Fish Finelli (Book 2) Page 5

  “Ready,” said Mi.

  “Set,” said Si.

  WIDOW’S WALK

  A decorative rooftop platform popular during the 19th century, some say it got its name from when men went to sea. Their wives would watch for their return from the roofs of their houses, hoping to spot the sails of the ships. Because whaling was dangerous, men sometimes died at sea, leaving widows at home to mourn.

  “Go!”

  There was a popping sound. We looked up. A red and green flare shot over our heads. The Captain waved from the widow’s walk.

  “Press on!” he shouted through his bullhorn. That’s Navy speak for get going and good luck.

  The boat shot forward and I pulled out the throttle to full. We went faster. I steered straight for Whale Rock, but we weren’t going fast enough. I could feel the drag behind us pulling us down.

  “Lean forward!” I shouted, hoping that would get us up on plane by shifting the weight.

  Roger leaned toward the bow. T. J. leaned toward me. I pulled the throttle out again. But it was out as far as it could go. Whale Rock was just ahead of us, but we still weren’t on plane. It was probably because there was too much weight aft (that means to the back) of the boat. We would have to move some weight farther forward.

  “To the bow!” I said, as we headed back.

  Roger moved to the front of the boat and sat right on the bow.

  “Hey, I’m getting all wet!” he called, as water splashed up around him.

  It was no use anyway. We still couldn’t get up on plane. I slowed down the engine as we got closer to the dock.

  “Five minutes and thirty-six seconds,” said Si.

  “Not fast enough if you want to beat Bryce,” said Mi.

  “I know. We have to get up on plane.”

  I turned the boat around to try again. We had to improve our time. The first rule of planing was weight distribution, so clearly our weight was not distributed correctly.

  “T. J., bow!” I said.

  “Huh?” said T. J., taking a bite of Peppermint Pattie.

  “Bow, now!”

  T. J. stood up and bowed.

  Si and Mi clapped.

  “T. J., c’mon!” I said, trying not to get mad.

  “What? You said ‘Bow,’ so I bowed.”

  “I meant to go sit in the bow.”

  T. J. climbed over the seat and squashed himself behind Roger, who was still sitting on the bow.

  “Roger, you sit behind me,” I said.

  Once Roger was in position, the Fireball felt more balanced. I knew a boat had to sit level to plane, but I wondered how the bow was going to be able to lift with T. J.’s weight right on top of it. It needed to rise from two to seven degrees to develop the lift it needed to plane.

  “Teej, move off the bow a little toward the middle.”

  T. J. positioned himself between the bow and the wheel. “It’s kind of like musical chairs, without the chairs,” he said.

  “Or the music,” said Roger.

  “To get up on plane, we need the hull to climb over and pass its own bow wave,” I said. “The hull needs to lift off the water, reducing drag and increasing speed.”

  “Okay, guys. Ready?” said Mi, his expression as serious now as when he counts money.

  “Set . . .” said Si.

  “Go!”

  I pulled out the throttle and the Fireball shot forward. The hull started to lift up.

  “Move back more, Teej!” I called.

  T. J. scooted toward me, pressing his back against the gearbox. I pulled the throttle all the way out. The hull rose up that next few degrees, and we were gliding over the waves. We did it. We were on plane! It felt like we were flying. Maybe we had a chance at beating Bryce after all.

  “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s the Fireball!” said Roger.

  “Look out, Superman!” added T. J.

  “WOO-HOO!” Roger whooped.

  But a minute later we hit the water with a thud.

  “Tartar sauce!” I steered around Whale Rock and headed back.

  “What happened?” asked Roger.

  “I forgot to back the throttle off once we were on plane.” That wouldn’t happen next time.

  “Don’t sweat it, dude. Hey, Teej, can I have some of that Laffy Taffy?”

  “You’re not supposed to be carrying extra snacks,” I said.

  “Laffy Taffy weighs almost nothing,” said Roger. “Hey, I don’t like banana, Teej. I want sour apple.”

