We Give a Squid a Wedgie by C. Alexander London

football.” Big Bart smiled. “Kicking an octopus isn’t much harder than kicking a football.”
    Celia slumped back against the railing of the boat, exhausted. Oliver and Corey slumped next to her.
    “That’s twice we’ve almost been killed by a normal octopus,” said Celia. “I really don’t want to meet the kraken.”
    “How many times do I have to explain that the kraken is a squid?” Oliver muttered. “If it’s even … oh, never mind.” He dropped his head to his chest, too tired to argue.
    Celia nodded, too tired to win an argument. She looked at the deck of the boat next to her foot. There was a large sharp tooth stuck into the fiberglass. She yanked it out.
    “Shark tooth,” said Big Bart. “They say it’s good luck.”
    “Yeah,” said Celia. “Good luck it didn’t eat us.”
    She put it in her pocket anyway, just in case.
    The whole ordeal had lasted only minutes, butit felt like a lifetime. It was only after they caught their breath that they noticed the boat was pitching wildly from side to side.
    They looked up and saw the last of the stars blotted out by heavy black clouds. The boat lurched sickeningly upward and crashed back down again with a blast of salt water.
    Oliver and Celia were already soaked and they smelled like fish. They were scraped and bruised from the octopus’s suckers. Aching, they ran to the cabin, swaying from side to side like Professor Rasmali-Greenberg after too much sherry.
    “I don’t feel so good,” said Oliver.
    Corey began barking out instructions to ready the ship for the worst of the storm, although by that point it was almost impossible to hear him over the howling wind. Walls of water crashed around them, leaving entire schools of fish ­flopping on the decks, only to be washed away again by the next crashing wave. Inside the cabin, a soup of seawater and stray fish sloshed along the floor.
    “Bonnie!” The twins knocked on the door to her bunk. “Bonnie, there’s a storm. Wake up!”
    “Is it time yet?” she called through the doorway.­
    “Time for what?” called Celia.
    “Nothing,” groaned Bonnie. “Wake me in the morning.”
    Oliver and Celia knocked for a few more minutes and then gave up.
    They poked their heads back outside.
    They saw their father at the wheel, struggling to keep the boat pointed in the right direction and to keep himself from being knocked overboard by the raging water. Corey was further forward, trying to tie the sails down so the heavy winds didn’t tear them to shreds. He had tied a rope around the mast and looped it around his waist so he didn’t get washed away.
    Big Bart was racing this way and that, falling over with every crashing wave that hit, trying to get himself to the cabin.
    Oliver and Celia took one more look around the battered deck and one look at each other and quickly ducked back inside.
    “I bet we’d just be in the way out there,” said Oliver.
    “And we wouldn’t want to distract them from their work,” said Celia.
    “And Dad would probably worry about us going overboard,” said Oliver.
    “Right,” said Celia. “He’d be worried for our … um … safety.”
    Neither of the twins believed it. They could hear their father’s whoops of excitement even through the sound of the howling wind. He loved a duel with nature.
    “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” they heard him yelling.
    Oliver looked questioningly at Celia. She shrugged.
    “I mean, we did wrestle an octopus,” she said.
    “Yeah,” Oliver agreed.
    “And someone will need to be rested for the morning watch,” she said.
    “Yeah,” Oliver agreed again.
    “So I think,” said Celia, “that we should get some sleep.”
    “Yeah,” agreed Oliver a third time. It felt really good to agree with Celia again.
    They had their hammocks strung up in the corner of the cabin like bunk beds, one above the other. Celia put her foot right on Oliver’s face on the way up to the top bunk.
    Yep, he thought. His