Kid vs. Squid (17 page)

“It's okay. You were a squid.”

“Yeah.”

We stood in awkward silence, and she threw her arms around me in a rush. Even as a regular girl, she had an amazing grip.

“Thanks,” she said, and she ran off before I could get too sniffly.

Farther down the boardwalk, we found Griswald, bewildered and completely soaked, but alive. One of his feet was still inside his big, clomping boot. The pink toes of the other poked out from the bottom of his pant leg. He wiggled them. And looked sad.

“If Skalla's restored all my exhibits to their former state, I guess the museum's out of business,” he said.

“I think you can probably buy freaks on the Internet.”

He considered this a moment before breaking out in a broad smile. “You know, that's not a bad idea. I could branch out into three-headed chickens and UFO babies. Besides, the sea always bestows wonders. Ever find a piece of sea glass in the sand, all polished round and smooth? One out of every thousand pieces of sea glass came from the very first Atlantis. Think about that.”

Skalla had healed his foot, but maybe not his brain. Maybe not all the way. Or maybe she had, but Griswald was just fundamentally a strange person. And maybe that was okay.

I turned to my friends and noticed the expression on Shoal's face. She wasn't happy. She was scared. Terrified.

“My family,” Shoal said to Griswald. “Did Skalla … ? Are they … ?”

And, yes, apparently Skalla had, because the Flotsam came toward us, covered in bandages, but alive.

Shoal jumped into Coriolis's waiting arms, and watching them embrace warmed me like a mug of hot cocoa, complete with whipped cream and an extra drizzle of chocolate syrup.

Fin and Concha the bike lady came up to me and Trudy. Concha looked down at us, her face a stern mask.

“You gave the witch her body back.”

“Yeah.”

“And now she can do everything she did before. She can rest and brew her magic until she's ready to strike again. And next time, she'll be doing it on two legs.”

“Maybe she doesn't need that anymore,” Trudy said.

Fin chewed his lip. “I suppose we'll see. If the sea
calls us back again at the end of summer and we find ourselves trudging across the beach, letting ourselves sink into the waves and fall into the Drowning Sleep—”

“The tide pulls at the earth,” Coriolis said. “It tugs the sand. It reclaims stone and wood. The sea is relentless. It reaches with greedy fingers, and one day it
will
reclaim this entire beach. Yes, it will take the boardwalk, and Los Huesos, and all of California. And the lands beyond that. Eventually, the sea welcomes everyone back to her cold, churning embrace.” He smiled down at us, squinting in the sunlight. “But not, I hope, for a very, very long time.”

My essay was really good. It was thorough. And I got a zero on it because I never turned it in. The only people who wouldn't accuse me of making it all up were hundreds of miles from me.

The school year went on. I took thirty-three math quizzes. I did six book reports. I memorized and forgot all the Articles of the Constitution.

Internet and phone access in Los Huesos still stank, so I exchanged a grand total of 174 letters and postcards with Trudy and Shoal.

I thought about signing up for tae kwon do again,
but I found a different school where they taught kung fu. I liked it there. It was good to start fresh. I wasn't very good at it, but that wasn't important. Every time I did a push-up, I thought about Trudy, training herself to be a superhero/detective. Every time I struck the punching bag, I thought about Shoal, relentless and fierce.

My parents were worried about me. They said I was acting strangely. They sent me to talk to the school counselor. I admitted I'd had a weird summer vacation but that I'd made good friends and I missed them and Phoenix didn't feel right. Phoenix wasn't the same because the world wasn't the same. There were witches and monsters in it, but also superheroes and princesses from lost cities.

I didn't tell anyone about the specifics.

Around February I started begging my parents to let me spend another summer with Griswald. Now they knew for sure there was something wrong with me. But by June, they'd surrendered.

On the last day of school, when the final bell rang, my suitcase was waiting for me on my bed when I got home. I'd packed it before breakfast. My folks drove me to the airport, and just a few hours later I was standing amid the stink of kelp on the sand-flea-infested beach of Los Huesos.

Trudy had grown an inch. Her biceps were bigger than mine. Shoal looked about the same. She wore a Barracudas Swim Team sweatshirt. The Barracudas were the mascots of Los Huesos Middle School. Trudy had been helping Shoal catch up on land-dweller things, such as algebra.

In some ways, Los Huesos was even a little weirder than before. People thought the colossal wave from last summer had something to do with global warming. And as for the monster squid and other oddities, surely eyewitnesses had gotten carried away in their descriptions. Scientists were studying the place. And the Atlanteans were making money by selling the scientists T-shirts and non-nutritious snacks. They used the money to convert Skalla's Ferris wheel tower palace into an attraction: New Atlantis. Adult admission was four bucks, and people were paying it. One day, it would be a true Atlantis, and a good one.

We stood on the sand together, Trudy and Shoal and I, staring out at the sea. The waves came and went, came and went. I figured I'd also be coming and going. To and from my friends, maybe for the next few years, maybe for the rest of my life. Wherever I went and whatever I did, a part of me had washed up on these shores, and I'd always leave a part of me behind.

We stayed on the beach a long time, being close, feeling right.

After a while, I couldn't stand it anymore.

“I swear if we don't get a pizza right now, I am going to die.”

Trudy and Shoal punched me. It hurt, and I laughed.

I had a bajillion people help me in various ways with this book, and I guarantee I'm going to forget to thank some of them, so, really, what's the point in thanking
any
of them? Okay, okay, I'll try, but I'll have to apologize in advance to those whose generous assistance goes unacknowledged here. I'll make it up to you, I swear.

From the Blue Heaven 2008 writers workshop: Paolo Bacigalupi, Tobias Buckell, Sarah K. Castle, Deborah Coates, C. C. Finlay, Daryl Gregory, Sandra McDonald, Paul Melko, Jenn Reese, and Catherynne M. Valente. And a particularly ginormous blob of thanks goes to Sarah Prineas, for her constant support and smartitude.

Gooey thanks as well go to Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw. And, as ever, to Lisa Will.

I'm also grateful to the awesome Caitlin Blasdell, who navigates me through the tricky waters of the publishing business, and to my editor, Margaret Miller, and her colleagues, who turned a thick stack of my incoherent ramblings into the book you now hold in your hands.

Finally, a nod to Steve at the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas, where I spent part of a pleasant afternoon perusing his displays of wonderfully disgusting things. Best three bucks I ever spent.

Copyright © 2010 by Greg van Eekhout

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published in the United States of America in May 2010
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
E-book edition published in April 2011
www.bloomsburykids.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Van Eekhout, Greg.
Kid vs. squid / by Greg van Eekhout. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Spending the summer after sixth grade at his great-uncle's Oceanside
museum, Thatcher and local girl Trudy team up to help Shoal, one of the people of
Atlantis cursed by a witch whose head still survives, and who has an army of monstrous
creatures helping her.
ISBN 978-1-59990-489-4 (hardcover)
[1. Imaginary creatures—Fiction. 2. Witches—Fiction. 3. Blessing and cursing—
Fiction. 4. Seashore—Fiction. 5. Atlantis (Legendary place)—Fiction. 6. Curiosities and
wonders—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Kid versus squid.
PZ7.V2744Kid 2010    [Fic]—dc22    2009036040

ISBN 978-1-59990-794-9 (e-book)