Hula Done It - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,89

are still some available."

"Us, too," said Nana, grabbing Bashful and Snow and heading off behind her.

I leaned against the wall by the men's head, completely flummoxed. So now what? Throw in the towel?

I shook my head and tried to think of the kinder, gentler days of my youth, when my responsibilities included nothing more than playing, daydreaming, and netting fish for Grampa Sippel when he'd nose his boat out into Gull Lake. Only Grampa never called it a fishing boat. He'd always called it a --

Bailey's fourteen-karat gold charm flashed in my brain. I pushed away from the wall, trembling at what I was thinking. I scrubbed my face with my hands, puzzling together all the pieces of the jigsaw, until the whole picture revealed itself to me -- the lies, the illusions, the chance meetings, the deceit. Holy shit! Shelly had been right! Something weird had been going on!

Unlooping my lasso from my waist, I coiled the rope into two large circles. Targeting my prey, I strutted toward the bow, and with Wonder Woman stealth, slid into the bench behind Friar Tuck. "GET HIM!" I yelled as I threw the lasso over his head.

"Are we doing that again?" Dopey asked behind me.

I jumped onto Tuck's back, clobbering him with my fists. "You fake!"

"GET OFF!" he barked, twisting his body to detach me.

"Leave her alone!" shouted Jonathan, steamrolling across the aisle to head butt Tuck in his round little belly. WOOF! "Let her go!"

"She has me!" Tuck spat, batting Jonathan's florets out of his face.

"Emily, dear!" I heard Nana yell over the din. "Do you know that man?"

"YES!" I screamed, sinking my fingers into his beard and ripping it off. "IT'S DORIAN SMOKER! Shelly recognized him even in his beard and fat suit. She called him a dead man because, guess what? He's supposed to be dead!"

"Owww!" he hissed, clapping a hand to his naked jaw.

"Who's Dorian Smoker?" asked one of the crayons.

"DORI?" screeched Catwoman, pouncing up onto a bench. "You're alive? You scumbag! You rat! I'm going to kill you myself!"

In the next moment Smoker jackknifed his body and catapulted me over his head, propelling me into Jonathan's stalk like a misfired rocket. BOOM! We crashed to the deck in a heap of limbs, my head woozy as Smoker jerked me onto my feet and collared his arm around my throat. "No one is going to move, or I swear, I'll snap her neck like a twig."

Catwoman clawed the air hard enough to draw blood. "I don't care what you do to her. I don't like her anyway." She leaped onto the deck, her eyes spitting venom as she took a step toward us. "Shelly's right. You're so dead, Smoker. Meooow!" She scratched the air again, making me cringe to think what she might have done if there'd been chalkboards handy.

"Not so fast," Nana said, seizing her tail as if it were the end of a tug-of-war rope. "Sneezy! Dopey! Lucille!"

Jennifer shot a glance behind her shoulder as her forward motion suddenly switched to a backward slide across the deck, compliments of three dwarfs and a pig.

"That's my granddaughter," Nana scolded Jennifer. "So we're not gonna make no waves. Understand?"

"Let go my tail!" Jennifer twisted her body around, swatting at Sneezy and Dopey. "So help me, Granny, when I get my paws on you, I'll --" THUNK! BOOM.

Snow White stood over Catwoman's body, all satisfied smiles and innocence. "Whoops. My walking stick must have slipped."

The green Crayola elbowed the brown one. "Help me out here. Are those guys dwarfs or elves?"

"Step away from her body!" Smoker snarled at the dwarfs. "Nice and slow. That's it. Now, everyone over to the port side of the boat."

People shuffled left. People shuffled right. The undecideds stood in the center aisle looking desperately confused.

"TO THE LEFT!" Smoker bellowed.

Everyone shuffled left while Jonathan rolled around on the floor like an upended tortoise.

"I'll save you, Emily!" he vowed as he tried to get his legs beneath himself. "Any minute now!"

Nana raised her hand. "Excuse me, Professor, but I seen on a Travel Channel special where too many people crowded onto one side of a boat wasn't a good idea, on account a it could make the boat capsize and sink."

"I'll make a note of that, Mrs. Sippel." He exerted pressure on my throat as he wrenched me into the aisle. "Anything else?"

Nana gave her mushroom cap hat a little scratch. "I can't figure somethin' out. If you're still alive, who was it what got throwed