by Alex Polan
Maddy shrugged. “I didn’t know it would be so wavy!” she said, pointing at the wind rippling across the water.
Marco could tell her mind was made up. Maddy was as stubborn as any of them—sometimes more. Will I be that strong if I have to tell my teammates that I can’t do the zip line? he wondered. He hoped so, but his palms got sweaty just thinking about it.
“It’s okay,” Nisha told Maddy. “The three of us can go out in a canoe, and you can stay on the pier. But first, you should try out my new invention!” She pulled something from her backpack that looked like a snorkel.
Maddy shrunk backward. “I don’t … really like to snorkel,” she said.
“It’s not a snorkel,” said Nisha. “It’s a Snorkel Stick—like a Selfie Stick. You put the camera on it so you can take video underwater! I’ll show you how it works.”
Logan handed her the camera, and she screwed it onto a piece of black plastic attached to the Snorkel Stick.
“Is that part of a tripod?” Marco asked, pointing to the black thing.
“Yup,” said Nisha. “From home. I knew it would come in handy.” Then she handed the Snorkel Stick to Maddy. “I set up the camera to take a video, so you can dunk it under the water. But be careful. Don’t let go!”
“I won’t,” Maddy promised. She carefully stretched out on her stomach, holding the purple stick. Then she lowered the camera over the edge of the pier. “Like this?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Nisha. “Spin it in a slow circle so you get a video of everything that’s under there.”
Maddy did, sticking her tongue out in concentration as she slowly spun the stick.
Marco wondered what she’d find under the water, but he could almost hear the ticking of the stopwatch around his neck. Most of the other teams were already by the boathouse, where Officer Jenny was helping them get into canoes.
“We ran out of time in the woods,” Marco reminded his friends. “We need to go get our canoe!”
“Okay, Maddy, bring it back up,” said Nisha.
When Maddy did, Nisha unscrewed the camera from the Snorkel Stick and replayed the video. Marco watched the screen out of the corner of his eye, keeping the other eye on the canoes that were starting to drift past.
The video didn’t show much. Something that looked like seaweed swirled round and round in the green water near the posts of the pier. Then Marco spotted a flash of color—something red and white.
“Wait, was that a Poké Ball?” Logan asked. “Go back!”
“It could have been a fishing bobber,” said Marco.
“It wasn’t,” said Logan. “It was a Poké Ball. I’ll bet it’s on the other side of the pier!” He flopped onto his stomach and stuck his head below the pier, as if he were looking under his bed again.
“Here it is! Come see!”
Just below Logan, tacked to the wooden pier, was a laminated poster of a Pokémon. And below that, a half-submerged Poké Ball bobbed in the water.
Nisha handed Logan the camera so he could snap a photo, upside-down.
“Horsea!” Maddy cried when she saw the picture, which looked like a tiny blue seahorse. “We found Horsea!”
“Shh! Not so loud!” Nisha whispered.
But it was too late.
A taunting voice rang out across the water. “Whatcha got there?”
Stella drifted toward them in her canoe, perched like a queen on her throne. Claire sat in front, but she glanced away as soon as Marco met her eyes.
“Looks like you found Horsea,” said Stella, gesturing toward the poster that Logan didn’t have time to hide. “And now I did, too.” She raised her camera and snapped a picture.
“See ya later, losers,” she sneered as the canoe pulled away. Marco heard her barking orders to Claire, who seemed to be doing all the paddling.
“What a cheater!” cried Logan, his hands balled into fists.
Marco almost reminded him that they had done the same thing to Team Fennekin, back in the woods. But Logan was already racing down the pier toward shore. “Let’s get her!” he cried.
Marco ran after Logan, feeling the pier wobble beneath him with each step. Then he was on dry ground, hurrying toward an empty canoe.
Officer Jenny, wearing a blue life vest over her swimsuit and a sun visor instead of her usual police cap, lifted one end of the aluminum canoe and dragged it toward the water. “Where’s the last member of your team?” she asked.
