We Give a Squid a Wedgie

by C. Alexander London

  “My rooster, Dennis!” he repeated. The men cocked their heads at him and furrowed their brows. “My chicken!”

  “Oh, right!” The pirates nodded. “The chicken.” They set off to scour the island.

  The volcano rumbled suddenly and a plume of ash and smoke rose into the sky. The earth shook.

  “And be quick about it!” Big Bart called after his men.

  As the others led Ernest and Sir Edmund’s thug and Corey away toward the beach, Big Bart whispered to Oliver.

  “Don’t look so blue,” he said. “At least you’ll get to see your father again.”

  “He’s alive?” Oliver felt some relief.

  “Oh yes.” Big Bart laughed. “When we left him he was just kind of … hanging out.”

  Oliver didn’t know what was so funny about his father “hanging out.”

  And Big Bart didn’t know that Dr. Navel was, at that very moment, storming the bridge of the cruise ship wearing a bright-pink bathrobe stitched with the logo of Princess Cruise Lines.

  37

  WE BOTHER BLOBFISH

  BONNIE HAD A BIG LUMP on her head and a sour expression on her face as she helped Sir ­Edmund’s henchman carry Claire Navel toward the pool of water by the old squid-headed statues. Sir Edmund and Celia walked side by side in front of them.

  “No way,” said Celia, after Sir Edmund explained what he wanted her to do. Her mother’s plan had fallen apart, and now she had fallen into his clutches.

  “You don’t have a choice, Celia,” he answered her. “Not if you want to save your mother from the same fate as her old friend Chris Stickles. There’s no hospital for her around here. That poison will drive her completely crazy soon.”

  “She was completely crazy before.” Celia acted tough. “So your threat doesn’t scare me.”

  “I could, of course, just feed her to my kraken.” He shrugged.

  “You don’t have a kraken,” said Celia. “They aren’t even real.”

  “Oh, mine is quite real,” said Sir Edmund. “And he is quite ornery. That means bad tempered.”

  “I know what ornery means,” Celia snapped at him.

  “Of course you do.” He clasped his hands behind his back.

  “The kraken,” Claire Navel muttered. “Call the kraken …” She started whistling to herself.

  “See, your mother is already going insane. She’s whistling to a giant squid.”

  Celia watched her mother whistling. Her eyes were glassy and her head lolled around limp on her neck.

  “So will you cooperate?” Sir Edmund demanded.­

  “I’m too young to scuba dive,” said Celia.

  “As you so kindly remind us all the time, you are almost twelve years old,” said Sir Edmund. “That is exactly the right age to start.”

  “What if I can’t find what you’re after?”

  “Well, in that case,” Sir Edmund sighed, “I would hate to be you.”

  Just then, the island rumbled with a violent earthquake. They struggled to stay on their feet. The volcano belched a cloud of thick black ash and the island fell quiet again. The last of the seabirds took flight and disappeared into the sky.

  “Fine,” said Celia, realizing that she had no choice. The whole plan was in shambles. She didn’t know what had happened to Oliver and Corey, but she and her mother were prisoners and they had no way to help her father. But if she got Plato’s map for Sir Edmund, maybe he would help them.

  They reached the hole in the ground between the weird squid-headed statues. It looked like little more than a deep puddle.

  One of Sir Edmund’s men was already there waiting for them. He had scuba gear set up and ready for Celia to put on. She dipped her toe in the water and realized why her mother had sent those wet suits long ago. Even though they were in the hot Pacific Ocean, the water was cold.

  She pulled her wet suit out of the backpack and squeezed into it over her clothes. Next she put on her flippers and the big vest with the heavy air tank attached. Sir Edmund’s man had to hold her upright. She felt like a penguin waddling around. Last, she put on the big face mask with a microphone in it and a headlamp on top. The tank on her back was pulling her over in the wrong direction. The heavy weights on her belt, to keep her from floating up too high, pressed uncomfortably on her hips. She couldn’t believe that people actually went scuba diving for fun. Just getting dressed in the equipment felt like medieval torture.

