No More Pranks

by Monique Polak

  “Holy cow,” Mike Junior’s dad said, using the back of one hand to mop his forehead as we pulled into the cove.

  “Listen,” Réal said, his voice a little jittery. “The wind changing like that gave us all a scare. Maybe we should go back to Tadoussac,” he said, looking first at Rosalie and me, and then at the Mikes.

  “We’re okay,” Rosalie said, “aren’t we?”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “All right, but with the wind in front of us, we’ll have to paddle hard to cross the ferry line,” Réal said.

  We made amazing time. Without a ferry staring us in the eye, the paddling seemed easy.

  Once we were out of the ferry’s range, we slowed down. The sun’s rays warmed our skin. We let our kayak float toward the others. Rosalie passed out juice boxes.

  “On a normal day it would take two hours of paddling to reach Ile des Lièvres. But it’ll take longer today,” Réal explained.

  It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re in a kayak. There’s something hypnotic about watching your paddle scoop water and then feeling it fly into the air behind you in a cool spray.

  There was lots to do once we reached the grassy island. The kayaks had to be dragged up the beach so they wouldn’t be pulled out by the current. Mike Junior helped Rosalie and me set up tents and build a fire. Supper was baked potatoes and steaks, which Uncle Jean had packed on ice.

  Mike Junior hung around as Rosalie and I chopped vegetables for a salad. I knew he wasn’t interested in cooking, but I thought he might be interested in Rosalie. Rosalie didn’t pay any particular attention to him. “I think I’ll go to my tent and read,” she announced after we’d set the picnic table.

  Mike Junior was rolling his shoulders backward. “That kayaking’s some workout,” he said, curling his biceps as he spoke.

  I bet he does weights, I thought, looking down at my own arms and wondering if, by the end of the summer, there was any chance they’d get that ripply look Mike Junior’s had. As I looked toward my fingertips, the row of colorful kayaks down by the beach caught my eye. Turned on their backs, they looked like small whales.

  “Just imagine,” I said to myself, but loud enough for Mike Junior to hear, “what a panic everyone would be in if the kayaks disappeared. We’d be stranded!”

  Mike Junior stopped flexing his muscles and looked right at me. “Has anyone ever told you you’re brilliant, Pete? Absolutely brilliant?”

  Just then, part of me did feel brilliant.

  But another part of me felt stupid— absolutely stupid.

  Chapter Eight

  It was nearly midnight when we zipped up our tents. Réal and the Mikes were a little tipsy. Uncle Jean had packed two of those cardboard boxes of wine, the kind people serve at parties. “I don’t drink that plonk!” the Mike who wasn’t related to the other Mikes said when Rosalie and I put the boxes out on the picnic table.

  It was kind of hard to take him seriously considering the get-up he was wearing: this green helmet with a huge piece of mosquito netting attached to it. He looked like a cross between a soldier and a bride.

  “Plonk?” Rosalie said. This was obviously another new word for her.

  “It means he doesn’t like it,” I explained under my breath.

  Plonk or no plonk, both boxes were empty before dessert. Rosalie and I were supposed to stick to juice, but when the others weren’t looking, I downed a camping cup full of wine. It felt warm as it trickled down my throat.

  We’d set up the tents in a semicircle up a small hill from the beach. Each tent was a short walk from the outhouse—a wooden shack surrounded by fir trees. We were two to a tent, except for Rosalie, who had a tent to herself.

  I was sharing with Mike Junior. At first we just lay in our sleeping bags, looking out the mesh window at the stars. Since I didn’t have a pillow, I was trying to figure out what I could throw at him if he started snoring again.

  He broke the silence. “So when are we hiding the kayaks?” he whispered.

  “Huh?” I said, playing dumb. Jeez, I thought to myself, I wish I’d never come up with the scheme. All I wanted was to get some sleep—and stay out of trouble. But I was beginning to suspect Mike Junior was the kind of guy who’d be hard to stop once he got an idea into his head, even if the idea was mine.

  “Don’t you want to sleep?” I asked, trying to sound really tired.

  “I’m wide awake,” Mike Junior said.

