“Not my mops! Here, take him! I don’t even know who that fish is!” Shivers tossed Albee’s bag over to Margo.
Margo caught the bag. Albee was miffed.
“Just let the mops go!” Shivers pleaded. “What have they ever done to you—besides clean your floors until they sparkle?”
“Okay, okay!” Margo put the mops back and slammed the closet door. This kind of plundering wasn’t going to work for Shivers, either. Luckily, she knew another way: distraction. She pointed above her head and said, “Shivers! Doesn’t that cloud look like a cozy cup of hot cocoa?”
Shivers lay down on the deck and looked straight up at the sky. “Which cloud? Where?” he said excitedly.
“Never mind. It must have blown away,” she said.
Shivers hopped back up to his feet and noticed that Margo had one hand behind her back.
“Shivers, where are your bunny slippers?” she asked, trying to contain an enormous grin.
Shivers carefully glanced down and saw his bare feet on the deck. His bunny slippers were nowhere in sight.
Margo whipped the slippers out from behind her back. “Got ’em!”
But Shivers wasn’t listening. He was still staring down in terror. He held out a shaking hand and pointed at his feet.
Then he cried out, “TOENAILS!” He leaped in the air, kicking wildly, trying to flick his feet right off his ankles. “Get away from me!” He sprinted across the deck, but it turns out feet are the hardest things to run away from. Then he squeezed Margo’s shoulders and shouted, “They’re following me!! There’s no escape!”
Margo hadn’t known Shivers would go into a toenail tizzy, and now she had to get him out of it. She tackled him on the deck, sat on him to keep him still, and popped the slippers back on his feet.
Shivers breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that was just about the worst thing that ever happened. I haven’t seen those toenails in days, and no matter how much beauty sleep they get in my bunny slippers, they just seem to get uglier.”
“Why are you afraid of toenails?” Margo asked.
“The real question is why aren’t you? They make my toes look like fingers. No matter how much I clip them away, they keep crawling back. And they’re full of toe jam! Which does not taste good on toast, believe me.”
“Ugh!” Margo recoiled.
“Plus, I have a rule. If Albee doesn’t need something, neither do I.”
“Tails over nails!” Albee said, waving his tail proudly.
“It’s a good thing I panicked enough to get these slippers back on my feet.” Shivers gasped and clapped his hands as he had a realization. “Hey! I took the slippers from you! Does that mean I plundered?”
Margo was impressed. “You did! In your own special way.”
“I panic-plundered!” Shivers announced proudly. “Look at me! I’m the world’s greatest plunderer!”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Margo said warily.
At that moment, they heard the screeching squawks of several seagulls flying above their heads. They looked up and watched the gulls soar through the sky and land on a nearby ship. The ship was almost twice the size of the Groundhog. It didn’t have a flag or a name, just a number written on its dark red hull. The deck was packed from front to back with shiny—
“Treasure!” Shivers said breathlessly. He ran to the captain’s deck and spun the steering wheel all the way to the left, sending the Groundhog swirling toward the strange ship.
Margo excitedly readied herself at the anchor. As soon as they had pulled up close enough to the ship, she plunged the anchor into the water.
Shivers flew down the stairs from the captain’s deck and said, “Let’s plunder that treasure and get this ghost gone!”
The giant ship was moving through the water more slowly than a marmalade parade. As it drifted nearer, Margo scrunched up her nose. “Something smells fishy.”
Shivers was too excited to listen. He grabbed on to the railing and jumped onboard, landing with a crunch.
Margo had no choice but to grab Albee and leap onto the ship, too.
There was a woman at the wheel wearing dingy overalls and a checkered hat with flaps over the ears. “Hey! What are you doing here?” she called down to them from the captain’s deck.
Shivers planted his feet and raised his fist in the air. “We’re here to plunder! Give us everything you’ve got!”
“SURE! NO PROBLEM!” THE captain said happily. Then she came down from the deck to help them.
