by Greyson Mann
So I jumped up and yanked on that line. And when I reeled in the fish, you’ll never believe it. I caught our very first SALMON!
It was pink. It was perfect. It was BEAUTIFUL. I could have eaten that fish raw, I swear. Except it turns out, something else wanted to eat it too.
When I heard growling, I almost fainted on the spot. But someone had to protect our family. So I did what our zombie guide told us to do: I threw a piece of fish at the cat, and I RAN.
Except it was more like the WHOLE fish. And I didn’t just run—I sprinted. For my life. Right up the nearest jungle tree.
From the top of that tree, I watched everything that happened next. It was like a slow-motion scene in a movie, and I’m not even kidding.
The ocelot ate the fish, but then it wanted MORE. It crept toward Chloe and her clownfish. And she and Dad just sat there with their MOUTHS hanging open. “Run!” I wanted to scream at my family. “Save yourselves!”
But I couldn’t eek out a single word. Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped for the best. I mean, maybe I was dreaming. Maybe we were all still sleeping snugly in the tree house, and this whole thing was a giant daymare.
I counted to three, and then I opened my eyes.
You’ll never in a gazillion years guess what I saw.
CAMMY was feeding that ocelot another fish. And then another. The cat was right next to her now. I was SURE it was going to swallow my baby sister whole.
But it didn’t. Instead, it did the strangest thing.
It licked her, and then it sat down on its rump. Like a tamed DOG.
Cammy laughed out loud and kissed the cat’s head. Was it PURRING now? I could hear the thing from way up here!
Well, Dad started laughing then, too, and hollering something about how my baby sister had just tamed her first ocelot. “Get down here, son!” he called up to me.
My SISTER saved the day? Had Dad not SEEN how I’d sacrificed my own fish to save the family? And how I’d climbed this tree just to make sure that one of us survived to tell the story?
Well all the way home, I had to hear about how ONE of my sisters was the best at fishing and how my OTHER sister could tame wild animals. And by the time we got to the tree house, I realized that something had followed us there …
That’s right—Cammy’s new “pet” was now glued to her side. GREAT. Maybe it adored Cammy, but that cat still looked at me as if it wanted me for a snack. It hissed at me, and I hissed right back.
Even Dad seemed worried. “We can’t take the cat with us to the Extreme Hills,” he told Cammy.
When she scrunched up her face like she was going to blow, he said, “But you can play with it for one more day, till we leave. Okay, sweetie?”
“OKAY, sweetie?” REALLY, Dad? Let me just say that there is NOTHING okay about letting your baby daughter play with an ocelot.
So I don’t know. The Extreme Hills are starting to look pretty good right about now. Sure, there might be cave spiders. And bats. And steep cliffs. And raging waters.
But there’s one thing you WON’T find in the Extreme Hills.
CATS.
DAY 10: TUESDAY
So Cammy set the record last night for most explosions in a row—FIVE, to be exact. I’m still shaking gunpowder out of my sleeping bag.
I guess she still wants Fish to go with us to the Extreme Hills, but Mom and Dad say that’s a no-go.
Yup, Cammy named her new cat “Fish.” Big surprise there. This is also the girl who named our pet sheep “Sock.”
When she wouldn’t stop blowing up, Mom and Dad pulled a classic parenting trick. They told Cammy that Fish might be waiting for us when we get back home from our trip. WINK, WINK.
Yup, they lied. Right to her face. At least it had BETTER be a lie. Because I’m not living with a cat. I’ll run away and join the creeper circus first. Just saying …
After we left Fish with our zombie guide, we waved goodbye (and good riddance). Then we loaded into our minecarts, and pretty soon, we were zooming up to the hills.
And I DO mean UP. If I weren’t wearing my seatbelt, I’d probably be sitting in Cate’s lap by now. Dad stopped singing for once, and Mom hung on to Cammy for dear life.
