The Pirate Who's More Terrified than Ever

by Annabeth Bondor-Stone

  “Okay, okay! I surrender!” Roy screeched. He clipped an orange life vest around Shivers and plopped him in the water. “Can I have the patches back now, please?!”

  “You sure can!” said Margo. She swung the bag around her head, then threw it as far as she could.

  The scouts rowed away furiously, trying to get to the bag of patches before it got caught up in the current.

  Margo used the anchor to hoist Shivers back onto the Groundhog.

  “I guess everyone was right,” Shivers panted. “The Bermuda Triangle is the most dangerous place on earth.”

  Margo sighed. “Shivers, we’re not even halfway there.”

  And while she corrected course and sailed south, Shivers lay on the deck and screamed.

  THE GROUNDHOG GLIDED THROUGH the water with a strong wind pushing at the sails. The sun was high in the sky as morning gave way to afternoon. Shivers was exhausted. He had already slid through the sewer and gotten into a catfight, and he was on his way to the most dangerous place on earth. He brought Albee out onto the deck and tried to take his midday nap, but his head was swirling with so many worries that he couldn’t even close his eyes.

  As the ship approached the Southern Seas, the water began to get rougher. A wave sloshed over the railing, soaking Shivers’s slippers.

  “AAAGH! MY FEET ARE DROWNING!” he screamed.

  Margo was concerned. She knew they were heading toward the world’s most treacherous waters, and Shivers already was treating every tiny splash like a tsunami.

  “It’s time for you to learn how to swim,” she announced.

  Shivers stood up on his soggy slippers. “Me?! No, thank you.” He shook his head. “Swimming is really Albee’s department.”

  Albee swam around his bag in a perfect circle. He truly was an artist.

  “Come on, Shivers. If you get lost in the Bermuda Triangle, you’re going to have to fend for yourself. There’s only so far Albee and I can pull you.”

  “But I’ve spent my whole life steering clear of swimming! I sink faster than a brock!”

  Margo was confused. “Your brave brother, Brock, is a great swimmer.”

  “Not him! I mean a combination of a brick and a rock!” Shivers explained. “How am I supposed to learn how to swim now?”

  “Swimming isn’t so hard. It just takes three things,” Margo said. “First, you have to kick.”

  “Well, of course I can do that!” Shivers cancanned across the deck, his feet flying high above his head. “Is the next step singing?” he asked hopefully.

  “Nope!” Margo grinned. “It’s flailing. And we both know you can do that.”

  “I can?” Shivers asked.

  Margo pulled a sandwich out of her backpack and held it in front of him.

  “AAAAAGGGH! A Sand Witch!!! Put it away before it casts a spell on us!!!” Shivers shrieked, flailing his arms so fast he looked like a demented windmill.

  “You can kick and flail.” Margo put the sandwich away. “Now comes the easy part. You just have to hold your breath.”

  “Hold my breath?! That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!” Shivers was flummoxed. He could hold a lot of things—Albee, his favorite mop, and a surprisingly large bowl of banana pudding. He could hold for laughter. He could hold a high note. He’d even spent hours on hold with the ice-cream shop trying to convince them to deliver. But hold his breath? He blurted out, “What if I drop it?!”

  Margo laughed. “You won’t drop it.”

  “But I don’t even know how much it weighs!”

  “What you need is practice.” She grabbed one of Shivers’s mop buckets and filled it with seawater. She knew that the only way to get Shivers to plunge his head into a bucket of water was to have a reward waiting at the end. So she found a few fuzzy peaches in the kitchen and dropped them into the bucket. “Okay, Shivers! You’re going to learn how to hold your breath by bobbing for peaches!”

  “My dad loves bobbing for things!” said Shivers. “But maybe it’s just because his name is Bob. . . .”

  Margo patted Shivers on the back and pointed to the bucket. “Just hold your breath until you bite into a peach, then come back up for air!”

  Albee narrowed his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to end in screeches instead of peaches?”

  Shivers took a deep breath and plunged his head into the bucket. But as soon as he felt the water on his freckled face, he skipped straight to the screaming. Water flooded his mouth and shot into his nose. He whipped his head up, sopping, sneezing, and hiccuping hysterically.

