The Pennypackers Go on Vacation

by Lisa Doan

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Gunter said quietly. “You have to spit in the mask and rub it around or else it will fog up. She didn’t even say how to clear water from a snorkel after you dive down.”

  Charlie snorted. “Spit in my mask? I’m not that gullible,” he said.

  Gunter shrugged and swam away. Charlie put his mask on his face and his snorkel in his mouth and pushed off the sand, lying facedown in the water. At first, he didn’t see anything except the crisscross pattern of light dancing on the bottom. He slowly drifted over a rocky formation and saw some small blue and orange fish hanging around it. The fish began to fade into a gray cloud as his mask fogged up. He stood up and took it off.

  Looking around, all he saw were people floating facedown like they had all died in a shipwreck. Except for Olive, who was up to her knees in water while his mom watched from a beach chair. His sister appeared to have unpacked some sandwiches from the cooler. She was deconstructing them and throwing bread and meat into the water. It was like she was feeding the ducks, without any ducks.

  Gunter was farther out than anybody else, diving down and then coming back up again and blowing water out of his snorkel like he was a breaching whale. And like the show-off he always was.

  Charlie made sure Gunter wasn’t looking, then spit in his mask, rubbed it around, and rinsed it out. Putting his head back in the water, the fog was gone. Not that he would tell Gunter that.

  As Charlie floated on his stomach and stared at the ocean floor, one of the rocks moved. He kept still, watching. It moved again. Charlie brushed away a piece of ham floating past his mask. The shape of what was moving became clear, like one of those pictures where first you see one image and then you see another and wonder why you didn’t see the second one right away. A mottled white-and-brown octopus was tucked into a crevice with just one eye showing and three arms full of suction cups draped around the rocks.

  It gave him a baleful stare.

  Charlie had the sudden urge to show Gunter. It would be cool to point out something he had found that nobody else had seen. It would be especially cool to show it to Gunter, who thought he was such a snorkeling expert.

  Just as he was about to call Gunter, Charlie stopped himself. If he showed the octopus to him, Gunter might think Charlie was trying to be friends like they used to be. Which Charlie would never do. He had a new best friend. His name was Kyle Kendreth and he was an excellent friend. Kyle and his amazing mom were nothing like the Hwangs. Kyle’s mom thought everything Charlie and Kyle did was fantastic. She said it was a toss-up which one of them would end up being president of the United States. One time, Charlie had even come home from a sleepover at Kyle’s with a participation trophy. He was named MVP for not breaking anything expensive. Kyle didn’t make fun of the Pennypackers’ fake vacations. Kyle’s mom called Mr. Pennypacker’s ideas “highly original.”

  As Charlie circled his octopus, a scream split the air like an ear-piercing siren. He yanked his head out of the water. Something thrashed in the shallow water in front of Olive. The water roiled and sprayed up into the air like the sea had turned into a washing machine. Olive stood frozen, staring at the maelstrom.

  Two tall gray fins with black tips emerged. They looked like … shark fins.

  Chapter Six

  Olive threw the sandwiches left in her hand into the churning water in front of her. Mrs. Pennypacker launched herself out of her chair as if she were aboard a rocket-propelled missile. She yanked Olive out of the sea.

  Cinderalla saw the shark fins and began to sink, waving her arms around like she was a drowning seaman flagging down a passing ship. Gunter swam over to her and held her up. Mickey Mouser, who had been sunbathing on shore next to the dinghy, pushed it into the water, jumped in, and started the engine.

  Cinderalla gripped Gunter’s hair in both hands and screamed, “Get me out of the water!”

  Gunter shook her and shouted, “Don’t flail around! You’re kicking up the sand and clouding up the water. Those sharks will think you’re a dying fish and won’t be able to see they’re wrong. By the time they figure out their mistake you’ll be bleeding to death.”

  Charlie looked around. The sharks had disappeared. Where did they go?

  Though he was generally against any opinion of Gunter’s, Charlie worried about the sand he was kicking up while trying to walk out of the water in his fins. He carefully slipped them off and let go of them. The swim fins drifted on the surface of the water behind him while Charlie slowly moved toward shore, trying not to seem like a dying fish.

