by Obert Skye
“So, are you in?” Juliet asked. “I quit my job for this.”
Rain looked out from under the overhang at the rain. “I don’t think I’ll be getting any more business today. Where are we going first?”
“Port O’Hare,” I told them.
“That’s on the other side of the island,” Rain said needlessly. “Down the thoroughfare.”
“Which is why we’re going to need to borrow a few bikes.”
“The rental charge is ten dollars an hour.”
“I’ll pay you back once we find the treasure.”
“There is no treasure,” he insisted.
“I’ll send you money from Ohio.”
Rain began to complain about how his bikes were his business and how he didn’t want us to ding them up. He was acting like Juliet and I were a couple of untrusty newts.
We ignored him and hopped on the bikes.
Both rain and Rain pelted us, one with water, one with words, as we biked toward the Port O’Hare thoroughfare to find out what Captain Fuzzy was hiding in warehouse fifty-six.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CRUISING INTO TROUBLE
The Port O’Hare thoroughfare began near the police station. I had never traveled down it, but I knew it led to the other side of the island where the cruise ships docked. It was the only way for the ships’ passengers to get to and from most of the restaurants and other things located on Rabbit Road. The thoroughfare was at least three golf carts wide and made from concrete. It had a bike lane on one side and a sidewalk on the other. It was almost completely flat and went straight through the two small mountain ranges on Bunny Island—the small Thump Back mountains, and the slightly bigger Volcanto mountains. Both mountain ranges were covered with lush jungles and small waterfalls that were easy to see from a distance.
I had never used the thoroughfare, because I had no interest in seeing where any cruise ships docked. In Issue #36 of Ocean Blasterzoids, the entire city of Whales nearly went mad when two evil cruise ships parked on the sea surface above them and played loud cruise music while continually dumping things into the ocean. Sure, it was a really preachy issue of Ocean Blasterzoids, and it didn’t sell very well because the story was weak, but it had left a lasting impression on me. I had even signed the pledge at the end of the issue that made me promise I would never be the kind of person who throws things into the ocean.
“So, that’s why I never throw things into the ocean,” I shouted as we rode.
“Nobody asked,” Rain shouted back, giving me grief the way best friends sometimes do.
The bikes made the journey way easier than walking or running, and the thoroughfare was mostly empty thanks to the rain. One golf cart passed us going in the direction of town, and two other golf carts passed us going toward Port O’Hare.
When we reached the port, we stopped under an awning on the front of a gift shop called the Bountiful Bunny. The rain was still coming down, and we were thoroughly soaked from our ride. In the distance I could see a cruise ship that was docked.
Next to the gift shop was a large golf-cart rental store and a small café called Bunny’s Burgers. Back behind the gift shop there were a bunch of big warehouses.
One of the biggest differences between here and the area by the mall was that here there were some actual roads. The roads led to various warehouses and up to the few surrounding buildings. There were no cars, but I could see some tractors and loaders parked near a couple of the warehouses. The machines were used to off-load things from boats that came into the port and then put those things into a warehouse for use on other parts of the island. The whole area felt industrial and not as interesting or beautiful as the other side.
“We need warehouse fifty-six,” I reminded them.
“Down there,” Juliet said, pointing past an abandoned brick building, and at the end of a short road there was a gray metal warehouse surrounded by a chain-link fence. The number fifty-six was painted on the side of it in black. Beneath the number was the word Steel. The warehouse looked old and weathered, with peeling paint and ample rust. It sat near the side of the Volcanto mountain range.
We rode our bikes to warehouse fifty-six and parked them behind three large stones and just outside the chain-link fence. The dumb rain was getting dumber and dumping water on us like we had done something to deserve it. Nobody was around, and the day was beginning to shift into late afternoon.
We found the gate on the fence and were happy to see that it wasn’t locked.
“Should we go in?” I asked.
Rain didn’t have the patience to answer my question. He walked through the gate and over to the gray warehouse. Juliet and I followed.
There was a door on the front of the building, but when Rain tried to open it he discovered it was locked tight.
“Nobody’s home,” Juliet joked.
“What do you think’s inside?” I asked, feeling let down by being locked out. “This place is huge.”
The three of us walked all the way around the gray warehouse. There were a few other regular doors, and three large garage doors with ramps in the back. All the doors were locked. There were some windows, but they were too high for any of us to see into.
“I wish I had suction cups,” I said sadly. “Admiral Uli would be able to get up to those windows and squeeze in through a hole no bigger than a quarter.”
Rain stared at me.
“Fine,” I said. “I bet if you got on my shoulders, you could see inside that window.”
“How about you stand on mine?” Rain suggested. “I’m taller.”
“Maybe you are at the moment,” I argued. “My dad said I’ll probably grow another five to six inches.”
“That’s great,” Rain said. “But we don’t have time to wait for that to happen. It’s starting to get dark.”
Rain stood near the warehouse below one of the windows, and Juliet helped me step into Rain’s cupped hands and then stand on his shoulders. I reached up and grabbed the bottom of a window. Standing as tall as I could, I could see just above the windowsill.
