Kid vs. Squid (2 page)

“What's wrong with the sneakers it's wearing?”

“Everybody deserves fresh sneakers,” Griswald said, very seriously.

“And I suppose being a cephalopod who lives in a jar doesn't change that.”

“Exactly,” he said, wiping cheese substance from his mouth with a paper towel. “Did you have a good walk?”

“I did. I smelled a lot of kelp.”

“Excellent. Did anything interesting happen?” He made it sound like a casual question, but I could tell there was something he
wasn't
asking, as if he was worried what my answer might be.

I thought about the weird guys on the bikes. And I thought about my great-uncle, sitting across the rickety table from me, whose biggest concern was buying shoes for a pickled octopus.

“No,” I said. “Nothing interesting.”

“Ah.”

I couldn't tell if he was disappointed or relieved.

“May I have some more cheese spray, please?”

That night, curled up in my hammock as Sinbad nested in my suitcase, I dreamed of jellyfish. They stared down on me with almost-human eyes.

I awoke hours before sunrise in the dark, with the remnants of my dreams still clinging like suction cups. The museum made noises as I lay suspended in my hammock. During the day, the place was just goofy, a few rooms of exhibits made from papier-mâché and modeling clay. The Feejee Mermaid was obviously a monkey torso of cardboard and rabbit fur sewn on to a leather fish tail. Fakes like that were called “gaffs,” and they weren't scary in sunlight.

Night was different. Wood creaked. Ice clinked in the refrigerator. Air whispered through the water pipes, sounding almost like voices. It figured: what's the point of living in a creepy museum if it doesn't get even creepier at night?

I thought about my parents on the other side of the globe. Internet and phone service in Los Huesos
stank, so Mom and Dad sent me the occasional postcard, mostly about the squirt gun business:
Dear Thatcher, We think we've found a great deal on polymer injection molds. Love and huggies.

I wondered if my friends back in Phoenix missed me. Everyone was doing fine, I supposed.

As if sensing my unease, Sinbad hopped into my hammock and sat on my stomach, purring as I scratched his scruff. He was a pretty fat cat, so I wasn't exactly comfortable with his weight pressing on me, but at least he made me feel less alone. After a while, I started drifting back to sleep.

Then glass shattered.

I shot up in my hammock. Sinbad hissed in protest and leaped off me.

Holding my breath, I listened.

Nothing.

Maybe I'd just dreamed the sound.

But then I heard footsteps. Too light to be the clomp of Griswald's crutch. This was the sound of someone creeping along in the dark. I imagined white, slimy feet trailing seawater.

Another noise came from the museum. A thump, a rattle, a jiggle. I wasn't imagining it; there was definitely someone out there.

Was Griswald awake? Did he know we had an
intruder? Was he even home, or was he out drinking with his salty old cronies at the Shipwreck Tavern?

As quietly as I could, I lowered myself from my hammock and put my ear to the door.

The door between me and the hallway was just a flimsy sliding panel, but it suddenly seemed like a brick wall, something that would keep me safe if only I kept it closed. But what if the prowler outside was a serial killer, and what if Griswald
was
home, and while I cowered in my room, he was getting murdered?

“Did you have a nice vacation?” Mom and Dad would ask at the end of summer.

And I would have to answer back, “Yeah, it was great. Uncle Griswald got his throat slit while I hid with the cat. I ate cheese spray for dinner.”

I slid the door open a crack.

I could still hear the wincing squeak of floorboards. It no longer sounded like lurking. It sounded purposeful. Like someone searching.

Tiptoeing down the hall, I reached Griswald's room and peered inside. His door stood open, the bed empty. He'd left me alone with a human-jellyfish-hybrid murdering psychopath. Or at least a burglar.

Something bumped my leg, and I choked off a startled scream as Sinbad streaked by in a flash of
fur. An instant later, I heard someone else choke off their own startled scream from the dark exhibit room.

I ran into the museum.

The intruder wasn't a jellyfish boy. It was a thin girl, staring at me with sharp, glittering eyes. Her ears were swept back, almost pointed. Bits of shattered door glass clung to the tattered tails of her black raincoat. In her golden brown, long-fingered hands, she clutched the
What-Is-It??

