We Give a Squid a Wedgie Read online

  “This must be what they call smooth sailing,” their father said with a contented sigh.

  They had fair weather their first day at sea, with plenty of sunshine and even-tempered winds. A pod of dolphins danced in the water, jumping and splashing and diving below the surface again. Even Oliver and Celia, who had never been fans of live entertainment, were impressed. But the dolphins left them as they got farther out to sea, and they quickly found themselves alone on the rolling swells of the Pacific Ocean.

  “You turning green, Oliver?” Dr. Navel asked his son.

  The deckhands snickered.

  “I’m fine, Dad.” Oliver blushed, even though he was feeling a little queasy. His father handed him a steaming mug of bitter tea.

  “Is this made out of something gross?” Oliver asked, sniffing it suspiciously.

  “It’s neem tea.” Dr. Navel smiled. “For your stomach.”

  “Oh,” said Oliver, who didn’t know what neem tea was.

  “Tea made from the leaves of the neem tree is considered very effective in treating upset ­stomachs, agitated nerves, and malaria,” Dr. Navel explained. “It’s also quite effective for killing termites.”­

  Oliver poured it over the side of the boat when his father wasn’t looking.

  “Isn’t this great?” Corey strolled over to Celia, watching the deckhands work. “I never knew my fans could be such good sailors.”

  “Aren’t you a little suspicious of them?” Celia asked.

  “No. Why should I be?” He turned away from Celia and shouted down the length of the boat. “Hey, guys! I almost forgot! I brought a pair of Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants for everyone!”

  He rushed along the deck handing out colorful pocketed pants.

  Celia went to the front of the boat, where Oliver was dangling his legs over the side, and sat quietly next to him. She didn’t say anything. They just watched the ocean together in silence, like it was a really boring TV show on a really big screen. It felt almost normal.

  “Don’t look so glum, guys,” Dr. Navel told the twins. “With a good wind, we’ll reach the Malacca Strait in about a week and then we’ll find the Orang Laut!”

  “A week?” Oliver muttered.

  “A week?” Celia groaned.

  The small crew shared all the responsibilities on the Get It Over With, but it became obvious almost immediately that Oliver and Celia couldn’t be left alone for the overnight watch.

  On the first night, they both fell asleep and sent the boat wildly off course, right into an international shipping lane.

  The whole crew woke to the sirens of a massive ship’s collision alarm.

  Corey rushed onto the deck wearing Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pink Pajamas and spun the wheel hard to port—which is what sailors call left. The boat turned very slowly and the tanker ship moved toward them very fast.

  It towered over them, blotting out the sky.

  Corey flailed his arms in the air at the crew of the tanker on deck, making the universal sign for panic.

  The crew on the deck of the tanker waved their arms back at him, making the universal sign for “we’re your biggest fans.”

  If they didn’t turn faster, their boat would be crushed and they would surely be swallowed by the unforgiving sea. Oliver had always thought it would be a lizard bite that did him in. Celia was still looking forward to dying of a broken heart at 102 years old, like Elaine Deveaux on her favorite soap opera, Love at 30,000 Feet.

  The sailboat kept turning and the tanker honked its horn as their small vessel brushed right past the giant steel hull. They missed it by just a few feet, rising high on its wake in the water and settling back down as the ship passed. Within minutes, the tanker had vanished over the horizon. Dr. Navel offered to stay awake with his children for the rest of the night watch, and the twins quickly fell asleep against his chest.

  It became obvious the next day that Corey Brandt could not be given responsibility for an early morning shift, because, being a teenager, he was completely incapable of waking up before noon.

  The deckhands refused to take any of the shifts on watch, as they claimed they were not officers on this expedition and it wouldn’t be right.

  “I thought you came from a long line of sailors,” Celia said to Bonnie.

  “Uh-huh,” said Bonnie, and went back to cleaning the deck.

  After the drama of the first night, however, sailing across the Pacific Ocean didn’t seem particularly dangerous or particularly hard.

  It was, like a lot of exploring, quite a bit more boring than an outsider would imagine.

