“What was that?” Celia snapped at her brother.
“What?” said Oliver.
“You just muttered the word googly out loud,” said Celia.
“I did not,” said Oliver.
“You did too,” said Celia.
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did n—”
“You did mutter the word googly,” his father said.
Celia crossed her arms in triumph.
Oliver looked from his father to his sister, back to his father, and then back to his sister.
“Whatever,” he said, and stomped away to be on his own.
If they wanted to gang up on him to make him stay at some stupid party just so she could make googly eyes at some stupid teenager, then they could do it without him. He didn’t need his sister on his side anyway. She always made him watch that dumb soap opera, Love at 30,000 Feet. Without her, he could watch whatever he wanted. She wasn’t his boss. She didn’t get to tell him what to do.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was watching him storm off. He had an idea that would really get on her nerves.
Just then, the server with the tray of octopus and calamari passed by. Oliver grabbed a big handful of the purplish blobs and brownish lumps and smiled at his sister. Then he shoved the blobs and the lumps into his mouth.
“No!” yelled Celia across the room. Everyone fell silent. She couldn’t believe what her brother had just done.
“You don’t tell me what to do!” Oliver yelled back across the room at her, spitting bits of calamari out of his mouth.
“It’s not that,” said Celia. “It’s . . . you’re . . .” She pointed behind him.
“Dude,” Corey Brandt said loudly. “Like, D-U-D-E, dude.”
“What?” Oliver asked. “What’s going on? Why is everyone looking at me like that?”
No one was moving. The entire room just stared at Oliver.
“Ollie,” his father said. “Don’t move.”
“What? Why not?” Oliver peered over his shoulder where his sister was pointing, and saw that he had just put a fistful of octopus in his mouth right in front of an octopus tank.
And the octopus did not seem happy about his friends being eaten.
Also, the octopus had just escaped.
2
WE ARE NONPLUSSED
OLIVER FELT A TENTACLE wrap around his left ankle. And then another wrap around his right ankle. And then another around his waist. They were sticky and harder than he expected, and much, much stronger.
“Ah!” he yelled as Celia and Dr. Navel raced across the room to help him. The octopus was already climbing up his back and onto his head with its sharp beak ready to snap his ears off.
“Don’t panic!” yelled his father, which was his advice for everything.
“There’s an octopus on my head!” Oliver yelled.
“It’s your own fault,” said Celia.
Oliver wanted to stick his tongue out at her, but he was afraid of what the creature would do if it caught his tongue.
“Dude!” Corey Brandt rushed over to his side. He took out his phone and snapped a picture. “Oliver, you’ve got an octopus on your head! That is E-P-I-C, epic!”
“Uh,” said Oliver, not sure why the teen star was spelling everything. It must be a Hollywood thing.
“Help,” he said quietly.
“Zat ees mai octo-pous!” their deep-sea-diving host shouted from a balcony above the shark tank. He had a thick French accent that made it very hard to take him seriously, especially when he was shouting about an octopus.
“Apologies, Jacques,” Dr. Navel shouted. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time. Well, we’ll get that octopus out of Oliver’s hair first.”
“Quickly, please,” said Oliver.
“Don’t worry, we’ll help you, bro,” said Corey, putting his phone away.
“Yeah . . . um . . . bro,” said Celia, smiling at Corey. “I’ll help you.”
She started pulling tentacles off of Oliver, making sure Corey was watching her.
Oliver rolled his eyes. She was happy just to make fun of him until Corey came over.
“Ow, be careful!” Oliver said.
“We’re trying,” said Celia.
For those of you who have never practiced the sport of octopus wrestling, one can imagine it is something like trying to wrestle a bag of Jell-O, if that bag of Jell-O was also trying to strangle you. As soon as Celia, Corey, and Dr. Navel had pried one tentacle from Oliver’s neck, another would wrap around his waist.
