“What’s that?” Dr. Navel called.
“I don’t care if you wedgie Twitchy Bart right off this ship. I’m not giving up my hostages.”
“Hey!” Twitchy Bart objected. “No! How could you?”
“Sorry, Twitch,” said Big Bart. “It’s just business.”
“That ain’t right, Captain,” one of the men behind Big Bart said.
The Malaysian said something in Malaysian. The others agreed.
“Now, fellas, just a second.” Big Bart sounded shaken. “Don’t get crazy … I’d never let him do that to any of you … you guys are my favorites!” He started to reach for the knife in his belt with his free hand, but the Somali caught him tightly by the wrist and stopped him.
“What’s my name?” he asked.
“Why … it’s … I know it … just hold on.” Big Bart stammered as he struggled to free his wrist.
“It’s Yusef!” Oliver called out. “Your name is Yusef! And Big Bart would throw you overboard too, just like he did to Bonnie. Don’t trust him!”
“Why you little—” Big Bart started to yank Oliver’s wedgie, but the waistband broke away and Oliver crashed onto the deck just as the other pirates pounced on Big Bart.
“My wedgie-proof pants worked!” Corey was thrilled. He helped Oliver up and they climbed the metal ladder to Dr. Navel on the bridge while the pirates were fighting each other.
Dr. Navel hooked Twitchy Bart’s underpants on the railing hanging over the side of the ship and bent down to embrace his son.
“Don’t leave me like this, Navel!” Twitchy Bart yelled. “I swear I’ll get you if you leave me like this.”
“Thank you, Corey,” Dr. Navel said, without letting go of Oliver. “I thought I might never see him again.”
“No problem, Dr. Navel,” said Corey.
“Please, call me Ogden,” said Dr. Navel. He looked down and saw Big Bart holding one of the pirates in a headlock and keeping the others at bay with a knife. Yusef was trying to sneak up behind Big Bart with a big metal pipe. Ernest and Sir Edmund’s henchman were watching the scene wide-eyed, trying not to get stepped on in the scuffle. Dr. Navel looked toward land and saw the black smoke belching from the volcano. “We have to get back to that island and find Celia.”
“And Mom,” said Oliver.
“You found your mother?” Dr. Navel’s face flushed. “She was really on that island?”
“Yeah,” said Oliver. “She was waiting for us to come and rescue her, I guess.”
“She’s not … behind all this, is she?” Dr. Navel grimaced.
“Not this time,” said Oliver. “And I think she might be in trouble. She and Celia were supposed to save me and Corey from Sir Edmund’s thugs. They never showed up.”
“All right,” said Dr. Navel. “We’ll take the dinghy and leave these pirates to their fight.”
“Dad?” Oliver suggested. “Maybe you should get some clothes first.”
Dr. Navel nodded and looked back over at Twitchy Bart.
“Oh no!” said Twitchy Bart. “No way!”
Minutes later, Oliver, Corey, and Dr. Navel, who was now dressed in Twitchy Bart’s shirt and Pocketed Pants, crept along the deck, past the waterslide and the swimming pool. Big Bart was chasing the Malaysian on the other side of the deck with a knife in each hand, and Yusef was chasing Big Bart with his big metal pipe swinging.
As Oliver climbed onto the dinghy, he saw Ernest spit his gag out.
“Don’t leave us here,” he called out from where he was tied up. “Don’t you leave us here!”
“You tried to kill me!” Oliver yelled, and hopped into the boat.
Dr. Navel hit the button that lowered the dinghy slowly into the water and he jumped aboard.
“I’m happy you could come with us this time,” Oliver told his dad.
“Thanks for coming back to rescue me,” said Dr. Navel.
“But we didn’t,” Oliver answered. “They kidnapped us … it was an accident that we rescued you.”
“Shh.” Dr. Navel put his fingers to his lips and smiled. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember you being a hero.”
Oliver looked at Corey. Corey nodded. “H-E-R-O,” he said.
The boat settled in the water; Dr. Navel unhooked its chain and started the motor. They sped back toward the island, where the volcano rumbled and spat red-hot lava.
