The Quest for the Kid

by Adrienne Kress

  To his left, beyond Evie, Catherine and Benedict were sitting down too. Benedict seemed engrossed in his map, hardly caring where he was, but Catherine had an odd look on her face as she got comfortable. Almost like she was scared the chair was going to eat her. Which was strange, since for one thing, chairs don’t do that,* and for another, even if the chair were alive, there was no one better to tame the beast and not get eaten than Catherine.

  There was a whirr then as the engines came to life. Through the window Sebastian could see a rush of bubbles stream past and then subside. There was a sudden loud metal clunk that reverberated through the vessel. He instinctively looked up, but all he could see was the shiny copper ceiling above, reflecting his worried face.

  “And we’re free!” said the Kid. “Doris has unlatched us, and we’re ready to sail.”

  It certainly seemed like they were no longer attached to whatever had been keeping them in place. The view out the window was bobbing slightly now.

  Sebastian watched the Kid closely. From his angle he could see the Kid pushing various buttons and staring at the glass window. He really hoped the Kid remembered how to pilot this thing.

  “And we’re off!” The submarine moved downward and then jerked to a stop. The view in front of them floated a bit to the left. “Wait. One second….Now we’re off!” said the Kid, and this time they pulled downward smoothly and slowly through the water. Sebastian thought it was very helpful that the Kid liked to narrate as he went, but maybe at this point all his attention should be on his driving.

  Fortunately, there weren’t any more false starts. They carefully glided down and forward through the water, and as they did, fish scurried away from the window this way and that, and sometimes even the other way.

  “We’re doing it,” said Evie softly beside him.

  He turned to her. She was staring out the window, and he wasn’t entirely sure if she was speaking to him or to herself.

  “We are,” he said.

  Nodding, she gave him a look closely followed by a smile. She leaned in. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered.

  “Honestly, me neither.” There was so much about this that he couldn’t believe. That he of all people was on a submarine, that he was with an exploring team on a rescue mission, that he still hadn’t called his parents, that he was lying to Evie about that, that he was no longer sure about pretty much anything he had ever been sure of…

  It was a lot.

  He was grateful the journey wasn’t going to be long and that it wouldn’t be deep. He didn’t need to imagine the weight of all the water on top of them added to the weight of everything he was feeling.

  When had he gotten this dramatic?

  “We’re going pretty steadily,” said the Kid. At that, both Benedict and Catherine rose from their seats and returned to the table.

  “I guess that means we can get up,” said Sebastian, unbuckling himself from his seat and glancing at Evie. She was sitting still in place. Staring ahead. “I mean, not that we have to.”

  “I think I just want to sit here a while longer. You can explore, though,” she said, not really paying that much attention to him.

  “Okay.” For some reason it felt strange standing and walking away from her. Especially when she was acting so “off” at the moment. He made his way over to Benedict and Catherine.

  “Is there much of a plan?” he asked, examining the map they were staring at. It was of London and the river that ran through it. The Thames, it was called, and Sebastian knew it pretty well. He’d looked at a lot of maps of London over time. He’d liked watching the evolution of the city from ancient Roman and medieval eras to now, how the waterways were used for transportation and how that changed with technology. It was neat.

  “Well, that depends,” said Benedict, bending over a portion of the map.

  “On what?”

  “On what you are referring to. If you meant a plan for traveling to the Cutty Sark, we do. It’s straightforward enough. If you mean anything to do with Alistair…” Both he and Catherine looked over Sebastian’s shoulder, and he turned around. They were staring at the back of Evie’s head.

  “You can tell me,” said Sebastian, turning back quickly. If there was something he should know, that Evie should know, he needed them to share it.

  “There is a lot of uncertainty,” said Catherine. “We don’t know exactly where he is. And we don’t even know if…” She stopped.

  “What?” asked Sebastian.

  “We don’t even know if he’s alive,” replied Benedict coolly.

  Sebastian’s heart dropped. It was true. It was very true. They had no real knowledge of anything. At all. He thought back to this entire experience. Everything he had gone through. It had all been to help Evie. But now here he was, in a giant machine underwater, traveling somewhere to help someone he wasn’t even sure needed his help. Someone who the rest of the team weren’t even sure needed help. And, worse, who could be beyond their help.

  How on earth had he put himself in this situation? Because of a love of adventure? He wasn’t even sure yet if he did love adventures. Right now he was feeling pretty darn tired of them. They took longer than you expected. There were lots of boring moments, lots of tedious traveling from one place to another. And then, when things weren’t tedious, they were downright dangerous. Life-threatening. Okay, maybe you got to go to a K-pop concert and an opera. And, okay, maybe getting to know new places and people was kind of exciting.

  But…

  What was his point again?

  “Sebastian, are you okay?” asked Doris, joining them at the table.

  “What?”

  “You look…odd,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, I’m okay. Uh, is there some place I could lie down? I’m very tired.”

