by Mac Barnett
Steve clenched his jaw. He imagined himself in that water, pulled toward the sea floor, looking at that great white with its black and lolling eye.
“So finally I get to the ankle strap, and I rip it off. And my lungs are burning, and I have to swim up for air, but I don’t even know which way is up. So I stay still, and I start to float up a little, and so then I start swimming up in that direction, and I finally break through the surface, and I’m just gasping for air.”
“Yeah,” said Steve.
“Okay, so I start swimming back to the beach, and all of a sudden there’s this big whoosh and like a slap, and I look, and my board’s come up. And I sort of pause, because I don’t know whether to get it, because this shark must think it’s a seal, right? But this is my favorite board—such a good board, and I really want to get it back, and I know this is dumb, but I swim over and get it, and I paddle like crazy back to the shore. And when I get to the beach, I see, well, check this out—”
Danimal hopped out of his car, loosened the ties on his roof rack, and pulled down a bright red long-board. Hopping around in his wet suit in the evening light, Danimal resembled nothing more than a harbor seal with green and orange patches. He brought his board in front of the car. Steve saw two jagged bites, one in the board’s middle and the other down by the fins. Steve felt nauseated by the sight, but for some reason he couldn’t stop looking.
“Did you report this?” Steve asked.
“No way. I wasn’t supposed to be out there. I’m not getting in trouble.”
“So what did you come here for?” Steve asked. “Was I supposed to track down the shark and teach him a lesson? I don’t do hired muscle jobs, especially with great whites.”
Danimal shook his head and laid the board down on the ground. “Nah. I want you to help me find a new place to surf.”
“Why hire a private detective? Buy a map.”
“No, no. I’m looking for a specific spot. A secret spot. In Baja. My grandfather used to surf it in the sixties, and when I was a kid he used to tell me about a break only he knew about. Supposed to be the most consistent wave around—like a machine or something, just pushing out perfect, peeling lefts for as long as you can see.”
“I still don’t see why you were looking for me,” Steve said.
Danimal ducked into his car and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here’s why: I was reading one of my grandpa’s old books when I found this.” He passed the scrap to Steve.
The paper was old and yellowed, and it felt brittle in Steve’s hands. In the kind of handwriting nobody used anymore was written:
Turn west at the south pole,
go down, then climb over the
old man who sleeps on the beach.
Turn right and then walk
to the place where the
sea sings its own name.
Steve looked up. “So?”
“It’s a riddle, man! A mystery. I want you to help me decipher this message and help me find the perfect wave.”
Steve murmured. He took a walk around the surfboard to get his brain moving.
“So what do you say, Steve? Will you take the case?”
Steve stopped. “No.”
Danimal was crestfallen.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Steve said, looking Danimal right in the eye. “Your story doesn’t make any sense. You weren’t attacked by a great white shark.”
CHAPTER V
AN UNDERWATER CONSPIRACY
“ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?” Steve couldn’t make out Danimal’s face—the man was silhouetted in the car’s headlights—but he could tell Danimal was angry. “Did you even look at my board? The evidence is right in front of you.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“The evidence.”
“Right.”
“It’s right in front of me.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The shark-eaten board was illuminated by the wagon’s headlights.
“What?”
Steve squinted in the glare (he wished he had a pair of sunglasses) and tried to smile. “Look, Danimal, I’m not saying you’re lying. I believe you believe you were attacked by a shark, but I don’t believe a shark attacked you.”
“Dude. What are you talking about?”
“There are two big bites out of this board, right?”
“Yeah …”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Even if the shark thought your board was a seal, he’d know it wasn’t after the first bite. So why would he take another mouthful of foam and fiberglass?”
Danimal stared.
“He wouldn’t,” Steve said. “Sharks don’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
Steve knew from watching a lot of TV shows about sharks. (It was important to understand the things you hated most.) He shrugged nonchalantly. “I used to be a detective. It was my job to know things.”
Danimal was slowly nodding. “Okay … so then what bit my board?”
“Nothing. If I had to guess, I’d say you were attacked by a person. Someone wanted this to look like a shark attack to scare you off. And whoever it was overdid it.” Steve was walking again, talking fast. “I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to rig up some sort of device that would make bite marks like a shark. Like one of those old bear traps, you know?” Steve felt a familiar glowing certainty right in his gut. “You know, I’ve got a hunch that all these great white sightings are fake. There are no sharks off Mímulo Point.”
Danimal took a few seconds to respond, and when he did, his words came slowly. “Why would anyone fake a shark attack?”
Steve paced. Why? To get people out of the water. To cover up a crime. Smuggling. Trafficking. A secret search for underwater gold. Saboteurs targeting a nearby harbor. The clandestine construction of a submarine crime base. Why wouldn’t someone fake a shark attack?
Steve made himself stand still. “None of my business,” he said.
