“Dude,” Corey called out. “Just be cool, Oliver. You don’t need to get jealous. I think you’re R-A-D, rad!”
“I’m not jealous!” yelled Oliver.
“Stop being a baby then!” Celia yelled back at him. She couldn’t believe her brother was acting like this. Just because she was three minutes and forty-two seconds older than he was did not give him the right to be so childish, not after she dove underwater and had a sea cucumber puke on her.
“I am not being a baby!” Oliver yelled, giving the wheel a spin in the other direction, which knocked everyone off their feet once more as the boat heaved to the other side and the boom raced back across the deck. “I’m trying to help!”
“Some help!” yelled Celia. “You’re more dangerous behind that wheel than a giant squid!”
“Celia!” yelled Dr. Navel. “That’s not nice! You cannot insult your brother just because he’s not as good of a sailor as you.”
“I am as good a sailor!” Oliver yelled. “I was trying to save you!”
“Save us?” said Dr. Navel. “What are you talking about? Save us from what? Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly!” he yelled. “But fine! If you don’t believe me, I won’t save you!”
He caught the wheel and stopped it spinning, straightening the sailboat out away from the fishing boats of the Orang Laut.
“It’s okay,” Oliver called to Big Bart, who was crouched in the entrance to the cabin trying to protect Dennis the rooster from all the ropes slashing to and fro. “I’ve had enough of them. They think I’m a baby. I want to join you guys, like on KidSwap. I’m a good sailor. I can be one of you.”
“What are you talking about?” Big Bart played innocent.
“I heard everything,” said Oliver. “How you want to take us hostage and ransom Corey Brandt and all that. It’s fine with me. I want to join you. I need a new family anyway. Mine doesn’t appreciate me.”
“Oliver,” asked Celia. “Did you fall asleep in the sun and bake your brains?”
“You doing all right, pal?” Corey asked sympathetically. “You’re talking kind of C-R-A-Z-Y, crazy.”
“Stop spelling!” Oliver yelled. “It’s bad enough you stole my sister from me. I don’t want to get a spelling lesson from you too!”
“That’s not nice, Oliver,” said Dr. Navel. “No one is stealing your sister. No one is stealing anything.”
“I’m afraid that’s not entirely true,” said Big Bart, standing up to his full height and setting Dennis down on the deck. “Someone is stealing this boat.”
“Who?” asked Dr. Navel, looking urgently toward the horizon.
Dennis the rooster clucked and cocked his head from side to side. Bonnie stepped up behind Celia and grabbed her, pinning her arms behind her back.
“Us,” said Big Bart. “Just like Oliver said.”
Twitchy Bart slid down the mast and stood face-to-face with Corey Brandt, holding up a big bowie knife and touching its point gently to the teardrop freckle under Corey’s eye.
“You should have ended up with Lauren on Sunset High,” he said.
“Don’t hurt him!” said Oliver. “I’ll join you and help … but just don’t hurt anybody.”
“Oliver.” Dr. Navel slumped back against the railing. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing what I have to do to keep you safe,” said Oliver.
“Oliver, son, listen. You can’t trust—”
Big Bart walked over to Dr. Navel, towering above him with his fist raised.
“No!” Oliver shouted, and stood between Big Bart and his father. He was too small to actually block an attack, but he puffed his chest up and tried to look brave. Big Bart stopped and smiled.
“Brave kid,” he said.
“Oliver, let me handle this,” said Dr. Navel. He stepped around Oliver toward Big Bart, but his foot slipped on the wet deck and he knocked into the wheel. The boat spun to the side and the boom swung again. Everyone ducked, just as Dr. Navel stood up straight. “Now, Bart, surely we can negotiate some—”
The boom knocked him right on the side of the head, sending him sprawling flat on his back, unconscious.
“That was easier than I thought it’d be,” said Big Bart.
“Yeah.” Oliver sighed. “Dad gets knocked out a lot. But now you don’t need to hurt anyone.”
“You can’t join them, Oliver,” Celia yelled as she struggled against Bonnie’s grip. “They’re pirates!”
