by Eric Bower
“Yup. I did a whole lot of fast breathing, just like you told me to. It worked pretty well at first. It helped my brain come up with a way to outsmart those sea beasts. Oh, look. Pretty lights . . . pretty lights . . .”
“That’s not what I meant,” M said, suddenly looking very concerned. “Hyperventilating is when you breathe at a rapid rate, often while panicking, and that’s precisely what I didn’t want you to do. Just . . . breathe normally, W.B., and . . . oh dear.”
She went to the kitchen corner to fetch me a glass of water. She was shaking her head and mumbling to herself. She must have been so proud of me for my quick thinking.
“I’m so sorry, my son,” P said sadly. “I’ve been such a fool. Such an awful, terrible, brilliant fool.”
“Oh . . . that’s okay. Do we have any butter? And maybe a slice of toast or two? Or nine? Wait, how many are in a baker’s dozen? I’d like that many. Plus one.”
I heard a sniveling noise and spotted little Waldo sitting alone on the floor. He looked so sad that I might have felt bad for him if I didn’t hate him so much.
“We put you into danger after treating you horribly,” P said to me as he placed his hand on my shoulder. “And I’ve been treating you worse than anyone. I’m so sorry, son. Please forgive me.”
“Oh . . .” I said again, and then I realized that I was saying “oh” quite a lot and should probably say something else. “Well, that’s alright. I guess. Nothing out there ate me, so I suppose everything is hunky dory. Say, does anyone else hear that loud ringing noise?”
Chimes were clanging in my head, and my legs suddenly felt like wet noodles. I realized that I was swaying back and forth, and I began to wonder if I was about to fall over.
Yes. I was about to fall over. The weight of my large and ringing head was too much for my wobbly body to support, and as I slowly began to fall backwards, I prepared my body for an unpleasant meeting with the floor.
“Maybe you should sit down, W.B.,” Rose said as she caught me. “You’re turning a weird shade of green.”
Sitting down seemed like a good idea. My tongue felt like it was vibrating, and my eyes kept spinning in circles. With Rose’s help, I sat on the sofa. M handed me a glass of water and once again told me that hyperventilating was a terrible thing to do, and that I was lucky it hadn’t gotten me killed. Then she began to fill my aching head with all of the scientific reasons why hyperventilating hadn’t given me my good idea to use the bubbles to frighten the sea creatures, while I nodded my throbbing head and pretended to listen to her.
As M lectured, Waldo slowly crawled over to me.
“No!” my father shouted sternly.
I sighed, and started to stand, assuming that I must have sat in the monkey’s spot again.
But it turned out that P was shouting at Waldo, not at me.
“You leave him alone!” P said, shaking his finger at Waldo. “That’s a bad little monkey!”
“Huh?” I said.
Rose sat down beside me and put her arm over my shoulder as she explained. “Mr. Baron is angry at the monkey now, for being mean to you, and also for eating the rest of our food, and especially for giving him fleas. Though Mr. Baron denies having fleas.”
“I don’t have fleas!” P told us, as he scratched his head and chin and face and neck and arms. “I’m just a bit itchy. My hair and face must be tickling me. That’s all. It’s just a typical ticklish face episode. They happen all the time!”
“Waldo also jumped onto the control panel when Mr. Baron was trying to let you back into the submarine,” Rose continued. “It’s funny. It almost seemed like the monkey wanted you to stay out there with the shark and the eel.”
I turned to the squirrel monkey as I unbuttoned my rubber suit. Waldo winced, as though he thought I might try to hit him.
“You’re an evil little monkey,” I whispered.
Tears started to form in the corner of the monkey’s eyes. His bottom lip trembled as he bowed his head. He looked as though he was terribly sorry for what he’d done, and he quietly crawled into a dark corner of the submarine.
“I think we’ll be letting little Waldo go as soon as we get to the island,” P said, as he and my mother began to repair the pipe and the gears. “He’s already caused us more than enough trouble.”
“W.B., once again, I can’t tell you how sorry we are,” M told me. “And we’re very proud of you for everything that you’ve done for us. Even if I’m sometimes baffled by your total misunderstanding of basic science.”
Rose gave my shoulder another squeeze then helped me out of my rubber underwater suit.
“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, W.B.,” she told me. “You really deserve that medal.”
I looked down at my WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMA medal and grinned.
My parents and Rose were able to fix the submarine with the scrap metal, and soon we were back on course for the nameless little island in the South Pacific. P put on his captain’s cap and continued to steer, while M served as his navigator. Rose filled the stove with coal and helped my mother to work the control panel.
I threw a blanket over my shoulders as I nestled into the sofa with one of my pirate adventure novels and a warm cup of tea.
From the corner of the submarine, I heard the soft and pitiful sound of a common squirrel monkey weeping.
It wasn’t just another squirrel dream. It was the mother of all squirrel dreams. I was back in my underwater suit, walking slowly across the bottom of the sea. But this time I wasn’t alone. There were three other people in underwater suits walking beside me, people who I naturally assumed were my parents and Rose. We were walking across the ocean floor in search of Captain Affect’s lost treasure when suddenly I tripped and fell.
