AJ Torres and the Treasure of Captain Grayshark

Chapter One

The pirate glared at me with one glassy blue eye. The other was covered with a black leather patch that matched his boots.

“There isn’t room enough for the two of us on this here poop deck, ye scallywag!” I growled, raising my sword over my head. “Walk the plank!”

Jayden let out a big sigh. “A.J., can you stop goofing around, bro? The tourna-ment’s about to start.”

I lowered my sword, which was really a bright yellow golf club, and said, “Fine. Whatever you say, Cap’n.” I gave the pirate statue that stood guard at the en-trance to Ruben’s Pirate Adventure Mini Golf Course a halfhearted salute and fol-lowed my best friend inside.

“Good. Now get your head in the game,” Jayden demanded. “There’s a lot at stake.”

He didn’t need to remind me. Just the other morning, he had woken me up with the worst news ever: His mom had been laid off, and she was looking for a new job out of town.

“You mean like Fort Lauderdale? Boca?” I’d asked.

He’d shaken his head sadly and muttered, “More like Jacksonville, where my grandparents live.”

After doing a few quick calculations in my mind, I became so upset that I jumped out of bed, not even embarrassed that I was still rocking my superhero pajama shorts. “But that’s, like, three hundred fifty miles away! At least five hours by car. It might as well be another planet!”

“I know.” Jayden had nodded as he sat heavily in my desk chair and extended his long legs in front of him.

“And that means . . .”

“I might move,” he’d finished.

I couldn’t even picture Jayden not living next door to me. He always had, and since his mom worked long hours, he spent almost as much time in my house as in his own. All of a sudden, that would be over.

“What about school?” I’d asked.

“I guess I’ll have to transfer somewhere else before the summer’s out.”

Somehow that was even more of a gut punch. We were already a few weeks into our summer vacation, so summer would be over in no time. Plus, not to brag, but Jayden Williams and yours truly, Alejandro Javier Torres, were big deals at SMPAS--South Miami Performing Arts School. Since his breakthrough performance as a possessed fish stick in Andrea Wade’s play about a haunted lunchroom, he’d be-come the most sought-after actor in the seventh grade, next to Manny Ramirez. And the way I’d managed to rig the frozen foods using some polyurethane cord and a pulley system so that they’d looked like they were floating had gotten me promoted to Junior Assistant Associate Set Designer Number Three for all the school plays. Only twelve years old, and we practically ran the place. He couldn’t leave now!

“Is there anything we can do to get your mom to stay here?” I’d asked.

Jayden had scoffed. “Sure. Come up with enough cash to pay our rent and bills for a few months and find my mom a job in town.”

I couldn’t do much about the job, unless she wanted to stand on the side of the road and twirl a giant cardboard sign that read IT’S NOT TOURISM . . . IT’S TOR-RESM! I’d happily relinquish that position--and the alligator costume it came with--to her, but my parents seemed to think it was important for me to participate in the family travel business. I did have an idea for how we could come up with the cash, though--at least some of it.

That’s how we’d ended up at Ruben’s Pirate Adventure Mini Golf Course near Mi-ami Beach a couple days later, competing to win a $300 cash prize. Luckily, even though Hurricane Belinda was due to skirt the coast any day now, and some busi-nesses had already closed in preparation, the tournament was going on as planned.

That’s because the course was run by none other than Ruben Vega. He’d become a local celebrity for regularly roaming his property in full-on pirate cosplay. As a theater kid, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his commitment to the bit. He greeted his customers rocking a giant hat, a wig of long black hair, a sword, a big red coat, and even a fake peg leg that covered one of his real legs. He was barely taller than me, though, and his belly bulging against his ruffled shirt made him look more like somebody’s uncle than a swashbuckling pirate. But he refused to let a hurricane scare him off, so I guess that was something.

He had a giant button, at least six inches across, on his coat that read ARRRRRRRRSSSSK ME ABOUT CAPTAIN GRAYSHARRRRK in bold black letters against a white background. Jayden and I knew better than to do anything of the sort. Ruben was really into pirate history, and if you gave him half a chance, he would talk at you about it for hours. Worse, he’d try to get you to visit the adjoin-ing museum that he’d curated himself, dedicated to local maritime history and the pirates who once sailed the waters around Florida. It was a giant snoozefest I only barely remembered from our second-grade school trip. The only reason anyone put up with Ruben’s conversational whirlpools was because the golf course was low-key amazing.