  As the first days went by on their way toward the Malacca Strait, Oliver and Celia found themselves without much to do. The TV on board could only play the shows that Corey had brought with him, and they were all Corey’s shows. They rewatched every episode of Sunset High and Agent Zero that he had, but that only lasted the first few days. They saw Corey as a sad-eyed vampire who broke the heart of his best friend and they saw him as a high-school superspy who broke the arm of a terrorist posing as a math teacher.

  Once those episodes were over, they didn’t know what to do. The real-life Corey Brandt was on deck working. Everyone was on deck working.

  “We could use the remote control,” Oliver suggested, reaching into his backpack for their universal remote control. “You know, to see in the catalog of the Lost Library if it says anything about kraken or Plato’s map to Atlantis … anything that could help us find Mom. And, you know,” he added, “Corey would probably be happy if we helped him make this discovery.”

  “I guess we could help,” said Celia, happy that Oliver had made a peace offering.

  Oliver hit a few buttons on the remote, but nothing happened.

  “Let me try,” said Celia.

  “I got it,” said Oliver.

  “You don’t,” said Celia.

  “I do too,” said Oliver, hitting more buttons. Suddenly the image on the screen changed to the symbol of the Mnemones, a key with ancient Greek writing below it. “See?”

  The peace didn’t last long.

  “Okay, now let me see it,” said Celia.

  “This was my idea,” said Oliver.

  “Yeah, but you can’t even spell kraken,” said Celia, lunging for the remote.

  Oliver yanked it away and shoved it into the back of his pants.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” Celia demanded.­ “It’s gross.”

  “Because you won’t grab it from there,” said Oliver.

  “Oh yeah?” Celia moved toward him.

  “What are you … what are you doing?” Oliver’s eyes widened. Celia dove at him and grabbed onto the waistband of his Pocketed Pants. She yanked up.

  “Ow!” said Oliver. “That’s a wedgie! No fair! Ow!” He reached around to the back of her pants and yanked, giving his sister a wedgie.

  “Ow!” said Celia. “You can’t give a girl a wedgie!”­

  “You’re not a girl,” said Oliver. “You’re my sister!”­

  “What’s going on?” Corey said, coming into the galley.

  “Nothing,” said Oliver, letting go of his sister and rushing to turn off the TV before Corey saw the symbol on the screen.

  “Nothing,” said Celia.

  Oliver pulled the remote out of his pants and set it on the couch. Celia wrinkled her nose at it. She had lost the desire to watch TV, or at least to watch TV using that remote control.

  “Looked like a wedgie war,” said Corey.

  The twins shrugged.

  “Well, it’s no use,” he said. “Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants are wedgie proof. Look.”

  He reached around to his back, like he was giving himself a wedgie. He made an uncomfortable face and then the waistband of the pants broke away and he was holding it in his hands. “See?”

  “It didn’t work for me,” said Oliver, picking at the back of his pants.

  “I guess it only works for a really bad wedgie. Like a life-or-death wedgie.”

  �
�I guess so,” said Oliver.

  “You know, you guys shouldn’t fight,” Corey told them. “You’re family and you need to work together. We’re all alone out here at sea.”

  “That’s not totally true,” said Celia.

  “It’s not?” Corey asked.

  “Have you seen that sail in the distance?” Celia asked.

  Corey looked confused. The twins led him onto the deck and pointed to the horizon, where a tiny sailboat appeared and disappeared as the sea rose and fell. It had been behind them since they’d left almost a week ago.

  “Do you think they’re following us?” Corey wondered.

  “Of course they are,” said Celia. “Someone’s always following us.”

  “I didn’t know you saw them too,” Oliver told Celia.

  “Of course I did,” she said. “I didn’t know you saw them.”

  “Yeah, I did,” said Oliver. “Who do you think it is? Pirates?”

  “Or Sir Edmund and his Council,” said Celia. “Or the Mnemones.”

  “Or crazed Corey Brandt fans,” said Oliver.

  Corey laughed. So did Celia.

