We Give a Squid a Wedgie

by C. Alexander London

  “Did you come up with that yourself?” Oliver asked.

  “I am the Celebrity Adventurist,” said Corey, which didn’t really answer Oliver’s question. Corey went back to building. He had his tuxedo shirt tied around his head like a bandanna with the bow tie to hold it in place. Somehow, the little wisp of hair that came out under it was still perfect.

  Celia sighed. Oliver rolled his eyes.

  “See. Googly,” he said.

  Just then, they heard a deep rumble in the distance. Both children looked toward the center of the island. Corey Brandt froze, broken plastic bucket and palm leaf in hand. Dennis stopped pecking at the sand.

  In the hazy sky beyond the palm trees, the jagged black rock of a volcano jutted into the sky. Its flat top was tilted just a little and one spike of rock poked out from the rest, like a bad haircut. Oliver named it Mount Haircut. It rumbled again and belched a cloud of black smoke, then fell silent.

  “Not good,” said Oliver.

  “Hey, guys.” Corey trotted over to the twins. “So I, like, think we’re okay for now.”

  “You do?” asked Oliver.

  “When I was filming Agent Zero in Iceland, we had this, like, crazy volcano erupt. No one could pronounce the name of it, so when you tried to find out what was going on, people just acted like nothing was happening so they didn’t have to talk about it. Everyone ignored all the black smoke and ash and just, you know, did their thing. Like shopping or whatever.”

  “That must have been so scary,” said Celia. She could feel Oliver’s eyes boring into the side of her head.

  “It wasn’t so bad … I was just stuck in my hotel room for a few days eating pickled shark meat.”

  Celia couldn’t stop her face from wrinkling. She was relieved when Corey laughed.

  “It was, like, delicious. Sort of salty and wet with a hint of—”

  “Um.” Oliver stopped him. “What about the volcano?”

  “Right,” said Corey. “So there were all these earthquakes, like, for days before the volcano erupted. I think we’re okay here because there haven’t been any earthquakes yet.”

  “Yet,” repeated Oliver.

  “Don’t worry, bro.” Corey patted him on the back. “Everything’s gonna be C-O-O-L, cool.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Celia, squeezing Oliver’s shoulder to show how reassuring and big sisterly she could be. “See? We’re gonna be fine.” She smiled.

  “Whatever,” snapped Oliver. He stomped off down the beach. He hated when Celia acted like she was older than he was. Three minutes and forty-two seconds didn’t count, not really.

  “Don’t go too far!” she called out as Oliver headed for the trees.

  “I’m just going to look for some coconuts,” he yelled back. “So you two can have your privacy!”

  Celia blushed bright red. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Corey Brandt just shrugged. He was a teen superstar, so he was used to kids acting weird around him. Adults too. Pretty much everybody acted weird around him. The Navels were actually the most normal kids he knew.

  “Eyjafjallajökull!” he yelled after Oliver.

  “What?” Oliver turned.

  “Eyjafjallajökull,” he said. “That was the name of the volcano in Iceland.” Oliver shook his head and kept walking, so Corey turned to Celia and flashed his smile. “I took lessons so I could pronounce it. Anyway, want to help me build this thing?” He pointed to the pile of garbage. Celia wasn’t sure how that pile of garbage would become a shelter, but she figured it was better than walking up the beach calling her mother’s name, so she started to help.

  As Oliver wandered into the shady trees beyond the beach, he glanced back at Corey and his sister setting to work on a little hut. He felt kind of left out and wished he hadn’t stomped off so dramatically. But he didn’t want to be a castaway on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, looking for his mother with his sister and Corey Brandt. He wanted to be at home watching Corey Brandt on TV and eating cheese puffs and snack cakes and waiting for their mother to return like she had promised she would.

  It used to be that Celia wanted the same thing Oliver did. Even if they couldn’t agree on what to watch on TV, they were still inseparable while watching it. There were Oliver- and Celia-shaped lumps in their couch, which now sat empty, like the ruins of a lost civilization.