Danimal was excited. “What? Come on! There’s a mystery here. Two mysteries. I’ll pay you to figure this out and find my grandfather’s secret surf spot. You can’t pull out now, man. You’ve already broken the case wide open.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Oh, now don’t give me—”
“Look, Danimal. Take your story to the police. Ask for Chief Clumber. Maybe he can help you.”
“The cops? You’re seriously just going to give up? What about my grandpa’s secret spot?”
“Your grandpa’s note doesn’t make any sense. There is no west at the south pole. At the south pole, every direction is north.”
Danimal looked confused.
“Anyway,” said Steve, “the south pole’s not in Baja. It’s in Antarctica. And I’m not going anywhere: My mom would kill me if I left Ocean Park again. I told you, Danimal. I retired. I’m just an ordinary kid now.”
And with that, Steve turned around and walked back into his house.
CHAPTER VI
TOO MANY DANAS
“HEY, CH—” STEVE CAUGHT HIMSELF before he called his chum Dana a chum. “Chum” was a Bailey Brothers word, and he wasn’t using it anymore. “Hey, buddy.”
“Hey, Steve,” said Dana.
On Thursday after school, Steve and his best friend, Dana, walked hands-in-pockets down the road that ran along the ocean, just like they always did.
And like she had for the past week, Dana’s new girlfriend walked home with them.
Dana’s new girlfriend was also named Dana, only her last name was Powers. Steve had always thought she was all right, until she and Dana started going out. Now it seemed like she was always around, and Steve found the combination of Dana and Dana vaguely but constantly irritating.
“Hey, Dana—,” Steve said.
“What?” both Danas said at once, and then broke into near-identical laughter.
This had been going on a lot lately.
Steve turned to Dana Powers. “I didn’t mean you.
I meant Dana.”
Dana sighed.
“I call you Other Dana, remember?” Steve said.
“Well you’re the only one who calls me that, Steve,” said Other Dana. “People have just been calling me Dana for twelve years, and you have been calling me Other Dana for like three days, so it’s not like I have just reprogrammed my brain to not respond when I hear you say my name.”
She had a good point. But Steve wasn’t going to say so.
“Plus the whole Other Dana thing is so stupid,” said Other Dana.
That was not a good point.
“Anyways—,” said Other Dana.
That was another thing about Other Dana. She always said “anyways.”
“—I don’t see what the big deal is. We both have the same name. I think it’s cute.”
Steve scoffed. “Do you think it’s cute, Dana?”
Dana shrugged glumly.
This whole situation was Steve’s fault, really. Last Monday Dana had asked Steve to ask Other Dana to be his (Dana’s) girlfriend. Steve said sure, no questions asked. Although there were a few questions he’d like to have asked, questions like, Why do I have to do the asking again? And why do you want to be Dana Powers’s boyfriend if you’ve never really talked to her for more than five minutes? And what exactly is entailed in being Dana Powers’s boyfriend, anyway?
That day, Dana Powers was standing at the top of a flight of stairs that led to the school’s front entrance. She was surrounded by a group of five girls, and they were all laughing loudly. Dana Powers was laughing the loudest. Steve smoothed his hair and tried to control his breath as he started up the steps. On the fifth stair he caught Dana Powers’s eye, but she turned right back to her friends. Steve rehearsed a script in his head—he imagined Dana P.’s surprise when she heard what Steve had to say. But his stomach was cold. Steve had felt this way before sometimes, when he was working on a case: Usually it meant he was walking into a trap.
He reached the group of girls. They’d gone quiet, but nobody was looking at Steve.
“Hey, Dana,” he said, then lost his momentum.
Dana smiled encouragingly. She had a nice smile. “Yeah?”
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Steve swallowed. “Um, in private?”
Dana Powers smiled at her friends before she looked back at Steve. She sure was smiling a lot. “Yeah.”
They shuffled a few feet over, Dana still on the top stair and Steve one below, until they reached the banister. She was wearing a sticker of a heart on her cheek, right below her left eye. Now her face was serious, and she looked at Steve closely, like she was recording the whole scene in her head to review again and again later.
“Um, you know my friend Dana?” Steve said. “Not you. I mean not that you’re not my friend, but the guy who is like my best friend? Dana Villalon?”
“Uh-huh,” she said without nodding. The heart was pink with a thin blue border.
“Do you want to be his girlfriend?” The words tumbled from Steve’s mouth.
“Yeah,” she said. Dana Powers was all smiles again as she skipped back over to her friends.
When Steve met Dana that day at the usual spot, Dana was facing the ocean, but he couldn’t have been watching the waves, because he had his palms pressed against his eyes. “Hey, chum,” Steve said, and Dana didn’t even correct him. He just looked at Steve, and Steve saw that his friend was scared. But when Steve delivered his report, Dana jumped high in the air, then lay down in the sandy dirt by the side of the road. Steve sat next to him for a while before they started back. That was the last time they walked home just the two of them.