“Not really,” said Oliver. “Pirates have peg legs and eye patches and parrots.”
“I have Dennis,” said Big Bart. “He’s a bird.”
“He’s a chicken!” Oliver objected.
“He’s a pirate chicken,” Big Bart corrected. “And, technically, he is a rooster. That’s a male chicken. So he’s a pirate rooster. And I am a pirate captain.”
“But real pirates say arrr!” Oliver said.
“No,” said Big Bart. “They don’t.”
“I think Oliver’s right,” said Celia. “They say arrr!”
“No,” said Bonnie. “We don’t.”
“You do,” said Celia.
“We don’t,” said Bonnie.
“You do,” said Celia.
“We don’t,” said Bonnie.
“Do you say ouch?” said Celia.
“What?” said Bonnie, confused.
“Ouch,” Celia repeated, and stomped on Bonnie’s foot. She wriggled out of Bonnie’s grip.
“Ouch!” Bonnie yelled as Celia slipped away. But Bonnie was quick. She snapped her wrist and her knife whistled through the air and caught the waistband of Celia’s pants before sticking into the mast, pinning her in place by the cloth and yanking her back.
“Ouch,” said Celia. “You’re not supposed to give a girl a wedgie!”
“Who says?” Bonnie laughed.
“Everyone! It’s a rule!” Celia struggled to pull away. “I thought these pants were wedgie proof!”
“Me too.” Corey’s shoulders slumped. He was very disappointed in his Pocketed Pants’ wedgie-proofing performance.
“I could have sliced you in half if I’d wanted,” said Bonnie as she pulled the knife out of the waistband and grabbed Celia by the arms again. “So be happy it was just a wedgie.”
“Bonnie is a bit touchy about the whole ‘arrr’ thing,” said Big Bart. “She comes from a long line of pirates and she’s very sensitive about their embarrassing history.”
“I am not sensitive!” Bonnie waved her knife around, far too close to Celia’s face for comfort. “Great-great-great-great-grandmother Anne was one of the greatest buccaneers in history and she should not be mocked with peg legs and parrots and all those nasty arrrs.”
“Anne Bonny was your grandmother?” Celia was shocked.
“My great-great-great-great-grandmother,” said Bonnie.
“How do you know about Anne Bonny?” asked Oliver.
“John and Anne in Love, the made-for-TV movie about Anne Bonny and her pirate lover, Captain John Rackham.”
Oliver wrinkled his nose. He hated when his sister watched movies where people used the word lover. All that kissing. It could even ruin a pirate story.
“Everybody hold on a second!” Corey yelled at the top of his lungs, stepping back from the point of Twitchy Bart’s knife. He looked from Bart to Bart to Bonnie to Dr. Navel crumpled on the deck of the boat. He lowered his voice. “Does this mean that you three aren’t really Corey Brandt fans either? Did you”—he gulped—“lie on my fan website?”
They all laughed loudly, which was answer enough for Corey. He slumped against the mast, surrendering. “I can’t believe I gave you free Pocketed Pants.”
“They are quite comfortable, if it makes you feel better,” said Big Bart.
“Enough talking,” said Bonnie. “Let’s throw these Navels overboard and take Mr. Brandt back for ransom, like we voted.”
“Wait!” said Oliver. “I want to join you! You can’t throw us overbo
ard.”
“Well, you can’t join us,” Bonnie snapped at him. “We don’t take on kids. Especially not brats like you.”
“I am not a brat.” Oliver pouted.
“No, son, you’re not.” Big Bart patted him on the shoulder. “The problem is, you see, it’ll cost us more than you’re worth in ransom to give you food and water. Piracy is our business. It’s not a hobby. We’re in it for the money.”
“If I was with you, though, I could help!”
“But your sister and your father would still be a problem, Oliver,” Big Bart said. “You see?”
“We could both join,” Celia suggested. “And we can help you find this island … that’s worth a lot! Sir Edmund would pay a fortune to know where it is!”
“Sir Edmund?” Big Bart asked.
