“We’re very lucky,” Hercules said. “Hey, Homer, is it true what Lorelei said earlier? Do I always sound like I’m in the middle of a spelling bee?”
“Only sometimes,” Homer replied.
“Does that make me weird?”
Homer wasn’t sure how to respond. Pointing out the Latin root of words definitely made Hercules a bit weird. Digging holes all over Milkydale definitely made Homer weird. Pink hair made Lorelei weird. Smelling treasure made Dog… well, it certainly didn’t make him weird. It made him kinda cool. But eating paper made Dog weird. “Everyone’s weird,” Homer said. “Some people are just better at hiding it than others.” Hercules smiled.
Lorelei led the way across the park. Grass stains glowed on the rump of her pink jumpsuit. A hole gaped at the back of Hercules’s rugby shirt. Homer’s left sleeve was slit down the seam. The scratches that each of them bore on their hands and faces were badges of honor, for they’d just survived one of the most productive twenty-four hours in treasure-hunting history. Not only had they reconstructed one of the world’s most famous maps, they’d translated its riddle and found an expert to calculate the coordinates, and now they had a destination.
But having a destination was like having a cake without frosting, which, in Homer’s opinion, was the best part. They still had a treasure to claim.
It was early morning, so only a few exercise fanatics were jogging in the park. A newspaper truck pulled into a parking lot. A man jumped from the truck, opened a newspaper kiosk with a key, shoved the day’s fresh, crisp newspapers inside, then drove off. Homer couldn’t help but notice the giant headline:
NOTORIOUS THIEF ESCAPES
FROM SOUPWATER PRISON
Homer might have ignored the headline. After all, he had more pressing things on his mind than a thief’s escape. But the photo below the headline caught his attention. It was a mug shot of a perfectly groomed woman with slicked-back black hair and a strand of pearls. Homer shuddered as if he’d just swallowed spoiled goat milk. “Lorelei!” he hollered, his voice cracking. “Lorelei!”
“What?” she called, whipping around. “Why are you two always so slow?”
Hercules stood next to Homer and peered over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Homer fumbled through his pockets. “Do you have a quarter?” he asked. Hercules shook his head. It cost two quarters to buy the paper and Homer had just the one. “Lorelei, come here!” he shouted.
She stomped back toward him. “What?”
“Do you have a quarter?” he asked, his eyes wild.
“Why—?”
“Just give me a quarter!” Spit flew from his mouth.
“Jeez. Why are you so grumpy?” She reached into her pocket and set a quarter into his hand. He stuffed the coins into the slot and opened the kiosk door, grabbing the top newspaper. Then he read the article aloud.
Madame la Directeur, once the esteemed director of The City’s Museum of Natural History, is the first person to have escaped from Soupwater Prison. Thanks to an anonymous tip that she’d been stealing gems from the museum’s Cave of Brilliance and replacing them with fakes, she was arrested earlier this year and sentenced to twenty years in the maximum-security facility.
It is not clear how she escaped, but an investigation is under way. A motorcycle rider claims he gave a ride to someone fitting her description and dropped her off just outside The City.
“I don’t know how she survived our swamp,” the prison warden said. “It’s full of alligators and piranhas.”
The whereabouts of Madame la Directeur is unknown at this time. Law-abiding citizens are instructed to telephone the police if they know anything that might lead to her arrest.
Had the air suddenly been sucked from the park? Homer couldn’t quite catch his breath. “Where do you think she is?” Hercules asked.
All the color washed from Lorelei’s and Homer’s faces. “The lair,” they replied.
PART FIVE
WATERY
PLACES
The word enemy is filled with ugliness. Hercules would tell you that it comes from the Latin inimicus, which means “foe.” Enemy isn’t a word to be used lightly. For example, if your teacher assigns you a fifty-page report on the composition of moon dirt and you do not care one bit about the composition of moon dirt, then you might consider your teacher to be a bit of an annoyance, but he is not your enemy. Another example—if the girl sitting behind you in the movie theater keeps flicking popcorn seeds into your hair, you will probably dislike that girl, but she is not your enemy. A true enemy is someone who seeks to confound, overthrow, or injure an opponent.
