Celia shook her head.
“There were two squid swimming side by side in the ocean,” he said. “One squid turns to the other one and says, ‘The water is pretty cold today.’ The other squid looks at his friend and shouts, ‘AHHH—A TALKING SQUID!’”
Celia stared back at Corey. He slapped his knee and nearly fell off the boat laughing.
“I guess that’s funny,” she said, her expression blank.
“A talking squid,” Corey repeated, still laughing. “I love that joke.”
Celia glanced back at their sailboat, getting smaller and smaller in the distance. She wondered if Oliver would have thought the joke was funny. Probably not. He didn’t seem to like Corey Brandt in real life very much.
“Hello!” Dr. Navel called out as they approached the flotilla of small wooden boats. “These boats are called lepa-lepa,” he said to Corey and Celia. “They are a traditional boat that the sea nomads have used for centuries, perfectly designed for their lives on the oceans … most of them have been forced to settle on land, but this community is one of the last that still calls the ocean home.” He waved as their boat approached. “Selamat datang!” he said, greeting them in the Malay language and hoping they understood.
The Orang Laut didn’t look like an ancient fishing people. They were dark skinned and dressed in normal clothes, chatting and eating and repairing fishing lines. Their little wooden boats were all tied together and bobbing gently on the water. They had little covered canvas huts at the back of each boat, which must be where they slept, and clotheslines hung between the boats. They had made their own little island.
They all stopped talking as Dr. Navel cut the engine and drifted up alongside them.
“Hello.” He smiled and reached into one of his many pants pockets and started pulling out gifts for the fishermen—steel fishhooks and string. He tossed them like he was tossing beads from a parade float. People ducked and yelled at him, dodging hooks. No one dared pick them up.
“They will not take your gifts,” said a boy who had popped up from the water holding a net filled with fish and shells. He had been underneath the surface when they arrived. He didn’t have an air tank on, just goggles and a swimsuit.
“How did he stay down so long?” Celia wondered aloud.
“Their children learn to dive very deep on a single breath from a very young age,” Dr. Navel said.
The boy climbed on board the Navels’ boat, dripping wet.
“The spirit of the giver is in every gift, and they do not know your spirit yet,” he said. “You could mean to put on a curse on all of us with these gifts.”
“We come in peace,” Corey announced loudly. The boy cocked his head at the celebrity. The old men wrinkled their brows and spat again. “That’s, like, what they say in movies,” Corey explained.
“We need your help,” said Dr. Navel. “These gifts are given in friendship. I do not speak the language of the Orang Laut. Would you translate for me?”
“Yes, I will help,” said the boy. “My name is Jabir.”
“Hello, Jabir,” said Dr. Navel. “This is my daughter, Celia, and this is—”
“Corey Brandt!” The boy smiled at Corey. “I learn English from Agent Zero! Sunset High!” He shook Corey’s hand eagerly. Then he frowned and added, “You should have been with Lauren.”
“Yes, of course,” Dr. Navel said, before Celia could object with her opinions about Annabel and destiny and all that TV trivia. He had really hoped to get away from television gossip in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
We should not be surprised that some products of the human imagination cross all distances. No matter where our adventures take us in life, whether to Kuala Lumpur or Dayton, Ohio, we will find that most strangers can become friends by sharing a soda, most arguments can be resolved over a friendly meal, and most people will have strong opinions about vampire romances on television.
“We are trying to learn if anyone has seen this woman.” Dr. Navel held up a photograph of his wife. Before the boy could even translate the question, the older fishermen shook their heads and spat into the sea.
“No one knows,” said Jabir.
“She perhaps traveled with some of your people to a terrible place. An island of giant squid? Kraken? There was a shipwreck there long ago.”
The boy translated into his language. The fishermen shook their heads, made clicking noises with their teeth, and spat some more into the sea.
“They will not tell you,” said the boy. He glanced around nervously and leaned closer. “They know this place, and they know this woman, but say that it is not for you to know. They do not tell secrets to outsiders.”
