Beach Party Surf Monkey

  “Boom!” We fist-bumped on it.

  “Pinky’s all set, too,” I told Gloria. “He’ll be in the parking lot singing ‘The Ballad of the Jewel Thieves’ starting at nine o’clock sharp.”

  “There’s a song like that?”

  “Yep. I wrote it for him.”

  “And Pinky can sing?”

  “Totally! He’s been the lead in the school musicals and a soloist with the church choir since kindergarten. After he fires up the crowd, I step in and lead the first tour at nine-fifteen. We hit all the high points of the jewel thieves hiding out at the motel.”

  “Slight problem, P.T. I don’t remember all that many high points.”

  “I know. That’s why I had to make up a bunch. I drilled a bullet hole in Morty D. Mouse’s fiberglass butt.”

  “Um, the Sneemer brothers didn’t have guns. They didn’t shoot holes into any of the statues.”

  “Maybe not. But if they’d had guns, they could’ve. Oh—Grandpa promised me he’ll repaint the Muffler Man statue into a cat burglar while we’re at school. This is going to be huge!”

  On Saturday morning, our sun-drenched parking lot was packed with cars and people.

  Pinky strolled around, plunking the three guitar chords he knows and singing the song I wrote for the grand opening of our Wonderland Jewel Thief Tour.

  “Just step right up

  And you’ll hear a tale,

  A tale of gold and jewels.

  It took place on this very spot

  With two crooks who were fools!”

  “First tour starts in fifteen minutes,” I announced through my megaphone. “Tickets are just five dollars, ten for VIP privileges.”

  “What’s in the VIP package?” asked a dad herding six kids.

  “Exclusive potty breaks. In addition to the public facilities in the lobby, VIPs receive an all-access pass to the bathrooms in rooms 103 and 114, the very same toilets the notorious Sneemer brothers used while they were hiding out here at the motel.”

  “Seven VIP tickets,” said the dad, eagerly handing me seventy bucks. For him, it was probably a bargain. His kids were guzzling juice boxes the way kindergartners do after a soccer game. One already had a leg jiggling in full “I’ve got to pee” mode.

  The juice boxes came from the concession stand, manned by Grandpa.

  “Who wants a Cel-Ray soda?” he cried. “Cel-Ray will make your day!”

  And then he burped. Good thing nobody was standing too close. They might’ve keeled over.

  “Focus on the juice boxes, Grandpa,” I whispered. “And the jewelry cake balls.”

  Gloria and I invented those. We went to Dunkin’ Donuts, picked up a couple dozen Munchkins, and dusted them with silver sugar sprinkles and those tiny silver candy beads they sell in the baking aisle at the supermarket.

  Gloria was making major money at her souvenir stand. She was right: the penny candy in the fancy blue boxes was selling like cheap imitation jewelry on the Home Shopping Network (not that I ever watch those kinds of shows). So were the sparkly new “Wonderland: Jewel of St. Pete Beach” T-shirts studded with rhinestones over the two Os so they looked like diamond rings.

  We were going to clear a couple thousand dollars, easy. If we did this every Saturday, we’d never, ever have to sell out to our skeevy next-door neighbor Mr. Conch—the man with the gold-plated wrecking ball.

  Mom came out of the office to join me and Grandpa near the concession stand. She had a rolled-up brochure from an Arizona retirement community in her hand. I wanted to tell her, I’m a kid! I’m too young to retire!

  But I could tell she was still seriously considering selling out to Mr. Conch.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said. “These people are each paying you five dollars to walk around, look at the swimming pool, and check out a couple of the statues? They could do that for free.”

  “True,” I said. “But they wouldn’t hear the action-packed story of how we beat the bandits. On the tour, they can thrill to all the chilling details and hear the never-before-told tale of what happened when I warned the Sneemer brothers they couldn’t fill up their huge ice chest with free ice from the ice machine.”

  “What happened?”

  “See? Even you’re interested! And then I’ll show ’em the hole in Morty D. Mouse’s fiberglass butt. Were shots fired when the bandits fled on foot, chased by Mad Max, our trusty dog?”

  “P.T.?” said Mom. “We don’t have a dog.”