“Hey!” was the most brilliant thing I could think of to say.

She hissed at me, baring her teeth, and darted out the door.

I gave chase, out the museum, down the boardwalk, my bare feet slapping hard against the wooden planks. Wet ocean air chilled me through the thin fabric of my T-shirt and pajama pants.

The girl made good speed, but I was a pretty decent runner. I had lots of experience running from mean dogs and bullies who weren't amused by my smart mouth or impressed by my tae kwon do belt.

The girl's raincoat flapped as she ran down two flights of wooden steps to the beach. I raced after her, hoping not to spear the soles of my feet with splinters. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, she jetted down the beach. The tide was in, but she expertly
dodged the surf and scrambled across slick rocks and jagged pieces of driftwood.

“Hey!” I called out again. “That's my
What-Is-It??
!”

She didn't seem to care. She kept on running.

Uttering bad words, I picked my way across the jumbled shoreline. Something stabbed my foot. I'd stepped on a rock. Or maybe a shellfish. I was sure I'd broken the skin. I would probably bleed to death now, or at least contract some sort of rare crustacean disease. My whole leg would swell up to the size of a blimp. It would turn orange and purple and grow suction cups. Doctors would cut it off and Griswald would put it in a big jar and charge people three bucks to see it.

I limped on for a while more, blood seeping between my toes, but it was no good. The girl was too far ahead.

I watched her move nimbly over the obstacle course until she vanished in a nest of boulders.

Now I'd never find out what the
What-Is-It??
was. I didn't know why that should bother me so much, but it did.

Wet and shivering, I dragged myself back to the boardwalk.

At Griswald's I treated my foot with rubbing alcohol, gauze, and more bad words. Sinbad kept trying to lick my toes. Either he wanted to comfort me, or
he was a vampire cat. I swept up the shattered glass and replaced the broken pane with cardboard and duct tape. Just as I was putting away the tape, Uncle Griswald came home. It was four thirty in the morning.

His bloodshot eyes went wide as he took in the crime scene. “What happened?”

“Burglar. Juvenile delinquent. The
What-Is-It??
is gone.”

Griswald said bad words of his own. I'd heard all of them before, but never in that combination.

He conducted a full inspection of the museum and found nothing else missing. The Mustache Fish and Little Mister Fishy Pants and the cash box all remained in their proper places.

With a frown, he scratched his beard. “Why steal the
What-Is-It??
unless it's valuable?” he muttered to himself. “Valuable or … important.” He looked more and more miserable as he thought about it. “If only I could remember …” It was only then that he noticed my bandaged foot. “Did you cut yourself on the glass?”

I shook my head and told him how I'd chased the girl.

Griswald whistled through his teeth. “That was foolhardy, Thatcher. Foolhardy, but very brave.”

“It wasn't brave. She was short and skinny. She
was practically dressed in rags. I should have just called the cops.”

But Griswald let out a bitter laugh. “Wouldn't have done us any good, lad. It takes more than a break-in to spur the police into action around here. I don't know what it would take.”

I was cold and tired and my foot throbbed and I wanted to be back home in Phoenix. If Griswald didn't want to report the burglary, fine. It wasn't my business. It wasn't my decapitated head.

“I'm going back to bed,” I announced, and I returned to my hammock. Hanging there like exhausted laundry, I closed my eyes and tried not to listen to the air whispering through the pipes.

Stupid pipes.

Stupid air.

I could have sworn they were saying “Flotsam.”

Griswald stayed in the next morning, and he was still snoring when I woke up. Since he hadn't left me a to-do list, I felt free to venture outside before dusting the devil fish and the snorkel dog. After giving Sinbad a blob of canned meat, I headed out the door.

The boardwalk had come alive.

A pair of little girls with pigtails led their mom into the candy shop and came out with pink plumes of cotton candy.

Tattoo guns buzzed inside the tattoo parlor.

