We’re on our way to the city of Inverness to visit Uncle Clive, Aunt Isla and Cousin Briony, aka Malibu Barbie Hater.
“Leakey’s Bookshop is in downtown Inverness.” His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.
“Is it like the BookBar at home?”
“Don’t you remember it?” he asks.
“No,” I tell him.
“I think you were there at least once. Right, Lib?” he asks Mom.
“Yeah,” she agrees, turning to face me. “We had hot chocolates in the coffee bar with Briony and Isla. You don’t remember?”
I shake my head.
“Well, maybe it’ll come back to you when we get there,” she says.
“I was probably so traumatized from the Malibu Barbie incident that I blocked it out.”
Mom snorts at that one. “I seriously doubt it.”
“She was bald, Mom,” I tell her. “Bald.”
“Oh, I remember,” she assures me.
“By the way,” I tell them, “I met this kid yesterday who went on and on about that monster of yours.”
“Did you now?” Dad says in the mirror.
“Yep,” I say. “And he said it’s real and those who don’t believe it just don’t know the facts of it.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, coming to a stop at a red light. “And where did you meet this lad?”
“In town,” I say.
“In town where?”
I shrug. “He runs the Nessie Quest booth.”
Dad laughs. “Ahhh, a tour boat company on Loch Ness? I’m sure they don’t have financial motives to keep that ridiculous story alive.”
Mom turns to face me again. “Honey, it’s not true.”
“Yeah, well, he sure seemed to think it was real.”
Dad grins at me in the mirror. “Did he try to sell you a ticket?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” he says, eyeing me in the mirror with a smile. “That’s a yes.”
Inverness ends up looking a lot like Tennyson, with shops and restaurants lining the streets.
Leakey’s Bookshop is on Church Street. It’s a redbrick building with five tall windows and a glass door with a gold bell that dings when you open it. Click.
But the inside of Leakey’s looks more like something out of an epic Disney movie than just a plain old store in the town of Inverness.
There are books everywhere.
And I mean everywhere.
Not just neatly lined on shelves but stacked in haphazard piles everywhere you look. Beautiful old books with leather covers and aging pages in between them and new books with brightly colored jackets. And right in the middle of the shop is a huge potbellied stove burning a bright orange fire inside. There’s an iron spiral staircase up to a second open level that wraps around the edge of the walls so that you can see all the way down to the bottom.
The shop is filled with people quietly browsing in the stacks, sipping on hot drinks in dark green paper cups with LEAKEY’S printed on them.
“Whoa,” I say. “This is crazy.”
Mom puts her arm around my shoulder. “This is one of my very favorite places on earth,” she tells me.
“I totally get that,” I say, aiming my camera.
Click.
“It’s epic,” I tell her. “Can I get a book today?”
“Absolutely,” she says. “Let’s get a few to take back with us.”
A shiny bald head with wild gray-haired wings on each side pops up from behind the stacks of books piled high on a wooden desk near the stove.
Uncle Clive.
I’d recognize him anywhere from the holiday pictures they send every year.
“Marmaduke Siles!” he hollers.
I hide a giggle behind my hand at that one and Dad gives me a poke while I watch a squatter, wider, balder version of him make his way over to greet us. Uncle Clive wraps his arms around Dad’s waist because the gray wings on his bald head only come up to Dad’s chin. Then when he’s finished squeezing Dad like a grizzly bear, he squeezes me and Mom too. When he’s all done, he takes a step back to get a good look at us.
Uncle Clive looks like the type of bookseller who gets so caught up in all his stacks and stacks of books that he forgets the simple things. Things like whether or not the buttonholes match the buttons correctly on his checkered blue shirt, which they don’t, or whether his gray wings need combing down, which they do.
“It’s so good to see ye all!” Uncle Clive exclaims with his hands on his hips. “Cor! Lass, have ye grown,” he tells me. “I think you’re even taller than my Briony. Briony, Isla!” he calls out. “Come here, my darlins, an’ say hello to Uncle Marmaduke Siles, Aunt Libby an’ Adelaide Ru.”
Aunt Isla darts through a door behind the wooden desk and clasps her hands in front of her.
“Oh my giddy aunt!” she gushes. “It’s about time we saw ye in person.”
Aunt Isla is a very tiny woman, dressed in a smart black turtleneck and matching pants, with graying hair braided and then rolled in a neat bun at the back of her neck.