  “Three minutes, twenty-three seconds,” said Mi as we pulled up to the dock.

  THUMP! Something fell out of T. J.’s shirt and hit the deck. He bent to grab it, but not before we saw what it was.

  “Coconut water!” I yelled. “T. J., we said no snacks. No extra weight.”

  “It was just a small bottle,” said T. J. “In case I got dirated.”

  “Dehydrated,” I said. “Which can only happen if you are without water for more than twenty-four hours, which is in no way going to happen, since we are not going to be on board this boat for an entire day and night!”

  “What else you got in there, Mahoney?” Roger tackled T. J. and started pulling on his pants.

  “Don’t pants me!” T. J. held up his hands. “I surrender!” He hates being pantsed. It’s his older brother Mickey’s favorite way to get him to do what he wants. It’s even more embarrassing if you’re wearing dinosaur boxers. Roger wouldn’t have done it, but just the threat of it was enough to get T. J. to cave.

  T. J. got to his feet and pulled a juice box out of his other pocket, along with a mini box of Cap’n Crunch, three Fruit Roll-Ups, and a jumbo-sized bag of pretzel rods.

  “Dude, you’re like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat,” said Mi, tapping his pencil on his clipboard. “I had no clue you were a human snack shop.”

  “Can I have a Fruit Roll-Up?” asked Si.

  “What flavor?”

  “Give him all of them!” I said. “And get back in the boat.”

  “Aye, aye, captain!” Roger saluted me.

  “Ready . . . set . . . go!” Mi clicked the stopwatch.

  Off we went in a surge of spray—again. And again. And again.

  FIRST ONE TO GET LOST WINS!

  Every day that week, we practiced getting the Fireball to plane. Mi and Si even came to help when they weren’t selling clams. We did everything we could think of to lighten the weight to make the boat go fast and help raise the bow. We took out the forward seat and eliminated most of the stuff in the Bug Patrol backpack except the flashlight and some Band-Aids. T. J. brought only small, lightweight snacks, like raisins and beef jerky, the kind of dried-up food astronauts take to the moon so it won’t weigh down a rocket when it’s in space in zero gravity. It all helped get us up on plane—especially if the wind was going our way and the water was calm.

  I couldn’t believe the race was less than a week away. I was so excited I kept waking up at sunrise and biking over to the Captain’s to sand the Fireball’s deck again or check and see that the Seagull’s fuel tap was working right. The Captain told me to deep-six (that’s Navy slang for throw overboard) my nervousness or I’d end up in a SNAFU for sure. WILCO, I told him (that means “will comply”—wilco, get it?).

  That morning Roger, T. J., and I were heading back from making a run around the Point.

  “Guys, I need to . . .” T. J.’s voice trailed off and he shrugged.

  “Need to what?”

  “You know?”

  “What? Learn how to weave snowshoes? Turn Bryce Billings into a droid?”

  “Visit the facilities,” said T. J.

  “Facilities?” Roger and I looked at him.

  “My mom is making us work on our manners,” said T. J. “Saying ‘bathroom’ is rude for some reason.”

  We approached the marina and I slowed down. I pulled up at the dock and T. J. hopped out while Roger and I tied up the Fireball.

  “Tell me that is not Bryce and Trippy,” I said.


  Zero Gravity

  This means no gravity, or weightlessness. It’s what astronauts call it when they float around in a space shuttle, although because they orbit Earth, they are still technically subject to gravity. The space shuttle moves sideways quickly at the same time that it is free-falling to Earth, causing zero gravity, which is why astronauts float around.

  “That’s not Bryce and Trippy . . . except it is Bryce and Trippy,” said Roger. “Contact in three-two-o—”

  “So, which one of you clam diggers am I going to have to beat?” said Bryce.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Only one racer is allowed per boat,” said Bryce. “It’s some dumb new rule.”

  “For safety,” said Trippy, pointing behind us. “It’s all in that sign.”

