No More Pranks Read Free

pranks is that they kind of have a life of their own. Once a prank gets started, you can’t just call it off. Especially when you’ve got a guy like Réal winking at you like crazy when you push the kayak with the lady and her hubby off from the shore. “Bon voyage!” I tell them—and I can’t help thinking it may be more “bon” for me, watching from the shore, than for them.
    You should have heard the woman scream. It was like what they describe in mystery books as bloodcurdling. Réal and I and the rest of the crew had a perfect view. We were out on the cliffs by the beach, and Réal had brought along the binoculars from the office. I was looking through them when I saw the husband pass the suntan lotion over to the wife. Then I saw her reach into her pocket and scream.
    I saw the scream before I actually heard it. I guess that has something to do with how sound travels when you’re out on the water. It’s a good thing kayakers sit so low in the boat. Otherwise, I think the woman might have fallen in. And then who knows what could have happened to her extremities?
    Uncle Jean paddled right over to see what was happening. I saw him talking to the woman. Then he looked up at the cliffs where we were. Which is when I put down the binoculars. Only, by then I knew it was too late.

Chapter Three
    One good thing about living in a B&B is that you don’t get yelled at. Uncle Jean didn’t even mention the frog-in-the-pocket incident. All he said was he wanted me to come out on the kayak with him at six this morning. It didn’t sound like a punishment, even though getting up at 5:15 isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. “It’s the best time to see the whales,” Uncle Jean told me when we werepacking up to leave, “before those damned Zodiacs are out.”
    Uncle Jean is a pretty laid-back guy. The only thing that seems to set him off are those Zodiacs. They’re these little inflatable motor-boats that take groups of people out to see the whales. They leave all the time from the Tadoussac harbor. “They dump gasoline into the St. Lawrence, and some of them get much too close to the whales,” he told me.
    There’s a rule up here that boats aren’t supposed to get any closer than 200 meters to a whale. Uncle Jean says there are plenty of captains who ignore it. “It’s difficult to enforce; besides, there’s pressure from the tourists. Everyone wants to go home and tell his neighbor, ‘I got this close to a whale.’” Uncle Jean stretched out his suntanned arm to show me what he meant. “If they want to get close to a whale, they should come out in a kayak. At least we don’t bother the whales when we’re on the water.”
    Till now, Uncle Jean’s been too busy to take me out in his kayak. We’ve had nothing but sunny days since I got here, and there’vebeen so many customers that Uncle Jean has had to turn some away.
    Even though I’m not what you’d call the country type, there’s something pretty beautiful about this place, especially early in the morning. Like today, when we first looked out at the river—you can see it from the kitchen at the Whale’s Tale—there was this thick layer of mist over the water. It looked like cotton candy, only gray. But by the time we got into the kayak, the mist had disappeared, and the water was so clear and blue it was hard to tell where it ended and where the sky began.
    At first, neither of us said a thing. We just paddled. I have to say it felt good to be quiet for a change. The morning air kind of whipped against my face, but that felt good too.
    â€œKeep an eye out for low-flying cormorants,” Uncle Jean told me. He was sitting at the back of the kayak so he could navigate. Even though all he could see was my back, he must’ve known I was listening, because he kept talking.
    â€œThe birds feed on