Moonfin Read online

  Max hardly ever called him by his first name in front of his crew. Captain Quinn cast an angry scowl his way then looked over the teeming net, expecting to see nothing but a pile of squirmy fish, or Jives, the deck cat, nipping at a fish-head. But trapped within the ropes and surrounded by common tuna was something different. It was trying to hold onto dear life and was losing the battle.

  Quinn stepped in closer and cautiously eyed the suffering animal. “Let’s pull it out and see what we have here—could be a rotting shark or something,” he barked.

  They unhooked the bursting catch, allowing the fish to spill onto the starboard deck. A small scaly calf, green, with red and yellow streaks running through it, spilled out also and slid over toward the crew, who scrambled out of the way to avoid touching it, except Jimmy, who stood still, because he didn’t know any better. It was rather pathetic and strange-looking with its puny reptilian head gasping for air and clawed flippers flailing about.

  “What the—?” Jimmy squatted down to get a better look. “That’s plain freaky.”

  “It’s dying, whatever it is. Do you think our net did it?” wondered Max.

  “Naw,” said Quinn, “looks like it was far gone before we picked it up.” This certainly confirmed some suspicions he was having about this island. Once, ten years ago, he’d found a beluga whale cut clean in half, like it had been bitten straight through, with teeth marks and all. And this creature had some fearsome teeth!

  “Finally—some real evidence that something foul lived around these waters,” he snarled under his breath.

  “Should we throw it back? It looks like a harmless babe,” said Max.

  Jimmy stuck its back flipper with a hook.

  “Looky here! This thing can breathe without gills,” he said, now jabbing the head. “Check out these long stringy things at the back of its noggin—”

  “Jimmy, I wouldn’t—”

  Too late. In the blink of an eye, a jagged barb popped out of one antenna and lodged itself in Jimmy’s arm. He screamed and fell to the ground, hysterical. The calf was too weak to do anything to its newfound prey, but the barb was still enough to cause unearthly pain—

  “GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!” he wailed miserably.

  It happened so fast.

  THWACK!

  The ship listed sharply to portside and twisted a quarter turn. The crew lunged for anything nailed down they could hold on to. The barb ripped out of poor Jimmy’s arm and took a chunk of flesh with it. Blood gushed onto the deck, and he yelled even louder while trying to latch hold of the rail with his one good arm to keep from fainting.

  After many long, tense minutes the ship stopped bobbing and turning, and the crew let go of their strangleholds. Max jerked off the flannel shirt he was wearing and wrapped it tightly around Jimmy’s arm to stop the bleeding. Afraid to move, the crew stood motionless for some moments in the eerie quiet. A heavy, stifling mist flooded around them, and one idea seemed to invade their collective thoughts: Something is terribly wrong.

  The current started moving the boat toward the island, nudging it sideways into the setting sun. It stopped in a patch of water that had rapidly changed from dirty blue to shimmering bronze in a matter of seconds. The quiet stillness covered them like a heavy wool blanket, smothering them in dread.

  I don’t like this … no movement, no waves,” grumbled Captain Quinn. “It’s dead flat everywhere.”

  Max heard something and looked over the side. A thin crust had formed on the surface of the water and was crunching into the hull. “Ugh! Do you smell that? Like putrefying fish guts, that is!”

  Quinn covered his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm. The horrid smell wafted over the deck, and the fishermen began to cough and gag in strained chorus.

  It all happened so fast there was hardly a moment to think. It started with a noise, a small squeal from the pitiful animal lying on the deck. Immediately afterward, an enormous fin—similar in shape to the calf’s—swept up out of the water and struck the side of the little vessel.

  THWACKITY-SMACK!

  It hit the hull with ten times more force than before.

  Everything on board slid sharply toward starboard. Whatever sea life was left in the trough slipped off to the safety of the ocean, including the strange calf. The crew, fighting for their lives and praying the boat wouldn’t tip over completely, grabbed onto a mast, a rope—anything that would keep them from being hurled into the fetid sea.

