“On it!”
Tommy yanked the wheel hard and pointed our bow downwind. He looped a bungee cord through the wheel’s wooden spokes to keep us headed in that direction.
“Now get below, boys. Batten down the hatches. Help your sisters man the pumps.”
Tommy grabbed hold of whatever he could to steady himself and made his way down into the deckhouse cabin.
Just then, a monster wave lurched over the starboard side of the ship and swept me off my feet. I slid across the slick deck like a hockey puck on ice. I might’ve gone overboard if my dad hadn’t reached down and grabbed me a half second before I became shark bait.
“Time to head downstairs, Bick!” my dad shouted in the raging storm as rain slashed across his face.
“No!” I shouted back. “I want to stay up here and help you.”
“You can help me more by staying alive and not letting The Lost go under. Now hurry! Get below.”
“B-b-but—”
“Go!”
He gave me a gentle shove to propel me up the tilting deck. When I reached the deckhouse, I grabbed onto a handhold and swung myself around and through the door. Tommy had already headed down to the engine room to help with the bilge pumps.
Suddenly, a giant sledgehammer of salt water slammed into our starboard side and sent the ship tipping wildly to the left. I heard wood creaking. We tilted over so far I fell against the wall while our port side slapped the churning sea.
We were going to capsize. I could tell.
But The Lost righted itself instead, the ship tossing and bucking like a very angry beached whale.
I found the floor and shoved the deckhouse hatch shut. I had to press my body up against it. Waves kept pounding against the door. The water definitely wanted me to let it in.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not on my watch. I cranked the door’s latch to bolt it tight.
I would, of course, reopen the door the instant my dad finished doing whatever else needed to be done up on deck and made his way aft to the cabin. But, for now, I had to stop The Lost from taking on any more water.
If that was even possible.
The sea kept churning. The Lost kept lurching. The storm kept sloshing seawater through every crack and crevice it could find.
Me? I started panicking. Because I had a sinking feeling (as in “We’re gonna sink!”) that this could be the end.
I was about to be drowned at sea.
Is twelve years old too young to die?
Apparently, the Caribbean Sea didn’t think so.
2
I waited and waited, but my dad never made it aft to the deckhouse cabin door.
Through the forward windows, I could see waves crashing across our bobbing bow. I could see the sky growing even darker. I could see a life preserver rip free from its rope and fly off the ship like a doughnut-shaped Frisbee.
But I couldn’t see Dad.
I suddenly realized that my socks were soaked with the seawater that was slopping across the floor. And I was up on the main deck.
“Beck?” I cried out. “Tommy? Storm?”
My sisters and brother were all down in the lower cabins and equipment rooms, where the water was undoubtedly deeper.
They were trapped down there!
I dashed down the four steep steps into the hull quarters as quickly as I could. The water was up to my ankles, then my knees, then my thighs, and, finally, my waist. You ever try to run across the shallow end of a swimming pool? That’s what I was up against. But I had to find my family.
Well, what was left of it.
I trudged from door to door, frantically searching for my siblings.
They weren’t in the engine room, the galley, or my parents’ cabin. I knew they couldn’t be in The Room, because its solid steel door was locked tight and it was totally off-limits to all of us.
I slogged my way forward as the ship kept rocking and rolling from side to side. Whatever wasn’t nailed down was thumping around inside the cupboards and cabinets. I heard cans of food banging into plastic dishes that were knocking over clinking coffee mugs.
I started pounding on the walls in the narrow corridor with both fists. The water was up to my chest.
“Hey, you guys? Tommy, Beck, Storm! Where are you?”
No answer.
Of course my brother and sisters probably couldn’t hear me, because the tropical storm outside was screaming even louder than I was.
Suddenly, up ahead, a door burst open. Tommy, who was seventeen and had the kind of bulging muscles you only get from crewing on a sailing ship your whole life, had just put his shoulder to the wood to bash it open.
“Where’s Dad?” he shouted. “I don’t know!” I shouted back.
That’s when Beck and my big sister, Storm, trudged out of the cabin that was now their water-logged bedroom. A pair of 3-D glasses was floating on the surface of the water. Beck plucked them up and put them on. She’d been wearing them ever since our mom disappeared.
“Was Dad on a safety line?” asked Storm, sounding as scared and worried as I felt.
All I could do was shake my head.
Beck looked at me, and even though her 3-D glasses were shading her eyes, I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was. We’re twins. It happens.
In our hearts, we both knew that Dad was gone.
Because anything up on deck that hadn’t been tied down had been washed overboard by now.
From the sad expressions on their faces, I knew Storm and Tommy had figured it out, too. Maybe they’d been looking out a porthole when that life preserver went flying by.
Shivering slightly, we all moved together to form a close circle and hug each other tight.
The four of us were the only family we had left.
Tommy, who’d been living on boats longer than any of us, started mumbling an old sailor’s prayer:
“Though Death waits off the bow, we’ll not answer to him now.”
I hoped he was right.
But I had a funny feeling that Death might not take no for an answer.