  “They’re after the meat Olive threw in the water,” Gunter shouted.

  Charlie looked around him. He was surrounded by cold cuts. Slices of ham, roast beef, turkey, and chunks of tuna salad floated by.

  Mrs. Pennypacker, still carrying Olive, had run down the beach and now stood directly in front of Charlie. “Get out, Charlie!” she screamed.

  “I’m trying not to kick up the sand, mom,” Charlie shouted back. He moved slowly and deliberately to shore while scanning the surface of the water all around him. The sharks were there somewhere, he just couldn’t see where.

  He heard an explosive splash behind him and turned his head. One of his swim fins had disappeared. Seconds later, it reappeared, a perfect half circle of teeth marks taken out of the blue rubber.

  Charlie lost his nerve and flailed and crawled the rest of the way out of the water. Mrs. Pennypacker grabbed him into a viselike grip.

  Gunter dragged Cinderalla onto the beach. Two black-tipped shark fins broke the surface twenty yards offshore. Charlie watched his other swim fin disappear and then pop back up, rejected. Blobs of cold cuts vanished in a feeding frenzy. The sharks were following the meat as it slowly drifted out to sea.

  Mickey Mouser had accomplished nothing, other than driving the dinghy in circles and nearly running over the twins before beaching it again.

  Once everybody was safely out of the water, the twins screeched at each other in Cucuchara. Charlie couldn’t understand it, but he thought the gist of it was that they now hated snorkeling, Cinderalla, sharks, Mickey Mouser, and the dinghy.

  Cinderalla had to be laid down on a towel. She had Mickey Mouser by the hair and shook him. “What if they come back?” she asked. “How far up the beach could they get? Should we all climb trees?”

  Mickey Mouser unpeeled her fingers from his hair and shouted, “Everybody stand back while I perform CPR!”

  Cinderalla slapped his leg. “How could I be talking if my heart stopped beating, you idiot.”

  Mickey Mouser considered this very valid point and said, “Revised! Everybody stand back while I don’t perform CPR. Get me the first aid kit—this victim needs oxygen, stat!”

  Charlie ran to the dinghy to get the large green box with a red cross on it. It was heavy, and he had to drag it across the sand to Mickey. Mickey threw it open and attached the tubing and mask to the tank and cranked the valve open. He stared at the pressure gauge, then said, “Revised! The tank is empty, so stand back while I apply rescue breathing!”

  “Get away from me, you creepster,” Cinderalla said. “Go get my cigarettes.”

  “Somebody go get Cinderalla’s cigarettes! Stat!”

  Claire flipped her braids over her shoulder and said, “Hashtag: Jaws here.”

  Then everybody turned to Olive.

  Gunter said, “You were chumming the water, you little maniac. You could have gotten us all killed.”

  “I was feeding the fish because I love them,” Olive said, her tone full of the defiance she generally trotted out when she was accused of something she knew she did.

  “You were feeding sharks,” Gunter said.

  “Now, hold on,” Mrs. Pennypacker said. “You can’t blame Olive. She’s only six.”

  “Yeah,” Olive said, her face brightening. “I’m only six. I can’t be blamed.”

  All eyes turned to Mrs. Pennypacker, who Charlie had to admit was indeed the responsible party.

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nbsp; “Sorry, mommy,” Olive said. “I’m only six so you’re gonna get blamed.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Pennypacker said. “I was just trying to relax. Yes, I saw her throw a couple of sandwiches into the water, but so what? It didn’t seem dangerous. If any of you had a six-year-old, you would know that any activity that grabs their attention, short of setting a fire, climbing on the roof, or attempting to drive the car, can afford a very much-needed break.”

  Cinderalla was still prone on her towel and was now blowing smoke rings into the air. “Really?” she said between coughs. “Just because she wasn’t driving, it seemed like a good idea?”

  “Well, maybe, Cinderalla,” Mrs. Pennypacker said, “you should have put don’t throw sandwiches into the water into your not very extensive briefing.”

