The word enemy is filled with ugliness. Hercules would tell you that it comes from the Latin inimicus, which means “foe.” Enemy isn’t a word to be used lightly. For example, if your teacher assigns you a fifty-page report on the composition of moon dirt and you do not care one bit about the composition of moon dirt, then you might consider your teacher to be a bit of an annoyance, but he is not your enemy. Another example—if the girl sitting behind you in the movie theater keeps flicking popcorn seeds into your hair, you will probably dislike that girl, but she is not your enemy. A true enemy is someone who seeks to confound, overthrow, or injure an opponent.
Madame la Directeur had done all three of those things. Confound: She lied to Homer about the membership coin, about his uncle, and about L.O.S.T. Overthrow: She stole the membership coin from Homer as well as all of his uncle’s possessions, including the map. Injure: She murdered Homer’s uncle, and then she tried to feed Homer, Lorelei, and Dog to her mutant carnivorous tortoise.
Madame la Directeur wasn’t simply Homer’s enemy. She was his überenemy.
After reading the newspaper article, Homer and Lorelei sank onto a bus bench, their bodies slumping like Lulu Bell’s deflated balloon.
“Now we’ll never get the submarine,” Lorelei said. “That old witch will never let me back into the lair.”
“She’ll never let me in, either,” Homer said. Or if she does, he thought, it would be just like the Hansel and Gretel story, where the old lady lures the little children into her candy house, only to enslave the girl and cook the fat boy over a fire.
“It was a crazy idea anyway,” Hercules said, squeezing onto the bench between them. “We don’t know the first thing about driving a submarine. There are all sorts of health issues with underwater travel. Too much pressure can blow an eardrum. And then there’s the bends. Have you ever heard of the bends? It’s when nitrogen bubbles get trapped in your veins and—”
“It wasn’t a crazy idea,” Lorelei said, jabbing Hercules with her elbow. “It wasn’t crazy at all.”
Homer remembered a day, not so long ago, when Uncle Drake had come to Milkydale to visit. He’d arrived in his usual manner, with an armful of strange presents for his two nephews and niece—a stuffed iguana for Gwendolyn, a miniature zeppelin for Squeak, and a new world atlas for Homer. After drinking lemonade and eating cherry pie with the rest of the family, Homer and Uncle Drake stretched out beneath the willow tree. They watched the ants trailing past, collecting twigs to carry back to their nest. Uncle Drake pointed to one ant carrying a stiff brown leaf. “See that little critter? It’s got one thing on its mind, to get that leaf back to the nest. It’s determined. Now watch this.” Drake took off his shoe and stuck it right across the trail, blocking the ant’s path. The ant wandered in a circle for a bit, but then took a sharp left turn and marched right around the shoe until it was reunited with the original path, the leaf still in its possession. Drake had smiled. “Homer, my boy, if we had one-tenth of an ant’s determination, we could do anything. With determination, anything is possible.”
Homer straightened his shoulders and took a long, deep breath. “It’s not a crazy idea. That submarine belonged to my uncle, and I’m going to get it.” Dog, who’d been eating the front page of the newspaper, must have noticed the serious tone in Homer’s voice because he stopped chewing and looked up.
Lorelei frowned, her pink bangs dangling over her defeated eyes. “I don’t see how. She’ll kill us if she sees us.”
“Look, we can do this. We just flew a hot air balloon, and we survived.” Hercules and Lorelei shared a bewildered look as Homer darted to his feet. “Lorelei, you’re really good at being sneaky and you’re really good at stealing things. And Hercules, you won the World’s Spelling Bee. I mean, come on, that’s amazing. We’ve outsmarted Madame before. We can do it again.”
“Okay, so how do we get into the lair?” Lorelei asked. “She’ll be watching. She’ll know if we come down the tortoise slide, and an alarm will ring if the gate opens. We can’t race in with the speedboat.”
Hercules shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I have no idea how to get into that place.”
“I’ll swim in and get the submarine,” Homer said. The idea came to him as suddenly as a burp.
“You think you could swim in there and not have Madame notice?” Lorelei asked.
“Yes,” Homer said. “With determination, anything is possible.”
“Are you a good swimmer?” Hercules asked. “It’s a long way down that tunnel.”