  “You look almost like a real explorer,” Sir ­Edmund said. “I am sure your parents would be so proud if they could see you. Too bad they can’t.”

  Celia’s words were muffled by the sound of her air tank turning on and the thick seal of the mask, but Sir Edmund understood well enough what she said. We won’t repeat it here.

  “Don’t you dare come back empty-handed,” Sir Edmund told her as he gave her a watertight bag to tuck into her vest and helped her sit on the edge of the hole, dangling her legs into the water.

  “I also suggest that you stay near the edge as you go down.”

  Celia shrugged to signal that she didn’t understand why. The edge looked dark and craggy with black volcanic rock. The center of the pool was calm and blue and clear. You could see all the way down to a soft sandy bottom.

  Sir Edmund stooped and picked up a rock. He threw it into the center of the water. It sank slowly. For a second, everything looked fine. Suddenly a column of bubbles burst out from the middle of the sand at the bottom of the pool, surrounding the stone and rising, sizzling, to the surface. In just a few seconds the bubbles stopped and the stone was gone.

  “It’s connected to the volcano,” Sir Edmund said. “It would melt a little girl even faster than a stone.”

  Celia nodded that she understood.

  “Enjoy your dive!” Bonnie laughed as she shoved Celia off the edge with her heel and Celia slid into the water. She turned in the water, gripping the wall to stay close, and gave Bonnie one long glare before she sank below the surface.

  The heavy, dry air from her tank filled her mask and she found that she could almost breathe normally. Water trickled into her wet suit with a cold gurgle, soaking her completely, but quickly warming with her body heat. She sank slowly with her belly pressed against the side wall to stay as far from the center of the pool as possible. Her light bounced off the jagged black rocks in front of her, and as she got deeper she felt her ears popping with the pressure. The wall smoothed as she got lower, and in under a minute, she was on the soft sand at the bottom, looking directly into the open mouth of a low, dark cave.

  The bubbles that came out every time she exhaled tickled her ears, and she stood still for a while, listening to the hiss of air filling her face mask when she inhaled and the roar of bubbles escaping when she exhaled. This felt a lot different than the dive she did with Jabir, when she only had on goggles and had to hold her breath. This time she felt more like an astronaut on another world than a swimmer.

  As her fins kicked up the loose sand along the bottom, she saw a universal remote control, just like the one they’d brought with them. She bent down to pick it up and saw that it wasn’t just like their remote control. It was their remote control. She recognized the orange stains from cheese puff dust, which not even salt water could wash away.

  She rolled her eyes. Oliver must have dropped it down here while he was off wandering the island and getting stuck in that trap. He was so clumsy that way. He’d probably been too embarrassed to tell her. She shoved the remote into the pocket of her dive vest.

  “Are you still alive?” Sir Edmund’s voice blasted through a speaker by her ear.

  “Yes,” she said, surprised that she could talk almost normally with the mask on. This reminded her of the time in Peru when Sir Edmund made them go into the ruins at Machu Picchu. Back then, her brother was with her. Back then, he could go first.

  Not this time. She hoped he was okay. She hoped he’d be okay if she didn’t make it out of this cave. He wouldn’t make a very good only child.

 
“I’m going in,” she said.

  She exhaled and kicked forward into the long cave, gliding deeper into the darkness with every stroke of her fins. She turned her head from side to side, scanning the walls with her light. So far, all she saw was smooth black rock. She caught a glimpse of a long green eel with razor-sharp teeth, floating like a ribbon in the breeze, but the ­moment her light caught it, it darted away into a small hole in the wall and was gone. As she swam past its hole, her light glistened red off the two watchful eyes of the lurking eel.

  Her breathing quickened, but she told herself to stay calm. Her family’s fate was in her hands. At least if she lived through this, Corey would be impressed. He couldn’t possibly think of her as a little kid then.

  The long cave opened up into a big chamber, so big she couldn’t even see the walls in any direction. The beam of light from her headlamp shot out into the dark and faded to nothing. She spun around and looked up and down and side to side. It was like she wasn’t even in water. It felt more like flying.

