The Sea-Quel (3 page)

“Pradeep, what time is it?” I asked, shaking my head to wake up my brain.

I had got into the habit of morning brain shaking after a teacher told me once when I was at school that my brain was still asleep. I thought about it (obviously
after
my brain woke up) and realized he might be right. So I started shaking my head every day to make sure my brain was actually awake at important times.

I could hear Frankie sloshing around in his open cooler. “Morning, Frankie,” I said. We had put the cooler right next to the radiator so Frankie could warm up a bit after being stuck in there with melting ice all day yesterday. I looked inside. Frankie was doing fin lifts with a can of cola.

Pradeep rolled over and opened his eyes. “Why am I on the floor? Where are we? Why are you shaking your head?” his look said.

“Obviously, I'm shaking my head to wake up my brain,” my look replied. Out loud I said, “We're at the lighthouse, remember?”

Suddenly Pradeep jumped up. “We have to check out that eel before Mark gets to it.”

“I've been thinking about that,” I said. “The lighthouse keeper said that if someone doesn't catch that eel, he'll have to close the lighthouse. Mark would actually be helping him out.” Then I interrupted myself, “Wait, Mark doesn't do anything to help anyone who's not evil. The lighthouse keeper seems pretty creepy, but do you think he's actually evil?”

“I don't think so,” Pradeep replied, “but I also don't think Mark is catching the eel just to help him out. We need to figure out Mark's plan.”

We put Frankie in one of Pradeep's sick bags, filled with water from the cooler, and carried him upstairs to Mark's room. We slowly creaked open the heavy wooden door and looked inside.

No Mark.

“Now we need to see if he left any clues,” Pradeep said. He went over to Mark's suitcase and started searching in there. I went over to the table. Science goggles, earbuds, Evil Scientists-R-Us catalog. I picked it up and flicked to a page called “Ten Must-Have Evil Scientist Accessories.” There at number one were the Evil Scientist hypnotic-stare-repellent contact lenses.

“I think I found something,” called Pradeep, holding up Mark's white Evil Scientist coat and chemistry set. “Funny packing for a vacation!”

“Well, we did bring a fish,” I replied.

Just then Frankie tipped the sick bag of water out onto Mark's desk. I grabbed a towel from the end of the bed. Frankie was flipping around on top of a piece of paper with something drawn on it.

Pradeep grabbed the sick bag and ran out to the bathroom to refill it while I mopped up the spill. Pradeep was just about to scoop Frankie up to put him in the bag when we both noticed Frankie had stopped flopping around. Not in a “can't breathe” way, but in an “I'm reading the piece of paper” kind of way.

When did he learn how to do that?

CHAPTER 6

EVIL EQUATIONS AND SINISTER SKETCHES

Pradeep and I bent over the paper on Mark's desk. It was a diagram of some kind. There was a squiggly worm thing on one side of the paper and the lighthouse being hit by a big bolt of lightning on the opposite side. Mark had written
Mwhahahaha
coming out of the mouth of a little character dressed in a white Evil Scientist coat at the bottom of the page.

An arrow pointing to the squiggly thing had something else written above it, but it was too smudged to read from the water.

Pradeep plopped Frankie back into the water-filled sick bag as I spoke. “I don't know exactly what he's planning, but I'm pretty sure that, as usual, it's evil. And that squiggly worm thing is probably…” I looked at Pradeep.

“The evil eel!” we said together. “We've gotta stop him.”

We heard a motor
putt-putt
ing outside. We looked out the open window to see Mark heading out into the bay in the lighthouse motorboat.

“He's already out there!” I yelled to Pradeep. “Come on! Quick!”

We ran down the spiral stairs of the lighthouse, Frankie splashing against the sides of the sick bag. As we rounded the last corner, we ran straight into the lighthouse keeper, nearly knocking him over.

“No running in the lighthouse!” he shouted. “What in Eel Bay are you up to?”

He stared hard at both of us. Then his eyes moved to the sick bag in Pradeep's hands. “Seasick in a lighthouse? I've never heard of a landlubber so bad in all my years! Don't let me stop you.” He motioned for us to pass him so Pradeep could get outside quickly.

Result! I knew that Pradeep's motion sickness would save the day one day.

Well, OK, I didn't actually know that, but it's pretty cool that it did.

We headed straight to the living room. The dads were both there with cups of coffee next to them, texting and talking on their smartphones. “Looks like this is the only room in the house where there's any signal, boys,” Dad said. “Some important work messages came in last night. I just need to sort a few things out.”