  Mickey Mouser said, “Listen here everybody, I have executed my safety officer duties to the letter, and there have been no casualties. So congratulations to me and there’s no use playing the blame game. The sharks are gone—following a trail of lunch meat out to sea. Hopefully, they have not learned to associate people with delicious cold cuts. Little Olive has learned her lesson and will never again throw lunch into the water or complain about her egg sandwich at breakfast.”

  “I can complain if I want to,” Olive whispered.

  Despite Mickey’s assurances that the sharks were gone, nobody had the nerve to go back into the water. There might have been the opportunity to have a picnic on the beach, but it turned out that Olive had thrown away more sandwiches than Mrs. Pennypacker had realized. Mickey took the two that were left and cut them into a mouthful for each person.

  As Charlie chewed his morsel of ham on white bread, Gunter sidled over and said, “I saw you spit in your mask so it wouldn’t fog up, just like I told you,” he said.

  “I didn’t spit in my mask,” Charlie answered. He was not sure why he lied about it, since it was about the stupidest thing in the world to deny something somebody saw you do. When he was little, he used to think he could convince people to un-see what they saw, if he just kept denying it. It hadn’t worked when he had stood in front of his mom, his fists full of crayons, denying he’d drawn a rainbow on the wall. He had even tried to pin it on Olive, though she was still an infant and couldn’t sit up yet. According to Gunter’s expression, it didn’t seem like denying reality worked any better now than it had then.

  “Yeah, you did,” Gunter said. “You took my advice and spit in the mask.”

  “Well,” Charlie said, “that was only so I could get a better look at the octopus I found.”

  “You did not find an octopus,” Gunter said.

  “Yes, I did,” Charlie answered.

  “Well, I saw a whale,” Gunter said, looking over Charlie’s head.

  Charlie was well aware that when Gunter couldn’t meet his eye he was lying. He also knew Gunter would go to his grave before he admitted it.

  “That’s nice,” Charlie said.

  * * *

  As he waited for his turn to get on the dinghy back to the boat, Charlie poked around the beach looking for shells, gold doubloons, or the bones of a long-dead pirate.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw some movement in the palm trees. He looked, but there was nothing. He noticed it again a few minutes later while he was kneeling and looking at some driftwood. He kept his head down and slowly turned his eyes toward the movement. A pair of eyes and the outline of a dark suit peeked from behind a palm tree.

  Charlie froze. It was one of the men who had been chasing the van. How was that possible? Why were they here? How did they even get here? They had to have a boat hidden on another side of the island.

  It was one thing to chase the captain down a dock in Miami. But somehow, they had followed the captain to this remote location in the Bahamas. What did they want? What could be so important that they would go to so much trouble?

  Charlie got a sinking feeling. Whatever they were after, it was serious. Nobody followed a person this far over some little misunderstanding.

  Charlie glanced at Gunter. His next-door neighbor was applying Band-Aids to the cuts and scrapes on Cinderalla’s legs from when she had been thrashing around near coral. Gunter hadn’t seen the man.

  Charlie casually stood up and wandered toward the tree line, pretending he was still looking for shells. He peeked up and saw a patch of dark material disappear behind a tree.

  Charlie sped up. The man turned and ran.

  Charlie broke into a sprint. A hundred yards ahead, the man was leaping from behind tree to tree.

  “Hey,” Charlie called. “I can see you. Who are you? What do you want?”

  The man didn’t answer, but now that he knew he was spotted he stopped trying to hide. Charlie watched as the man in the dark suit, legs pumping, ran deeper into the jungle and disappeared.

  Charlie thought about following him, but scenarios rolled through his head of being lost in the jungle and the dinghy leaving without him, and then his dad trying to bargain down the price of a rescue operation. He could see his dad sticking with steely resolve to a bargain-basement fee while Charlie lived on coconuts and drew large SOS signs in the sand for a few months.

  He turned back and nearly ran into Gunter.

  “What are you doing here?” Charlie asked. “You’re supposed to be bandaging up Cinderalla.”

  “I couldn’t take the secondhand smoke,” Gunter said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing,” Charlie answered.