  “I know. That’s why I have to say it as if it’s a question. That way I’m not lying. This is what English teachers call a tall tale. Only instead of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox, we’re giving them the Sneemer brothers and Morty, our big gray mouse.”

  “Relax, Wanda,” said Grandpa. “We’re a roadside attraction, not a history museum. These folks came here for the old razzle-dazzle.”

  “And I’m gonna give it to them!”

  “Attaboy, P.T.!”

  Of course, that was when Mr. Frumpkes, our history teacher, pulled into the parking lot.

  And he’d brought his own bullhorn.

  “Good citizens of St. Petersburg Beach!” cried Mr. Frumpkes through his bullhorn, which was squealing like a sick dolphin. “Visiting tourists! Beware! The story you are about to hear is not true. It is, in fact, fallacious!”

  “What do you mean?” asked the dad who’d just given me seventy bucks so his kids could use a jewel thief’s potty.

  “It’s a lie!” Mr. Frumpkes waved a newspaper in the air. “Here’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!”

  I hate when people say that.

  It means everything is about to become super boring. Where’s the drama? The suspense? The story?

  “That young whippersnapper over there is a known exaggerator!” Frumpkes declared. “He is an unreliable narrator!”

  Mom reached out. Squeezed my hand. The look on her face? She was eyeballing Mr. Frumpkes the way a mama bear eyeballs anybody who gets between her and her cub.

  “The stolen jewels were not recovered here at this motel,” Mr. Frumpkes blared on. “Hardly! They were found all the way across the bay in Tampa at an animal sanctuary known as Wild Cat Safariland!”

  “Maybe so,” snapped Gloria. “But the jewel thieves really did stay here. P.T., his grandfather, and I really were the ones who recovered the stolen merchandise!”

  “Correct,” said Mr. Frumpkes. “Therefore, if you insist on giving tours to celebrate your glorious adventures, Miss Ortega, I suggest you pile these poor people into a bus and do your tour over in Tampa—not down the street from my mother’s house! Her mah-jongg group is having trouble finding parking spaces!”

  Long story short?

  Everybody left.

  We refunded all their money.

  We also ate jewelry cake pops for lunch. Mom and Mr. Ortega said the candy necklaces, jawbreaker bracelets, and gummy bear earrings would be our dessert “for the foreseeable future.”

  Actually, just Mom said that. Then she went back to Googling “good schools in Tucson, Arizona.”

  Mr. Ortega tried to buck us up with more of his sportscaster lingo.

  “Sure, you’ve got to go back and regroup, maybe circle the wagons, make some adjustments at halftime. But remember, kids, it ain’t over till it’s over.”

  “Dad?” said Gloria. “It’s over. Everybody left.”

  Mr. Ortega nodded grimly. “The ball just didn’t bounce our way today, Gloria. We have to put this loss behind us.”

  Gloria and I spent the rest of our Saturday moping around and hanging out in the lobby with Cheeseball, my cat. I was wondering how Cheeseball would like all that dry heat out in Arizona. If Mom made us move, it might make her fur less frizzy.

  “Do you realize,” said Gloria, fiddling with a whirring calculator, “this is our first moneymaking venture that actually lost money?”

  Cheeseball meowed. I think she was trying to cheer us up.

  Suddenly, I heard a sc
reech. Cheeseball shot out her claws. They dug through my shorts as she sprang out of my lap.

  A car slammed on its brakes. Tires squealed. Horns honked. Someone screamed.

  Cheeseball ran under the nearest sofa.

  She doesn’t like loud, high-pitched noises.

  Especially when they sound like a car wreck.

  Gloria and I raced out of the lobby and into the parking lot fronting Gulf Boulevard.

  Several large SUVs had skidded to a stop. Guys with cameras jumped out of the big black vehicles to snap pictures and grab videos of a shaggy-haired blond guy in board shorts and white-framed sunglasses who was being chased by a mob of girls.

  Now the girls (not the car brakes) were the ones doing all the shrieking and squealing.

  “Yo!” Shaggy, who was sort of short, shouted at me, whipping off his shades. “Help me out, man! These girls love me like crazy!”

  “Uh, this way,” I said, because I could tell he needed help. I grabbed hold of his arm.