When we came to a crossroads, I read the sign out loud: “Extreme Hills ahead.” Someone had painted something else on the sign in bright red, and as we inched closer, I could just make it out: “Turn back NOW!”
Well that sent a shiver down my creeper spine. And right away, the only thing I wanted to do was—yup, you guessed it—TURN BACK.
Instead, I pulled out my journal (making sure Mom didn’t see me reading in the cart) and reviewed my 30-Day Plan.
Now I remember WHY I’m doing all this—to meet Kid Z!
I’d do ANYTHING to meet Kid Z, wouldn’t I? Yup, I would.
So all I can say is, that rapper had better appreciate my efforts.
DAY 12: THURSDAY MORNING
So after a whole day riding the rails, we’re HERE! We made it to the mouth of the cave. Well, we ALMOST made it.
Mom just spotted some sugarcane growing along a stream, so she told Dad to stop the carts. You know how that went down. But Mom actually WON this time.
So she’s out there getting her sugarcane seeds or stalks or whatever, and Dad is tapping his foot so hard, all of our carts are shaking.
I’m excited too, because it looks like a LOT of creeper families are camping in the cave. That means two things:
1. There’ll be more creepers to help fight off cave spiders. Maybe those spiders will decide to just take their venom and go home.
2. One of those creeper families MIGHT be roasting some pork chops over a campfire. And THOSE creepers will be MY new best friends.
I really have to stop thinking about pork chops, because my mouth is doing that salivating thing again. And Dad doesn’t like it when I spit over the side of the cart.
Okay, so Mom is coming back now. Dad is starting up the cart. (Is he even going to wait for Mom to get inside?!) And our cave adventure is about to begin!
DAY 12: THURSDAY MORNING (CONTINUED)
Okay, so we set up camp. Dad got this fancy new tent that was supposed to “set up itself,” but it didn’t exactly work that way. In the battle of Creeper versus Tent, Dad took a few hits. I think I even heard him swear (but Mom says I shouldn’t write that stuff down).
While I was pretending NOT to write that stuff down, I took a look around the cave. There were tons of creeper families in here, but the best part was what I saw riding a minecart INTO the cave.
I saw SAM.
Well, it wasn’t actually Sam, but it was a slime that was every bit as green and jolly as Sam. And I must have really missed my slime friend, because I wanted to jump right on board that cart.
Turns out, the slime was a cave guide named Saul. He offered to take us on a quick tour of the caves, but Dad surprised me by saying NO.
“We’ve got perfectly good legs,” he said. “We’re going to HIKE the cave.”
Say WAH-HUT?
Chloe grinned at me as if this were the best day of her life.
But then Mom said not to get too excited—that we weren’t hiking any time soon, because it was almost morning. “Let’s get a good day’s sleep first,” she said.
So now we’re all cozy in Dad’s new tent, and I gotta say, it’s kind of cool in here. The roof of the tent is like a curved green sky. And I didn’t have to climb a vine ladder to get in here.
But it’s also kind of crowded. My sleeping bag is WAY too close to Chloe’s. And she just warned me to watch out for cave spiders while I sleep.
GREAT. I’d kind of forgotten about them. But now I’m afraid to turn out my torch.
Ziggy Zombie once told me that the average mob swallows seven baby spiders in his lifetime. How is that possible? I asked him. And he said it was because most of us sleep with our mouths open, and baby spiders crawl right in.
Well I will NOT be sleeping with my mouth open. Thanks to Chloe (and Zig
gy Zombie), I probably won’t be sleeping AT ALL.
DAY 13: FRIDAY
Well, I did sleep. At least a little.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t swallow any spiders though, because when I woke up, my stomach felt empty. REALLY empty.
When it growled, Mom gave me a carrot. “Crunch it outside,” she said. “So you don’t wake your baby sister.”
I took my carrot outside, but I didn’t exactly CRUNCH it. That carrot had seen way too many days on the road. It was all wilted and rubbery. But I ate it. And Mom promised me we’d find some mushrooms during our hike, and that she’d make some mushroom stew.
