The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Soggy School Trip

by Henry Winkler

  CHAPTER

  12

  The first mate saw to it that everybody got to work right away. Frankie and Luke had to stand at the bow of the ship, looking for pirates. They didn’t see any of those, but they did see a New York City garbage barge going by. Luke said it smelled like pizza, which makes you wonder what he gets on his pizza. Orange peel and flies? Or maybe potato skins and sweet wrappers?

  Ashley and her new best friend Chelsea “Football Camp” had to lower buckets into the river to get water to swab the decks. A couple of other kids had to polish all the brass on the ship. The first mate took four kids in a rowing boat and they paddled over to the next dock to look for hides. Unfortunately, one of those kids was Heather Payne, who finally barfed up her lunch in the East River.

  The captain told Collin and me to wait for him on the poop deck while he marched around shouting orders. You’re laughing, but it’s true. There is actually a place on a boat called the poop deck.

  “I’m Collin Rich,” Mr Perfect said to me.

  “Hank Zipzer,” I said, trying to seem taller. “I know. Ashley pointed you out. She said you’re a really cool guy.”

  Wait a minute here. I was prepared to hate this guy. But he’s being nice. Really nice, in fact.

  “Can you believe we’re standing on the poop deck?” he said.

  “They probably call it that because during storms, the captains would get so scared they pooped their pants.”

  Collin burst out laughing. “Ashley said you’re funny too,” he said, slapping me a high five. “She’s right. So how’d you get to be captain’s assistant?”

  “A guy named McKelty nominated me,” I said. “The class voted. You?”

  “My teacher picked me. He said I was tough enough to take it, whatever that means.”

  Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. The captain was back. I gulped.

  “This isn’t a party, you lazy slugs,” he snarled. “Follow me to my quarters, and shake a leg or you’ll feel my whip.”

  I thought he was going a little overboard on the mean captain routine. If he was trying to show us that sea captains in the olden days ruled with an iron hand, we got the picture. Maybe he’d lighten up now.

  He headed below deck. Collin and I followed. I was looking forward to getting to know the captain away from all the others, when he wouldn’t have to act so mean. I couldn’t wait to get my special assignment. I wondered what it would be. What would a captain’s assistant get to do that nobody else got to do? Look at old maps and help chart our imaginary course? Look at the stars with a telescope? Or maybe just share a lamb chop at the captain’s table.

  I have only four words to describe what happened next.

  None of the above.

  When we got below, the captain made us pull off his boots.

  “Polish these until you can see your face in them,” he ordered. “And don’t look up until you’re done. You there,” he growled, turning to me. “Clean the head.”

  “What head? Your head, sir?” I asked, not knowing whether or not to salute.

  He didn’t answer, just handed me a bucket and a toothbrush. That was a new one. I’d never heard of washing your head with a toothbrush.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “But shouldn’t you use a toothbrush to brush your teeth, not your head?”

  “On a ship, a head is a toilet, you green maggot!” he shouted.

  I couldn’t believe it. He was asking me to clean the bathroom! With a toothbrush! I didn’t even do that at home.

  “I’m going to lie down,” he said. “When I wake up, I’ll have you dog hairs peel onions for my stew.”

  He stomped off into his bedchamber and slammed the door.

  A lightbulb went on in my head. The captain’s assistant wasn’t a special job at all. It was a miserable, low-down job. The worst one on the ship, as a matter of fact. Look at what he was making us do: clean his bathroom, polish his boots, peel his onions. What was next – cutting his toenails? No, he wouldn’t. That’s got to be against the law, even at sea.

  Then it hit me. McKelty had known it all along. His brother must have told him exactly what a captain’s assistant does. That’s why he nom inated me – to do the dirty work so he could have a good laugh.

  Oh, that Nick the Tick.

  I was going to get him for this.

  CHAPTER

  13

  TEN WAYS I’M GOING TO GET EVEN WITH THAT ROTTEN LOUSY PUNK NICK MCKELTY

  1. I’m going to find all the creepy crawlies that live on this boat and hide them in McKelty’s dinner.

  2. After he eats the bugs, I’ll tell Old Nick that the creepy crawlies are probably having a great time feasting on his liver.

