Flush

  “There it is, Noah.” Shelly pointed to a door. On it hung a hand-carved sign that spelled out the word “Mermaids.”

  “Don’t move,” she told me, and promptly disappeared into the stall. Seconds later the door cracked open, and Shelly’s blond head poked out. She looked around warily, then signaled for me to join her.

  Inside the ladies’ restroom.

  So I did. The two of us could barely fit.

  “Where’s the stuff?” she whispered.

  I patted Abbey’s backpack. The day before, Shelly and I had divided the stash of food coloring: seventeen bottles for me, seventeen for her.

  “You got the sign?” I asked.

  She smiled and held it up for me to see: a square piece of cardboard on which she had printed in capital letters with a jet-black marker: OUT OF ORDER.

  “Guaranteed privacy,” she assured me.

  “But what about you?” I was worried that she wouldn’t have a safe place to flush her supply of the dye.

  “There’s another Mermaids’ john up front. I’ll use that one for my potty breaks.”

  “But what if somebody’s already in there?” I asked.

  “Then I’ll crash the Mermen’s.”

  “The men’s room? You serious?”

  Shelly shrugged. “Hey, who’s gonna stop me?”

  She had a point. “I gotta get back to the bar,” she said. “Billy Babcock’s waitin’ on me all moony-eyed. Poor sap thinks he’s in love.” She gave my shoulder a friendly tweak. “Good luck, young Underwood.”

  “You, too, Shelly.”

  I locked the door the instant it closed. As soon as I heard her tack up the OUT OF ORDER sign, I unzipped Abbey’s backpack and removed the dye bottles.

  The head on a boat is basically a glorified closet, with barely enough room to sit and do your business. This one smelled like a mixture of stale beer, Clorox bleach, and Shelly’s fruity perfume, but it was still less obnoxious than most public commodes.

  And as uncomfortable as it was, it was way better than being sealed up inside a liquor crate.

  For a moment I wondered what my father would have thought if he could see me there, locked in the Mermaids’ head on the Coral Queen. The parent part of him would have been mad at me for sneaking aboard, while the nature loving part of him would have been proud of me for trying to nail Dusty Muleman.

  Knowing Dad, he would’ve had one firm piece of advice: Don’t get caught!

  When I opened the first bottle of food coloring, I saw that Shelly was right. The gel oozed out like molasses. Carefully I squeezed the plastic container until every gooey purple drop landed in the toilet hole.

  Then I gave a good hard flush to make sure the dye went where it was supposed to go. Shelly had warned me that the stuff could get gummy pretty quick. If it stuck in the plumbing pipes, our plan would be ruined.

  There was only one way to check it out. I knelt down, pinched my nose, and peered into the nasty depths of the head. Not a speck of fuchsia could be seen.

  So far, so good.

  One bottle down, sixteen to go.

  Time passes incredibly slowly when you’re trapped in a rest-room.

  Whenever I got ready to make a break, people would stop in loud groups outside the door—talking, laughing, singing along to the music.

  I was dying to get out of there, but I had to be patient. I had to wait for a lull.

  I kept thinking of Abbey, alone in Rado’s dinghy, reading her book by flashlight. Even though there were no dangerous wild animals in the mangroves, I was afraid she might get spooked by some of the freaky night noises. If you’ve never heard two raccoons fighting before, you’d swear it was a chainsaw massacre.

  When I wasn’t worrying about my sister, I was thinking about what else was happening on board the Coral Queen. With so much partying, the other toilets were probably getting flushed nonstop. If Dusty Muleman pulled his usual trick, all that raw waste would be streaming out of the basin later.

  It made me mad, which was good. I needed to stay mad in order to do what I had to. Every two or three minutes I looked at my watch, wondering why the hands weren’t moving faster.

  Mom and Dad were probably still at dinner. Afterward they were supposed to go to a late movie in Tavernier. That meant they’d be home around twelve-thirty, so Abbey and I had to be back at the house and in bed before then.

