Fish Finelli (Book 2) Page 7

  “Take the wheel!” I ordered Trippy. “Keep it straight for Get Lost. Okay?”

  Trippy stared at me dumbly, his face as white as the bright-white hull of the Fireball.

  I turned around and bent down, feeling for the rope. The rain was coming down in sheets. I had to keep rubbing my eyes to get the water out of them so I could see. The rope was wet and slippery and hard to hold. More waves rocked the boat.

  “Hurry, Fish!”

  I pulled the knife out of my pocket, and squeezed the scissor blades together with as much force as I could. Nothing happened. The boat started to spin. I turned around. Trippy had let go of the wheel!

  “Hold the wheel!” I yelled into the wind.

  No one else said a word. Not even Bryce, who looked just as scared now as the other guys.

  “It’s too wet!” screamed Trippy.

  “You can do it! Just grab the wheel.”

  He finally did and the boat stopped spinning. I had to cut the rope fast before Trippy lost total control again.

  I bent down and snapped the scissors back and forth. They slipped out of my hands. I lunged and grabbed them. I sawed at the rope with one of the scissor blades as hard as I could. A few strands popped off. I kept sawing away. More strands popped off. It helped that the rope was one of the Captain’s oldest.

  SNAP!

  The Viper listed to the starboard side, the roll bar tipping dangerously close to the water. Waves rocked into it from the port side. The Viper shot up as the Fireball started to spin. Then the Viper bounced over the waves away from us.

  I didn’t waste another second. I pushed Trippy over and grabbed the wheel from him. He had a dazed look on his face. All the guys did, especially Bryce, as he watched his boat disappear into the storm. . . .

  TUNA EYEBALLS ON TOAST. YUM! YUM!

  Irevved the engine and we surged forward. We were moving at last! Get Lost was getting closer. I held on tight to the wheel as another gust of wind and rain hit us from the starboard side. We listed to port, but I turned the wheel fast to straighten us out. Come on, Fireball!

  We surged forward. Another twenty yards and we would reach the beach.

  My heart stopped beating quite as fast. Fifteen yards. Then ten. Five. Close enough.

  “Let’s go!” I said. “Help me beach the boat.”

  Everybody hopped into the water. We sloshed through waves and driving rain and pulled and pushed the Fireball onto the shore. We were soaking wet and shivering.

  The five of us huddled together under a canopy of trees as the storm raged around us. Bryce sat a little bit away from us, as far as he could get from me. He kept shooting me evil glares, like a viperfish (no kidding—it’s one of the meanest-looking sea creatures you ever saw), but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop thinking about what T. J. had said about Get Lost and the kids who disappeared. It was so dark and gloomy, I suddenly started feeling like maybe the story was true after all.

  “I wish it wasn’t so dark,” said T. J., as if he was reading my mind.

  “A little light would be nice,” I agreed, sneaking a peek over my shoulder at the shadowy trees behind us.

  “Light coming right up.” Roger opened the Bug Patrol backpack, which he had remembered to take from the boat, and pulled something from it. “Da-da-da-da!”

  “Oooh, a Barbie flashlight!” said Bryce.

  “Hey, you want light or not?”

  We all nodded as Roger flipped the switch. A thin beam of light shot out and then died. He knocked it against his leg and flipped the switch again. Nothing.

  “Barbie, you light up my life! Come back to me!”

  Everyone laughed except for Bryce.

  “Let me try,” I said. Roger tossed me the flashlight. I popped out the batteries, put them back in, and screwed on the end again. Then I flicked the switch. A beam of light shot out. We held our breath, wondering if it would flicker out again. A few more seconds passed.

  “Barbie, you rock!” joked Roger, as I tossed the flashlight back to him.

  We all smiled. It wasn’t much, but there was something reassuring about that little light in the great big gloom of Get Lost.

  Roger put the flashlight in the middle of the uneven circle we had made under the trees.

  “Hey, it’s like a campfire,” said Roger, pretending to warm his hands over the light.

  “Where are the s’mores?” asked Trippy.

