Tooth or Dare Read online

  WITH THANKS TO PAUL EBBS

  “Two hundred and nineteen . . . two hundred and twenty . . . two hundred and . . .”

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

  “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”

  Tinkle. Crunch.

  Crrrraaaaaaaaaaashh!!!!

  As the huge pyramid of teeth I’ve been counting crashes to the bedroom floor, I glare at Humphrey, my humming-fish alarm clock, from both sides of my hammer.

  The glare is meant to make him terrified . . . but in this case it’s more laughing-i-fied.

  Humphrey floats onto his back as bubbles of laughter explode from his gills.

  With a sudden flash, Larry the Lantern Fish starts glowing like a ship’s fog light. Larry always gets too bright when he’s startled.

  “Is it time to get up already?” he says sleepily, finning his eyes and dimming his light.

  I float around and sigh at the teeth scattered all over the carpet.

  Okay, I’d better explain.

  How many teeth do you have? Count them. While you’re doing that, I’ll list all you need to know about my teeth.

  Sharks have about a squillion unbelievably sharp teeth.

  I have row after row of them in my mouth.

  They fall out all the time and are replaced within a day.

  If there was a Tooth Fairy for sharks (like you leggy air breathers have) we’d all be millionaires by the time we’re eight.

  But we don’t have a Tooth Fairy, and they’d probably run out of money in half a day.

  Instead we collect our teeth in a jar and have a competition at school to see who has lost the most each year.

  That’s why I was counting them out on top of my bedside crabinet.

  But now they’re scattered all over the floor and I have to count them all out again! (Humphrey starting to hum made me jump and the teeth went flying.)

  Humphrey obviously thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. I can still hear him snickering as I start shoveling the teeth back into the jar with my tail.

  The reason I woke up before my alarm-clock fish went off is because I was too excited to sleep. And the reason I was too excited to sleep is because we’re nearly at the end of the school year. In one week the prize for who has lost the most teeth will be handed out in class by our teacher, Mrs. Shelby.

  To be honest it’s a junky prize: a replica of a great white’s tooth stuck in a piece of driftwood. Well, the driftwood isn’t a replica, there’s bunches of that around-but the shark tooth is made from carved coral.

  I wouldn’t mind if it was a real Great White’s Tooth-that would be cool. But coral?

  No.

  But I do want to win the competition. Mainly to beat Rick Reef the reef shark. He always wins. For the past three years I’ve been close, but he’s managed to beat me every single time.

  This year will be different though. The last time I’d counted I’d lost two hundred and seventy-three teeth. Last year Rick only lost two hundred and seventy-one and he won the competition.

  “I don’t know why you’re bothering,” says Larry from behind me.

  “Yeah, you know Rick’s gonna win. He always does,” says Humphrey.

  I keep shoveling. They’re only trying to rile me up.

  “I heard Rick’s lost so many teeth this year he has to suck his breakfast to death,” Humphrey says, snickering.

  I’m about to come back with the wittiest put down in the history of put downs . . . but I can’t use it because Mom is calling upstairs, “Harry-Warry! Time for brekkie-wekkie!”

  I go downstairs and once I wriggle out of Mom’s finbrace (she hugs me so tight it makes my eyes bulge out of my hammerlike balloons), I dart into the kitchen. Dad is floating at the table eating his sea-cereal with one fin while checking the news on his cool new octopiPAD. He’s swiping across the screen, flicking through page after page of boring news.

  I’ve been on my best behavior all week because he promised that if I’m good, he’ll let me use the octopiPAD over the weekend to play BrineCraft. I sit quietly while he flicks. Mom puts a bowl of Kelp Krispies in front of me and I bite down extra hard on them, hoping to pop out another tooth.

  “Harry!” Dad says, lifting his nose from the octopiPAD and giving me his squintiest look. “Can’t you eat a bit quieter? I’m trying to read the news and all I can hear is your teeth crunching like seashells in a washing machine!”

  “Sorry . . . crunch . . . Dad . . . crunch . . . I’m trying to knock . . . crunch . . . a . . . few . . . more . . . GWULFFFFFFFF!!!”

  Dad pops some marine-beans into my chompy mouth and pushes my jaws closed. “Just be quiet-and take a look at this.”

