Lily thought hard. “We’re going to have to figure out some weakness of the whales.”
“What about using more mirrors?”
“We’d have to cover everything with mirrors to be safe. There must be some other way.” Lily frowned, thinking hard.
Several men came in. They were thin and nervous.
“Oh no,” said Katie. “It’s the writers from Simon & Schuster. They’re here to find out what happened so they can write the next Horror Hollow book.”
“Miss Mulligan?” one said. “We’d like to find out a few details to use in the upcoming book.”
“Hi,” Katie said. “We’re kind of in the middle of a conversation right now.”
“We’d like to get started writing,” said the writer. “Could you just fill us in on a few details?”
“Miss Mulligan, how did you fight off the whale?”
“Miss Mulligan, why are whales out to get you?”
“Miss Mulligan, when you crept up the stairs, was it timidly or intrepidly?”
The writers waited. One had his laptop computer open and turned on. His fingers quivered over the keys.
“It wasn’t me who figured out how to chase off the whale,” said Katie. “It was my friend Lily.”
The writers looked from one girl to the other.
“Okay,” said one. “That’s fine. But a little bit confusing for the reader, because you’re the hero. So for the purposes of the series, we’d like to make it be you. And Lily helped. But was carried away by the whales to their secret underwater hideout.”
“In the ruins of the Titanic,” said another writer. “Where there’s a room full of gold bricks.”
“Stolen from the Duchesse de Désastre,” said the first writer.
“And the whales are in cahoots with the killer bees coming up from Mexico,” said the third writer. “Because of the Aztec curse.”
“The Curse of the Jaguar,” explained the first writer triumphantly.
“But this whole thing started with Lily!” said Katie. “Tell them, Lily!”
But Lily just looked uneasy and shy
“Go on!” said Katie. “Tell them about going to work with your dad!”
“It’s fine,” said Lily.
“Great,” said one man.
“Super,” said another.
“Exactly,” said the third.
And the one with the laptop started typing quickly.
One of the writers explained to Katie, “Your friend Lily doesn’t have the pizzazz you do. The presence.” (Lily turned her face away from them. She suddenly didn’t want to be in the room.) The man continued, “She doesn’t have that special oomph. She doesn’t have that glossy girl-glamour that’s important for our readers. For example, when a writer, a good writer, wants to write a description of his main character, he wants to be able to say something like, ‘She looked in the mirror at her pretty brunette hair and her thin five-foot-one-inch frame.’ Not ‘She looked in the mirror at her squat five-foot-one-inch frame and her flat brown hair that completely covered her eyes, except when she blew on it diagonally.’”
“Tell you what,” said one of the writers. “We could maybe work in your friend Lily if she could be a comic sidekick. You can have a squat, flat-haired comic sidekick.” He asked Lily, “Can you tell jokes?”
(Lily wanted there to be a hidden place under the rug where she could lie without moving and just listen, unseen by anyone—ever.)
“That’s insulting,” said the third writer angrily. “I can’t believe he even said that. I apologize. Here’s a better idea: How about we have Lily have some kind of makeover partway through the book. Like, after everyone thinks that she’s just quiet and her hair is always over her eyes, somehow her hair gets pulled back— and suddenly she’s really sexy, and everyone’s like, ‘Whoa, Lily! When you completely change your look, you’re beautiful!’”
“Gotcha!” exclaimed one of the writers.
“There’s the ticket!” cried another.
Katie stood up and pointed at the door. “Get out!” she yelled. “We have just been attacked by a whale with laser-beam eyes, and I do not need you saying stupid things about my friend who just saved my life!”
“Touchy, touchy,” said one of the writers.
“Werewolves getting to you?” said another.
“Someone’s tangled with one too many mindsloths,” said the third, closing up his laptop.
“We’ll be in touch,” they said, and left.
Lily was sitting on the coffee table, shuffling her tennis shoes in the pile of the rug.
“Don’t let them bother you,” said Katie.
“I’m not bothered,” Lily said. She turned her face away.
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re crying.” Katie reached over and tugged gently on Lily’s hair. “Hey.”
Lily turned back around. She shrugged without words.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Katie. She put her arm around Lily. “You’re the hero. You’re the one who figured out this whole plot against the world by Larry. You’re the one who figured out that Larry was a half-whale, half-human whatsit.”
“Hybrid.”
“Yeah. You’re the one who figured out what his teeth really mean. And you’re the one who just saved my life by figuring out what to do with the mirror.”
Lily looked in the mirror at her squat five-foot-one-inch frame and her flat brown hair that completely covered her eyes, except when she blew on it diagonally.
“That’s okay,” she said. “It’s your story.”
“No—” said Katie. “It’s your story. You have to realize that it really is. It’s only when people realize that the story can be about them that they can start to change things.”
Lily said glumly, “We have a lot to change. By three days from now.”
“Exactly,” said Katie. “And if you keep believing that this is Jasper’s story or my story, you won’t be ready to give everything to the story and save us all from the stilt-walking laser-beam whales.”