Shivers looked at Albee with amazement. “See? I am the world’s greatest plunderer,” he said, making his way to the main deck.
Albee was skeptical. So was Margo. Plundering wasn’t supposed to be this easy. In fact, nothing with Shivers was supposed to be this easy. She followed behind him suspiciously, then suddenly she heard him scream.
“AAAAAGGGHH!” Shivers was up to his knees in a greasy gray sludge. He was surrounded by empty soda cans, ratty gym socks, and blackened banana peels. His eyes stretched out in horror as he looked at the mountain of moldy mysteries. “IT’S ALL TRASH!” he shouted, pinching his nose.
“Of course it’s all trash. This is a trash barge!” said the captain. “Why else would I have these nose plugs?” She popped two tiny rubber plugs out of her nose and took a deep breath. “Yikes,” she said, and popped them back in.
Fear mounted on Shivers’s face. Margo could tell he was in a pre-panic that could erupt at any moment. “I can’t believe we barged onto a trash barge!” he cried. “We’re never going to find any treasure, and I’m going to get eaten by a ghost! Who will take care of Albee? He needs me to feed him fish flakes, to give him fresh water, to sing his favorite songs as loud as I can several times a night!”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that last one,” said Albee.
“Don’t worry, Shivers,” said Margo. She waded into the pile of garbage and rolled up her sleeves. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!”
“Little girl!” the captain said, squishing and squashing her way over to them. “If I were you, I wouldn’t put my bare hands in there. It’s full of dangerous things . . . like bear hands.” She handed gloves to Margo and Shivers, then extended her own gloved hand. “I’m Shelly,” she said with a smile. “But my friends call me Smelly.”
“That’s not very nice,” said Margo.
“It certainly isn’t,” said Shelly, “But that’s what I get for being in charge of a trash barge.”
“We’re trying to find . . .” Margo paused. It was hard to explain that they were searching for a present for an angry ghost. “Do you mind if we take a look around?”
“Sure! Make yourself at home,” said Shelly. “But don’t really. This is a terrible place to live.”
Margo picked through the pile of debris, trying desperately not to breathe in through her nose. At one point she saw a glint of silver, but it turned out to be a wad of tinfoil covered in fish oil. She picked up a string of pearls, only to find that it was really a string of spitballs. Then, she thought she’d found some gold coins, but they turned out to be chocolate coins and all the chocolate was gone, so the whole thing was a bust. “Maybe one man’s trash is just another man’s trash,” she sighed.
“AAAAAAGGH!” Shivers wailed.
Margo looked up at him. She couldn’t tell if this was a scream of panic or a scream of delight. “Did you find something?” she asked.
“No! My gloves are too tight!” he squealed. Shivers had just figured out how to put his gloves on.
Margo sighed. “Well, you can take them off now. There’s no treasure here.”
Shivers groaned. Taking the gloves off was going to be even harder than putting them on.
“We’ve got to go,” said Margo. Then she looked around, confused. “Where’s Albee?”
“I put him on this stinking pile of soggy socks,” He trudged through the trash and gasped. “Oh no! It’s a sinking pile of soggy socks!” The sock mound had caved in, and a
cascade of crusty socks was slipping toward the center. Albee was nowhere in sight. Shivers was everywhere in fright.
He spun around in circles, stirring up the socks so it looked like he was in a disgusting dryer. “ALBEE!” he screamed. He found two short pencils, and despite his worry that they’d get stuck forever, he bravely rammed them in his nose (erasers first).
“I’m coming to get you, buddy!” he howled. Then he took a deep breath and dove in.
Margo marveled at Shivers. When his best friends were in trouble, he was able to put his fears behind him. Still, he could always turn around and his fears would be right there where he left them. She could only see his bunny slippers kicking above the surface as he clawed his way through the muck. She found two pieces of candy corn to use as nose plugs of her own and plunged in after him.
