The Pirate Who's Back in Bunny Slippers

by Annabeth Bondor-Stone

  “Get that away from me!” Shivers cried. “It’s like a baby boomerang! Those things should be illegal!”

  “It’s the only way out!” Brock insisted.

  Shivers was uneasy. Anything that could escape gravity like that was clearly the work of witches or ghosts or both. He decided to ask his first mate.

  Shivers crouched down next to Albee’s bag. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I think it looks pretty easy,” Albee said.

  “What’s that? You think it’s really scary and difficult but it might be the only way to save my best nonfish friend?! You always know just what to say.” Shivers took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

  Brock planted his feet and Shivers shimmied back up onto his shoulders. Albee supervised. Once Shivers reached the window, Brock handed him the yo-yo and he hooked it onto his finger. As soon as he saw it in his hand he screamed and dropped it, but it flew back up. “Witchcraft!!” he squealed. He tried to get rid of it again but it bounced back toward him like a toy on a mission. “Get it off me! Get it off me!” he squawked, throwing the yo-yo down over and over again, narrowly missing Brock’s head.

  “Shivers!” Brock shouted. “Try throwing it out the window!”

  “Begone, yo-yo!” Shivers cried, raising up his hand. He flung the yo-yo as hard as he could through the bars of the window. It swooped down along the side of the wall, then hit the bush and hooked onto the key. Then, with the force of a thousand yo’s, it barreled up and back through the bars, flinging the key into the vault, where it dropped to the floor right next to Albee’s bag.

  “Got it!” said Albee.

  Shivers scampered down from Brock’s shoulders as fast as he could, then lay down on the floor, kissed it, and whispered, “I’ll never leave you again.”

  Brock picked up the key and unlocked the door. Shivers got Margo’s bag, and then he got Albee’s bag, and then he got out of that bank as fast as he possibly could.

  BROCK STOOD IN THE crow’s nest of Solid as a Brock, looking through a pair of pirate binoculars—which were just like regular binoculars except they had an eye patch over one side.

  “Any sign of them?” Shivers called up from the deck. He was in a panic over which way to sail.

  “Nothing yet!” Brock said, spinning around like the lamp on a lighthouse. “All I see is a big party boat, a cargo ship, and—” He adjusted the binoculars to get a closer look. “The Land Lady?! What’s that doing out at sea?”

  “WHAT?! My Land Lady?!”

  “It sure is,” Brock said, looking at the name written on the side of the ship. “But it’s got a lot more cannons than it used to.”

  “You mean more than zero?” Shivers asked.

  “A lot more than zero. And the Treasure Torch is right there on the deck!”

  “What?! Give me those!”

  Brock tossed the binoculars down to Shivers. He looked through them, spotted the Land Lady, then zeroed in on the helm. Steering his ship was Mayor President. “Follow that Land Lady!!!” Shivers shouted.

  “You got it!” Brock raised up the anchor and they sped across the water. Under the dark night sky, the ocean was rough and the waves were chopping more than a kung fu movie. Luckily, Solid as a Brock was a much stronger and faster ship than the Land Lady, so they gained ground quickly—or, rather, they gained sea quickly. As they got closer, Shivers looked through the binoculars again. There was no sign of Margo but he could see that the mayor was surrounded by her menacing pirate crew.

  “I don’t think we can do this alone,” Shivers said nervously.

  “I know! I’ll call Mom and Dad!”

  “You have a phone on your ship?” Shivers asked.

  Brock laughed heartily. “Who needs a phone? Phones are so last century.” He ran to the back deck of the ship, cleared his throat and bellowed. “HEY, MOM! HEY, DAD!”

  Brock’s voice was so loud that it echoed all the way back to New Jersey Beach and through the town. One by one, moms and dads popped their heads out their windows, calling, “Yes, dear?”

  “Sorry!” Brock shouted. He knew he would have to be more specific. “TILDA! BOB!” But there was no answer. Brock shrugged. “I guess I’ll leave a message. WE’RE GOING INTO BATTLE! HELP!”

