CHAPTER 8

Mom declared Tuesday the official take-a-break-from-the-lake day. She wasn’t working, and she said Dad’s sunburn needed a day to heal.

“Really?” said Dad, touching his cheeks. “I thought it was looking pretty good today.”

Ethan scooted his chair closer and took another look. In the light from the kitchen window, Dad seemed to have three shades of color going on now.

The bottom of his face had turned from red to brown. The top was still white. And the line in the middle still looked pretty pink. Like Neapolitan ice cream, thought Ethan with a grin.

“So what should we do this morning?” asked Mom. “School shopping?”

“Ugh,” said Ethan. “I’m trying to pretend that we’re not going back to school next week.”

“Me, too,” said Devin. “In fact, I have no idea what you guys are even talking about.”

She scooted back her chair, scooped up Mystic, and carried her like a baby down the hall, singing an I Love Summer song that she’d pretty much just made up on the spot.

Mom sighed. “You know who’s going to be the most bummed out next week when you go back to school?”

“Me?” guessed Ethan.

“Nope. Mystic. She’s going to be awfully lonely around here without you two.”

“Yeah,” said Ethan. “Poor girl. So we should probably take her to the lake today, while we can.” He raised his eyebrows at Mom hopefully, but she wasn’t having it.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “You can take her again tomorrow. This morning? It’s school shopping.”

Ethan stuck out his lower lip, pretending to pout. But the truth was, he didn’t really mind a day away from the lake. He and his friends hadn’t gotten any closer to cracking the Magikarp Code. And besides, he wanted to spend some time training Mystic today.

As he went to his room to get changed, he reached down into her basket of toys and picked up her tiny tennis ball. It seemed so little compared to the one she’d tried to steal from the retriever at the lake. The memory made Ethan laugh now.

She could be stubborn and naughty, yes. But she was a tough little thing, too. If she were a Growlithe, she’d be my strongest Pokémon, he thought. For sure.

“Is Gia here yet?” asked Devin, poking her head through the door of Dottie’s Doughnuts.

Mystic strained at the leash in Ethan’s hand, hoping to bust into the doughnut shop, too. But he held her back and made her sit on the sidewalk.

He heard Dottie answer no, so he took a seat on the bench to wait. Then he remembered that the bike rack nearby was a PokéStop, so he pulled out his phone to gather a few Poké Balls.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated. Mystic looked up, cocked her head, and growled.

“You see it, too, huh?” Ethan whispered, staring at the purplish-blue mothlike Pokémon. “That’s a Venomoth. And they are not easy to catch.”

“A Venomoth? Really?” said Devin, pulling out her own phone as she walked back out of the shop. “Good thing Gia just showed up. She can help you catch it.”

Ethan shot off a Poké Ball without waiting, just to see if he could catch the fluttering Pokémon on his own. But it fell way short. Catching flying things wasn’t Ethan’s specialty. So when Gianna locked her bike up against the bike rack, he was ready to ask for help.

“How would you catch this Venomoth, Gia?” he asked her. “I really need to work on my throws.” He held out his phone to Gianna.

“Okay,” she said, studying the screen. “Well, see the shadow underneath the Venomoth? Watch that to see how far away the Pokémon is. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell.” She flung the ball and hit the Venomoth dead center.

“Excellent!” read the screen.

“Yes!” said Devin, pumping her fist.

But then the ball cracked open and the Venomoth popped out. Seconds later, the purple Pokémon disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“No way!” said Ethan.

Gianna sighed and shook her head. “Sorry, Ethan,” she said, handing back his phone. “Sometimes a Pokémon just doesn’t want to be caught. We should have used a Razz Berry to sweeten it up!”

“That’s okay,” he said. Somehow, it made him feel better to know that Gianna didn’t catch every Pokémon that crossed her path, either.

As he slid his phone back in his pocket, it bumped against something else—the tiny tennis ball he’d been carrying around all morning. He pulled it out to show Gianna. “I’ve been working on another kind of throw today, too.”

Mystic saw the ball and immediately started jumping and barking.

“Whoa,” said Gianna. “She really loves her ball!”

Before Ethan could give it to the puppy, Dottie came out carrying a bowl of water—and something that looked like a cookie. It was orange and shaped like a fish, and Dottie set it down right in front of Mystic.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Ethan, his jaw dropping.

Dottie shrugged. “I had a little free time,” she said. “I thought I’d whip something up for your little buddy. I’m afraid it’s tuna flavored, because I couldn’t find any Magikarp flavoring at the grocery store.”

Devin laughed and clapped her hands. “A Magikarp biscuit for Mystic. Dottie, you’re awesome!”

“I think you should open Dottie’s Doggy Doughnuts,” said Gianna. “Mystic thinks so, too.”

The puppy was tackling the biscuit as if it were a real fish. She took it in her mouth and shook it a little, then set it down and started gnawing on a corner.

“Well, you kids gave me the idea,” said Dottie. “You always inspire me when you come back from Pokémon hunting. Have you caught much at the lake this week?”

Ethan sighed. “Not really,” he said. “Nothing’s biting at Badfish Creek.” He meant it as a joke, but Dottie picked right up on it.

“Badfish Creek,” she said, gazing into the distance as if she could actually see it. “My grandpa used to take me fishing there when I was a little girl. And that was a long time ago.” She put her hands on her hips and grinned.

“Really?” said Devin. “Did you catch bad fish at Badfish Creek?”

“Nope,” said Dottie. “We caught good fish. Grandpa told me that the creek was named by fishermen who wanted to keep their favorite fishing spot a secret. They named it ‘Badfish’ so that other people wouldn’t want to fish there, and they’d have the creek all to themselves.”

“Smart!” said Ethan. “Those fishermen were pretty sneaky.”

“For sure,” said Gianna. “I wouldn’t have thought about doing that.”

“Sure you would have,” said Devin. “You’re plenty smart. You’re the one who’s been helping us figure out the Magikarp Code, remember?”

Gianna shook her head, which sent the antennae on her bug cap bouncing. “I’m much better at capturing Pokémon than I am at cracking codes.”

As Ethan watched the antennae bob back and forth, he batted a thought around in his mind. Dottie’s story about Badfish Creek had given him an idea, or at least the start of one.

He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on it. But it kept fluttering around like that Venomoth, threatening to get away.

“Ethan?” Gianna said, sounding very far away. “Earth to Ethan.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“Dottie wants to know what kind of doughnut you want today.”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” he admitted. “But I might have just figured out something else.”

“What?” asked Devin, her eyes wide.

“The code,” he said. “I might have just cracked the Magikarp Code.”