  Again, we all laughed except for Bryce. “This isn’t funny, you know. My boat is wrecked and lost—”

  “No, Billings, we’re lost, as in on Get Lost. The Viper didn’t get to Get Lost. Get it?” Roger’s brown eyes glowed in the light. There’s nothing he loves more than wordplay.

  “My dad is going to kill me,” said Bryce. “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

  “I’m sorry, dude,” said Trippy, glancing uneasily at his friend.

  “We had no choice, Billings,” I said. “We wouldn’t have made it otherwise. We had to get out of the storm. I’m sure he’ll understand that.”

  Another crack of thunder sounded over our heads. Seconds later lightning flashed again.

  “See what I mean?”

  “I thought we were going to die,” said Trippy, shivering.

  Roger and T. J. nodded.

  Bryce hung his head. “You don’t get it. None of you do. My dad is going to kill me. It’s always me. Beck never messes anything up. All I ever hear about is how perfect my brother is, and how come I can’t be like him. Beck never wrecked a boat, that’s for sure.”

  Beck Billings was in seventh grade and a football and lacrosse star. He was also the number-one student in his grade and a great pianist. Everyone loved Beck, including Summer, Roger’s older sister, who had a major crush on him.

  The thing was, Beck was a nice guy. He wasn’t stuck up at all. I actually started feeling bad for Bryce that his dad would compare him to his brother all the time. Nobody could compete with Beck. It had to be rough.

  “Look on the bright side, Billings,” said Roger as lightning forked across the sky. “I’m sure your dad would rather you were alive than turned into Billings flambé by a bolt of lightning.”

  “Funny, Huckleton,” said Bryce. “The bottom line is if it wasn’t for Fish cutting the Viper loose, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “What?!”

  “The truth is you should be thanking him for saving all of us,” said Roger.

  Trippy nodded at me and mouthed “Thank you” so I could see but Bryce couldn’t.

  “Without Fish we would be fish food, shark bait, whale chow,” said Roger.

  “You know what this means?” said T. J. all of a sudden. “We won.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” said Roger. “We beat you, Billings.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Bryce. “We had an accident. It doesn’t count.”

  “Yes, it does. It’s like the Indy Five Hundred. Just because some cars get wrecked or burn up, the first car to cross the finish line wins.”

  “You said the first one to Get Lost wins,” I said. “And we were the first ones.”

  “We won fair and square,” said Roger. “Come on. Say it.”

  “Whatever,” said Bryce. “So you won. Who cares? All that matters is my boat is lost somewhere in that storm and it’s wrecked and it’s all your fault, Fish Finelli!”

  “How is that my fault?” I said. “You’re the one who got stuck in a sandbar and broke your prop.”

  “So? You still didn’t have to cut the rope. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  If I felt bad for Bryce before because of how his dad treated him, all my feelings of sympathy were flambéed right out of me. How dare he blame me?

  Roger must have seen the angry look on my face, because before I could start yelling at Bryce, he said, “How about a game? It will serve two wonderful purposes: to take our minds off our terrible fate and to warm us up.” He rubbed his arms.

  “Now that you mention it, I’m freezing,” said Trippy, pulli
ng his shorts down over his knees.

  I was cold, too. There were goose bumps up and down my arms.

  “What kind of game?” asked Trippy.

  “Don’t Hesitate is always fun,” said T. J., whose teeth had started chattering like those plastic windup teeth you buy on Halloween.

  “Only if I get to pick the category,” said Roger.

  “Animals,” suggested T. J.

  “Bor-ing,” said Roger.

  “Dinosaurs,” said Trippy.

  Interesting, I thought. I remembered Trippy dressing up as a T. rex back when he and Bryce were in first grade and we were in kindergarten, when we were all friends. Back then we all used to play hide-and-seek and dodgeball and stuff at recess. Then Trippy and Bryce went to surf camp the summer after third grade. After that, they started dressing different and acting different and Bryce started being the big bully he is now. And Trippy went along with it and stopped being friends with us, too.

  “Nah,” said Bryce, back to being his usual, bossy self. “Dinosaurs have too many long, weird names.”

