We Give a Squid a Wedgie

by C. Alexander London

  “Don’t drown on your trip, weirdo.” Greg laughed. He didn’t care that Oliver knew Corey Brandt or had famous explorers for parents. He just liked being mean.

  The rest of the boys, however, were eager to hear about the trip.

  “Will you be the first mate? Or the bosun?” asked one of the Gomez brothers.

  “What’s a bosun?” asked the other Gomez brother.

  They were identical twins. Oliver didn’t know which was which. Talking to them reminded him that he missed talking to his sister.

  He just shrugged.

  “Dude,” one of the Gomezes said to Oliver as they were climbing neighboring ropes in gym class. “Do you think you’ll have to climb like this on the sailboat? Like a pirate? What if you meet pirates? Do you think they’ll make you walk the plank?”

  “I heard that pirates don’t do that,” said the other Gomez, climbing the rope on the other side of Oliver. “They just kill you and take your loot.”

  Oliver grunted. He had to focus on climbing the rope. Why did they make children climb ropes? It seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.

  “Do you think you’ll see sharks?” the Gomezes asked together.

  Oliver grunted again. But he wondered, what about pirates? What about sharks? And what if they found the island of sea monsters and the map? Would they also find their mother?

  The other kids were so excited about the voyage that Celia never even got a chance to talk to ­Oliver.

  “OMG!” Stephanie squealed. “I read on ­Brandtblog.com that Corey Brandt is hiring the ­entire crew for your trip from fans on his website!”

  “Do you think he’ll hire us?” asked Annie. “We could totally go with you!”

  Celia didn’t answer.

  This was an unsettling idea.

  “I heard that you have to go to the bathroom in a bucket off the side of the boat,” one of the Gomezes told Oliver a half hour later, as they sat down in the lunchroom in front of heaping piles of Tater Tots.

  “I heard you don’t even get a bucket,” said the other Gomez, biting into his grilled cheese sandwich. “And you have to use old gum wrappers for toilet paper.”

  “No way!” said his brother as he drowned his lunch in ketchup. “They’re too small. Maybe you have to use, like, seaweed or something.”

  “Like when Corey Brandt got that rash on The Celebrity Adventurist?” the other one added. He gestured at Oliver with a Tater Tot. “Do you think you’ll get a rash?”

  The way he asked made a rash sound like a good thing.

  “Oliver is a rash,” Greg Angstura butted in, smashing his fist down on Oliver’s plate and squashing Oliver’s Tater Tots into a potatoey mush.

  “You’re just jealous because Oliver’s going somewhere cool and exciting and the only place you ever go is baseball camp!” the other boys objected.

  “You all go to baseball camp with me!” Greg yelled back at them and the whole group fell into an argument about baseball camp and the relative coolness of Oliver Navel over Greg Angstura.

  Oliver finished his lunch silently while they argued about him. It wasn’t really important that he speak. Anything he said would probably just undermine their point about him being cool. He didn’t feel cool. He just felt lonely.

  And it was all Corey Brandt’s fault.

  While the boys argued about Oliver, he decided that he would get back at Corey and Celia. Then she could see what life would be like without her twin brother. Then she’d be in trouble. He had a great idea.

  “What’d you say, loser?” Greg Angstura was suddenly in his face.

  “What?” said Oliver.

  “You were muttering to yourself, weirdo.”

  “Was not,” said Oliver.

  “Leave him alone,” said the Gomez brothers.

  Greg shook his head and stomped away to find somebody else to bully.

  “Hey, Oliver.” One of the Gomezes turned to him. “You really were muttering, you know?”

  “Really?” Oliver said. “What’d I say?”

  “Just one word, and you kinda smiled all ­creepylike when you said it,” said the other Gomez.

  “What word did I say?” Oliver asked.

  “Sabotage,” they told him.

  “Yeah,” said Oliver, nodding. “I guess I did.”

  9

  WE CAN’T STAND SABOTAGE

  THE DAY OF THEIR DEPARTURE had arrived and the fight between Oliver and Celia had taken on a life of its own. Removed from the original cause, the argument turned into a game of wills—whoever apologized first was the loser.

