“Pirates! Pirates! They’ll rob us blind, cut our throats, and leave us for dead! They’ve already thrown that poor dog overboard.”
On hearing this, Mr. Sylvester fainted.
This all provided an excellent distraction, one that Sabina Redfort made good use of. She very quickly and very quietly made her way to the wheelhouse, snatched up the ship-to-shore radio, and sent out a Mayday call to the coast guard.
“Mayday, Mayday. This is the Golden Albatross. Do you read me? Over.”
She got no reply, but she wasn’t going to give up. Someone was bound to pick up the distress signal sooner or later.
“Mayday, Mayday. This is the Golden Albatross. Do you read me? We are in deep over-our-heads trouble. Over.”
Still no reply. This was very odd. The coast guard was supposed to answer immediately. Sabina’s voice rose louder.
“Mayday, Mayday, I repeat, do you read me? Over.”
“Yes,” said a voice — unfortunately not a voice from the radio, but rather a deep voice from just behind her. “It’s certainly over for you, lady!”
Sabina spun around, and there, standing a few feet away, was a smartly dressed young man who looked like he would be more comfortable in an office than on the deck of a pirate boat; he did not look one bit like the murderous type. However, the man at his side did. He was smiling, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth, some chipped, some missing. He was a small man, but he seemed to easily occupy the cabin with a monstrous malevolence.
In his hand was a very shiny and very sharp-looking knife.
“I was just . . . trying to cancel a . . . dental appointment,” stammered Sabina, not at all sure what she was saying, but she was staring at the man, and dental hygiene was the first thing that had come to mind.
The man snickered cruelly. “No need for teeth where you’re going.”
Sabina didn’t like the glint in his eye. He was obviously a man who enjoyed throwing dogs into the ocean; no doubt women, too. He grabbed her arm and pushed and dragged her back to the deck.
“Watch it, would you, Captain Hook; you’re wrenching my arm out of its socket.”
“No need for arms where you’re going,” laughed the pirate. Then he spied the gem on her finger. “Now give me your ring!”
Sabina shook her head. “But this is a family heirloom. It belonged to several of my great-grandmothers, and if you think —”
“You hand it over,” growled the pirate, “or I’ll kill everyone on board.”
“But . . . it won’t come off my finger,” protested Sabina.
“No need for fingers where you’re going!” he said, flashing the knife.
Goodness, thought Sabina, there’s not going to be much of me left.
“Let me cut it off. Save you the struggle.” He laughed again.
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Sabina, clenching her fists. The pirate lunged toward her, and Sabina lashed out, clocking him on the jaw. Sabina Redfort packed quite a punch, and the ring, which was diamond, gashed a scarlet ribbon across the pirate’s cheek.
“Oh my, that was an accident,” said Sabina a little nervously. “I was about to say, if you want this ring, you had better get me a little soap and water.”
The pirate didn’t look like he was about to oblige, but then he grinned.
“OK,” he said. “Here’s the water; good luck finding the soap.”
And with that he picked her up and threw her overboard.
Brant Redfort, horrified, bellowed, “Honey, don’t think of drowning! I’m coming to save you!”
And he did a swan dive from the bow of the boat and disappeared beneath the waves. The pirates, sensing they had in some way failed to create an atmosphere of blind terror, began shooting into the water. They continued to shoot for some minutes, wanting to be sure that these two have-a-go heroes would never resurface.
“We won’t be worth much to you if we’re all dead!” screamed Mrs. Sylvester. “Hostages have to be alive, remember.”
“Who said anything about hostages?” snarled the pirate.
This had the desired effect, and all the remaining passengers trembled and awaited their fate.
RUBY WOKE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING to hear her radio making an unpleasant noise, like an orchestra tuning up. She lifted her head wearily from the pillow and through the blur of her poor eyesight saw a gray furry shape.
“Bug,” she groaned. “You wanna switch that off?” It was a trick of his to step on the radio, turning it on. It usually got Ruby out of bed.
The dog ambled over to where she lay and licked her nose.