“I can swim,” Homer said. But he didn’t say he was a good swimmer.
When Homer turned five, his mother signed him up for lessons at the Milkydale Community Pool. And each summer following, until he turned ten, she continued to sign him up for lessons. He began in Jellyfish class—that’s when you can float by yourself—and made it up to Bullfrog class—that’s when you can put your face in the water and swim like a frog. But he never made it to Porpoise, which included all the other strokes.
“I can swim,” he repeated.
“Well, what are we sitting around for?” Lorelei asked. She smacked Hercules on the back. “Let’s go get ourselves a submarine.”
Morning was in full swing, and there was no time to waste. They gave up the idea of hiking all the way around the lake to the public dock, where the speedboat was moored. Instead, Lorelei rented a paddleboat from a nearby stand, and they paddled as close to the gate as possible.
“You’ll have to swim under it,” Lorelei said.
Homer peered over the edge of the paddleboat and cringed.
Some bodies of water are meant for swimming. Mountain lakes, though cold, invite the swimmer with soft ripples and crystal clear water. Lazy rivers tempt the swimmer with deep pools of blue and green. Country clubs, community centers, and private residences skim bugs from the water and add drops of chlorine. City Lake, however, was not meant for swimming, hence the signs posted throughout the park:
Homer, however, had not seen any of these signs, because most had rotted away and were lying on the lake’s bottom. The others were covered in pigeon poop.
He removed his shoes, socks, T-shirt, and jeans so that he was standing in his boxers. The only thing that embarrassed him about standing in his boxers was that he was wearing a pair with hearts all over them, picked out by his mother. Otherwise, a pair of boxers was pretty much like a bathing suit, so it was no big deal. He patted Dog’s head. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m a good swimmer,” Hercules said. “Even though I don’t have my swim goggles or my nose plug, I should go with you.” He started to pull off his rugby shirt.
“No,” Homer said. He turned his back to Lorelei and whispered to Hercules, “You stay here and watch Dog. Make sure she doesn’t take him.”
Lorelei leaned over Homer’s shoulder. “You don’t trust me?” she asked innocently.
“Not in a million years,” he said. Then he lowered himself over the side of the boat, breaking through a patch of yellow scum the way a spoon breaks through piecrust. The water was oddly warm. Dog balanced on his hind legs and leaned over the edge of the paddleboat, whining.
“Don’t let him follow me,” Homer said, remembering how Dog had jumped out of an airplane in a desperate attempt to chase after Homer.
Hercules wrapped an arm around Dog. “Good luck,” he said as Homer began to dog-paddle toward the tunnel.
“Don’t forget Daisy,” Lorelei called. “Bring her back.”
“What?” Homer nearly swallowed a mouthful of water. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“What about Speckles?” Hercules asked.
“Oh, I almost forgot about Speckles,” Lorelei said. “He can’t live in there with Madame. She’ll feed him nuclear waste like she did to the tortoise. She’ll turn him into a monster. Homer, you have to save Speckles.”
“What?” Homer stopped paddling and began to tread water. “How am I supposed to get the submarine and rescue a rat and a whale shark at the same time?”
“With determination, anything is possible,” she said.
“You did say that,” Hercules confirmed.
Homer regretted those words. But he knew how badly he’d feel if Dog were left behind to live with Madame.
After peeling a plastic grocery bag from his arm, Homer frog-kicked toward the tunnel. He passed through a bunch of fast-food containers and plastic soda-can rings that had tangled together like a field of man-made water lilies. The gate loomed before him—as ominous as the entrance to a medieval fortress. He grabbed hold and peered between two iron bars. Then, before he could panic, he took a deep breath and sank into the murky water. Keeping his eyes squeezed shut, he lowered himself to the bottom of the gate, swam beneath, then emerged on the other side.
“Blech,” he said, wiping lake water from his lips. It tasted soapy, with a hint of cod-liver oil.
Something floated toward him from the depths of the tunnel. It was a red ball. As the ball picked up speed, it became clear that it wasn’t floating—it was being pushed.
