What a Trip! (7 page)

I was stuck in—where was I?—Hong Kong, which is in China. Which is very far away from Palmdale. And the only way back home was with Frankie and the book. But I was everywhere they weren't.

“What if I never find Frankie again?” I groaned out loud. “What if everybody left me behind? What if I get stuck here in Hong Kong? What if I never get back to my life? I like my life! All that lying around. All that TV to watch. All that homework not to do. All the books I never want to read! No! No! No! This—can't—be—happening! Oh, please, someone give me a sign—”

“Indeed.”

Now, I've made fun of that word before, but I was never so glad to hear it as just then, when my life was teetering on the edge of extinction. I whirled around and there was Phileas Fogg, calmly glancing at the big empty space that should have been a ship.

With him was the beautiful Princess Aouda.

“Oh, dear. Our ship has sailed,” she said softly.

“Indeed,” Mr. Fogg repeated.

“Aouda! Mr. Fogg! I'm so glad you found me!” I interrupted. “I woke up here all alone and didn't know what I was going to do and my head started to—”

“Where is Passepartout?” asked Fogg.

The guy doesn't go for people yelling and screaming. So I calmed down. I took a big breath. Then I told them everything that had happened. Well, I tried to. Because being dropped into books has all these rules, Fogg and Aouda only understood part of it. Among the parts they didn't get was about Fix being a detective sent to arrest Mr. Fogg for robbery. Even though I tried about a hundred different ways to say that, Aouda and Fogg just weren't supposed to know it yet. It was then that I heard another voice. A not-so-welcome voice.

“Eh, did someone say my name?”

It was Detective Fix himself, strolling down the dock with a suitcase in his hand. I felt like tackling him right there, for messing up the trip, for grabbing the book, and also for losing Frankie and Passepartout.

But the dude was bigger than me. Besides, I didn't want to be skewered by that mustache of his.

Of course, Aouda and Fogg were polite to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Fix,” said Aouda.

“Our ship appears to have left,” Fogg added.

“Oh, my!” said the annoying detective, twirling the twisty ends of his stinky mustache and pretending to be astonished. “Has it? How terrible! And the next steamer doesn't leave for a week. Too bad, too bad. Ah, well. Nothing to do about it. Shall we find a hotel and wait here for the week? Here, Miss, let me get your bag—”

“No,” said Fogg, putting himself between Fix and Aouda's bag. “The leaving of the
Carnatic
is a minor difficulty, I admit. But you forget, Mr. Fix, that this is the harbor of Hong Kong, one of the great ports of Asia. With a little work, we shall find a ship to carry us across the China Sea to Japan. Devin, Aouda, let's find a ship!”

Fogg and Aouda stepped off quickly.

Fix snarled under his breath. “But … but … arggh!”

“Ha!” I said, storming off with Fogg and Aouda to find a boat bound for Japan. Fix stumbled along after us, of course. It seemed as if he was attached to Mr. Fogg by some kind of invisible rope. Every place Fogg went, Fix went, too. It was annoying, but I couldn't stop him.

It wasn't too long before Mr. Fogg found a chubby little guy named Captain John Bunsby, standing on the deck of a small sailing boat called the
Tankadere
.

After Fogg explained what we needed, Bunsby said, “It can't be done—”

“Oh, too bad!” said Fix delightedly.

“—the way you suggest, Mr. Fogg,” the captain went on. “But if we go to Shanghai, China, you can pick up the American steamer there.”

“Very good,” said Fogg. “From there, we'll stop in Yokohama, then across to San Francisco, losing no time.”

“Except for one thing,” I said. “What about Frankie?”

“And Passepartout?” said Aouda. “They are lost—and we have no idea where?”

Fogg wrinkled his brow, slipped out his notebook, and scribbled a few things. Satisfied, he closed the notebook. “I shall do whatever I can to find them.”

“Oh, Mr. Fogg!” said Aouda, her eyes getting misty again. “Thank you.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I shall be back in one hour, and then we sail.”

In an hour he was back, explaining that he had alerted the Hong Kong police that if either Passepartout and Frankie were found, they should be put on the next boat to Yokohama. He left a wad of money for tickets and other stuff to help them.

