We Give a Squid a Wedgie

by C. Alexander London

  “Dad,” Celia asked. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “I’ve never been on a cruise ship before,” said their father. “I always thought the experience was artificial.”

  “Corey?” Celia tried.

  “I’ve just done private yachts. Never anything like this.”

  “Celia,” Oliver said. “What about Love at 30,000 Feet?”

  “It takes place on an airplane.”

  “Remember that season that was all the Duchess in Business Class’s dream? Love at 30 Knots?”

  “Oh, right!” said Celia. “They were all on a cruise ship, and it sank at the end of the season and the duchess woke up.”

  “So,” Oliver asked. “Where did they find the lifeboats?”

  Celia thought for a bit. “They didn’t.”

  “Oh,” said Oliver. Love at 30,000 Feet had gotten them out of so much trouble before, he never imagined it would let them down. He felt his hopes sinking.

  “Television does not have all the answers, children,” said Dr. Navel. “Sometimes you have to use your brains and your senses. You’d be amazed what you can figure out if you just look and listen to the world around you.”

  “Ugh,” said Oliver. “Another explorer lecture.”

  “It’s not a lecture. I’m just saying that sometimes the answer you’re looking for is out in the world, not on the television. You have to—”

  “Wait!” said Celia. “Listen! Do you hear that?”

  They listened.

  “That’s television static,” said Oliver.

  “Guys,” Corey said. “I kind of agree with your father. Now might not be the time for TV.”

  “This way!” said Celia, and she raced down a side corridor with Oliver close on her heels. Corey and Dr. Navel followed and they found themselves suddenly on an open deck filled with lifeboats attached to cranes and beyond them, the roar of the ocean.

  “How did you figure that out?” asked Dr. Navel.

  “Television static!” said Celia. “I listened for a sound like the static on our broken television. The TV static always sounded like the ocean, so I figured the ocean would sound like TV static.”

  Oliver gave her a high five. Dr. Navel cocked his head to the side and opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I think Dad’s nonplussed,” whispered Oliver, who was glad he hadn’t forgotten that word.

  “No,” said Dr. Navel. “I’m not baffled. I’m impressed. Good job!” He hugged both his kids. “Now climb into this boat,” he said, pulling the cover off of one of the boats. “I’ll work the crane to get you out and then I’ll jump aboard when it starts lowering toward the ocean. Put on the life jackets. They should be in there.”

  “Maybe I should work the crane, Dr. N,” Corey suggested. “You should stay with your children.”

  “Corey.” Dr. Navel put his hand on the teen star’s shoulder. “You’re a good kid, but I am the adult here, and you need to get on the boat. Your parents and your agents and your managers would kill me if you came to any harm.”

  “But the pirates could kill you first.” Corey’s shoulders slumped. He liked to be the hero and didn’t like to be reminded that he was still a teenager.­

  “Don’t worry,” said Dr. Navel. “I’ll hop right on. I need you to look after Oliver and Celia. They’re the most important ones here, okay? I trust you.”

  “Okay,” Corey agreed. He liked being trusted by a famous explorer.

  He climbed aboard and Dr. Navel hit the button on the control box. The lifeboat lifted up off the deck and swung outward, hanging over the side of the cruise ship at least fifteen stories above the ocean. Water churned and sprayed off the ship’s side. Foam and mist rose nearly as high as the lifeboat, like they were floating on a cloud. Dr. Navel hit the button to release the raft.

  Nothing happened.

  He hit it again.

  Still nothing.

  “It’s stuck,” said Corey.

  “Okay,” said Dr. Navel. “Just hang on a second. I’ll fix it.”

  “Stop right there!” Big Bart shouted, bursting onto the lifeboat deck. A mass of pirates rushed onto the deck behind him, armed to the teeth. Some of them had even sharpened their teeth.

  Big Bart had shed his red velvet coat and gotten rid of his ceremonial sword. Now he held a machete in one hand and a very modern semiautomatic handgun in the other. He no longer looked like a pirate from a movie. He looked like a warlord from the news.