“Holy hares!” I said loudly.
“What is it?” Rain asked as I wobbled on his shoulders.
“Rabbits,” I exclaimed. “Thousands and thousands. There are rows and rows of them stacked from floor to ceiling.”
Staring through the dirty glass, I could see that the entire warehouse was stuffed with bunnies of all colors. They were stacked tightly on top of each other, and all of them had their eyes shut.
“There’re so many. I . . .”
“Hey, get down!” someone yelled at us from around the far corner of the warehouse. “You kids stay right there!”
It was a man wearing a green shirt and black pants and holding a rake. The surprise caused me to slip off Rain’s shoulders and fall onto his head. We both tipped backward and plowed into Juliet. The three of us hit the wet concrete hard.
I could see starfishes dancing around my head.
“Get up!” Juliet said.
We all started running as the man screamed things.
“Stop! Stop! I’m not kidding.”
None of us thought he was, so we ran as fast as we could to the front gate and out to where our bikes were. Jumping onto them, we pedaled much faster than we had pedaled when riding to Port O’Hare. We kept looking over our shoulders to see if anyone was following us, but no one was. There was nothing but wet skies.
“Who was that?” Rain yelled as we biked.
“I have no idea,” I yelled back. “But judging by what I saw in the warehouse, we’ve got bigger problems than him.”
The three of us pedaled as hard as we could, racing down the rainy thoroughfare and back toward Rabbit Road.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RAINED OUT
My dad was predictable and easy to find—he was in the Angora Room with Summer. They were sitting at a different table, and he was telling her all about the exciting world of being an insurance fact-checker. I didn’t want to butt in, but we
had an emergency on our hands and my father could no longer brush us off.
“Dad!” I interrupted.
“Perry,” he said happily. “You’re still wet.” He looked at Juliet and Rain. “And you two are just as soaked.”
“You need to come with us,” I insisted. “Now.”
“Where?”
“Outside. And you can’t say no this time.”
My dad looked at Summer. He then looked back at me.
“I’m serious,” I added. “You have to come.”
It was a surprise to all of us when my father stood up.
“Okay, what is it?”
“Not here,” I told him. “You’re going to have to ride a bike. I’ll ride on the handlebars.”
Summer gasped at the thought.
“It’s raining so hard,” my dad said, looking out the large windows on the south end of the Angora Room.
“Pretend you’re a plant and you’re being watered,” I suggested.
“I’ll do it,” my father said with conviction.
“If you have to go out, use a couple of the hotel golf carts,” Summer said. “You’ll get wet, but not as wet as on bikes.”
Summer led us to the front desk, where she handed us the keys to two carts parked outside. We quickly found the golf carts and left the hotel, driving into the wet and stormy outdoors. Rain drove one cart with Juliet, and my dad drove the other with me. The carts were nicer than my uncle’s old Squidmobile, but they lacked any fake tentacles or decorations. I wanted to drive, but my dad insisted I wasn’t old enough. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had driven the Squidmobile many times and in worse situations.
“Where are we going?” my dad asked loudly as we zipped through the rain.
“Just follow them,” I answered while pointing to my friends up ahead. “I think we’re heading to the Liquid Love Shack to get Zeke. He might be with Flower.”
I wanted to tell my dad about Zeke saving up to marry Flower, but Zeke had sworn me to secrecy. And secrecy is one of the things in life worth swearing over.
When we got to the Liquid Love Shack, it was filled with people—some were drinking carrot juice smoothies, and some were just in there waiting out the storm.
I was thrilled to see that Zeke was there helping Flower.
“Perry,” Flower said happily.
I tried to smile at her, but she was grinding a carrot and the image grossed me out. Seeing Flower reminded me that there are some adults in the world who are better than others. Her dark skin was speckled with bits of juice, and her long dark hair was tied up behind her head. She was thin and prettier than most of the other grown-ups I know. It was surprising that she was so kind, seeing how she was Rain’s mother.
I introduced my father to her, and I told them all what had happened at warehouse fifty-six.
“Rain,” Flower chastised her son. “You shouldn’t be taking Perry and Juliet to the port.”
“Perry took me,” Rain said defensively.
“And now I’m going to take Zeke and my dad,” I announced. “You’re welcome to come along, Flower, but we need to go now.”
“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow,” Zeke suggested.
“Only if you don’t care about the future of this island,” I warned him.
Flower cared about the island’s future, but she still decided to stay dry and stay at the Liquid Love Shack. My dad then drove one of the golf carts with me. Zeke drove the other one with Juliet and Rain.
The rain continued to dump.
“I’m glad we have this time alone,” my dad said as we drove down the Port O’Hare thoroughfare. Fat raindrops whipped up against our faces and covered my arms and legs with squid pimples.
“We’re always alone,” I reminded him. “We live alone. Plus, we have a hotel room at the Bunny Hotel. We’ll be alone there, too.”
“This island is wonderful,” he said, ignoring me as the moisture made his usually bushy mustache droop like a soggy starfish. “Intriguing hotel hostesses, and you making up all this excitement.”