  “Yo, ease up, Slick. Just got a new tat inked on that arm.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Aidan!” somebody shouted behind a clicking camera. “Look this way!”

  “Aidan!” shouted a man with a microphone. “What are you doing on St. Pete Beach?”

  “Aidan, did you really break up with Dasani so you could date Aisha?” shouted someone else.

  “What can I say, man? I love the ladies! All of ’em.”

  Some girls shrieked some more. Louder. Some guys started shrieking, too. It reminded me of when a flock of seagulls discovers an unguarded sandwich on the beach.

  “But please,” the guy named Aidan shouted back, “leave Aisha alone! Let our love, like, blossom.”

  More shrieking. Squealing. One swoon.

  The crowd crushed forward.

  “Back up, people,” said Gloria, standing firmly in her Wonder Woman power pose, which she heard about in some kind of talk on the Internet. She tells me standing like that makes her feel invincible (which, trust me, she totally is). “This parking lot is for the private use and enjoyment of registered guests only.”

  I hustled the little guy toward the lobby door. As I did, I checked out his golden bangs. Somebody had cut them to look messy but totally neat. He also had these green-green eyes (they sort of reminded me of swamp scum) that I’d seen before. I couldn’t remember where until I finally did: inside Ava’s locker at school.

  The guy in the board shorts was none other than the one and only Aidan Tyler!

  As I grabbed the door, I realized that if I took Aidan Tyler into the lobby of the Wonderland, he’d be like a prize blowfish in an aquarium. His fans would just press up against the glass to gawk at him. Some girl would probably make smoochy faces at him, too. And that would mean I’d have to spend my weekend cleaning greasy lipstick smears off our floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Change of plans,” I told him.

  “That’s cool, man. I’m up for whatever.”

  “Gloria?” I shouted over my shoulder. “I’m going with plan D!”

  “Gotcha!” she hollered back, never breaking out of her power pose.

  “So, what’s plan D?” asked Aidan.

  “We hide,” I whispered. “Inside a giant dinosaur.”

  Dino, our big green fiberglass dinosaur around back, has a secret door in his rump.

  Grandpa used to store junk in there—putters for the miniature golf course, lawn flamingos, paint cans, old sneakers.

  “It was cheaper than buying another shed!” he told me.

  Gloria and I have since turned it into our private clubhouse. It’s a great place to hang out, swap stories, and plot schemes—except in August. Then it’s more like a sauna inside an oven located at the molten core of the earth.

  That day, though, it was the perfect hiding place for teen idol Aidan Tyler.

  “Here comes Gloria,” I said, staring through the periscope we’d rigged up inside Dino’s tail. “You’d better stand away from the door.”

  “Too true,” said Aidan, backing up against the curved fiberglass walls, which are kind of bumpy and knobby on the inside of a statue, since, you know, nobody really looks at that part.

  I swung the door open. Gloria leapt in. I slammed the door shut and hurried back to the periscope.

  “Did they follow me?” Gloria asked breathlessly.

  I held my finger to my lips.

  We needed to keep quiet.

  Through the periscope, I could see a clump of girls tromping around like they were on an Easter egg hunt.

  “Aidan? We love you! Aidan? Where are you?”

  Aidan slumped to the floor, shaking his head. “It’s, like, crazy out there, man.”

  Gloria motioned for him to remain quiet. Then she gestured to our snack box. It’s a cooler we keep loaded with Oreos, cheese balls, kettle corn—the essentials. We would keep soda in there, too, but we’re not idiots. Some days it gets so hot inside Dino’s rear end, cans explode.

  Trust me.

  We learned this the hard way.

  We did have some bottles of water. And a couple of cartons of warm orange juice because, like I said, in Florida, OJ availability at all times is mandatory.

  I passed a bunch of the snacks and a bottle of warmish water over to Aidan Tyler.

  “Hey, you guys!” we heard one of the girls holler. “There he is! I think I see Aidan! Down on the beach!”

  “SQUEEEEE!”

  On the other side of the dinosaur walls, we heard the muffled sounds of a teenaged cattle stampede.

  We gave it a few more minutes. Aidan sipped his warm water. Gloria nibbled an Oreo. I rechecked the periscope.