  The Coral Queen closed at midnight. If I waited until then to slip away, we’d have less than thirty minutes to run the dinghy back to Rado’s dock, grab our bikes, and race home. I didn’t like the odds because it was dark on the water and the dinghy was slow. I also didn’t like the idea of three more hours in the ladies’ room.

  I decided to make a run for it, crowds and all, and pray that nobody would try to catch me. Shelly had said that most of the regular customers were so heavy into the gambling that a rhinoceros could get loose on board and they wouldn’t care. I hoped she was right.

  Quietly I gathered up the empty dye bottles—the only evidence that could ever incriminate me—and stowed them in Abbey’s backpack.

  But as I reached out and unlocked the door, the metal handle began to jiggle violently. Somebody was trying to get into the head.

  I grabbed the handle with both hands and braced my shoes against the sink.

  “Hey, open up!” demanded a croaky female voice. “I gotta go!”

  Either she didn’t see the OUT OF ORDER sign, or she was so desperate that it didn’t matter. From outside came a heavy grunt, and the handle was nearly yanked from my grip.

  The door opened no more than two inches, but it was enough to give me a startling peek at the intruder. She looked about eighty-five in both age and weight, which wasn’t what I expected. She was pulling so ferociously on the door that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a three-hundred-pound sumo wrestler on the other side.

  “You open up right this second!” the old woman squawked. “I gotta go now!”

  She wore a shiny copper-colored wig that fit like a helmet. Her face was caked with powdery makeup, and her sparkly fake eyelashes were longer than a camel’s. A cigarette dangled from parrotfish lips that were puffy and painted the color of sliced mangoes.

  “Can’t you read the sign?” I asked through the crack.

  “What sign, Einstein?”

  That’s when I spotted the piece of cardboard between her feet on the scuffed floor. Shelly’s tack must have come loose.

  “Hey, you’re not even a Mermaid!” the old woman snapped, spitting her cigarette. “Get outta that bathroom ‘fore I call Security.”

  It took all my strength to pull the door shut.

  “You little sicko!” She let out a string of cuss words that would have put my Grandma Janet into cardiac arrest.

  “Go away,” I pleaded. “This is an emergency.”

  “Emergency? I’ll show you a damn emergency.” The parrotfish lady pounded at the flimsy door with her bony fists. “My bladder’s about to blow like Mount Saint Helen, you hear me, young man?”

  Now she was shouting like a maniac. I knew it wouldn’t be long before a crew member came running to see what was wrong.

  “Listen up, you brat,” the woman said. “I’m gonna count to five and then I’m bustin’ in—and you better not be sittin’ on that john when I do. You read me, junior? It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

  “Please don’t,” I said, but it was hopeless.

  “One! Two! …”

  There was no other choice. I stood up from the toilet, put on the backpack, and lowered one shoulder. When the nasty old buzzard barked “Five!” I crashed out the door, ducked under her flailing, twig-sized arms, and took off running.

  Nobody would’ve paid much attention if she hadn’t started shrieking: “Catch him! Catch that rotten little pervert!”

  Luckily, I’m pretty fast and not real tall, so I was able to dodge and weave through the legs of the gamblers. A few of them glanced up, and one or two actually made a lame grab for my shirt. Fortunat
ely, most of them had been celebrating hard and were in no condition to chase after me.

  Shelly’s eyes got as wide as saucers when I flew past the bar. A bleary, leathery-faced man who I assumed was Billy Babcock spun on his stool and exclaimed, “Is that a kid on the boat?”

  I headed topside. An angry yell rose from behind me, and I turned to see two humongous guys in hot pursuit. They looked seriously ticked off. Each wore a tight red T-shirt with the words EVENT STAFF silk-screened across the front.

  Shelly had warned me about them—the bouncers.

  They bellowed at me to stop, but that wasn’t going to happen. I scampered to the upper deck and ran straight for the bow. Reflected below, in the glassy basin, were the twinkling, Christmassy lights of the Coral Queen.

  It was a long way down to the water; longer than I’d imagined.

