“Bingo!” Margo yelled.
“Darn it!” a man sitting nearby in the casino shouted while he stood up and tore his bingo card in half.
The Fun Hopper was the largest of the three stands. On top of the long counter were piles and piles of colorful pamphlets. The stacks were so tall Margo could hardly reach the top of them. At first she thought that there was no one working at the stand, but then she realized that what she thought was a tall bamboo reed was actually the tallest, most stick-like woman she had ever seen. The woman also had on a very tiny tan safari hat. It matched her tan safari shirt and tan safari shorts and tan safari face. You can see why she would be mistaken for a piece of bamboo. She was munching on a large sandwich.
“Excuse me—” Margo began to ask.
The woman raised a long slender finger and pointed to a little sign on the counter that said BACK IN ONE MINUTE.
“Sorry. I’m just in a hurry and I’m looking for a map of—”
“Ahem,” the woman said, pointing to the sign again. She finished her sandwich and then popped a potato chip in her mouth and chewed. Then chewed again. Then chewed one more time. It was one very long minute—and one very chewy chip.
“Okay!” The woman took down the sign and smiled at Margo. “I’m Kathy. How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a map.”
“I have lots of maps,” Kathy said. “If you buy a Fun Hopper Pass from me, you can go on any excursion you want. Whale watching, moose watching, watch making . . . And I have maps for all of them.”
Margo sighed. She really wished that Shivers’s parents’ letter had said which map to get. She reached out to grab one of the maps, hoping it might give her a clue. But Kathy swatted her hand away.
“Sorry, kid. The Fun Hopper Pass is for grown-ups only. You should check out our Kids Club. Today, we’ve got a great game of hopscotch!”
Margo was steamed. Albee was furious. “You don’t understand! This fish and I are on a very important mission! And we need to figure out which map—”
Suddenly, Margo felt a low rumble beneath her feet. “What’s that?” she asked. “It sounds like a stampede of elephants.”
The Fly High in the Sky Guy shrugged. “They must be doing jazzercise on the first floor.”
Margo turned back to Kathy, racking her brain for a strategy to find the right map. “Do you have any excursions that involve dogs and fairies?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
Margo jumped for joy.
“Ahem.” Kathy glared at her. “This is the Fun Hopper, not the Fun Jumper.”
As Kathy started riffling through the maps on her counter, the rumble that had been beneath Margo’s feet now sounded like it was coming from right behind her.
“It’s around here somewhere,” Kathy muttered, still looking for the map.
Just then, a coconut-shaped phone rang on Kathy’s desk. She raised a long slender finger at Margo and answered the phone.
“Hello?” Kathy said. “No, I’m not busy. . . .”
Before Margo could protest, the doors to the casino burst open and she heard a loud, familiar scream.
“AGGGHH!!” Shivers was running so fast, it looked like he had been shot out of a cannon. The angry cruise ship passengers squeezed through the door behind him, stumbling over each other trying to catch him.
“Shivers! Up here!” Margo called out.
When he spotted Margo, Shivers felt terrelieved—which is when you’re terrified and relieved at the same time. But then he looked at the angry crowd behind him, and went back to being just plain terrified.
“Margo, help!” he shouted.
Margo knew she had to get to Shivers right away. Kathy was still gabbing into her coconut-shaped phone. In one lightning-fast motion, Margo unzipped her green backpack and swept a huge stack of maps inside.
“It’s got to be in here somewhere.” She hoped.
She zipped her backpack closed just as Shivers reached the top of the stairs. One of the cruise ship passengers grabbed on to his pantaloons, but Margo yanked him free. “Let’s go!” she shouted as they started to sprint away.
“Now’s our chance,” Shivers panted. “I lost half the crowd downstairs. They’re still waiting for the elevator.”
Margo tried to hold Albee’s bag steady, but he was bouncing all around inside.