  “I went down and then I hicced up!” he sputtered.

  Albee slapped his fin to his forehead.

  Another hefty hiccup rattled through Shivers’s fragile body. “How do I—HIC!—get rid of these things?!”

  Margo tapped her chin in thought. “Well, there are two options. Either get really scared or hold your breath.”

  “Those are the two worst options ever! I’m—HIC!—doomed!” he said, throwing his hands in the air.

  Margo couldn’t help but let out a little laugh.

  “What a—HIC!—disaster! I’m never—HIC!—touching water again!” he declared.

  At that moment, a gigantic wave crested over the ship, then splashed onto Shivers and soaked the deck. “AAAAGH!” he screamed. “I have so much—HIC!—mopping to do!”

  But the mopping would have to wait. Another huge wave slammed into the hull of the Groundhog, sending it spinning like a ballerina. Margo stumbled up to the captain’s deck as quickly as she could and grabbed the helm.

  Shivers picked up Albee and followed Margo. “What’s—HIC!—happening?!”

  “Look!” Margo said, pointing straight ahead to a buoy on the water’s surface. Tied to it was a sign that said BERMUDA TRIANGLE AHEAD! TURN BACK NOW!

  “We’re almost there!” Margo said.

  Shivers wailed, “We’re going to be—HIC!—triangle trash!”

  Margo gripped the helm tightly as the ship strained against the churning waves. “Don’t worry, Shivers, we’ll make it!” she said as she steered them past the buoy.

  But then they spotted another sign floating on the water. This one said APPROACHING CERTAIN DEATH!

  “AAAGGH!” Shivers screamed. He tightened the straps of his life vest. “I don’t know how long this thing will keep me—HIC!—afloat. I need all rubber duckies on deck!” He raced to the bathtub, scooped up as many rubber duckies as he could carry, and stuffed them into his coat pockets. He sprinted back to the captain’s deck, picked up Albee’s bag, and stared straight into his eyes. “Stay out of the kitchen, Albee! If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the kitchen sinks!”

  By now, the sea was so violent that Margo could barely hold on to the helm. Fierce gusts of wind whipped around her, flapping her ponytail like a flag. The ship reached a third buoy with a sign that read: ENTERING THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (HOPE YOU KNOW HOW TO SWIM)!

  “Shivers, we made it!” Margo shouted. “We’re in the Bermuda Triangle!”

  Shivers screamed. “Well, the good news is, I’m so scared that my hiccups are cured.”

  The ocean swirled around the Groundhog. Then a giant wave slapped against the side of the ship, sending Margo, Shivers, and Albee stumbling to the ground.

  Margo leaped to her feet and lunged toward the helm, which was spinning like a pinwheel. She grabbed hold of it and tried to gain control, but the current was far too strong. No matter which way she steered, the ship still circled toward the center of the storm.

  Meanwhile, Albee’s bag was rolling every which way around the main deck.

  “Why did I eat so much butter?” Albee groaned.

  Shivers chased after him, looking like a madman trying to find his last marble. Just as Shivers got ahold of Albee’s bag, a sound came from the sky like the cracking of a giant wooden bat. Rain. It spat down in heavy sheets. Shivers felt certain that he was going to drown.

  “The message says that the key to stopping Captain Crook is in a t
reasure chest!” Margo yelled, holding the helm with all her might. “Shivers, look over the railing! Do you see a treasure chest?”

  The rain was coming down harder than ever now. Shivers tried to shield his eyes from the drubbing droplets as he peeked over the edge of the ship and into the sloshing Southern Seas below. The water was a steely gray, empty of any answers. He didn’t see a treasure chest, but he did see a streak of light set the waves ablaze . . . and then another, and another.

  “All I see down here is lightning!” Shivers shouted.

  “What?! Lighting comes from the sky, not the sea!” said Margo.

  Shivers shrugged. “Well then, somebody dropped a lot of night-lights. . . .”

  Just then, a wave as big as a house swelled above the deck. Shivers saw sparks crackling along the crest and he realized that what he was seeing wasn’t lightning. And it wasn’t night-lights. He had been so, so wrong.