“Welcome to our Semi-Annual Pirate Adventure Golf Tournament!” he called out now over the bullhorn. “Teams who preregistered, go get your clubs. Everybody else, head for Snappy. Yarr.”

That was literally how he said it--“Yarr,” not “YARR!”

He pointed to a podium in the shape of a giant Day-Glo green alligator standing on its hind legs. Ruben’s assistant, a bored-looking teenage girl who was chewing gum and writing furiously on a notepad, stood on the platform, which made it look like she was getting a piggyback ride from the gator.

As she explained the app Ruben had set up where scores would be updated throughout the course of the game, I glanced around, sizing up the competition: a few tourists who didn’t look like they’d ever held golf clubs before, an elderly cou-ple with thick bifocals, a group of college kids who seemed way more interested in taking selfies with the fake pirates . . . I liked our chances.

That is, until I noticed who was standing in line right in front of us, waiting to sign up with her friend.

“Is that . . . ?” I whispered to Jayden.

“Cristina Ramirez,” Jayden whispered back with a nod. Already his face was flushed, and his breathing sped up, like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. Oh no. Of all the school kids for us to run into, it had to be Cristina, the object of Jayden’s massive crush. He was usually cool and laid-back, the definition of un-bothered, but in Cristina’s presence, he turned into a nervous ball of sweat.

“Get it together, bro,” I said under my breath.

Jayden nodded and furiously wiped his hands on his shirt, just as Cristina finished signing up and noticed the two of us.

“Oh, hey, guys!” she said with a friendly wave. “Are you entering too?”

Jayden’s mouth opened and closed a couple times, like a robot whose operating system had crashed, but no sound came out.

“Yes,” I jumped in. “And we’re going to demolish you.”

Cristina shared an amused look with her friend, a tall redhead with freckles named Sarah, who I also recognized as a ballet dancer from SMPAS.

“Oh yeah?” said Cristina. “Well, bring it on.”

After they floated away and I finished signing us up and downloading the app, Jay-den groaned miserably. “How could you jinx us by telling her we were going to demolish them?”

“It’s called trash talk, Jayden. And it works! We’ve got them shaking in their ballet slippers.”

We didn’t. Cristina and Sarah were giggling as they took a few practice putts, look-ing super relaxed, but Jayden, who looked like he had just taken a dip in the Atlan-tic, didn’t need to hear that.

We chose our golf balls and followed a path of paving stones to the first hole, where pirate figures held bottles of grog or swords in one hand and bags of coins or bejeweled necklaces in the other. They were having a blast. The people of the town they’d just sacked were probably not as thrilled, but for some reason, we never really talked about them.

I leaned forward to watch the first team get started.

One of the college kids, in a Miami Dolphins jersey and ball cap, sank the very first ball in two shots, and his teammate high-fived him. The elderly couple made par too. I guess it made sense that nobody would sign up for a tournament unless they were pretty good. Cristina and her friend were no different, except before they took their turn, Sarah loudly said, “Show ’em how it’s done.” Cristina did just that by getting a hole in one, and Sarah squealed.

Okay, so this was not going to be as easy as I’d hoped.

I glanced at Jayden. I guessed he could tell what I was thinking. “Don’t worry, bro,” he said. “We’re gonna rule this course!”

We stepped up to take our turn. Neither of us got a hole in one, but we made par. Four holes later, according to the app, Cristina’s team was still a few strokes ahead of us, but eventually their luck ran out.

The fifth hole featured a scene of pirates burying treasure on a sandy island, be-side a waterfall, and it had an honest-to-goodness sand trap, where Sarah man-aged to get stuck and lose a couple strokes. Then Cristina banked her golf ball off a seashell, missing the hole by a mile.

When our turn came, I learned from Cristina’s mistake and avoided the shell, banking off the treasure chest instead for a hole in one.