Madame la Directeur had done all three of those things. Confound: She lied to Homer about the membership coin, about his uncle, and about L.O.S.T. Overthrow: She stole the membership coin from Homer as well as all of his uncle’s possessions, including the map. Injure: She murdered Homer’s uncle, and then she tried to feed Homer, Lorelei, and Dog to her mutant carnivorous tortoise.
Madame la Directeur wasn’t simply Homer’s enemy. She was his überenemy.
After reading the newspaper article, Homer and Lorelei sank onto a bus bench, their bodies slumping like Lulu Bell’s deflated balloon.
“Now we’ll never get the submarine,” Lorelei said. “That old witch will never let me back into the lair.”
“She’ll never let me in, either,” Homer said. Or if she does, he thought, it would be just like the Hansel and Gretel story, where the old lady lures the little children into her candy house, only to enslave the girl and cook the fat boy over a fire.
“It was a crazy idea anyway,” Hercules said, squeezing onto the bench between them. “We don’t know the first thing about driving a submarine. There are all sorts of health issues with underwater travel. Too much pressure can blow an eardrum. And then there’s the bends. Have you ever heard of the bends? It’s when nitrogen bubbles get trapped in your veins and—”
“It wasn’t a crazy idea,” Lorelei said, jabbing Hercules with her elbow. “It wasn’t crazy at all.”
Homer remembered a day, not so long ago, when Uncle Drake had come to Milkydale to visit. He’d arrived in his usual manner, with an armful of strange presents for his two nephews and niece—a stuffed iguana for Gwendolyn, a miniature zeppelin for Squeak, and a new world atlas for Homer. After drinking lemonade and eating cherry pie with the rest of the family, Homer and Uncle Drake stretched out beneath the willow tree. They watched the ants trailing past, collecting twigs to carry back to their nest. Uncle Drake pointed to one ant carrying a stiff brown leaf. “See that little critter? It’s got one thing on its mind, to get that leaf back to the nest. It’s determined. Now watch this.” Drake took off his shoe and stuck it right across the trail, blocking the ant’s path. The ant wandered in a circle for a bit, but then took a sharp left turn and marched right around the shoe until it was reunited with the original path, the leaf still in its possession. Drake had smiled. “Homer, my boy, if we had one-tenth of an ant’s determination, we could do anything. With determination, anything is possible.”
Homer straightened his shoulders and took a long, deep breath. “It’s not a crazy idea. That submarine belonged to my uncle, and I’m going to get it.” Dog, who’d been eating the front page of the newspaper, must have noticed the serious tone in Homer’s voice because he stopped chewing and looked up.
Lorelei frowned, her pink bangs dangling over her defeated eyes. “I don’t see how. She’ll kill us if she sees us.”
“Look, we can do this. We just flew a hot air balloon, and we survived.” Hercules and Lorelei shared a bewildered look as Homer darted to his feet. “Lorelei, you’re really good at being sneaky and you’re really good at stealing things. And Hercules, you won the World’s Spelling Bee. I mean, come on, that’s amazing. We’ve outsmarted Madame before. We can do it again.”
“Okay, so how do we get into the lair?” Lorelei asked. “She’ll be watching. She’ll know if we come down the tortoise slide, and an ala
rm will ring if the gate opens. We can’t race in with the speedboat.”
Hercules shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I have no idea how to get into that place.”
“I’ll swim in and get the submarine,” Homer said. The idea came to him as suddenly as a burp.
“You think you could swim in there and not have Madame notice?” Lorelei asked.
“Yes,” Homer said. “With determination, anything is possible.”
“Are you a good swimmer?” Hercules asked. “It’s a long way down that tunnel.”
“I can swim,” Homer said. But he didn’t say he was a good swimmer.
When Homer turned five, his mother signed him up for lessons at the Milkydale Community Pool. And each summer following, until he turned ten, she continued to sign him up for lessons. He began in Jellyfish class—that’s when you can float by yourself—and made it up to Bullfrog class—that’s when you can put your face in the water and swim like a frog. But he never made it to Porpoise, which included all the other strokes.
