Whales on Stilts! by M.T. Anderson

Uncle Georgie always having new girlfriends is that the new girlfriends are always really, really nice to you because they’re trying to impress Uncle Georgie, before they realize that he’s nice but kind of a wiener and has a big gambling problem; and you think Sheryl is probably the best girlfriend that he’s had in a long time, because at least she can do card tricks, so on the beach, you sit next to her on your blanket, and you’re reading the adventures of Jasper Dash and you’re wondering who originally read them, years ago, who were the faceless kids, now grandmas or now dead, who lay like you on the beach and read them back when your parents weren’t even born yet, and their names are written in pencil on the first page—“This book belongs to Caroline Botts”; “Hank Botts read it, too”— but the people who own the cottage you’re renting are called Martelli. Your older sister Gina refused to put on suntan lotion for some reason, so now her skin is all purple and green, and a lot of the local boys have come over to admire it, and they’re going, “Whoa! Cool!” and she smiles at them, with a kind of crackling sound as the skin on her face moves. And your mom and Uncle Georgie are playing Frisbee on the beach, calling to each other, and Sheryl is lying there next to you, studying for some graduate school exam, wearing big sunglasses; and Gina has just gotten sand in her sandwich and is complaining about it to everyone, because she says it
clings
to the swiss cheese, like
clings,
you know? and everyone is going, “Just brush it off,” and she says she can’t, because her hands are sandy, and Dooky says, “What are you complaining about? Sand...
Sand-wich.
Sand... Sand-
wich,”
which actually is pretty funny, because it makes Gina even angrier, and she goes, “Mom! Tell him to stop being a jerk!” And the top of your head gets warm as you read on about Jasper’s adventures in the cloud caves, and you don’t even notice the green flies buzzing around you anymore, and you’ve spent nights having clambakes down by the ocean, and you had a lobster for the first time, and Gina was allergic, and she got hives and piles, so she looked like she was leopard skin, a leopard-skin Gina, and Sheryl was really good with her and helped her apply ointment, and Dooky kept going,
“Oinkment,
more like it”; and you brush flies away from your hair, and your uncle, who is sitting next to you, trying to hitch a flying kite to his leg, sees you, and somehow overcome, your uncle Georgie smiles— and he says to you, “I hope you will always feel this kind of joy”; and motorboats go by out in the salt marsh, and they startle egrets so they fly up toward the empty, cloudless sky.

Larry watched the screens in despair. “My army... my army!”
    Jasper picked himself up from the floor, struggling a bit with the deflated Oxysphere around him. “I’m afraid they’re gone, sir. Gone back to the sea, where they belong.”
    One after another, the whales tumbled into the water, their stilts lying desolate, like hydraulic pickup sticks, on the shore.
    â€œIt’s all ruined!” Larry growled.
    By this point Ray had freed himself from the ropes and picked up one of the guns from the floor. Larry strode right past him, knocking his hand aside. Larry turned at the door. He growled, “I’m going to swim away, through myyacht’s screen door. But mark my word, Boy Technonaut—I’ll be back. You’ll see me again! Someday I’ll be back, and more fearsome than ever!”
    Jasper looked at him, tight lipped. “No, sir, I’m afraid not.” He shook his head solemnly.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo,” Jasper said, very gently and consolingly. “In three years I’ll run into you, and you’ll be working full-time at an industrial carpet-cleaning