  But there was no time to wait for a response. They had just drifted into the Land Lady’s wake. Now, Shivers was able to really see what the mayor had done to his ship. His mop collection had been replaced with seventeen sharp swords. His flag had been replaced with a new one that was just a giant picture of the mayor’s snarling face. Even his coat hooks had been replaced with real hooks, which just seemed unnecessary. And Brock really wasn’t kidding about the cannons. They were everywhere. A group of pirate interns patrolled the deck, filling each cannon with thick, gray goop.

  At that moment, a huge wave from Brock’s ship rocked the Land Lady. The mayor turned around in surprise and spotted them. She rushed furiously onto the deck. “You escaped!” she screeched into her megaphone. “Another masterful move from Shivers the Pirate. Well, there’s no escaping now.” She pointed one of the cannons directly at them, and her interns followed suit with the rest. “I realize that if I can’t outsmart you, I’ll just have to make you fish food.”

  “What have you done to my Land Lady?!” Shivers cried.

  “I knew that if I was going to become the most powerful pirate on the seas, I would need a powerful pirate ship. So when I took it from you this morning I had my crew redecorate. All they had to do was get my old pirate gear out of storage!”

  “Old pirate gear?” Brock asked. “Can someone please explain to me who this lady is?”

  “I suppose there’s time for one more story before you get slurped up by the great blue stew.” She laughed, gesturing wildly at the ocean. “I was born at sea, you see. But no matter how much treasure I plundered, I never had any power. I was a Nobody! Seriously! My name was Sheila B. Nobody! So what did I do? I left my pirate life, moved on land, and gave myself the most powerful name I could think of. Before I knew it, I was the most powerful person in all of New Jersey. I got a free house and free cars! And all the interns I could stuff into an office! But I wanted more! Once I discovered that the Treasure Torch was out there and that you were keeping it from me, I knew the time had come for me to return to the sea. And look at me now! I retrained my interns to be perfect pirates, I have my very own ship, and the Treasure Torch is mine. There’s no pirate more powerful than me. And you’re not going to stand in my way anymore!”

  “Oh, I get it now.” Brock nodded. “You really gave us the long version, huh?”

  The mayor glowered at him. “Then I’ll make the rest of this quick. Good-bye, Shivers! It was terrible knowing you!” She raised up her fist and brought it down onto a red button at the base of the cannon. There was a thunderous BOOM! as it fired directly at them.

  SPLURRSH! THE CANNON SHOT landed on Brock’s ship, spraying a mountainous mixture of moldy gloop across the deck. Shivers had no idea what had just been shot out of the cannon, but whatever it was, it gave him the willies.

  “What is that stuff?” Shivers asked, sticking out his tongue in disgust. “It looks like sewer slime!”

  Brock examined a glob of slop on his deck. “And it smells like guacamole.”

  The mayor cackled from the captain’s deck. “It’s cafeteria food!” she announced proudly, her voice blasting from the megaphone. “I didn’t have any cannonballs, but as mayor I had unlimited access to the elementary school’s leftovers. I took one look at this stuff and thought, this is way more dangerous than cannonballs! See?”

  She signaled to the pirate interns and they all fired their cannons at once. A deadly deluge rained onto Brock’s ship. This time, the rotten food hit with such force that it splintered the hull. Another round of cannonfire hit, and the back of Solid as a Brock cracked in half.

  “Uh-oh. I guess I have to rename it Sinking Like a Brock. Abandon ship!” Brock cried. He saw that Shivers was still wearing Margo’s backpa
ck and decided to pull Shivers onto his own back. Shivers wrapped his arms around Brock’s shoulders and held Albee’s bag tightly in his hands.

  “You can swim, right?” Brock asked, leaping over the railing.

  But before Shivers could scream, “NO!” they plunged into the blackness below.

  Shivers wanted to kick and thrash in a panic, but the water was so cold that he just stayed frozen to Brock’s back as he fought against the waves. Brock made it to the Land Lady and tried to grab on to the ship, but his hands slipped off the slimy wooden sides. Just then, he saw something drop down from Shivers’s bedroom porthole. It looked like a rope covered in soggy green leaves. “Wow, your daisies have really grown long,” he said. Shivers tried to warn Brock that daisies don’t look like that but his mouth was too full of freezing salt water to do anything but shiver and spit.