It was pretty much all he could do.

I didn't like the idea of just leaving Hong Kong without Frankie, but I had to trust that if she had the book, she would do okay. Besides, Passepartout was a good guy. He wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

When Captain Bunsby said it was time, we all got on board—even Fix wormed his way on—and set sail for Shanghai. The wind filled the sails of the
Tankadere
, and we swiftly made our way out of the harbor to open sea.

“If we can reach Shanghai in time to catch the American steamer,” said Mr. Fogg, gazing at the water ahead, “and if, for some reason, Passepartout and Frankie managed to get on the
Carnatic
before it left Hong Kong, we can meet up with them in Yokohama. It all depends on making good time now, of course—”

No sooner had he said this than the winds began to blow harder, the sky turned dark, and lightning flashed across the sky.

“Storm coming up!” yelled the captain.

“Indeed,” said Fogg, scribbling the word
storm
in his notebook. “Unforeseen, but not yet a problem.”

Now I tell you, I don't like these storms that just “come up.” One minute, I'm standing on deck, looking out at the water; the next minute, waves are crashing against the hull and I'm hanging over the side, losing my lunch. The only good thing about this storm was that the winds pushed the ship faster and farther on its way.

Except that it turned out not to be just a storm.

“It's a tempest!” said Fix, waves splashing over him.

“It's not a tempest!” said a sailor. “It's a typhoon!”

“It's no typhoon!” cried the captain. “It's a hurricane!”

Except that it wasn't a hurricane, either.

It was Frankie.

Chapter 14

I could tell it wasn't just a regular storm, because the lightning that flashed and the thunder that crashed were different from any storm I had ever seen before.

They were exactly like the kind of meltdown that happens when you read ahead in the book.

And Frankie was reading ahead.

Seeing the sky start to rip in half usually freaked me out, but not this time. It meant that even though I'd get tumbled all around and probably all kinds of wet, Frankie was okay somewhere and reading.

I kept searching the skies for what I knew was going to happen, and sure enough, there it was.

A black V-shaped rip opened up in the sky as if we were all on a page being ripped in half.

Kkkkkk!
The clouds split apart. The ship reeled and rocked from side to side. Aouda stumbled into Mr. Fogg. He got all flustered and she just smiled at him as he steadied her. Fix slammed into one thing after another like a pinball. I had to laugh.

Finally, I was thrown hard to the deck, and just as I was sloshing across it, heading straight for the heavy mainmast, I found myself tumbling over and over in the darkness. The next moment I was in blazing sunshine, sliding down to earth on something bumpy.

It was a roof. The roof of a pagoda.

The roof of a pagoda—in Yokohama, Japan!

“Devin!” yelled a voice.

“Frankie!” I cried out, flipping up off the curved edge of the roof and straight down into a goldfish pond.

Splursh!

Wet to the bone, I clambered out to see two very familiar people rushing up to help me out.

“Devin! We found you!” cried Passepartout.

“Told you I'd get him here!” said Frankie.

“Yahoo! We're back together!” I said. “But how?”

Frankie gave me a big grin. “After Mr. Fix caused the meltdown at the Hong Kong dock, we found ourselves on the
Carnatic
sailing without you.”

“Then, at dawn today, November fourteenth,” said Passepartout, “we arrived in Yokohama. We got off to wait.”

“But we weren't sure if you guys would get here on time,” said Frankie. “So I did some reading.”

I laughed. “And
splash! boom!
—here I am, in the next chapter. So, okay. If the
Tankadere
set sail November seventh, and today is November fourteenth, that's seven days. Fogg and Aouda should be here soon. It also explains why I'm so hungry. I could eat a … a … a lot!”

“Me, too!” said Frankie.

“Let us go hunting for food!” chirped Passepartout.

Our noses led us right to the marketplace in downtown Yokohama. Stall after stall sold fresh fish, fruit, and vegetables. It looked great, but we had a big problem. We had no money, and none of the food was free.

Wandering some more, we found a bunch of rich shops, teahouses, and restaurants. The people wore silk kimonos and wooden sandals that clacked on the cobblestones, but they weren't giving away food, either.