  Roger and I walked over to the sign. Sure enough, in big black letters it read: ONLY ONE RACER PER BOAT. NO EXCEPTIONS—BOATING SAFETY COMMITTEE. All the other rules were still the same: All racers had to wear PFDs and be able to swim a hundred meters in light clothing, good sportsmanship was mandatory, each boat must be in good working order with a full fuel tank, and no boat could interfere with another boat by cutting into its lane.

  “Snap!”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  Bryce and Trippy rolled their eyes. “Because of that dumb kid who fell out of his cheesy boat last year. He wasn’t even in our division.”

  “Oh.”

  Roger and I looked at each other. We both remembered when Colum Osborn, Two O’s cousin, fell out of Two O’s brother Tucker’s boat. There were three of them in a nine-foot Alumacraft with a tiller steer motor, you know, one of those little ones in the back. It’s a small boat, and they were all big kids.

  “Like I said, only good boats and good racers should be allowed in the Classic,” sneered Bryce.

  “Good boats and good racers have nothing to do with it,” said Mr. Blue, the marina manager, who had just come out of the marina office. “This is all about safety. The Classic judges and the Boating Safety Committee agreed unanimously on the one-racer rule. That includes your father, Bryce.”

  Bryce’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Roger and I looked at each other. We didn’t know Mr. Billings was on the Boating Safety Committee and a judge this year.

  “All the other rules are the same,” said Mr. Blue. “The one-racer rule is the only new one.”

  “What are we going to do?” I said, turning to Roger.

  “Dude, as if that’s a question,” said Roger. “Sure, it would have been fun, especially to beat Billings over there.” He winked at Bryce, who blew out an annoyed puff of air and rolled his eyes. “But this is your race.”

  Just then T. J. came running up, waving his arms wildly. His face was red and he was breathing hard.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Bryce. “Someone steal your lunch?”

  Trippy laughed and high-fived Bryce.

  “There’s this new rule that only one racer is—”

  “We know!” we all said.

  Roger and T. J. looked at me.

  “The Fireball will plane easier without us, right, Fish?” T. J. said.

  “Absotively posolutely,” agreed Roger. “And Teej and I will be with you in spirit every step—or should I say wave—of the way.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Uncle Norman’s girlfriend, Venus,” I said. Venus Star is an astrologer and she’s super nice, but she has some pretty wacky ideas.

  The five of us started walking along the dock, heading back to our boats. The Fireball was just ahead of us. The Viper was tied up on the other end.

  “I’m still going to beat you, Finelli,” said Bryce.

  “Given,” said Trippy.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Of course I will,” said Bryce, pointing to the Seagull. “That freaky little motor is no match for my Mercury.”

  “Is so,” I said. “And it’s not freaky, it’s British, and it was used to power light assault—”

  “You think your motor’s so great,” said Bryce. “Let’s race right now.”

  The word “Okay” was on my lips, but then I remembered listening to the weather forecast that morning. There was the chance of an afternoon thunderstorm, so Uncle Norman and my dad decided to get an early start on their plumbing job, since they don’t like to work on outside pipes in the rain.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said, thinking about how Uncle Norman always says the biggest danger on a boat is the weather.

  Roger and T. J. looked at me in surprise.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to race you or anything,” I said quickly. “But it might storm later.”

  We all looked up at the sky. There were a few clouds, but the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

  “You’re just scared,” said Bryce.

  “Am not,” I said.

  “Are so,” Trippy added.

  “If you’re not, then like I said, let’s race right now. Trippy and me against you and Roger and T. J.”

  T. J. and Roger looked at me again. Racing against Bryce and Trippy was a bad idea for so many reasons. First, there was the weather. Then there was the fact that the marine safety course made it very clear that none of us was supposed to race one another without supervision, ever. On top of that, I was the OOD, the officer of the deck, as the Captain would say, and the safety of my men—in this case, Rog and Teej—was my responsibility.

  “Hah! I knew you were too scared.”

  “No, we’re not,” I said.

  “You should be,” said Bryce. “You’re going to get smoked.”

