The Extremely High Tide!

by Kir Fox

  Talise shrugged. “Maybe it’ll help with waterproofing?”

  Finn removed his crown of sticks and leaves, then placed it on the ship’s rudder. The feral child removed his crown of sticks and leaves, then placed it on Finn’s head. “I can always make another,” he said.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  “Every boat needs a name,” Clara said. “What do you want to call it, Talise?”

  “Me?” Talise said.

  “Of course!” Runa handed her a paintbrush. “It’s your boat.”

  “I suppose that’s logical.” Talise stood back, gazing at the boat. Her boat. A boat’s name should be comforting, she thought.

  She stepped forward and painted its name on the side.

  S.S. SEA BLOB

  When she finished, everybody was thrilled on the outside. “What a great boat!” Davy grinned. His teeth glittered.

  “Probably the best boat in the entire world!” Nia said.

  “Factually the best,” Jules corrected her.

  “One question,” the feral child said. “I kept meaning to ask, but: What kind of boat is it supposed to be, exactly?”

  Talise scratched her head. “Well . . . it’s not just one kind of boat. Since all the schematics were from different kinds of boats, I decided to combine them. So it’s a motorboat. And also a sailboat. And also a tugboat.”

  “Probably the best motor-sail-tugboat in the entire world!” Nia said.

  “Factually the best,” Jules corrected her.

  “But what is it supposed to tug?” asked the feral child.

  “It’s . . .” Talise began.

  Everyone waited. She knew they were staring at her, but she kept staring at her boat. She squeezed her sea blob.

  She’d avoided thinking about the reason for building her boat. All she’d ever known was that she had to. It was one of the strongest inside-feelings she’d ever had. A hunch, Jules had called it. But now that the boat was finished . . .

  “I guess building a boat was pretty silly,” Talise said.

  “No way,” Runa reassured her. “It was actually super fun!”

  “Like howling at the moon,” Finn joked.

  “And anyway, that’s the thing about hunches,” Jules said. “There’s always a reason for them—sometimes, you just don’t know it right away.”

  Clara nodded in agreement. “You just have to trust yourself.”

  Talise thought about it. She couldn’t expect her classmates and parents and Clara and the feral child to trust her if she didn’t trust herself.

  And she did! She did trust herself.

  “While I have you all here,” Talise began, “would you mind accompanying me to City Hall? My boat is safe from the Extremely High Tide. But we should probably make sure the rest of Topsea is safe, too.”

  Jules sighed. “You think they’ll finally listen?”

  “If we’re all together, they have to!” Runa slung an arm around Jules’s neck. “Talise, we’re right behind you.”

  TALISE’S LOGBOOK

  Name: Talise Villepreux

  Date: Monday

  Location: Topsea beach, City Hall

  Time in: N/A Time out: N/A Bottom Time: N/A

  Depth: Out of my*

  Temperature: Ominous

  Visibility: A little misty, but that could just be my eyes

  Observations: The good news is that my boat is finished. Thanks to my family and classmates and the boy from the beach forest, the S.S. Sea Blob is ready to sail!

  The bad news is an Extremely High Tide is coming.

  An Extremely High Tide is only dangerous if the town does not prepare in time. But when my friends and I asked the Town Committee for Lunar Consequences to send out a notification just in case, they said, “We can’t stake the committee’s reputation on a random kid’s prediction” and “Paper doesn’t grow on trees” and “Please stop talking, I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with this.”

  * I think that was a good joke!

  Finally, the committee agreed to take another look at their charts. Even though they appeared to be games of tic-tac-toe, I am feeling quite optimistic.

  Perhaps it is because I know my parents trust me. Clara trusts me. Runa, Jules, Finn, Davy, Nia, and Earl Grey trust me. Quincy trusts me (even though he is quite apprehensive and would prefer to trust the committee). You trust me, Logbook. I trust me, too.

  Or perhaps it is because I trust the ocean.

  Davy didn’t care for seaweed.

  Not that he would ever say that out loud—especially on Bring Your Kid to Work Day. His mom worked at the seaweed cracker factory, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. (Also a stray, spying strand might overhear him.)