“Maddy’s not coming. She gets seasick,” Nisha explained in one winded breath.
Marco glanced over his shoulder and saw that Maddy had flopped back down onto the pier, looking like a melted Poké Puff left out in the rain. He sighed, knowing just how she felt.
“I see,” said Officer Jenny. “Well, this canoe is big enough for the three of you. Just don’t stand up or rock the boat. And don’t make Professor Birch blow his whistle.” She gestured toward the lifeguard chair.
“We … won’t,” said Marco, his voice cracking. He’d had enough whistle-blowing for one day.
“But there are only two seats!” Logan noticed as he carefully stepped into the boat.
“You and Nisha can have them,” Marco said quickly. “I’ll sit in the middle.” So I don’t have to paddle, he thought. Because after what had happened in the woods, he didn’t want to be in charge anymore. We’ll be better off with someone else leading the way.
“You’ll be on map duty then,” said Nisha, handing him the new orienteering map. This one was mostly blue, with an outline of greens, blacks, and browns.
Then Officer Jenny helped them push off from shore. Logan sat at the rear of the boat, which meant he got to steer. Nisha took the front. And Marco hung out in the middle, trying to use his map and compass to steer the team toward another Pokémon. So much for not leading the way, he thought with a sigh.
“Where’s Stella?” asked Logan from behind. “Oh, I see her! Let’s go.” He began paddling furiously toward a canoe in the distance.
“No!” Nisha scolded, dragging her paddle in the water like a brake. “We’re supposed to hunt for Pokémon—not Team Fennekin. Where should we go, Marco?”
He studied the map, looking for Pokémon. Wingull was hidden somewhere in the grass near shore. Goldeen was back toward the boathouse. And Tentacool was… .
A whoop from the swimming raft in the middle of the lake told him exactly where Tentacool was.
“That way!” Logan shouted, pointing toward the cluster of Team Froakie T-shirts surrounding the raft. He switched his paddle to the left side of the boat, sending a trickle of cold water down Marco’s back.
Marco yelped and scooted up onto his knees.
“Don’t stand up!” Nisha warned over her shoulder. “You heard what Officer Jenny said.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, wiping the water from the back of his neck. “Look for a Pokémon that looks like a blue jellyfish!” he reminded his friends.
“There!” cried Nisha, pointing with her paddle.
A poster of Tentacool was tacked to the side of the raft, rippling in the wind. “Quick, get a picture!” said Marco.
Logan fished the camera out of his pocket and leaned over the side of the canoe, making it tip toward the water.
“Don’t rock the boat!” Nisha shrieked, gripping the sides of the boat with her hands. “You’re making me nervous.”
Then Marco saw something that made him nervous: two girls in fox-orange T-shirts paddling straight toward the canoe.
Logan saw them, too. “No way,” he said. “Team Fennekin’s not getting a picture of this Pokémon.”
As soon as Stella and Claire were closer—close enough for Marco to see the sneer on Stella’s face—Logan launched into action. He paddled the canoe forward a few feet, right in between Stella’s canoe and the Tentacool poster.
Then he pointed at Claire. “Don’t look now,” he called in a panicked voice, “but Tentacool’s in your boat! He’s alive! Get out! Get out!”
Claire jumped and spun aroun
d in the boat, which made Stella snort.
“You fell for that?” she said, giving Claire a withering look. Then she reached her hand over the side of the boat and scooped up some water, preparing to attack Logan.
“Stella, get your hand out of the water—NOW!” he cried. “There’s a fin. Look! There it is! Shark! It’s Sharpedo!”
He stood up and pointed at the rippling water near Stella’s hand.
“Don’t. Stand. Up!” Nisha cried.
Too late.
Marco felt the boat flip. For a moment, he hung suspended in the air—as if his harness had just broken away from a zip line, and he was about to fall down, down, down… .
He hit the water with a sharp slap.
And then he couldn’t breathe.
CHAPTER SIX
As Marco plunged into the icy cold water, his lungs tightened and the world went black.