  “I’ve got it!” said Roger. “Nasty-wasty, ucky-yucky lunches provided by the Whooping Hollow Elementary School!”

  We all looked at one another. No one knew what to say.

  “I take that as a yes,” said Roger. “Don’t Hesitate, the subject is nasty-wasty, ucky-yucky lunches, starting with greasy, grimy, gopher-gut tacos, kidney beans, and dog hair.”

  “Nasty,” I said.

  “Wasty,” said T. J.

  “Your turn, Fish.”

  “Ground-up chicken feet salad on a moldy bun with wasp crackers,” I said.

  “T. J.?”

  “Tuna eyeballs on toast with pickled grasshoppers and bird’s nest soup.”

  “Yum! Yum!” said Roger. “Bryce?”

  All eyes turned to Bryce. “Egg puke on whole wheat, with french-fried worm soup.”

  “Totally gross, Billings! Excellent!”

  Bryce glared at Roger, who was busy pointing at Trippy.

  Trippy frowned, concentrating. “Fried spiders with rice . . . um . . . raccoon snot . . .”

  “You hesitated!” said Roger.

  “I did?”

  “Yes, before you said raccoon snot.”

  Before we could start another round, T. J., whose favorite subject was always food, said, “You know, fried spiders, especially tarantulas, are a delicacy in Japan.”

  “Gross!”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “From Eating Adventures Around the World,” said T. J. “It’s a cooking show. You know, in some countries they eat monkey brains and goat brains.”

  “EWWWWW!!!!”

  “I’m hungry,” said Trippy just as my stomach rumbled.

  “Hungry enough to eat monkey brains?”

  Everyone laughed.

  Roger and I looked at T. J.

  “What?” T. J. asked.

  “What you got?”

  “Not a lot,” said T. J. “On account of the weight restrictions on the boat.”

  “You have food?” said Bryce.

  T. J. nodded. We all watched as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of Jolly Ranchers. He laid them out in front of him. This was followed by a crushed-up bag of Goldfish crackers, a pair of wax lips, and a small box of Craisins.

  We all looked at the pile of snacks.

  “I want the wax lips,” said Bryce.

  “Me too,” said Trippy. “I’m real thirsty.”

  “Me three,” said Roger.

  “Looks like it’s time for the Jolly Rancher Challenge,” said T. J. “Whoever wins gets the lips, and then we share the rest. Deal?”

  “What’s the Jolly Rancher Challenge?”

  “Whoever can unwrap a Jolly Rancher fastest in his mouth, using only his teeth and his tongue, wins.”

  T. J. smiled. He always wins the Jolly Rancher Challenge. Maybe because he’s the one who made it up in the first place.

  T. J. handed out the Jolly Ranchers. “Everybody ready?”

  We all nodded, even Bryce.

  “On your marks . . . get set . . . go!”

  We popped the candies in our mouths and started biting and sucking on them. We must have looked pretty crazy. T. J. won, of course, but Trippy was only a few seconds behind him. Trippy told us about this one time he ate ten fluffernutter sandwiches and then threw up in his mother’s prize rosebushes. The candy must have put Bryce in a better mood, because he told us how he ate a dog biscuit on a dare and it was kind of tasty. We all laughed, including him.

  We were so busy eating the rest of the snacks that we didn’t notice that the rain had slowed to a drizzle and the wind had died down.

  “Hey, guys, look!” said T. J., pointing to where a thin trickle of sunlight poked out of the clouds.

  The water had calmed down, too. As we got to our feet, the sun came out for real, lighting up the gloom. Get Lost didn’t look nearly so spooky anymore.

  “Looks like we’re good to go,” I said.

  We all piled into the Fireball.

  “We better find my boat, Finelli,” said Bryce, frowning and waving a finger in my face. All traces of his good mood were long gone.

  “Take a chill pill, Billings,” said Roger.

  “A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . .” I started saying the alphabet to myself to keep my temper from rising, just like the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. That’s how he kept himself calm when he started getting mad, and why he was known as a wise ruler. I wasn’t an emperor, but I was the OOD. I had to be calm to take care of my boat and my men.

