by Dan Gutman
That’s when the strangest thing in the history of the world happened.
“Shark!” somebody yelled. “There’s a shark in the water!”
5
A Strange Visitor
We all looked up. Sure enough, in the distance there was a shark fin sticking out of the water!
“WOW!” everybody said, which is “MOM” upside down.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeek!” somebody screamed.
Sharks are scary! My friend Billy, who lives around the corner, told me a shark can bite your head off like it’s eating grapes. I saw a movie where this shark ate a bunch of people. In the end some guy threw a tank filled with gas in the shark’s mouth and blew it up. It was cool.
Everybody on the beach was yelling and screaming and freaking out. You should have been there!
Mr. Sunny blew his whistle and shouted, “Everybody out of the water! Leave this to me. I know how to handle sharks. I’ll lure it away from the beach.”
Then he went running into the ocean.
“Mr. Sunny is sooooooo brave!” Andrea sighed.
“That’s not brave,” I said. “That’s dumb. The shark could bite his head off like a grape.”
We all watched as Mr. Sunny dived into the water. He was swimming right toward the shark! What a dumbhead!
I was sure the shark was going to bite Mr. Sunny’s head off like a grape. But it didn’t. Because just as Mr. Sunny reached the shark, we figured something out.
It wasn’t a shark after all!
No, it was a guy with a shark fin strapped to his back!
Mr. Sunny dragged him up onto the beach. The guy was wearing flippers and a diving mask. We all gathered around. I thought Mr. Sunny might have to give the guy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was choking and spitting out water.
“Glub, glub,” said the guy.
“Are you okay, dude?” asked Mr. Sunny.
“G’day, mates!” the guy said. He had a funny voice. “Yes, I believe I am okay.”
“What’s your name, man?” asked Mr. Sunny.
“George Granite.”
“Dude, why do you have a shark fin attached to your back?” Mr. Sunny asked. “You scared us to death, man!”
“I am a long-distance swimmer,” Mr. Granite said. “Sometimes I roll over on my back, and the fin helps me stay in a straight line.”
“Where did you swim from?” somebody asked.
“Australia.”
WHAT???!!!
“Australia?!” I said. “That’s like a million hundred miles away!”
“You swam all the way across the Pacific Ocean?” asked Andrea.
“Well, I did stop to rest on a passing turtle,” Mr. Granite said.
It was totally amazing. But if you ask me, people who swim across oceans with shark fins on their backs are weird.
6
Nah-Nah-Nah Boo-Boo
Y’know how your teacher says you have to read a chapter in a book before you can have fun? And you really don’t want to? Well, read this chapter. Then go have fun! And tell your teacher nah-nah-nah boo-boo!*
7
Andrea and the L Word
Great news! The next day, my parents said my friends Ryan and Michael and Neil could come and spend a week with us at our beach house. Yay! I guess my parents felt bad about sticking me with Andrea all summer.
I was so excited when Michael’s dad pulled his car into the driveway. Me and the guys went right out to the beach to play football. Our Pee Wee football team lost every game last year. But we are getting a new coach this year named Coach Hyatt. So maybe we’ll be better.
“Go out for a long bomb!” I shouted to Ryan.
Playing football in the sand is cool because you can dive for the ball like they do on TV. And when you’re all hot and sweaty, you can just jump into the water to cool off.
When me and the guys got tired of playing football, we walked down the beach. Mr. Sunny was working on his sand castle. He had rulers, buckets of water, Popsicle sticks, and lots of other carving tools. And guess what brownnosing know-it-all was helping him?
Andrea, of course.
“Hi, Mr. Sunny!” I said. “These are my friends Ryan, Michael, and Neil. We call Neil ‘the nude kid’ even though he wears clothes.”
“I’m sorry, Arlo,” Andrea told me, “but Mr. Sunny cannot talk to you right now. He is a sand artist.”
Except that she said “arteest.” What’s up with that?
“The sand is my canvas,” Mr. Sunny said without even looking at us.
“The sand is Mr. Sunny’s canvas,” repeated Andrea.
“I must have just the perfect mixture of sand and water to create my sand masterpiece,” said Mr. Sunny. “I call it my sanderpiece.”
“Mr. Sunny must have just the perfect mixture of sand and water to create his sanderpiece,” repeated Andrea.
“I am one with the sand,” said Mr. Sunny. “The sand speaks to me.”
“Shhhhhh!” said Andrea. “Mr. Sunny is speaking with the sand.”
Mr. Sunny closed his eyes and was mumbling something to himself. I couldn’t hear all the words, but it had something to do with sand.
Sheesh! People who talk to sand are weird.
Andrea stepped away from the castle and pulled me aside.
“Arlo, I’m in love!” she whispered.
Ugh! Andrea spoke the L word!
“With who?” I asked. “Besides yourself, I mean.”
“Who do you think?” Andrea said. “Mr. Sunny! He’s brave and handsome, and he’s an artistic genius! See how he leans his cheek on his hand? ‘O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!’ Shakespeare wrote that, you know.”
Oh, brother! That Shakespeare dude was annoying.