  He holds up the octopiPAD.

  I roll my eyes and sigh. I’m not interested in boring news, or pictures of Dad opening a new store or school in Shark Point. Dad loved to show off before he became mayor, but he’s double worse now.

  Dad pushes the octopiPAD right up close, and sensing that I’m not really interested, he leans right in. “It’s something even more interesting than knocking your own teeth out to win a silly prize. Look!”

  I focus on the screen. It’s not the boring news headline that I’m expecting. It’s something way better:

  NEW THIS SUMMER AT DREGOLAND!!!

  SHARK POINT’S PREMIER AMUSEMENT PARK PRESENTS:

  THE MOST TERRIFYING!

  DORSAL-DEFYING!

  SCARE-FEST IN THE WHOLE WIDE OCEAN!!!

  DARE YOU RIDE THE KRAKEN???!!!!

  Dad fins the screen and a video plays . . . if my eyes bulged out when mom hugged me, then right now it must look like my whole face is about to explode!!!! And here’s why:

  Rising from the center of Dregoland are thirty Gigantic! Green! Slimy! Tentacles!

  On each of the tentacles are about twenty suckers!

  But as the video comes in closer, I can see the suckers are cages!

  And in each cage is a kid shark or teen fish screaming with joy and fear!

  But . . . the tentacles are whirling around the body of an even GIGANTIC-ER mechanical kraken!!!!

  (Krakens are like the most feared sea monsters ever!)

  The kraken’s body is all lumps and bumps around a huge slippery mouth full of terrible teeth!

  The tentacles swoop down toward the teeth!

  Each tooth is as big as a great white!!!!

  Everyone screams.

  Everyone laughs.

  It’s the most exciting thing I have ever seen!!!

  “Dad! Can we go?” I start swimming crazily around Dad’s head. My swishing tail makes his sea-cereal float off toward the living room. “Can we, Dad? Can we?”

  “Calm down, Harry!” Dad grabs me and floats me firmly back to the table.

  “But-”

  “You’re not going anywhere, my son. Not until you’ve cleaned up my breakfast and picked up all those teeth.”

  Oh, fish cakes! In my excitement, I’ve knocked my jar of teeth all over the floor again. Humph!

  “Harry, stop!” Ralph yelps from inside my mouth.

  “And then the Kraken’s tentacles swoop down and . . .”

  “Ouch! You just bit my rear! Ouch! Stop!”

  “. . . you’re in the sucker cage and you can’t fall out, but it goes right inside the kraken’s mouth, upside down!”

  “Harry! How can I clean your teeth if-ouch!-you don’t stop-ouch!-biting me? Just shut up about the stupid kraken, will you?”

  Ralph darts out of my mouth and skids around to face me. He looks very angry. Ralph is my best friend. He’s also a pilot fish, and pilot fish eat the bits of old food from between sharks’ teeth. They’re like swimming toothbrushes. Yeah, I know it sounds gross, but they seem to enjoy it. Well, mostly. I suppose
it’s not very enjoyable if the shark’s mouth they’re inside keeps talking about The Kraken and nipping them with the teeth they’re supposed to be cleaning. But I’m so excited I just can’t stop!

  Ralph reaches a fin behind him and with a pained expression and a loud pop pulls one of my teeth out of his tender hide and slaps it into my fin.

  “One more for your collection,” Ralph says.

  I put the tooth into my schoolbag. “Sorry, Ralph.”

  “You going to shut up now?” Ralph asks.

  I nod and he swims back inside my mouth.

  But all I can think about is The Kraken and riding in one of those cages on the craziest, mind-blowingest, amazingest theme park ride in the entire seaverse!

  “What’s up with Rick?” I ask my friend Joe the Jellyfish as we approach the school gates. Although I’m still totally stoked about The Kraken, I have to keep one side of my hammer on the lookout for trouble.

  Rick’s the school show off and can be a bit of a bully. He loves nothing more than sneaking up behind me and flubbering my hammer with his tail, then giggling with his dimwit buddy Donny Dogfish like a volcano’s sea vent.