  “No, you stop right there!” Dr. Navel turned to the pirates. Oliver and Celia weren’t sure that yelling at a bloodthirsty warlord was the best idea at the moment. “Celia, show this man his chicken.”

  “Rooster,” whispered Oliver.

  “You’ll never see your rooster again if you don’t let us leave.” Dr. Navel puffed his chest out.

  Celia lifted Dennis up above her head as she and Oliver and Corey ducked low in the boat. The bird squirmed and flapped, but Celia was not going to let Dennis get away.

  Big Bart scratched the stubble on his cheek with the blade of his machete as he thought. Finally, he nodded.

  “Fine,” he said. “You leave me no choice.” The other pirates looked disappointed. A few of them pouted. “I’ll have to get a new chicken.”

  “Bwak!” Dennis squawked.

  The pirates cheered.

  Dennis stopped squirming. His wings settled against his side and his head hung down. Until that moment, neither Oliver nor Celia could have pictured a heartbroken chicken, but now it appeared that they were the proud owners of one. At least for the last few moments they would be alive.

  “Now I’m going to gut each and every one of you from gizzard to gullet!”

  “What does that even mean?” Oliver called out.

  “Cut you wide open,” Big Bart explained. Then he charged forward with a tidal wave of salty thugs behind him.

  Dr. Navel turned to his children in the boat and nodded. Oliver and Celia shook their heads vigorously.

  “Oliver, Celia. I love you,” Dr. Navel said. And then he kicked the lifeboat, tipping it over and dumping his children and Corey Brandt off the side of the cruise ship.

  25

  WE TAKE A SHORT SWIM

  “AHHHH!” THEY SCREAMED as they plummeted toward the churning water. They only caught a glimpse of their father as the pirates swarmed him. He was struggling to push his glasses back up his nose while the pirates tackled him.

  The twins fell past cabin windows where other pirates lounged watching TV, past on-board playgrounds and restaurants, past emergency doors and fire hatches, until they hit the ocean with a bone-crunching crash.

  Walls of water erupted around them. Celia lost her grip on Dennis, who flapped his useless wings a moment before settling back down on the surface of the water like a duck.

  They felt themselves spinning and turning and churning beneath the salty sea, knocked around in the wake of the cruise ship. First Celia, then Oliver, then Corey burst through the surface of the ocean gasping for air.

  “Everyone okay?” Corey shouted.

  “I guess so,” Oliver panted.

  “Everyone … except Dad,” said Celia.

  As the cruise ship sped off, they looked up at Big Bart leaning out from the lifeboat deck, waving his machete in the air, and the pirates on the other decks shouting and throwing garbage into the water. The ship sounded its horn, which was loud enough to rattle their bones, but it kept speeding away, growing smaller and smaller on the horizon with their father on board, his fate unknown.

  “Dad,” said Celia, treading water. “He … he sacrificed himself for us.”

  “He could be … you know … okay?” Oliver said.

  “Your father is a great man,” said Corey. “He saved our lives.”

  “Sort of,” said Celia. “But for how long?”

  They looked around. They were alone on the open ocean, bobbing up and down in the waves. The backpack was still on Celia’s back, getting ­wat
erlogged and heavy. She was struggling to keep her head above water.

  “Ah!” Oliver shouted.

  “What?” Celia yelled.

  “Something brushed my leg!”

  “A shark?”

  “No.” Oliver relaxed. “It was just my other leg. Sorry. False alarm.”

  “We shouldn’t stay out here too long,” said Corey. “The sharks will eventually come.”

  “Great,” said Celia. “So what do we do?”

  “Swim?” suggested Corey.

  “To where?”

  “How about that way?” Oliver pointed.

  “Why?” Celia asked. “Is there land that way?”

  “No,” Oliver told her. “There’s a boat.”

  Celia and Corey turned and saw a small wooden boat heading their way, and on board Celia saw the boy from the Orang Laut, Jabir, waving at them with a grin.

  “You have taken your chicken for a swim?” Jabir laughed as he helped Corey and the Navel twins on board his boat.