  The boatswain, Derek, wasn’t so lucky. He jerked his hands out, sliding at sonic speed toward the rail. He didn’t have a chance. Too much sloshing and sludge and inertia. The last thing he saw was a jagged ring of teeth framing a black hole rising out of the sea. A battle between his boots and the creature’s mouth took place.

  The boots lost.

  The next thing the crew heard was the sound of crushing toes and Derek’s screams. For several eternal moments, the boat continued to rock violently back and forth. Knuckles and faces were white with fear.

  A few men were able to pull the injured boatswain back over the rail to safety; he crumpled to the deck like yesterday’s laundry. Only one deckhand had to tease—“Snuffles been tickling yer feet, aye, Derek?”

  First chance he got, Captain Quinn lunged toward the engine room. The ship could stall if enough water poured down the hatch, leaving them dead in the water at the mercy of waves and beast. “All hands! Secure those sails!” he shouted furiously as he slammed into the splintered hatch door, a falling spar nearly missing his head by inches.

  Jimmy held onto his injured arm and leaned over the rail to get a look at what had just pushed their boat around like a plastic toy. It would’ve taken something incredibly powerful to shove their vessel around with that kind of ease—they were lucky not to be sitting at the bottom of Davy Jones’s locker right now.

  The frightful rocking stopped, and the boat finally steadied. Captain Quinn kept bellowing in wild fury, “Look sharp! We don’t want to be sitting here if that thing wants to come back around and play again!” Max darted to the wheelhouse to call for med-flight assistance—he just hoped to get Derek to the hospital in time to save a few toes. The crew pulled the Windstar around and headed back toward the mainland.

  Jimmy couldn’t do much to help, so he plunked down on a nearby barrel and watched everyone else scramble.

  “Wonder if I should tell this tale at Mulligoon’s Pub tonight,” he said weakly to himself, clutching his bloodied arm close to his side. “Naw, I’d never get another fishing job on a trawler again, that’s for sure.”

  Captain Quinn was reeling from the jolt and fuming mad. Two crewmen down. His vessel almost sunk. For years, he’d been searching for a possible clue to Brandon’s disappearance, only to have to leave it behind. And how was he going to explain this mess to the Coast Guard?

  He searched the deck for the calf.

  Gone. It must’ve flown off after the second hit.

  He spat in a venomous rage. “You got what you wanted, all right, and willing to kill a whole ship full of men to get it! One day I’ll find you!” he thundered. And grabbing a harpoon off the wall, thrust it into the wheelhouse, sending Jives scurrying in complete terror.

  Chapter 4

  BONFIRE

  Spzzz-sppzz-spzz, the little butterscotch cube lit up like a fizzing sparkler. Lizzy poked at it with copper wires and adjusted the current, focusing her ruffled mind on the task at hand. After the strange encounter at the aquarium yesterday, she was glad to be home in her solarium laboratory—a haven from the crazy world.

  “Okay … the butterscotch pudding is now a chemically enhanced polymer with volatile additives soaked in ionic fluid to aid in conductivity,” she exhaled, trying to keep talking octopi out of her mind. It didn’t help that her tangled curls kept getting stuck in the pudding and looked remarkably like floppy tentacles.

  After a few more pokes, she shouted, “Huzzah! I think I’ve got it!” to all her lab pets.

  “Mmm—I don’t know if I sh
ould eat it or run from it,” said Sugar, standing in the doorway, perfectly lined eyebrows arched high as ever.

  “Probably both.”

  “By the way, Mrs. Gates called and said you disappeared from the field trip yesterday, again.”

  “I got a little distracted.” She gave the little cube another rough stab. Of course how many people get distracted by talking to an octopus? That’s not the typical way to get lost on a field trip.

  “Listen, girl, I know you get a little bored in class, but that is no reason to be taking your personal tours on school field trips. What’s your momma going to say? She works at the aquarium lab, and Mrs. Gates gave her an earful about your behavior yesterday.”

  Lizzy groaned.

  “She’s just mad because I know more about the aquarium than she does.”

  “Mmmhm—there you go again.”

  Lizzy looked up at Sugar behind over-sized lab goggles.