  The tips of my ears started getting hot and all thoughts of marine safety flew out of my head. I was sick and tired of Bryce acting like such a big shot, as if he was better than we were, and thinking he could push us around. It made me so mad, my whole face was burning. Maybe if we beat him, he would finally leave us alone.

  “You’re the ones who are going to get smoked,” I said. “We’ll race you right now.”

  Roger raised his eyebrows and T. J. stopped chewing on one of the carrots his mom was making him eat after she discovered his stash of junk food.

  “Deal,” said Bryce.

  Trippy, a sneaky grin on his face, whispered something to Bryce. The two of them high-fived.

  “First one to Get Lost wins.”

  T. J.’s eyes widened. Roger and I exchanged uneasy glances. “Get Lost Island?”

  “That’s right, Get Lost Island. If you’re not too chicken, and you don’t get lost!”

  HOLY SMOKES! WE SMOKED THEM!

  We piled into the boat. All three of us looked up at the same time. Puffy white clouds floated across the sky.

  “You sure it’s not going to storm till later?” asked T. J.

  “If it storms at all,” I said. “We’ll be back way before then, anyway.” I snuck another glance up at the sky. Were the clouds getting darker, or was that just my imagination?

  “If we don’t get lost,” said T. J. “Imagine, years later our skeletons are found, with our scalps all dried up and hanging from a tree.”

  “That’s just a story about those kids who disappeared,” said Roger. “And they weren’t scalped or anything. You’re making that up.”

  The legend of Get Lost started during World War II. Some kids went there to go fishing and they never came back and their boat was never found. I’m pretty sure grownups made it all up so kids back then would stay close to home. See, the grown-ups were afraid the kids would be captured by German saboteurs (spies who try to destroy a country from the inside), because some Nazi spies really did sail from a secret German base and land a U-boat on a beach right in our town. They brought a ton of explosives with them. Their mission was to slow down America’s war effort by blowing up stuff like an aluminum company and a railway, and make us so afraid, we would stop fighting. The operation failed and the saboteurs got caught by the FBI, but still, the
grown-ups didn’t want kids messing around in the water too far from home, in case the Germans tried to do it again.

  “Bones were never found,” I said, wrapping the pull cord and yanking on the rope to start the engine. “And no boat. There’s no evidence it ever happened.”

  “Did so. Mickey said. No one in town wants us to know the truth. He got it from Burt Babinski, who knows all kinds of secret stuff, like how to use a Taser, ’cause of his dad being chief of police.”

  “Burt Babinski also said the Porta Potty on the baseball field is a time machine,” I said.

  “Um, excuse me, coach, I’m just going to help George Washington fight the Redcoats before they slay us and take Long Island for the British,” said Roger. “Then I’ll be right back to cover left field.”

  “You never know,” said T. J. “Have you ever been in that Porta Potty?”

  “No way!” I said, checking that the fuel tank was still close to three-quarters full.

  “It stinks!” said Roger.

  T. J. nodded. “Exactly.”

  Just then we heard the hum of a motor as Bryce and Trippy approached. The Viper idled up beside us.

  “Ready, losers?” Bryce’s gold aviator sunglasses glinted in the sun.

  “We were born ready,” I said, putting on the mirrored sunglasses I had won off him after our first bet. I did it on purpose, because I knew it made him mad.

  Bryce looked over the top of his frames and gave me his “You are a cockroach and I’m about to flatten you” look. I looked back at him over my glasses, meeting his stare.

  “First one to Get Lost wins,” said Roger.

  “On your marks . . .” said Bryce.

  “Get set . . .” I said.

  “Go!”

  VROOOOOMMMM!

  Bryce and I revved our motors. I did it to check that the Seagull was running well, and to show him his Mercury motor didn’t scare me.

  “Get ready, guys!” I said.

  T. J. sat criss-cross applesauce in the middle of the boat and Roger moved behind me to the stern. I pulled out the throttle and we took off, but the Viper shot ahead of us. I pulled the throttle all the way out and the Fireball surged forward. We were three boat lengths behind the Viper, then two, then just half a boat length. Come on, Fireball!