“Ow!” Oliver shouted again as Celia, Corey, and Dr. Navel tugged him most of the way free. “I think it’s still got a grip with one of its tentacles.”
“Where?” asked his father. “I can’t see it.”
“On my . . .” Oliver looked around the room. Everyone was watching him. He swallowed hard. “On my underwear,” he said. “It’s giving me a wedgie.”
“O-U-C-H, ouch,” said Corey Brandt.
“This is going to hurt,” said Dr. Navel, and yanked Oliver one more time, extremely hard.
“Ow!” yelled Oliver.
Dr. Navel fell backward and Oliver fell onto him. The octopus still held a scrap of Oliver’s underpants, and its tentacles flailed in the air with it, as if it were waving a white flag of surrender.
Corey grabbed the octopus by two of its tentacles and swung it up through the air to toss it back into its tank.
However, he overestimated the distance and the octopus flew right over its tank and hit the current Sumo Wrestling Champion of the World right in the chest with a loud wet slap. The octopus wrapped its tentacles around the Sumo Wrestling Champion of the World in a hug, and the Sumo Wrestling Champion of the World looked back at the teen superstar with an expression that could only be described as nonplussed. Nonplussed was a word that Oliver and Celia had learned by living at the Explorers Club and having famous explorers for parents.
It meant confused to the point of bewilderment.
Oliver and Celia spent a lot of their time nonplussed.
They were nonplussed when their mother showed up on a mountaintop in Tibet, after being missing for three years, to tell them that she was part of an ancient secret society and that the twins were destined to discover the Lost Library of Alexandria. Then she ran off again.
They were nonplussed when she appeared another time in the Amazon to help them find the city of El Dorado, where the Lost Library had been hidden, and they were nonplussed when they discovered that some mysterious explorer named P.F. had moved the whole Lost Library before they even got to El Dorado.
They were really, really, really nonplussed when their mother sent them a copy of the complete works of Plato and two wet suits.
They had to look up Plato using their universal remote control, which, aside from controlling the television, gave them access to the complete catalog of the Lost Library of Alexandria on any TV screen.
That too had been a present from their mother.
She never just got them a gift certificate to the mall.
When they’d looked up Plato with the remote control, they saw that he was an ancient Greek philosopher, that he had once been kidnapped by pirates, and that he had written the earliest descriptions anyone had ever seen of the lost civilization of Atlantis.
Plato said that Atlantis was a ten-thousand-year-old island kingdom that had become the center of wealth and power in ancient times. When the Atlanteans—that’s what the citizens of Atlantis were called—grew too wealthy and too powerful and tried to conquer the whole world, they were punished. Their entire civilization was swallowed by the ocean in a single terrible day. At least, that’s what Plato said he’d heard. Scholars, mystics, and explorers had been searching for Atlantis ever since Plato told that story.
Knowing all this made Oliver and Celia even more nervous about those wet suits their mother had sent. They preferred not to get wet.
At this moment, however, they were
very wet, although it was the Sumo Wrestling Champion of the World who was nonplussed. The octopus trying to wrap itself around his giant chest might have been a little confused and bewildered too.
“Out!” cried the deep-sea diver whose party had been ruined. “All uf you, out uf my house! Vite! Quickly! Go! Out!”
Within minutes, Corey Brandt, Oliver, Celia, and their father were in a taxi on their way back to the Explorers Club, wet and smelling like fish. As they left, no one noticed one of the fire dancers slip away from his group to hail a cab and follow them. In most places, a Rajasthani fire dancer hailing a cab would be a strange sight, but in New York City, even that wasn’t strange.
“You got your wish,” said Celia as they climbed the stairs to their apartment on the 4½th floor of the Explorers Club. “We got to leave the party early.”
“Yeah,” said Oliver, still blushing from his very public octopus wedgie.
“Don’t worry about it, dude,” Corey told him. “That party was L-A-M-E, lame. We’ll have a lot more fun watching VSSCTSNYES up here, chillin’.”
