take them home. Servants scurried about cleaning up champagne glasses and vacuuming up spilled whale fritters off the Persian carpets. The exotic animals Sir Edmund had displayed all evening for his guests’ enjoyment—white tigers, bald eagles, and even a rare Congolese okapi, sometimes called the African unicorn—were packed back into shipping crates to be returned to his private zoo in Fiji.

  His guests had been some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world—industrialists, politicians, dictators, warlords, and a few dozen explorers who had remained loyal to Sir Edmund when he left the Explorers Club. They had all donated generously to his new society, and they supported his work without question. Even if most of them didn’t know what his work really was.

  He smoothed his extravagant red mustache with his fingers and rested his feet on the back of a stuffed warthog he used as an ottoman. He had poached it himself in East Africa some years ago. Sir Edmund took great pride in his hunting abilities, although some in the press criticized him for using automatic weapons and hunting from a helicopter. They just didn’t understand sportsmen such as himself.

  He set his cell phone on the ivory table next to him and waited for it to ring. He was expecting important news from his spies in the field.

  It had been months since he’d last seen Dr. Claire Navel in the Amazon rain forest, when she and her brats had yet again ruined his plans for the Lost Library. It had always been that way with her. She was an itch that he just couldn’t scratch.

  When she first vanished all those years ago to search for the library, Sir Edmund knew it was trouble. Claire Navel wasn’t merely an explorer like her husband, pursuing science and wisdom and all that nonsense. She was one of the Mnemones, descendants of the ancient scribes of Alexandria.

  Sir Edmund really hated the Mnemones. What a stupid name for a secret society! How was a person even supposed to pronounce it? Knee-moan? It sounded more like pneumonia to him.

  The Mnemones had destroyed the Great Library back in ancient times, framing Caesar for the job. They wanted to keep the collection out of the Roman general’s hands after he sacked ancient ­Alexandria, so they secreted its contents away and burned it to the ground. Unfortunately, they hid the collection too well. They lost it.

  Someone really should have kept better track of where they had put it.

  Ever since the library had gone missing, the heirs of the Mnemones had been trying to find it again, a mission now led by Dr. Claire Navel.

  Well, Sir Edmund was determined to find it too. His Council, made up of some the most powerful people in the world, would stop at nothing to find it. Where Caesar had failed, Edmund S. Titheltorpe-­Schmidt III would succeed. There was power in that library beyond the imagining of simple scribes.

  Claire Navel was a great explorer, that was undeniable. In fact, she was far better at it than Sir Edmund would ever be. He had decided to use that to his advantage. When Claire Navel did find the library, he intended to be there. It would be the last thing she ever discovered.

  Of course, first he had to find her. And that had proved difficult.

  He rolled a large gold coin between his knuckles as he waited for his phone to ring. The coin was inscribed with the symbol of the Council, a scroll wrapped in chains. It was an elegant symbol, he thought, free from all the clutter of the Mnemones and their silly key with their silly writing: Mega Biblion, Mega Kakon was their motto. Big Book, Big Evil.

  He snorted a laugh. They were so afraid of the very library they were after. Big Evil? They had no idea!

  But C
laire Navel had more allies than Sir Edmund had expected. She had escaped his clutches in Tibet, vanquished his henchman in Fez, and vanished from under his nose in the Malacca Strait.

  But he had allies too. Even now he had Ernest as his spy, dressed like a Rajasthani fire dancer, gathering information on the Navels’ next move. It wouldn’t be long. Claire Navel would make contact with her family again soon, somehow, somewhere. She needed her children as badly as Sir Edmund did. It had been prophesied.

  The greatest explorers shall be the least, the sacred Oracle in Tibet had said. The old ways shall come to nothing, while new visions reveal everything. All that is known will be unknown and what was lost will be found.

  Sir Edmund ground his teeth. It was so cryptic. Oracles never could just speak clearly.

  The greatest explorers shall be the least.

  Well, if anyone was the least of anything, it was Oliver and Celia Navel. They were the least interesting, least curious, least adventurous, least likable children he had ever known. Not that he had known a lot of children. He preferred the company of warlords or wild animals to the company of kids. They had a smell that disturbed him.

  “Has he called?” a woman asked, entering the room.

  Sir Edmund didn’t stand when she walked in, which would have been the polite thing to do. He didn’t feel the need to be polite to this particular person. She was a grave robber. She had once been an explorer—in fact, she was known, along with her partner, for discovering the Jade Toothpicks—but the Navel twins had exposed her as a fraud and a thief. They’d fed her partner, Frank, to a yeti in Tibet. They’d nearly drowned her and ­Ernest in the Amazon.

  She probably deserved it, thought Sir Edmund, who had never been very fond of her or either of her partners. But she wanted nothing more than revenge on the Navels, and that suited Edmund’s purposes perfectly.

  “Janice,” he said. “Where have you been skulking about?”