  CAESAR AUGUSTUS (63 BC–AD 14)

  The first emperor of the Roman Empire, he ruled from 31 BC to 14 AD. He expanded the borders of Rome, adding Egypt, parts of Africa, and much of Europe to the empire. Wise and strong, he began an era of peace in Rome and built temples, theaters, and roads. The month of August is named after him.

  I pulled on the rope to start the Seagull, checking the fuel level. We had less than half a tank, which was just about enough to get us home. I was pretty sure the Viper hadn’t sunk, because whalers are pretty much unsinkable, but less than half a tank of fuel was not enough to go chasing after it if it had drifted too far away. All I could do was hope it was close by as I pulled out the throttle and we headed away from the island.

  We had only gone a little ways when what do you know? We saw a white shape bobbing on the waves with a telltale green stripe on the side.

  PHEW!

  “See, your boat is fine,” said Roger.

  I cut the engine and we drifted closer to inspect the damage. The Viper was fine, as in it was in one piece, but it was definitely listing to starboard from all the water in the bottom. Plus, it wasn’t like it was going to run with a broken prop. I revved the engine.

  “Where’s the line?” asked Bryce. “You need to tie it to your boat.”

  I shook my head.

  “What?!”

  “It’s too heavy for the Fireball to pull with all the weight we already have,” I said. “We’ll never make it. We don’t have enough gas.”

  “You’re just saying that so my boat gets more messed up, and then you’ll be able to beat me in the Classic,” said Bryce, frowning.

  “This has nothing to do with the Classic,” I said. “It’s about safety. You need to come back in a bigger boat with a bigger engine to pull a load that heavy. Don’t you remember the section in the Marine Safety Course about weight restrictions and the ratio of—”

  “You think you’re so smart, Fish Finelli,” sneered Bryce. “Just get us out of here, so I can go get my boat. I’m never going to forget what you did. Get ready to get clobbered at the Classic, loser!”

  HUNG DRAWN AND GROUNDED!

  You’re grounded, young man,” my dad told me as he paced in front of the piano bench in our living room, where I was sitting. I felt like he was Darth Vader and I was Luke Skywalker, and he was about to blast me off the Death Star and into outer space.

 
; “Aw, Dad,” I said in a very un-Luke Skywalker way. Then again, I didn’t have a light saber to defend myself.

  Shrimp put his gigantic head down on my feet. He let out a sad, doggy whine and slobbered all over my toes. I couldn’t believe after everything I had been through, I was grounded on top of it.

  I confessed all the details to my parents when I got home. It turns out the Captain had called during the storm when he didn’t see the Fireball at the dock. That worried my mom, so she called my dad and Roger’s and T. J.’s moms. Nobody knew where any of us were.

  I explained about Bryce and the storm and Get Lost, figuring honesty is always the best policy and since everything had turned out okay—except for the Viper getting messed up—all was well that ended well. My dad didn’t see it that way, though.

  “Do you want to go over it again?” My dad ticked off each of my crimes. “One, you went to a dangerous place without permission. Two, you did not tell anyone where you were going. Three, you were irresponsible about the weather. Four, you endangered not just yourself, but your friends. Am I forgetting anything?”

  I kept quiet. I knew that was one of those trick questions that adults ask, but they don’t really want you to answer. If you do, things will pretty much only go from nasty to wasty.

  “He did rescue Bryce and Trippy,” said my mom.

  “Hmm . . .”

  “He did get everyone safely to shore.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “He did act in a calm and courageous manner.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  Wow! I sounded like a real hero, like Luke Skywalker. Maybe they would go easy on me.

  THUMP! THUMP! Shrimp wagged his tail. He must have thought I sounded like a real hero, too.

  My parents stepped into the hall to decide my sentence. I played the first few measures of “Für Elise” on the piano while I waited. It’s my dad’s favorite. I figured it might help.

  “Your father and I agreed you are grounded for one week, starting now,” my mom said, walking into the room.

  “A whole week?! What about the race?” That was on Saturday, exactly six days away.