  Doris was on her feet immediately. “Oh, you’re right! It’s very late, for all of us. Follow me!” She turned and called out to Evie still sitting in her grandfather’s chair. “Evie, do you want to join us? I’m showing Sebastian his quarters.”

  “I’m okay, thanks,” replied Evie.

  “Okay, great!” Doris turned back to Sebastian.

  She led him off the bridge and into one of the passageways. After a little walking they arrived in front of a low curved door. “Here’s your quarters. It’s one of our guest quarters. Pretty nice, really. We always treated our guests well.”

  She turned the metal handle, and it squeaked loudly, as did the hinges as she pushed the door open. “I should probably get some WD-40 for this, huh?”

  Automatic lights flickered on in two wall sconces, revealing a cozy room. Though it was small, there was enough space inside for a bunk bed over a simple mahogany desk. And on the far wall was a porthole.

  “If you need us, you know where to find us,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he replied, stepping into the room.

  “You have a nice sleep.” The door closed in a slightly too loud squeak and slam.

  He climbed up the short ladder to the bunk bed and lay down on his back, feeling utterly mentally exhausted. Maybe it was time to create a pros-and-cons list. To work toward making an actual decision. He’d been coasting for too long. Did he want adventures, or didn’t he? Was he the same Sebastian as he had been before he’d met Evie and started working for the Explorers Society? Or had he changed? If he had changed, had he changed since he’d changed? That was a new one. Had he maybe once thought adventuring was fun but now was over it?

  What about the simple fact that the team was back together and no one really needed his help anymore?

  His eyes closed heavily, but he forced them open again, wide.

  No! This time he wasn’t falling asleep. This time he’d find out the answer first!

  * Though, quite frankly, how would anyone know unless there were witnesses, I suppose�
��.

  Evie awoke with a start. She blinked a few times at the blue in front of her, but when a lazy octopus swam by as if on its nightly stroll, everything came flooding back.

  “Hey, you’re awake,” said the Kid, looking up from his book. He was sitting sideways across his chair like a teenager, knees over the right armrest, back against the left.

  “Yeah. How long was I asleep?” asked Evie, trying to get her eyes to focus. She and the Kid were the only two on the bridge. The lights had been dimmed, and everything was painted in a blue glow from the ship’s headlights illuminating the water ahead of them.

  “A few hours,” replied the Kid. “It’s probably around four in the morning Portugal time.”

  “How are you still so awake?” asked Evie.

  He shrugged. “It’s my job. I’m also a bit of a night owl. You want to go to bed? I can take a break and show you to your quarters.”

  Evie shook her head. She knew deep down that she was being silly, but she didn’t want to leave her grandfather’s chair. It almost felt like if she did, it would vanish or something. Which was ridiculous, of course. She curled herself sideways into a ball so that her head was on the armrest and she could see the Kid and out the front window.

  “Jason?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “What happens when this is all over?” She watched as bubbles from the engines blew past the fringes of the window. The bubbles were kind of hypnotic.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “What happens? After we rescue my grandfather? To you guys?”

  “Oh.” There was silence, and she heard him softly close his book. “Hmm. Well, I have a new agent, so I’m excited to work with her. And I guess Doris will return to her family and the opera, or maybe they’ll move somewhere else. They do love traveling. And Benedict, well, he’ll go back to the university, and Catherine has all her animal rights causes….”

  “So everyone will simply do what they were doing? Nothing will change?”

  “Change?” replied the Kid.

  “Yeah. Now that you’ve seen each other again, spent time together. You’re all just going to split apart again like this never happened?” The thought made her feel sad.

  There was silence. Evie shifted her position so that she could see the Kid better. He wasn’t looking in her direction. Instead he was staring off into the distance, seeming, well, kind of sad himself.

  “I think there are too many bad memories. I think…they want to forget,” he said, lost in thought.

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “You said ‘they.’ What about you?”

  The Kid dropped his head, and she couldn’t see his face. “I’ve missed them. I have. But I can’t change them.”

  “You’re making new memories. Maybe that will change things. Maybe I can change things!” She was starting to feel energetic again. The bubbles were less hypnotizing now and more like they were propelling her. She sat up.

  “Evie, you can’t fix everything,” said the Kid with a small laugh.

  “Wanna bet?” she asked with a grin.

  The Kid’s laugh got bigger. “I like your attitude, Evie, I really do.”

  She grinned back at him as he returned to his book. She ran her fingers over the etched-in compass symbol in the chair. Things were going to be different. The Filipendulous Five would be back together. She would make sure of it.

  * * *

  —

  Sebastian woke up and, after climbing out of his bunk, made his way back toward the bridge. He was mad at himself for having fallen asleep. He hadn’t meant to. He thought back, trying to recall when sleep had taken him. Oddly, it’s almost impossible to recall the exact moment when you fall asleep.* That split second between being awake and not was always erased. Like if you were to remember it, it would reveal the secrets of the universe. Or at least some really good gossip about it.