He went under for just a second before his life vest popped him back up again. But now his arms and legs felt frozen—stiff with cold and fear. Swim! he told himself. But where was the boat? Where was Logan? Where was Nisha?
Marco faced shore, where Maddy stood on the pier with her hands clamped over her mouth.
He saw Professor Birch leap out of the lifeguard chair and race toward the boathouse. And then he spotted Officer Jenny paddling toward him and the overturned canoe.
Someone sputtered behind Marco. “Logan!”
His friend looked like a drowned rat, his wet bangs pressed to his forehead. Logan opened his mouth, as if to crack a joke, and then closed it again.
“Where’s N-Nisha?” asked Marco, his teeth starting to chatter.
“Here!” she called. She was clinging to the overturned canoe on the other side of the swim raft.
Everyone’s okay, Marco realized with relief.
But then he caught sight of another canoe—and Stella’s smug face. She didn’t say a word.
She doesn’t have to, thought Marco miserably, turning back toward shore.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said again. “I was just trying to scare Team Fennekin.” Instead of looking at his teammates, he studied Dex, which luckily had been strapped to his wrist during the fall.
“How’d that work out for you?” asked Nisha, her tone sharp. She hugged her towel tightly around her shoulders.
Marco felt like a referee at a boxing match. Logan and Nisha had been going at it ever since Officer Jenny had brought them back to the pier to dry out. At least their bickering took Marco’s mind off the tipped canoe.
After falling into the lake, all he could think about was the zip line tomorrow. I fell out of the canoe. Am I going to fall off the zip line, too? Now the danger seemed more real than ever.
As Marco wrung out his T-shirt over the edge of the pier, he spotted Maddy playing peacekeeper with Logan and Nisha.
“Do you want to share this with Nisha?” she asked Logan as she broke a soft Lava Cookie in half.
“Not now,” he grumbled. “We have to look for more Pokémon.”
“Yeah, we do,” said Marco, checking his stopwatch. He was relieved that it still worked, even dripping wet. “We already lost half an hour.” Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a canoe approaching the pier.
“Incoming,” said Logan under his breath.
Red-headed Sam was at the front of the boat, waving to make sure he had their attention. Then he made goofy swimming motions with his hands. “Did you have a nice swim?” he teased.
“Yeah, how’s the water, Team Treecko?” called Max from the rear of the canoe.
As the boys paddled away, Nisha groaned and stood up. Water dribbled from her khaki shorts, and her shoes squeaked. As she peeled off her wet gloves and shoved them into her pockets, she asked, “Where’s the map, Marco? Let’s get going.”
The map? He checked his pockets, but he already knew they were empty. He’d been clutching the compass in his hand ever since the boat tipped into the lake, but what had he done with the map?
“It was … on my lap,” he mumbled. “Before, you know, the boat tipped.” He raised his eyes to meet Nisha’s, and then they both shifted their gaze toward the lake.
“Is it out there?” asked Logan, getting to his feet. “Do you see it?”
After a long painful pause, Marco said, “No. And even if I did, it’d be ruined by now.” Ruined, like everything else I try to do during orienteering.
“Well do you at least remember what was on it?” asked Nisha. “What are the last two Pokémon we’re looking for?”
Marco closed his eyes and tried to remember. “Wingull was somewhere on shore”—he gestured toward the beach and swimming area—“and Goldeen was in the water on the other side of the boathouse. But without the map… .”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nisha, waving her hand in the air. “What was the hidden item? Let’s make sure to get a picture of that.”
Marco sunk back down again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see it on the map—or I just can’t remember.” He pressed his fingertips against his forehead.
A heavy silence fell over the pier, which Maddy tried to break. “Lava Cookie?” she asked, holding the treat below Marco’s nose.
The sweet smell almost made him gag. “No, thanks,” he said quickly.
Maddy’s face fell, and she started crumbling bits of cookie into the water below. “I’m sorry I’m not helping,” she said sadly.