  The thing I was beginning to learn about pranks is that once you dream one up, it’s hard to stop. So I tried another tactic. “Mike,” I said, “maybe hiding the kayaks isn’t such a great idea.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Pete. Think how much fun it’ll be to see Réal’s face when he thinks they’re missing. The guy will have a cow.”

  It was kind of fun to imagine the look on Réal’s face. But I also had a feeling Réal wasn’t the sort of person who’d appreciate being pranked. “He’ll be really pissed off when he figures out who did it,” I told Mike Junior.

  “No way,” he said. “Your uncle’s his boss—he can’t get mad at you.”

  “Hey, you two are making too much noise!” It was Rosalie, speaking in a stage whisper from the next tent. I wondered whether she was more upset about being awakened, or about the fact that we were leaving her out of our conversation.

  “We’re sorry,” I whispered back. My theory that she was upset about being left out must have been right, because a minute later she was standing outside our tent, dressed in a flowery flannel housecoat and fuzzy pink slippers that didn’t look like they were meant for camping.

  “What’s going on, anyway?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’re trying to sleep.”

  You could tell she didn’t believe me.

  “Want to come in for a game of cards?” Mike Junior asked, sitting up in his sleeping bag and using his hand to comb the hair out of his face.

  “No thanks, I’m dead tired,” she said as she turned her back and shuffled back toward her tent.

  “Did you catch those slippers? Pretty sexy!” Mike Junior said with a laugh, but I was pretending to be asleep. It’s a good thing Rosalie woke up, I thought, or I might have had to move those kayaks after all. I remember having this relieved kind of feeling as I dozed off—kind of like I was supposed to have an organ removed, and at the last minute, the doctor changed his mind and said I didn’t need the operation.

  I didn’t sleep long. The sky was still black when I felt Mike Junior tapping my shoulder. “Let’s go!” he whispered.

  For some reason I can’t quite explain, I got up and tugged on my sweats. Maybe I was too tired to argue. “Shh,” he said, holding one finger to his lips as we passed Rosalie’s tent.

  We made our way past the other tents and down the gravel path to the beach. The tide was much higher than when we’d docked. Now the beach was more than half-covered by water. It was a good thing we’d put the kayaks as high as we did or they would have been carried off by the current.

  Silently, Mike Junior took one end of the closest kayak, and I took the other. Emptied of its contents, the kayak, which was made of lightweight fiberglass, was easy to move. We headed for a small area nearby, overgrown with bushes and trees. The bushes scratched against my ankles. Nobody would spot the kayaks here.

  A loud rumble startled us. At first I thought it was snoring. Maybe it was Mike Junior’s dad, and snoring was another thing they had in common. But we were too far from the tents to hear anyone snore. Then I heard the noise again. Mike Junior and I let the kayak we were carrying drop to the ground.

  The noise—it sounded now like a loud bleating sound—was coming from the water. As I turned to look in the direction of the Saguenay, I saw something huge and black. Against the dark horizon it looked as big as a mountain. But something told me it was a whale. Something else told me he was in trouble—big trouble.

  Chapter Nine

  Another thing I’ve learned about pranks is sometimes someth
ing really important happens, and you forget all about whatever pranks you’ve got planned. Which is what happened to us. We’d only moved the first kayak when we heard the whale making that bleating noise.

  We rushed down to the water, shining our flashlights in front of us. It was a whale all right—floating on the water’s surface, only a couple of meters from the beach. When we directed our flashlights closer to his body, we both gasped. Even in the dark, the surrounding water had an unmistakable red tinge. “He’s bleeding,” I told Mike Junior.

  I could tell from the fleshy knobs on top of his head near his blowhole, and from his long flippers, that this was a humpback. Because of the way he was lying, the area beneath his tail was exposed. That’s when I saw it—the triangular scar—the one Uncle Jean had told me about. “Petit Fou!” I called out, and for a second I thought I saw the giant tail quiver.

  “You know him?” Mike Junior asked.

  “I’ve seen him out on the St. Lawrence.”

  “What do you think happened?” he wanted to know.