“I’m not making anything up.”
“There you go.”
“Dad,” I complained. “Sometimes I feel like you don’t listen to me.”
“I have very good hearing,” he said seriously. “My diet helps with everything from circulation to sound perception. People say I have the ears of a large monkey, and I’m assuming large monkeys have good hearing.”
“Admiral Uli says, ‘Assumptions make you dumbsome.’”
“The wisdom of a fish.”
“Squid,” I corrected.
The rain was getting harder and the sky was getting darker.
“I hate to be a wet blanket,” my dad said. “But it’s really coming down. Maybe we should turn around.”
I was going to protest, but the sky opened up and rain poured down in buckets and barrels. The Port O’Hare thoroughfare was quickly becoming a river.
“Newts!” I swore.
“Where?” my father shouted above the sound of the rain.
“It’s too dark to see any,” I shouted back. “But they use the rain to travel in and drop down on unsuspecting enemies.”
“Perry!” he yelled. “Now that you have actual friends and real island adventures in your veins, don’t you think you can stop constantly pretending about squids?”
I looked at my dad and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
It was true: I really didn’t know. I knew I was getting older, but I wasn’t ready to abandon all the things that had helped me cope with growing up. Admiral Uli was more than just an old comic book character that a few people knew. Ocean Blasterzoids was a place to escape to and help me make sense of the world I actually did live in.
“I can’t just give Uli up,” I told my father.
“You’re a loyal squid,” he said kindly. “Also, I’m turning around. This road is a river. We’ll have to come out tomorrow morning.”
I was going to argue, but the rising water and the falling rain were about to wash us away.
My dad turned the cart around and Zeke followed our example.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. I was worried about Captain Fuzzy, worried about thousands of robots, worried about Zeke, worried about lost booty, worried about the storm, and worried about my father always insisting that I was pretending.
I don’t know which one of my worries worried me more.
“The Fuzzy guy who Zeke works for really is concerning,” I shouted as we drove back through the rain.
“In a perfect world, we’d have no concerns,” my father yelled. “Of course, that would probably be boring.”
My dad drove on as the sky continued to hose us down.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PAMPHLETS OF WONDER
With everything that was going on, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. But once we got back to the hotel, I lay down on my bed to test the softness, and next thing I knew it was nine o’clock in the morning.
My dad’s bed was empty, which meant he was probably down in the Angora Room eating whole-grain toast and keeping Summer from her job.
Getting up, I walked to the window and opened the curtains. It was no longer raining, but the sky still had some clouds. I was thinking of taking a shower and using the soap sample Juliet had given me when I heard a knock at the door.
I glanced into the mirror on the wall. My hair looked like a sea urchin, and I was wearing an oversized Ocean Blasterzoids T-shirt that had stains on it from the previous night’s snacks.
There was a second knock.
Quietly I moved closer and looked through the peephole on the door. The hallway was dark, making it hard to see much.
“Who is it?” I shouted.
“It’s me, Sheriff Rolly.”
I froze.
“Could you open up, Perry?” he asked.
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I’m fine.”
I heard Sheriff Rolly sigh through the door. “I need to talk to you.”
/> “My dad said to never let strangers into the room.”
“We saw your dad downstairs,” the sheriff informed me. “He’s actually the one who told us to come up and talk to you.”
“Thanks a lot, Dad,” I mumbled to myself.
With zero enthusiasm or excitement, I opened the door. There standing in the hallway was the sheriff, and next to him was Captain Fuzzy. Seeing a blob fish so early in the day made me panic.
“No!” I said, trying to close the door.
I was too slow. Sheriff Rolly stuck his foot in and pushed it open.
“We just have a few questions,” the sheriff insisted.
It was no use trying to hold the door closed—the sheriff was way stronger than me. So I let go of the door and stepped back into the room. Feeling like I might need something to protect myself, I picked up a pillow off my bed.
The sheriff and Captain Fuzzy stood near the mirror, giving me both a front view and a rear reflection of them.
“It’s nice to see you’re back on island,” the sheriff said. “But Fuzzy here says you’ve been loitering around some of his buildings.”
“He was crawling around and eavesdropping,” Captain Fuzzy added.
“Crawling is a really good exercise,” I tried to explain. “I’m trying to stay in shape.”
Sheriff Rolly groaned and then changed the subject. “Were you anywhere near Port O’Hare yesterday?”
“I don’t like cruise ships.”
“That wasn’t the question. Were you out there?”
“My dad thinks everything I do is out there.”
Sheriff Rolly sighed. “I forgot how much fun you could be. Listen, Perry, how about you and your friends just try to have a non-lawbreaking time while you’re here. Everyone already knows what you three have done in the past. No need to prove anything more.”
“People keep saying that,” I complained. “But I wasn’t proving. I was crawling.”
“Please,” the sheriff begged, “just listen. Mr. Newton here isn’t going to press any charges against you for sneaking around, but you need to stay out of trouble. It’s Bunny Break and I have other things to worry about.”