  All he ever wanted was to go nowhere, do nothing, and have no one bother him. He didn’t want to get bitten by lizards, thrown out of airplanes, chased through jungles, marooned at sea, or hide from wedgies in the second-floor boys’ bathroom. Why was all of that so hard?

  Oliver was muttering to himself and stomping through the trees when he saw something weird in his path. It was a really big statue, at least four times his size. And there was another one next to it. And one next to that.

  The statues were all arranged in a circle and, from what Oliver could see, they were all statues of giant men. They were made out of big, heavy stones, not even the same color as the other rocks he’d seen on the island, like someone had brought them from somewhere else. But who would carry giant stone statues to an island in the middle of nowhere?

  Oliver stepped closer and pulled a vine down off the nearest one. The face wasn’t the face of a man. It was a bug-eyed squid head on top of human shoulders. Its tentacles hung down like a beard. Oliver stepped around to see the other statues and it looked like they all had these weird squid faces.

  In the center of the circle of the statues there was a watery hole, too big and too deep to be a puddle. It looked like it went down forever. Oliver had a churning feeling in his stomach, the kind of feeling he always had just before he did something exciting, or just after he ate his father’s famous beet and beetle chili. He decided to turn back to the beach.

  As he turned, he heard a snap under his foot. He froze. There was a quick whooshing sound. Leaves shook and branches broke.

  “Uh-oh,” said Oliver.

  He couldn’t move in time. A looped vine clamped around his ankle and a bent palm tree whipped straight up, scooping him into the air. As the tree settled, Oliver swung back and forth upside down, hanging fifteen feet above the weird statues and the strange blue hole. The remote control, which he’d been carrying in his pocket, slipped out and crashed down into the hole, vanishing below the water.

  “Oh great,” he groaned. Now he would have to explain to Celia that he’d lost their remote control. The watery cave below looked a lot deeper than the space between the couch cushions where he usually lost the remote. And a lot more dangerous.

  29

  WE SACRIFICE A SNACK CAKE

  CELIA LOOKED BACK at the line of trees on the edge of the beach, wondering where Oliver had gone.

  The volcano had been quiet for hours now and it was peaceful on their little desert island. The sun dunked itself into the horizon. Inky streaks of red, orange, and yellow oozed across the ocean. It was a beautiful sight. She was annoyed that her brother was missing it. It was just the sort of moment he would like.

  She couldn’t believe Oliver was still angry at her. She thought they had made up. Boys could be so fickle, she thought.

  “Where do you think he could be?” she asked.

  “Guys need to be alone sometimes,” said Corey. “Maybe he’s off collecting his thoughts.”

  “He doesn’t have that many thoughts,” Celia said. “It’s been hours. What if a wild animal got him? What if the volcano erupts and he’s all alone? What if our mom shows up and he’s not here?”

  “Oliver can take care of himself. He’s a tough kid.”

  “No,” said Celia. “He’s not!” She stood up and brushed the sand off her dress. “He’s my brother. I know when something’s wrong. I just know it.”

  “Okay,” Corey said, standing. “Let’s go look for him. We can’t do any more work on … that today.” He looked over at their sorry excuse for a shelter. It looked more like a pile of garbage than the garbage had before Corey piled i
t. Celia nodded.

  As they walked off into the scraggly forest, calling Oliver’s name, night settled over the island. The moon came out, bright and full, guiding them through the trees.

  “Over here!” they heard Oliver call. They rushed toward the sound of his voice and stopped, ­startled, in front of a giant statue of a squid-headed man.

  “What is that?” Celia asked.

  “Look—there are more. They’re huge,” said Corey. “Who could have built these things?”

  “Uh, guys?” Oliver called from above. They looked up and saw him hanging upside down by his ankle from a snare in one of the trees. “Little help?”

  “What are you doing up there?” Celia called.

  “Oh, you know, just sightseeing,” Oliver snapped. “I got stuck! What do you think? It was a trap!”