  3. I’ll hide Nicky Boy’s belt and then get him to do a sailor’s jig in front of both classes. His trousers will fall down, and everybody will see his GI JOE underpants.

  4. He’ll be so embarrassed, he’ll throw himself overboard.

  5. I’ll find a sea cucumber on the bottom of the river, which I happen to know are slimy and ooze purple ink. I’ll replace his pillow with the sea cucumber, and when he puts his big fat head down on Mr Cuke, it will pee purple stuff up his nose.

  6. No, I can’t do that to a sea cucumber.

  7. Maybe I’ll just have to tell Katie Sperling that Nick rubs nappy-rash cream on his chapped kneecaps.

  8. I’ll tell the captain that the rash on his knees is scurvy and very contagious, so they’ll have to lock him up in the ship’s jail and throw the key away.

  9. When he’s asleep, I’ll squirt whipped cream in his hand and then tickle his nose with a feather so when he scratches it, he smears whipped cream all over his big, ugly face.

  10. I’ll put his hands in warm water while he’s sleeping so he pees up a storm in his sleeping bag.

  11. Numbers one through to ten are all so good, I would never be able to choose just one. I think I’ll have to do them all.

  12. I know this is more than ten, but I’m so mad I can’t stop myself.

  CHAPTER

  14

  “What are you writing?” Collin asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, covering up the list with both hands. The last thing I wanted was for Collin to see my horrible handwriting and spelling. He’d think I was a moron.

  “You’ve been hunched over that paper for the last five minutes,” he said, lifting one of my fingers and trying to peek under it. “What’s the captain going to say when he sees you haven’t cleaned the head?”

  “He’ll say, ‘Get cracking, you scurvy dog, or we’ll feed you to the sharks below,’” I answered, doing a pretty sweet imitation of the captain’s voice, if I do say so myself.

  Collin laughed. “You’re a genius at impressions,” he said. “You sound just like him.”

  A genius? If he only knew.

  “Come on, show me what you were writing,” he begged.

  “Sometimes I make lists,” I said. “This one is how I’m going to get even with that rat punk Nick McKelty. He set me up for this job.”

  “How?” Collin asked.

  “He knew it was a terrible job, so he suggested me. He did it to get at me, just to be a punk.”

  “I can’t stand punks,” said Collin. “Read me the list.”

  That was a whole lot better than letting him actually see the list. If Collin looked at my handwriting, he’d think it was a Japanese comic book. And if he ever saw my spelling, I’d have to tell him I’m dyslexic or he’d think I was a total moron. We were really hitting it off and I didn’t want him to think I was “different”.

  So I read him the list. He started laughing and didn’t stop. You would have thought he was watching a Scooby-Doo cartoon or something really funny.

  “You’re too much,” he said, holding his sides. “You’re a total riot! How do you think this stuff up? I say we blast McKelty. Which number on your list should we start with?”

  We? He said we. He wants to help get Nick the Tick. W
hy? Is he kidding me?

  I guess not, because we decided that almost everything on the list couldn’t possibly be pulled off. But we did come up with something that was perfect. Nothing fancy, just a sweet little plan that would do the job.

  For the plan to work, I had to get Nick down to the captain’s quarters. That wasn’t going to be easy. I knew he wouldn’t come if I called him down there. And Collin didn’t know him, so it would be strange for him to invite McKelty down. We needed bait to attract him.

  But what kind of bait do you use to catch a smelly fatty fish like Nick McKelty?

  CHAPTER

  15

  While we were making our plan, we still had to look like we were working. The captain stuck his head out every few minutes to make sure we were doing our jobs.

  “No lollygagging around or I’ll have you scrubbing the galley next,” he said to me. “And use some elbow grease on those boots, you lazy laddie,” he snarled at Collin.