  “I can’t help it, I do. Golly! Mrs. Gates has it out for me.”

  “It may be true that you know more, but it won’t help your grades if you get on the science teacher’s last nerve,” she chided.

  Lizzy checked the electric current running through the wire. This’ll be tricky. Ordinarily she double and triple checked her calculations where volatile ions were concerned, but today she couldn’t get anything right.

  She picked up a small metal box and gave Sugar a warning look. “You might want to stand back a little. I’m trying to figure out a more efficient way to fuel rocket engines, and if I’m right, this could be a bit—”

  BOOM!

  An earsplitting crack filled the room, and the small pudding cube exploded into a hundred soft little missiles, covering them and the solarium in yellow slime. A deafening silence followed in which Sugar’s face went from keen interest to shocked horror, all in a fraction of a second.

  “… messy,” Lizzy squeaked out.

  “LIZZY GRAPE!” shouted Sugar. Her eyes were round, blazing orbs behind a drippy mask. She looked like one of those wax figures at the museum that had been left out in the sun too long.

  “Wow! I had no idea the charge would be that strong.”

  “Just look what you did to the table!”

  Lizzy looked down. A tennis-ball-sized blast hole had taken out the corner of her worktable. She opened her palms and shrugged.

  “Yet another hole in the table for science?” she said contritely. This wasn’t the first time she had wrecked the solarium furniture, and probably not the last. She slid the smattered goggles onto her forehead and surveyed the damage around her. Catching sight of Sugar’s hair, she began to giggle uncontrollably.

  “What? What did you do!”

  “Well, look on the bright side. Your flaming magenta hair looks smashing with butterscotch highlights!”

  Sugar cracked a smile and fluffed her coiffure.

  “Do you like it? It’s called pink-pizzazz, this one.”

  Lizzy took a long, deep breath. The beginning of summer was getting off to a rough start. She slumped down to the floor, sticky curls falling around her shoulders like gooey ropes.

  “That shouldn’t have happened. The protein in the pudding was only supposed to change, not go kablooey. I wonder if I underestimated the explosive capabilities.”

  “Maybe, just a little,” chuckled Sugar, sitting down next to her. It was hard to stay mad at Lizzy with yellow pudding splattered across her face. Truth be told, she loved Lizzy’s crazy experiments.

  “Or it could have been that the positive ions spread the charge more rapidly than I originally calculated …” her thoughts drifted off with the possibilities.

  Sheesh! What’s wrong with me? She looked over at Sugar with wide, serious eyes and asked, “Was there some deeply traumatic event in my past that left me mentally impaired or otherwise different in some way?”

  Sugar wiped a goopy glop from her ear and tried to keep from laughing. “Well, let’s see … once you fell into the gorilla pit at the zoo. Sumptin’ about a mama ape carrying you off to play for a bit,” she said jokingly.

  “That explains it. Brain damage.”

  “I can see it is beginning to affect you, why do you ask?” she said, continuing the charade.

  Lizzy sat quietly for a few moments, unsure about letting Sugar in on her octopus conversation. Maybe it was better to keep it under wraps for now. She didn’t want to add to her “space-cadet” status, especially after blowing up pudding.

  “No reason. It’s just that sometimes I think about when I was little, and I can’t remember things I ought to—like birthday parties or what my room looked like—and the day Brandon’s boat went missing. It’s all a blur …” She did remember feeling a strange sadness the day before, though. Maybe she knew, deep down, something bad was going to happen.

  Gentle concern flooded Sugar’s dark blue eyes.

  “I don’t know much about the day your brother disappeared, sweetie, I only wanted to help y’all. Your mom and dad were so busy lookin’ for Brandon, and you girls needed looking after—”

  “He could still be alive, you know,” Lizzy rasped, feeling the pain in her heart rise to her throat.

  Sugar put an arm around her and brushed a loose, sticky curl from her shoulder, and looking wise, as only Sugar could, said, “Life can be like, well … like your lab experiments.”

  “Slimy and half-brained, you mean?”