“Look,” said Oliver. “It’s erupting! Everyone’s running away.”
Sir Edmund’s men were rushing from the brush, sprinting across the beach, and clamoring onto their boats to flee. Janice, covered in mud, kicked one of the men out of the way as she flopped onto one of the boats.
Oliver didn’t see Sir Edmund, Bonnie, his mother, or Celia anywhere.
39
WE SCOLD A SKELETON
CELIA MOVED CLOSER to the explorer’s skeleton one squishy-wet footstep at a time. Even though his eye sockets were dark and empty, he looked like he was watching her approach, and grinning at her because she was afraid.
She thought about her brother and Corey and her mother in need of rescue and her father aboard the pirate ship. She didn’t want any of them to end up like this skeleton. She had to be brave. She took another squishy step.
“You’re not so scary,” she told the skeleton, trying to trick herself into being brave. “You look ridiculous in that hat.”
She marched right up to the skeleton and leaned in to look it right in the eyes. Or at least right where its eyes used to be.
“You hear that?” she said. “I’m not afraid of you. Now you have to help me save my family. Where’s Plato’s map?”
Celia pursed her lips and waited. Of course nothing happened; she knew nothing would happen. In fact, she felt pretty dumb scolding a skeleton the way she scolded Oliver. But feeling pretty dumb was better than feeling pretty terrified, so she stood up straight and slid the leather notebook out of the skeleton’s hand. Sometimes doing something silly could conquer being afraid.
“Excuse me,” she told the skeleton. “I suppose you don’t need this anymore.”
She opened it carefully, knowing from what her parents always told her that old books fell apart easily. The pages of this one were brittle and faded, but she could make out the writing in ink on the first page.
“Property of Colonel Percy H. Fawcett,” she read. “If found, destroy without reading.” Celia raised her eyebrow at him. “Sorry, Colonel Fawcett,” she said. “I don’t want to read it any more than you want me to. But I have as much choice as you do.”
His bone-faced grin smiled back at her. She guessed he was beyond caring.
She turned the pages. The writing was hard to make out in the light from her headlamp. She saw drawings of South American towns and of native tribes. She even recognized some of the plants and animals from her own trip into the Amazon.
And then she was startled to see detailed drawings of the temples at El Dorado, the very place she and her brother had been last summer, where they were supposed to find the Lost Library. His pencil writing all over the drawing was hard to make out; there were letters she knew to be ancient Greek and there was the symbol of the key from her mother’s secret society, and there was Sir Edmund’s Council’s scroll in chains. On the back of the page with the drawing, she read what Colonel Percy H. Fawcett had written.
“I do not regret what I’ve done. Though it cost me my son and his friend along with him, I bear this burden alone. Only my thoughts in this diary keep me company on this lonely outpost. Even the builders of this once great civilization are gone. I am alone on an island I know not where, just as I planned. For I did not escape the far reaches of the Amazon with my treasure only to turn it over to philistines.”
Celia didn’t know what a philistine was, but it didn’t sound like a good thing to be. She added it to her list of words to use against people she didn’t like.
“These memory keepers would make fools of the ancient sages and this council would bring destructi
on to all. It cannot fall into either hands. So I locked it in on itself; the Lost Library of Alexandria. Secure in Atlantis. And Atlantis secure within the Lost Library. Only the old Greek’s map will tell. And that shall perish with me.”
She couldn’t believe it. This old explorer had left the Amazon, where everyone thought he had vanished forever, only to hide the Lost Library and then come to this island and vanish forever.
And what was that about the memory keepers? Could he have meant the Mnemones? A mnemonic was a way to remember something. Did that mean he was hiding the Lost Library from the Mnemones and from Sir Edmund’s Council? Why? What difference would it make if someone made fools of the ancient sages?
From what Celia could tell, they did just fine making fools of themselves. If they were so sagey, why’d they lose their library in the first place? And how could the Council use the library to “bring destruction”?
It seemed like every time she discovered anything, it only led to more questions.