  Collin polished the captain’s boots and I – are you ready for this – cleaned the bathroom with the toothbrush. I did a really bad job, if I have to say so myself. I don’t want to gross you out, so let’s just say I gave the old brush a few swishes around the old bowl and got out of there fast.

  Ms Adolf came by to check on us, still wearing her pink pom-pom hat. She said we could take a five-minute break to eat the snack we had brought from home. Dinner wasn’t for another hour, and it was only going to be gruel. I had no idea what gruel was. Collin said it was like porridge, only lumpier.

  When the captain heard Ms Adolf’s voice, he came barging out of his cabin.

  “And who might you be?” he hollered.

  “I’m Harriet Adolf, one of the teachers.”

  “On my ship, you’re just another sailor,” he said. “Now, Harriet, get up top and help with the lines. And remove that stupid hat while you’re at it.”

  Ms Adolf turned all red in the face and those splotches showed up big time on her neck. I smiled. Usually, I would laugh. It was pretty funny to see Ms Adolf get yelled at. But it was weird seeing this stranger yell at our teacher like that. I was glad when she left.

  “And as for you, you scallywag, wipe that grin off your face,” he said to me. He stomped back into his cabin and slammed the door.

  I got the snack from my bag and sat there munching on my tofu jerky. It tasted like tree bark, only tougher. But I was so hungry, I just pretended I was a koala bear sitting in a eucalyptus tree chomping down leaves. I was thinking about how koala bears are the cutest animals in the world when I noticed what Collin was having for his snack.

  TWINKIES! It was just what we needed to put our plan into action!

  I love you, Collin’s mum, whoever you are. I love you for packing him Twinkies.

  I reached out and grabbed the packet away from him before he took the first bite.

  “Hey, what’s up with that?” he said.

  “This is our bait,” I said to him. “McKelty is a Twinkie pig. He gets word we have Twinkies, and he’s down here before you can say got ya. And once he’s here, we can do what we talked about.”

  “Good thinking, Hank,” Collin said. “You’re the smartest.”

  Just then, Ashley and Chelsea stuck their heads in the window.

  “Collin, you’re not going to believe what we’ve been doing.” Ashley giggled.

  “Can I hear too, since I am one of your two best friends?” I said to Ashley.

  “I was talking to both of you,” Ashley answered. “I meant to say Hank, but only Collin came out.”

  “Yeah, the two names are really hard to say together.”

  That came out a little snappier than I had meant it to. I didn’t want to be mad at Ashley for liking Collin. I could understand it. He was cool. I wondered what I’d be like if I was perfect like Collin. Would I strut around like some kind of jerk or would I be really nice like he was?

  “We’ve just finished swabbing the decks,” Chelsea said. “It’s time to change shifts and the first mate said we could be line handlers.”

  “Poor Frankie. He’s bummed out,” Ashley whispered to me. “He asked if he could swap partners, but the first mate says we have to stay in the same teams all night. So he’s stuck with Luke Whitman.”

  “And that Luke is so gross,” Chelsea added. “While they were on watch, he kept picking his nose and trying to wipe it on the ropes. We have to touch those to lift and lower the sails.”

  “Well, McKelty stuck me with the worst job ever,” I whispered back.

  I thought I heard the captain moving around in his room. It sounded like he was coming out again. I had to act fast.

  “Ash, we need your help. Find McKelty and tell him to come here right away.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Just tell him we have Twinkies. Hurry!”

  I gave Ashley a strong nudge, something close to a push. She and Chelsea disappeared just as the captain yanked open the door to his room.

  “Did I hear someone yammering out here?” he yelled.

  “No, sir, Captain, sir,” Collin and I both said at once.

  “Hand me my boots,” he said to Collin. “Bring me my dinner while I get ready for shift change.”

  He snatched his boots from Collin and disappeared into the bathroom, or head as we sailors like to say. Two seconds later, McKelty’s big face appeared at the window, just like I knew it would.

  “I hear you’ve got Twinkies,” he said. His beady eyes fell on the packet of Twinkies I had left near the windowsill. His huge hand reached out and swiped them. Oh yeah. The stinking fish was taking the bait.