The guys came over to hear what Andrea was whispering about.
“Mr. Sunny is sixteen years old,” I told Andrea. “He’s way too old for you.”
“I already figured it out,” Andrea said. “Mr. Sunny is seven years older than me. So when he’s thirty, I’ll be twenty-three. That’s not so bad. And when he’s fifty-eight, I’ll be fifty-one. And when he’s—”
“Okay, I get it,” I said. “But he’s too old for you now.”
“I don’t care,” Andrea said. “‘Love is blind, and lovers cannot see. The course of true love never did run smooth.’ Shakespeare wrote that too.”
“Did that guy ever write anything in English?” I asked.
“Shakespeare was English, you fobbing, toad-spotted, maggot pie!” said Andrea.
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
“Are you gonna take that, A.J.?” Michael said. “She called you a fobbing, toad-spotted, maggot pie.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” I said. “It’s in that Shakespeare language.”
“It sounds like bad words to me,” said Neil the nude kid.
“I have it all planned out,” Andrea told us. “When I grow up, Mr. Sunny and I will be married right here on the beach. We’ll have a solar-powered bungalow and cook our meals on a solar-powered stove. I’ll help him build sand castles all day long. It will be sooooooo romantic.”
“Does Mr. Sunny know about this?” asked Ryan.
“Oh no, “Andrea whispered. “It’s a secret. I’m not going to tell him until I’m eighteen and he’s twenty-five.”
Girls are weird.
8
Love Is Dumb
“Girls are weird,” I told the guys as we walked away from Andrea.
“You can say that again,” Michael said.
“Girls are weird.”
We walked down the beach to scope out some of the other sand castles that people were building. They were really lame.
“Girls are always falling in love,” Ryan said.
“Ugh, disgusting!” we all agreed.
“I’m never gonna fall in love,” said Neil the nude kid.
“Me neither,” said Michael. “Love is dumb.”
“Well, if Andrea is in love with Mr. Sunny,
at least she won’t be bugging me anymore,” I told the guys.
“I think you’re jealous, A.J.,” said Ryan.
“What?!”
“You’re jealous that Andrea’s in love with Mr. Sunny.”
“I am not!” I insisted.
“Are too,” Ryan said. “You tried to talk her out of being in love with him.”
“I did not.”
“Did too.”
We went back and forth like that for a while.
“Oh, come on, A.J.!” said Michael. “It’s so obvious you and Andrea are secretly in love. That’s why you’re so mean to each other. Everybody knows that if you like a girl, you act like you hate her.”
What? That didn’t make any sense.
“Yeah,” Neil said, “if you really hated Andrea, you would act nice to her. That would prove that you hate her.”
My brain hurt.
We went up on the boardwalk and bought saltwater taffy with some money my mom gave us. I got a bag of chocolate taffy. Michael got cinnamon taffy. Neil got strawberry taffy. Ryan got broccoli taffy. Ryan will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food. One time he ate part of the seat cushion on the school bus.
I thought about what the guys said. Being mean to Andrea showed that I liked her. And being nice would show that I hated her. So if I wanted the guys to stop teasing me about being in love with Andrea, I would have to be really nice to her.
We went back down to the beach to see how Mr. Sunny was doing on his castle. He was talking to the sand with his eyes closed. I called Andrea over.
“I bought you a present,” I said, handing her my bag of saltwater taffy. “Sweets to the sweet.”
“Oh, thank you, Arlo!” Andrea said. “I didn’t know you knew Shakespeare!”
“Huh?”
“‘Sweets to the sweet,’” she said. “Shakespeare wrote that.”
“He did?”
“Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. is talking that Shakespeare talk to Andrea and giving her candy. They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.
9
Much Ado About Nothing
Me and the guys went back up to the boardwalk. We walked past a Chinese fast-food restaurant there. Just seeing it made me hungry. But I couldn’t get food because I spent the money my mom gave me on saltwater taffy. And I gave most of the taffy to Andrea.
Bummer in the summer!
“What do you wanna do?” I asked the guys.
“I don’t know,” said Ryan. “What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know,” said Michael. “What do you wanna do?”
“I asked you first,” I said.
We went back and forth like that for a while. Finally, Neil the nude kid suggested we go booger boarding, which made no sense to me. Who wants to put boogers on a board? But then he said he meant boogie boarding, which is completely different and much more fun.
The only problem was that we didn’t have a boogie board.
“We could dig a hole,” suggested Ryan.
“Digging holes is cool,” said Michael.
“Maybe we’ll find buried treasure,” Neil the nude kid said. “Then we can use it to buy some food.”
We went down to the beach to dig a hole. My friend Billy, who lives around the corner, told me that if you dig a hole deep enough, it will go all the way to China.
“Hey,” I told the guys, “if we dig a hole to China, maybe we’ll end up near a Chinese restaurant. I bet they’ll give us Chinese food.”
“Then we won’t even need to find buried treasure,” Michael said.
“Great idea, A.J.!” said Ryan.
That’s why I’m in the gifted and talented program at school.