Well just the thought of that stew warmed me from the inside out. So, I made LOTS of noise outside the tent, trying to wake up my family so we could get on with this hike already. I kicked a few rocks. I whistled. I might have even stuck my face close to the opening of the tent and hissed.
I finally heard Cammy squeal, and Chloe groan. Then the Creeper family started filing out of the tent, one by one.
Cate was the last one out. She was still wearing her super-dark sunglasses. When I reminded her that there was no SUN in the cave, she just sort of sniffed. Then she said I don’t know a thing about fashion.
Then Mom pulled me aside and reminded me that Cate doesn’t have her wig anymore and that Dad pretty much made her dump out her perfume back in the jungle. “So leave her alone about the glasses,” said Mom.
FINE. But I knew Cate was going to be bumping into walls. I just hoped she wouldn’t fall off a rocky ledge or into a cave pond, because I for one was NOT going to dive in and fish her out.
Anyway, just as we started out on our hike, I felt the rumble of a minecart coming our way. Saul the Slime showed up and asked again if we wanted a tour. I REALLY hoped Dad would say yes this time.
Mom must have felt the same way, because she smiled super wide at Dad.
But he said no thanks. And after Saul was gone, Dad said that a slime like that would just scare away all the interesting things before we got to see them.
EXACTLY! I wanted to holler. If we’d taken a minecart tour, the cave spiders would have steered clear.
But I didn’t say so. After that ocelot incident in the jungle, I didn’t want anyone thinking I was a scaredy-creep. So when Dad crept off down a long dark tunnel, I took a deep breath and followed him.
The first “interesting” thing we found was mushrooms. I would have been happy about that, except the mushrooms were MOLDY.
I knew what Mom was going to say before she even said it: “When life hands you moldy mushrooms, make mushroom stew.” But I’d been eating rubbery, moldy things for DAYS now. What did a creeper have to do to get a pork chop around here???
I was kind of crabby after that, until Cate walked smack into a wall in front of us. I tried not to laugh, but a creeper can’t help grinning. “Told you so,” I might have whispered.
When Mom shot me a look, I pretended to be really interested in a crack in the wall. “Say …” I hissed. “Are those EMERALDS in there?”
I didn’t really think they were. But then Dad ran over all excited, and he pulled his pickaxe out of his backpack, and he started chipping away at the wall.
Suddenly the wall crumbled—I don’t even know why. And these disgusting SILVERFISH spilled out!
Well Cammy laughed as if those critters were the greatest things ever. As if she was going to make them her new little pets or playthings. Sometimes I think something is seriously WRONG with that kid.
As Dad dodged a silverfish, he said something that really stuck in my creeper craw. He told Mom that Cammy must take after CHLOE, because she’s super brave around critters.
HUH.
Did that mean that Dad thought I WASN’T brave? I mean, sure, I had just jumped up onto a rock to get away from a silverfish. But that wasn’t being SCARED. That was being SMART.
Well Chloe puffed right up when she heard Dad’s compliment. She started chasing the silverfish to impress Dad even more—or to make me look bad.
By the time all the silverfish scuttled away (GROSS), Mom said we’d seen enough “interesting” things for one night. She said it was time to head back to camp to make mushroom stew.
As Chloe ran past me, she got right in my face and hissed, “Hey, scaredy-creep. If you’re scared of silverfish, what are you gonna do when you see a SPIDER?”
She flashed her Evil Twin grin. And then she raced off ahead of everyone else, like she was going to be the first one in line for that stew.
Well that was fine by me. I’d pretty much already lost my appetite.
DAY 14: SATURDAY MORNING
So last night, Mom announced that SHE would be leading our next family hike. Why? Because some creeper at camp told her about an abandoned mineshaft, and Mom thought she might find some seeds in one of the chests there.
