We Give a Squid a Wedgie (11 page)

“Eleven and a half!” Celia corrected him again.

“I believe in you!” Dr. Navel smiled as he tossed off the rope, tugged the engine to life, and sped off toward the collection of boats, taking Corey and Celia with him.

His sister hadn’t changed at all, Oliver thought. Just after they’d finally made up, she was ready to abandon him for Corey again. She was just like their mother, always leaving Oliver behind. She didn’t even look back as they sped away, just watched Corey laugh at something that was probably dumb.

“D-U-M-B,” Oliver spelled out loud.

“Don’t worry, little bro.” Big Bart came up beside him. “Command ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of. You got us crew here and we’re at anchor. All you have to do is make sure we stay at anchor.”

“Whatever,” Oliver grunted and went to sit in the captain’s chair behind the wheel. The deckhands
all came together for lunch, but Oliver didn’t feel like being sociable. He watched the dinghy arrive at the rafts and watched Corey and his sister wave at the fishermen.

“Stupid teen heartthrob,” Oliver muttered. “Thinks he’s so cool.”

While Oliver watched Corey and his sister and his father, he didn’t notice the deckhands signaling to each other with their eyes, and one by one disappearing into Bonnie’s bunk, where they shut and locked the door.

AS THEIR DINGHY PULLED AWAY
from the
Get It Over With
, Celia started to feel bad about leaving Oliver behind with the weird deckhands and that chicken. She was going to turn around and at least wave to him as they sped off toward the Orang Laut, but just then Corey turned to her.

“Did you hear the joke about the two squid?” Corey asked.

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 must 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.

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.”