  THE GIANT WAVE CRASHED onto the ship, carrying an army of slimy electric eels with it. They were the most hideous things Shivers had ever seen. They had scaly spotted skin, beady black eyes, and teeth that looked like razor-sharp toothpicks. As the eels slid across the deck, Shivers felt like he was on a plate of the world’s most evil spaghetti. He tried to scream, but there were so many eels that all he could do was squeal.

  “Margo, these eels are shocking me in more ways than one! Help!”

  Margo wanted to help Shivers, but she knew the moment she left the helm the ship would spin out of control. “I have to keep the Groundhog on course!” she shouted back.

  “Well, I did not sign up for this course!” Shivers wailed. An eel slithered between his slippers and wrapped around his ankle. “Take cover!” he screamed. He flung the eel off with one high kick, picked up Albee, and sprinted inside as fast as he could. But the eels skidded in after him on a slide of seawater. They glided into his kitchen and wriggled up onto the counter, zapping everything in their path with eel-ectricity. They sent a spark through the toaster, and it popped up and down wildly, springing burnt bread onto the floor. The microwave buzzed on, setting off explosions of popcorn inside. The blender whirred to life, splattering blueberry smoothie everywhere.

  “Why do I preload all my kitchen appliances?!” Shivers screamed. He leaped across the kitchen and ducked down to avoid getting a faceful of flying food. “Let’s store ourselves in the pantry,” he said to Albee. He opened the pantry door, but the eels were already inside, sizzling his snacks and toasting his oats. “Eels in my meals!!!” Shivers squawked.

  Shivers slammed the pantry door and dashed down the hall to his bedroom. There was no escape. The eels followed at his heels, sparking on every light they passed. And in Shivers’s bedroom, that was a lot of lights. Along with the standard collection of night-lights, reading lights, lamp lights, and dance lights, there were high-voltage safety lights under the bed and in the closet. Suddenly, the whole ship was so brightly lit, it looked like a firefly on a trampoline.

  The eels zapped on the clock next to Shivers’s bed, setting off the alarm. Shivers covered his ears, but then the eels crawled over the stereo, and it began to play rock and roll—which was just the sound of rocks rolling around. Shivers usually listened to it very quietly to help him get to sleep, but now it was blaring at full volume, and it sounded like he was in the middle of an avalanche.

  Shivers stuck his head out of the porthole and screamed, “Margo!! Do something!! The eels are winning!!”

  Margo knew that Shivers was right. Eels were all over the captain’s deck. They tried to slither onto her legs, but she hopped over them with expert precision. (All that time she’d spent jumping rope at recess was really paying off.) But every wave that hit the ship brought more and more eels on board. For every eel she dodged, two more showed up. Margo knew she would have to do something drastic.

  “Shivers!” Margo shouted. “Hold on tight!”

  “To what?! An eel?!” said Shivers.

  “I’m steering us into the waves!”

  “Are you crazy? The ship will flip right over!”

  “That’s the whole point!” said Margo. “We have to face our fears head-on!”

  Shivers thought fast and wrapped himself as best he could around his bedpost while holding on tightly to Albee’s bag.

  Margo wrenched the helm as hard as she could, steering the ship directly into the waves. A massive swell scooped up the Groundhog and lifted it into the air. Shivers shrieked as the ship teetered on its side, nearly toppling over entirely. The eels poured out through the open porthole, zipping and zapping, then did an electric slide right off the edge of the deck and dropped back into the ocean.

  “Hooray!” Margo cheered.

  “Hoor-AAAGGH!” Shivers shouted. It was as close to a cheer as Margo could hope for.

  But the celebration lasted about as long as a balloon in a cactus store. The waves were too strong. The ocean was steering now. The Groundhog whipped and twisted. It was impossible to see where they were heading.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have come here!” Shivers shouted to Margo. “The Bermuda Triangle is the scariest place in the entire world!”

  And with that, the ship caught the crest of a giant wave and nearly flipped upside down. All Margo could do was hold on for dear life, while Shivers held on for fear life. But the force was too strong. Shivers, Margo, and Albee were flung from the ship. As they sailed through the air, Shivers wailed, “It was nice knowing you! Except for all the terrifying adventures!” And then—

  WHAM!