  She smirked at her brother and he smirked back. Things were getting back to normal.

  All three of them kept their eyes fixed on the sailboat in the distance, wondering who was following them and also wondering why.

  On board the tiny sailboat on the horizon, Ernest, dressed like a pirate in an old movie with a sash and a hat and even a plastic parrot on his shoulder, steered. Janice stood at the bow with her binoculars raised.

  “The chase is on,” she said.

  “What?” said Ernest, who couldn’t hear her over the wind.

  “I said the chase is on!”

  “What?” He still couldn’t hear her.

  “The! Chase! Is! On!”

  “The chaise? What’s a piece of furniture got to do with anything?”

  “I said chase! The chase is on!” she yelled back at him. “Oh, never mind. Just steer.”

  Janice couldn’t believe she had to spend the next several weeks on this tiny boat with Ernest. She hoped they would meet up with Sir Edmund soon so she could take a shower and get some distance between herself and the celebrity impersonator. He was not an ideal partner in crime, but he would have to do until she got what she wanted. Luckily, he didn’t know how much Sir Edmund was really paying them to follow the Navels.

  She did not intend to share it.

  11

  WE SORT OF SWIM

  WITH SHARKS

  ON THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the seas grew rougher, and the ocean swells grew larger. The Get It Over With rose to the top of each swell and then surfed down again into the deep trench between the waves.

  For hours they followed their course, rising and falling, rising and falling through the swelling sea.

  “Now you’re, like, really starting to turn green, dude,” Corey told Oliver, who was watching the first season of Agent Zero for the fifth time. “G-R-E-E-N, green. You gonna lose your lunch?”

  “Shh … I’m trying to watch you on TV,” Oliver told him. “I’m fine. F-I-N—” But he couldn’t finish spelling back at Corey because he felt his stomach do a somersault. He rushed from the cabin to the front of the boat. He knelt on the hot fiberglass deck, getting ready to return his lunch to the ocean, when he looked up to see a most bizarre sight.

  The boat had slid down into one of the trenches between the waves, so there were walls of water on either side like an aquarium, except there was no glass. Oliver was looking straight into the face of a shark as it swam peacefully in the waves.

  He forgot all about his upset stomach and nearly fell backward from the boat’s edge. Suddenly, the boat lifted onto the back of the next wave and the wall of water sank below them again.

  Oliver stayed where he was so he could see into the ocean when they slid down into the next trench. It was like he was watching a nature show on television, except he could reach out through the screen of water if he wanted. All sorts of sea life floated in the swells—schools of large silver fish and small undulating squid, the long blobby tails of jellyfish, the doofus grin of a sea turtle, and the zombie-eyed stare of sharks.

  “You’ve got to see this!” Oliver called out.

  Corey and Celia came over and watched with Oliver as the live sea show sank again below them and the horizon rose up in the distance.

  “I am, like, awed by the majesty of the sea,” Corey said.

  “Yeah,” Celia agreed. She settled down next to her brother. They spent the entire afternoon watching the walls of water filled with sea life rise and fall. The twins forgot they had ever been mad at each other. They even forgot about the television down in the cabin.

  Dr. Navel happily watched his children. It was nice to see them enjoying nature instead of television and even nicer to see them getting along again. He let them skip their turn at the watch so they could keep watching the ocean.

  As the sun began to set, Big Bart came over to where they sat. Dennis the rooster clucked happily beside him.

  “I thought you might like to eat out here,” he said, handing them each a steaming plate of rice and beans. “Just don’t eat too close to the edge of the boat.”

  “Why’s that?” Oliver wondered.

  “Well, it’s dusk,” said Big Bart. “They call this the sharking hour. It’s when sharks hunt. Wouldn’t want one coming on board to snatch your dinner.”

  “Sharks don’t eat rice and beans,” said Oliver.

  “Oh, I suppose not.” Big Bart laughed. “But what about little children?”

  “We’re not little children,” Celia explained with a sideways glance at Corey. “We’re almost twelve. That makes us tweens.”