She stomped her foot, and the island rumbled in answer. Dust crumbled from the ceiling. Black chunks of rock crashed into the water. Then the cave shook from side to side, knocking Celia off her feet. She pulled herself up again using the old wheel of the ship. She tracked a droplet falling from the ceiling. Another followed it. When they hit the deck of the boat, they sizzled with steam and cut a perfect hole in the wood.
Lava was leaking through the roof.
Celia needed to find Plato’s map and get out of there, and fast!
She flung open the explorer’s trunk and saw all kinds of empty tins of food and strange instruments and odd devices. There was no diving gear, of course. Percy Fawcett vanished long before scuba diving was invented. He must have come to this place to hide when it was still aboveground, before the last volcanic eruption.
If she didn’t find Plato’s map soon, she would be entombed here too.
She tossed supplies out around her as she rummaged, muttering apologies to the old skeleton, to whom she’d already gotten used to talking, the way some people talked to pets or dolls or little brothers. She didn’t expect him to respond.
“Where is it?” she muttered. “Where’s that map?”
The trunk was empty. There was no papyrus scroll. No ancient Greek writing. No Plato’s map.
She ran around the ship, tearing open every nook and cranny. It was empty. Percy Fawcett had traveled here alone and traveled without much luggage. There was nowhere else to hide it.
She looked back at the skeleton and groaned.
“I’m glad Oliver’s not here,” she told the bones of the old explorer as she rummaged through his pockets. “He would flip out. He’s such a wuss. He’d be helpless without me, you know?”
She tugged and pulled at the old clothes, which seemed to come apart in her hands. All he had in his pockets was a worn-down pencil nub, a rusty compass that had lost its needle, and a faded black-and-white photograph of two young boys and a sad-faced woman. That must have been P.F.’s family.
“Ugh!” She yelled in frustration and threw the photo at him. “I am going to lose my family if I don’t find this map!”
The island rumbled. The water around the temple gurgled and bubbled. A giant stalactite broke from the ceiling and crashed into the water. She looked back at the old skeleton, deeply annoyed by his dumb skeleton smile. But that feeling—that annoyed feeling and that dumb smile—made her think of Oliver and she knew where to look.
“Gross!” She groaned. “Boys!”
She reached around behind him to the waistband of his pants, just where you’d grab to give the old skeleton a wedgie, and sure enough, she found a roll of old cloth tucked into the back of his pants. She pulled it out and unrolled it.
She knew it immediately. There was the ancient Greek writing, there was the drawing of the world with all the continents in the wrong places, and, strangely, there was the symbol of Sir Edmund’s Council, a scroll locked in chains.
But Plato’s map was older than the Lost Library, thought Celia. Why would his Council have existed before it did?
“This council would bring destruction to all,” Percy Fawcett had written. A library couldn’t bring destruction to all … but maybe Atlantis could. Celia found herself getting that seasick feeling.
If Sir Edmund got this map, he would “bring destruction to all.”
But if he didn’t get the map, he would definitely bring destruction to Celia’s family and to Corey Brandt.
“Oh man!” she said out loud, with big roll of her eyes. She didn’t know how she was going to do it yet, but she had no choice. She had to figure out how to save her family and then save the world.
She shined her light upward and saw steaming hot drops falling from cracks in the ceiling, like lava was fighting its way in from above. It was time to go.
“Good-bye, Colonel,” she told the bones of Percy Fawcett. “If I can, I’ll tell your family what happened to you.”
The skeleton stared back at her, unmoving and unmoved.
The room shook and another great chunk of black rock fell into the water with a splash.
Celia shoved Plato’s map and the leather diary into the plastic bag Sir Edmund had given her and tucked it into her wet suit. Then she struggled back into her scuba gear and slipped into the water.
“I’m coming back!” she said into the microphone as she sank below the surface, giving one last good-bye wave to poor, dead Percy Fawcett.
“It’s about time!” Sir Edmund’s voice crackled. “Bonnie was ready to leave you and your mother for dead. This whole island is going to blow!”
“I’m swimming as fast as I can!”
“Did you find it?” Sir Edmund said. “Did you find Plato’s map?”
