Moby Clique

by Cara Lockwood

  Ryan struggles against the ropes, tugging and pulling with all his might.

  “Fire! Fire!” Samir shouts. “Somebody help!”

  “I don’t think anyone is going to hear us,” Blade says.

  She’s probably right. There is a huge storm outside and there’s a giant whale attacking the ship. And yet, over the crackling sound of the fire, the lurching of the ship, and Samir’s cries for help, I hear someone calling my name. It’s faint at first, then it gets louder.

  “Here! I’m in here!”

  Before I know it, the door has swung open and there’s a shadow of a figure standing there. A figure that looks a lot like…

  “Heathcliff?” I ask, still not sure if I can believe my eyes.

  It sure looks like him. Broad shoulders, dark, unreadable eyes, and his longish black hair that’s wet from the storm outside and sticking to his forehead in curly clumps.

  Relief floods over me. He didn’t get zapped back to Wuthering Heights. He’s here. He’s really here!

  He sweeps in and without hesitating, stomps on the fire with his boots. Then he suffocates the remaining flames with the wet Bard blazer he whips off his back. I can see the outline of his broad shoulders through his shirt. He wipes sweat and rain from his brow as he stomps the last flicker of a spark underneath his heel.

  “But I thought you left,” I manage to stutter. “Forever.”

  “Yeah, you were totally gone,” Blade says.

  “Poof! Into thin air,” Samir adds. When Heathcliff frowns at him, Samir is quick to add, “Not, of course, that we’re sorry to see you survived. I mean, obviously.”

  Ryan gives Heathcliff a long look, but says nothing.

  “Whatever,” Parker snaps. “Will you just untie us already? You won’t believe what these losers have been saying about you. They think you’re a fictional character.”

  Heathcliff says nothing, just goes about untying us silently.

  “I mean, that’s crazy. Tell them it’s crazy,” Parker says.

  Heathcliff doesn’t answer her and Parker starts to look a little unsettled.

  “So are you going to tell us what the heck happened, or what?” Blade asks.

  “I don’t know,” Heathcliff says, shrugging. “I fell into a boat tied along the side of the ship. I sat there thinking that I really didn’t want to go back to Wuthering Heights, and I kept thinking about you.”

  He stares at me as he says this.

  “And so I stayed,” he adds, whipping the last bit of rope around my legs free.

  Immediately, I spring up and throw my arms around him, tears blurring my vision.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Ryan interrupts. There’s jealousy in his voice, and annoyance. If Parker notices, she doesn’t let on. She’s still trying to process the fact that Heathcliff is fictional. Heathcliff is not the kind of guy to make something like that up or to go along with a joke. She’s clearly uneasy now. As I watch, she actually reaches up and touches Heathcliff’s sleeve, as if to make sure he’s actually real.

  “Um, yeah,” Samir says. “Could you guys save the romantic reunion for some other time? We’ve got a world to save and I’m still tied up here,” Samir says, holding up his hands.

  “Ditto,” Blade says, raising hers.

  No sooner than Heathcliff unties Blade and Samir, the ship lurches violently to one side again, sending all of us sprawling. I fall to the ground, landing hard on my knees. A barrel of gunpowder comes loose from its moorings and starts to roll straight for my head. I curl up in a protective ball, but Heathcliff is there, putting his body in between me and the barrel. It hits him hard, but he stops it.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  “Fine,” he groans, holding his side.

  The ship lurches again, but we all manage to keep our footing. Ryan helps steady Parker.

  “If I get out of this alive, I’m never speaking to my parents again,” Parker says. “I can’t believe they sent me here. They were supposed to get references about this place!”

  “Let’s get out of here before something else catches fire,” Samir says.

  He heads for the stairs and the rest of us follow, even as the boat rocks violently from side to side. Up above us, the once blue sky is now dark and menacing, with lightning flashing in the dark clouds. The wind has picked up and whips through the sails, snapping them hard against their restraining ropes. Water sprays up from the choppy waves and I don’t see land. Where it should be is blanketed with a thick fog.

  Ryan helps Parker up the stairs. She still has a sprained ankle and is limping.