She rushes over with open arms and big hugs for all of us. “It’s brilliant to see ye all. Briony!” she calls toward the back room. “Come an’ say hello!”
“You have a lot of books,” I tell Uncle Clive. “Don’t they all fit in the shelves or something?”
He chuckles.
“You sound just like my Isla.” He clasps her hand and gives it a squeeze.
“Aye,” she says, nodding. “I’ve told him a million times.”
Uncle Clive glances around the room. “It is a wee bit o’ a mess in here, inna it?” he says. “She’s always tellin’ me I need to organize this place. But I quite like bein’ surrounded by books everywhere I look. Like I’m swimmin’ in a sea of them. I dinna mind if it’s a bit higgledy-piggledy a’times.”
Even though he’s the very opposite of Dad in many ways, when he smiles, he does it the exact same way as Dad, showing all his straight white teeth.
“I like it this way too,” I tell him. “It reminds me of a Disney movie. I think if Belle had her very own bookshop in that French provincial town, it would look exactly like this, and you actually look a lot like her father, Maurice.”
His bushy gray eyebrows stand at attention straight up toward his shiny bald head. “Brilliant!” he exclaims. “Shall I keep it this way, then?”
“Absolutely,” I say.
That’s when I see my cousin Briony pop her head out of the back room.
“It’s aboot time ye made it here,” she calls out to us.
She looks just like her pictures. She’s skinny like me, but a few inches shorter. Her dark brown hair is like mine, except she didn’t cut it in a bob in a bad-idea best-friend pact. Hers is long and in a ponytail that hangs on her back.
“I’m just buzzin’ to have ye visit!” she exclaims, curling her arm around mine.
At first glance, she doesn’t look like your typical maimer of Barbie dolls. She has a nice smile just like Uncle Clive and Dad have, with straight white teeth. I wonder if I look like Dad when I smile.
“Come on.” She pulls me toward the door. “I have to take ye to So Coco for a treat. Ye will absolutely love it; everythin’ there is well tidy scran. I promise ye. Mam and Da,” she calls to them as we make our way down the stairs. “We’re going to So Coco for biscuits.”
“Braw!” Uncle Clive says. “Sounds wonderful, my darlin’.”
“Is it okay?” I ask Mom.
“Of course,” she says. “You two have fun.”
After we zip up, we head to whatever So Coco is, and as we scurry down the sidewalk between raindrops, Briony links her arm with mine, chattering on about all the fun we’re going to have together this summer. Past yummy-looking cafés and bistros, past colorfu
l gift shops filled with thick, authentic Scottish wool sweaters, touristy T-shirts, red-and-green-plaid towels, socks and even Scottish plaid boxer shorts. The sidewalks are filled with people, even in the rain.
Briony blabs on while I peek in each store window lining Church Street and then High Street when we turn the corner.
“I’m just buzzin’ to know you’ll be here to spend the entire summer,” she is saying. “Just gobsmacked.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“My verra best friend, Evangeline, is travelin’ wi’ her family so much this summer. That’s why it’s even more brill to have ye here. Otherwise, I’d be stuck. Havin’ no one to hang wi’ all summer is a mare indeed.”
“A mare?” I ask her.
“Ye know…a nightmare. A mare.”
“Oh, right,” I say.
She still has her arm linked with mine as she chats on.
Then something in the window of the next shop, called Highland Souvenirs and Gifts, catches my eye and I stop dead in my tracks.
“What’s all that?” I ask.
The window is filled with green stuffed animals that have long necks and flippers instead of feet. All of them have wide, innocent monster grins.
“Och, that’s the famous Loch Ness Monster.”
“That”—I point to the glass—“is what the thing looks like?”
She rolls her eyes to the sky. “Certainly not,” she says, pulling on my arm again. “It’s a rubbish story really, just a tourist thing.”
The rain is falling harder now, the drops tapping on my hood.
“You mean, you don’t believe in it?” I ask her as we hurry on.
She shakes her head. “I’d have to be dafty to think it’s true.”
“Dafty?”
“Like silly…ye know, an idjit or a dunderheid,” she tells me. “Most locals know it’s not true.”
“Most isn’t all,” I say.