“I understand, and I promise to respect your ways,” said Dr. Navel. “I will not reveal your secrets, but I must find this place. My wife—her mother”—he pointed at Celia—“is in danger!”
“Others have come here in the past to learn from us,” said the boy. “There was once a group of outsiders who came to make a ‘documentary film,’ they called it. We taught them many things: how to dive deep with a single breath, the names of the spirits in our canoes, in the currents, in the birth of a shark. Our legends of this island of the giant squid. They made their documentary movie and we, who have shared our secrets with them, we did not ever see any—what do you call it?—royalty payments from this movie. They put it onto television, I think. We do not share with outsiders anymore. Television contracts are simply too unfair.”
“Television.” Dr. Navel sighed. “Always television,” he repeated, shaking his head. Corey slumped, disappointed. He knew exactly how unfair television contracts could be. Celia couldn’t believe they were giving up so easily. She had an idea.
“Have you ever seen Valerie-at-Large?” she asked the boy.
“Celia,” said her father. “This is hardly the time to talk about television. The Orang Laut are a wise and learned people. They live their lives on the—”
“I love that show!” The boy smiled and pointed to a satellite dish on one of the boats. “TweenTV!”
“Right,” said Celia.
Dr. Navel slapped his palm on his forehead.
Celia ignored him. “Did you see that episode where Valerie was writing a story for the school paper and she wanted to know what happened at Addison Garrity’s birthday party, but only the popular girls were invited and Valerie wasn’t popular, so she had to find a way to get invited? She offered to do Madison Graham’s biology paper for her if she could come, but Madison said, well, you have to be in the Six Sisters Club, which is a secret club that the popular girls had, though I don’t know why it was called the Six Sisters because there were a lot more than six of them, but Valerie said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ So she had to do all this stuff to join the club, like spend the night in a graveyard and steal a towel from the boys’ locker room, because that was her initiation, and then she got to go to the party, but it was really boring and the girls were actually mean to each other, but she was one of them now, so she kept her promise and never told anyone their secrets, because she’d been made part of the group?”
“Um, yes?” said the boy, unsure what Celia was saying. Dr. Navel and Corey looked questioningly at her too.
“So is there anything like that, like an initiation that we can do to become one of the Orang Laut?” she asked.
“You want to sneak into the boys’ locker room?” asked Jabir, scratching his head.
“No.” Celia rolled her eyes. “We want to do whatever it takes to become one of you.”
The boy turned and translated for the elders. They laughed and he talked some more. They laughed again and he turned back to Celia.
“They say there is one thing you can do, and then they will tell you where to find this island where the monsters live,” he said. “You must prove you are true people of the sea.”
“How do we do that?” Corey asked.
“I am sorry, Mr. Corey,” said Jabir. “Not you. But the girl”—he smiled at her—“she m
ust go through our … what was the word?”
“Initiation,” said Celia.
“Yes,” said Jabir.
“Why me?” groaned Celia. Jabir blushed and wouldn’t look at her.
“Celia,” her father scolded her. “It is not polite to question their ways. Please, Jabir, continue.”
“Okay,” said Jabir, looking back at Celia. “First, you must complete a task of great danger and bring us the tooth of a tiger shark.”
Celia smirked. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the shark tooth she’d pulled out of the deck of their boat the night before.
“Done,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. The boy took it from her, wide-eyed. “From shark wrestling.” She shrugged.
Jabir turned and showed the tooth to the others. There was another round of murmuring and muttering. Some nodding. No one spat.
“Okay,” said Jabir. “This last thing you must do alone. You will show that the sea accepts your spirit.” He glanced back at the elders and wrinkled his eyebrows. “Or something.”
“Is this for real?” Celia demanded.
The boy nodded, but Celia wasn’t sure she believed him.
“What do I have to do?” she asked. “Like meditate and hum or something?”
When Jabir told her what she had to do, she really wished she had stayed aboard the Get It Over With like her brother.
