The Pirate Who's More Terrified than Ever Read online

  “Peanut butter and jelly with a side of chips,” said the man in sunglasses.

  “A chicken sandwich with fries, same as every day.” The tattooed woman shrugged.

  “Just a salad,” the guy with the tool belt said sadly. “I’m watching my weight.”

  “Good idea. You never know when it might sneak up on you.” Shivers shuddered and then pressed on. “People, you’ve got it all wrong! We’re going to need a major renovation here. But first, I’m going to need to borrow a hard hat. If there’s one thing I know about lunch, it’s that things can get messy.”

  The woman with the tattoo handed over her yellow hat. Shivers put the hard hat on top of his soft hat, grabbed the three lunch boxes, and got to work. He mixed and matched ingredients, his hands flying between the meals so fast that the workers couldn’t help but look on in amazement. He crisscrossed the crusts, retossed the salad, and unjammed the jelly from its peanut-buttery partner. Finally, he presented the workers with their new and improved meals.

  He turned to the man with the tool belt. “Your salad was looking a little soggy, so I added in chips for extra crunch!”

  “Thank you!” The man grinned. “What a salty surprise!”

  Then, Shivers handed a lunch box to the man in sunglasses. “For you, peanut butter–battered chicken. In some parts of the world, this is considered a delicacy.” He leaned in and whispered, like he was sharing a secret, “And in others, they haven’t even heard of it.”

  “Ooh! How exotic!” the worker replied with excitement.

  “And finally, my greatest creation,” Shivers said, strolling over to the tattooed woman. “Introducing . . . jelly fries!”

  “Oh,” the woman said with much less enthusiasm. But when she tried a french fry dipped in grape jelly, she jumped to her feet and shouted, “It’s brilliant! BRILLIANT!”

  Shivers blushed. “I’m glad you like it. As I always say, once it’s in your belly, it’s all jelly!”

  The three workers dug into their meals with gusto, throwing their heads back in delight with every bite. They were so busy enjoying their new and improved lunches that they didn’t even notice the ten-year-old girl stealing—or, rather, borrowing—the giant crane right behind them.

  Margo had never operated a crane before, but she had spent a lot of time (and money) playing the claw game at the arcade, so she caught on pretty quickly. She looped the hook into the manhole cover and lifted it clean off. Then she hopped out of the crane and gave Shivers a big thumbs-up.

  Shivers said, “Well, folks, I wish I could stay and chat. But I don’t have the right hat.” He took off the hard hat and returned it to the tattooed woman. Then he turned to go.

  “Wait!” said the man with the tool belt. “Who are you?”

  Shivers looked back and squinted in the sunlight. “I’m just a kid looking for a fish.”

  He ran to the edge of the manhole, where Margo was waiting. They linked their arms, plugged their noses, and dove in.

  SHIVERS AND MARGO LANDED in the sewer sludge with a SKLURSH—which is kind of like a splash, but much more disgusting. They were instantly swept up in a gurgling current of grime and slime.

  Shivers flailed around in the soggy darkness, trying to grab hold of Margo as they slid through the sewer. “Why didn’t you tell me there weren’t any lights down here?!” he shrieked.

  “Shivers, trust me: sometimes it’s better to be in the dark,” Margo shouted back.

  As they twisted around a corner, their eyes began to adjust to the dim light streaming in through the street grates above them. Now, Shivers saw what they were sliding in. It was a slug-green swirl of mold and curdled milk, served with a side of stinky slush. Shivers and Margo spotted a faint glimmer of a blowfish tail flapping up ahead.

  “Albee!!!” they called out, their voices echoing off the sewer walls.

  But Albee was being funneled through the tunnel just as fast as Shivers and Margo were. Suddenly, he slipped out of sight. Shivers squinted to see where Albee had gone and realized they were sliding straight toward a sheer drop-off. Judging from the sound of the sludge splashing below, it was going to be a big drop.

  “AAAAAGH!” Shivers screamed. He grabbed Margo and swung her in front of him. “Margo, you’re really the leader of this mission. You get in front!” he said, grabbing her shoulders.