“In here!” Margo yelled. She opened a door into a huge dining room. It was filled with tables covered in lace tablecloths and napkins folded to look like swans. Across the room was an enormous buffet with every kind of food Shivers had ever imagined: pineapples, mashed potatoes, peach pie, shrimp piled high on ice, and live lobsters, waiting to be boiled and not very happy about it.
Margo went straight for the lobsters. “We’ll use these lobsters to fend them off,” she said. She picked one up and tried to hand it to Shivers.
The lobster snapped its claw in Shivers’s face. Shivers winced. “Have you lost your mind? That thing is horrifying!”
Margo rolled her eyes. “That’s kind of the point.”
Shivers assured Margo, “I’ll use a different weapon.”
The crowd burst into the dining room, and Shivers grabbed a handful of pink boiled shrimp. “That’s your weapon?” Margo asked him, worried. Shivers nodded and threw the shrimp at the Cruise Captain. The Cruise Captain caught the shrimp in his mouth, chewed them up, and spit the tails back at Shivers.
Meanwhile, Margo used the lobster and its sharp claws to scare off the other passengers. She had set Albee down next to an enormous serving bowl of melted butter and he was getting very hungry. Albee swam straight toward the serving bowl so fast that his bag rolled like a hamster wheel and knocked into the table, toppling the bowl and spilling butter all over the floor. The Cruise Captain and the passengers slipped on the buttery tidal wave, crashing to the ground.
Margo and Shivers saw that this was their chance to make a quick exit. They picked up Albee and ran out the back door of the dining room and down a twisting flight of stairs. Margo kicked open a heavy door. They ran through it and realized with relief that they had found the main deck.
The sun glared in their eyes as they looked around for their ship.
“Where’s the Land Lady?!” Shivers shouted.
“It’s just on the other side of the deck!” Margo assured him. “Run!”
“Finally, something I’m good at!” Shivers said as he tore off toward his ship.
At that moment, the Cruise Captain burst out onto the deck, followed by the crowd. “There’s the pirate!” the Cruise Captain shouted. “The Cruise Captain found the pirate! Long live the Cruise Captain!” He started singing, “For he’s a jolly good cruise captain, for he’s a jolly good cruise captain. . . .”
But the crowd was too busy chasing Shivers to sing along. Margo and Shivers ran in zigs and zags all over the deck, with Margo doing most of the zigging and Shivers doing most of the zagging.
“What are we going to do?” Shivers wheezed. “We’ve got nowhere to go! No way to escape! And no plan!”
“If we had a plan”—Margo panted—“it wouldn’t be an adventure!”
She sped off toward the rope bridge that would get them back on the Land Lady, but Shivers’s zagging was lagging, and he started to fall behind.
Meanwhile, the Cruise Captain shimmied up the mast. He called down to the crowd, “Buffet line formation! Fall in!”
The crowd spread out into a long buffet line, separating Shivers from Margo and blocking his path to the Land Lady. Shivers froze. There was nowhere to run. The cruise passengers formed a circle around him, shouting, “Pirate! Pirate!”
“Well, this is it,” said Shivers. “My last hope is that the sharks at least brushed their teeth.”
The crowd pushed Shivers to the edge of the deck, still yelling, “Pirate! Pirate!” Shivers clambered up onto the railing, but it was too hard to balance. He tripped and fell off the side of the boat. His voice faded as he yelled, “It was a joooooke!” His feet
hit the icy water and suddenly, waves were swirling around him like he was in a giant, salty toilet.
Margo had almost reached the Land Lady when she heard the splash. “Shivers!” she called. There was no answer. She stopped dead in her tracks, wondering what the right move was and worried that she was going to make the wrong one. If she left the Land Lady tied to the Carnival cruise, they might never see their ship again. On the other hand, if she didn’t go after Shivers right now, she might never see HIM again. She gripped Albee’s bag tightly, trying to figure out what to do. A part of her wished her dad were here. Or even Mrs. Beezle. But there was no time for wishing now.
She felt a tap from Albee’s bag. She looked down and saw Albee swimming furiously in one direction. He was not swimming toward the Land Lady. He was swimming toward Shivers. Margo knew what they had to do. She placed Albee snugly in the pocket of her big green backpack. “We’re coming, Shivers!” she yelled, sprinting back across the Carnival deck.