A wide expanse of polka dots skimmed the surface of the water. With the red ball balanced on his head, Speckles the whale shark swam up to Homer. As he tilted his head, the ball rolled into the water. He nudged it toward Homer. Wait a minute, Homer thought. Rescuing Speckles might be the easiest part of this mission. Homer grabbed the ball. Then he tossed it between the gate bars, into the lake. With a smack of his tail, Speckles dove under Homer’s feet and disappeared.
“Lorelei!” Homer called. “Here comes your shark.”
“Thanks!” she called back.
Hoping that the rat and the submarine would be equally cooperative, Homer pushed away from the gate and went into frog-kick mode. His arms began to ache at the halfway point, and by the time he reached the end of the tunnel, they felt as heavy as lead pipes.
Homer’s gaze fell upon the submarine. As silent as a water bug, he swam along the far edge of the lair’s pool, his eyes adjusting to the bright lights. The place looked vacant. Maybe Madame had been caught by the police already. He could only hope. Then he remembered Lorelei’s request.
“Daisy?” he called quietly, scanning the lair for a pair of beady eyes and a long gray tail. Where was she? “Daisy?” He was about to swim across and search the lair when a voice shot out of the back room, piercing Homer like a precisely aimed porcupine quill.
“That’ll teach her to bring rats into my lair!”
For as long as he lived, Homer W. Pudding would never forget that voice. Clinging to the submarine’s edge, he watched as Madame la Directeur stomped into the lair. Then he grimaced as a gruesome scene unfolded.
A lifeless gray rat swung by its tail from Madame’s fingers. In her other hand she held a shovel. She must have whacked the creature over the head. “Infested,” Madame hissed. “My lair is infested!” She opened a garbage can and tossed in the body. It hit the bottom of the can with a horrid thunk. Poor Daisy, Homer thought. Lorelei will be crushed.
Even though Madame had the same slick black hair and was still shaped like a pear, with her upper half much smaller than her lower half, Homer almost didn’t recognize her. She used to wear a ton of makeup and fancy clothes with high heels. Now she looked like she’d been camping in a baseball dugout. She dropped the shovel and wiped her hands on her jeans. Then she yanked the baseball cap off her head. “Look at all this junk,” she said, turning in a slow circle. “My lair is full of toys! Children’s toys!” She kicked a beach ball and overturned a beanbag chair. She kicked Hercules’s first-aid kit into the pool. Then she stomped to the vending machines. “Packages of brine shrimp? How dare she fill my vending machine with brine shrimp!” She pushed one of the vending machines over.
Homer cringed as the clang echoed off the stone walls. He tightened his grip. Madame was out of control. She’d whacked Daisy on the head, and she’d probably whack him on the head, too. Her face clenched in a frenzied rage. “When I get my hands on that girl, I’ll… what’s this?”
She picked up Homer’s backpack. His mother had insisted on embroidering his initials on the flap, just in case it got lost. “H.W.P.?” Madame opened it and pulled out a black jacket, then a piece of paper. “ ‘Traditional mourning attire… for Mr. Homer W. Pudding’… Homer Pudding? Homer Pudding?” Then she looked around and softened her voice. “Oh, Homer? Are you still here? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Homer slid behind the submarine. Submerged to his nostrils, he peered around the bow.
A buzzer sounded and the flat-screen lit up. Horizontal lines blinked, and then Torch’s face appeared. She held a glue stick and a piece of cut paper. The table in front of her was covered with little map pieces. “Hey, Lorelei! Where the heck are you?”
Madame’s arms fell to her sides, and she dropped the coat and paper.
“I need your help with this stupid map,” Torch said. “Hey! Lorelei!”
Madame tucked her T-shirt into her jeans, pushed a few stray hairs from her face, then strode across the room and sat on the red throne, facing the screen. “Hello, Torch.”
Torch’s mouth fell open. The glue stick tumbled from her hand.
“Why do you look so surprised?” Madame asked snidely. “I told you that I would escape. I told you that I would lead you and Gertrude on this quest.”
Torch narrowed her eyes. “Where’s Lorelei?”
“I don’t know where that street urchin is,” Madame said. “But she stole my red speedboat, and when I find her and that Pudding kid—”
“Homer?” Torch asked. “Homer’s with Lorelei?”
“Obviously the boy wants the treasure as much as we do.”
“But if he’s with Lorelei, then that means he’s abandoned L.O.S.T.”