“I can swim,” he repeated.
“Well, what are we sitting around for?” Lorelei asked. She smacked Hercules on the back. “Let’s go get ourselves a submarine.”
Morning was in full swing, and there was no time to waste. They gave up the idea of hiking all the way around the lake to the public dock, where the speedboat was moored. Instead, Lorelei rented a paddleboat from a nearby stand, and they paddled as close to the gate as possible.
“You’ll have to swim under it,” Lorelei said.
Homer peered over the edge of the paddleboat and cringed.
Some bodies of water are meant for swimming. Mountain lakes, though cold, invite the swimmer with soft ripples and crystal clear water. Lazy rivers tempt the swimmer with deep pools of blue and green. Country clubs, community centers, and private residences skim bugs from the water and add drops of chlorine. City Lake, however, was not meant for swimming, hence the signs posted throughout the park:
WARNING:
This lake is not meant for swimming.
Itchy rashes, unusual fungal infections, respiratory distress, swollen toes, and hair loss may occur after swimming in this lake, so DO NOT swim in this lake.
Homer, however, had not seen any of these signs, because most had rotted away and were lying on the lake’s bottom. The others were covered in pigeon poop.
He removed his shoes, socks, T-shirt, and jeans so that he was standing in his boxers. The only thing that embarrassed him about standing in his boxers was that he was wearing a pair with hearts all over them, picked out by his mother. Otherwise, a pair of boxers was pretty much like a bathing suit, so it was no big deal. He patted Dog’s head. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m a good swimmer,” Hercules said. “Even though I don’t have my swim goggles or my nose plug, I should go with you.” He started to pull off his rugby shirt.
“No,” Homer said. He turned his back to Lorelei and whispered to Hercules, “You stay here and watch Dog. Make sure she doesn’t take him.”
Lorelei leaned over Homer’s shoulder. “You don’t trust me?” she asked innocently.
“Not in a million years,” he said. Then he lowered himself over the side of the boat, breaking through a patch of yellow scum the way a spoon breaks through piecrust. The water was oddly warm. Dog balanced on his hind legs and leaned over the edge of the paddleboat, whining.
“Don’t let him follow me,” Homer said, remembering how Dog had jumped out of an airplane in a desperate attempt to chase after Homer.
Hercules wrapped an arm around Dog. “Good luck,” he said as Homer began to dog-paddle toward the tunnel.
“Don’t forget Daisy,” Lorelei called. “Bring her back.”
“What?” Homer nearly swallowed a mouthful of water. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“What about Speckles?” Hercules asked.
“Oh, I almost forgot about Speckles,” Lorelei said. “He can’t live in there with Madame. She’ll feed him nuclear waste like she did to the tortoise. She’ll turn him into a monster. Homer, you have to save Speckles.”
“What?” Homer stopped paddling and began to tread water. “How am I supposed to get the submarine and rescue a rat and a whale shark at the same time?”
“With determination, anything is possible,” she said.
“You did say that,” Hercules confirmed.
Homer regretted those words. But he knew how badly he’d feel if Dog were left behind to live with Madame.
After peeling a plastic grocery bag from his arm, Homer frog-kicked toward the tunnel. He passed through a bunch of fast-food containers and plastic soda-can rings that had tangled together like a field of man-made water lilies. The gate loomed before him—as ominous as the entrance to a medieval fortress. He grabbed hold and peered between two iron bars. Then, before he could panic, he took a deep breath and sank into the murky water. Keeping his eyes squeezed shut, he lowered himself to the bottom of the gate, swam beneath, then emerged on the other side.
“Blech,” he said, wiping lake water from his lips. It tasted soapy, with a hint of cod-liver oil.
Something floated toward him from the depths of the tunnel. It was a red ball. As the ball picked up speed, it became clear that it wasn’t floating—it was being pushed.
A wide expanse of polka dots skimmed the surface of the water. With the red ball balanced on his head, Speckles the whale shark swam up to Homer. As he tilted his head, the ball rolled into the water. He nudged it toward Homer. Wait a minute, Homer thought. Rescuing Speckles might be the easiest part of this mission. Homer grabbed the ball. Then he tossed it between the gate bars, into the lake. With a smack of his tail, Speckles dove under Homer’s feet and disappeared.