But I didn’t fall in the slow and graceful way that a person falls while they’re underwater. I fell in the fast and clumsy (and all too familiar) way that a person did when they were back on land. I realized that we weren’t underwater. I removed my helmet and discovered that we were actually in the desert.
“Hey!” I called to the others. “We don’t need these helmets. We’re on land!”
The others turned to me, and for the first time I noticed that they were quite a bit smaller than I remembered my parents and Rose being.
They took off their helmets to reveal they were all common squirrel monkeys. Their eyes were bright red and evil. The monkeys pointed at me and began to shriek.
Well, I don’t know what you do when evil common squirrel monkeys shriek at you, but I would run, so run is what I did. I turned and ran across that wide and bumpy desert, my legs churning in my rubber suit, running so fast that at times it felt as though my feet weren’t touching the ground. I ran even though running is my sixth least favorite thing in the world to do, right behind waking up early for school, eating creamed spinach, cleaning my room, getting a haircut, and giving Aunt Dorcas a foot massage.
As I ran across the desert, I noticed a dark shadow slowly begin to fall over me. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see the three shrieking squirrel monkeys dressed in underwater suits, but what I saw instead was a wave crashing down on me, though it wasn’t a wave of water, it was a wave of squirrels, a wave of thousands and thousands of confused and wildly screaming squirrels.
And they were about to drown me. I opened my mouth in shock, and as the furry avalanche began to fall, the only thing I could think to scream was—
“Squirrel wave!” I shouted as I suddenly sat up in my bunk, bonking my head on the metal ceiling of the submarine.
“Ow.”
I heard three people and one monkey groan.
I was back on the submarine, back in reality. I wasn’t in the desert, and I wasn’t about to drown in squirrels. Everything was normal, or, at least, what passed for normal with my family. I was alright, or, at least, what passed for alright with me.
“W.B.,” Rose moaned from the bunk beneath mine, “one day, you and I are going to have to sit down and figure out where your weird squirrel thing comes from.”
“Good luck with that,” M muttered into her pillow. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for years.”
Suddenly my father gasped. He popped out of his bunk and rushed over to the steering wheel at the other end of the submarine.
“Sharon! Sharon!” he called. “It’s finally here!”
“Mmmmm, that’s nice dear,” my mother yawned, as she pulled her blanket over her head and tried to drift back to sleep.
“What’s finally here?” Rose Blackwood asked as she slid out of her bunk and threw her robe over her shoulders.
“The day is finally here!” my father cried excitedly as he fired up the submarine, making it come to life. The torches mounted to the outsides switched on, the flippers flipped, and the entire metal contraption slowly rose from its slumbering spot at the bottom of the sea. “This is the day we reach the island!”
The thought of finally getting out of the submarine and setting foot on solid land was so exciting that M and I hopped out of our bunks as well, and rushed to the front of the submarine. Together, the four of us did our family happy dance.
For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s the dance that my family does when we’re really happy about something. It used to be only my mother and father who did the family happy dance, but eventually Rose and I started doing it along with them. I will be the first to admit that our happy dance looks absolutely ridiculous. In fact, it looks insanely ridiculous. When we’re doing our happy dance, we sort of look like we’re a group of orangutans fighting off a flock of angry seagulls. But I still enjoy doing it. After all, what’s the point of dancing if it doesn’t make you look a bit foolish?
From his shadowy place in the corner, Waldo stared at us with the sort of look on his face that you’d expect from a monkey watching humans act like apes.
Nobody Gets to Hit W.B. Except For Me
Three hours later, we were there. We had reached the island where Captain Affect and his crew were planning on burying his greatest treasure before his ship had sunk. It had taken us weeks to get there, and we had almost strangled each other on the way. But we had still done it.
“We’re here!” P declared proudly, and then he scratched his head. “Now what?”
“I think the first thing we should do is park the submarine and explore the island,” said M. “We need to find some supplies. Your greedy monkey ate the last of our food, which means unless we become really good at fishing, we’ll need to find something to eat here to survive the trip back home.”
Everyone shot an ugly look at little Waldo, who whimpered and frowned.
“I can’t believe I made you my first mate,” P whispered to the monkey as he shook his head in disgust.
“I thought you didn’t really make him your first mate,” I objected. “You told me you just gave him the hat because his head was cold.”
“We both know that was a lie, W.B.,” P said as he rolled his eyes. “And stop sticking up for him. You’re always defending that naughty monkey.”
“What?” I exclaimed, unable to believe my ears. “Me? Defending the monkey? Why on earth would I do that? I’ve hated that monkey since the beginning of our trip!”
“That’s not how I remember it,” P said with a sniff, as he picked a flea from his ear.
M steered the underwater ship to the rocky coast of the island, and, once we were as close as we could get, she brought it to the surface and dropped anchor.
We all dressed quickly and climbed out of the submarine, happy to have our first taste of fresh air in quite a long time. We walked across the top of the submarine and hopped onto the rocks jutting out of the side of the island.
