Changes in Latitudes by Will Hobbs

Author:Will Hobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 1988-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

TEDDY AND I caught the last bus into Punta Blanca, or we would have gotten back even later. Jennifer was waiting for us out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She was talking to Bill, who was on his motorbike, and she didn’t see us among the people coming and going. “I’m just afraid we’d miss them and make things worse,” she was saying.

“Make what worse?” I demanded, making a sudden appearance.

She looked relieved, but that didn’t last long. “Mom’s really mad,” she said theatrically. “I told you you couldn’t just take off like that.”

What a joke. Jennifer thought that would scare me. I loved it that my mother was mad. As mad as she might be, she couldn’t be half as angry as me. On the bus ride back I’d seen her over and over on the beach with that schmuck, and my anger had taken a form as exquisitely perfect as a rose. “She is, huh?” I said.

Actually I didn’t like this guy hanging around, checking out our dirty laundry. He had his own dirty laundry to worry about—every time I’d seen him he was wearing the same grubby T-shirt with the leaping marlin. I didn’t like his face, either. He looked like a real piece of slime.

“Why are you so late?” Jennifer insisted.

“Hey, we had a rough day at the office.”

Bill started up his motorbike. “See you around,” he said to her, and took off.

Now it was my turn to grill her. “What’s the deal with him?”

“He just offered to help.”

“We don’t need no stinking help.”

Teddy and I went straight to our room, and Jennifer went to hers. I figured it was up to my mother to make the next move. With both me and Mom on the warpath, Teddy sought refuge in bed with a nature book. He hadn’t spoken a word since we left the scene of the turtle slaughter. I went out onto the balcony for a few minutes and parboiled my brains some more.

When I came back into the room I sat back on my bed and stared at the stuffed frog on the nightstand. That shook Teddy’s concentration. He sneaked peeks at me as I out-glowered that baleful frog on the bongos. The thing did have an evil look, like something out of a “Twilight Zone” show. Something that would come alive at night, spread filth and disease, set fires, stab people with knives, and so on.

“Go ahead, make my day,” I whispered savagely, and tore an arm off.

Teddy, the poor kid, was horrified. He’d seen me do it, and saw me holding that frog’s limb up in the air like it meant something.

“It was us or him,” I told Teddy. “He was planning to do things to us with a fork—during the night. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right now. I don’t think he’ll be able to do much with one arm.”

Teddy could tell I hadn’t flipped out, that I was only probing the limits of normal weirdness. He tried a little smile, but it got no farther than the corner of his mouth.

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