  Everyone else in Topsea loved seaweed. Davy didn’t get it! Sometimes he thought if he learned why his friends went bananas over seaweed pops and seaweed snow cones, he’d understand Topsea better, too.

  Fake it till you make it had worked on Spirit Day. So Davy decided he’d pretend to like seaweed until he really did like it.

  He pretended really, really hard. Maybe a little too hard.

  “Where’d you get all that stuff?” his mom asked at breakfast.

  Davy looked down at his Eat Local Seaweed! T-shirt, woven seaweed belt, skinny seaweed shoelaces, and Seaweed Rocks flag. “Principal King loaned it to me from the lost and found. Although I think the flag is hers.”

  “That’s very sweet, Davy. I’m glad you’re so excited to see the factory!”

  He smiled, although he couldn’t help feeling a little envious of his friends. Quincy was going to his mom’s horticulture lab to learn about plant physiology and flower psychology. Nia was flying to Playa del Carmen to look at beachfront mansions. Runa was going to the moon. Or her father’s cheese shop. Davy wasn’t sure which, but both sounded fun and interesting.

  Maybe going to the seaweed cracker factory would be fun and interesting, too.

  Davy’s mom usually took the triple-decker bus to work. Because the weather was especially nice, they sat on the top level. By the time they reached the factory, their hair stuck up in all directions and they couldn’t stop laughing.

  “This is why I always carry a beachcomb on sunny days,” Davy’s mom said.

  As she fixed Davy’s hair, he noticed a few workers in bright yellow vests. They were lining up orange cones leading to the bluffs. “Do you think they’re preparing for the Extremely High Tide?” he asked.

  “Last I heard, the Town Committee for Lunar Consequences was still running tests,” his mom replied. “But it sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “They’d better be! Talise is more of an expert than that committee.”

  Davy’s mom chuckled. “You seem pretty excited.”

  It was true. Davy really wanted to experience an Extremely High Tide! (Although he’d never admit that to Quincy.)

  They approached the bluffs. One side looked like a row of towering chimneys made of moss-covered granite, all different heights and widths. Davy had never seen the seaweed cracker factory up close. Now he could see a little door at the bottom, and little windows peeking out from behind the moss, and little plumes of smoke puffing out of the tops of the “chimneys.”

  Maybe today was going to be fun and interesting after all!

  Davy’s mom showed a security guard her ID, which she wore on a seaweed lanyard. The guard gave Davy a visitor sticker. He stuck it to his Eat Local Seaweed! T-shirt.

  “Nice shirt!” the guard said. “Bet you’d like some sea-weed gum.”

  “Um, sure,” Davy said.

  He slipped the stick of gum into his pocket instead of his mouth. Once again, he couldn’t help but wonder why. Why would anyone want seaweed gum, when they could have spearmint or watermelon or grape?

  Davy followed his mom inside. Their footsteps echoed around the stone walls as they walked down a long corridor. Davy didn’t see anyone else, but he thought he heard the faint murmur of voices.

  And ticking. And grat
ing. And pulverizing.

  They stepped into an elevator. As they rode up, Davy’s mom fitted a hairnet around his head, pulling the elastic down to cover all of his shaggy brown hair.

  “I think you’ll like this part.”

  “Wearing a hairnet?” Davy said uncertainly.

  His mom laughed, putting on her own hairnet. “No, seeing the factory floor.”

  Davy waited eagerly as the elevator went up . . . and up . . . and up. They must have been almost to the top of the bluffs when it finally stopped. The doors slid open. Davy stepped out onto a metal platform and looked down.

  “Wow!” he exclaimed.

  The massive factory floor spread out far below him, a dizzying series of conveyor belts covered in piles of squiggling seaweed and sparkling salt and colorful powders. Robotic arms with rubber grippers lifted boxes. Printing presses spit out labels for various cracker flavors. Super-tall silos huffed and puffed and occasionally grunted things like “Ugh, Mondays” or “Get back to work, Bob.”