  They landed on a sandy beach. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. Relaxing island music filled the air. Shivers and Margo rubbed the grit from their eyes and saw that they were surrounded by people in brightly colored swimsuits holding big icy drinks. A woman in a straw hat stepped forward. She waved at them with a huge smile on her face and announced, “Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle!”

  SHIVERS, MARGO, AND ALBEE all had the same dumbfounded look on their faces.

  The woman in the straw hat pulled them to their feet. “I’m Dana, the events planner. But everyone here calls me the party captain!”

  The people around her shouted, “Woo! Party captain!”

  Finally, Margo managed to gain control of her mouth. “I’m Margo. This is my best friend, Shivers, and his first mate, Albee.”

  “We’re so glad you’re here!” Dana pulled all three of them in for a warm hug. Then she turned to the people around her. “Okay, everyone, get back to having fun!”

  The crowd cheered again and scattered across the beach. They danced to steel-drum music played by a live band. They splashed in the crystal-clear water and zipped around on Jet Skis. They filled up their plates with delicious-looking food from a giant buffet. Just a few yards from the sand was a bustling resort, complete with a golf course, tennis courts, horseback riding, yoga classes, and a sparkling swimming pool.

  Shivers shook his head in disbelief. “This is the Bermuda Triangle?!”

  “It sure is,” said Dana, slurping from a straw crammed into a coconut shell.

  “But I thought the Bermuda Triangle was the most dangerous place on earth! No one who comes here ever returns!” said Shivers.

  “Because no one who comes here ever wants to return,” Dana explained. “The Bermuda Triangle is paradise!”

  She led Shivers, Margo, and Albee along the beach. “One way or another, all these people got lost on the open ocean and ended up here. Then, when they saw how great it was, they decided to stay forever!” She pointed to a group playing beach volleyball. “They were on a cruise ship that took a wrong turn on the way to Mexico.”

  A guy in bright-red swim trunks hit the ball over the net, then turned to them with a big grin on his face. “I’ve been here for three years . . . or is it four? Who cares?”

  Dana continued, “Fishing vessels, whale-watching tours, oil rigs—you name it! All kinds of ships crash-land in the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “I was in a relation-ship and I never looked back!” said
one of the steel-drum players, then he burst into peals of laughter.

  “He makes that joke every day,” Dana whispered.

  As they walked past the buffet table, Shivers’s stomach growled and Margo’s eyes widened at the heaping platters of food. There were fruit cakes, cupcakes, and crab cakes . . . coffee, cake, and coffee cake.

  Shivers pointed to a tray of almond-crusted donuts. “Do you have any donuts with no nuts?” he asked.

  “Of course we do! Go nuts!” said Dana, handing him a donut with sprinkles. Then she gestured to a spread of breaded chicken. “How about some chicken fingers?”

  Shivers leaped back and screeched. “Those chickens must have had huge hands!”

  Margo helped herself to a cupcake. “Where did all of this come from?”

  “Ships land here constantly, carrying all kinds of stuff!” Dana put her arm around a tall man in blue overalls. “Just last week, Carl here crashed his cargo ship filled with gourmet food and tambourines!” She picked up a tambourine from a basket and shook it above her head.

  “Best thing that ever happened to me!” said Carl.

  Dana nodded. “The only thing we had to throw out was that giant crate of eels.”

  Shivers and Margo locked eyes and shuddered.

  Dana continued, “You never know what might wash ashore in the Bermuda Triangle. Just the other day, I found this box on the beach! Must have fallen off a ship by accident!” She picked up a weathered, salt-stained treasure chest from the sand. Carved into the wood was the same symbol that was on the flag of Captain Crook’s Ship: an iron lock.

  “Now I use it to store my prizes!” said Dana.

  Margo grabbed Shivers’s arm. “Shivers! The treasure chest!”

  Shivers gasped and reached out toward the treasure chest, but Dana swatted his hand away.

  “I don’t think so!” she said. “If you want a prize, you have to win a game. And you’re just in time for my favorite—limbo!”