We Give a Squid a Wedgie

by C. Alexander London

  “There!” Oliver pointed just offshore, where they saw the last motorboat speeding away from the island with Sir Edmund and one of his henchmen holding Celia hostage. Their mother was next to her, half draped over the side of the boat like a sack of wet clothes. Oliver swallowed hard, hoping she was knocked out and not, well … he didn’t even want to think it.

  “Where’s Bonnie?” Corey wondered. “I didn’t, like, see her in any of the boats.”

  They heard a chuckle from behind them. “I’ll be taking your boat back, I think,” she said. She was leaning on a palm tree and she wasn’t taking any chances. She had a gun pointed at them.

  “You’re going to kidnap us again?” asked Dr. Navel.

  “Not this time,” said Bonnie. “Sir Edmund got what he was after from your daughter, so the ­Navels are worthless to me now.” She smiled at Corey, although it didn’t look like a happy smile. It was more like a wolf baring its teeth. “But the Holly­wood brat and the chicken will still do me some good with Big Bart’s crew.”

  “You’re too late,” said Dr. Navel. “The ones I didn’t knock out are at each other’s throats. There will be nothing left of that ship or that crew by the time you get there.”

  Bonnie shrugged. “I’ll take my chances. I’m sure my odds are much better than yours. Stay where you are and I’ll let you fend for yourselves as the volcano erupts. Try to chase me and I’ll shoot you.” She nodded at Corey. “You! Grab the bird and come with me.”

  “I’ll never leave my friends!” said Corey.

  “Then I’ll have to shoot them right here.” She raised her gun.

  Corey looked at Oliver and Dr. Navel with wide wet eyes. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Go,” said Dr. Navel. “We’ll be all right. You go and I promise we’ll come for you, just like you did for me.”

  Corey hugged Dr. Navel and bent down to Oliver.­

  “I’m sorry I came between you and your sister,” he said. “I never meant to upset either of you. I think you guys are, like, amazing.”

  “You gonna spell that?” Oliver smiled.

  Corey laughed and hugged him. “Take care of your dad.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Oliver. “We’ll see you again soon. Like, S-O-O-N.”

  “Touching,” said Bonnie. “Now bring that dumb chicken and get on the boat.”

  “It’s a roost—,” Oliver started, but Bonnie gave him a look that told him not even to think about correcting her.

  She made Dr. Navel push the dinghy off the beach while Corey started the motor. Bonnie shouted orders and waved her gun around.

  Dr. Navel and Oliver watched from the beach as Dennis and Corey sped away toward the pirate ship in the distance. Sir Edmund’s dinghy was back at his own ship. Both of them, it seemed, would be gone soon, and Dr. Navel and Oliver would be alone under the volcano.

  “Remember all that sailing stuff I taught you?” Dr. Navel asked.

  “Yeah,” said Oliver.

  “Well, it’s time to use it. We’re getting off this island.”

  “How?” Oliver wondered.

  “Let’s grab that pile of garbage over there.” He pointed to the shelter Corey had started to build. “We’re making a raft.”

  “You know how to do that?” asked Oliver.

  “Son,” Dr. Navel said, “I may not be on television, but your old dad can still do one or two cool things.”

  “Like build a raft out of garbage to save us from an erupting volcano and rescue Celia and Mom from an evil explorer?”

  “Exactly that.”

  “That’s pretty cool, I guess.” Oliver shrugged.

  Dr. Navel couldn’t help but smile. The island rumbled and another dark plume of smoke burst into the air. Red-hot lava began to flow down the side of the mountain. Gray dust fell from the sky like snow, coating the trees and the beach in ash. Within seconds it was falling like a blizzard.

  “We have to build fast!” said Dr. Navel. “Grab anything that floats and drag it over here!”