“We will!” Celia said. “C-H-I-L-L . . .” She stopped spelling when she saw her father and Oliver raising their eyebrows at her. “It’ll be fun,” she said. This time she blushed a little.
“Dr. Navel?” Corey asked. “Do you think this will hurt my chances of getting into the Explorers Club? I kind of threw an octopus at a sumo wrestler during the New Year’s Eve party.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Dr. Navel. “All you have to do is discover something fantastic before you turn seventeen and they’ll certainly let you in.”
“Something fantastic? Like what?”
“Oh, there are all kinds of things to discover,” said Dr. Navel. “We’ll think of something.”
“Corey?” Oliver was about to ask why he wanted to be in the Explorers Club so badly, but his sister had stopped in her tracks on the landing outside their apartment. Something was wrong. The moon rock, which was usually perched on a shelf above the doorway, had fallen, and the door itself was partway open. The lock was broken clean off.
From inside the dark apartment they heard a loud hiss, followed by a piercing shriek. There was a yelp and then a thunderous crashing noise.
“That sounded a lot like—” Oliver started.
“Our television falling off the wall!” Celia finished his sentence as they rushed past their father and Corey Brandt to confront the intruder, who had just done the unthinkable.
3
WE ARE AWARE OF
OUR DESTINY
WE MIGHT FIND IT UNUSUAL for two children, who admittedly have no taste for excitement, to storm in on an intruder, but one must understand their situation.
You see, not only was their television in danger, the one thing they truly cared about in this world, they also knew themselves to be perfectly safe.
The hiss that they heard belonged to Beverly, a large venomous lizard of the species Heloderma horridum, who was fiercely loyal to a particular armchair in their apartment and would fight anyone to protect it. She also enjoyed strawberry snack cakes.
The screech that they had heard belonged to Patrick, a small gray howler monkey whom their mother had befriended in the Amazon rain forest. He considered himself their guardian rather than their pet, and he lived with the Navels only because he felt a duty to protect them while their mother was away. He also had no idea how to get back to the Amazon from their apartment.
As for the crashing sound, it had indeed been their television falling off the wall and smashing to the floor, and the tiny yelp just before it fell belonged to the man who was now sprawled on his face with Beverly the lizard sitting on the back of his head and Patrick the monkey pinning his arms to the floor. In spite of the cold weather, he wore only a short-sleeved Hawaiian print shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.
“Excuse me?” the man called from under Beverly, his face smushing into the floor. “Is anyone there? Did I hear someone come in? Help. Please help.”
“Who are you?” Celia demanded. “What are you doing in our apartment?”
“And why did you break our television?” added Oliver.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” the man spluttered. “Dr. Navel. Squid. Island. Map.”
“The dude is, like, C-R-A-Z-Y, crazy,” Corey said, stepping up behind the twins.
“I’m Dr. Navel,” Dr. Navel told the man.
“No, no. Dr. Navel. Dr. Claire Navel,” the man said. “Your wife is in peril!”
Oliver and Celia raised their eyebrows at each other.
Corey sucked his breath through his teeth.
Dr. Navel nodded at Oliver and gestured to the lizard.
“But—” Oliver started, not wanting to lift the lizard off the intruder’s face but knowing he was the only one who could. If anyone else tried to handle Beverly, that poor soul would get a nasty bite that would knock him out for days.
Reluctantly, he lifted Beverly off the man’s head and set her back on her armchair. Patrick scampered onto the couch. They helped the man up and sat him next to the monkey, realizing immediately that they knew him.
“You!” Celia pointed. The man had a bright red nose, like he spent too much time blowing it. They had seen him before, when he had them thrown out of an airplane over Tibet. He was part of their mother’s secret society, the Mnemones (which was pronounced “knee-moans”), which had been trying to find the Lost Library of Alexandria for almost two thousand years.
“Good to see you again, children,” he said.
Celia frowned at him. Oliver scrunched his face at the man in what he thought was a threatening look.