“Cut it out, would you, Bug?”
She dragged herself up, then tripped over the happy husky and landed on her behind. Darn it! She crawled over to the radio and blindly fiddled with the dial.
“If you’re gonna switch the radio on, at least tune it to something that sounds like a tune.” To her surprise she found it was tuned. Mrs. Digby had obviously been in with the vacuum, since the dial was set to easy-listening Chime Melody. However, the track that was playing was anything but easy listening: it sounded like a whole bunch of grasshoppers were playing badly tuned violins.
Jeepers, is that enough to give anyone a sore head.
Ruby looked at herself in the mirror.
“I guess I’m up,” she muttered. She showered and dressed and fixed her barrette in her hair, then looked at herself in the mirror.
Better, she told herself. She pulled on a T-shirt that said wake me if things get interesting.
School that day basically involved trying to coax Clancy out of packing his bags and heading for the hills.
“I think I should just get outta here, make a run for it,” he said. He seemed to mean it. “I won’t survive two minutes in the ocean, not two minutes.”
“Clance, you’re overdramatizing. The worst that could happen is you get stung by a jellyfish.”
“A jellyfish!” squealed Clancy, by now flapping his arms furiously. “I don’t like the sound of that. No, I’m gonna head for Colorado — it’s landlocked. I could camp out for a few months until this whole thing blows over.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “Clance my friend, you’re beginning to lose it. It’s just a school swimathon.” But Clancy Crew could not be calmed.
“You know how I am about jellyfish; if I get stung, I’ll most likely have an allergic reaction and sink.”
“You can borrow my Spectrum anti-sting canister, how about that? That’s gotta reassure you,” said Ruby.
By Thursday, Clancy was worse: he was hardly able to speak, and in physics when Mr. Endell asked him what he would do if an asteroid struck Earth, Clancy replied, “Thank my lucky stars.”
Elliot tried to jolt him out of it by making him laugh, but most of his jokes seemed to revolve around some poor bozo meeting a gory end, and so his efforts resulted in Clancy Crew sinking lower into his sweater. He actually looked like he was shrinking.
By Friday, Clancy had adopted the demeanor of a condemned man. He had stopped wrestling with his fate and seemed to accept that there was no way out; he was going to have to swim that swimathon even if it meant swimming heroically — or perhaps weeping like a coward — toward certain death.
After school, just as Clancy was leaving for home, Ruby caught up with him.
“Hey, Clance, do you want me to come over?”
Clancy shook his head. “Nah, that’s all right, Rube. I gotta get my sleep; it’s my only chance.”
“You know you’re not gonna die, Clance; you’re being awful pessimistic.”
“Can you guarantee that?” asked Clancy, searching her face for assurance. He wanted to believe her, he really did.
“I gave you my anti-sting; there’s no way you can die of a jellyfish attack,” said Ruby.
“I know,” said Clancy. “But there’s worse than jellyfish out there.”
As she looked into his desperate eyes, she thought of that old saying: a drowning man will clutch at straws. Clancy needed a straw ri
ght now, one that he could put all his faith in: RULE 20: NINETY PERCENT OF SURVIVAL IS ABOUT BELIEVING YOU WILL SURVIVE.
Ruby reached into her inside jacket pocket and unclipped something from the lining.
“Here,” she said. “Why don’t you take this? It’s the luckiest thing I got.” She handed him a tiny tin button. It seemed to be totally plain, just an ordinary white button, until you held it in your hand and felt something embossed on its surface. Ruby had found it when she was just a little kid, next to the sidewalk on Cedarwood Drive. She had kept it all these years; she wasn’t exactly sure why. She usually had it pinned to the inside of her jacket, a habit started when she was a toddler and aware that her mother would consider the pin a hazard and take it away. Now that she was grown there was of course no need to hide it, but it had become a “thing”— something she did — and so the button remained out of sight. “Just don’t lose it, and give it right back, OK?”
