We Give a Squid a Wedgie (26 page)

“
Property of Colonel Percy H. Fawcett
,” she read. “
If found, destroy without reading.
” Celia raised her eyebrow at him. “Sorry, Colonel Fawcett,” she said. “I don’t want to read it any more than you want me to. But I have as much choice as you do.”

His bone-faced grin smiled back at her. She guessed he was beyond caring.

She turned the pages. The writing was hard to make out in the light from her headlamp. She saw drawings of South American towns and of native tribes. She even recognized some of the plants and animals from her own trip into the Amazon.

And then she was startled to see detailed drawings of the temples at El Dorado, the very place she and her brother had been last summer, where they were supposed to find the Lost Library. His pencil writing all over the drawing was hard to make out; there were letters she knew to be ancient Greek and there was the symbol of the key from her mother’s secret society, and there was Sir ­Edmund’s Council’s scroll in chains. On the back of the page with the drawing, she read what Colonel Percy H. Fawcett had written.

“
I do not regret what I’ve done.
Though it cost me my son and his friend along with him, I bear this burden alone. Only my thoughts in this diary keep me company on this lonely outpost. Even the builders of this once great civilization are gone. I am alone on an island I know not where, just as I planned. For I did not escape the far reaches of the Amazon with my treasure only to turn it over to philistines.
”

Celia didn’t know what a philistine was, but it didn’t sound like a good thing to be. She added it to her list of words to use against people she didn’t like.

“
These memory keepers would make fools of the ancient sages and this council would bring destruction to all. It cannot fall into either hands. So I locked it in on itself; the Lost Library of Alexandria. Secure in Atlantis. And Atlantis secure within the Lost Library. Only the old Greek’s map will tell. And that shall perish with me.
”

She couldn’t believe it. This old explorer had left the Amazon, where everyone thought he had vanished forever, only to hide the Lost Library and then come to this island and vanish forever.

And what was that about the memory keepers? Could he have meant the Mnemones? A mnemonic­ was a way to remember something. Did that mean he was hiding the Lost Library from the ­Mnemones and from Sir Edmund’s Council? Why? What difference would it make if someone made fools of the ancient sages?

From what Celia could tell, they did just fine making fools of themselves. If they were so sagey, why’d they lose their library in the first place? And
how could the Council use the library to “bring destruction”?

It seemed like every time she discovered anything, it only led to more questions.

She stomped her foot, and the island rumbled in answer. Dust crumbled from the ceiling. Black chunks of rock crashed into the water. Then the cave shook from side to side, knocking Celia off her feet. She pulled herself up again using the old wheel of the ship. She tracked a droplet falling from the ceiling. Another followed it. When they hit the deck of the boat, they sizzled with steam and cut a perfect hole in the wood.

Lava was leaking through the roof.

Celia needed to find Plato’s map and get out of there, and fast!

She flung open the explorer’s trunk and saw all kinds of empty tins of food and strange instruments and odd devices. There was no diving gear, of course. Percy Fawcett vanished long before scuba diving was invented. He must have come to this place to hide when it was still aboveground, before the last volcanic eruption.

If she didn’t find Plato’s map soon, she would be entombed here too.

She tossed supplies out around her as she rummaged, muttering apologies to the old skeleton, to whom she’d already gotten used to talking, the way some people talked to pets or dolls or little brothers. She didn’t expect him to respond.

“Where is it?” she muttered. “Where’s that map?”

The trunk was empty. There was no papyrus scroll. No ancient Greek writing. No Plato’s map.

She ran around the ship, tearing open every nook and cranny. It was empty. Percy Fawcett had traveled here alone and traveled without much luggage. There was nowhere else to hide it.

She looked back at the skeleton and groaned.

“I’m glad Oliver’s not here,” she told the bones of the old explorer as she rummaged through his pockets. “He would flip out. He’s such a wuss. He’d be helpless without me, you know?”

She tugged and pulled at the old clothes, which seemed to come apart in her hands. All he had in his pockets was a worn-down pencil nub, a rusty compass that had lost its needle, and a faded black-and-white photograph of two young boys and a sad-faced woman. That must have been P.F.’s family.­

“Ugh!” She yelled in frustration and threw the
photo at him. “I am going to lose my family if I don’t find this map!”

The island rumbled. The water around the temple gurgled and bubbled. A giant stalactite broke from the ceiling and crashed into the water. She looked back at the old skeleton, deeply annoyed by his dumb skeleton smile. But that feeling—that annoyed feeling and that dumb smile—made her think of Oliver and she knew where to look.

“Gross!” She groaned. “Boys!”

She reached around behind him to the waistband of his pants, just where you’d grab to give the old skeleton a wedgie, and sure enough, she found a roll of old cloth tucked into the back of his pants. She pulled it out and unrolled it.

She knew it immediately. There was the ancient­ Greek writing, there was the drawing of the world with all the continents in the wrong places, and, strangely, there was the symbol of Sir Edmund’s Council, a scroll locked in chains.

But Plato’s map was older than the Lost Library, thought Celia. Why would his Council have existed before it did?

“This council would bring destruction to all,”
Percy Fawcett had written. A library couldn’t bring destruction to all … but maybe Atlantis could. Celia found herself getting that seasick feeling.­

If Sir Edmund got this map, he would “bring destruction to all.”

But if he didn’t get the map, he would definitely bring destruction to Celia’s family and to Corey Brandt.

