We Give a Squid a Wedgie (22 page)

“RRRHUMRPFLAH!” he shouted. The pirates below laughed heartily.

Dr. Navel had thought the pirates would throw him overboard right when they first caught him, but Big Bart was determined to follow the twins to the island, so they had hung him from the chandelier and called together this war council.

“Here’s the plan, brothers,” Big Bart told them. “We’ll get to this lousy island, find those Navel brats and their celebrity friend, and hold them for ransom again.”

“What about the kraken? Didn’t they tell you this island was guarded by giant squid?” one of the pirates asked.

“You afraid of some fairy tale?” Big Bart sneered. “Piracy ain’t no hobby for me. I want to get paid! And the only way we get paid is if we capture that Corey Brandt again.”

One of the pirates raised his hand. Big Bart nodded at him to speak. “I really think that at the end of
Sunset High
, Corey Brandt should have ended up with Laur—” Big Bart cut him off with a punch square across the jaw.

“No more talk about
Sunset High
,” he told his crew. “I’m tired of hearing about teenage vampires. Now, who’s with me?”

“About the vampires?” Twitchy Bart wondered.

“About the island!” Big Bart roared. “We attack at dawn! We take the Navels. We take the teenager.­ And we take whatever treasure we can find!”

“You really think there’ll be treasure?” Twitchy Bart asked. The whole crew leaned in to hear the answer. As a general rule, pirates are quite fond of treasure.

“There’s always treasure!” Big Bart roared. “And this time it’s ours for the taking! Now who’s with me?”

The pirates jumped to their feet, clapping and whistling and cheering for their captain, who sat back in his chair and smiled. He laced his fingers together behind his head and gazed up at the ceiling, looking Dr. Navel right in the eyes. As the wedgied explorer squirmed, dancing in the air over the ballroom, Big Bart gave him a friendly wink and dismissed his war council so they could go get ready for battle and maybe use the old waterslide a few times before it was time for mayhem.

Once they left, Big Bart stood. “Good night, Doctor,”
he said, and flipped the lights off, leaving Dr. Navel hanging in the dark of the old ballroom.

“Mrmffff,” groaned Dr. Navel. He wiggled ­furiously, trying to loosen the rope around his hands. He had to get free and try to stop the pirates somehow.

His fingers found the zipper on his pair of Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants. He felt the sharp edge and realized he might be able to use it to cut his hands loose. Then he would have to figure out how to get down to the floor below without cracking his head open or causing too much noise. But first, he would have to escape from the anguish of his underwear.

He sawed his hands free with the jagged zipper edge and then reached up to the chandelier. He lifted himself up to relieve the pressure of his wedgie and sighed with glorious relief. He tried to wriggle the pants free from where they were snared, but he had to hold on to the chandelier with both hands to keep from falling. He couldn’t get free. Corey had said the Pocketed Pants had special wedgie protection built into them for life-or-death wedgies. He must have had a defective pair. Dr. Navel decided that he would write a strongly worded letter
to the manufacturer, just as soon as he escaped and saved his family.

He thought about the sadhus of India, some of whom could hold their bodies in impossible positions, endure great pain and discomfort, and become free of the limits of the physical realm. He tried thinking like them, bending and flexing and twisting to lift himself out of his underwear and descend peacefully to the floor.

It didn’t work.

“Ow!” He grimaced as his wedgie worsened.

Then he remembered something else about the sadhus of India. He realized what he would have to do to escape.

The sadhus of India were often stark naked.

He sighed a sigh worthy of his children at their most annoyed and wriggled himself right out of his pants, leaving them hanging on the chandelier as he dropped down onto a table below.

As they ran to and fro preparing for battle, none of the pirates noticed Dr. Navel—who was wearing a tablecloth like a toga—creeping about, hiding in doorways, and slipping through narrow passageways belowdecks, searching for a way to escape.

And for some new pants.

OLIVER, CELIA
, their mother, and Corey spent much of the night preparing for battle. They had changed back into Corey Brandt’s Pocketed Pants, leaving their formal wear behind. It made working a lot easier, and there was plenty of work to do.

They reset the snares by the large statues that had caught Oliver and Corey. They gathered rocks onto high hilltops to tumble down on intruders. They dug pits and covered them with leaves.

It was hard, physical labor and most of it was tedious and dull. Oliver spent hours digging the same pit. Every time he got deep enough, water would flood up from below and cave in the walls and he’d climb out gasping and muddy.

Celia spent hours tying rope snares. Just when she got one attached, the volcano would rumble,
the earth would shake, and the snare would snap and she had to do it all over again.

“If this were on TV, there’d just be a bunch of scenes of us building different traps while music played,” Oliver said. “And funny little things would happen, like Corey getting stuck in a net, and we’d help him down and we’d all laugh. And then by the time the song was over, we’d be done.”

“It’s called a montage,” said Celia.

“Yeah,” said Oliver. “That’s what we need. A montage. We’d get this done faster if it was a montage.”