“Lorelei!” Homer called. “Here comes your shark.”
“Thanks!” she called back.
Hoping that the rat and the submarine would be equally cooperative, Homer pushed away from the gate and went into frog-kick mode. His arms began to ache at the halfway point, and by the time he reached the end of the tunnel, they felt as heavy as lead pipes.
Homer’s gaze fell upon the submarine. As silent as a water bug, he swam along the far edge of the lair’s pool, his eyes adjusting to the bright lights. The place looked vacant. Maybe Madame had been caught by the police already. He could only hope. Then he remembered Lorelei’s request.
“Daisy?” he called quietly, scanning the lair for a pair of beady eyes and a long gray tail. Where was she? “Daisy?” He was about to swim across and search the lair when a voice shot out of the back room, piercing Homer like a precisely aimed porcupine quill.
“That’ll teach her to bring rats into my lair!”
For as long as he lived, Homer W. Pudding would never forget that voice. Clinging to the submarine’s edge, he watched as Madame la Directeur stomped into the lair. Then he grimaced as a gruesome scene unfolded.
A lifeless gray rat swung by its tail from Madame’s fingers. In her other hand she held a shovel. She must have whacked the creature over the head. “Infested,” Madame hissed. “My lair is infested!” She opened a garbage can and tossed in the body. It hit the bottom of the can with a horrid thunk. Poor Daisy, Homer thought. Lorelei will be crushed.
Even though Madame had the same slick black hair and was still shaped like a pear, with her upper half much smaller than her lower half, Homer almost didn’t recognize her. She used to wear a ton of makeup and fancy clothes with high heels. Now she looked like she’d been camping in a baseball dugout. She dropped the shovel and wiped her hands on her jeans. Then she yanked the baseball cap off her head. “Look at all this junk,” she said, turning in a slow circle. “My lair is full of toys! Children’s toys!” She kicked a beach ball and overturned a beanbag chair. She kicked Hercules’s first-aid kit into the pool. Then she stomped to the vending machines. “Packages of brine shrimp? How dare she fill my vending machine with brine shrimp!” She pushed one of the vending machines over.
Homer cringed as th
e clang echoed off the stone walls. He tightened his grip. Madame was out of control. She’d whacked Daisy on the head, and she’d probably whack him on the head, too. Her face clenched in a frenzied rage. “When I get my hands on that girl, I’ll… what’s this?”
She picked up Homer’s backpack. His mother had insisted on embroidering his initials on the flap, just in case it got lost. “H.W.P.?” Madame opened it and pulled out a black jacket, then a piece of paper. “ ‘Traditional mourning attire… for Mr. Homer W. Pudding’… Homer Pudding? Homer Pudding?” Then she looked around and softened her voice. “Oh, Homer? Are you still here? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Homer slid behind the submarine. Submerged to his nostrils, he peered around the bow.
A buzzer sounded and the flat-screen lit up. Horizontal lines blinked, and then Torch’s face appeared. She held a glue stick and a piece of cut paper. The table in front of her was covered with little map pieces. “Hey, Lorelei! Where the heck are you?”
Madame’s arms fell to her sides, and she dropped the coat and paper.
“I need your help with this stupid map,” Torch said. “Hey! Lorelei!”
Madame tucked her T-shirt into her jeans, pushed a few stray hairs from her face, then strode across the room and sat on the red throne, facing the screen. “Hello, Torch.”
Torch’s mouth fell open. The glue stick tumbled from her hand.
“Why do you look so surprised?” Madame asked snidely. “I told you that I would escape. I told you that I would lead you and Gertrude on this quest.”
Torch narrowed her eyes. “Where’s Lorelei?”
“I don’t know where that street urchin is,” Madame said. “But she stole my red speedboat, and when I find her and that Pudding kid—”
“Homer?” Torch asked. “Homer’s with Lorelei?”
“Obviously the boy wants the treasure as much as we do.”
“But if he’s with Lorelei, then that means he’s abandoned L.O.S.T.”