“Oh man!” she said out loud, with big roll of her eyes. She didn’t know how she was going to do it yet, but she had no choice. She had to figure out how to save her family and then save the world.

She shined her light upward and saw steaming hot drops falling from cracks in the ceiling, like lava was fighting its way in from above. It was time to go.

“Good-bye, Colonel,” she told the bones of Percy Fawcett. “If I can, I’ll tell your family what happened to you.”

The skeleton stared back at her, unmoving and unmoved.

The room shook and another great chunk of black rock fell into the water with a splash.

Celia shoved Plato’s map and the leather diary
into the plastic bag Sir Edmund had given her and tucked it into her wet suit. Then she struggled back into her scuba gear and slipped into the water.

“I’m coming back!” she said into the microphone­ as she sank below the surface, giving one last good-bye wave to poor, dead Percy Fawcett.

“It’s about time!” Sir Edmund’s voice crackled. “Bonnie was ready to leave you and your mother for dead. This whole island is going to blow!”

“I’m swimming as fast as I can!”

“Did you find it?” Sir Edmund said. “Did you find Plato’s map?”

“Affirmative,” said Celia, because that’s how people answered that sort of thing on TV.

“Did you find anything else down there?”

“Negative,” said Celia, thinking of how she would hide the journal before Sir Edmund saw it, because that’s what heroes do on TV, and Celia guessed it was time to be a hero.

Though no one but the blobfish and whatever else lurked in the shadows of the deep was there to see it, a heavy stream of bubbles rose from Celia’s mask, which proved that, indeed, it was possible to sigh underwater.

You see, Celia really didn’t feel like being a hero.

THE LITTLE BOAT HADN’T
even hit the beach when Oliver threw himself over the side and splashed through the low breakers, calling out for Celia. Waves piled on, knocking him over with every new step he took. He spat out salt water and seaweed, pulled himself up, and kept stumbling on through the surf.

“Celia!” he yelled. “Mom!”

The last of Sir Edmund’s men, ignoring Oliver completely, leaped into their own boats and sped off toward their ship.

The dinghy slid onto the sand behind Oliver. Dr. Navel lifted the motor so it didn’t get stuck, and he and Corey jumped off.

“Everyone’s, like, gone,” Corey said.

“No.” Oliver pointed. “There’s one boat left. That has to be Sir Edmund’s.”

The ground shook and knocked all of them off their feet. Trees toppled and a cloud of black ash blotted out the sky.

“We have to find them!” Oliver said as he stood back up and pulled seaweed out of his ears. “We’ll need to split up.”

“No,” Dr. Navel told him. “I almost lost you once. I am not doing that again. We stick together.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Corey. “We don’t even know where they are.”

“This way!” Oliver ran, not even looking to see if they were following him. They rushed through the tangled tropical forest until they reached the giant statues of the squid-headed men. One of them had cracked and another was leaning perilously to the side, like a pirate after too much rum. Below it was the watery entrance to the cave. Dennis pecked and clucked around the edge in a state of high anxiety.

“Bwak-bwak-bwak,” he said when he saw Oliver.­

“They were here.” Oliver rushed over to the edge of the hole.

“Did the chicken tell you that?” his father
asked, surprised that his son could speak to poultry.­

“No,” said Oliver. “And he’s a rooster.”

Oliver bent down and picked the old remote control out of the grass.

“I dropped this into the water,” he said. “And now it’s here. And it’s still wet. Celia must have left it here so I’d find it.”

“So where did she go?” Corey wondered.

They looked around, searching for footprints or trampled grass, any clues at all.

“Ow,” Oliver said as Dennis pecked at his feet. He swatted at the bird. The volcano rumbled.

“Watch out!” Dr. Navel tackled Oliver just as one of the statues snapped at the base and collapsed onto the hole, blocking its entrance.

“I hope no one’s still down there,” Corey said.

“Bwak,” said Dennis, flapping his useless wings.

Dr. Navel helped Oliver up.

“Bwak!” Dennis said again.

Oliver looked at Dennis and then at Corey; Corey looked at Dennis and then back at Oliver.

“Chicken to the rescue?” Corey said.

Oliver nodded.

“What?” asked Dr. Navel.

“Dad,” said Oliver. “We’ve got to follow the bird.”

With that, Dennis took off through the bushes. Dr. Navel, Oliver, and Corey Brandt chased after him, hoping he would lead them to Celia and Claire Navel.

They ducked branches and leaped over logs. When the bird weaved to the left, they weaved to the left. When it hopped to the right, they hopped to the right. Soon they were back on the beach, panting. They’d run in a big circle.

“That was a wild-goose chase.” Dr. Navel rested his hands on his knees.

“Chicken,” said Corey.

“Rooster,” corrected Oliver.

“A wild-rooster chase,” said Dr. Navel. “The meaning is the same. We didn’t find anything.”

“Bwak!” said Dennis, kicking his yellow claws into the foamy surf and running away as the waves crashed, only to run forward again when the water went back out. “Bwak,” he repeated with every charge toward the sea.

“There!”
Oliver pointed just offshore, where they saw the last motorboat speeding away from the island with Sir Edmund and one of his henchmen holding Celia hostage. Their mother was next to her, half draped over the side of the boat like a sack of wet clothes. Oliver swallowed hard, hoping she was knocked out and not, well … he didn’t even want to think it.