“My boss has hit the roof over a misallocated
blah, blah, blah
,” Pradeep's dad said.

They had gone into business mode and I had tuned out. My brain translates lots of things—jelly-bean code, flag code, even Scooby-Doo's mumbling—but not business talk.

“How about we go out on one of the boats after lunch?” Dad said.

“Why don't you two go down to the beach for now and see who can find the biggest shell?” Pradeep's dad suggested. Pradeep gave him the standard “I am not a three-year-old girl” look. “Or the biggest, scariest crab?” his dad added.

“You can even try fishing from the beach if you want,” Dad said. The sick bag started shaking again.

Pradeep pretended it was him. “Excuse me, I gotta go!” he yelled as he dashed out with the bag.

“OK, Dad, we'll hit the beach,” I said. “Hey, where's Sami?”

“She's sleeping late this morning,” said Pradeep's dad. “The trip must have tired her out.”

I ran outside and met Pradeep. “OK, we're good to go. Sami is asleep and the dads are plugged into their phones for the next couple of hours.”

Pradeep walked over to the jetty, where a second boat was tied up. “Good,” he said, “'cause look what I found. We can use this rowboat to follow Mark.”

Now you might be thinking this isn't a great plan. Surely:

Pradeep + boat = lots of throwing up.

But it's weird—Pradeep gets sick in cars, buses, airplanes, roller coasters, and pretty much everything that moves, but the one place Pradeep doesn't get seasick is on the sea.

CHAPTER 7

NOT-SO-SMOOTH SAILING

Pradeep and I started to untie the boat. I brushed some seaweed off the side. “It's called
A Vision of Velma
,” I said, reading the name that was painted there in swirly writing. “Hey, have you ever rowed a real boat before?”

“No, but how hard can it be?” Pradeep answered.

We slipped on some life jackets and put Frankie's sick bag in the bottom of the boat. Half an hour and four super-sore arms later I said, “Really,
really
hard.”

We could see Mark up ahead of us, but it seemed to take ages to get close. He was in a motorboat after all, and we were rowing.

Finally we got close enough to read the name on the side of Mark's boat.
Daphne's Delight,
it read in slanted writing. Mark had his back to us and was pulling hard on a long fishing rod, trying to reel something in.

“Do you think he caught the…” I started, but before I could finish, my question was answered by a mega-long eel leaping into the air alongside Mark's boat.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!” Pradeep and I both squealed. Now, I'm not a kid who squeals on a regular basis. Pradeep isn't either. I don't squeal at mice or spiders or scary movies or disgusting unidentifiable things stuck to the bottom of my sneaker. But I think that squealing when a massive eel jumps out of the water near you is fair enough. I dare you not to squeal if it happens to you!

Amazingly, Mark kept ahold of the fishing rod— but the motorboat rocked hard from side to side. Then we heard a sound that none of us expected. Not Mark, not me, and especially not Pradeep.

“Naughty swishy eel!” a small voice shouted from Mark's boat.

We looked over to see Sami climbing out from under a tarpaulin in the bottom of
Daphne's Delight
. “I want to see sea. Not play with naughty eel!” she shouted as she stood up.

Mark nearly dropped the fishing rod. “Little moron?” he said, twisting around. “Were you hiding under there the whole time?”

Then he noticed me and Pradeep in the rowboat. “What is this? A
moron
-family outing?” he yelled.

Sami giggled and started singing, “Sami went to sea, sea, sea to see what she could see, see, see…”

At that moment the eel pulled hard on the line and it jerked the boat.

Sami wobbled back and forth for a moment, before a final rock of the boat sent her tumbling into the water.

CHAPTER 8

TUMBLING TODDLER TERROR

Mark looked too stunned to move.

“Sami!” Pradeep screamed and sprang into action. He grabbed a spare life jacket from the bottom of our boat and held it tight in his hand.

“Pradeep, wait! I'll get help!” I shouted.

“There's no time,” he said, handing me his glasses. “I'm a good swimmer. I'm coming, Sami!” he yelled as he leaped into the choppy water.

The eel looked as if it was in pain. The hook hung out of its mouth and its eyes glared at Mark. It reared up and splashed down again and again, sending wave after wave of water sloshing into both boats. If it kept on doing that, we'd all sink!

“Let go, Mark!” I yelled.

Pradeep had reached Sami and had her hanging on to the life jacket. He dragged her over to our boat and shoved her up so she could reach the side. I hauled her in and she slumped down into the well of the boat next to Frankie. She was soggy and shaken, but at least she was safe!