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
PART ONE: HEARD ANY GOOD JOKES LATELY? CHAPTER 1: IT’S FUN BEING FUNNY
CHAPTER 2: MEANWHILE, BACK IN REALITY…
CHAPTER 3: GUESS WHAT I SAW THIS MORNING?
CHAPTER 4: WHERE I FOUND MY FUNNY BONE
CHAPTER 5: BULLY FOR ME
CHAPTER 6: WHO YOU CALLING CHICKEN?
CHAPTER 7: IT’S A GREAT DAY—FOR ABOUT TWO MINUTES
CHAPTER 8: A BURGER AND FRIES FIXES EVERYTHING
CHAPTER 9: IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT…
CHAPTER 10: LIFE IS FUNNY—AT LEAST, MINE IS
CHAPTER 11: DIAGRAMMING MY DEATH SENTENCE
CHAPTER 12: A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND
CHAPTER 13: HYSTERICAL HISTORY
CHAPTER 14: WEEPING WITH THE WEEDWACKER
CHAPTER 15: LIVE FROM NEW YORK—IT’S JAMIE AND FRIENDS!
CHAPTER 16: FRANKENFURTER
CHAPTER 17: THE THREE AMIGOS?
CHAPTER 18: TWO’S COMPANY, FOUR’S MORE FUN
CHAPTER 19: COMING ATTRACTIONS I DON’T WANT TO ATTRACT
CHAPTER 20: JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT SCHOOL WAS SAFE…
CHAPTER 22: FREE JOEY!
CHAPTER 23: CALLING ALL GODS!
CHAPTER 24: WISH THIS WAS A BASKETBALL COURT…
CHAPTER 25: MRS. GAYNOR’S EXCUSED ABSENCE
CHAPTER 26: TRUE CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER 27: RIDE ’EM, COWBOY!
CHAPTER 28: GETTING HOUSE-TRAINED
CHAPTER 29: HOW TO DO NOTHING, AND DO IT WELL
CHAPTER 30: A BATTLE OF WITS?
CHAPTER 31: THE BIG LAUGH-OFF
CHAPTER 32: RAFE WHAT?
CHAPTER 33: THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
CHAPTER 34: BAD KARMA
CHAPTER 35: FATE STINKS
CHAPTER 36: NEVER LET ’EM SEE YOU SWEAT
CHAPTER 37: COMEDY CONVOY
CHAPTER 38: GETTING “CREME’D”
CHAPTER 39: FUNNY MEETING YOU HERE
CHAPTER 40: WILL JAMIE CHOKE? FIND OUT NOW!
CHAPTER 41: NO RISK, NO REWARD
CHAPTER 42: AND THE WINNER IS…
CHAPTER 43: HOMETOWN HERO
CHAPTER 44: COOL NEWS
CHAPTER 45: MAD ABOUT MADISON AVENUE
CHAPTER 46: AND IN OTHER NEWS…
CHAPTER 47: SPEAKING OF DUMB…
PART THREE: VIVA LAS VEGAS—OR SHOULD I SAY, HASTA LA VISTA, LAS VEGAS? CHAPTER 48: NOSE-TO-THE-GRINDSTONE TIME
CHAPTER 49: STOP AND SMELL THE SEA SPRAY
CHAPTER 50: FAMILY TIME
CHAPTER 51: BEWARE THE MIGHTY MEATY
CHAPTER 52: CARSICK
CHAPTER 53: EVEN A BAD JOKE IS GOOD MEDICINE
CHAPTER 54: ALL HANDS ON DECK
CHAPTER 55: CALLING IT QUITS
CHAPTER 56: SATURDAY NIGHT DEAD
CHAPTER 57: I GUESS THIS IS THE END
CHAPTER 58: THE MIDDLE SCHOOL COMEDY CLUB
CHAPTER 59: THE BEST AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITY EVER
CHAPTER 60: BRINGING DOWN THE SCHOOLHOUSE
CHAPTER 61: ENCORE PERFORMANCE
CHAPTER 63: KNOCK, KNOCK! WHO’S THERE?
CHAPTER 64: HOW FEDEX CHANGED MY LIFE—FAST!
CHAPTER 65: FLYING HIGH (WITH OR WITHOUT AN AIRPLANE)
CHAPTER 66: LAS VEGAS OR “LOST WAGES”?
CHAPTER 67: THE FEAR FACTORY
CHAPTER 68: THE WILD WILD-CARD CONTESTANTS
CHAPTER 69: WHO AM I? WHERE AM I?
CHAPTER 70: AND THE WINNER IS???
CHAPTER 71: HOMECOMING KING
CHAPTER 72: GIRL FRIEND OR GIRLFRIEND?
CHAPTER 73: IF I HAD $110,000…
EPILOGUE: COMING SOON: JAMIE’S HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER!
P.S. FROM JAMIE
BOOKS BY JAMES PATTERSON
A SNEAK PEEK OF TREASURE HUNTERS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by James Patterson
Illustrations by Laura Park
Excerpt of Treasure Hunters copyright © 2013 by James Patterson
Illustrations by Juliana Neufeld
Cover art © 2013 by Laura Park
Cover design by Neil Swaab and Tracy Shaw
Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First ebook edition: December 2013
ISBN 978-0-316-20696-9
E3