Clancy looked at this small object lying in his hand. He believed her about the luck. Ruby could see that in his eyes. This tiny object might just save my life. That’s what he was thinking. “Really?” he said, and his face looked brighter. “I can borrow it?”
“Yeah, take my good luck, why don’t you.”
He smiled. “Thanks, Rube.”
She walked off, then stopped and called out, “So remember, if anyone’s gonna get chomped tomorrow, it’s me!”
Ruby was slowly riding her bike home when she noticed the stranger standing on the corner of Bamboo and Rose. She had seen him a few times now without really taking notice, but this time she was taking notice: Twinford was a big place, but this guy seemed to be frequenting a lot of the same places Ruby did.
Is he tailing me?
She had first seen a weathered-looking guy soon after the dolphins took up residence in Twinford Harbor. Earlier this week she had spotted the same man on the corner of Amster, drinking a small cup of coffee. He wore a hat and sunglasses (even though the sun had already sunk low in the sky). He was tanned and lithe, but the hair that stuck out from under his cap was gray and he looked like he had seen many a scorching summer’s day, his skin leathery and worn. She had spotted him in the middle of town too, outside the library and then again down near the harbor.
Nothing to be suspicious about, you could say, but Ruby had picked him up on her internal radar, and once she had seen him a couple of times, she realized she was seeing him over and over. She had never observed him with anyone, nor had she heard him speak, not even to the waiter at the coffee shop. When he ordered, he pointed; when he thanked, he nodded; when he paid the check, he paid silently and left with a wave of the hand.
OK, so there was no law against drinking small cups of coffee in the Full-O-Beans coffee shop, but though Ruby had never caught him looking in her direction, she had this weird feeling that this man was watching her, like he knew who she was. If she was right about that, then what was he doing? And was she in danger?
Why would he be tailing me? she thought.
For now, she couldn’t do anything more than add him to her list.
Once back on Cedarwood Drive, she scooted up the stairs to her room. She retrieved her yellow notebook and marked the “stranger” sightings on her city map. Having stared at the map for some time, Ruby put down her pen, folded the map, and returned it to the hiding place. She went down to the kitchen to find Mrs. Digby and food.
She found Mrs. Digby boiling pasta and scolding the radio.
The radio presenter was saying:
“We at Chime Melody apologize for the interference to our broadcasts during this past week. We are trying to correct the problem. Meanwhile, don’t go twisting that dial, we’ll miss you.”
“They shoulda sorted this issue before now,” said Mrs. Digby. “It’s more than an old person can stand, this squawking coming at you every time you step into your kitchen. No wonder my noodles are overcooked.” She twisted the tuner to Twinford Talk Radio.
“SO BETTY, I HEAR YKK 672 IS ABOUT TO PASS PRETTY CLOSE TO EARTH?” “THAT’S RIGHT, KEN.” “BETTY, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE ASTEROID COULD BE INTERFERING WITH CHIME MELODY 204 FM?” “INTERESTING THEORY, KEN, BUT I DON’T THINK THE SCIENTISTS WOULD AGREE THAT THE TWO THINGS ARE RELATED.”
“Asteroid, my foot.” Mrs. Digby clunked the off switch with her ladle and went back to salvaging her noodles.
But Ruby’s mind was no longer on food; it was far too busy trying to decide if Ken might just be right. Maybe the asteroid did have a part to play in this whole mystery.
Or maybe it was just a cold bit of rock floating through space, and Ruby was no closer to working out what in tarnation was going on.
The captain of the Golden Albatross — a cowardly little man — might have surrendered immediately, but Ambassador Crew was no coward, and he would not give in so readily.
He had had enough of dancing to their tune. He stood up from where the Twinfordites were huddled and strode out to confront the head pirate. He drew himself up as tall as he could. He towered above these scoundrels, and it made him feel confident. He would get what he wanted — he always did.
“This will not stand — do you hear me? I insist that you release me and drop me back on terra firma. I have a job, and it’s an important one. Oh, and these people need to get home too.” He waved his hand, indicating the cowering cruise passengers. “Some of them have jobs, and most of them have commitments of sorts.”