  Brock pulled them up onto the rope and started a steady climb toward the porthole. He took one last look over his shoulder just in time to see his old ship, which had just been his new ship, slip beneath the surface of the sea. “I hope my piranhas are okay,” he said.

  “I can’t say I agree,” Albee replied.

  But there was no time for arguments. Brock had reached the porthole. He hoisted Shivers and Albee inside, then squeezed himself through the small, circular window like a raccoon through a Ring Pop. Finally, there was a POP! like a cork being pulled out of a bottle as Brock pushed himself all the way through. He landed on his back next to Shivers on the floor of the bedroom.

  Staring down at them, holding the rope, was the friendliest, most fearless face they could hope to find.

  “Margo!” Shivers exclaimed, leaping up from the floor and dancing around her. “I’m so happy to see you! I’m so happy you’re safe! I’m so—” He glanced around his bedroom and saw that it was covered in ocean garbage. “DISGUSTED!!! What happened to my room?!”

  “The mayor turned it into the seaweed-sifting station. I have to sit here and sort through all this filth looking for hidden treasure.” Among the muck was a pile of thick gold chains covered in slime that had been scraped from the sea floor. The pile was almost as tall as Margo. “But on the plus side, when I heard all the commotion and saw you guys outside I was able to drop you a line!” She held the seaweed rope up proudly.

  Shivers took off Margo’s backpack and handed it to her. “I thought you might be missing this.”

  “My backpack!” Margo was thrilled. She opened it up and gobbled down the banana and the fish stick. “I was starving.”

  “So what do we do now?” Brock asked.

  “I have to clean up this mess,” said Shivers. “I hope the mayor didn’t find my spare mop.” He opened his closet and took out the most enormous mop any of them had ever seen.

  “There’s no time for cleaning! We only have two options here. It’s fight or flight,” Margo said.

  Shivers shook the mop in frustration. “How many times do I have to tell you guys, I’m afraid of heights!”

  Margo’s eyes sharpened like two green colored pencils. “Then I guess it’s fight.”

  “Finally!” Brock shouted. “Brock smash!” He charged headfirst through Shivers’s door, breaking it off its hinges as he ran into the hallway.

  “Get ahold of yourself!” Shivers groaned. “Or at least get ahold of the doorknob.” Margo threw her backpack on and ran after Brock. Shivers followed behind, his mop in one hand and Albee in the other.

  They ran into the kitchen and looked through the porthole out onto the main deck. There were interns standing at attention behind each cannon and a circle of them guarding the Treasure Torch, which sat squarely in the center of the deck.

  They heard the mayor just above them on the captain’s deck, barking into her megaphone. “Interns! Why are you standing around? Jump in the water and sift through that ship wreckage. There’s sure to be treasure down there somewhere. And if you see anybody floating around, tie a rock to their foot! Now hurry up, the freezing seawater isn’t getting any warmer!”

  The interns saluted her and dove straight off the deck, each one letting out a high pitched yelp when they hit the icy water. Margo raised her fist in the air and yelled, “Now’s our chance! Charge! . . . I mean, CHARRRRRRGE!”

  Mayor President spotted them and was so shocked that she dropped her megaphone. It fell from the captain’s deck and landed with a clatter on the main deck. The mayor howled, “You again!! Interns, assemble!!”

  In an instant, a new group of interns rushed onto the deck. It was hard to imagine that just hours ago they were wearing cleanly pressed suits, since now they looked like they had crawled out of a sewer. Their hands were caked with mud from seaweed sifting and their rotten teeth were speckled with popcorn kernels.

  “My popcorn!” Shivers shouted, appalled.

  But the mayor’s voice overpowered his as she yelled at the crew, “Seize the stowaways! Stick them in seaweed and simmer them over the stove! Alliterate and obliterate them! And remember, protect me at all costs and one day you might get paid for this job!”