Nisha leaned over to squeeze her shoulder. “C’mon, you can help right now. We’ll search the beach for Wingull while the boys look for Goldeen in the water.”
Maddy smiled and hopped up, taking Nisha’s hand.
Marco emptied the water from his shoes before heading back to the boathouse with Logan.
A lost map. A flipped canoe. What next? he thought as he walked. He shivered, partly from his drenched clothes, and partly from his fear that something else could go wrong. Something else would go wrong. By now, he was almost certain of it.
“We should give Stella a taste of her own medicine,” said Logan, paddling with short, quick strokes. “We should spy on Team Fennekin until they find Goldeen!”
Marco shaded his eyes from the sun and searched the lake for Team Fennekin. “That plan’s not going to work,” he said with a sigh. “I think Team Fennekin already found all the Pokémon.”
He pointed toward the boathouse they had just left behind, where Stella and Claire were stepping out of their canoe. Stella was doing some sort of weird victory dance. And Team Torchic wasn’t far behind. Two kids in bright yellow tees were dragging their canoe out of the water, too.
“I can’t look,” Logan groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I can’t stand it. Just kill me now.”
Marco wanted to give up, too. The sun had suddenly gone behind a cloud and refused to come back out.
Then they heard it—a whistle from the beach.
Treecko, Treecko!
“The girls!” said Marco. “They must have found Wingull!”
He and Logan paddled toward the sandy shore, where Nisha was waving. She helped them pull the canoe onto the beach.
“You found Wingull?” asked Logan, hopping out of the boat. “Let me see.”
Maddy popped up out of some tall grass beyond the beach. She raised a finger to her lips and waved them over, as if warning them not to wake a sleeping baby.
When Marco saw the poster of the seagull-like Pokémon, he had to look away. Seeing Wingull only reminded him of the letter he’d written to his parents. The letter I never sent, because I chickened out, he thought sadly.
“You couldn’t find Goldeen?” asked Nisha.
Logan shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t think Goldeen is even out there. I think the counselors tricked us,” he said, kicking the sand.
“But Team Fennekin found it,” Marco pointed out. When Logan shot him an annoyed look, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
Nisha sighed. “How much time do we have?” she asked.
Marco checked his stopw
atch. “Seven minutes?!” he cried. “When did that happen?” He shook the timer, not convinced it was working.
“We have to keep looking!” said Logan, rushing back to the canoe.
Marco ran, too, but a wave of hopelessness washed over him. He was pretty sure they weren’t going to find Goldeen.
And he was right. A few minutes later when Professor Birch’s whistle cut through the air, he and Logan were floating in the middle of the lake. We lost—again, was all he could think.
Nisha noticed Marco’s long face back on shore. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ll do better at the cave, okay?”
Marco nodded and tried to muster up some sort of energy. We have to do better at the cave, he told himself. Because the only competition after that is the zip line, and I’m pretty sure that’s going to be an epic fail.
“Let’s go!” cheered Logan. “To the cave!” He never seemed to have trouble finding energy.
Marco raced after his friend, hoping some of that energy would rub off on him. But another sharp whistle cut through the air, stopping him in his tracks.
“Team Treecko!” Officer Jenny called from behind.
Uh-oh. Marco’s stomach dropped, just like it did when he and Logan had gotten busted in front of the zip line this morning. But what did we do wrong this time?
He couldn’t bring himself to turn around.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marco finally turned to face Officer Jenny—and was relieved to see a twinkle in the counselor’s eyes.
“I know you’re eager to go cave hunting,” she said, “but you need to make a stop first—back at your cabins, to put on dry clothes.”
“But, there’s no time!” Logan protested.
“No buts,” said Officer Jenny, kindly but firmly. “It’s chilly in the cave. And the more time you waste arguing with me, the less time you’ll have for orienteering. You can make up time riding your bikes to the cave.”
Marco took a deep, ragged breath as he watched the rainbow of colored T-shirts disappear into the distance. Everyone else was heading forward toward the cave.