  “I’m also going to sue,” Parker says, mumbling a little. “I’m still going to sue. Definitely. I’ll sue Bard, first, and then maybe my parents, second, but I’m going to sue. Oh, yes. For sure.”

  Parker sounds like she might be losing it.

  “Where in hell are we?” Blade demands, bringing our attention back to the problem at hand.

  We’ve somehow made it out to sea. Was Ms. P right? Is it possible to escape purgatory?

  “Miranda!” I hear Blade shout behind me. I look back. She’s pointing to the front of the ship. I look up and see Ms. P there with my sister. Ms. P is standing on the railing, a little like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titantic. She’s holding her hands wide, as if trying to embrace the whale. My sister is standing next to her, holding the magical copy of Moby-Dick and reading from it.

  That’s how Ms. P is conjuring up characters as big as the whale and the ship full of sailors. By reading from the book, my sister can fully open the dimensions between reality and fiction. She’s the key to everything. Just like I was when Emily Brontë hatched a similar plan last year.

  I’ve got to get that copy of Moby-Dick. Without it, Ms. P will be powerless and we can send Ahab and his crew back to where they came from.

  I try to make my way over to Ms. P and Lindsay, but the ship lurches hard to the right, slamming me into the railing. Just when I think I have my footing, I lose it again. It’s like trying to walk in a funhouse, I just can’t seem to make any forward progress.

  “Lindsay!” I shout to try to get her attention, but she can’t hear me over the gale-force winds.

  Heathcliff, who’s stronger than I am, grabs hold of the railing and holds his other arm out to me. I grab it, and together we move forward steadily.

  Nearby, I see Ahab and a group of his crew members scramble into a small boat. For a minute, I think they’re abandoning the ship, but then I realize they’re all carrying harpoons. They’re going to try to hunt Moby Dick in the storm. They’re insane.

  Ahab orders his men to lower the boat, which they do. I don’t have time to bother with them. I fix my eyes on Lindsay and manage to make steady progress to her. Heathcliff is by my side, moving with me.

  “Lindsay! You’re going to get us all killed!” I shout at her. She turns, eyeing me warily. Ms. P whips around, too. “Give me the book.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Lindsay,” she tells my sister. “She’s just jealous. Jealous of you and your power.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, Linds,” I say. “You could end the world as we know it. You’ll kill us, Mom and Dad, everybody.”

  I feel Heathcliff beside me, ready to spring. Blade and Samir walk cautiously forward. Ryan is busy holding up Parker, who is still clutching at him and mumbling.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Ms. P calls, holding out the copy of To the Lighthouse over the choppy ocean waves. It’s Ms. W’s book. If she destroys it, she’ll destroy Ms. W.

  We freeze.

  Lindsay looks unsure suddenly. “Are they right?” she asks Ms. P. “Could we kill everybody? I mean, do you know for sure?”

  “You’re going to listen to them?” Ms. P sputters.

  “After all the time they’ve ignored you? Taken advantage of you?”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Lindsay says. For once, I’m glad she’s got a know-it-all attitude.

  Out of the corner of my e
ye, I see Ryan gently put Parker down on the deck. She sits there, cross-legged, leaning against the railing of the ship, silent. She looks a little dazed.

  Ryan, meanwhile, tries to maneuver closer to Ms. P, sneaking over to her blind spot. Secretly, I cheer him on.

  “I told you not to worry about it,” Ms. P says, more sternly now.

  “She told you not to worry about it because you’ll be dead,” Blade points out. “We all will be.”

  “It’s true,” I say, hoping to hold Ms. P’s attention long enough for Ryan to get to her. “Tell her the truth, Ms. P.”

  But Ms. P isn’t listening. She’s caught sight of Ryan and she whirls around on him. With a flick of her wrist, she sends him soaring up off the deck and over the side of the ship. We all watch in amazement as he’s flung into the churning sea.

  “Ryan!” Lindsay shouts, louder than any of us. “No!”

  Ms. P seems to realize her mistake. She was acting on protective instinct, but she’s accidentally sent Lindsay’s bargaining chip overboard. Lindsay now turns on Ms. P with a fury. “You bring him back!” Her face is red and I recognize a full-fledged temper tantrum coming. Ms. P senses this, too, and turns to look over the deck, searching for Ryan, but the waves are so choppy she can’t see him. She can’t levitate what she can’t see.