The four of us started digging with our hands. I could almost taste the Chinese food we were going to eat once we reached China.
“Hey,” Ryan said, “what’s the deal with jumbo shrimp? It’s either jumbo or it’s shrimpy. It can’t be both.”
“Yeah,” said Michael, “and how can you have sweet and sour pork? Either it’s sweet or it’s sour. What’s up with that?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and how do they know which ribs are the spare ones?”
Chinese food is weird.
We were all digging in the sand when the strangest thing in the history of the world happened.
“Hey!” Neil suddenly shouted. “There’s something down here!”
“What is it?” I asked. “Buried treasure?”
“No, it’s…a hand!”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” we all screamed.
“And the fingers are moving!”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” we all screamed.
“It’s the sand monster!” I shouted. “My sister told me about it. It’s a zombie, and it eats boys!”
“Run for your lives!” shouted Neil.
That’s when this giant, human-shaped creature pushed its way out from under the sand.
It stood up!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” we all screamed.
The sand monster started shaking sand off itself.
And that’s when I realized it wasn’t a sand monster at all. It was Mr. Granite, that weird guy who swam all the way from Australia!
“Thanks for digging me up, blokes,” said Mr. Granite. “I must have dozed off on the beach. I guess some kids covered me with sand as a prank.”
Then he just walked away, like that was completely normal. Mr. Granite sure has a weird way of popping up out of nowhere.
Down the beach, we saw that Mr. Sunny had put up a big fence around his sand castle. I guess he was afraid that somebody might damage it before the judging. A bunch of kids were watching him work on the castle, but Andrea wasn’t around.
“Where’s Andrea?” I asked Mr. Sunny.
“I cannot talk right now,” he replied. “I must have silence with the sand.”
We found Andrea down by the water, reading one of her Shakespeare books.
She looked like she had been crying.
“What’s your problem?” I asked Andrea.
“Mr. Sunny won’t talk to me,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “He always says he needs to be alone with his sand. ‘These words are razors to my wounded heart’! ‘This was the unkindest cut of all.’ ‘O, I am fortune’s fool’! ‘Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless’!”
That Shakespeare talk is really annoying. But I never saw Andrea cry before. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
That’s when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world. I could prove once and for all that I didn’t like Andrea.
“I know how you can get Mr. Sunny to notice you,” I told Andrea. “You should pretend to drown. Mr. Sunny will have to save you.”
The guys all agreed that I was a genius, and I should get the No Bell Prize. That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.
“It would never work,” Andrea said. “I’ve been taking swimming lessons since I was three. I’m an excellent swimmer.”
“Mr. Sunny doesn’t know that,” I told her. “Just fake it and pretend you can’t swim.”
“But that would be like lying,” Andrea said.
Andrea doesn’t know the first thing about lying. Lying is when you say your dog ate your homework when you don’t even have a dog.
“Pretending to drown isn’t lying,” I told her. “You can’t tell a lie if you don’t talk. And if you’re drowning, you don’t talk. Except to yell ‘Help!’”
“Actually, drowning people say ‘Glub, glub,’” said Michael. “I saw that in a movie once.”
“First they yell ‘Help,’” Ryan said, “and then they say ‘Glub, glub’ as they’re drowning.”
“I don’t care what drowning people say!” Andrea yelled. “I won’t do it!”
Sheeesh, what a grouch.
10
The Sanderpiece
The
next morning me and the guys saw a sign on the boardwalk that said SAND CASTLE JUDGING TODAY! It said that a judge would be coming down the beach to choose the best sand castle. The winner would get a trip to France.
“Hey, what’s that?” Neil asked, pointing up at the sky.
“Somebody is parasailing,” I said, and I told the guys what parasailing was.
“That is cool!” they all agreed.
We went down to the beach. A bunch of kids were looking at Mr. Sunny’s sand castle through the fence. It was amazing. It looked just like a real castle.
“I must have silence as I put the finishing touches on my sanderpiece,” Mr. Sunny said. “It must be perfect so I can win the trip to France.”
Mr. Sunny had hooked up an electric toothbrush to his solar-powered baseball cap. He was crawling around on the ground, using the toothbrush to brush away the last tiny specks of loose sand.
“Your sand castle rocks, Mr. Sunny!” Michael said.
“It’s gonna blow the doors off all those other sand castles,” I told him. “You’re sure to win the contest.”
Mr. Sunny got up and stepped back from his castle.
“That’s it!” he announced. “Voilà! Fini!* My sanderpiece is complete!”
“WOW!” everybody said, which is “MOM” upside down.
I spotted Andrea down by the water, so me and the guys went over there to pester her. Pestering girls is fun. Especially Andrea. She was eating a piece of pizza and reading one of her Shakespeare books.
“Are you still upset about Mr. Sunny?” I asked her.
“‘What’s done, is done,’” Andrea said sadly. “‘They do not love that do not show their love.’ ‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.’ ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair.’”
I didn’t know that Shakespeare guy wrote about baseball.
“Stop moping around,” I told Andrea. “You should take my advice and pretend to drown.”