As soon as their heads smashed through the trash, Margo and Shivers were hit with a stew of sickening smells: sour cabbage and bitter beets . . . head sweat and slime-soaked meats . . . baby bathwater and used shoe juice . . . all simmering in the stale stench of unfresh-baked cookies. The pencils in Shivers’s nose weren’t doing much to erase the stink, and Margo’s candy corn wasn’t helping, either.
Shivers was trying to slog through a tangled web of old street meats and moldy string cheese when he had to come up for air. But he didn’t come up high enough and instead he wound up inhaling a mouthful of hair.
Margo came up, too, and yanked Shivers from the trash. He was spitting and sputtering and muttering all at the same time. “Albee’s gone! He’s gone! I thought I had found him but it was just an old orange!” Shivers held up a piece of rotting orange.
Then he fell to his knees and squeezed the fruit. As the juice ran down his arm, he shouted, “WHY?!”
“WAIT!” Margo pointed across the deck. “What’s that?”
A pink bubble was growing on the surface of the trash pile. Shivers and Margo slogged over to it as fast as they could. The bubble was getting bigger.
“AAGH! The trash is growing!” Shivers screamed.
Margo reached out and carefully touched the bubble. Then she realized she couldn’t untouch it. It was very sticky. “Bubble gum!” she exclaimed. She tried to pull her hand away, but the bubble came with it. As she lifted it from the surface, she saw that there was something dangling from it. And that something was a blowfish.
“Albee!” Shivers cheered. “I didn’t know you liked bubble gum!” He gave Albee a big hug. As he squeezed Albee, the bubble got bigger. Then Margo squeezed the bubble and Albee got bigger, puffing up to his full blowfish size. Surprised, Shivers squeezed Albee again and the bubble got bigger. Then Margo squeezed the bubble again, and—well, you get the idea. This went on for so long that Shelly had to interrupt.
“Shouldn’t that fish be in water?” Shelly asked. During his adventure, Albee had lost his bag.
Shelly filled an old soda bottle with water and tossed it to Margo. She popped Albee inside and screwed on the cap.
Albee sighed. “I just hate losing my bag when I travel.” Then he swam in a circle around the bottle. “But this will do.”
Of course, no one heard him.
“Come on, Shivers, we’ve got to get back to the Groundhog,” said Margo.
“You’re right,” said Shivers. “The ghost of Quincy Thomas is coming after me, and there’s nothing here for us but moldy fruit and heartache.”
“And toenails,” said Shelly. “Don’t forget the toenails.”
“What?!” Shivers’s eyes blew up bigger than Albee’s bubble.
Shelly shrugged. “This ship is, like, half toenails.”
Shivers barged across the barge, splashing through the trash as fast as his own little toes would take him, then jumped off the edge of the ship. He was so terrified of the toenails that he forgot to be afraid of the ocean below. As the choppy water sloshed over his head, he remembered.
Margo leaped in after him, clutching Albee tightly. “Good-bye, Smelly!” she called as she plummeted through the air.
“It’s Shelly!”
Margo grabbed onto Shivers’s hand and tried to swim toward the Groundhog. But just then, they heard a creaking sound from below the surface. A giant metal cage rose from the sea and scooped them up. The lid snapped shut above their heads. They were trapped inside.
SHIVERS GRIPPED THE METAL bars of the trap and shook them as hard as he could, but they wouldn’t budge. “AAAAAGH! We’re locked in!” he screamed.
The trap lifted up into the air, bouncing Shivers, Margo, and Albee around like beach balls in a blender. It jolted higher and higher, smashing and spinning them in circles. Red blurs whizzed by, but they were so dizzy it was impossible to tell what they were. Finally the trap stopped climbing and their somersaults came to a halt. As the swirling slowed, Shivers’s eyes regained focus and he saw what had been bouncing around inside with them.
“Lobsters!” he shrieked. The trap was full of them, clicking their claws and climbing all over the place.
Suddenly, the trap tipped over and the top sprang open. Shivers, Margo, Albee, and the lobsters fell out faster than a fly who can’t flap. They landed with a THWAP! on a perfectly polished wooden floor. Margo and Shivers leaped away from the lobsters as quickly as they could, looking around frantically.