15
WE DON’T LIKE
WHAT WE HEAR
THE SUN BEAT DOWN on Oliver all morning. Seabirds circled the mast, squawking and searching for food. He knew Bonnie would be mad if they pooped on the deck she spent so much time cleaning. The boat rocked gently in the water, and pretty soon Oliver found himself drifting off to sleep.
Hunger woke him up some time later. The sun had moved past the high point in the sky, so it was afternoon and his father and sister and Corey were still over on the rafts of the Orang Laut. Oliver couldn’t hear any of the deckhands talking, so he figured they were napping or something. He remembered seeing a box of snack cakes in the galley and he decided that he had earned one or two by being in command of the boat all morning. He hopped up to get one.
He was just turning to go back out on deck with the whole box of snack cakes shoved into his backpack—in case he needed more than one—when he heard loud whispers coming from behind the closed door of Bonnie’s bunk.
“They don’t suspect a thing,” he heard Twitchy Bart say. “Don’t worry about it. We hacked into Corey’s website perfectly. He thinks we’re just regular contest winners. If any of them was suspicious, I’d see ’em conspirin’ an’ such from my perch up the mast.”
“I don’t like the way that little girl asks me so many questions about Corey Brandt,” said Bonnie. “She needs to mind her own business.”
Oliver nodded in quiet agreement but kept listening.
“I say we wait,” Big Bart said. “If the Orang Laut help them, they’ll take us right to this island of the sea monsters. If that place is worth all this trouble, there must be something valuable there. Treasure and the like.”
“You believe this stuff?” Bonnie sneered. “You’re crazy, Big Bart. There’s no such thing as a kraken and no mysterious island. This is a wild-goose chase. I say we stick to the plan.”
“I don’t think these explorers would go through all this trouble on a wild-goose chase,” Big Bart tried to reason with her. “They seem pretty smart to me.”
“They’re just kids,” Bonnie spat.
“They’re tweens,” corrected Big Bart. “They handled that shark and octopus nicely. I didn’t see you helping out.” Bonnie sniffed the air loudly. “And their father has lots of fancy degrees.”
“Even more reason not to go along with him,” said Bonnie. “Two brats, a teenage heartthrob, and an overeducated fool. We’d be wasting our time.”
“We’ll get a nice ransom for Corey Brandt, no matter what,” Twitchy Bart said. “I bet the television studio will pay up. That was the plan, and I want to stick to it.”
“We could sell the Navels off as shark bait,” said Bonnie. “Like my great-great-great-great-grandmother Anne used to do.”
Oliver’s blood ran cold.
“Corey Brandt is not the big prize here,” said Big Bart. “The real money’s in that island they’re looking for! We should let the Navels do all the work of finding it for us, I say. Then we take ’em hostage afterward!”
“I’m tired of sailing,” Twitchy Bart complained. “It’s dull and it’s hard and I want to get back to our ship to put my feet up and watch TV. I’m sick of being stuck on this sailboat taking orders from that teenager. I don’t care how good his hair is. I say we take these dumb saps prisoner the moment we’re clear of these sea people, forget all about some fairy-tale monster island, and make a bit of Hollywood ransom money, just like we always planned to do.”
“Twitchy Bart’s right,” said Bonnie. “And I’m tired of listening to that Celia going all googly for him. It’ll be nice to shut her up for good at the bottom of the sea.”
Oliver couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He didn’t actually disagree that his sister was annoying, but she shouldn’t get sent to the bottom of the sea for it!
“You’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish, I tell you,” Big Bart snapped at Bonnie.
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Twitchy Bart moaned.
“I think Bonnie knows.”
“What if I don’t?” snarled Bonnie.
“Well, find out then.”
“Well, maybe I don’t wanna.”
“Well, maybe you’re an idiot.”
“Well, maybe I’ll cut that big face of yours off if you talk like that again.”
“Well, maybe you should try it.”
“Well, maybe I—”
“Hey!” Twitchy Bart whisper-shouted. “Keep your voices down or the boy will hear all yer jabbering.”