  Oliver ran up and down the beach, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve so he didn’t breathe in ash. His hair and clothes and face were all gray and ghostly, but he worked as quickly as he could. He found driftwood and plastic bottles, empty gas cans and more plastic bags than he could count. He found the shredded remains of an inflatable airplane emergency raft that struck him as quite familiar. He dragged his haul back down the beach to his father, who was working on the raft that Corey had begun.

  “Why’s there all this garbage here?” Oliver choked out the question through the blizzard of volcanic ash.

  “Everything has to go somewhere. Did you know that all the plastic ever made still exists on earth in some form? Litter goes into rivers and oceans and catches the current and eventually washes ashore.”

  “Dad?” said Oliver. “Now might not be a good time for a lecture. Let’s just be happy that so many people throw away things that float!”

  Dr. Navel nodded and Oliver helped him tie a driftwood beam in place for a mast. The island rumbled and a sheet of sizzling hot rocks crashed down the side of the volcano, racing toward the beach.

  “We need to go faster,” Oliver said. He ran off to collect more plastic.

  On board the research vessel Serenity, Janice and Sir Edmund scanned the island through their binoculars but couldn’t see much through the falling ash. They could just barely make out Oliver hauling an armful of water bottles through the breaking surf.

  “It looks like Bonnie chose to leave your son and husband to the tender mercies of nature.” Sir Edmund turned to Celia and her mother.

  “You’re a lucky winner!” said Claire Navel. “Thousands in cash and prizes!” Her head lolled back and forth and her eyes were glassy, distant. She drooled.

  “You made her crazy!” Celia shouted.

  Sir Edmund raised his eyebrows at Celia.

  “Crazier than she was, anyway,” added Celia.

  “She’ll be fine in a few hours,” said Sir Edmund. “We gave her the antidote, just like we promised.”

  “You said you’d let us go!”

  “You should be happy that we didn’t let you go,” Janice told her. “We could have left you for dead along with the rest of your family. Now you’ll get the thrill of being an only child!” Janice laughed.

  “Now, Janice, be nice,” said Sir Edmund. “That is no way to treat the young lady who has brought us this.” He held up the papyrus scroll of Plato’s map. His mustache twitched with glee. He turned to one of his crew. “Take the prisoners belowdecks. I want Claire Navel contained before the poison is out of her system. And then get us under way. We have a map to follow, a Lost Library to ­discover, an ancient civilization to restore to glory!”

  “What about Bonnie?” Janice asked, lifting her binoculars again to watch Bonnie and her hostages speeding toward the pirate cruise ship.

  “She knows too much,” said Sir Edmund. “We’ll let the kraken take care of her.”

  “But Ernest is still on that pirate ship,” said Janice.­ “He’s an idiot, but he’s been loyal.”

  “If we were to rescue him, you would have to split the money I’m paying you,” said Sir Edmund, raising his eyebrow.

  Janice looked toward the pirate ship again, then she shrugged.

  “I thought so.” Sir Edmund nodded. He called down to one of his crew on the lower deck. “Release the kraken!”

  “What was that, sir?” the crewman called up.

  “I said”—Sir Edmund cleared his throat—“Release! The! Kraken!”

  “What?” The crewman looked over his shoulder.­ No one was there. “You mean me?”

  “Yes! You! You idiot!” Sir Edmund stomped his foot. “Release it now!”

  “Release what, sir?” the man shouted back.

  “The kraken!” Sir Edmund’s face had turned red with rage. “The giant tooth-clawed squid we’ve been driving around the Pacific Ocean! Release it now!”

  “Oh, that squid thing?” the man
said. “It gives me the creeps.”

  “Just release it! Now!”

  “I’ll have to find one of the engineers to open the tank, sir. I’m not sure how.”

  “Do that then!”

  “Yes, sir!” The man rushed below to find somebody who could tell him how exactly one went about releasing the kraken.

  Sir Edmund sighed and turned to Janice. “These things always seem so much easier in the movies.”

  41

  WE HEAR A FAMILIAR HISS

  CELIA HEARD a great commotion on the deck above the tiny metal room where they’d locked her with her mother. Men were running and shouting and barking orders at each other. Something dramatic was going on, but Celia couldn’t really focus on that because her mother was singing in the corner.