  “We’ll get you down!” Corey called, rushing ­between the statues to reach the tree where ­Oliver’s trap had been tied.

  “Don’t go that way!” Oliver warned a moment too late. There was a quick whooshing sound. Leaves shook and branches broke.

  “Uh-oh,” said Corey.

  He couldn’t move in time. A looped vine clamped around his ankle and a bent palm tree whipped straight up, scooping him into the air. As the tree settled, Corey swung back and forth upside down, fifteen feet above the row of weird statues, right next to Oliver.

  “Oops,” said Corey. “Hey, look at that weird puddle! It’s like the entrance to an underwater cave or something.”

  Celia’s shoulders slumped. Now she had to rescue both of the boys by herself. Why were boys always rushing into things? There was obviously more going on here than giant statues of squid men and a deep puddle. Someone had put the statues here for a reason and someone had built traps next to them for a reason.

  She glanced nervously around her. Suddenly every noise in the dark seemed filled with danger; every buzzing bug or rustling leaf was an enemy about to attack.

  It was not unreasonable.

  Every time Celia and Oliver had been alone in a remote wilderness, they’d been attacked by something. The Daytime Doctor always said “the best evidence for future behavior is past behavior.”

  It was that idea that told Celia that every time she wandered into a forest filled with booby traps and old statues, she would be attacked by myste­rious and ancient forces. That was what always happened.

  She didn’t dare step any closer to the statues, in case there were more traps. She thought for a moment.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Wait right there!”

  “What else would we do?” Oliver wondered.

  Celia disappeared back toward the beach. The boys hung quietly upside down, waiting for Celia to return.

  “I didn’t mean to come between you and your sister,” said Corey.

  “It’s cool, whatever,” said Oliver, like it was no big deal.

  Thankfully, Celia came back at that moment. Oddly, she held the chicken under her arm. In the other hand, she held a snack cake. She set the chicken down and smashed the cake in her hands, tossing the pieces around the rope.

  “Hey, that was our last cake!” Oliver objected, but the chicken ran, squawking after the sweet rubbery mush of Velma Sue’s Strawberry Surprise. Its head bobbed up and down as it pecked at the ground.

  “Come on … ,” Celia murmured. “Come on. You can do it. Be a good chicken.”

  After a few more pecks, the sharp beak caught the vine that held Oliver in the air. A few quick pecks around it and the fibers started to snap.

  “Hey, Oliver,” Celia called up. “You might want to brace yourself.”

  The vine snapped and Oliver fell straight down, landing with a thud on the top of one of the statues, then sliding down the side. He wasn’t hurt, but what was left of his tuxedo looked like it had been torn apart by wild animals.

  “Chickens to the rescue!” Corey Brandt laughed. “It’s, like, so—” He didn’t get to finish saying what it was so like, because the chicken pecked through his vine and he fell, just missing the top of the statue and landing with a hard smack on the ground, next to the watery hole.

  “You okay?” the twins called out, not daring yet to rush toward him in case there was another trap.

  “I’m okay.” Corey stood up slowly, catching his breath. “I’ve had worse accidents on set. I once fell into the orchestra pit during a rehearsal of Sunset High: The Musical.”

  “There was never a musical of Sunset High,” said Celia.

  “We never opened.” Corey brushed himself off. “I landed on an oboe player during my ‘Vampire Blues’ song. He sued to shut down the show.” Corey looked around at the statues that towered over them, casting heavy shadows in the moonlight. “So, I guess we should figure out what this place is?”

  “This is the place we’re looking for,” said Celia.

  “Why do you think that?” wondered Oliver.

  “Because of this,” she said, bending down next to the hole and picking up a small brass plate from the ground. Two letters were engraved in the brass, just like on the compass Jabir had given her: P.F.

  The chicken pecked at the ground around the hole, clucking quietly.

  “Does that mean—?” Corey began to ask. “Could this be—could this hole lead to … the Lost Library?”

  Celia shrugged and gazed into the dark blue water.