  Hundreds of workers milled around, all wearing hairnets and bright green one-piece rubber suits. Some carried clipboards, which they marked after examining a finished cracker. Others carried tiny spoons, for sampling the piles of flavored powder. A few wore thick gloves, for wrangling particularly unruly strands of seaweed into the dehydrator.

  “Right this way!” Davy’s mom said.

  Davy followed her down the platform, his eyes still glued to the factory floor. If he was going to figure out why everyone in Topsea loved seaweed so much, this definitely looked like the place to do it.

  But when they reached a door labeled Taste Test Room, Davy’s smile grew forced. He really didn’t want to taste any seaweed crackers. Still, he waved his Seaweed Rocks flag dutifully as he walked inside.

  More workers in rubber suits sat behind a large, circular table covered in little plates. Each plate had a stack of crackers in various colors: green, orange, yellow-green, orange-yellow, greener-green, black.

  “Sorry for interrupting,” Davy’s mom said. “Luis, this is my son, Davy. Davy, this is Luis, the Experimental Flavors Manager.”

  The man closest to Davy stood up. He had curly black hair and a curlier black mustache dusted with cracker crumbs.

  “Welcome, Davy!” he said. “Would you like to try a few new flavors we’re working on? We’d love to get a kid’s opinion.”

  Davy did his best to sound enthusiastic. “Sure, thanks!”

  He walked around the table to an empty chair and sat. Luis passed him a piece of paper, a pencil, and several little plates of crackers. Each was labeled with a different flavor:

  Pickled Pumpkin

  Hickory-Smoked Eggplant

  Caramel Clam

  Spicy Duck l’Homage

  “What we’re doing is tasting each cracker,” Luis explained. “Then taking notes on the pros and cons of the flavors. Don’t be afraid to write the cons,” he added with a wink. “If you don’t like the taste, it would really help us to know why.”

  Why? Davy thought. Because it tastes like seaweed, that’s why!

  But he just said, “Okay!”

  “Jalapeño Honey!” Davy’s mom snatched a cracker, then bit into it with a loud crunch. “This one’s fantastic, Luis.”

  Davy took one, too, but he just nibbled off the corner. To his surprise, it wasn’t that bad. He picked up his pencil and paused, thinking. The reason he liked it was because the spiciness of the jalapeño and the sweetness of the honey covered up the seaweediness of the seaweed. But he wasn’t sure Luis would appreciate that kind of feedback. So instead, he wrote:

  Pros: Spicy, sweet.

  Cons: None.

  Next, he tried the Pickled Pumpkin.

  Pros: Halloweeny.

  Cons: Puckery.

  Then he tried the Caramel Clam.

  Pros: Caramelly.

  Cons: Clammy.

  Davy was starting to enjoy himself. Being a taste tester wouldn’t be such a bad job, he thought. Even at a seaweed cracker factory.

  But then he got to the last plate, piled with black crackers. The label read:

  “Crab”

  Davy eyed the crackers suspiciously.

  Then the door opened. A petite woman with spiky brown hair stepped inside. When she saw Davy’s mom, she heaved a sigh of relief.

  “There you are!” she exclaimed. “We’re holding an emergency meeting in five minutes. Our drainage system is backed up, and we need to come up with a plan to fix it fast, just in case there’s an Extremely . . . uh, extremely unexpected event.”

  “Right behind you,” Davy’s mom said, then turned to Davy. “Do you want to hang out in the taste test room until I’m done?”

  “That’s okay, I’m pretty full,” he replied quickly. “Can I watch the assembly lines instead?”

  “As long as you’re careful,” she said, kissing his hairnet.

  Luis waved. “Thanks for the feedback!”

  Back on the metal platform, Davy walked to the railing and leaned over as far as he dared, watching the activity below.

  He found the silos especially interesting. They looked like giant metal coffee cans, so tall they almost reached the platform. Each had a hatch on top, and a square-shaped door with a dial lock, like a locker. And each had a different word painted in green along the side:

  CRUNCH

  TANG

  AROMA

  BITTER

  SWEET

  WHY

  Davy furrowed his brow. “Why” wasn’t a taste word. But it was a question he’d been asking all day: Why did everyone in Topsea love seaweed so much?