She climbed up onto the railing where Shivers had fallen. She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “Don’t look down.” Then she jumped into the water after her best friend.
MARGO HELD ON TIGHTLY to Shivers’s arm. He had fainted before the sharks had realized that without some butter and salt, Shivers would not be a tasty snack. They had swum off in search of a supermarket.
Margo reached into her big green backpack and pulled out the maps from the Fun Hopper. They were so soggy from the water that it looked like they had been chewed up by a dog, or a really slobbery baby. She riffled through them, trying to find one that she could read. Finally, she found one that wasn’t completely soaked through. The writing at the top was too smudged to read, but Margo was able to make out a picture at the bottom. It showed what looked like a cartoon cruise ship and a dotted line leading north to a small beach. From what Margo could tell, she and Shivers were floating right in the middle of that dotted line. She returned the maps to her backpack and started using her right hand to paddle north, while her left hand held on to Shivers.
As they floated in the choppy waves, Margo saw an unknown shore not too far away. “Land, ho!” she shouted, delighted. She kicked as hard as she could until she finally reached the sand. She dragged Shivers onto the beach and stood over him, worried. His eyes opened and he coughed. He had swallowed too much water and couldn’t spit it back up.
Margo remembered something. “A great adventure must have great snacks!” Quickly, she reached in her pocket and found a carrot she had been saving for later, and shoved it into Shivers’s mouth.
Shivers’s C-sickness kicked in and he puked up all the water onto the sand. It was pretty gross, but still Margo was thrilled.
“Thank goodness! We made it!” Margo said, pulling Shivers up to his feet.
“Made it?” Shivers asked. “What are you talking about? Hand me my pillow. And turn my alarm clock off. I just had the most terrible dream.”
Margo couldn’t believe her ears. “Shivers, don’t you remember when we fell off the ship?”
“You had the exact same dream about falling off the ship?!” Shivers asked. “That’s amazing!”
“It wasn’t a dream,” Margo explained. “You really fell off the ship! Then I jumped in after you, and when I found you, you had fainted. So I grabbed you and dragged you to shore.”
“Really?” Shivers couldn’t believe his ears. No one was believing anybody’s ears today.
“Yes,” Margo continued. “It was so exciting. It was like I was a real hero. I swam like crazy and Albee had my back the whole time!”
“He did?!” Shivers squealed with delight.
“Yeah!” Margo said. “Because I kept him in my backpack!”
“Way to go, Albee!” Shivers cheered, and coughed up a handful of sand. “I want to give him a high five!”
Margo turned to take her backpack off her back. But there was nothing there. “Shivers, where’s my backpack?”
Shivers and Margo locked eyes. Neither of them could believe what they were about to say.
“WHERE’S ALBEE???!!” they shouted.
Shivers looked up and Margo looked down. Shivers looked left and Margo looked all around. Margo’s backpack was nowhere to be found! “It must have slipped off my back when I was swimming!” Margo wailed.
Shivers was so sad that he didn’t even want to stand up anymore. He collapsed on the sand and thought about how he would rather sit in a bathtub full of snails than lose Albee.
“We should have stayed home!” he shouted at Margo. “This is what happens when you take a boat out to sea! Now we’ve lost Albee! He’s stuck in your backpack somewhere all alone. We have no idea where we are. We’re no closer to finding my family. And now the only friend I’ve ever had is gone!”
Margo looked away. She didn’t want Shivers to see the tears in her big green eyes, which looked so lonely without her big green backpack. “I thought I was your friend,” she whispered.
“And YOU lost him!” screamed Shivers.
Margo clenched her fists so she wouldn’t start sobbing. Then she remembered who got them into this mess in the first place. She lifted her head up and stared Shivers down. “Hey, buddy,” she said with a scowl. “You were the one who told everyone on the boat you were a pirate!”