  “Celia?” said Oliver. “How do we always discover this stuff by accident? I mean, I just walked off. It doesn’t really seem, you know, possible that we’d end up in the exact right place. Do you think it’s, like, destiny? Like the oracle in Tibet said?”

  “No,” said Celia. “There’s no such thing as destiny. It’s just luck. Really, really bad luck.”

  Just then, the leaves next to one of the statues rustled and shook. Corey stepped in front of Oliver and Celia. The chicken clucked.

  “I wouldn’t call it really bad luck,” said their mother, Dr. Claire Navel, stepping from behind one of the squid men. Her hair was a mess of ­matted leaves and the wet suit she wore was torn and frayed. “In fact, I couldn’t be happier to see you guys! I count this as my lucky day!”

  Oliver’s and Celia’s mouths hung open and they stood frozen and mute.

  Nonplussed.

  30

  WE LEARN THE PLURAL OF NEMESIS

  “MRS.—I MEAN, DR. NAVEL!” Corey rushed forward to shake her hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  “Please, call me Claire,” she said.

  “Mom!” Oliver finally spoke. “Mom?”

  She rushed forward to give Oliver a big hug. “I am so glad you made it here. I knew you would. I just knew you would find a way.”

  “You’ve been here this whole time?” Celia scolded her mother.

  “I could at least get a hello, Celia,” her mother scolded her back.

  Celia just grunted. Mothers should not disappear and reappear like this, she thought. It wasn’t fair.

  “I came here with a group of Orang Laut, but they wouldn’t stay,” Dr. Navel explained. “They marooned me here because they were afraid of the kraken—that’s a giant squid.”

  “We know,” said the twins.

  “I’ve been stranded here for a few weeks now. I knew Chris Stickles would contact you if I didn’t return. I just hoped you would be able to persuade the Orang Laut to lead you here.”

  “One of them is all googly for Celia,” Oliver explained. Celia elbowed him.

  “Where’s your father?” their mother asked.

  Oliver looked at his feet. Celia frowned.

  “He, like, sacrificed himself,” said Corey. “To some pirates. For us.”

  “We need to find Plato’s map,” Celia told her mother. “We need to try to ransom him from the pirates.”

  “We can’t do that,” said Claire Navel.

  “What?” Oliver objected. “But … it’s for Dad!”

  “Ollie, honey, your father would not want anyone else getting their hands on Plato’s map.”

&nb
sp; “But it’s just some dumb old artifact!” Oliver stomped his foot. “The Explorers Club is full of dumb old artifacts!”

  “This one is different,” she told her son. “This one cannot fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Why not? Who cares? This is about Dad!”

  “This map will lead to Atlantis, where the Lost Library is hidden.”

  “So what?” Celia demanded, agreeing with her brother.

  “There is a reason the library was hidden in the lost city of Atlantis,” she told her children. “It is something like locking the key to a safe inside the safe.”

  “If you lock a key to a safe inside the safe, no one can get in,” Oliver said.

  “Duh,” Celia added.

  “Exactly,” said their mother. “You see, inside the Lost Library there are the greatest and most powerful books of all time. Including a sort of instruction manual.”

  “All this is about, like, an instruction manual?” Corey scratched his head.

  “An instructional manual to bring Atlantis back from the depths,” said Claire Navel. “An instruction manual to return the empire of Atlantis to its former glory and to conquer the world.”

  “Oh,” said Corey, because what else can you say to something like that?

  “We have to do something to help Dad,” said Celia.

  “That’s only one of our problems,” Corey said, pointing at Mount Haircut. Clouds of thick black ash billowed upward into the clear blue sky. “When Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it looked just like that,” Corey said.

  “You pronounced Eyjafjallajökull really well,” said Claire with a smile. “Not everyone can do that.”

  “Thanks.” Corey blushed. “I took lessons.”

  “They were worth it,” she said. “Icelandic is a very hard language and your accent is lovely, almost like a young Hilmir Snær Guðnason.”

  “Mom.” Celia rolled her eyes. “Maybe we should save the language lesson until after we get off this island?”