  “The coast is clear,” I announced. “There’s nobody out there except a pelican. No, wait. That’s a new statue.”

  “Let’s give the paparazzi out front a few more minutes to pack up their gear,” suggested Gloria.

  “I can dig it, man,” said Aidan.

  In case you’ve been living in a cave (or the butt end of a dinosaur) for a few years, here’s the scoop on Aidan Tyler: His concerts always sell out the day tickets go on sale. He’s only seventeen and already has a dozen platinum records and millions of lunch boxes with his face and green-green eyes plastered all over them. He’s on the cover of Teen Ink, J-14, and Popstar! magazines all the time and probably spends two hours every day scrunching his hair to make it look perfectly messy. Come to think of it, he’s so rich he probably pays someone to scrunch it for him.

  “This, like, your motel, man?” Aidan asked me.

  “Sort of. My grandpa owns it. My mom runs it.”

  “Tell you what, dude—because you two, like, rescued me from the mob and because I’m, like, a totally awesome individual, I’m gonna toss your motel’s name into the hat.”

  “Fantastic!” I said. “Um, what hat are we talking about?”

  “For my first-ever movie. That’s why I’m here in St. Petersburg, F-L-A. We’re, like, scouting locations for my upcoming big-screen debut. Competition is off the chain. Every motel, hotel, and resort in Tampa Bay wants the gig. They’re pitching my producers tomorrow.”

  “Quick question,” I said, remembering how much money we’d just lost on our Jewel Thief Tour, which tanked even faster than Silly Bandz. “When you shoot a movie at a location, do you, you know, pay?”

  “No. I mean I, personally, don’t pay for anything anymore, man. I have people who do that kind of stuff for me. I don’t even carry coinage in my pocket, just a bundle of Benjamins, because, you know, that’s how I roll.”

  Gloria and I both nodded.

  “But the movie company?” said Aidan. “They’ll pay you a ton to rent out your place for a few weeks. Plus, if your motel’s in my movie, it’ll be famous forever, man—just like that hotel where Elvis filmed Blue Hawaii!”

  “We’ll be famous?” I was practically drooling.

  “Forever, dude. Just like me.”

  I knew that Aidan had to meet Grandpa.

  When it
comes to selling the wonders of the Wonderland, nobody does it better than Walt Wilkie.

  If, with Aidan Tyler’s help, we could turn our motel into a famous movie location landmark, Mom would forget all about selling out to Mr. Conch and moving to Arizona. Too many people from all over the world would want to visit and stay at the Wonderland once it became a movie star.

  So I texted Grandpa:

  MEET ME BEHIND DINO!

  He, of course, called me back.

  “P.T.?” he said. “What are these words someone’s typing on my telephone screen here? Why is it all of a sudden making funny squiggly sounds?”

  Grandpa’s new to smartphones.

  “Meet us behind Dino!” I told him.

  “Why?”

  “We have a very important guest.”

  “Ohhh. Is it the president?”

  “No.”

  “Then it can wait. I’m eating lunch. Bologna and mustard on white bread with pickle relish. You want one?”

  “No thanks. Grandpa? Our guest is a major celebrity and he’s looking for a motel to use as the setting for his first movie.”

  “Ooh. They pay for that.”

  “I know. And nobody bulldozes down motels once they’ve been in a movie. Hurry!”

  I ended the call and poked my head out of the giant dinosaur’s tail.

  “Looks like everybody’s gone….”

  Gloria came out after me. Aidan followed her.

  “So what’s your name, man?” Aidan asked me.

  “P.T.”

  “Solid. Easy to spell. Yo, I’m Aidan Tyler. The Tyes.”

  “Yeah,” said Gloria. “We got that. I’m Gloria Ortega.”

  “Nice. You a fan?”

  “Yes. Of Barbara Corcoran. She’s an entrepreneur on Shark Tank. You ever watch that show?”

  “Girl, I own a shark tank. Got me some piranhas in there, too.”

  “So who’s this handsome young fellow?” asked Grandpa, who’d ambled over from his workshop to join us behind Dino. He was clicking his tongue like crazy. I could tell: he had a wad of white bread mustard-glued to the roof of his mouth. Again.