  I hope Ryan is okay, but the sea is stormy and I don’t even see his head bobbing in the water. He’s strong, though, and a good swimmer. He told me he used to lifeguard for a couple of summers back home.

  Lindsay closes her copy of Moby-Dick and hangs it over the side of the ship.

  “Save him, now, or I drop this book!” Lindsay stomps her foot to show she’s serious.

  Just then, Ryan’s head pops up in a wave about twenty feet from the boat. Ms. P sees him, too, and reaches out her arm. He’s suddenly floating above the water, dripping wet and coughing.

  “There, you see? Now give me the book and I’ll bring him over the side,” Ms. P says.

  “Don’t trust her!” Blade calls out, but too late, because Lindsay hands over the book. Naturally, the minute Ms. P has the book in her hands, she drops Ryan back into the foaming sea.

  “That’s it!” says Parker, coming to for the first time, pulling herself up on her feet. She hobbles up to Ms. P and grabs the book out of her hands. Ms. P is so busy concentrating on Lindsay that she doesn’t see Parker. “No one messes with my Ryan,” Parker adds for good measure, as she gives our teacher a hard push. Ms. P totters and then falls over the side of the boat.

  I feel a little like cheering for Parker. Except for the fact that she’s Parker, and because one second later she drops Moby-Dick over the side of the boat.

  “Parker! We needed that,” I say. “There’s no other way to curb the storm or get us home.”

  “I’ll get it!” Lindsay shouts, scrambling up on top of the boat railing and leaning over, trying to reach the book. But, in seconds, Ms. P has appeared again, this time dripping wet and clutching both books to her chest—Moby-Dick and To the Lighthouse. With her free hand, she reaches up, grabs Lindsay’s arm, and flings her overboard.

  I’m not sure if it’s Lindsay screaming, or me, as I run straight to the edge and look over. Miraculously, my sister’s managed to fall straight into the boat with Captain Ahab and his crew, saved from the ocean, which—given the fact that she can’t swim—is a good thing. She’s out cold, though, and that’s definitely bad. So is the fact that they’re headed straight out to fight Moby Dick, and everything in the book says they’ll lose.

  “We’ve got to save her!” I shout to Heathcliff, who’s already in motion. He leaps at Ms. P. She sidesteps Heathcliff’s lunge, but isn’t quite fast enough. He manages to grab a book from her hands and tosses it to Blade, who catches it easily. She pops open the book and Ms. W flies out.

  “That’s more like it,” she says, then turns to face Ms. P, whose eyes widen in fear.

  “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d say you, right now,” Blade says to Ms. P.

  “Good one,” Samir says.

  “You think so?”

  “Oh yeah, definitely.” Samir nods his admiration.

  “Would you two get a room already?” Parker snaps at them both. “Jesus. Enough with the flirting banter.”

  The two teachers circle each other warily and then, suddenly, Ms. P floats upward, toward the lookout post on the ship, fleeing as fast as she can go. Ms. W follows.

  I am still hanging over the rail, watching Lindsay sail away with Ahab.

  “Lindsay!” I shout. “Lindsay! Wake up!” Lindsay groans a little, but doesn’t quite come to. I watch, helplessly, as Ahab’s rowboat moves farther and farther from the ship. Beside me, Heathcliff glances at the water. There’s too big a gap now to jump, even for him. I look out on the ocean and see that Ryan is swimming toward Lindsay. He’s making good progress. I hope he gets there soon.

  Above our heads, Ms. P and Ms. W clash.

  “Give up, Sylvia, you’re trapped!” Ms. W yells.

  “Never!” Ms. P shouts back.

  The two ghosts swirl in figure eights around the ship’s mast and sails. At this rate, Ms. P could play her game of “keepaway” forever.

  A bright light breaks through the clouds in the horizon. It’s sunlight, and it slashes through the clouds in sharp rays, illuminating the water in bright, dazzling patches.