  Shivers and Margo flew with the force of a thousand flushes toward the drop-off. They spotted a sign right at the edge that said, WELCOME TO UNDERNEATH DOWNTOWN NEW JERSEY—WHERE GARBAGE GOES TO DIE!

  “Whoa, cool!” Margo said. “I bet this is one of those places only the locals know about!”

  Shivers tried to wrap himself up in her backpack straps and wailed, “I DON’T WANT TO BE DEAD GARBAGE!”

  It was a reasonable request, but the current was only moving one way. Shivers searched desperately for something to hold on to. He dragged his hands through the muck until he finally found a net. But it was a hairnet . . . made of hair. He screamed and tossed it aside.

  Now, they were just inches away from the drop. In one last attempt, Shivers plunged his arms deep into the sludge. He sifted through the grit and grime and then, just in time, his fingers wrapped around a thick rope.

  “Margo! We’re saved!” he fear-cheered.

  But when he yanked the rope out of the sludge, he saw that it was attached to a brown, bulbous body with a furry head . . . And that it wasn’t a rope at all, but the tail of a snarling sewer rat.

  Dread shot from the top of Shivers’s head to the tips of his slippers. He shrieked so loudly that he woke up the rest of the sewer rats, who popped their heads up and glowered at Shivers with cranky red eyes.

  he wailed, flinging the rat into the darkness and flailing his hands in the air as he came to the drop-off.

  “Great idea!” Margo said. “Hands up for the big drop!”

  And with that, they sailed over the edge and fell through the air until the big drop turned into the big plop as they landed in the soupy sewer water below.

  The current picked them up again, and now they were in an even larger tunnel. The damp, mossy walls were dotted with big holes, and sunlight streamed down from the street above.

  Margo looked up. “We’re right under Main Street!”

  “The only thing I’m under is extreme stress!” Shivers moaned, still sliding behind her.

  “If my coordinates are right, we should be directly underneath the Candy Bar and Grill,” Margo said.

  It turned out her coordinates were right, and all the trash from the candy store came tumbling through the hole above their heads.

  “Incoming!” Shivers shouted, shoving Margo firmly in front of him.

  She was hit with a barrage of stale-but-still-soft marshmallows. Seconds later, Shivers was pelted with Pop Rocks that exploded around him as they hit the water.

  “AAGGH! A SNACK ATTACK!” he screamed.

  “Don’t worry,” Margo shouted as the current continued to carry them. “We’re coming up on the flower shop! What could go wrong?”

  Just then, Dolores, the florist from the Petal Peddler, poured a sackful of surplus roses into the sewer.

  The petals fluttered down and gently brushed Margo’s face. “Mm, smells nice!” she said, smiling. Then, the thorns shot straight at Shivers, poking him all over. “Aggh! I don’t want my ears pierced!” he wailed. “That’s it! I’m getting in front!”

  Shivers scrambled past Margo just as they were rushed beneath the craft store. As it turned out, Make Your Own Junk was going out of business, so they were dumping all their junk from the store into the sewer. All at once, Shivers was drenched in a shower of glue, feathers, and beads that made him look like a bedazzled chicken. Margo got lightly dusted with glitter.

  They reached the end of the sewer and got spit out into a pool of shallow, murky seawater. They looked around and realized they were right under a New Jersey pier. Huge wooden pillars towered above them, supporting a bustling boardwalk that stretched far out into the oc
ean. They could hear the clatter of rushing roller coasters above them. The thick smell of smoked meats and fried cheese filled their noses.

  “Albee?! Where are you?!” Shivers squawked, flapping around frantically in the water.

  An old man and woman leaned over the pier’s edge and saw Shivers.

  “Look, darling! It’s one of New Jersey’s famous sewer chickens!” the man said, snapping a picture.

  Shivers and Margo waded through the salty slosh, searching desperately for any sign of Albee.

  “We’ll never find him!” Shivers wailed. “He could be anywhere in this giant salt bucket!”

  “I’m right here!” Albee called out from the open ocean ahead. But as usual, no one could hear him.

  Shivers fell to his knees and sobbed. “Everyone always told me there are other fish in the sea, but I want my fish!”

  “I’M RIGHT HERE!” Albee shouted at the top of his gills. He mustered all his strength and puffed up to his full blowfish size.

