Free Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow by Nathan Bransford

the same I do wish you would reconsider, as I was so looking forward to embarking upon adventures with you. And if I may be perfectly honest, I am not ready to return to life as a pleasure cruiser. There is always a great deal of shrieking and talking about boys. It’s simply dreadful.”
    Mick cleared his throat. “It’s just you and me, Sarah. Well. And Praiseworthy.”
    Sarah gave Mick a fierce gaze that she hoped would burn his eyebrows off.
    Mick put on what Sarah assumed was his best roguish grin, which simply irritated her further. “I thought you wanted to go find the Dragon’s Eye with me,” he said.
    Sarah jumped up and stared Mick Cracken right in the face. “You thought wrong.”
    Sarah stomped out of the cockpit and marched around the ship until she found a stateroom with a large four-post bed. She jumped up onto the bed, grabbed a headless stuffed animal, and threw it against the wall, where it collided with a soft thud.
    â€œOuch!” Praiseworthy said.
    â€œSorry, Praiseworthy.”
    â€œActually, I can’t feel pain. That was a joke. Was it funny? Oh, how I hope it was funny. I just can’t bear to think that you’re unhappy.”
    Sarah sighed and tried to still be mad, although a bit less successfully than before. She imagined Jake and Dexter, trapped in some small escape pod, pressing buttons and arguing with each other, and the thought of her two best friends fighting it out made her a bit less angry as well. If she knew Jacob Wonderbar, he’d have a plan in no time, and not even a trip into the middle of Nowheresville, Outer Space, would scare him. Then she had an image of Jake finding his way back and freeing her from Mick’s ship and giving Mick a good punch in the nose and saving the day . . .
    Sarah sat straight up in bed. She was actually daydreaming about a boy saving her ? Sarah shook her head violently. What in the world was happening to her? Her hero Betty Friedan would be so ashamed. Sarah looked up at the ceiling.
    â€œSorry, Betty. I promise that I do not need a boy to save me, nor do I want such a thing to happen, because women are perfectly able to save themselves, and they most certainly do not need a boy to help them.”
    Sarah remembered all the times boys had slighted her in the past few hours. Jacob hadn’t even let her look for the spaceship and then he took the captain’s seat himself and created a horrible space mess, and worst of all, the miscreant Mick Cracken had taken it upon himself to ditch her friends without even considering that she might be upset about it. She clutched her hands into fists at the mere thought of that pretend pirate, who had actually believed she would be impressed by his silly antics and who had the nerve to fire her friends into space. He had actually thought she would like to be stuck on a spaceship with him, so typical of boys, who are all so conceited they can hardly see anything beyond their pointy noses. Soon enough she was punching her pillow and had roused herself into a spirited sense of indignation.
    â€œThat’s it! ” she shouted to no one in particular. She jumped out of bed, stomped through the room, and flung open the door, which smacked right into the face of Mick Cracken.
    â€œOw,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
    â€œYou were spying on me?”
    â€œNo! Well, yes.”
    â€œUgh!” Sarah marched toward the rear of the ship and Mick tried to keep up.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    Sarah knew perfectly well what she was doing. She was going to put on her space helmet, cut Lucy loose, and fly back to find Jacob Wonderbar and Dexter Goldstein. She wasn’t going to wait for a boy to save her. She would set things right and get them all back home safely to Earth, or at least . . . Her breath caught when she thought of her sister, The Brat, and her parents and her piano and her cat, Susan B. Anthony, and she hoped they were all safe. She