Hardy Boys Fan Fiction at the HDA - Boardwalk Bust

Joe and I are both on the Bayport High swim team, both good, fast swimmers. But it doesn’t matter how fast you are – sharks can swim faster. The best thing to do was not to think about the danger. We just had to focus on saving that little girl.

Every few strokes I’d stop and try to get a bead on where she was. But by the time we were within thirty yards or so, all I saw was fin, sticking up out of the water.

“You dive down and get her,” I heard Joe shout from somewhere to my right. “I’ll deal with that.”

I wanted to argue with him, to take on the more dangerous job myself, but there was no time. The little girl’s lungs would be full of water by now and she’d sink like a stone if I couldn’t get to her first.

I dove underwater, keeping my eye out for a sinking girl or a swimming shark. I felt a moment’s relief. There she was. There were still bubbles rising from her mouth and nose which meant she still had enough air to keep her suspended in the water. But that wouldn’t last long.

I strained every muscle in my body to get to her before it was too late. There. Pulling her close to me, I held her tight and made for the surface. My lungs felt like they were going to burst, but I just kept kicking, hoping I’d get some air before I passed out and we were both goners.

I broke the surface just as I was starting to see stars. The world went white for a second, and then I could hear myself gasping. Not a peep from the girl, though.

I took in big gulps of air and looked for Joe. He was swimming toward us, towing something in one hand. My eyes went wide. It was a surfboard.

“Some shark,” he muttered as he got closer. “It was turned over, with the fin sticking up.

He brought the board over and I hoisted the little girl onto it. Then Joe and I got on opposite sides of the board and swam for shore. I only hoped it wasn’t too late.

No sooner had we gotten to the beach than a crowd gathered around us. I rolled the little girl off the surfboard onto her stomach and pushed down on her abdominal area. Water gushed out of her mouth. I pushed again and she started coughing hard.

“Make way!” I heard the lifeguard’s angry voice barking through the megaphone as he pushed his way through the crowd. Then he grabbed me by the shoulder. “Back off!” he ordered. “I’ll take care of this.”

I’m not a hothead by any stretch of the imagination but nobody manhandles me like that and gets away with it. Especially not a lifeguard this dumb. If that girl hadn’t still been lying there, needing help, I would have laid into that guy right then and there.

“Leave my brother alone,” Joe said. Next thing I knew, he had pulled the guy away from me and spun him around.

“Hey!” the lifeguard said. “Get your hands off me, punk.” He reared back and let go a left hook right at Joe’s face. At the last minute Joe ducked and the guy’s knuckles slammed into his cheek, one of the chunky rings he was wearing scraping the skin.

Now, Joe is a black belt in aikido, and a pretty fair hand at tae kwon do, too—but I know he wasn’t thinking straight right then. The whole point of the martial arts is to fight with your mind, not your emotions.

I could see that Joe was furious. He shook off the pain and squared his body toward his attacker. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see you try that again, now that I’m ready for you.”

The lifeguard was happy to oblige.

But this time Joe was too quick for him. He ducked out of the way, and at the same time grabbed the guy’s arm and helped it along in the direction it was already going.

Then Joe gave a slight yank. The lifeguard flipped in midair, making his gold chains clink, and came down hard on the sand. He muttered something filthy and cracked his knuckles, getting ready for another attack.

“Leave him alone!” said Madison. She stepped right between Joe and the lifeguard. “Those two guys are heroes, you jerk. You should be thanking them.”

“Yeah,” said Summer. Several others in the tight circle surrounding us agreed.

“Lay off!”

“Put a sock in it!”

“Hey!” the lifeguard yelled, brushing the sand off himself. “Everybody back off! I’m in charge here, and what I say goes.”

“Actually, what I say goes.”

Everyone turned to see where the booming voice had come from. There stood Bump Rankowski – Mayor Bump Rankowski.

The lifeguard suddenly looked smaller and weaker than his Mr. Atlas image a few minutes ago. “Oh, hi, Mr. Mayor.”

“What’s going on here?” Bump demanded.

“Um, these two guys disobeyed my orders to clear the water.”

“And why’d you order the water cleared?”

“Shark sighting, sir,” the lifeguard explained, squaring his shoulders.

“There was no shark, Bump,” Joe interrupted. “It was just this surfboard’s fin, sticking out of the water. And this little girl was drowning.”

The little girl was sitting up by now, with her head tucked between her knees. She coughed every few seconds, but it was easy to see she was going to be all right. Her mother had found us all by then and was kneeling down, brushing damp hair out of her daughter’s face.

“My baby,” she kept saying. “My baby, oh Penny...I just ran back to the room for a minute. But I could have lost you...”

“What’s your name, son?” Bump asked the lifeguard.

“Um, Chuck. Chuck Fatone, sir.”

“Chuck Fatone, hmm? I’m gonna remember your name, son,” Bump said, shaking a finger at him. “I’d better not hear it again, unless it’s to say you saved somebody’s life. Understand?”

Fatone gave Joe and me a murderous look before turning back to the mayor. “Yessir,” he said, his mouth twisted into a bitter sneer.

“I hope so,” Bump said. Then he turned to the assembled crowd. “All right, people. Excitement’s over. There was obviously no shark attack. You can rest assured, everything’s under control.”

Bump’s cheerful tone seemed to calm the crowd and they started to disperse. I could see why he was a successful politician. Everyone just naturally seemed to follow his orders.

He walked over to the little girl and her mother, talking in a much softer, gentler tone. In a less than a minute, the little girl was smiling and nodding. After a few more words to the mother, he walked over to us. “Come with me, you two.”

He guided us to a shady spot underneath the boardwalk. He placed one hand on my shoulder, the other on Joe’s. I felt his grip tighten. “Quick thinking on your parts, saving that little girl.” His voice suddenly took on a steely note. “But listen here. Trouble seems to follow you boys – first the airplane thing, now this.”

I frowned. “But—”

“Trouble is not good for business,” he continued. “Not good at all. People don’t vacation in places if they’re scared a shark will bite them. Got that?”

“But we weren’t the ones who—” Joe tried to tell him.

But Bump wasn’t listening. “When the tourists don’t come, business gets bad. Really bad.”

“But we didn’t—”

“And when business gets bad, mayors don’t get reelected. Comprende?”

What else could we say? He wasn’t listening anyway. “Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joe, but I could tell he was ticked off.

“Yes, Bump,” he reminded us, his best politician’s smile flashing back to life. “Call me Bump.”

He stepped away and turned back to join the crowd on the beach, smiling and waving at everyone. “Enjoy, everyone! Enjoy Ocean Point – pearl of the Jersey Shore.”

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The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.