  Oliver didn’t want to admit that he missed his sister and that, really, sailing around the ocean with Corey Brandt was going to be kind of cool, if only Celia would stop acting weird around him. And he really wanted to find their mother.

  Celia didn’t want to admit that she had been a jerk, betraying her brother just to impress Corey Brandt.

  Also, the television was still broken. It was almost impossible to watch, the static was so loud.

  Dr. Navel arranged for Professor Rasmali-Greenberg to look after Beverly the lizard and ­Patrick the monkey while they were gone. It was kind of a relief not to have to take care of two wild animals. Oliver and Celia were not really animal people. They liked them better on TV. In real life, wild animals smelled.

  They flew to Hawaii to meet Corey, where he was preparing his boat for their voyage. He greeted them at the dock, dressed for the sea with a striped shirt and a captain’s hat and flared white pants with all kinds of zippered pockets.

  “You like ’em?” he asked. “These are from my new line of clothing, Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants! They’re made right here in Honolulu!”

  “Great,” said Celia. She was pretty sure that giant white pants were not the best look for TweenTV’s “Coolest Teen in the World,” but he looked so excited about them.

  “I brought you all a pair in different colors!” He tossed a pair of pants—in impossibly bright orange and red and green—to each of them.

  “The crew won’t fly in from Los Angeles until tomorrow morning,” Corey explained. “There were some problems picking the fans through my website. Like, hackers and stuff. I don’t know about computers, but I think it’s all sorted out now, and it means we have an extra day to practice sailing before we head out.”

  “Excellent,” their father cheered. “Let’s get to it!”

  Oliver made sure to complain loudly as the boat eased out of the boat slip. Vacationers in plush bathrobes and supermodels in little swimsuits gathered on the decks of their yachts to look down on the Navels and the famous teenager as they set out.

  “Okay, trim the mizzen sail!” their father called out to Oliver. They had studied all the parts of the boat, and Oliver knew that the mizzen sail was the one at the back of the boat.

  He quickly rushed to the front of the boat and started tugging on the line that held the Explorers Club flag.

  “That’s not even a sail!” Dr. Navel shouted. He slapped his forehead in exasperation. “You knew this yesterday! Aft! Aft!”

  Oliver knew that aft was what sailors called the back of the boat. Why they couldn’t just say “the back of the boat” was anyone’s guess. Sailors, like explorers, doctors, and librarians, liked to have their own words for things. It helped them tell who was really a sailor and who was just pretending to be.

  “What’s aft?” Oliver pretended not to know.

  “Let me help him, Dad,” said Celia, pulling the rope that tightened the mizzen sail. The boat picked up speed.

  “Good job, Celia!” said their father.

  “Good job, Celia,” Oliver muttered under his breath mockingly.

  “Why don’t you take the helm, Oliver?” suggested Dr. Navel.

  “Sure!” Oliver rushed to the steering wheel, grabbed hold, and smiled widely at his sister. “Like this?” Oliver asked, and gave the wheel a big spin with all his strength.

  The boat heaved around, the sails snapped and billowed in
the wind; the lines tangled and whipped around the deck and the boat spun out of control—heading straight for a Russian billionaire’s luxury yacht.

  The ruddy-faced billionaire on deck started waving his arms and shouting in a frantic tone. His overdressed girlfriend shrieked. We don’t need to speak Russian to understand that their admonishments were not particularly polite.

  “Wait! Not like that!” Dr. Navel leaped across the deck to catch the wheel and turn them away from the yacht before they crashed. Once he got the boat pointed in the right direction, Corey and Celia had to struggle to get all the ropes untangled again.

  “You’re doing this on purpose,” Celia whispered to her brother.

  “Who says?” Oliver snapped back at her.

  “I do!” said Celia. “You know all this stuff. I know you do.”

  Oliver stuck out his tongue at her and turned away.