“Careful, W.B.,” Rose warned, after I’d already slipped and landed face first on a sharp rock. “You don’t want to hurt yourself.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The island was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The beaches were covered in pale sand and brightly colored shells. There was a dense, green jungle in the center of the island, where we discovered large fruit bushes which we quickly stripped for supplies. There was a row of coconut trees along the outside of the jungle, and P climbed them with the ease of a common squirrel monkey and picked all of the coconuts clustered at the top. M found several edible plants and nuts and wild tropical vegetables which she’d read about in one of her books. Before we knew it, we had collected a small feast.
As my parents began to lug the bags with food back to the submarine, Rose was hard at work collecting sea grapes and other little edible things along the coast. Once we had enough supplies, we would begin our search for Captain Affect’s sunken treasure.
It was my job to find fresh water on the island, which meant I’d need to do a bit of exploring. I took the large clay jugs that my parents had given me and made my way into the jungle in search of a stream or waterfall. As I walked, I heard a rather monkeyish noise behind me, and, the next thing I knew, there was a common squirrel monkey perched on my shoulder like a pirate’s parrot.
Waldo smiled at me as though we were now best friends.
“Ooo?” he cooed, in a tone which sounded like he was saying, “Hey, buddy. How ya doing?”
“Go away.”
His little monkey lip trembled.
“Stop trembling that lip,” I ordered. “I don’t care about your monkey tears. You’ve been horrible to me for weeks, and you even tried to keep P from allowing me back into the submarine. I hate you.”
Waldo stopped trembling his lip and bowed his head in shame as he hopped off my shoulder and sat on the ground.
I continued along a path that I discovered, which allowed me to cut through the dense jungle brush with ease. I could hear little Waldo following me, though every time I looked back at him, he’d try to hide behind a bush or a rock or a tree. It was very annoying. Not quite as annoying as Aunt Dorcas, but then again, very few things are.
After what felt like an eternity of searching, I finally found a little pond in the middle of the jungle. Though I can’t say that the water looked particularly good. It was dark and murky, with a thick layer of pond scum on top. It also looked like it’d been sneezed in by at least six different wild animals with head colds. As I uncorked the clay jugs to collect the water, I accidentally sneezed in it as well.
I dipped the clay jugs into the water, and as I waited for them to fill, I looked over and spotted someone who had suddenly appeared beside me at the edge of the pond. They were wearing an ugly mask, a pointy witch’s hat, and a long, flowing robe. For a moment we just stared at one another.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” the masked person replied pleasantly.
I looked down and saw that the masked person appeared to be floating two inches above the ground. My brain spun in my head like a cow in a cyclone, trying unsuccessfully to understand what it was that it was seeing.
“I don’t suppose you’re an illusion?” I asked the masked face. “Maybe you’re something that my overactive imagination invented because I’m a little frightened being out here on my own?”
“No,” the masked face said. “I don’t think so.”
“And you’re not a bad dream? The sort of dream I’d have after making a grilled cheese sandwich with fried onion rings right before bedtime?”
“Nope. But that sounds delicious.”
“It’s very delicious. Hmmmm,” I said, scratching my chin. “So, you’re really here?”
“I’m afraid so,” the masked face told me. “I’m really here. And as you might have already guessed, I’m a ghost.”
“Oh.”
For a moment, my brain broke.
It just sputtered and died, making the noise that a balloon makes when it release
s all of its air at once. Everything in my mind shut off after the ghost told me that it was a ghost, so I just sat there staring blankly until my brain somehow fixed itself again.
The ghost was polite enough to wait until my brain was better before it spoke to me again. I will say this for ghosts—they’re much more polite than monkeys, eels, and sharks.
I’d never met a ghost before. Then again, I’d never ridden in a submarine before either, or worn an underwater suit, or battled man-eating sea creatures, or made an enemy out of a monkey. So it was turning out to be a summer full of new and horrible experiences.
“A real ghost?” I asked, when I had found my voice again.
“Yes,” the ghost said as it straightened out its long, black robes. “A real ghost. And I’m afraid that if you steal the lost treasure of Captain Affect, I’m going to have to haunt you.”
Well, that was bad news. If we couldn’t take Captain Affect’s treasure, then our trip across the Pacific Ocean would have been a remarkable waste of time. Not to mention a waste of all the brain cells I might have killed during my underwater battle—a possible side effect of the hyperventilation, according to M. If I’m going to kill some brain cells, then I at least want a priceless diamond or two for my troubles.
I tried to reason with the ghost.
“What if I took the treasure, but didn’t keep it?”
“Hmmm. You mean if you stole it, but then gave it away?” the ghost asked. “Like Robin Hood?”
“Exactly.”
Apparently, no one had ever asked the ghost a question like that before, and so it had to think about it for a while. At first I waited politely, but then I began to glance at my pocket watch and repeatedly clear my throat, letting the ghost know that I had better things to do with my time than to sit around and watch it think. If I enjoyed watching others think, I’d randomly walk up to people on the street and say “What’s 1,532,263,656 divided by 36,482,468?” or “What number is ‘molybdenum’ on the Periodic Table of Elements?” or “What does the Swahili phrase ‘arobaini na mbili’ mean in English?”