  “Game’s over,” a voice said.

  I turned to face the bouncers, 400-odd pounds of meat and muscle. Panting from the chase, they wore cocky grins. They thought they had me cornered, but they were wrong.

  One of them beckoned with a beefy finger. “Let’s go, boy.”

  I kicked off my shoes and stuffed them into Abbey’s backpack.

  The other one spoke up: “Chill out, shrimp. Don’t try anything stupid.”

  After that “shrimp” remark, I couldn’t resist messing with them. “If I fall overboard and drown,” I said, “you guys are in deep trouble.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “My mom and dad’ll sue Mr. Muleman for every cent he’s got, so you’d better watch it.”

  The bouncers looked at each other and their smiles faded.

  While they huddled to discuss their next move, I ducked under the railing and edged into position. I purposely didn’t look down again.

  One of the goons took a step toward me. “Whaddya think you’re doin’? You nuts?” he asked.

  They were getting ready to rush me, I could tell.

  “Move away from there!” ordered the other bouncer, also moving forward. “You’re gonna break your fool neck.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.

  Something like panic showed in their pudgy, squinting faces. They figured they’d lose their jobs, or worse, if they let something bad happen to me.

  One of the men whipped out a walkie-talkie and held it close to his mouth. “Luno! Better come check this out!”

  “Yeah, tell him to hurry,” the other man said. “This kid’s a real space case.”

  It was definitely time to go.

  The bouncers reached out and lunged, but I was already in the air, falling sweetly to freedom.

  Or so I told myself as I hollered, “Geronimo!”

  SIXTEEN

  I don’t remember hitting the water, but I do remember sinking.

  Not very deep, but deep enough to remind me that I was wearing Abbey’s backpack.

  I could have ditched it, but that would have been the same as littering. Besides, MS. ABBEY UNDERWOOD was written with a bright red marker in two different places on the backpack. If somebody found it and saw all those empty food-coloring bottles, we were busted for sure.

  Hurriedly I loosened one strap of the backpack to free my right shoulder, which made it easier to swim. I wasn’t breaking any Olympic records, but I was definitely putting some distance between myself and the Coral Queen. At any moment I expected the blue dinghy to come chugging into view, Abbey riding to the rescue.

  Behind me, where the casino boat was moored, a shouting match had erupted. I turned my head and spotted Luno stomping back and forth under the dock lights, hollering furiously at the two bouncers on the top deck. The bouncers were yelling back, pointing across the basin.

  Pointing at me, of course.

  I kicked harder, thinking: Hurry up, Abbey. Hurry.

  “Stop, boy!” Luno commanded. “You stop now!”

  He was running along the docks, trying to keep even with me, so I dove beneath the surface. The dirty water stung my eyes and I squeezed them shut. It didn’t matter, because even with my eyes wide open I couldn’t have seen a whale three inches in front of my nose—not in that murky basin in the dead of night. I was swimming blind, but at least I was swimming.

  When I came up for air, a white blast of light caught me squarely in the face.

  “There he is!” Luno cried out. He was standing on a fish-cleaning table, sweeping a portable spotlight across the basin.

  I ducked like a turtle and swam farther. When I popped up again, the same thing happened—the bright light, Luno yelling at me to stop. This time, though, he sounded closer.

  Where was my sister?

  The channel was at least a hundred yards away. Luno would run out of dock before I’d run out of water, but I was getting exhausted. My clothes were slowing me down, and the waterlogged backpack felt heavier by the minute.

  Still no sign of the dinghy.

  Even if my “Geronimo!” wasn’t loud enough, Abbey surely must have heard Dusty Muleman’s goons bellowing like bull elephants. I took a gulp of air and dove under again. Two kicks later I struck what seemed to be a wall of blubber.

  A wall that moved.

  Next thing I remember was me spinning like a top—then shooting upward, launched by some invisible brute force. Flying out of the water, I opened my eyes just in time to see an enormous brown shape, mossy and slick, pushing away at an incredible speed. A broad rounded tail slapped the surface so hard, it sounded like a rifle.