  Gunter folded his arms. “Nothing but following one of those guys in suits,” Gunter said.

  “So what if I was?” Charlie said, brushing by him and heading back toward the beach.

  “The captain is in deep,” Gunter said.

  “Deep into what?” Charlie asked over his shoulder.

  Gunter didn’t answer. Charlie was certain that Gunter didn’t know any better than he did.

  As Charlie came to the edge of the tree line, he spotted a piece of paper lying on the sand. He casually bent over, scooped it up, and put it in his pocket.

  “What is it?” Gunter said, catching up to him. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” Charlie said. “I just don’t like to see trash lying around a tropical paradise.”

  “Give it up, Pennypacker,” Gunter said. “You know I will haunt you until you show it to me. I’ll follow you everywhere. I’ll tell your mom you were mean to Olive. I’ll tell your dad you’ve been ordering expensive movies on his credit card. I’ll break in and search your cabin. I’ll tell the twins you’ve been begging to learn Cucuchara. I’ll tell Olive that you’ve ruined things between her and Jimmy Jenkins. I’ll tell Claire that you’re planning to sneak up behind her and cut her hair. Hashtag: she’ll strangle you.”

  Charlie did not doubt that Gunter would do all those things, and probably some things he hadn’t bothered to mention. He sighed. “I get to read it first.”

  Gunter shrugged. Charlie pulled out the scrap of paper. All it said was:

  Take MANTHI with you.

  The boss.

  It had to have fallen out of the man’s pocket. A piece of paper would not last twenty-four hours in this environment. It was some kind of clue, but what did it mean?

  Gunter grabbed the note and read it, then nodded knowingly.

  “Don’t even try,” Charlie said. “You have no idea what it means.”

  Gunter handed Charlie the note back. “Maybe not, but I’ll figure it out before you do.”

  Charlie didn’t answer. Whatever there was to figure out, he had to do it before Gunter did. His dad could not get wind of any of this.

  * * *

  After everyone had been safely transferred back to the ship, Captain Wisner came on the loudspeaker. “Well, well, folks, I guess you have a story to take home with you, courtesy of Wisney Cruises. Ha ha. But seriously, any cruise line in the world might have run into a similar situation. Assuming there is a six-year-old who keeps throwing meat into shark-infested waters. C
ould’ve happened to anybody who was six and had access to cold cuts and was not being properly supervised, but everybody’s back on board with all their original body parts, so lesson learned. Now folks, kick back and enjoy the afternoon. We will soon be underway. We will overnight in Nassau where you will feel free to disembark and experience first-rate dining and exciting nightlife. There’s even a casino if you care to try your hand with Lady Luck. In the morning, we will be on our way to the heart of the Caribbean—first stop, Eleuthera. Over and out!”

  Charlie was lying on a deck chair next to his dad. “I don’t suppose we’ll be first-rate dining this evening,” he said.

  “First-rate burgers or chicken,” his dad answered.

  Charlie sighed. “Let me guess,” he said. “Burger King or KFC.”

  “And McDonald’s or Popeyes,” his dad said. “A virtual cornucopia of choice. I will only mention that I have coupons for a particular dining establishment that starts with an M.”

  “McDonald’s it is, then,” Charlie said. “And I suppose gambling is out?”

  Mr. Pennypacker snorted. “Son, if there was any possible way to double my money by throwing around some dice, I’d speed off this boat like the Road Runner. Nobody wins at a casino except the owners. Occasionally they let a little old lady win a hundred dollars, but then they rob her in the parking lot to get it back. That’s how they get you to believe you could win, too.”

  Gunter threw himself into the chair on the other side of Charlie. “I’m going to splurge tonight. I have twenty dollars,” Gunter said.

  Charlie cringed. Spending a lot on food was one of his dad’s chief gripes. As he always said, “In the end, what happens to all that expensive food? It goes right down the same toilet as all the cheap food.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Gunter,” Mr. Pennypacker said. “Do you really think I’d let you go off on your own? What if you didn’t come back? That would be thirty dollars a day down the drain.”