Now everything was different. Other Dana was around all the time. And Other Dana was nothing like Cissie Merritt and Hannah Fenway, the Bailey Brothers’ girlfriends. They only hung out with Shawn and Kevin when it was convenient for the brothers. And even then the girls spent most of their time sunbathing so Shawn and Kevin could go fly-fishing or explore suspicious rock formations.
“Have you started book four yet?” Other Dana asked.
“What?” Steve said.
“I wasn’t talking—”
“Look at that,” Dana said, pointing toward the beach. A flock of seagulls was dive-bombing an abandoned bag of french fries. The air was thick with birds, squawking and squabbling. One of the gulls managed to pick up the greasy bag and fly a few feet before another bird swooped down and knocked the prize from its beak. Fries fell and scattered on the sand, and the birds’ shrieks grew loud and frantic. Steve and Dana laughed.
“Anyways … ,” said Other Dana, and then didn’t say anything else.
“Anyway,” said Steve.
“What?” said Other Dana, wheeling around on Steve so fast that he took an involuntary step back.
“It’s anyway. Not anyways.”
“What’s your problem, Steve?” Other Dana said. Steve wanted to say something, but he didn’t have anything to say.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Other Dana gave her head a disgusted shake. Then she turned around and walked away from the ocean, toward downtown Ocean Park.
The gulls kept squawking.
Dana watched her till she disappeared around a corner.
The boys kept walking.
“What’s my problem?” Steve asked, forcing a laugh. “What’s her problem, right?”
Dana was silent, then said quietly, “You could be nicer to her.”
Unbelievable.
They walked without talking.
“You’ve been acting weird for a while,” Dana said after a few minutes. “What’s wrong? Still MacArthur Bart stuff?”
There was a lot wrong, but MacArthur Bart was probably the easiest to talk about.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Last night I put all my Bailey Brothers books in the trash—”
“Seriously?”
“I feel weird about them now. The guy who taught me everything I know about being a detective turned out to be a criminal mastermind—”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with his books.”
“I know, but—”
“I mean, he wrote all the Bailey Brothers books before he went bad, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So look at it this way. Say MacArthur Bart was a wizard. And when he was young and innocent and good he wrote a famous book of spells. Then, when he got older, he was seduced by the dark arts and became an evil wizard. Just because he ended up becoming a dark mage doesn’t mean that the grimoire that he wrote in his youth is evil too.”
Steve was quiet for a few seconds. “When did you get so into wizards?”
“What?”
“Are you reading wizard books?”
“What? What are you talking about? I’m not so into wizards.”
“Grimoire?”
“That’s a wizard’s spell book. Everybody knows that.”
Steve stared at Dana. “Everybody does not know that.”
“Whatever. I’m trying to help you. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about wizards.”
“Um, I think you’re the one making a big deal about wizards. Is this what Other Dana was talking about? Book four? Is she making you read wizard books?”
“She’s not making me read them.”
“So you are reading wizard books!”
“So what?”
“So you’re changing is what. Come on, Dana. You’re supposed to be the cool one.”
Dana stopped walking. “What?”
Steve’s face flushed, and he talked fast. “You’re the cool one, Dana. You run faster, you go on nice trips with your parents, you read books about ships—”
“Oh, there aren’t really any ships in these books. Wizards’ magic doesn’t work on water.”
Steve slapped his forehead with two hands.
“What?” said Dana. “Look, they’re not ‘wizard books.’ The third one doesn’t even have wizards in it. It just has liches.”
“What’s a l
ich?”
“An undead wizard.”
Steve groaned.
“What?” Dana asked. “What’s this series even called?”
Dana paused, then said quietly, “Wizards’ Worlds.”
“Wizards’ Worlds.”
“I’m serious. They’re actually really good.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Are you joking? Do I have to tell you everything I’m reading? Do you want me to turn in a reading log every week?”
“No, but you were deliberately keeping these books a secret.”
“Because I knew you’d react like this.”
“Like what? I’m only upset because you were hiding stuff from me!”
“No. Not upset. I knew you’d make fun of me.” Dana shook his head. “And I never made fun of your detective books.”
Steve felt like he’d been punched in the solar plexus. “Why would you? There’s nothing wrong with the Bailey Brothers books.”
“Fine! That’s what I was saying before you blew up about wizards.”
Steve and Dana walked the rest of the way in silence.
When they got to Steve’s street, they stopped.
“See you tomorrow,” Steve said.
“Bye,” said Dana.
Steve walked down Driftwood Avenue. What was Dana even talking about? How could he compare detective books and wizard books? That was dumb. And anyway, Steve hadn’t really been making fun of Dana. Had he?
Steve opened the front door.
There was a man with a gun in his living room.
CHAPTER VII
A DISASTER AT HOME
THAT MAN WAS RICK ELLIOT, Steve’s mom’s boyfriend and Steve’s number one enemy, especially now that Steve had stopped fighting crime. Rick was a cop, so the gun wasn’t weird. Or illegal. Which was too bad. Steve would have loved it if Rick had committed a crime. Then he’d be in jail instead of Steve’s living room.