  But Rick isn’t lurking behind me today, he’s already by the gates strutting up and down in front of Cora and Pearl, the dolphin twins, and he’s smiling.

  Rick never smiles. Most times there’s a sneer as wide as a walrus’s bottom sliding up the side of his face.

  “I don’t like it,” Joe says, “Rick’s never that smiley.”

  To be fair, Joe doesn’t like anything much. He’s made of jelly in the bravery department as well as the body department. “He’s up to something,” Joe says quietly, and as if to make us all sure that he’s scared by Rick’s change of behavior, his bottom toots several times with fear.

  Rick turns and struts again in front of the girls, pulling his mouth into a wider smile with his fins. As we get closer, my friend Tony the Tiger Shark nudges me in the gills with his finbow. “He’s not smiling. Look.”

  I zero my hammer-vision in on Rick’s mouth. Tony’s right. He isn’t smiling. He’s showing off another couple of holes between his teeth to Cora and Pearl!

  The dolphins flick their tails in excitement. “You’re going to win for sure, Rick,” coos Cora.

  “You’ve lost more teeth than everyone else put together,” purrs Pearl.

  “Keep your heads down boys,” I whisper to Ralph, Tony, and Joe as we get closer. “With any luck he won’t notice us.”

  We nearly make it past when Joe’s bottom triple-toots, and Rick spins around. His fake smile turns into a sneer, as if someone just flicked a switch on his face.

  “Hey, rubberhead!”

  My heart sinks lower than a sand skate’s belly and my shoulders automatically hunch up. Rick floats right up to me, and I expect him to flubber me-but he doesn’t. He just fins my mouth wide and looks right in.

  “Pathetic!” he says after a moment, opening his mouth wide. Rick points at his lower jaw. “Ook at isssssss!” Which, roughly translated, means, “Look at this!”

  Rick has fresh spaces and I can see a few loose teeth. I think about pointing out my own new holes to Rick, but before I can raise a fin, Donny, who has sneaked up behind me, flubbbbbbbbbbbbbbbers my hammer, and suddenly, Rick, Donny, Cora, and Pearl are all laughing their tail fins off.

  Great.

  “Harry Hammer?”

  “Here . . . Ouch! . . . Mrs. Shelby.”

  Attendance isn’t going well. Rick is sitting behind me in class flicking krill balls at the back of my hammer. Because Mrs. Shelby, our sea-turtle-teacher, is looking at her attendance book, she can’t see what he’s doing. She looks up. “Harry? What happened?”

  I hear Rick growling under his breath. It’s clear there will be trouble if I tell on him.

  “Nothing, Mrs. Shelby. I just hit my finbow on the edge of the desk.”

  Mrs. Shelby continues with the attendance. Luckily Rick is too busy showing off his fresh holes to the kids around him to flick any more krill balls at me.

  Some days I really don’t want to be at school. Some days I wish I could be out in the ocean having adventures and ambushing prey just like my great white hero Gregor the Gnasher. No one would dare flick krill balls at him.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Shelby says. “As you all know it’s only a week until we find out which shark has lost the most teeth this year, so let’s have a count up!”

  All the sharks in the class get their jars out and start counting. Only sharks are able to enter the competition because fish have really bad teeth that are so small you can barely see them, let alone count them. I tip my jar onto my desk. Ralph and Joe float over to help. Joe, being a jellyfish, comes in really handy-or really tentacle-y-because he can count things way quicker than anyone else. As all eight of his tentacles whirl around on my desk, my jar starts to fill up. I finish first.

  “Two hundred and ninety-one!” I call out. Mrs. Shelby notes it down.

  “Two hundred and seven, Mrs. Shelby,” says Terry the Thresher Shark with a disappointed frown on his face. I’m well in the lead there!

  “Two hundred and sixty-eight,” Tony the Tiger Shark says. He smiles at me and gives me the fins-up.

  “Two hundred and eighty,” Lucy Lemon Shark calls out from the back of the class. I’m doing great!

  Finally, there’s only Rick left to call out his total and I’m still in the lead. Rick and Donny are counting. Their faces are deep in concentration. Rick may be good at sports, but he’s not the sharpest tooth in the tooth jar when it comes to brainy stuff, and they’ve had to restart a couple of times. Donny’s become a bit cross-eyed with the pain of thinking, and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth. Mrs. Shelby goes over to their desk to help them.