  “Tweens, huh?” Big Bart said. “Well, in that case I’m sure the sharks won’t bother you!” He chuckled and bid them good evening, lumbering his way back belowdecks, with Dennis hopping along after him.

  “He’s weird,” said Celia.

  “I kind of like him,” said Oliver.

  “I think he’s pretty cool,” said Corey.

  “I guess he’s okay,” Celia conceded. Oliver rolled his eyes a tiny bit when his sister wasn’t looking. They ate quietly and watched the sleek silver bodies of sharks slice through the water.

  That night, the twins were sound asleep inside their bunks in the cabin when they heard a loud bang that shook the entire boat. The walls of the cabin flexed, like they had been hit with something really big. They heard a terrible sound from outside, thrashing and scraping. It was as if a fight had broken out on deck.

  They rushed outside to see what was going on and stopped short in the doorway.

  Just in front of them, a large octopus was engaged in a violent battle with the ropes that Bonnie had spent so much of the afternoon coiling. Its tentacles were tangled and it was squirming and sliding, trying to get itself back to the water.

  “Is that the kraken?” Corey wondered.

  “It’s an octopus,” said Big Bart, standing beside him. “The kraken is a squid.”

  “If the kraken’s real,” Oliver added, “it would have giant fangs and be about as big as this whole boat. But Beast Busters says it’s not real, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Beast Busters?” asked Big Bart.

  “Don’t ask,” said Celia.

  As they stood watching the octopus struggle in the ropes, a large tiger shark darted along the wall of water alongside the boat. It gave no warning, but in a flash it turned its whole body around and shot toward the deck, slicing right through the wall of water, and, much to its surprise, plummeting through the air and landing right beside its prey. The shark’s eyes glistened in the moonlight. Its rows of razor-sharp teeth shined.

  As the Get It Over With rose to the top of the swell, the octopus and the shark found themselves thoroughly out of the water. The octopus’s eyes scanned the shark beside it and the shark did what came naturally to a fish out of water: it panicked.

  Ropes and tools went flying. A
heavy steel winch handle, used for raising the sails, plopped overboard and disappeared into the ocean. The shark tried to snap its jaws around the octopus. The octopus tried to wrap itself around the shark to sink its sharp beak into the shark’s head. Black ink sprayed from its belly, smearing all over the deck. The humans dove for cover.

  “Dude!” Corey Brandt shouted, not very helpfully.

  “We’ve got a shark on board,” Dr. Navel announced from the steering wheel at the back of the boat. “And an octopus.”

  “We noticed!” Celia yelled.

  “Don’t panic!” yelled their father.

  “Keep it down, down there!” yelled Twitchy Bart from high above in the mast. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “I don’t get paid enough for this,” said Bonnie. She turned around and went back to her bunk to sleep.

  “Don’t worry, kids,” said Big Bart, putting his massive arms around Corey, Oliver, and Celia. “I’m here to help. Just tell me what to do.”

  “How should we know?” objected Oliver. “We’re eleven!”

  “And a half!” Celia added.

  “Well.” Big Bart turned to Corey. “You’re the Celebrity Adventurist. What do we do?”

  “I, like, never did an episode about this,” said Corey.

  “Oliver.” Celia turned to her brother. “You watch Sharkapalooza! What have you learned?”

  “Sharks live in the water!” Oliver yelled.

  “Well duh, professor,” Celia scoffed at him.

  Oliver hated when his sister made fun of him for not knowing something when she didn’t know it either. And he didn’t like looking like an idiot in front of Corey Brandt or Big Bart.

  “Dad!” he yelled. “What do we do?”

  “Don’t panic!” their father added again. That seemed to be as much advice as he could offer.

  “Well …” Oliver racked his brain to remember something useful, anything useful. “They say that if you rub a shark’s nose and flip it upside down, it sort of falls asleep.”

  “Rub its nose?” Celia repeated in disbelief.

  “And then we can push it overboard,” Oliver said miserably.

  “What about the octopus?” Corey wondered.