  She kicked her way forward through the dark and saw something strange down below her. She realized that it was easier to rise up when she inhaled because her lungs were full of air, and easier to go down when she exhaled because her lungs were empty. So she breathed out and kicked down toward the strange shapes looming on the edge of the darkness—they were a line of those same statues of squid men. Beside them were the petrified trunks of trees, their leaves long gone, but she could clearly see by their branches that they had once been palm trees, as if this whole cave had once been above water.

  Strange translucent fish and spiny crabs scuttled out of the path of her light. Her fin kicks disturbed a lazy blobfish, drifting just above the floor. It seemed to ooze away backward into the darkness.­

  Celia looked up into the grim face of the squid men, now towering above her in the dark. Her light cast strange shadows as she swam between two rows of them toward an opening into another chamber. She felt like a knight entering a castle in one of Oliver’s sword-fighting movies. Out of the corner of her eye shapes darted between the statues, vanishing as soon as her light hit them. She imagined sharks and eels and giant squid lurking just beyond the beam of her light.

  She thought she saw a giant tentacle wrapping around the base of one of the statues, but when she flashed her light on it, there was nothing there. A giant shadow moved in the dark behind her. She whipped her light around, but again there was nothing to see.

  She suddenly felt more like a girl in a horror movie wandering through a haunted house in her pajamas. Everyone watching knew she was doomed, but she kept going anyway, driven by that horror movie rule that says, “No matter how bad an idea it is, you have to go into the creepiest and darkest room possible.”

  She felt suddenly colder, but not because the temperature had changed. She missed her brother. She felt safe when he was around, when they were a team. She regretted how she’d treated him, just to impress Corey Brandt. He’d acted like a baby, but it was no excuse. She was older by three minutes and forty-two seconds. She was supposed to be more mature. She vowed to apologize to him for real if she ever saw him again.

  “Where are you?” Sir Edmund’s voice blasted in her ear. “You better not have drowned.”

  “I’m here,” Celia said. “I’m going through a big stone archway.”

  She swam forward, leaving the statues behind and entering a new room. Her light hit a black wall of volcanic rock a few feet in front of her. She looked up and saw her bubbles rising in a long column, up, up, and up until they broke on the surface.

  The surface.

  She swam gently upward, hoping with every kick that she wasn’t about to set off a booby trap or wake a sleeping sea monster.

  Her head broke through into a large cavern with a roof of rock and spiky stalactites. Crushed up against the rock on the far side of the cave, she saw a sight that took her breath away: a grand wooden ship lying on its side, its sails torn and tattered, its hull broken open.

  She swam over to it and hoisted herself onto its tilted deck. She sat along the rail, what sailors called the gunwale, and pulled her fins off.

  “I found a ship,” she said into her mask. “I’m getting out of the water.”

  “Keep your microphone on!” Sir Edmund spluttered, but Celia took the mask off and couldn’t hear him anymore. She wriggled out of her vest and left all her scuba equipment on the deck. Then, in a chilly wet suit, she climbed up toward the bridge of the ship where the captain would have sat, hoping she’d find what Sir Edmund was after.

  Hoping she could save her family with it.

  When she reached the captain’s chair, she gasped. She turned and ran back down again, grabbed her mask, and panted into the microphone without putting it back on.

  “I found him,” she said. “I found P.F.”

  “Does he have it?” Sir Edmund sounded gleeful even through the static of the wet speaker. “Does he have Plato’s map?”

  “I didn’t look,” Celia said.

  “Well, get up there and look for it, right now!”

  Celia dropped the mask again and trudged back up to the chair, dreading what she would see: a skeleton in a ragged khaki outfit and pith helmet, like old-time explorers wore, clutching a leather journal to his chest.

  He was surrounded by old tools and empty cans of food. His feet rested against a wooden steamer trunk. Celia didn’t need to look at the brass plate on the top of it to know that it belonged to P.F., the explorer who had found the Lost Library before anyone else and then vanished. This was his final resting place.

  38

  WE GO TO WEDGIE WAR

  “SOMETHING’S WRONG,” Big Bart said as he stepped onto the forward deck of the Princess cruise ship. “I left the Somali guy and the Norwegian guy out here.”