  The interns swarmed but the first one to reach them was the mayor’s photographer, Roger. He shot them with the only weapon he had—his camera. He blinded Shivers, Margo, and Brock with a bright flash. “Aggh! A photobomb!” Shivers shrieked. They tried to push past Roger, but all the pops of bright light made it impossible to see where they were going. Brock had been in enough fistfights during lightning storms to know how to handle the situation. He closed his eyes and barreled forward. And when he opened his eyes, he was behind the photographer’s back. He called out, “Hey, snappy! Picture this!” The photographer spun around with just enough time to capture the moment.

  “I guess it’s lights-out for that guy,” said Albee, but no one was paying attention.

  Once their eyes adjusted, they saw that the pirates were all around them with their rusty swords and trusty daggers ready to strike.

  “Stay back!” Shivers stammered, holding his mop above his head.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Brock asked.

  “I’ll . . . scrub them clean?” Shivers tried.

  Brock just sighed and shook his head.

  Shivers looked at Albee with terrified eyes. “Well, I guess this is the end. Promise you won’t eat me when I turn into fish food.”

  “It’s not the end,” Margo said, her eyes as strong as steel. “We just have to stick together.”

  “Yeah!” Brock cheered. “Pirates stick together! Like . . . two sticks . . . in a pile of sticks!” Sometimes Brock had trouble describing things.

  A pirate intern with a hook hand and a hooked nose lunged at Margo with his sword, trying to slice her like a ham sandwich. She jumped back and something caught her eye in the reflection of his blade. It was the mayor’s bright orange megaphone, sitting on the deck just behind her. In an instant, her big beautiful brain knew exactly what to do. She tapped Shivers on the shoulder and said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What is it?” he asked, backing up against the wall and clutching the mop for dear life.

  Margo looked him square in the eye and said, “Popcorn is really made from parrot poop.”

  Shivers gasped. His face turned pale as he thought about all the popcorn he had eaten in his life. If it’s true that you are what you eat, then Shivers was made of mostly parrot poop. Just as he opened his mouth to scream, Margo scooped up the megaphone and held it in front of him.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!” Shivers wailed. The megaphone blasted the sound into the interns’ faces, blowing back their hair and beating against their eardrums. They covered their ears, turned, and scurried away from the shrieking. They huddled closely together at the end of the ship’s deck and crammed their fingers in their ears to keep the screams out.

  Margo dropped the megaphone, turned to Shivers, and said, “Just kidding!”

  “Don’t scare me like that!” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Hey, where did everybody go?”

  Then
, to everyone’s surprise, there was a thundering shout. “BROCK SMASH!!!”

  With the force of a giant bowling ball, Brock plowed head first, body second, feet third into the crew. It was like a flying bear hug. The railing cracked behind them and the whole mass of bodies flew overboard into the churning waves below.

  Shivers and Margo rushed to the edge of the deck and searched the water for any sign of Brock. The sea was full of bobbing heads but they were all thrashing around so much it was impossible to tell them apart.

  Shivers called out, hoping Brock would hear, “Stay there! We’ll throw you a life jacket!”

  “Don’t you mean a death jacket??!!”

  Margo and Shivers gasped and turned around. Standing dangerously close to them was Francois.

  “A death jacket? That’s not a real thing!” Margo insisted.

  “It is so! I got one in Denmark!” Francois replied. His back was now as crooked as his smile after being trapped in the canary cage.

  He took a step toward them and they inched away until their heels reached the edge of the deck with their backs facing the open ocean.

  Shivers gripped Margo’s hand, his eyes ablaze with panic. “What are we going to do?!”

  “For once, Shivers the Pirate doesn’t know what to do,” the mayor said, leisurely descending from the captain’s deck. She sauntered up next to Francois. “I see you’ve met my partner in crime. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that my new pet wasn’t a canary dressed like a man, but a man living like a canary. It turns out we have a lot in common.”

  “That’s right!” said Francois. “We both enjoy long walks on the beach, and our favorite ice-cream flavor is bubble gum. We’ve never been to Hawaii but we’d like to go someday—”