“Well, this isn’t television,” said Celia. “So keep digging that hole.”

The sun was starting to peek over the horizon by the time their mother said they were done. Mount Haircut rumbled and belched smoke.

“I’ll bet we’ve only got a few hours before it blows,” said Corey.

Their mother shimmied down from a treetop.

“That’s plenty of time,” she said. “Sir Edmund’s ship is just offshore and the pirates are close behind. Both of them will launch their dinghies any minute now.”

“
Dinghy
is such a dumb word,” said Oliver. “It doesn’t sound like something to be afraid of.”

“These dinghies will be filled with Sir Edmund’s­ thugs and groups of bloodthirsty pirates,” his mother answered.

“That sounds scarier,” said Oliver.

“Don’t be afraid,” his mother told him. “We want them to come. We need to get off this island somehow.”

“So we’re going with Sir Edmund?” Celia was incredulous.

“Or the pirates?” Oliver was equally shocked.

“Bwak-bwak-bwak,” Dennis clucked, which almost certainly had nothing to do with the conversation. He was, after all, just a rooster.

Corey, however, still had fresh memories of the pirates threatening to sell his hair. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

“Well, that depends,” the twins’ mother answered.­

“Depends on what, Dr. Nav—?” Corey started. “I mean, Claire.”

“It depends on whose ship is easier to hijack.” She smiled.

“You mean, like, steal?” Oliver asked. “Like ­pirates do?”

His mother nodded.

“That’s crazy,” said Celia.

“Don’t worry.” Her mother squeezed her shoulder. “I have a plan. I’ll keep you safe.”

“How will you do that?” Celia stomped her foot in the sand. She had been working all night and was pretty hungry, which made her grumpy. She also got grumpy when she was about to be ­attacked by Sir Edmund’s thugs and bloodthirsty pirates.
The Daytime Doctor
might call it a “psychological coping mechanism.” Celia thought it was perfectly reasonable to be grumpy at times like this.

“You couldn’t keep us safe from Sir Edmund or from those pirates! You couldn’t keep Dad safe and now he’s gone! You can’t keep anyone safe! You never have! All you do is leave!”

Celia had tears running down her cheeks and, realizing that Corey and brother were staring at her, she blushed and bit her lip. She turned her back on all of them.

“We’ll need to be brave for a bit,” Claire Navel told her daughter. “My plan needs all of us to work
together. Once it’s done, we’ll save your father and get out of here.”

“What about Plato’s map?” Celia sniffled. “You’d just leave off looking for it?”

Her mother smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was a mask to cover a sadness. “I need to make sure you and your father are safe.”

“That’s not an answer. You mean you’ll go right back to looking for it,” Oliver said. “Right back down that hole.” He pointed to the watery cave surrounded by strange statues. “You’ll leave us again.”

Their mother’s lips had just begun to form an answer when the high-pitched buzz of a small boat engine cut through the tense air among the Navels. Corey darted away to the trees and rushed back again.

“That’s Sir Edmund,” he said. “He’s got Janice and Ernest and even that pirate Bonnie with him. And a few thugs.”

“What’s Bonnie doing with them?” Celia wondered.­

“They must have rescued her from the ocean after Big Bart threw her overboard,” said Corey.

“I’ll bet she’s mad,” said Oliver, which really didn’t need to be said.

“They don’t know I’m on this island,” their mother said. “That is our advantage. We have the element of surprise.”

“What do we do?” Corey asked.

Claire Navel spelled out their plan. It was dangerous and crazy and if it worked they would save themselves and their father. They’d also put an end to the pirates once and for all.

If the plan failed, Oliver and Celia would never have to give that report to the whole school about what they learned while they were absent. There’s an old pirate saying that goes “dead men tell no tales.”

They don’t give school reports either.

“I WANT PARLEY!”
Sir Edmund shouted, standing on the beach with his arms in the air. “Come on out and parley with me!”

“That’s the same thing your dad was shouting about on the pirate ship,” said Corey as he and Oliver and Celia squatted behind a tree watching Sir Edmund unload his men and weapons onto the beach. “What’s parley?”

Celia shrugged.

“You don’t know?” Oliver smirked. It felt good to know something that Corey and his sister didn’t know.

“Don’t get that look,” said Celia. “Just tell us.”

“It’s from the Pirates’ Code,” said Oliver. “When someone demands the right of parley, they get to talk to the leader of the enemy ship and they
can’t be harmed until the parley is over. It’s from the French word for ‘talk,’ which is, uh …”

“Whatever.” Celia cut her brother off. “If Mom’s dumb plan is going to work, we have to go talk to Sir Edmund now.”

“Your mother’s plan isn’t dumb, Celia,” Corey told her. “You really should be nice to her. She’s a brilliant woman.”

“She ditched us to explore the world, then got us thrown out of an airplane, lost in the Amazon, and now stranded on a desert island,” said Celia. “You can be nice to her. I’ll be how I want to her. Now let’s do this.” She looked at Oliver. “You go first.”