Free No More Pranks by Monique Polak Page B

saying.
    Going where? What’s going on?
    â€œI’ve had it. He’s spending the summer in Tadoussac. I want him away from those friends of his. And Daisy and Jean have offered to look after him.”
    Tadoussac? They’ve got to be kidding. That tourist trap in the middle of nowhere?
    I can hear my dad’s voice now. He’ll talk her out of it. At least I hope he will.
    â€œI’m not sure it’s necessary,” he says, “but if you think it’s come to that…”
    I can just imagine him throwing his arms up in the air.
    Getting suspended is one thing. Being forced to go to another school is another. But spending a summer in Tadoussac? Now that’s a life sentence.

Chapter Two
    Pierre?
    That’s what everyone here calls me. And it doesn’t help to say my name is Pete. They just nod and say, “Okay, Pierre.” Then they point to the wet suits that need hosing down or the kayaks that have to be pushed off from the shore.
    My Uncle Jean owns a kayaking company up here in Tadoussac, about five hoursnortheast of Montreal. He’s got quite the job. Twice a day, he takes groups of tourists out on the St. Lawrence River to watch whales. You should see his tan.
    Aunt Daisy—she’s my mom’s kid sister and Uncle Jean’s wife—says the business is tougher than it looks. “Let’s put it this way,” she told me this morning at breakfast. “You don’t want to be out on the river with a group of inexperienced kayakers when it’s storming. If someone falls in, Jean has less than five minutes to get the person back in the kayak. The St. Lawrence might look harmless—just a body of gray-blue water—but it’s colder than you’d expect. If you fall in, you lose sensation in your extremities—your hands and feet—within three minutes.”
    Aunt Daisy looks like my mom—they both have this wild, curly, blond hair—but they’re not at all alike in other ways. My mom would definitely flip out if she were discussing losing sensation in your extremities. Not Aunt Daisy. You’d think she was discussing a recipe for sugar pie, this dessert she makes. Aunt Daisy is the calm, collected type. Maybeit’s because she used to be a nurse. Up here though, she runs a bed-and-breakfast—The Whale’s Tale—which is where she and Uncle Jean live—and where I’m staying.
    It’s funny about the St. Lawrence. I’ve spent my whole life in Montreal, and though the St. Lawrence is always there—underneath us when we cross one of the bridges into the city, or in the distance when we’re up on Mount Royal—somehow, I never really noticed it till I got here. Man, that thing is massive. If you ask me, it’s more like an ocean than a river.
    Uncle Jean’s got me working, which is all right, I guess. Otherwise, I don’t know what else I’d do up here in Dullsville. How many times can a guy go to the whale museum and check out whalebones? Of course I don’t have Uncle Jean’s cushy job out on a kayak; I’m part of the cleanup crew. But I get minimum wage, which means I should end up with about a thousand big ones by the end of August.
    The other guys on the crew are older than me. Most of them don’t speak much English,so it’s a good thing I’m pretty much bilingual. As long as they don’t talk too fast, I get most of what they say. I hate to admit it, but maybe all those years in French immersion schools weren’t as big a waste as I thought.
    One thing I notice is that I get all the crappy jobs. Like today, Réal—he’s in charge when my uncle’s not around—well, he made me hose down this mountain of boat shoes. They’re these blue and silver nylon boots you’re supposed to wear when you kayak. I guess they’re meant to keep those extremities warm in case of a spill. You wouldn’t believe how smelly