  “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest …

  Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

  “Mom, shh. Stop singing pirate songs.” Celia tried to calm her. “It’ll be okay. You just have to rest for a while.”

  “Drink and the devil had done with the rest,” her mother crooned.

  Celia slumped against the wall, rubbing her eyes, exhausted. Beneath her wet suit, the journal of Percy Fawcett was digging into her back. The pages were soaked, but at least she managed to keep it hidden from Sir Edmund.

  She had put on quite a fit to keep her wet suit on. She learned long ago that no one, not even Sir Edmund, could stand to watch a little girl cry if they could help it. So when she got out of that water, she cried and whined and threw a tantrum to keep her wet suit on. Sir Edmund must have thought that letting her wear the wet suit was a small price to pay for peace and quiet. Luckily.

  “Psst,” someone whispered from right next to her. “Psst.”

  Celia listened carefully and tracked the sound to a vent by her feet. She crouched down and pressed her ear against it.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Claire?” the voice whispered. It belonged to a man. “Is that you?”

  “I’m her daughter, Celia. Who’s this?”

  “Celia!” The voice nearly shouted, so she had to turn her ear away quickly. “Celia, how can it be you? How did you get here?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Professor Rasmali-Greenberg,” the man said.

  “Professor!” Celia recognized the voice of the Explorers Club president now. It was more hoarse than she’d ever heard it, but it was him.

  “I was abducted just after you left the Explorers Club with Corey Brandt. They lured me to a conference on the hermeneutics of the later cults of Poseidon and snatched me from my hotel room.”

  Celia had no idea what hermeneutics were but she knew that Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea, so that probably meant it had something to do with Atlantis.

  “I fear Sir Edmund has something terrible planned,” he went on.

  “I know he does,” said Celia. “He’s got Plato’s map.”

  “He does! How?”

  “I gave it to him,” said Celia, burning with shame. “I had to. He was going to kill Mom.”

  “But you … ,” the professor stammered. “How did you find it?”

  “I had to scuba dive through a cave and take it out of Percy Fawcett’s underpants,” she told him, like it was just another dull day of sixth grade.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Celia. “We have to find Dad and Oliver and Corey Brandt.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “I saw them on the island, but there’s a volcano erupting. Corey got taken to the pirate ship.”

  Just then they heard a ferocious, inhuman shriek, followed by very human shouts of fright and confusion.

  “I fear that pirate ship is in the gravest of dangers,” the professor said.

  “I heard Sir Edmund say something about a kraken,” Celia told him.

  “He is abusing the poor creature from his zoo,” said the professor. “Escape is going to be rather a challenge with a giant squid on the loose.”

  “But how will we even get out of these cells?” Celia asked, just as her door swung open.

  Patrick the monkey screeched happily at her and rushed into the cell, slobbering kisses all over Celia’s face, and then leaped onto her mother to do the same.

  “Ogden,” she said. “You need to shave, but I love your new cologne.”

  “That’s the monkey, Mom.” Celia helped her mother stand.

  The professor came into the little cell with Beverly the lizard at his side. He was wearing a filthy white linen suit with no tie. It was the first time Celia had ever seen him without a tie on. He noticed her glance at his neck.

  “They took my tie when they abducted me.” He sighed. “It was a beautiful mallard on a golden background. I loved that tie.”

  “But what are they doing here?” She gestured at the animals.

  “Stowaways,” he said. “I took them to the conference with me to make sure they were looked after while you were gone. They followed me when I was kidnapped and have been running around stealing food on this ship ever since.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them to help you escape before I got here?” asked Celia. “You could have stopped all this from happening!”

  “Oh, I tried,” he said. “They are stubborn creatures. They showed no interest in escape until they heard your voice a few minutes ago. I think they were waiting for you.”

  “So what now?” Celia asked.