“Affirmative,” said Celia, because that’s how people answered that sort of thing on TV.
“Did you find anything else down there?”
“Negative,” said Celia, thinking of how she would hide the journal before Sir Edmund saw it, because that’s what heroes do on TV, and Celia guessed it was time to be a hero.
Though no one but the blobfish and whatever else lurked in the shadows of the deep was there to see it, a heavy stream of bubbles rose from Celia’s mask, which proved that, indeed, it was possible to sigh underwater.
You see, Celia really didn’t feel like being a hero.
40
WE FOLLOW THE CHICKEN
THE LITTLE BOAT HADN’T even hit the beach when Oliver threw himself over the side and splashed through the low breakers, calling out for Celia. Waves piled on, knocking him over with every new step he took. He spat out salt water and seaweed, pulled himself up, and kept stumbling on through the surf.
“Celia!” he yelled. “Mom!”
The last of Sir Edmund’s men, ignoring Oliver completely, leaped into their own boats and sped off toward their ship.
The dinghy slid onto the sand behind Oliver. Dr. Navel lifted the motor so it didn’t get stuck, and he and Corey jumped off.
“Everyone’s, like, gone,” Corey said.
“No.” Oliver pointed. “There’s one boat left. That has to be Sir Edmund’s.”
The ground shook and knocked all of them off their feet. Trees toppled and a cloud of black ash blotted out the sky.
“We have to find them!” Oliver said as he stood back up and pulled seaweed out of his ears. “We’ll need to split up.”
“No,” Dr. Navel told him. “I almost lost you once. I am not doing that again. We stick together.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Corey. “We don’t even know where they are.”
“This way!” Oliver ran, not even looking to see if they were following him. They rushed through the tangled tropical forest until they reached the giant statues of the squid-headed men. One of them had cracked and another was leaning perilously to the side, like a pirate after too much rum. Below it was the watery entrance to the cave. Dennis pecked and clucked around the edge in a state of high anxiety.
>
“Bwak-bwak-bwak,” he said when he saw Oliver.
“They were here.” Oliver rushed over to the edge of the hole.
“Did the chicken tell you that?” his father asked, surprised that his son could speak to poultry.
“No,” said Oliver. “And he’s a rooster.”
Oliver bent down and picked the old remote control out of the grass.
“I dropped this into the water,” he said. “And now it’s here. And it’s still wet. Celia must have left it here so I’d find it.”
“So where did she go?” Corey wondered.
They looked around, searching for footprints or trampled grass, any clues at all.
“Ow,” Oliver said as Dennis pecked at his feet. He swatted at the bird. The volcano rumbled.
“Watch out!” Dr. Navel tackled Oliver just as one of the statues snapped at the base and collapsed onto the hole, blocking its entrance.
“I hope no one’s still down there,” Corey said.
“Bwak,” said Dennis, flapping his useless wings.
Dr. Navel helped Oliver up.
“Bwak!” Dennis said again.
Oliver looked at Dennis and then at Corey; Corey looked at Dennis and then back at Oliver.
“Chicken to the rescue?” Corey said.
Oliver nodded.
“What?” asked Dr. Navel.
“Dad,” said Oliver. “We’ve got to follow the bird.”
With that, Dennis took off through the bushes. Dr. Navel, Oliver, and Corey Brandt chased after him, hoping he would lead them to Celia and Claire Navel.
They ducked branches and leaped over logs. When the bird weaved to the left, they weaved to the left. When it hopped to the right, they hopped to the right. Soon they were back on the beach, panting. They’d run in a big circle.
“That was a wild-goose chase.” Dr. Navel rested his hands on his knees.
“Chicken,” said Corey.
“Rooster,” corrected Oliver.
“A wild-rooster chase,” said Dr. Navel. “The meaning is the same. We didn’t find anything.”
“Bwak!” said Dennis, kicking his yellow claws into the foamy surf and running away as the waves crashed, only to run forward again when the water went back out. “Bwak,” he repeated with every charge toward the sea.
We Give a Squid a Wedgie Page 18