“It was a JOKE!!!” Shivers cried.
“Oh, really funny!” Margo said. “You know what’s a joke? You. Trying to be a pirate!”
Shivers squinted up at her. “That was a low blow, Margo. And I’m not just saying that because it rhymes.”
Before they could go on, a food vendor wheeled his cart between them. “Want something to eat?” he asked with a toothless grin. “Maybe a frankfurter?”
“I’m too sad to be hungry,” Shivers said. “Plus, I ate about three bags of popcorn for breakfast.”
“Well, now I know why it was so hard to pull you ashore!” Margo snapped from the other side of the cart.
“All right, listen!” Shivers pounded his fist on the food cart. “There’s no time for fighting! Maybe you pulled me ashore, maybe I pulled you ashore, we’ll never really know the truth!”
Margo was so mad her head nearly exploded.
“The point is,” Shivers continued, “I’ve got a fish to find. Your backpack must be floating around somewhere. I’m getting back on my ship!” He started walking back toward the sea.
Margo knew that the only way to get out of this mess was to stick together. She ran after Shivers. “The Land Lady is still tied to the cruise ship with my rope bridge, remember?”
“My Land Lady is gone?!” Shivers collapsed on the ground again and started burying himself in the sand, trying to get away from this horrible day.
“It’s okay,” Margo said, “We’ll just have to swim out to find Albee.”
“Swim?!” Shivers shrieked. “N-O spells ‘No.’ We’ll have to find someone to take us.”
A sailor called out from his boat, “If you need a ride, I can take you on my ferry!”
Shivers thought about it for a moment. “Thank you!” he shouted back. “We don’t have any money to pay our fare, but we can sing and dance!”
“Shivers, we’ll just swim. Don’t be such a weenie,” Margo said.
The toothless food vendor’s head shot up. “Hey, if you’re getting hungry, I’ve got weenies!”
“We’re not hungry!” Shivers said. Then a lightbulb went off in his head. “Weenies . . . you mean, hot dogs?” he asked.
“Delicious hot dogs,” the vendor replied.
Margo could hear the gears in Shivers’s brain turning. They sounded a little rusty.
Shivers pulled his parents’ letter out of his pocket. “Margo, look!” he said, pointing to the paper with so much excitement that he almost poked a hole through it. “My parents said the island was overrun by dogs.” He dashed over to the vendor and grabbed a hot dog right out of his hand.
Margo put her own brain gears into motion as she thought about what Shivers was saying. “You really think
this is the island with the Treasure Torch?”
“It has to be!” Shivers exclaimed, pointing to the letter again. “They also said there are fairies everywhere!” Shivers saluted the sailor on the ferryboat. The sailor saluted him back.
Margo was still skeptical. “But that’s a ferry, not a fairy. They’re spelled differently.”
Shivers replied, “Well, my parents have always been great pirates, but they were never very good spellers.”
Margo thought for a moment. “Okay, so there are hot dogs and ferries everywhere . . . but where’s the Green Giant they wrote about?”
The sailor shouted to them, “You want a Green Giant? Look behind you!”
Shivers and Margo turned around. There it was, the Green Giant herself.
“The Statue of Liberty!!!” Margo shouted, jumping around like she was on a pogo stick.
“Of course!” said the hot-dog vendor. “Why else would they call it Liberty Island?”
Margo jumped over to Shivers, pointing at Lady Liberty. “Shivers, do you see what I see?”
Shivers puked twice.
“Oh, no,” Margo groaned. “Don’t tell me—”
“Yep,” said Shivers, standing up slowly. “I also get ‘see’-sick.”
“Oh, brother,” Margo said, smacking her forehead. She pointed up at Lady Liberty again. “Shivers, look what the statue has in her hand!”
Shivers looked up and saw what Margo saw. In the statue’s right hand was a glimmering golden torch. “Is that . . . ?” Shivers’s jaw dropped so far that his tongue almost hit the ground. He whispered, “The Treasure Torch?”
The Pirate Who's Afraid of Everything Page 5