  “There he is!” Margo cheered. Without giving it a second thought, she dove into the water and swam with all her might until she reached Albee. She grabbed a spare sandwich bag from her backpack and scooped Albee up inside, then swam back to shore.

  She handed Albee back to Shivers, who gave the sandwich bag a big hug.

  “We’ll never let you out of our sight again,” he promised.

  Margo noticed that Shivers had managed to shake off some of the feathers but was still almost entirely crusted in crud. “You’re going to have to take another shower,” she warned him.

  “NEVER!” Shivers shouted. “I’ve almost drowned six times today, and I haven’t even had my mid-morning nap! Come on, Albee, let’s go home.”

  They turned to head toward the sand, but then Margo saw something that stopped her in her tracks. Floating near the sewer entrance was a green glass bottle with a piece of paper inside.

  “A message in a bottle!” she gasped. Her green eyes sparkled—and not just because she was still covered in glitter. “I’ve always wanted to find one of these! We’ve got to read what’s inside!”

  “Why?” Shivers shrugged. “We already know what it’s going to say.”

  Margo scooped the bottle out of the water. “What do you mean?”

  Shivers shook his head and sighed, “Margo, it’s a message in a bottle. It’s obviously going to say ‘Help! Let me out of this bottle!’”

  Shivers didn’t really understand what a message in a bottle was.

  Margo plopped down on the sandy beach, popped the cork, and read the message. By the time she reached the end, the excitement on her face had slipped away, and a darkness had fallen over her eyes.

  Shivers sat down next to her and clutched Albee’s bag nervously. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Margo showed him the paper. It was drenched in seawater and the ink had run, but Shivers could still make out the message:

  But the paper was too soggy to see the signature.

  SHIVERS WAS HORRIFIED. HIS mouth dropped to the ground in shock and stayed for so long that a sand crab almost moved in. “Captain Crook is going to attack New Jersey?!”

  “That’s what the message says,” Margo said through gritted teeth. She was furious that anyone, pirate or otherwise, was threatening her town.

  Shivers wasn’t furious; he was fear-ious. “He can’t do that! Pirates never attack people on land. It’s the number-one rule of the Pirate Code!”

  “The Pirate what?” Margo asked.

  “The Pirate Code! The rules that all pirates have followed for hundreds of years!”

  “Pirates always have to follow these rules?” Margo asked.

  “Always,” Shivers insisted. “Without the Pirate Code, the sea would be chaos! Pirates would just be a bunch of hideous heathens doing whatever they wanted! Have you ever seen a pirate talk back to a whale?”

  “No . . .” said Margo.

  “Of course not! Because that’s rule number eighteen!” Shivers began to pace back and forth, rattling off the rules of the Pirate Code. “Rule number six: First the skull, then the crossbones. Number eleven: Never ride a seahorse. Number forty-two: Always sail away from the puke.” He turned to Margo with wide eyes. “And do you ever wonder why I’m always screaming so loudly?”

  Margo cocked her head. “Because you’re afraid of everything?”

  “Well, yes . . . But also because of rule number three.” Shivers shouted, “ALWAYS USE YOUR OUTSIDE VOICE!” He stopped in his tracks and threw his hands in the air. “But the most important rule is rule number one: Pirates never attack people on land.”

  Margo picked up the message. “Well, it looks like Captain Crook and his whole gruesome crew are going to break the Pirate Code. And there’s only one thing we can do about it—”

  “Return this letter to where it came from!” Shivers snatched the paper from her. “It was much less scary when it was a message in a bottle than when it was a message out of a bottle.” He rolled up the mushy paper. “Let’s toss it back into the ocean, head home, and figure out the snack of the day!” He tried to stuff the paper into the bottle, but Margo yanked it back.

  “Shivers, you can’t just fix something by throwing it in the water.”

  Shivers shook his head. “That’s what I said when you made me take a shower!”

  “We’ve got to do something about this!” said Margo.

  Just then, they heard the wail of sirens as a squad of police cars zipped down the street.

  “Margo, look! Help is on the way!” Shivers grabbed Albee’s bag and sprinted after the police cars. Margo followed close behind. Her dad, Police Chief Clomps’n’Stomps, would know what to do.