  “We’re at the boundary,” Ms. W calls to Ms. P. “We can’t go any farther.”

  “I assume she means purgatory?” Blade asks me.

  “We can go farther and we will. I will see my children again.”

  Beneath our feet, the boat comes to a standstill. It’s strange, but true. We just stop moving and the sea around us goes completely still. Behind us, the storm is still raging, but in this one spot, with the light coming down, everything is still. It’s like we’ve crossed some invisible line. The ocean runs past us, but the boat is completely still, as if some large invisible hand is holding us stationary.

  “Whoa,” Samir says.

  “This is so cool,” Blade says, leaning far over the rail to watch the water splash up against the side of the boat, even though we’re no longer moving.

  I put my hand out over the rail of the ship and it hits something hard and cold. It’s like invisible glass.

  “I told you we were at the boundary,” Ms. W says. “Now, stop this nonsense and come with me. You can go no farther.”

  “No,” Ms. P says, floating out over the ship’s stern. She puts her hands up as if to feel what is holding us in place. “No! It isn’t possible! The ocean!”

  “We cannot leave before our time,” Ms. W says. She’s nearly close enough to Ms. P now to grab her. She lunges, but Ms. P spins away at the last second and the two are suddenly locked in a struggle. Somehow Ms. P loses her grip on the book and Moby-Dick falls into the water beside us. I see it slowly sink beneath the surface. There’s a giant bubbling circle, as if it’s causing some kind of reaction with the water.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Samir says, pointing.

  The bubbles grow bigger, then a spout of water bursts up through the surface. A whale’s signature.

  I swallow, hard.

  “If you’re thinking it’s the world’s most famous sea mammal, then yeah, it’s what you think it is.”

  We turn in time to see a massive white tail rise out of the water just feet from the boat. It stays there, still, for a second, dripping water, before crashing through the bough and sending splinters of wood in all directions.

  Twenty-six

  Chunks of wood and water fly through the air as the Pequod leans sharply to one side. The mast cracks in half and comes crashing down beside us as Parker, Heathcliff, and I hop one way to avoid it and Blade and Samir go another.

  “No way, it isn’t…it’s not possible,” Parker is sputtering in shock.

  “Get used to the impossible,” I say.

  Moby Dick slides under the boat and it rocks hard to the left. I lose my footing and go
sliding on my back across the deck, dangerously close to the water that’s bubbling up from Moby Dick’s attack.

  Heathcliff shouts my name as he tries to come after me. But the deck is in pieces and it’s hard for him to find his footing.

  I don’t see any sign of the whale, but I know he’s nearby and that he can swallow people whole. I flail my arms and legs and manage to grab on to some fish netting. But it looks like I’m too heavy for the netting because it’s coming loose from the hooks holding it to the ship.

  At my feet, I see the water churning and bubbling. As I watch, frozen, the whale surfaces, its giant head huge and hulking. I’m now a few feet away from its massive, bent jaw. Its mouth creaks open, revealing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth, each one big enough to cut me in half. I’m starting to think movie producers made a mistake when they chose sharks for Jaws. Moby Dick is way scarier.

  “Um, nice whale?” I say, trying to get a firmer hold on the fishnet, which is coming loose in my grasp. And then I hear a scream and Parker tumbles down the deck, bouncing into me, and nearly sending us both into the giant mouth of Moby Dick.

  She’s now clinging to the net and I’m holding on to her legs.

  “Don’t let go!” I shout to her.

  “Um, state the obvious!” Parker shouts back.

  Moby Dick blows out more water from his blowhole and opens his mouth wider, sending out a scented bouquet of decaying fish.

  “Geez, ever heard of an Altoid?” I say, flinching.

  “What’s an Altoid?” asks Ms. W, who swoops in from above my head and lifts us to safety.

  “Ms. W! Thank God.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says as she puts us down on the edge of the ship that isn’t yet underwater.

  Parker just crosses her arms. “I’m still going to sue,” she tells Ms. W. “And just because you’re a ghost doesn’t mean you’re not liable.”

  I crowd together with Blade, Samir, and Heathcliff, who are all holding on to whatever they can to stop themselves from sliding into the bubbling water.