“He’s this, like, evil billionaire,” Oliver explained.
Big Bart tapped his finger on his lips, considering.
“We took a vote,” Bonnie said. “We voted to take Corey Brandt hostage. You are bound by that vote. It’s the Pirates’ Code. If the captain starts breaking the rules, then where will we be? Chaos! Anarchy!”
“That’s right.” Twitchy Bart nodded. “Without our code, we’d be no better than common criminals!”
“All right, I hear you two,” said Big Bart. “But I won’t be throwing these Navels overboard either. They may yet prove their worth.”
Celia exhaled with relief. She and Oliver made eye contact, but neither one of them could tell what the other was thinking. So much had happened between them and they’d never felt farther apart.
“So what now?” Corey asked.
“Well,” said Big Bart, “we’ll tie you up in the cabin and take you back to the Princess.”
“The Princess?” Celia wondered, thinking about the myth of the Orang Laut.
“Oh, you’ll see.” Big Bart laughed.
Although they couldn’t tell each other, both Oliver and Celia had the same feeling that if this were a television show, now was the moment ominous music would start.
None of the pirates noticed the tiny sail still following them on the horizon.
19
WE PRACTICE PIRACY
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU got us into this!” whispered Celia, lying on the bunk next to her brother. Her arms were tied to her sides and her legs were tied to each other with thick rope, so she felt more like a sea cucumber than a girl.
“Bwak,” said Dennis, who was perched on a shelf just above her head, keeping a beady little bird eye on the twins.
“I got us into this?” said Oliver, lying next to his sister and looking up at the business end of the chicken’s behind. He was tied up the same way as Celia, unable to move, and he was hoping that the chicken had eaten a light lunch. “I tried to save us from the pirates!”
“By turning the boat in circles?”
“Yes!”
“That was your entire plan?”
“Well, I didn’t have any help coming up with it.”
“I was busy almost drowning because of a sea cucumber!”
“That never would have happened if you weren’t trying to impress Corey!”
“Hey, guys,” said Corey from the floor, where he was tied back-to-back with Dr. Navel. “Don’t argue, okay? You’re, like, brother and sister. You shouldn’t be fighting about me.”
“I’d love to dance, grandmother, but not with that bear,” their father mumbled, still unconscious.
The door in front of him that led to the galley was closed and locked.
“We have to get out of here,” Corey said. “Pirates are not good news. It’s not like in the movies where they sing and dance.”
“What movie is that supposed to be?” Oliver scoffed.
Corey ignored him. “Are you guys wearing the Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants I gave you?”
“Yeah,” said Celia.
“Yeah,” said Oliver.
“Great,” he said. “They’re designed with a special feature just for situations like this.”
“I hope it works better than the wedgie-proof waistband,” said Oliver.
“It does,” he said. The twins heard a zipping sound and a rustling of fabric and then some more zipping and suddenly Corey was standing up, free of the ropes. “Swiss Army zippers.” He smiled. “They double as cutting knives along the edges, tiny magnifying glasses in the hole, and data storage if you plug them into a computer.”
“Wow,” said Oliver. “These are nice pants.”
Corey showed the twins how to use the pants to escape, and soon they were all free, standing up in the little cabin. Dr. Navel was still out cold.
“So what do we do now?” said Oliver. “How are we going to retake our ship?”
They all thought for a little while, as the boat splashed through the waves.
“Don’t you know martial arts from Agent Zero?” asked Oliver.
“It’s all choreographed on TV,” said Corey. “Like a dance.”
“And real pirates don’t dance,” Oliver thought.
“We could pretend to have stomachaches,” Celia suggested.
“And then what?” Corey asked.
“I dunno,” said Celia. “On TV, prisoners always pretend to have stomachaches so they can escape.”
They thought some more.
“Bwak,” said Dennis quietly. “Bwak-bwak-bwak.”
“I’ve got it!” said Celia. “We can beat them at their own game.”
“We can?” asked Oliver.
“You wanted to be a pirate?” Celia looked at her brother. “Well, now’s your chance. We’re taking a hostage on the high seas!”