  “He’s a rooster,” said Oliver. “Are you an Orange Lord?”

  “Orang Laut,” said Jabir. “It means Sea People.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Jabir,” said Celia.

  Jabir blushed. Corey and Oliver raised their eyebrows, and Celia punched her brother’s arm.

  “Where to?” said Jabir.

  “We have to save your father,” said Corey.

  “I think we’ll need to pay his ransom,” said Celia, pulling the old brass compass from her pocket. “And I have an idea how.”

  26

  WE HAVE SOME FOLLOWERS

  “THEY’VE BEEN PICKED up by some ­fishermen at sea,” Janice said as she watched the twins board the small fishing canoe through her binoculars.­

  “What should we do?” Ernest wondered. “Follow them or the cruise ship with their father on it?”

  “We’ll keep following them. The fishermen might take them to the island,” Janice said.

  “And when we get there, I’ll get my revenge,” said a wet and weary-looking Bonnie. “Big Bart wants that island and he’ll have to go through me to get it.”

  “That island doesn’t belong to you,” Janice snapped at her. “We rescued you from the sea. We can toss you back in again.”

  “I’d like to see you try it,” said Bonnie.

  “Make me,” said Janice, who was quickly ­discovering that pirates did not make good guests aboard a small boat.

  “Ladies,” Ernest interrupted. He was quickly discovering that it wasn’t easy sailing with a grave robber and a pirate. “Should we call Sir Edmund and let him know what’s happening?”

  “Not yet,” said Janice. “We’ll let the twins lead us to the island first. Once we know where it is, we’ll call Edmund and get our reward.”

  “And then I’ll get my revenge,” said Bonnie. “With Sir Edmund’s reward money, I can buy off Big Bart’s whole crew and send him to the bottom of the Pacific, just like he tried to do to me.”

  “You aren’t a very forgiving person,” said ­Janice. “I like that.”

  She trimmed the sails and they continued following the small boat.

  27

  WE ARE NOT GOING

  ALL GOOGLY

  JABIR’S BOAT HAD two small sails at the front and back and moved low in the water. It wouldn’t be much use in a storm and wasn’t really made for traveling in the open ocean.

  “We don’t usually go this far from land,” said Jabir. “But I thought you guys might be in some trouble when I saw you sailing in circles.”

  “Your mother seemed angry when I left,” said Celia.

  “She wasn’t happy that I made up all that initiation stuff,” he said. “She still doesn’t know that I gave you that compass. I think I will probably get in big trouble. But it is worth it to help you.”

  “You’re doing all this for her?” Oliver scoffed. “Really?”

  “For all of you,” said Jabir, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “Ha!” Oliver exclaimed. “You’re going all googly for my sister!”

  “I am not,” said Jabir.

  “You are!”

  “I am not,” he repeated.

  “You are!”

  “He is not!” Celia interrupted.

  “Thanks for coming to the rescue, Jabir,” Corey said, cutting the argument off. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

  “I am your number one fan!” Jabir smiled.

  “Oh great, now he’s googly for Corey,” Oliver groaned. All three of them gave Oliver a long stare. He burst out laughing and shook his head. “I was kidding … sheesh.”

  They sailed all day and all night. They took turns sleeping and steering and watching out for giant killer squid as they got closer to the island. Oliver and Celia couldn’t really sleep. Every shadow beneath the waves made their blood run cold; every strange noise made them shudder with fear. Their imaginations conjured all sorts of sea monsters from the depths, but the night passed without seeing one.

  The next morning, land appeared in the distance, a green volcanic island ringed with a white sand beach. They couldn’t believe the boy had found his way there on the open ocean with just the broken needle of an old compass to guide him.

  “I read the waves and the birds and the clouds.” He shrugged. “They tell me where to go better than some little piece of brass.”

  He dropped the sails and rowed them to the shore.

  “I will have to go back to my mother,” he said. “She will worry if I do not come home soon. I have to bring her some fish or she won’t eat today. You understand?”

  “Family,” Oliver said. “We get it.”