  Right away I knew what had happened: I’d crashed into a sleeping manatee.

  I splashed down in a tumble. For a solid minute I treaded water, not going anywhere, until my heart quit racing and I was able to catch my breath. The marina was momentarily quiet except for the merry chime of steel drums from the Coral Queen’s calypso band.

  Where in the world was Abbey? And where was that caveman Luno?

  I began swimming again, although not as bravely as before. The collision with the sea cow had rattled me—I couldn’t help wondering what other creatures might be cruising around the dark cloudy basin. As huge as manatees are, they feed strictly on vegetation and have no appetite for humans. That’s not true for everything that swims at night, especially certain large and fearless sharks.

  The water was as warm as soup, but an icy shiver ran down my neck as I kicked onward. I only know a few prayers by heart, but I said all of them to myself. Twice. That’s how scared I was.

  I can’t say for certain whether God was listening, but it wasn’t long afterward that I heard the wheezy chug-a-chug-chug of a small outboard motor. I stopped moving and fixed my eyes in the direction of the noise. A familiar shape took form along the edge of the shadows, near the mouth of the basin.

  As the shape drew closer, into the pale wash of the dock lights, I recognized the blue dinghy and the spindly silhouette of my sister at the helm.

  Excitedly I called Abbey’s name, and she responded with our pre-arranged signal: three rapid blinks of her flashlight. I set out for the little boat as fast as I could, not caring how much noise I made. All I wanted was to get out of the water in one piece.

  Abbey whistled, but I was too exhausted to whistle back. The dinghy was no longer heading my way; in fact, it seemed to be sliding away in the current. By the time I caught up, my arms and legs were starting to cramp. I grabbed on to the bow and, with my sister’s help, hauled myself aboard.

  At first I couldn’t even talk—I just sat there, dripping and panting like a tired old dog. Finally, I shook off the backpack and dried my face with the tail of Abbey’s shirt.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I nodded and rubbed my aching muscles. “How come you turned off the engine?”

  “I didn’t,” Abbey said. “It stalled out.”

  “Nice.”

  “That’s how come I was late getting here. It took like forever to get the stupid thing started!”

  I stepped to the stern to confront the creaky old Evinrude. The starter cord was a three-foot len
gth of rope that wrapped tightly around the engine’s flywheel. A small block of plastic served as a handle on the exposed end of the rope, so you could pull it without shredding your fingers.

  Hand-cranking an outboard is harder than starting a lawn mower. Marine engines have more horsepower, so it takes more strength to turn the flywheel. After bracing my heels against the transom of the dinghy, I locked both hands around the grip of the starter cord.

  “Do it,” said my sister.

  “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  I reared back and yanked. The engine shuddered, coughed once, then went silent.

  “Crap,” mumbled Abbey.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, which was ridiculous. Only an idiot wouldn’t have been worried.

  I shifted my weight slightly and took hold of the rope again.

  “Let it happen, cap’n,” said Abbey.

  At that instant the dinghy lit up like a movie stage—Luno had found us with his spotlight. Abbey and I shielded our eyes and tried to see where he was. His voice gave us the answer: He was close.

  Too close.

  “You again!” we heard him snarl. “You two punks! This time you no get away!”

  He was standing at the end of the last dock in the marina. Off our port side was the mouth of the basin and, beyond that, open sea. If I could only get Rado’s darn engine started, Abbey and I could escape.

  Again I tried the starter cord, and again nothing happened but a sad sputter.

  “We’re drifting toward the dock,” my sister said gloomily.

  “I can see that.”

  “Should we jump?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Four, five, six times I pulled the rope with the same depressing result. Meanwhile a breeze was pushing the dinghy steadily toward the dock, where Luno was pacing like a hungry cat. For amusement he would occasionally zap us with the hot beam of his spotlight.

  Abbey crouched low in the bow, but I had to keep standing. It was the only way to put enough force into pulling the starter cord.