“We are?” asked Oliver.
“Bwak!” said Dennis.
All eyes turned to the pudgy, flightless bird. “Bwak-bwak,” it said again and then cocked its head from side to side.
Sometimes even a chicken knows when it’s in trouble.
20
WE PLAY CHICKEN
BIG BART RESTED HIS FEET on the transom of the boat and was steering with one hand. Bonnie adjusted the winches to tighten the sails, getting a few extra knots of speed. Twitchy Bart was nowhere to be seen, which meant he was probably up the mast again. It turned out that the pirates were actually very good sailors, better than Corey and the Navels had been.
“How do we do this?” Celia whispered, peering out the crack of the door to their bunk.
“We need to make demands,” said Corey.
“Why do I have to hold the chicken?” said Oliver, who was struggling to keep Dennis quiet under his arm. He didn’t think it was fair that he always got stuck with the animals on their adventures, but Celia said he had the most talent for it and Corey needed to keep his hands free in case the pirates tried anything sneaky.
Oliver had thought about tying up the chicken just like they had been tied up, but it was way too hard to do. The octopus and the tiger shark were easier to wrangle than the chicken.
“Bwa … bwa … bwak,” the chicken squawked.
“Hush,” Oliver commanded it, and, much to his surprise, the chicken hushed.
“So what’ll you tell the others when we get back to the Princess?” Bonnie asked Big Bart.
“Tell the others about what, Bonnie?” he answered.
“About our extra hostages, the Navels.”
“I’ll tell them there’s a billionaire who might pay ransom for ’em,” said Big Bart.
“You believe that?” Bonnie asked. “Some snot-nosed kids say they know an evil billionaire, and you believe it? I think they were just mouthing off to save their own skin.”
“You’re not the motherly type, are you, Bonnie?”
She snorted.
“Well,” said Big Bart, “I theorize that this young lad and that young lass have a mother. Perhaps she’ll be interested in paying their ransom.”
Oliver and Celia glanced at each other at the mention of their mother.
Usually, when things got dangerous, their mother had a way of sh
owing up to help out, or to explain things, or to save the day, like the whole adventure was her idea all along.
But this was the open ocean and these were vicious pirates. Who knew where their mother even was? Oliver wondered if they’d find her disguised as a pirate, ready to rescue them the moment they showed up.
“We’re on our own,” Celia whispered, as if she could read his mind.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” Oliver wondered.
“I’m your sister. I just know,” said Celia.
“You guys ready?” Corey asked. He looked over at Oliver and Celia, gave them his famous wink and smile, kicked the door to their bunk wide open, and strode out onto the deck of the boat. “Nobody move!” he shouted. “Or the chicken gets it!”
“Bwak!” squawked Dennis, squeezed snugly in Oliver’s grip.
“Go ahead!” Oliver said, lifting the frantic chicken in the air. “Make my day!”
He’d always wanted to say that.
Dennis’s little clawed feet ran in the air, as if he might just fly away if only he could get a running start.
“Don’t you hurt Dennis,” yelled Big Bart. “Or I’ll cut you from your gizzard to your gullet.”
The threat would have been terrifying if any of them had the slightest idea what it meant.
“We’ll give you your chicken back,” said Corey. “If you surrender control of this vessel back to us, like, now.”
“Look around, kid.” Big Bart laughed. “We’re on the ocean. There’s no one here to help you. Give up and no one will get hurt.”
“Your friends want to throw my friends overboard,” Corey said. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Bwak,” said Dennis.
“Okay, kids, you got the jump on Big Bart, that’s true.” Big Bart sighed. He looked at Oliver. “If you still want to join us, you can. Just bring Dennis over to me. Back on our ship, we’ve got satellite television and all the movies and TV shows you could ever watch. We even have the Agent Zero Christmas special.”
“Hey!” Corey objected. “That was never supposed to be released!”
“What can I say?” Big Bart shrugged. “We downloaded it illegally.”
We Give a Squid a Wedgie Page 10