Lily nodded. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
Katie flicked her hard on the arm. “It’s your story. You decide.”
“Well,” said Lily. “We should learn about the weaknesses of whales.”
“Yeah,” said Katie. “We can go to the library.”
“Or to an oceanographical institute.”
“A what?”
“A place that studies the sea.”
“Yeah!” said Katie.
“And we should ask my dad for more details about the stilts and the accessories. He might have heard other things that we can use against the whale army.”
“Good idea!” said Katie.
“And we should figure out where they’re going to come onto land first. If we can pinpoint that,” said Lily, getting excited, “we could be there waiting for them...”
“Now you’re planning!” said Katie. “See? This is great!”
Lily smiled shyly. “So you’ll share the story?” she said. “Not that I need my own story.”
“Everyone needs their own story,” said Katie. “This one is yours.”
Lily nodded awkwardly. “I’m glad I have someone to share it with,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Katie, grinning and resting her head against Lily’s. “I’ll remember that when we’re both being fried by a humpback whale with ray-gun eyes.”
The next day, when Lily’s father was driving her to a dentist’s appointment, she asked him, “Do you remember when I talked to you about the stilts for whales? How you told me that there were other accessories that went with them?”
“Lily,” said her father, “this isn’t about this whale ‘invasion’ again, is it?”
Lily didn’t answer.
Her father sighed. He took his hand off the gearshift and patted her on the neck. “I realize that it must be hard being friends with Jasper and Katie, because they’re so f
amous for their adventures. But that’s no reason to make things up. That’s no reason to start seeing conspiracies in everything. Okay, honey toad?”
“Just.. . what are the other accessories?”
“Nothing big, honey. Nothing worth talking about. Just laser implants in their eyes and a spray bottle that keeps them wet. That’s all. And a kind of metal hat with an antenna that controls their thoughts from a remote location.”
“What remote location?” asked Lily quickly.
“I don’t know, Lil. Probably the laboratory. It’s all perfectly straightforward.”
“Have you heard anything about where whales are getting these things, uh, put on them?”
“I think over near the factory, out somewhere in Smogascoggin Bay. That’s where they hitched up the prototypes. You know who you should ask about this? My pal Ray, who works with me. He could tell you all about this.” Lily’s dad nodded. “Except he was taken out of the office a few days ago with his hands tied behind his back and a bandanna tied as a gag on his mouth.” Her father thought for a second. “Huh. He hasn’t been in to work since. I wonder if he has the flu.”
Lily felt like her hands were freezing to the seat. “Dad,” she said, “could you not go to work today?”
“This is ridiculous, Lily. I’m not in any danger. We’re going to have our launch in two days.”
“It’s not a launch; it’s a whale invasion.”
“Not another word!” said her father. “I’m sick of this! Okay, Lily? Enough is enough!”
Lily didn’t know what to feel—terrified or angry. Being yelled at always made her shrink up inside. She sat there playing with the lock on the car door, frowning, trying not to cry.
But there was one thing she’d gotten out of the conversation, she realized. She had to tell Katie and Jasper about what she had found out. This new piece of news—that the whales were remote controlled—might be the key to defeating them. If only they could break that remote control’s power over the whales’ thoughts and actions ...
When Lily got to the dentist’s, she immediately asked where there was a pay phone. She ran to the corner and dialed Jasper’s number.
Jasper picked up the phone in his laboratory. He was trying out some new springed shoes.
“Jasper?” said Lily. “The whales have metal hats put on them to control their minds, and lasers for eyes. I think that these things are being put on them someplace out in Smogascoggin Bay.”
Jasper said,
“Ah, that’s better. Now, as you were saying.”
Lily told him what she’d discovered.
They talked over their plan of action. They decided that Katie and Lily would go over to the Smogascoggin Oceanographical Institute and see what they could find out about whales. Jasper said that he would go out in his Marvelous Subaquatic Zephyr to see if he could spot any whales gearing up for battle on the ocean floor of the bay. While Lily talked on the phone, she watched people making appointments with the dentist’s receptionist.
Suddenly it hit her: If she and her friends didn’t do something, the appointments would never happen. Things scheduled for Tuesday would never come to pass. But people all around her were going on like normal, not knowing that everything was about to change.
Lily pictured the dentist’s office and all the buildings around it as just a pile of gray bricks, scattered with drills and dentures, as if the rubble was hungry and openmouthed and would snap up passing flies.
Lily was such a nice person, it didn’t even occur to her that a vision of the dentist’s office destroyed should have actually cheered her up.
Later that day Lily and Katie went over to the oceanographical institute. They learned a lot about whales. They learned that whales survive underwater through various means, such as a surplus of oxygen-storing myoglobin in the whale’s muscle tissue. They learned that whales make noises but have no vocal cords. They learned that the blue whale—the largest animal ever to exist—can weigh up to two hundred tons. The heart of one giant blue whale weighed about fifteen hundred pounds. They learned that most baleen whales eat euphausiids, cope-pods, and amphipods. They learned that the song of the humpback whale can last up to thirty-five minutes.