  “Okay,” Dr. Navel called out. “Oliver, you’ll get the hang of it! Let’s review! What do you do when you’re on watch?”

  “Um.” Oliver made a big show of thinking hard. “You watch.”

  “Yes,” their father prompted. “But what do you watch?”

  “Agent Zero?” he suggested.

  Corey gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Be serious,” their father scolded. “Our safety at sea counts on you. What do you look out for when it’s your turn on the watch?”

  “Um … ,” Oliver tried again. He knew the right answer, of course. He couldn’t forget it after all the episodes of Porpoise Pirates he’d seen. The watch had to look out for big ships in the distance. A tanker ship could go from a speck on the horizon to right on top of them in less than twenty minutes and they wouldn’t even see a small sailboat as they ran over it.

  Plus there were whales to worry about. You wouldn’t want to crash into a whale in a little ­fiberglass sailboat. You’d be split to pieces and shipwrecked for certain.

  Oliver looked over at Corey, who nodded encouragingly. Celia, standing next to him, was shooting laser beams at Oliver with her eyes.

  “When it’s your turn on the watch, you look out for … ?” Dr. Navel prompted Oliver again.

  “The time?” said Oliver.

  “What? The time? No!” Their father slapped his forehead again. It was red from all the slapping. “Not that kind of watch!”

  It went like that for hours as they sailed up and down the coast. Oliver ran from end to end on the boat, tangling ropes and dropping sails and steering them in the wrong direction, all while answering every question he was asked as wrong as he could think of, even when the right answer was obvious.

  It was hard work making sure nothing worked at all. Sabotage turned out to be even harder than sailing the right way.

  “Dude,” Corey whispered to Oliver as he was catching his breath. He patted Oliver on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It’s hard to remember all these different sailing words. You’ll get the hang of it soon, just like your sister.”

  Celia gave Oliver an exaggerated smile.

  “Bro,” Corey added. “You’re kinda green.”

  Oliver wasn’t feeling well. The rocking and rising and falling of the boat was turning his stomach inside out.

  “Don’t you dare,” whispered his sister.

  “I’m not doing it on purpose,” said Oliver.

  “That reminds me of this episode of The Celebrity Adventurist where I was in Madagascar,” said Corey. “I had to eat these cookies with grasshoppers in them. It was G-R-O-S-S, gross!”

  “Oh no,” said Oliver. “I remember those—­chocolate chirp cookies!”

  His face went from kinda green to dark slime green, his stomach heaved, and he leaned over the side of the boat. The sound of Oliver hurling up his lunch carried all the way back to the yachts docked at the marina.

  “I think we’ll call it a day,” said Dr. Navel.

  Celia and Corey agreed.

  As they tied up the boat, Dr. Navel took Oliver aside and knelt down to talk to him.

  “Listen, son,” he said. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Some people are natural-born sailors—­like your sister—and some just aren’t.” Oliver clenched his fists and tensed his jaw. “But as long as you do your best, we’ll be just fine. I believe in you, okay?”

  “Sure,” Oliver grumbled.

  “No,” said his father. “Look me in the eyes. I. Believe. In. You.”

  Oliver realized that his dad was never going to give up on him, no matter what he did. Oliver couldn’t let his father down and he couldn’t let Corey think that he was a doofus and Celia was, like, a genius. He used to think Corey Brandt was the most awesome guy in the world. He was a ­superspy and an action hero and a reality TV star all in one. But around Corey, Celia turned into an alien.

  How could someone that cool make his sister so uncool?

  He had to accept that sabotage would never work. And anyway, it was way too hard.

  “All right, Dad,” he said. “I’ll try harder. I ­promise.”

  Dr. Navel rubbed Oliver’s hair and finished tying up the boat. Oliver came up next to Celia as they walked down the pier.

  “You win,” he said.

  “I do?” said Celia.

  “Yeah.” Oliver grunted. “I’ll go on this stupid adventure to find this stupid Squid Island. I won’t try to mess it up anymore.”

  “See?” said Celia. “It wasn’t so hard to realize I was right, was it? I heard that girls mature faster than boys, so you know, I knew you’d come around eventually.”