“Yes, clearly.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Madame leaned back in the red throne. “Homer doesn’t matter right now. What matters is the map. Where’s Gertrude?”
“She had a little accident,” Torch said in a humdrum way. “We were standing on the deck, and she suddenly toppled overboard. I tried to save her—really I did.” The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “But all that jewelry pulled her right down to the bottom.”
Homer shivered as silence filled the lair. Gertrude was dead? Possibly murdered? Even though she was a traitor, this was a major loss to the organization. The L.O.S.T. membership was dwindling by the day.
“I see you are in the process of reassembling the map,” Madame said. “I will be there shortly to assist you.”
“No,” Torch blurted out.
“No?”
“That’s right. No.” Torch’s brow knitted, and she glared into the camera. “I don’t need your help. So what if you’ve escaped? I have the map. I have Gertrude’s yacht. I don’t need you anymore. The plan has changed.”
“The plan has changed?” Madame repeated. She darted to her feet with so much gusto that the throne fell backward. “The plan has changed?”
Torch winced, as if Madame’s fury had reached through the screen and slapped her.
“Do not forget, you tattoo-covered nitwit, that I’m the one who created the plan,” Madame said, pointing a finger at the screen. “The girl is working for me. I persuaded her to go to the Pudding farm. I told her about the map. Then I called you and Gertrude and told you to offer your services to her. I told her she could trust you two. She was idiotic enough to give you the map—that’s her fault. But I’m the one behind this, so never ever forget who’s in charge. You wouldn’t have the map if not for me.”
Homer’s fingers turned white as he gripped a porthole. Lorelei was working with Madame la Directeur? Maybe he shouldn’t have been shocked. After all, she’d worked for Madame before.
But Madame thought Lorelei had given Rumpold’s map to Gertrude and Torch. So that meant that Lorelei was double-crossing Madame. Homer clenched his jaw. She would try to double-cross him, too. No doubt about it. She was playing a game with everyone—a game comprised of her own rules for her own benefit. No matter how many promises or pacts she made, Lorelei wanted the treasure for herself and no one else.
Well, Homer could play games of lies and deception, too. At least he thought he could. He’d never really tried, but right then and there, he knew it was necessary. He’d have to stoop to Lorelei’s level. Homer W. Pudding, nephew of Drake H. Pudding, wasn’t about to let Rumpold Smeller’s treasure, a treasure the entire world was waiting for, fall into Lorelei’s greedy hands. No way. No way!
“You don’t scare me,” Torch said from the flat-screen. Her hawk appeared and pecked at the camera lens. “You’re an escaped convict. I’m going to call the police and tell them where you are.”
“You don’t know where I am,” Madame said, folding her arms and smirking with satisfaction.
“Whatever,” Torch said, pushing the hawk aside. “It doesn’t matter that you’ve escaped. I don’t need you. That’s the point. I have the map.”
“Oh, but you do need me.” Madame picked up the red throne, brushed off its cushion, then sat. Resting her hands on the armrests, she spoke in a steadier, calmer voice. “You haven’t put the map together. You’re having trouble.”
“I ain’t having trouble,” Torch insisted. “It’s just that there are a lot of pieces.”
Madame made a tsk-tsk sound as she shook her head. “My dear Torch, you’re not a map reader. You don’t come from a treasure-hunting family. Your head is filled with fantasies about Atlantis. That’s why you’ve never found a single thing in your life. You need my expertise. I can put the map together.”
The hawk leaped onto Torch’s shoulder and nuzzled her cheek. Torch, deep in thought, stroked the hawk’s head. Then she stared at all the map pieces lying in front of her. “Okay, fine. You can help me.”
“Then we’ll have to get rid of the girl,” Madame said. “She knows too much. And the boy, too.”
Homer’s heartbeat pounded at his temples.
“Those kids ain’t my problem. All I care about is the treasure.” Torch uncapped a glue stick. “So, if we’re going to put this map together, I want to make a new plan. This time it’s just you and me. Deal?”
“Deal,” Madame said. Torch gave her directions to Gertrude’s yacht. Then Madame reached out and turned off the screen. “ ‘You and me,’ ” she said with a snicker. “Until, of course, it’s just me.”