The pirates merely laughed.
“Who is this bozo with the snapped arm?” jeered the pirate with the poor dental work. He was pointing at Ambassador Crew’s plaster cast — an injury sustained in a squash match.
“Now, just look here —”began Ambassador Crew.
The pirate snarled a menacing snarl that came from deep inside. “You are not the boss of this boat — I am. And if I say you need to keep your big mouth shut, you shut it — understood?”
Ambassador Crew glanced at the silver knife glimmering in the pirate’s hand, and he kept his mouth firmly shut.
“And if I say you jump up and down, then you jump up and down, got it?” said the pirate.
Ambassador Crew nodded.
“So jump up and down,” snarled the pirate.
Ambassador Crew jumped.
IT WAS 8 A.M. ON SATURDAY MORNING, and Clancy Crew was doing as Coach Newhart had suggested: swimming as if his life depended on it. At this rate he was going to win the trophy for Twinford Junior High single-handedly. He was way out in front and almost at the buoy. He even thought he could hear Ruby’s shouts, urging him on, but of course he couldn’t, not with the earplugs in. What he could hear was the thumping of his heart and the voice in his head that said, Why am I in the water? Am I out of my mind? I’m going to die!
A couple of times he thought he saw something; a couple of times he thought he felt something brush past him. He tried to focus on a rule Ruby had taught him many, many years ago when he was just a tiny kid at a Halloween party. It had been his turn to stick his hand in the Halloween barrel; the barrel always contained everyday items — like a hard-boiled egg with shell removed — but your imagination could easily lead you to believe that it was a misshapen eyeball you were holding. Sometimes, it is important to shut down the creative part of the brain, just tell yourself it’s OK and you will find that it is OK. RULE 21: DON’T THINK BACK; DON’T THINK AHEAD; JUST THINK NOW.
So Clancy tried to do just that. Things went fine until he got to the marker, turned, and began to swim back to shore. This was the worst part, the part he dreaded. Now he couldn’t see what was in the open water behind him; now he would never know if some large fish with big sharp teeth was following him, waiting for exactly the right moment to open its jaws and bite down on a leg, or worse, his whole body. He imagined the blood gushing up out of his mouth, the feeding frenzy that would ensue.
Clancy closed his eyes and swam.
He swam so hard and so blindly that he only realized that he had reached the beach when he felt the rough s
and graze his stomach and the strong hand of Coach Newhart pulling him to his feet.
“Nice swim, Crew. I knew you had technique, but I had no idea you were fast.” The coach draped a towel around his shoulders and slapped him on the back. “Grab a hot drink, son, and get warmed up.”
Clancy staggered toward the support team, all of them smiling and cheering congratulations, but Clancy was only aware of the sensation of sand underfoot; feet, all two of them, back on terra firma. He was alive.
When the swimathon was over and all the participants were out of the water and back on the beach, pulling on their tracksuits, Clancy went to find Ruby. She was sitting on the beach, her head resting on her knees, her eyes focused on the horizon. She looked up, smiling. “See Clance, I told you you could do it!”
“Can we just get out of here?” he pleaded.
Once they were safely installed in their favorite booth at the Double Donut, Ruby picked up the conversation. “Mind over matter is all it took you — of course, guts too,” she added. “I don’t deny that.”
“Well, never again,” said Clancy, clutching a mug of hot chocolate. He was still shivering even though it was eighty degrees outside.
“Don’t let Coach Newhart hear you saying that,” said Ruby. “He thinks he just discovered the swim talent of the century. My guess is he’s got big plans for you, my friend.”
“Can we please talk about something else?” pleaded Clancy. He was beginning to turn green. It was fair to say that Clancy Crew looked all washed out, which wasn’t surprising since he had just faced his biggest fear and lived to tell the tale. Ruby thought about her darkest terror, the total fear of being buried alive. Would she have fared so well if forced to confront her own nightmare? She decided to cut Clancy a little slack and changed the subject.