  “My uncle told me humpbacks can get into fights—during mating season. But it’s past mating season. I can’t figure what—”

  A loud whirring sound, coming from somewhere out on the water, interrupted me. I looked up. I could barely make out the shape of a boat. “It’s a Zodiac,” I told Mike Junior. “But what’s it doing out now?”

  Then, just like that, the answer came to me. “I’ll bet Petit Fou got bashed by that Zodiac.” A cold anger rose in me. Petit Fou had stopped bleating, but he was breathing fast, his huge whale body heaving up and down. I’d never heard a volcano about to explode, but I imagined that was what it would sound like.

  “What do we do now?” Mike Junior asked.

  “We’d better wake the others,” I told him. It was hard to turn our backs on Petit Fou, but we had to.

  Réal and Mike Junior’s dad were already halfway out of their tent. “What’s the racket?” Réal asked, rubbing his eyes. “Who’s crazy enough to be out on a boat at this hour?”

  “There’s a whale,” I managed to tell them, though it felt like my breath was caught in my throat. “He’s bleeding!”

  “Bleeding?” Réal seemed shocked. The sky had grown a little brighter, and I watched his face turn pale.

  Rosalie and the others were up now too. “A whale—bleeding,” I heard voices say as they unzipped their tents and slipped on their sneakers.

  Rosalie didn’t say a word, but her look told me she thought Mike Junior and I were somehow responsible for whatever trouble there was.

  “We’d better radio my uncle. He might be able to get a veterinarian from the interpretive center,” I said to Réal as we started down the path. I knew Réal had a two-way radio with him. He needed it in case any of us got into trouble—or if one of the kayaks got damaged. Suddenly I remembered my latest prank. For a second I felt a little guilty—but there was no time, I told myself, to think about that now.

  When we got to the beach, Réal’s attention was so focused on the whale that he didn’t notice the missing kayak.

  “I think it’s Petit Fou,” I told him.

  “Did you see the scar?” Réal asked, without lifting his eyes from the whale.

  “Yup,” I said, “underneath his tail and shaped like a triangle.”

  The radio made a crackling sound when Réal turned it on and passed it to me. “Uncle Jean? It’s me, Pete. We’ve got a big problem. No, we’re all fine. It’s Petit Fou. I think a Zodiac hit him.”

  Even through the static, I could hear my uncle swearing at the other end. In both languages.

  It was hard to make out Uncle Jean’s next words, but I could have guessed what they’d be. “Did you recognize the Zodiac?” he wanted to know.

  “It was dark,” I said, wishing I had a better answer.

  “My uncle’s going to the interpretive center,” I told the others when I put down the radio. “When there’s more light, he’ll try to get a helicopter over here. In the meantime, he says to keep Petit Fou wet.”

  “We can use that bucket,” Réal suggested, lifting his eyes to the spot where we’d had dinner a few hours before. “Hey, where’s the other kayak?” His voice sounded more tired than upset.

  “Uh, it’s up in the bushes,” Mike Junior said, as if the bushes were a perfectly normal place to keep a kayak. “It was Pete’s idea,” he added.

  I decided not to hang around for the rest of the conversation. Instead I made a beeline for the bucket. When I turned back to the water, I spotted Rosalie sitting near the shore on a moss-covered boulder. I could tell she was ignoring me. Her mouth was wide open, as if she wasn’t paying any attention to me or Réal or Mike Junior.

  I followed her gaze out to the water. Petit Fou was still there, floating heavily on the surface, his breath quick and labored. But he wasn’t alone. Surrounding him were four other humpbacks—three adults and a calf. I hadn’t been the only one communicating. Except Petit Fou hadn’t needed a radio to call for help.

  Chapter Ten

  “The fact that sound travels four times faster underwater than it does in air helps whales communicate with each other,” Rosalie was saying as we waded out into the Saguenay and took turns emptying the bucket of water onto Petit Fou. The water was so cold it made our legs ache, but it felt good to do something for Petit Fou.

  Rosalie was back in know-it-all mode. Still, you have to admit it was pretty cool about the other humpbacks coming to keep Petit Fou company. I mean, it really seemed like he had communicated with them.

  If I were a whale, I’d be a humpback. That’s because they’re showmen, known for diving and slapping their flippers. But the four who’d come to hang with Petit Fou seemed to be lying low.

