We Give a Squid a Wedgie Read Free Page B

climbed the stairs to their apartment on the 4½th floor of the Explorers Club. “We got to leave the party early.”
    “Yeah,” said Oliver, still blushing from his very public octopus wedgie.
    “Don’t worry about it, dude,” Corey told him. “That party was L-A-M-E, lame. We’ll have a lot more fun watching VSSCTSNYES up here, chillin’.”
    “We will!” Celia said. “C-H-I-L-L . . .” She stopped spelling when she saw her father and Oliver raising their eyebrows at her. “It’ll be fun,” she said. This time she blushed a little.
    “Dr. Navel?” Corey asked. “Do you think this will hurt my chances of getting into the Explorers Club? I kind of threw an octopus at a sumo wrestler during the New Year’s Eve party.”
    “Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Dr. Navel. “All you have to do is discover something fantastic before you turn seventeen and they’ll certainly let you in.”
    “Something fantastic? Like what?”
    “Oh, there are all kinds of things to discover,” said Dr. Navel. “We’ll think of something.”
    “Corey?” Oliver was about to ask why he wanted to be in the Explorers Club so badly, but his sister had stopped in her tracks on the landing outside their apartment. Something was wrong. The moon rock, which was usually perched on a shelf above the doorway, had fallen, and the door itself was partway open. The lock was broken clean off.
    From inside the dark apartment they heard a loud hiss, followed by a piercing shriek. There was a yelp and then a thunderous crashing noise.
    “That sounded a lot like—” Oliver started.
    “Our television falling off the wall!” Celia finished his sentence as they rushed past their father and Corey Brandt to confront the intruder, who had just done the unthinkable.

3
WE ARE AWARE OF
OUR DESTINY

    WE MIGHT FIND IT UNUSUAL for two children, who admittedly have no taste for excitement, to storm in on an intruder, but one must understand their situation.
    You see, not only was their television in danger, the one thing they truly cared about in this world, they also knew themselves to be perfectly safe.
    The hiss that they heard belonged to Beverly, a large venomous lizard of the species
Heloderma horridum
, who was fiercely loyal to a particular armchair in their apartment and would fight anyone to protect it. She also enjoyed strawberry snack cakes.
    The screech that they had heard belonged to Patrick, a small gray howler monkey whom theirmother had befriended in the Amazon rain forest. He considered himself their guardian rather than their pet, and he lived with the Navels only because he felt a duty to protect them while their mother was away. He also had no idea how to get back to the Amazon from their apartment.
    As for the crashing sound, it had indeed been their television falling off the wall and smashing to the floor, and the tiny yelp just before it fell belonged to the man who was now sprawled on his face with Beverly the lizard sitting on the back of his head and Patrick the monkey pinning his arms to the floor. In spite of the cold weather, he wore only a short-sleeved Hawaiian print shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.
    “Excuse me?” the man called from under Beverly, his face smushing into the floor. “Is anyone there? Did I hear someone come in? Help. Please help.”
    “Who are you?” Celia demanded. “What are you doing in our apartment?”
    “And why did you break our television?” added Oliver.
    “I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” the man spluttered. “Dr. Navel. Squid. Island. Map.”
    “The dude is, like, C-R-A-Z-Y, crazy,” Corey said, stepping up behind the twins.
    “I’m Dr. Navel,” Dr. Navel told the man.
    “No, no. Dr. Navel. Dr. Claire Navel,” the man said. “Your wife is in peril!”
    Oliver and Celia raised their eyebrows at each other.
    Corey sucked his breath through his teeth.
    Dr. Navel nodded at Oliver and gestured to the lizard.
    “But—” Oliver started, not wanting to lift the