  Margo and Shivers reached the edge of the beach and saw the police squad gathered in front of old Mrs. Sternbean’s house. Their black-and-white cars were parked haphazardly along the sidewalk. Police Chief Clomps’n’Stomps was barking orders at the whole squad. He was standing next to Mrs. Sternbean; her tiny wrinkled head poked out of a huge knit sweater.

  “Okay, people, get in position!” Clomps shouted. “Code red!”

  Shivers and Margo ran onto the lawn.

  “Margo!” Clomps said, his eyes lighting up. “And . . . Shivers,” he added, his eyes dimming down. “What are you doing here? It’s Sunday. Aren’t you supposed to be hiding from the sun?”

  “Normally, yes.” Shivers gasped, trying to catch his breath from all the running. “But we’ve got a big problem!”

  Clomps grunted. “I know we do. I’m taking care of it right now.” He held up a big white megaphone and announced, “I don’t know how Cuddles the kitten got stuck in that tree, but we’re not leaving until we get him down!”

  “YES, SIR!” the squad shouted back.

  That’s when Shivers and Margo noticed the fluffy white cat perched on the highest branch of Mrs. Sternbean’s maple tree. The police officers leaned a large metal ladder against the tree and started climbing.

  “We have a much bigger problem than this!” said Shivers.

  “There is no bigger problem than this,” Mrs. Sternbean wailed. “Except for how many hairballs I have in my house. But that’s my problem.”

  Margo tugged on Clomps’s sleeve. “Dad, we found a message—”

  “The only message I want to hear right now is that Cuddles is safely on the ground! The rest will have to wait!” said Clomps.

  Margo sighed. She knew that when her dad was on the job, nothing could stop him. The only way to get his attention was to get the cat out of the tree first.

  The officers scrambled from branch to branch, calling “Here, kitty, kitty!” But Cuddles, like most cats, only had one trick—ignoring people.

  Margo realized that the only way to catch this cat was to make it come to them. She turned to Mrs. Sternbean. “What are Cuddles’s favorite things?”

  Mrs. Sternbean’s face lit up. “Well, he likes batting fish around.”

  “Not going to happen!” said Albee.

  Mrs. Sternb
ean continued, “All his favorite toys are bouncy, squeaky, and covered in feathers.”

  Margo looked over at Shivers. He was bouncing nervously in his bunny slippers and letting out high-pitched squeaks, the feather on his pirate hat flapping in the wind. It dawned on her, for the first time since she’d known him, that Shivers was basically a giant cat toy. She grabbed her dad’s megaphone and announced, “Send in the pirate!”

  And with that, Shivers was grabbed by the long arm of the law—in fact it was several long arms—which lifted him up and flung him into the tree.

  “AAAAAAGH!” Shivers screamed as he landed in a thicket of branches just inches away from Cuddles. Shivers turned to face the cat, and his whole being filled with dread. Sure, kittens looked cute in pictures, but up close they were cringe-inducing.

  Cuddles wiggled his whiskers. Shivers leaped back and screamed, “Don’t whisk me!”

  Then Cuddles swatted at Shivers’s hat. Shivers ducked and shouted, “Press pause on those paws!”

  The more Shivers quivered, the more curious Cuddles grew. He pounced toward him. Shivers knew that even if he defeated the cat once, he would have to do it again eight more times! It just wasn’t a fair fight! He decided to make a run for it. And then he made a stumble for it. And then he made a fall for it.

  As Shivers hurtled toward the ground, Cuddles leaped out of the tree after him. Fortunately, the police squad was ready with a giant safety net. They caught Cuddles comfortably in the net just as Shivers came crashing down into Mrs. Sternbean’s birdbath.

  Mrs. Sternbean scooped Cuddles up in her arms and announced, “Cookies and lemonade for everyone!”

  “Cookies and lemonade?!” one of the officers remarked.

  “What a refreshing treat!” another officer shouted.

  The squad stampeded into Mrs. Sternbean’s house. Clomps stayed behind and helped Margo pull Shivers out of the birdbath.

  Shivers was spitting and sputtering, flinging filthy bathwater everywhere. “A shower and a bath in one morning?” He groaned. “This is the worst day ever!”