“Yes!” I whooped. “We could actually win this!”

“Told you so!” Jayden agreed. We celebrated with our secret handshake: two fist bumps, a forearm cross, and a handclasp.

“Dorks!” Cristina called over from the next hole, but Jayden grinned like it was a term of endearment.

From that round on, the leaderboard shifted back and forth between us, Cristina and Sarah, and the college kids. Jayden and I were holding our own at first, but as the course continued, the scenes displayed near each hole became more and more disturbing. There was the deck of a ship, with what looked like a villager being made to walk the plank. There were angry pirates looking genuinely murderous. And then came the two ships in the middle of a battle. The cannons jerked and made shooting noises, and the front of each one lit up orange each time it “shot.” I knew it was all fake, but something about them must have shaken me, because an easy putt, three shots max, turned into five when my ball kept popping out of the hole.

“We’re cursed!” I cried out.

“Hey, at least we aren’t them,” Jayden said, nodding to the next hole, where pi-rates stuck up out of the blue turf, trying to swim away from danger. Giant squid tentacles reached across the actual water hazard, attaching to the pirate ship’s mast like they were pulling it under.

“The decor here is definitely a little bleak,” I said with dismay. “Okay, a lot bleak.”

But Jayden grinned. “Don’t worry about it.” He pointed at the app on my phone. “According to that, we’re still in this, and I’m feeling lucky.”

The final hole was in a covered area, where the walls were painted dark blue to simulate our being underwater. Above our heads, a projection of waves completed the effect. Beside us rested the bottom of the Salty Rogue--the infamous Grayshark shipwreck.

To finish the game, we had to hit our golf balls into the open mouth of a great white shark. We needed to pull ahead of the college kids, so Jayden and I had to do it in three putts total.

Jayden was up first, and he looked confident. But right before he took his first putt, Cristina and her friend came walking up to us. I noticed they had already turned in their clubs.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you give up?”

Cristina laughed. “No, my ball did. It got lost in one of the lagoons.”

“Oh,” I said, checking the app. “That’s why there’s a little skull and crossbones next to your names.”

“I guess that means you did beat us.” Cristina shrugged. “Congratulations. Anyway, I have to go now. Good luck! Hope you win.” She held out her hand for me to shake. Then she shook Jayden’s and waved goodbye before walking off the course and hopping into her parents’ car with Sarah.

Jayden looked dumbfounded as he stared at his hand. “Did that just happen?”

“Yes. Now focus and take your shot,” I said. But I knew it was no use. Thanks to Cristina and her friendly handshake, Jayden’s nervous sweats had returned, and he couldn’t seem to get a good grip on his golf club. His first putt was so far off from the shark’s mouth, he might as well have been blindfolded. He got it in on the sec-ond shot, but if we wanted to win, it was up to me.

And I needed a hole in one.

“You got this, bro.” Jayden stood behind me and patted my shoulders to hype me up the way a boxing coach would a prizefighter.

I lined up my shot, trying not to think about scary things like giant sea creatures or drowning pirates . . . or my best friend moving to Jacksonville. I pulled my club back but stopped myself before hitting the ball. My hands were shaking. I wiped them on my shirt and then took several deep breaths. Jayden crossed his fingers.

I took aim once again and then tapped the ball hard. It banked off a piece of coral, glided past a gnarly-looking figure of Davy Jones, and headed straight for the great white shark. At the last second, though, the ball veered slightly left, missing the shark’s mouth by an inch.

I heard groans coming from the competitors who had already finished their games. Great. Our defeat was now a spectator sport.

“It’s okay,” Jayden said. “We can still go for a tie.”

I nodded, trying to convince myself he was right. “You think so?”

“For sure. We’ll probably split the pot. Half the money is better than none!”

I supposed Jayden was right. Half wouldn’t be enough to help keep Jayden in town, but it would still be more than we’d had this morning.

“Go ahead,” Jayden said. “Sink it.”

The ball was only a foot from the shark’s mouth. A chip shot--one I could make in my sleep. But awake-me hit it too hard, and it bounced off the shark’s teeth and drifted away.