  “I’m the Somali guy!” one of the scar-faced pirates complained. “My name’s Yusef! We’ve sailed together for five years!”

  “And there is no Norwegian guy,” said the other scar-faced pirate. “He’s Swedish.”

  “I can’t keep track of all of your countries,” Big Bart groaned. “I’m not the United Nations.”

  The Malaysian said something in Malaysian and all the pirates but Big Bart laughed.

  “Oh, if you think Twitch would be a better captain, by all means, say so,” Big Bart bellowed, grabbing the handle of his knife. The other pirates stopped laughing. “I thought so,” said Big Bart. He turned to Oliver and Corey and bent down.

  “The pirate’s life is no pleasure cruise,” he said gravely. “There are a lot of languages to learn.”

  Big Bart’s men dumped Ernest and Sir Edmund’s henchman, both bound and gagged, onto the deck with two loud thuds. The pirate named Yusef bent down and snatched the plastic parrot off Ernest’s shoulder, then he knocked Ernest’s fancy hat into the ocean.

  “Hey,” Ernest whined, but Yusef put his boot on Ernest’s neck. “I didn’t want to dress like a pirate anymore anyway,” he wheezed from underneath the boot.

  Big Bart stood back up and called out for Twitchy Bart. He called out for the Swede. There was no answer. In fact, the ship was silent. Oliver noticed Big Bart’s lips pursing in alarm.

  For those of you who have never been on a pirate ship, I can assure you that they are not usually quiet places. Parties go all night with loud music and singing and shouting. Shouting often turns to yelling. Yelling often turns to fighting. And fighting sometimes turns to singing again. Everyone turns their televisions up too loud.

  “Let Oliver go!” someone shouted from above. Oliver looked up to see his father standing outside the door to the bridge, where the captain and his officers steered the ship. He was holding Twitchy Bart in front of him by the elastic band on the ­pirate’s underpants.

  “Ow!” said Twitchy Bart.

  Dr. Navel gave his wedgie a tug. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

  Oliver wondered why his father was wearing a fuzzy pink robe, but he was so happy to see him again that he didn’t mak
e any sarcastic comments.

  “Hey, Dr. Navel!” Corey called out.

  “Hi, Corey!” Dr. Navel called back. “Release Corey too, or I’ll give your friend the Tiger Wedgie of Doom.”

  “No one can perform the Tiger Wedgie of Doom!” Big Bart shouted.

  “I learned it from the Shaolin monks in China,” said Dr. Navel. “They performed it on me almost every day.”

  The other pirates gasped.

  “You kidnap my chicken, you escape, and now you wedgie my first mate!” Big Bart said. “I am very fed up with the Navel family.”

  He snatched Oliver by the back of his pants and lifted him off the ground with one hand. The wedgie was instantaneous.

  “Ow! Leggo!” Oliver kicked and squirmed, but Big Bart didn’t so much as bend his arm.

  “I could toss Oliver overboard this second,” Big Bart called to Dr. Navel. “I don’t imagine he could survive the fall.”

  “Why is everyone always trying to kill me?” Oliver yelled. “I just want to be left alone and watch TV!”

  “Don’t worry, Oliver,” his father shouted. “I’ll get you home!”

  “Let go of Twitch,” said Big Bart, “and I might spare your son.”

  “Let go of Oliver first,” said Dr. Navel.

  “Do it, Cap’n,” said Twitchy Bart. “I can’t take much more o’ this wedgie!”

  “It looks like we’ve got a Bulgarian standoff,” said Big Bart. “Wedgie to wedgie.”

  “Guess so,” said Dr. Navel.

  “Where’s the rest of my crew?”

  “They’re hanging out in the banquet hall,” said Dr. Navel. “Just like you left me.”

  “How did you—” Big Bart was astonished.

  “I learned a lot from those Shaolin monks,” said Dr. Navel. “In between wedgies they taught me martial arts.”

  Oliver was impressed with his father for maybe the first time ever. Or at least he would have been impressed if he didn’t feel like his underwear was climbing into his lungs.

  “You have one problem, Dr. Navel,” said Big Bart.