  “We need to stop Sir Edmund,” said the professor.­

  “I don’t care about him right now,” said Celia. “I want to rescue my family and go home and watch TV and get through middle school alive.”

  Professor Rasmali-Greenberg shuddered. “I can think of no worse fate than middle school. The wedgies I suffered …” He hugged himself. Celia didn’t ask him to explain. “Anyway, we’ll have to stop Sir Edmund in order to escape and save your brother and father.”

  “Okay, so how do we do that?” Celia asked.

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” the professor told her.

  “Hey there!” one of the crewmen shouted, discovering that the prisoners had gotten out of their cells. Patrick screeched and Beverly, quick as lightning, darted over to the man and hissed.

  “Don’t hiss at me!” He raised his foot to stomp on the lizard, and she sprang up and bit him on the toe.

  “Ow!” he yelled. Within seconds he fell against the wall, pale and sweating.

  “Beverly!” Celia cried. “I think she just killed that man.”

  “No,” said the professor. “A bite that quick won’t kill him. It might make him wish he were dead, but after a few days of painful misery and discomfort, he’ll be as good as new. And, for some reason science has never fully explained, lima beans will taste better.”

  “Hmm,” said Celia, who really didn’t like lima beans.

  The crewman slumped to the floor, whimpering. Celia felt bad for him until she remembered that he didn’t seem to have a problem serving on Sir Edmund’s crew, leaving her father and brother behind as the volcano erupted, or holding her mom and Professor Rasmali-Greenberg prisoner.

  Celia, Beverly, and Patrick slipped past the groaning crewman. The professor helped Celia’s mother follow along the gangway. She was still out of her wits.

  “Yo-ho-ho,” Claire Navel sang as they crept along.

  Celia rushed along the narrow passageway that stretched down the center of the ship. She heard the crew shouting above and froze every few feet to make sure the coast was clear. When they came to an intersection, she stopped.

  “Which way do we go?” she wondered aloud.

  “Right! Right!” Celia’s mother called from the back of the group. “The right is right!”

  “Your mother says to go right,” the professor repeated.

  “But she’s crazy,” said Celia.

  “But she’s right,” said the professor.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because madness often l
eads to inspiration,” he said. “Also, there’s a sign.”

  He pointed to a sign at the corner just above Celia’s head. It had a map of the ship on it. The rafts were clearly labeled. This was much easier than aboard the pirates’ cruise ship.

  Moments later, they found themselves creeping toward a stairway that led above deck.

  “Well, no going back now,” said Celia.

  She stepped onto the deck and her heart sank when she saw an empty space where the life rafts should have been.

  “Sir Edmund is breaking the law,” the professor observed. “He is not supposed to travel without life rafts.”

  None of the crew had noticed the escaped prisoners yet. They were all looking off the left—what sailors call the port—side of the ship.

  Celia followed their gaze and saw the mysterious island engulfed in flame and ash and steam. The whole thing was crumbling into the sea.

  “Oh no,” she whimpered, afraid that her father and brother and Corey were lost forever.

  But then, a shadow formed in the haze. It grew clearer with every second. It was a raft with big sails cutting through the water toward them, a raft made of garbage. She could only make out two forms on board, but the way the littler one slouched as it moved about and the way the taller one pointed and gestured wildly made her feel sure that it was her brother and father.

  “Where’s Corey?” she wondered.

  “And what is that?” The professor pointed at a huge shadow, twice the size of the raft, racing toward it just below the surface of the water.

  “The kraken,” whispered Celia’s mother. She grabbed Celia’s shoulder.

  The shadow was charging right for the raft.

  42

  WE SAIL THE SQUIDDY SEA

  “TRIM THE MAINSAIL!” Dr. Navel called out, and Oliver yanked the tangled bit of rope they’d attached to the big sail on their garbage raft. The raft rose slightly on its side as it picked up speed away from the island. Oliver couldn’t believe his father had managed to build a raft out of garbage in such a short time.