Celia elbowed him so he’d stop.
“You look like you have stomachache,” she whispered.
“Chris!” Dr. Navel said. “What are you doing here? Why were you lying on the floor?”
“You know this guy?” Celia turned to her father.
“Of course,” said Dr. Navel. “This is Chris Stickles. We’ve known each other since graduate school. He’s a noted ichthyologist.”
Oliver looked at Celia.
“Fish scientist,” she said.
“I specialize in cephalopods,” he said.
Oliver looked at Celia again. She shook her head.
“Like octopi and squid,” Chris Stickles told them.
“Octopi! Ha!” said Celia. Oliver grunted.
“He had us thrown out of an airplane in Tibet,” Oliver complained.
The man smiled sheepishly.
“That was you?” Dr. Navel asked.
“I was traveling incognito,” he answered.
“Wonderful!” said Dr. Navel. “I had no idea. You really are a master of disguises.”
“It was nothing,” said the man. “Just a new suit, and some makeup, and—”
“We nearly died!” interrupted Oliver. “And now he broke our television!”
“Sorry about that, but look—” He stopped himself and looked at the teenager next to Dr. Navel. “Are you really Corey Brandt?” His face lit up.
“Yes,” Corey answered.
“I loved you on Sunset High,” he said. “Although you should have ended up with Lauren, I think. Annabel was no good for you, even if she was willing to become a vampire.”
“Annabel was his destiny,” Celia said. “And that’s not important right now. Why did you smash our TV?”
“My specialty is in giant squid,” he said.
“That’s no excuse for breaking our TV,” Celia repeated.
“The television is not really important right now,” Chris Stickles replied.
The children gasped. Beverly hissed.
“I mean, it’s important, I guess . . . but what I meant . . . ,” he stammered.
“Why don’t you explain why you came here,” Dr. Navel asked his old friend.
Chris Stickles nodded. He looked the children up and down. “I am sorry to tell you that you are in grave danger. I fear your mother is lost.”
“We know,” s
aid Oliver.
“We’re always in grave danger.” Celia shrugged. “And our mother has been lost for years. She’ll show up eventually.”
“Um.” Chris Stickles looked at Dr. Navel. This was not the reaction he was expecting.
“Look,” Celia explained. “I know whatever you’ve got going on seems, like, really, really important. But we’ve heard it all. There’s even a prophecy about us.”
“The greatest explorers shall be the least,” Oliver said in his best oracle-type voice. “The old ways shall come to nothing, while new visions reveal everything. All that is known will be unknown and what was lost will be found.”
“Cryptic, right?” his sister said. “Oracles are impossible to understand. We met this one in Tibet.”
“I talked to a yak,” said Oliver.
“They don’t just say what they mean,” added Celia.
“Yaks?” Chris Stickles asked.
“Oracles,” said Celia. “So you can’t expect us to get excited when you come in here being all cryptic too.”
“And breaking the TV,” added Oliver.
“Right,” said Celia.
“The TV was an accident! I’m here because of your mother.” He looked at Dr. Navel. “Your wife, I was with her. We were together, but she left me to seek”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“the kraken. She never returned.”
“Oh, whatever,” Celia groaned in disbelief.
“No way,” whispered Oliver.
“What’s a kraken?” asked Corey.
“It’s a giant squid with claws in its suckers and massive fangs,” said Oliver. “But Beast Busters did a whole episode about how it doesn’t exist.”
“It does exist,” said the man. “I have seen it. And I’m an ichthyologist.”
“Malcolm from Beast Busters is a retired science teacher,” Oliver replied.
“I have a PhD in marine biology!”
“Well, why don’t you have a TV show then?”
“Please, go on,” said Dr. Navel.
“I was with your mother just a few weeks ago,” Chris Stickles said. “We were searching for the man we believe found Plato’s map to Atlantis. The man who knows the location of the Lost Library of Alexandria.”
We Give a Squid a Wedgie Page 2