  “Thank you, Jabir.” Celia took his hand and held it for a moment.

  After a long silence, Jabir climbed back into his boat, raised the sails, and sailed away.

  “Totally googly for you,” Oliver told his sister. She didn’t argue. “So what are we supposed to do now?” he asked.

  “Bwak,” Dennis said, running free up and down the beach, happy to be where chickens were meant to be: dry land.

  They watched Jabir’s boat vanish over the horizon.­

  “So this is the mysterious island,” observed Corey. “We didn’t see any giant squid on the way here.”

  “I told you the kraken isn’t real. Beast Busters is never wrong,” said Oliver. “So, you think Mom’s here?”

  “I dunno,” said Celia. “But I guess we better start looking.”

  28

  WE’RE MAROONED AND BLUE

  THE TWINS SLUMPED down on the sand. They had spent an hour walking up and down the beach calling their mother’s name. They received no reply. They needed a rest. They looked up at the sky.

  “It looks like a yak,” said Oliver.

  “No it doesn’t,” said Celia, shading her eyes with her hands.

  “Well, it changed.” Oliver squinted up at the sky. “It used to look like a yak.”

  “No,” his sister said. “It didn’t.”

  Being three minutes and forty-two seconds older than Oliver meant that Celia was closer to being a teenager than he was, which meant the she was the expert on exactly what shapes the clouds were, and it was very irritating that Oliver would disagree.

  “It looks like a herd of something,” she told him.

  “Yaks!” Oliver dug his toes underneath the mushy wet sand and kicked blobs of it into the surf. “A herd of yaks!”

  “Chickens,” said Celia definitively. “It looks like a herd of chickens.”

  “Chickens don’t go in herds. They go in flocks.”

  “Well, it’s gone now.” She tossed a clump of seaweed into the breaking surf. On the beach behind them Dennis hopped by, pecking uselessly at the sand. The sun burned white-hot above them. The last puffs of cloud disappeared beyond the horizon, ruining Oliver and Celia’s argument. There was nothing left to watch, just blue in all directions.

  The water was blue.

  The sky was blue.

>   They were feeling pretty blue.

  “So we’re marooned, huh?” said Oliver. He rested his cheeks on his knees and locked his hands under his legs. He exhaled slowly.

  “Yeah,” said Celia, scanning the horizon for any sign of Jabir’s boat coming back or the pirate ship or the small sailboat that had been following them. “We’re marooned.”

  “This stinks,” Oliver said. He pulled the untied bow tie out of his collar and threw it onto the beach next to him. His tuxedo shirt was filthy; his tuxedo pants were ripped at the knees. His shiny black shoes were long gone, and his tuxedo jacket was stretched out on a rock to dry. Oliver was learning what many an explorer before him had discovered: a tuxedo is a terrible outfit in which to be marooned on a desert island.

  “It’s not so bad.” Celia had ripped the frilly, lacy part of her ball gown off so she was just wearing a long skirt and a T-shirt. She looked almost comfortable. She glanced back toward the low bushes and palm trees at the edge of the beach, where Corey was setting up a small shelter out of washed-up garbage and palm tree leaves.

  “It’s not so bad?” Oliver stood. “It’s not so bad? How can you say that? We should be at home right now! We should be sitting on the couch watching Sharkapalooza, or The Squid Whisperer, or Beast Busters! But instead, I’m dressed in fancy clothes, stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because some Orange Lord was making googly eyes at my sister! And all my sister can do is make googly eyes at Corey Brandt!”

  “I do not make googly eyes at Corey Brandt!”

  “You do too!”

  “I do not!”

  “Do too!”

  “Do not!”

  “Do too!”

  “Do n—”

  “Please Remember What’s First!” Corey called out, interrupting them. “It’s a helpful mnemonic!”

  The twins stared blankly at him.

  “A mnemonic … a trick to remember something. Please for Protection, Remember for ­Rescue, What’s for Water, First for Food. If you remember Please Remember What’s First, you’ll remember what to do when you’re marooned on a desert island. I’m building us some protection!”