  The Mikes had changed into warm clothes and wading boots. “We’ll take over,” Mike Junior’s dad called out as he came down the hill. “You kids better warm up,” he added, tossing a couple of sleeping bags our way.

  Rosalie and I went to sit by the fire Mike Junior and Réal had lit. I meant to watch the humpbacks, but soon I felt my chin drop to my chest and my head swing to one side. As I dozed off, my mind went back to the pool of blackish red water Mike Junior and I had seen when we’d first come down to the river. And then, still in my half-sleep, I remembered the whirring sound of the Zodiac’s motor as it zoomed off into the dark. Only, this time I saw something: a white flag hanging from the boat’s stern.

  “It had a white flag,” I muttered. My own words woke me up.

  “What?” Rosalie asked. My head had been slumped on her shoulder. She couldn’t have been comfortable, but it was nice of her not to have pushed me away.

  “The Zodiac—the one that took off when Mike Junior and I came down to the shore. It had a white flag.”

  “White flag?” Rosalie said, turning my words into a question. “It must belong to Leblanc. He owns a fleet of Zodiacs, and they all have white flags. Just like his name, Leblanc—which means the ‘white one.’”

  “I’ve seen him. He and Uncle Jean grew up together.”

  “They did?” Rosalie sounded surprised.

  With the other humpbacks nearby, Petit Fou seemed to settle down. But the pool of reddish water grew around him. “It’s a good thing his blowhole is out of the water,” I heard Réal say as he and the others took turns dumping more water onto Petit Fou’s huge body.

  The rest of the night passed in much the same way. Half-asleep, half-awake, we kept an eye on Petit Fou, getting up every twenty minutes or so to relieve the others. What sleep we got was interrupted by Petit Fou’s occasional bleating, and by the whooshing sound of the other humpbacks coming up for air.

  The whir of a helicopter told us it was a new day. Uncle Jean’s eyes were small and red; his clothes, rumpled. “This is Chantal Youville,” he said, introducing the pilot, who also turned out to be the veterinarian.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Dr. Youville said, without bothering to look at any of us as she rushed out of the helicopter. She reached int
o the back of the helicopter for her backpack and sprinted down the beach toward Petit Fou. Uncle Jean followed, stopping only to rumple my hair as he passed.

  We crowded around Dr. Youville as she examined Petit Fou. “Looks like his tail was caught in a motor. Pierre,” she said, gesturing toward me, “get the syringe from my backpack. It’s already loaded with antibiotics.”

  I’ll never complain about needles again, I thought as I passed her the biggest syringe I’d ever seen.

  “It’s mostly used for horses,” Dr. Youville explained as she waded out into the water, holding the syringe like a machine gun.

  “Will it hurt?” Rosalie asked.

  “I doubt it,” Dr. Youville replied. “And once the antibiotics take effect, Petit Fou should be able to heal without developing an infection. If he’s strong enough to swim— provided that doesn’t take too long—he may survive. The water is the best place for a whale to heal.”

  I winced as she injected the antibiotics into the whale’s belly. The others who’d been standing around all took a step back as the syringe pierced Petit Fou’s flesh. I tried to imagine the antibiotics working their way into Petit Fou’s system, penetrating the blubber and then traveling to all of his organs—and, of course, to his damaged tail.

  But there wasn’t time for imagining. Rosalie nudged my arm. “How are we going to catch Leblanc?” she whispered.

  Chapter Eleven

  Why do girls always order salad? I knew better than to ask Rosalie, especially since I wasn’t in the mood for some lecture about vitamins and fiber.

  “I’ll have a burger and fries,” I told the lady when it was my turn to order. The fries were way better at the chip wagon, but that was on the outskirts of town. There was nothing special about the food at the clubhouse cafeteria, but you couldn’t beat its location—smack in the middle of the dock in downtown Tadoussac.

  I scanned the room and led Rosalie to a small table by the window. As I put down my tray, I nodded at the group of men sitting nearby, playing cards. Outside, tourists were lining up for the giant tour boats. Strange to think that just three days ago we’d pulled up here in our kayaks after the overnight trip.