12

Charlie Anderson should never be left to do laundry

It’s amazing what an unexpected dip in the sea can do to break the tension. Once we had hauled ourselves back onto Llywelyn-the-Great and had caught our breath, all the anger seemed to have drained out of us into the Welsh water.

“That was unexpected,” I said.

“My phone’s dead,” Ben said, trying to turn it off and back on again.

I pulled mine out of my sopping pocket. “Mine too.”

Charlie peered over the side. “Think mine’s still in the sea.”

“What were we doing?” I said. “That was so stupid.”

“I dunno. I felt like I really wanted to fight you.” Ben shook his head to get the water out of his ears.

“Yeah, I thought I wanted to fight you too,” I said.

Ben stopped shaking and looked at me. “I don’t really want to fight you.”

“I don’t really want to fight you either. Friends?”

“Friends.”

It was a nice moment but it was cut short when Charlie stood between us and shook himself like a dog. “I don’t mind what you guys are doing as long as you don’t leave me out.”

“We promise not to leave you out,” I said.

“Good. Or I’ll get you both.” He took his shirt off, wrung it out, and whipped me and then Ben around the legs. He chased us around the boat until we got tired and then we all flopped down on the padded benches.

“What are we going to do now?” Ben asked. “I’m cold. Are you cold?”

I nodded. “I don’t want to stay out here all night.”

“We should go below deck. Keep warm in the cabin.”

“It’s probably locked,” I said.

Charlie tried the handle. “It’s definitely locked.”

“It’s probably not locked locked though.” Before we could stop him, Ben gave the handle a shake, then rammed into the door with his shoulder. There was a splintering sound and the door swung open. “See, not locked locked.”

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Charlie said.

“We’re already trespassing, I didn’t think a little breaking and entering was much different,” Ben said, switching on the light. “We are in a moment of extreme need.”

I looked at Charlie and he sighed and said, “Do you think they have hypoallergenic pillows in prison?”

Despite the threat of a criminal record hovering over our heads, I couldn’t help but feel relieved that we were inside. We started exploring, leaving wet footprints wherever we went. At one end of the boat was a small kitchen area, in the middle section was a tiny table with some seats, and at the other end was the world’s smallest toilet and bunks for sleeping. I told Ben and Charlie not to touch anything. We had to leave everything exactly how we’d found it.

I was so tired, and Ben and Charlie were yawning too, so I suggested we strip off and put on our spare underpants to get ready for bed. We needed to be up early and out of the boat before anyone else was about.

Charlie took our wet clothes—he said he’d found somewhere to dry them out—and then we climbed into the bunks. Ben and I went top-and-tail on the bottom bunk. Charlie had the top one to himself. We should have gone the other way around because Charlie kept farting, but by that point I couldn’t be bothered to move. It wasn’t long before we passed out, either from fatigue or from the toxic fumes of Charlie’s onion-scented butt blasts.

It must have been only a few hours later that I was woken up by a shrill wailing sound. I bolted up, my nose twitching.

Smoke.

It took me a moment to remember where I was and then work out that the boat must be on fire. I shook Charlie and Ben awake.

“Get up. I think the boat is on fire!”

Charlie stretched, rubbed his eyes, and then appeared to remember something and leaped to his feet. “Oh no! I forgot!”

I did NOT like the sound of that. “What did you forget, Charlie?”

He didn’t answer, just ran off in his underpants toward the other end of the boat. Ben and I followed him to the little kitchen area. He opened the sliding door and all this smoke billowed out.

He picked up a kitchen towel and waved it around while saying, “No, no, no, no, no,” like a severely disappointed folk dancer.

“What did you do?” Ben shouted.

“Have you been cooking?” Through the smoke I could make out a pile of something ablaze on the stove top.

I filled up a mug with water from the sink and threw it at the pile. To be honest, it had as much effect as peeing into a volcano. Luckily, Ben grabbed the little fire extinguisher that was attached to the wall, pulled the nozzle, and aimed it at the stove. The small blaze was extinguished, and we spluttered and coughed as even more smoke filled the cabin. The fire alarm was still going so I grabbed the towel from Charlie and tried waving it in front of it. That didn’t do anything so I began pushing the off switch, but it wouldn’t stop.

Charlie yelled helpfully, “Turn it off. Someone’s going to hear us!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

Ben opened the door to let out some of the smoke and I found a wooden spoon in one of the kitchen drawers. I adopted a more aggressive approach and began whacking the alarm with all my strength. It fell from the ceiling onto the floor but the noise got louder if anything.

“Take that!”

WHACK!

“And that!”

WHACK!

“Go on, Fred, smash it!” Charlie yelled.

I really started to pummel the alarm. The white plastic casing cracked, then fell apart, and the alarm emitted its final death wails.

“Finish it off!” Ben shouted.

I brought the spoon down right in the center of the alarm and delivered the killer blow. It let out a final peep and then was quiet. Freddie Yates 1—Smoke Detector 0.

“Enjoy that much?” Ben asked.

I blushed. I had in an angry-fun sort of way. “Well . . . you know.”

“He’s got a kitchen utensil and he’s not afraid to use it,” Charlie laughed.

I poked the smoldering ashes with the spoon. They looked strangely familiar. “What is this stuff?”

Charlie quickly stopped laughing and began shifting his weight from foot to foot in a way that made him look decidedly . . . shifty.

“Charlie?”

“I only meant to warm them up. I didn’t think they’d catch on fire.”

In among the ashes I spotted a charred label with AGE 11–12 YRS printed on it. “Charlie, tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“It’s our clothes.”

“I said not to tell me that.”

Charlie looked uncomfortable. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“To cook our clothes?” Ben spluttered. “What were you going to do—eat them?”

“There weren’t any flames, the stove has these hot circles, see?”

“Hot circles?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I was only going to warm them through.”

“Charlie! They were our clothes, not pancakes. We’ve got nothing to wear apart from our underpants! I can’t meet Alan Froggley in my underpants. I just can’t.”

It was then that Ben inexplicably started laughing and I had a serious sense-of-humor failure. “Ben, this isn’t funny!”

“It’s a little funny.”

“No, it’s a disaster.”

“Now you’re being dramatic.”

“Ben, we’re in Wales, in a boat we’ve broken into, that we’ve now set on fire, and we’re practically naked—how is this not a disaster?”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Chill, nobody’s died, have they?”

His words seemed to fill the whole cabin.

He looked at me guiltily. “Oh. Sorry. Apart from your Grams. Nobody else has died.”

I just looked at him with my mouth open.

Ben quickly broke eye contact, picked up the bits of alarm, and chucked them in the garbage can. “It’s fine. We’ll think of something.”

I couldn’t see how it was fine. “We’ll need a miracle to get ourselves out of this mess.”

But a miracle didn’t happen. Not then anyway. In fact, our situation got a whole lot worse.