  Finally Rick looks up. “Two hundred and ninety-two!” he says triumphantly, and does three barrel rolls to celebrate.

  Clams!

  Ralph pokes me in the gills with his finbow.

  I push his fin away.

  Rick’s in the lead-I really thought I might have a chance!

  Ralph pokes me again.

  “Get off!” I hiss at him.

  Oh well. It’s only a stupid old fake shark tooth for a prize. Not like it matters.

  “Well,” says Mrs. Shelby, “I have a very important and exciting announcement to make about this year’s prize. I’m sure you’ve all seen the news about the new ride at Dregoland?”

  Oh no. I don’t like the sound of this.

  Ralph is poking me so hard it’s like he’s trying to poke a hole through my gills. I push him away with my tail.

  “I take great pleasure in informing you,” Mrs. Shelby says, “that the owners of Dregoland have invited next week’s winner, and three of his or her friends, to an exclusive preview night to be the first ever to ride The Kraken!”

  I don’t believe it!!!!!

  “And,” Mrs. Shelby continues, “the winner will get to meet the special guest of honor at the preview night-Gregor the Gnasher!”

  I DOUBLE DON’T BELIEVE IT!!!!! Rick could get to ride The Kraken and meet my hero.

  This is now officially the worst day of my life.

  The whole class goes wild. Cora and Pearl rush up to Rick to pat him on the back and coo and purr at him all over again because he’s in the lead. Donny and Rick are high-finning like crazy.

  Ralph grabs me by the gills and shakes me hard. My head goes all flubbery and suddenly there’s about ten Ralphs in front of me, all saying the same thing.

  “Will you please take a look at my rear!”

  “What?”

  Ralph turns around and shoves his bottom in my face. “Look! I just found them and I can’t reach them with my fins.”

  As my vision returns to normal I see two of my teeth still stuck in his hide.

  Two teeth!

  That means . . .

  I pluck them out and hold them up high. “Mrs. Shelby! Look!”

  Mrs. Shelby turns and looks in my fin.

  “I hav
e a new total! Two hundred and ninety-three!” I almost scream.

  Everyone stops and stares. Cora and Pearl freeze in mid coo and look at me, my jar, and my two new teeth, freshly pulled from Ralph’s rear.

  “Well, that certainly puts you in the lead, Harry!” Mrs. Shelby smiles, and writes my new total down.

  Suddenly everyone zooms away from Rick and Donny like they’re a bad smell and starts yelling and cheering and swimming around me!

  I’m caught up in a whirlpool of noise and fins and jelly tentacles and tiger stripes.

  Pearl and Cora lift me up on their bottlenoses and coo and purr thirty times louder than they did for Rick!

  Rick and Donny don’t join in of course. They’ve both floated to the back of the class with scowls so sharp they could pop a puffer fish.

  Another great result!

  This isn’t such a bad day after all.

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!”

  I bounce onto my bed and take the jar of teeth out of my schoolbag. Making sure that Humphrey and Larry aren’t around, I give the jar a big sloppy kiss and place it carefully on my bedside crabinet.

  I flop back onto my bed with a huge silly grin on my face and close my eyes. I imagine I’m in a cage on one of the Kraken legs, spinning through the water at a zillion krillometers an hour. Down below I can see hundreds and hundreds of faces-including Gregor the Gnasher’s-cheering me on . . . and . . .

  Rick’s face suddenly looms up, filling my vision. He opens his mouth . . . and he has absolutely no teeth at all, and he’s pointing at my mouth, which I can feel with my mouth is full of teeth! Then Mrs. Shelby is taking me by the fin and pulling me out of The Kraken and making me sit on the naughty rock for lying about my teeth. And now all I can see is Rick . . . with Gregor the Gnasher in the cage instead! He’s flying above Dregoland. And he’s laughing. And he’s pointing. At me!!!!!!!!!

  That’s when I wake up.

  What the heck! I must have drifted off to sleep and into a dream. Or more like a nightmare! I get a horrible scaredy feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realize I’m only one tooth ahead of Rick.