Now normally I would have taken a pass on that hike. See, abandoned mineshafts are DANGEROUS. A creeper could fall to his death in one of those. And it’s not only ME I’m worried about. It’s Cate in her “fashionable” sunglasses too. Because she’s been bumping into walls and tripping over rocks since we got here.
But before I could say all that, Mom dropped another important piece of info. She said we might even find some POTATOES in that mineshaft.
Well, she had me at “PO—“because if there’s anything I love almost as much as pork chops, it’s potatoes.
“Let’s go,” I said, leading the way.
Dad was impressed by that, I could tell. But he wasn’t very impressed with the map Mom carried. Her new creeper friend had drawn it—the one who had told her about the mine. But it was hard to see the map in the dark.
When Mom grabbed a torch, Dad made some crack about maps being “overrated.” Then Mom told him that if he didn’t want to follow her map, he could “take a hike”—his OWN hike, that is.
Well that shut him up. But I think Dad kind of DID want to take his own hike. See, he had his pickaxe out, and he was all about finding some emeralds. So I kept my eye on Dad while we hiked, the way I keep my eye on Cammy when I’m afraid she’s going to wander off.
Seriously, looking out for my family was stressing me out. My baby sister liked to play with wild critters.
My older sister stumbled around blind as a bat.
And now Dad was playing miner or treasure hunter or something. I had a bad feeling about this hike. A REALLY bad feeling.
When Mom started cheering, I knew she’d found the mouth of her abandoned mineshaft. So I took a deep breath and prayed for potatoes. That was the only thing that was going to make this hike worthwhile.
The ladder leading into the mine made our TREE HOUSE ladder seem like a kiddie ride at the creeper carnival. I slid down that thing with my eyes closed, hoping I’d hit bottom instead of some sort of trap door or lava pit or cave pool.
By the time I reached the bottom, Mom was already digging through a treasure chest. “Is that stealing?” I wanted to ask. Were alarm bells going to go off? Were the creeper police going to show up and arrest us any moment now?
But the mine DID look abandoned. There were cobwebs everywhere, which made me feel better. Until I realized that meant there were probably SPIDERS here too. CRIPES.
So if I was going to find some potatoes, I had to do it fast. I flung open the lid of the treasure chest next to Mom’s and started digging through the “treasures.” Moldy bread. Bruised apples. And then … YES! Potatoes!
I almost bit into one, but Mom swatted it out of my hand. RUDE.
“That’s rotten!” she said. “Can’t you smell it?”
Well, yeah, I could smell it. But I had smelled a LOT of stinky things since this vacation started. So I wasn’t going to let a bad smell get in the way of my lunch.
Then Mom told me that rotten potatoes were as poisonous as pufferfish. AGAIN with the pufferfish???
I almost cried. Holding that rotten potato was like being near a bucket of water in the hot desert, and not being able to drink a drop of it.
Sometimes Life was SO unfair.
Mom found some melon and pumpkin seeds, which of course were NOT rotten or stinky. So SHE was happy. But then we heard voices coming down the ladder.
I hoped they were creepers, hiking around the cave like us. But when Mom held up her torch, we saw blue jeans. And pickaxes. And headlamps. We saw HUMANS.
GREAT.
Did we just steal from a mine that was NOT abandoned?
Dad said we should really get a move on, and he pointed AWAY from the ladder, deeper into the mine.
Now I’m just a kid, but even I knew that was a BAD idea. Mom’s map wasn’t going to help us if we got lost in tunnels down here. But like I said way back when, Dad isn’t a big fan of humans. And after the way Mom was treated back in Humanville, she wasn’t either.
The only creep in my family who seemed to want to stick around was Cate. When she took off her sunglasses and start batting her eyelashes at the miners, I knew she was in trouble.
So I did what I had to do. I told Cate that her makeup was smudged. That she REALLY should fix that before meeting the miners. That I was embarrassed to even be seen with her.
Her face crumpled and she put her sunglasses back on so fast, she nearly poked an eye out. Then she crept away before anyone could catch her looking smeared and smudged.