  But finally his memory knocked itself back into place and Sebastian did think of one thing. A decision he’d made. An important one at that.

  When he arrived at the bridge, Evie gave him a big wave, and he was happy to see her standing at the table with the others and not still sitting in Alistair’s chair.

  The Kid was pacing while the others were looking at a map.

  “I don’t think this is fair. I definitely do not think this is fair,” the Kid was saying.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sebastian, quietly slipping in beside Evie.

  “Evidently the person meeting us and getting us into London is the Kid’s archnemesis,” replied Evie just as quietly. She was smiling, though. It seemed extremely unusual. Weren’t archnemeses a bad thing?

  “Sounds serious,” he said.

  “Not really. Apparently there was a short period when the Kid went missing back in the team’s heyday, sneaked off to his own adventure mountain climbing. The team replaced him with this other explorer briefly. And…Jason did not like that.” She raised her eyebrows at Sebastian.

  Oh. “Well, I mean, that was his own fault,” replied Sebastian.

  “Yeah,” said Evie.

  “Look. Let me go ahead. I’ll get us a boat, return with it, and pick everyone up.” The Kid stopped and turned, his eyes bright and excited with the idea.

  “Or we could not waste precious time waiting for you and simply use the help we can get,” replied Doris, crossing her arms.

  The Kid’s face fell. His expression turned to mopey. He pouted. “So unfair.”

  “You’re acting like a child,” said Doris.

  “Hey!” said Evie at that. “We’re not the ones pouting over here.”

  Exactly, thought Sebastian.

  The Kid glanced at her, shook his head, and laughed a little. “Ugh. Whatever. Fine. But don’t expect me to be nice.”

  “Okay, Jason,” said Doris. “Enough’s enough. Bring us up.”

  The Kid slouched his way to the driver’s seat and pushed a few buttons. The submarine shook more violently than Sebastian had known it to, and everyone looked over at the Kid. “Sorry,” he said, not seeming particularly so.

  Water rushed outside the windows, bubbles burst past, and the rumbling got louder and louder. And then stopped. Suddenly. With a little bounce.

  There was the sound of chain against metal as the anchor was dropped.

  “Okay, everyone,” said Doris, clapping her hands together. “Time to go!”

  * Which is why I try to stay asleep as much as possible.

  Evie could barely contain everything she was feeling. If she’d been thrilled before, which she had been, what on earth was this feeling now? It was too much, way too much, and she bounced a little on her feet beside Sebastian and (she couldn’t help it) gave him a big sideways hug.

  “Whoa!” he said in surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just so excited!”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  It was hard to know exactly what was going on there with him. After all, he’d been weird for days now. But she also knew that Sebastian experienced excitement completely differently than she did, so she was okay with his withdrawn response.

  “Did you sleep okay?” she asked as they followed the explorers toward the exit hatch.

  “Yeah.” But he stopped speaking. Like he didn’t mean it. Like there was more to say.

  “What?” asked Evie.

  “I made a decision,” he said. He eyed her closely.

  Maybe this was it. Maybe this was what he’d been keeping from her. “About what?”

  “Come on, you two,” said Catherine, motioning for them to hurry.

  They started walking again. “Please tell me. We don’t need to be standing still to talk. And we’re always going to be interrupted somehow.” There was never a
perfect time to say anything. He really needed to say it already. They approached the ladder, and Catherine stood to the side to let Evie up first. “Tell me on the boat,” she said as she started to climb.

  She hoisted herself into the open air. It was so good to feel it against her skin, feel the spray from the sea, smell the salt in the air. She looked toward what she assumed was England, the sea crashing against the shoreline. Approaching the submarine quickly was a really fancy-looking speedboat, zipping its way over and creating a white tail in its wake.

  The hatch closed behind her, and she turned to see Sebastian next to her. The Kid was standing, still pouting, staring at the black-and-red speedboat.

  They all watched as it slowed to a stop. The driver stepped forward and tossed them a line.

  Benedict caught the rope easily and pulled the boat alongside the submarine. “Okay. Everybody in,” he said.

  Doris climbed down the submarine’s external ladder first and with the driver’s help hopped easily onto the deck of the speedboat. Well, if Doris could do it and she was the same height as Evie, that meant that Evie could do it. She felt so confident that she said, “I’m next!”

  Catherine nodded and helped her slowly over the side of the submarine. Evie took each rung of the ladder step by step, now more aware of the cold wind that nipped at her cheeks. When she arrived at the bottom, she turned to see the driver’s outstretched hand. She grabbed it and jumped on board. Evie looked up and waved.

  “Thank you!” Evie said to the driver.

  The woman smiled back at her, pushing a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “You’re welcome.” Evie moved to the side as the driver prepared to help Catherine, who really didn’t need any help. “So,” said Evie to the driver as they waited, “you’re the Kid’s archnemesis.”

  “Is he still going on about that?” replied the driver with a laugh.