  “No, more like surprising and beautiful. Listen, I could give you all kinds of reasons why bad things happen, but the truth is, I don’t always know. Sometimes life seems like a battle, and when good people decide to fight, they can take a fall. And the things they fight for … it’s all about the people they love. Understand?”

  “Yeah, life’s not a magic carpet ride.”

  “That’d sure be nice! Save my tired feet from walking into town every day,” she said cheerfully, wiggling her toes around in pointed silk flats.

  “Besides, Brandon went out looking for smelly ol’ lobsters that day, not a battle or anything,” Lizzy grumbled.

  They sat silently. Sugar eyed the yellow splotches on the solarium window, wondering if they’d bake to a crust in the hot sunlight. She thought about Brandon and his warm smile. He always loved sitting with Lizzy and reading to her when she was a little girl, and going on fishing trips in the summertime with his dad, and their patrols with the Guard. She was sure there was a good reason he was out near the island that day, and it sure wasn’t for lobsters.

  “He sure loved an adventure, that one! I know he would be so proud of who you are too, Lizzy. You’re like him in many ways.”

  Lizzy didn’t feel brave, nor did she want to be in any battles. She’d rather crawl up in her old green chair with her books and read about life, instead of living it at times.

  “We’d better clean up this mess before your mom gets home, or you’ll be late for the bonfire tonight.”

  “Oh, the bonfire!”

  She almost forgot that she was meeting Jeff and Kai at the beach to set up for the eighth-grade graduation party. She ran into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards.

  “I’m supposed to help with the s’mores. Do you know where the marshmallows are? I know I didn’t use them for anything combustive.”

  Sugar pulled out a bag from one of the drawers.

  “They’re a little stale, but I don’t think the eighth-graders will notice.”

  “Thanks, Sugar, don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  After scrubbing down the walls and floors of the solarium, Lizzy piled the grocery bag of sweets into the wire basket of her cruiser and rode straight over to Blowing Prawn Beach. She pulled into the parking lot, pausing to admire the brightly colored lanterns festooned across the sand for the annual Monarch Middle School bonfire.

  Everyone always looked forward to this event each summer. Tonight, the sixth- and seventh-graders celebrated the eighth-grade graduates—a time to say goodbye to everyone as they moved on to high school, and to welcome the
younger students into the upper classes. Lizzy arrived just in time to set up the dessert table and join in on the celebration. The boiling sun was beginning to dip into the cool ocean, and all along the beach fire-pits were smoking with lobster, corn, and potatoes. She looked around at the cheery sight, breathing in all the yummy smells wafting on the breeze.

  “Did you bring the marshmallows? Because if you didn’t, you will feel the wrath of Krista,” greeted Kai, twisting her face into a googly-eyed madwoman.

  “Arrrgh, does that girl ever get tired of bossing everyone around?”

  Lizzy tossed the grocery bag to Kai.

  “I guess that’s what we get for voting her class president.”

  “You mean the brainwashed kids in school did. I didn’t vote for her.”

  “Me neither. Oh, and Jeff said to meet him at lifeguard station number eleven and he would dig up some clams for us to smoke on the fire,” said Kai, puckering her lips.

  Lizzy stifled an urge to gag. “Not for me. I don’t eat anything that comes out of a shell.”

  Partway down the beach a giant bonfire roared. Lizzy could see many of her classmates milling around, eating dinner and singing songs. The sounds of guitars and harmonicas played off the waves up and down the shoreline, putting everyone in good spirits. They found Jeff’s pit where he was busy heaping up piles of juicy clams.

  “Hey, guys, watch this.”

  He took his clamming fork, and digging deep into the damp sand, pulled out a baby clam. And tilting his head back popped the whole thing, shell and all, into his waiting mouth. After a minute or two, with the innards stripped, he spat the shell out onto the sand.

  “Eeewww, that’s gross,” said Lizzy, disgusted.

  “Wow, you are talented,” said Kai.

  “Yeah, great party trick.”

  Kai thought he faked it.

  “No, seriously, how’d you do that?”

  “Um, he ate it, Kai,” said Lizzy, pursing her lips. “It’s a talent the Pinkertons are known for around here.”

  “Sucking the life out of things?”