They were on the deck of the most magnificent ship either of them had ever seen. The hull was as white as a freshly brushed tooth. The railings were dazzling gold. Even the lobster trap seemed to be shimmering sterling silver.
Soon they heard footsteps behind them and two men appeared wearing starched white shirts with matching gloves, jet-black suit jackets dotted with shiny silver buttons, and small golden pocket watches. They were each carrying a copper lobster bucket. When they saw Shivers and Margo, they dropped the buckets to the floor with a CLANG! and crossed their arms angrily.
“Children in the lobster haul?!” said one of the men.
“Again?!” the other guffawed. “Well, they must belong to one of the passengers. I’ll have them carted off immediately.” He clapped his hands briskly and shouted, “TOBIAS!”
Instantly, a man drove up on a golf cart. He was dressed exactly the same as the other two men, except he had a gleaming gold badge on his jacket that said CAPTAIN.
Tobias quickly but carefully whisked Margo and Shivers into the back of his cart. Then he picked up Albee’s bottle and placed him delicately in the cup holder. He stepped on the gas and the cart zoomed off.
Shivers marveled at Tobias’s gold badge. “Are you the captain of this ship?” he asked.
“I’m the captain of the butlers,” Tobias explained in an English accent that made him sound very fancy. “It’s much more important.”
Shivers and Margo turned to each other, looking puzzled. They had never seen a ship with a butler, let alone so many butlers that they needed a captain.
“How many butlers are there?” asked Margo.
“Two for every passenger, of course,” Tobias replied without hesitation. “This is the biggest, most expensive yacht on the sea.”
“What’s a yacht?” Shivers whispered to Margo.
She thought for a second. “It’s a fancy boat that fancy people ride on to get away from it all.”
“Get away from what?! Is something chasing them?!” Shivers was alarmed.
“No! I mean, they come out here to relax.”
“They go out to sea to relax? That’s crazy!” Shivers squealed. “I can think of a lot of places more relaxing than this giant bowl of fish poop.”
Before Shivers could start listing those places, Tobias drove the golf cart through a swinging door and screeched to a halt inside a majestic ballroom full of people who did look very relaxed. In fact, they weren’t moving or speaking at all. They were sitting drowsily in overstuffed armchairs topped with frilly pillows. Crystal chandeliers dangled from the ceiling above them. The walls were peppered with paintings of brightly colored shapes smashing into each other. A plaque above the paintings read THIS IS ART.
There was so much to look at that all Shivers could do was gasp.
Tobias whipped around and held up his hand. “Please don’t gasp! The air in here is very expensive.”
Tobias grabbed Shivers and Margo by their wrists and led them to a corner of the room sectioned off by a red velvet rope. He unhooked the rope and ushered Shivers and Margo behind it, then clicked it back into place.
“You stay here in the Lost and Found,” he instructed, taking off his white gloves and tossing them in a trash can. In a flash, he pulled a new pair from his pocket and put them on.
“You can’t leave us in the Lost and Found!” said Margo.
“Do you know where you are?” Tobias asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“So you’re lost and I found you. Sounds like the perfect fit. I’m sure your parents will come get you after the party is over. Toodle-loo!” Tobias waved and hopped back into the golf cart. “Don’t forget your fish!” he said, tossing Albee’s bottle to Margo. Then he sped away.
Shivers slumped his shoulders and said, “Oh, great! This day gets better and better! There’s a ghost trying to kill me. We still haven’t found any treasure. And now we have to wait for our parents to pick us up?!”
“Snap out of it!” she said, shaking the rope. “What we really need to do right now is find some treasure.”
“How are we supposed to find treasure? I can’t even think straight with all this jewelry clinking and clanging. And those priceless paintings on the wall are so distracting. What do they even mean? And don’t get me started on that giant diamond sitting by itself on the windowsill. There’s so much glare on that thing I can barely see!”
The Pirate Book You've Been Looking For Page 3