“You smell that, son?” called a man from a popcorn cart. Chemical butter odors wafted on the air. “That's the smell of the sea, and the sea says you need popcorn.”

“Maybe later,” I muttered. “But let me ask you something. Why'd everybody suddenly show up today?”

He was broad-shouldered, in a too-small T-shirt with a faded crown on the front. A beard of silver curls blended with the mane of hair spilling down his shoulders. His eyes were the color of coal, and they suddenly grew sharp and furious. I stepped back, wondering what I'd said to make him angry. But then his look softened. He seemed to get sleepy, and he blinked.

“You smell that, son?”

“The sea?”

“It's the smell of the sea, and the sea says you need popcorn.”

“Didn't we just have this conversation?”

“You smell that, son?”

“Ah, yes, the smell of repetition.”

Stumbling along with my sore foot, I left him and his smell behind.

A partially dismantled Ferris wheel stood farther down the boardwalk behind a plywood fence. Curious, I used an abandoned plastic paint pail for a boost and pulled myself up to peer at the wreck. It towered over a dry moat—maybe the former home of alligators or piranhas—that was now just a muddy trench. Buckets for riders dangled off the wheel like loose teeth. I didn't think I'd be riding it anytime this summer.

Next to the Ferris wheel, a train of roller-coaster
cars ratcheted up the hill. The train wasn't full, but the few passengers let out impressive screams as the cars swooshed down.

Merchants arranged T-shirts and beach towels in front of their shops. A woman at the bike and skate rental pumped air into bicycle tires. Beeps and buzzers sounded from the arcade. A man on a bench threw seed at a mob of pigeons.

Where had all these people suddenly come from?

A girl approached me.

“You look confused.”

Solidly built, she stood a couple inches taller than me, with an FBI Academy baseball cap jammed over a head of tight black curls. Lively brown eyes stared from her dark brown face. I felt like I was being studied and judged.

“It's First Day,” she said, sweeping her hand over her head to indicate the entire boardwalk. “It happens like this every year. One day, ghost town, the next day, all this.”

“The same day every year?” I asked.

“Walk with me,” she said. Adjusting the backpack she wore slung over one shoulder, she started down the boardwalk toward the midway without waiting for any response from me. I followed.

“Last year First Day happened in July,” she went on. “I heard it was late May the year before that, one
of the earliest First Days ever, but I wasn't there for it. I moved here a week before First Day last year.”

“There wasn't anyone here yesterday. Do the shop people and tattoo artists and everyone live in town?”

“Some do, but not many. Most of the workers just sort of roll in on First Day, like flotsam on the waves.”

That word again. The jellyfish boys had asked if I was flotsam. Was she friends with them? If so, I didn't think I wanted to know her. But except for Griswald and his tabby cat, I'd had no one to talk to in weeks. So I kept walking with the girl.

“Flotsam,” I said. “What does that word mean?”

“You know, the floating wreckage of a ship. As opposed to jetsam, which is what gets tossed overboard to lighten the load during a storm.”

Jetsam. Kind of like how my parents had tossed me to Griswald to lighten their load.

As we continued along, merchants and snack vendors watched us go by. I didn't like the way their eyes tracked us, not even bothering to hide the fact that they were staring. Maybe they were just hungry for our business.

The girl offered her hand. “I'm Trudy McGee, by the way.”

We shook. She had a strong grip. “I'm Thatch—”

“Thatcher Hill,” she interrupted. “I know. You're Griswald's nephew.” And then, before I could say
anything, she corrected herself. “Great-nephew, I mean. So, I heard you had some excitement at the museum last night.”

“Guess word gets around fast in Los Huesos. Griswald said he wasn't going to bother with a police report. He said the cops around here aren't very motivated.”

She smiled a little. “Some things get around fast. Other things don't get around at all. Did the thief get anything good?”

“Just the
What-Is-It??
And before you ask, I don't know what it is. Could be a genuine human head. Could be a mummified honeydew melon.”

“That's all he took? No cash? No valuables?”

“Just that. And the thief was a she. About our age, I'd guess, or a little younger.”

Trudy gave me a laser-focused look. “You saw her?”