  Maybe the answer was in that silo!

  Whistling innocently, Davy strolled down the platform until he stood over the WHY silo. He glanced at the workers, but they were all too busy to look up.

  Carefully, he slipped under the railing and dropped onto the silo with a light thunk. He crawled over to the hatch and studied the dial. Unlike his locker at school, this lock’s combination used letters instead of numbers.

  Not far from the dial, someone had scratched the word “AROO.”

  Davy laughed. His dad used to have trouble remembering passwords. He’d scrawl hints for himself on the back of his phone or under his computer. When his mom saw one, she’d sigh and cross her arms and pretend to be mad. “It’s too risky!” she would say. “What if someone guesses the password?”

  “No way,” Davy’s dad would reply. “No one can guess my hints.”

  Was AROO a hint? Davy chewed his lip. Then he twisted the dial to D, then to O, then to G.

  CLICK.

  Davy grinned. He wondered what his dad would have said—probably that his hint would have been a lot harder to guess.

  He pulled open the hatch. A bat swooped out.

  “Yikes!” Davy ducked.

  Once the bat was out of sight, he peered into the darkness and spotted a ladder. He shimmied through the opening, grabbed the top rung, and lowered himself inside.

  His footsteps echoed off the walls as he descended. When he reached the fifth rung, there was a SPLOOSH!

  Davy glanced down in surprise. His right foot was under-water. Grimacing, he pulled his foot out and steadied himself. His eyes were starting to adjust now. Leaning out as far as he dared, he stared into the water. It reminded him of the Bottomless Cove.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  Suddenly the water shimmered, then rippled, then began to churn. It moved faster and faster, like a whirlpool.

  Davy couldn’t take his eyes off it. He’d gone to a carnival once, and a hypnotist had tried to put him into a trance with a whirling black-and-white circle. It didn’t work at all, he thought dizzily. She tried to make me cluck like a chicken when she rang a bell, but I just laughed. . . .

  He stretched out even farther, farther, until his nose grazed the surface, and the water moved faster and faster until—

  “Davy?”

  It sounded like Davy’s mom. Startled, he jerked away from the water. Had
n’t it been whirling? It was so still now.

  How long had he been staring?

  He scrambled up the ladder and out of the hatch, closing it quietly behind him. Then he pulled himself onto the platform, stuck his hands in his pockets, and casually strolled toward the Emergency Meeting Room.

  “There you are!” Davy’s mom said. “Meeting’s all finished. Would you like to try working behind one of the assembly lines? Or maybe try wrangling seaweed into the hydrator?”

  Davy opened his mouth to say yes. But the moment his mom said “seaweed,” his mouth started watering.

  “Can we go back to the Taste Test Room?” he heard himself ask. “I really want to try more of those experimental flavors.”

  His mom raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “And tonight, could we have seaweed burgers for dinner? Or seaweed loaf? Or Quincy makes seaweed pancakes sometimes—maybe we can try that?”

  “Of course,” his mom said, still watching him curiously. “But, Davy, I know you don’t really like seaweed that much. You don’t have to pretend just for me.”

  Davy glanced back at the silo and grinned. “That’s because I didn’t understand why everyone in Topsea loves seaweed so much. But I get it now. It’s . . . it’s seaweed.”

  HWAA! HWAA! HWAA!

  They looked up as green lights began flashing in the corridor.

  “What’s going on?” Davy asked. “Is that an alarm for Extremely High Tide?”

  “No, that alarm is much louder,” his mom said. “This alarm just warns that another alarm might be sounding soon. Nothing to be concerned about. Shall we do a little more taste testing?”

  “Sure!”

  “But first—why is your shoe soaking wet?”

  “I stepped in a seaweed,” Davy said distractedly. “I mean, a puddle.” He was busy imagining all the new, delicious dishes he could try. Seaweed steak, seaweed pizza, seaweed doughnuts . . .

  NOTIFICATION: SAFETY PROTOCOL FOR EXTREMELY HIGH TIDES