  He stuffed one whole Twinkie in his mouth.

  “Haphing a grood time bing za chapn’s assisfhunt?” he asked.

  “I’ve really got to thank you, Nick,” I said to him. “This is the best job ever.”

  That got his attention. Nicky Boy stopped chewing long enough to look. A squirt of the cream snuck out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Yeah,” Collin chimed in, just like we had planned. “While all you guys are up top working in the cold, we’re down here hanging with the captain. Telling jokes. Hearing about his adventures at sea.”

  I could tell this was very confusing to McKelty.

  “Really?” he said, swallowing the Twinkie and smearing the cream all over his chin. “He’s not mean?”

  “Mean?” I laughed. “He couldn’t be nicer.”

  “Yeah, he offered to take us out in the rowing boat after everyone goes to bed,” Collin said.

  “We don’t want to be late for that, do we, Collin?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said McKelty. There was some Twinkie goop hanging off the tip of his nose now.

  “We’re going to get him dinner now,” said Collin. “Captain asked if we’d eat with him. It’s roast chicken, right, Hank?”

  “No, steak,” I said. “Thick ones. Oh, and fries.”

  “Hey, Nick,” Collin said. “I hear you guys are going to have to eat gruel.”

  “That’s tough,” I said, “because we get chocolate mousse for dessert.”

  “That’s French,” Collin said.

  McKelty looked like he was going to cry. “But I thought that this job was supposed to—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. The big idiot was about to give himself away.

  “The old captain used to treat his assistants very badly,” I said. “But this new captain, he’s changed all that. He thinks his assistants should be treated like princes. Isn’t that what he said, Collin?”

  “No. I think he said kings.”

  McKelty’s little eyes were popping out of his big, thick head. I had him right where I wanted him. It was time to make my move.

  “A new assistant was supposed to start at shift change,” I said very quietly to Nick, like I was letting him in on the secret formula for Kryptonite. “But he said we could keep the job all night if we wanted to.”

  “The whole time?”

  Collin and I n
odded.

  “That’s not fair,” said McKelty. “You’re not giving anyone else a chance.”

  “Hey, why would we sleep in those creaky old bunk beds,” Collin said, “when we can stay here on these nice, soft sofas?”

  “But keep that between us. We’re trusting you,” I whispered to him.

  “I wanna be the captain’s assistant,” McKelty whined.

  “Hey, who doesn’t?” I said. “And thank you, Nick, for thinking of me.”

  “Please, Hank,” begged McKelty. “Let me have the job.”

  This was the most fun I’d had since Halloween when I’d dressed up as a chicken and walked into Mrs Fink’s house and asked to be put in her soup.

  “If I let you have the job, what will you do for me, Nick?”

  “What do you want, Hank?”

  “I want you to stop teasing me.”

  “OK.”

  “And I want you to stop swiping Ashley’s Twinkies from her lunch.”

  He paused a minute.

  “Can I have just one?”

  “No,” I said.

  “OK,” he said finally.

  “Deal,” I said. I held out my hand and we shook. “Congratulations, Nick. You are now the captain’s assistant.”

  I turned to Collin. “I guess we’d better be going.”

  Collin and I grabbed our bags fast. We could hear the captain starting to come out of the bathroom. We had to get out of there.

  “See you, McKelty,” I said as we bolted out of the door. “Give our regards to the captain.”

  We ran out of the captain’s quarters and hid in the bunk room next door. We put our ears next to the wall to see what we could hear. We heard a door slam and then the captain holler.

  “Who the blazes are you?” he said.

  “I’m your new assistant, sir,” answered Nick.

  “What happened to those other rascals?” The captain didn’t sound happy.

  “I know you wanted them for the whole time, sir, but I requested the job at shift change.”

  “Then what are you standing there for? Make my bed!” the captain roared. “And where is my dinner? When you’re done with that, sweep the floor. And unpack my provisions. You look like a lazy dog if ever I saw one.”