But they didn’t learn anything specifically about combating walking whales with laser-beam eyes.
So let’s leave them behind.
Meanwhile, far below the waters of the bay, a fake boulder slid aside and Jasper’s Marvelous Subaquatic Zephyr slid out into the murky, polluted tides. His lights trawled the depths.
He headed cautiously toward the docks near the Abandoned Warehouse. He passed the piers, waving with green algae and speckled white with barnacles. He shone his lights over the bottoms of sailboats and motorboats, where they rocked on the waves above him. He passed two deep-sea divers giving each other a high five. They had just found a roll of quarters that had dropped off a harbor cruise.
Near the Abandoned Warehouse, the piers were broken and jagged. There were the remains of docks on the bottom, puffy with green slimy growth. Blind fish swam through fields of rusted cars and cans.
Jasper reached a brick wall—the back wall of the Abandoned Warehouse. He knew that’s what it was because it was painted on the bricks, in big letters:
There, right below the wall, was a secret berth—a big platform made of metal, with all kinds of industrial tools in brackets. The berth was shaped like this:
Jasper narrowed his eyes and scanned the sub’s lights over the berth. There was no mistaking it—this was no flounder factory. This was definitely where the whales had been equipped with all of their “accessories,” like the lasers and the mind-control helmets.
Now, he thought, the trick is to find the whales themselves.
He headed back out into the bay. For hours he drifted back and forth, marking his path on a chart. He saw great boulders and old decaying trees. He puttered by manta rays. No whales, though.
At dinnertime he surfaced briefly to eat a sandwich. He opened his hatch and sat above water, munching on ham and cheese, sipping a wonderful tall glass of chocolate Gargletine Brand Patented Breakfast Drink, which left him feeling healthy, heroic, and refreshed. Why, every household should have a canister of Gargletine—fortified with seventeen essential nutrients found in no other foodstuff! Give it a try, moms of America, and you’ll see why it’s called “Pluck in a Bucket.”
As he was sitting there, enjoying the great, sweet, laminated taste of Gargletine, he noticed something on the horizon.
Smoke.
No, not smoke. It was a kind of strange fog, rising from the water. It obscured the little pine-covered islands in the bay. It drifted up toward the moon.
No, not fog. It blew across his face. It was warm. He dropped his sandwich. “Steam,” he said. “Steam! From the lasers! By george!”
Jasper scrambled below, clanged shut the hatch, and threw the Zephyr into Full Speed Ahead. It chugged swiftly through the darkened waters. Peering through his Aquatic Night Goggles, Jasper shut off the lights. His night goggles detected heat, instead of light. In total darkness his vessel shot past rocks and wrecks. He saw them through the goggles as dim purple shapes, lit by the bright green of living things— fish, clams, and sea anemones.
And finally, whales. Yes, he’d found the whales.
There were a huge number of them. Above, the surface of the water was roiling with the motion of them all, bubbling beneath the moon. They were circling around something he couldn’t make out... Something purple with lots of swirls and curves ... (He squinted.)... Something with many arms ...
A squid—the natural enemy of the whale!
But there was something strange about the squid.... Living things showed bright green in Jasper’s goggles. The squid was purple. Was it dead?
No, he realized. Not dead. It wasn’t real. It was a target.
A bright light flashed. The whales were using a wooden stand-up squid for target practice. They were training themselves to use their eye lasers.
&
nbsp; It was the heat from the lasers that had made the clouds of steam.
Jasper stayed well away from the whales. He didn’t want to be detected. With so many of them, they would be able to crush his Zephyr like an aluminum can.
He had seen all he needed to. The whales were getting ready for war.
Quietly he backed his ship away from them. He headed toward shore.
On the way home from the oceanographical institute, Lily and Katie stopped at the police station.
I don’t think I need to tell you how this conversation went.
Have you ever told the police that your house has been pillaged by whales? And then mentioned that tomorrow whales will invade the town?
In Lily and Katie’s experience, the police responded by saying things like:
“What do you mean exactly by ‘invasion’?”
“The whales,” explained Katie, “are going to invade.”
“Can I tell you a story, girls?” The police officer leaned back and rested his heels on his computer keyboard. He said patiently, “In the nineteen-sixties there was something called the British Invasion. But no British people really invaded us. It was called an invasion, but all that happened was a lot of British bands sold a lot of records in the United States.”
“So you’re saying,” said Katie, “that really these whales are just going to release a lot of hit singles.”
“Don’t get fresh,” said the police officer. “I’m saying that just because there was something called the British Invasion doesn’t mean you should be afraid of British people. See what I mean? The British have never invaded America.”
Lily mumbled, “What about during the War of 1812?”
“What about it?”
“They burned down Washington, D.C.”
“Yeah.” The policeman bit an apple. He chewed. “Do you girls ever do a sport?”
Let’s end this painful interview and move on to something else.
Lily couldn’t sleep that night. She felt like little gyroscopes were spinning around in her wrists and ankles. She pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of her bed. Her room was dark. She could hear her father and mother talking quietly in the other room. No words, just muttering.