Oliver sucked in his breath and tried to be as still and silent as possible. No sound came from inside Bonnie’s bunk. An eternity passed. Oliver didn’t dare so much as shift his weight on his feet, lest it make a noise. He was getting pretty uncomfortable. He really needed to use the bathroom after his nap.
“Okay,” he heard Bonnie say; her tone meant business. “By the articles of piracy, as laid down at the dawn of the Barbary Corsairs, we’ll take a vote.”
“Fine,” said Big Bart.
“Suits me,” said Twitchy Bart.
“By show of hands, who votes we take control of this vessel as soon as we are clear of the Orange Lords or whatever they’re called, take the hostages back to the Princess and get what we can get for ransom, and forget all about some sea monster island.”
There was a moment of silence. Oliver wondered who the Princess was.
“That settles it, captain,” sneered Bonnie. “Two votes to one. Your crew has spoken.”
“So be it,” said Big Bart. “I swore an oath to our articles of piracy and I’ll abide by them. Although I think you’re being fools.”
“Think what ya like,” said Twitchy Bart. “Just make sure you knock out that Dr. Navel first. You never know what a father will do to protect his young.”
“He seems kind of harmless to me,” said Big Bart.
“You never know with fathers and children,” said Bonnie. “I’ll take care of the bossy little girl and her mopey brother.”
“That leaves Corey Brandt for me,” said Twitchy Bart. “It’ll be nice to take that Hollywood type down a notch. I hated Sunset High. He should have ended up with Lauren at the end.”
“Annabel was his destiny,” said Big Bart. “You can’t run from destiny.”
“Whatever,” said Bonnie.
“His other stuff’s pretty good,” Big Bart added. “You can’t argue with that.”
“I liked Agent Zero the best,” Twitchy Bart chimed in. “And these Pocketed Pants are great. They’re breezy and warm at the same time. A
nd the pockets … you can never have too many pockets.”
“The color selection’s nice too,” Big Bart agreed.
“I’m still gonna wallop him,” added Twitchy Bart. “I wanna see if anything can mess up that hair.”
They all guffawed and Oliver heard the sound of backslapping, their arguments forgotten in favor of their brutal mischief.
Oliver didn’t know which was worse, that the crew of their ship was planning a mutiny or that he agreed with their taste in television.
Just then he heard the whine of the dinghy’s motor as it came back to the ship. A knot formed in his stomach and his skin prickled with nerves. He closed his eyes for a second to think. They were in danger and he was the only one who knew. He asked himself, what would Agent Zero do?
The engine grew louder. They were almost back. He’d have to warn them. Corey was Agent Zero after all. And their father had certainly faced worse dangers than this.
He just had to figure out how to keep the Get It Over With close to the little fishermen until he could tell them the treachery that was afoot.
The door to Bonnie’s bunk burst open and Oliver fell backward onto the floor, scattering plastic-wrapped snack cakes everywhere and spilling the remote control out of his bag. He slipped it into his pocket as fast as he could.
“Oh, sorry … sorry,” he muttered. “I just woke up and thought I’d get something to eat.”
Bonnie and Twitchy Bart watched him, their eyes narrowing to slits. Big Bart crossed his arms and took a deep breath, looking down at Oliver with watery blue eyes.
“Ahoy!” Dr. Navel called from outside. “We’re back! Somebody want to help us aboard?”
“Oliver, I have to ask you something important.” Big Bart bent down and looked Oliver right in the eyes. Oliver gulped.
Big Bart reached down and snatched up a snack cake in his giant hand and held it right in front of Oliver’s face. “May I?” he asked with a smile.
“Sure,” squeaked Oliver.
“I love these things.” Big Bart shook his head, standing. “I know they’re mostly rubber and industrial waste, but they’re just so delicious. You eat up. We’ll go help your dad and them. You are now relieved of command, sir!” He saluted.
We Give a Squid a Wedgie Page 8