“We'd better chow down soon,” I said, “or I can't be responsible for my actions.”

Frankie laughed. “When are you ever?”

Just then, Passepartout saw a sign up on the side of a building. It read:

JAPANESE CIRCUS TROUPE

ACTS OF ALL KINDS

LAST APPEARANCE BEFORE SAILING TO AMERICA

COME ONE, COME ALL!

Frankie grabbed my arm. “Devin, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Sure,” I said. “But do they make nachos in Japan?”

“No, I'm wondering if they're hiring people.”

“Frankie is right!” said Passepartout. “Perhaps the circus will hire us. And pay us money to buy food! For instance, I can juggle. If I had three apples—”

“If you had three apples,” I said, “I'd eat them. Let's get in there now before I start nibbling my fingers!”

We crashed into the theater and hunted down the owner. We pleaded with him to let us into his show.

“I am an expert juggler!” said Passepartout.

“And Mr. Wexler says I'm a clown,” said Frankie.

I nodded. “It's true. She gets that all the time.”

The man looked us over, then stared at me.

“You. Can you sing?”

“People can't believe it when I sing,” I said.

“And
you
won't, either,” mumbled Frankie.

“Ah, but can you sing standing on your head?”

“Some people say that's my softest part!” I told him.

“Can you sing on your head with a plate spinning on your left foot and a sword balanced on your right?”

I gulped. “A sword?”

“A nine-bladed sword!” said the man.

Frankie pulled the circus owner aside. “As long as someone tells him which is right and left, he can do it!”

The guy made a noise, then nodded his head. “All right. I'll hire you. Be ready in five minutes!”

Before I knew it, I was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while spinning a plate and balancing an ugly sword. Frankie, wearing a bright orange wig, ran around me honking a wacky horn, while Passepartout leaped about, juggling three apples.

At the end of the song, a bunch of real acrobats came tumbling onto the stage and the three of us instantly became the bottom row of a giant human pyramid!

The crowd went wild as each new acrobat climbed to the top. And it got heavier and heavier for us.

“I can't do this!” I grunted to Frankie.

“If we collapse, everybody falls!” said Passepartout.

“My—back—hurts—” groaned Frankie.

It was exactly at this moment, with about a thousand pounds of professional Japanese acrobats on top of us, that the theater door opened and two people entered.

I squinted through the crowd at them.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

I screamed with delight. “Mr. Fogg! Aouda! It's us!”

Moving my lips wasn't so bad.

It was when I nudged Frankie and Passepartout to show them that our friends were here, that I realized I shouldn't have moved my arms.

The moment I did, all those acrobats came crashing down in a huge, squealing heap, spilling out into the first five rows of the audience in a mess that they are probably still talking about.

I say
probably
, because we didn't wait around to see.

In an instant, we were flying out of that theater and racing with Aouda and Fogg through the crowd and up the plank of the steamship
General Grant
, which had just started chugging its way across the Pacific Ocean.

To San Francisco.

California.

The United States of America.

Chapter 15

After all the welcome hugs, we sorted out what had happened after Frankie flipped the pages and zapped me to Yokohama.

Just as the storm pushed the
Tankadere
into Shanghai harbor, Captain Bunsby spotted the steamship
General Grant
making its way toward Yokohama.

They signaled to the steamer, it stopped, and Fogg and Aouda—and unfortunately Fix—got on board.

The
General Grant
then steamed to Yokohama. There, Fogg and Aouda learned that Frankie and Passepartout had been on the
Carnatic
when it stopped there, and went searching for them. When Aouda spotted the circus, she remembered that Passepartout had been a juggler. She and Fogg went straight into the theater.

“The rest is history,” I said.

“And now to the future,” said Mr. Fogg as we gathered at the ship's railing and looked ahead. “If we make it across the sea in twenty-two days,” he said, “reaching San Francisco by December third, exactly sixty-two days into our tour of the world, we shall have gained two days. Then, if all goes mathematically, we shall reach New York by December eleventh, and London by the twentieth, well in time to accomplish our goal!”