  “It’s not for you,” said Oliver. “It’s for Mom.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I’m glad you’re not being stupid anymore.”

  “You still owe me an apology.”

  “For what?”

  “If you don’t know, then I’m not telling you.”

  “Oliver.” Celia groaned. “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “Humph,” he said, and sped up.

  Celia sped up behind him.

  “Hey, guys, why are you walking so fast?” Corey called, but he was mobbed by a group of fans who recognized the teardrop freckle under his eye and the famous swoop of his hair.

  “See you later.” Dr. Navel smiled, running to catch up with the twins, who were almost racing each other now.

  As the Navel family ran along, wrapped up in their personal dramas, a young woman followed them at a discreet distance, making notes in a small notebook. If they had paid any attention to her, they might have noticed that she looked a lot like a young Vivian St. Claire, a classic actress from the 1950s who had played sassy reporters and fast-talking society dames. They would have also noticed that the young woman had a light layer of prickly beard stubble on her face.

  It wasn’t his favorite disguise, but Ernest the celebrity impersonator had to make due with what he had. He couldn’t very well be the Rajasthani fire dancer again and his Corey Brandt getup was no good anymore. He’d sworn never to wear it again anyway, out of spite for the teen star.

  Sir Edmund and his Council wanted to know everything the Navels were up to, and Ernest took diligent notes. He didn’t know what the Council’s plan was, but they had promised him the perfect reward for his efforts: revenge.

  10

  WE’RE IN SHIP SHAPE

  THE GET IT OVER WITH sliced across the waves heading from Hawaii toward Indonesia. ­Corey’s boat was a forty-eight-foot ketch, which meant that it had two masts—a mainmast and mizzenmast—and another sail at the front called a jib.

  There was enough cabin space for six private bunks, a small lounge, and a galley, which is what sailors call the kitchen. In the galley, there was a couch and, much to Oliver and Celia’s relief, a working television set.

  Corey had allowed the twins to name the boat when they set off, and they had chosen Get It Over With. Corey liked the name because he thought the twins were being ironic.

  They weren’t.

  They really did want to get this whole adventure over with. They set sail early on th
e morning after their training day, as soon as the deckhands arrived.

  There were three deckhands, and they had applied for the job through Corey Brandt’s fan website. That struck both the twins as pretty odd, because none of them looked much like Corey Brandt fans.

  There was a twitchy little guy named Bart. He spent most of his time climbing up and down the tall mainmast, adjusting lines, and looking out to the horizon.

  “Watching for pirate ships,” he said. “They come up on you fast.”

  There was the cook, also named Bart, who was the size of two normal grown-ups combined. They called the cook Big Bart and the other one Twitchy Bart.

  Big Bart had tattoos of all kinds of birds covering both his arms and he’d brought a chicken on board with him.

  “Why do you have a chicken?” wondered Oliver.­

  “He’s a rooster,” the cook explained. “And don’t get any ideas. He’s not for eating. This guy’s my friend. His name’s Dennis, but don’t bother calling him that. He doesn’t know he has a name. He’s just a rooster after all.”

  “Does he do anything? Like tricks?” Oliver asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “That’s why I like him. He doesn’t fly, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t do anything at all.”

  Oliver had to admit he kind of liked Dennis too. That was his idea of the perfect life.

  The last deckhand was a young woman. She didn’t say much, except that her name was Bonnie and that she came from a long line of sailors and she’d seen everything Corey had ever done, even the Tooth Blaster cereal commercial he’d made when he was little.

  “What’d you think of the Sunset High ­reunion?” Celia asked.

  “It was okay,” said Bonnie. She went back to coiling ropes without another word.

  “How about The Celebrity Adventurist last season?” Celia tried.

  “Uh-uh,” said Bonnie without looking up.

  Celia wondered what good it was to have Corey Brandt fans on the crew if none of them would talk about it. Normally she would have talked to her brother about Corey Brandt, but he was still being grumpy with her.