“Well, o’ course there are some who are daft enough to believe it. There are groups who scan the loch every year with their high-tech sonar scannin’ devices to look for somethin’ livin’ deep in the waters. It’s called the Nessie Race, but no one ever finds anythin’ other than a distant photo or blurry image. Truly, if there were somethin’ deep in the loch o’ the monstrous sort, someone would ha’ found it by now. Anyway, there are much more important things to think aboot,” she says. “Like do ye have a boyfriend?”
I think about the guitar boy on the heavenly steps.
“Me? No,” I say.
“Me either,” she tells me. “But I’m quite open to it.”
I laugh at that one.
“Have ye ever had a French macaron?” she asks. “So Coco is a scrummy wee café to warm our cold bones wi’ tea and a French macaron—chocolate-an’-chili is my absolute favorite. They’re well tidy scran. Or there are chocolate truffles that are pure magic if ye like. Just wait until ye taste them.”
I stop and turn to face her head-on. “Okay, Briony,” I say. “I have another very important question to ask you.”
She stops then too and turns to face me.
“Aye?” she asks.
“I get that you don’t believe in lake monsters, but do you believe in one or more of the following?” I tap each on a finger as I list them. “Haunted houses, ghosts, zombies and/or the undead?”
I wait, watching her eyes squint and her lips pinch together in a tight line before she says, “That’s quite a different story then, inna it? If ye find yourself in that sort o’ company, it’s just one wicked mare.”
I bob my head up and down inside my hood in a slow nod. “A legit, big-time mare.”
Okay…fine, I’m willing to admit that there’s a slim chance that I’m wrong about Euna Begbie being the actual spawn of Satan. Annnnd…I’m not too proud to admit that she may not be a card-carrying member of the undead either. In fact, it’s very possible there’s nothing paranormal about her. At least that’s where the evidence leads at this point.
Especially in the light of day.
The fact is, it’s very possible that she’s just a regular woman. With two very odd exceptions, which include but are not limited to the following:
Her fashion sense.
And an excessive fondness for the color orange.
Not just on her lips either.
I find this out the very next morning when Mom sends me out to a Wee Spot of Tea and Biscuits for fresh scones and bread and also makes me stop in at Euna Begbie’s flat to thank her for the chocolate cookies, which turned out to be way more tasty than devilish.
After I knock on the door marked 166, the towering woman appears in the doorway in her black dress, holding an orange ball of yarn, two knitting needles and one-third of what looks like a blanket.
“Cheers,” she says in a voice that’s anything but cheery.
“Cheers, Ms. Begbie,” I tell her. “Thank you for the yummy cookies that you made for us. They were actually really good.”
Euna Begbie smiles an orange SpaghettiOs smile at me.
An actual smile, which makes her way less scary. Not completely, because you never know with the undead.
But the smile definitely helps.
“I’m quite delighted to hear that,” she tells me, stepping aside and waving a hand toward the flat. “Please come in.”
“Oh, ahhhh…inside?” I say.
So I know I said that in the light and with the orange smile she was much less scary, but that was from the safety of the hallway.
“Aye,” she says, pushing open the flat door a little bit wider.
I picture the headline. WITHOUT A TRACE is how the paper will describe my unfortunate disappearance.
AMERICAN GIRL VANISHES IN SCOTLAND
PARENTS EXPRESS REMORSE FOR NOT CHOOSING DISNEY WORLD WHEN THEY HAD THE CHANCE
“Please,” she says, motioning me in.
I laugh nervously and move a heavy foot forward and then the other, stepping slowly through the doorway. And that’s when I see it.
A legit orange obsession.
There is orange everywhere.
No…I mean everywhere. And in every shade imaginable.
In Jelly Belly terms it’d be like: Sunkist Tangerine, Peach, Cantaloupe, Orange Sherbet, and Chili Mango all at once.
To be honest, Jelly Belly could get some new orange ideas from all the different shades in flat 166. Maybe like: Fort Augustus Sunrise, Buffalo Wing, Nemo Fish, President Trump Cheeks or even Jar of Cheez Whiz.
“Whoa,” I tell her. “That’s…uh, well…that’s a whole lot of orange is what it is.”
She smiles a bit bigger. Not so big that you can see actual teeth, but big enough that it makes her look way less evil. And I wonder why she doesn’t do it more often because she’d scare far fewer children if she did.
I watch her sit down on an apricot sofa near a large, arched picture window overlooking the loch. Outside, I can see velvety green hills circling the loch waters. The loch is bustling with activity, with both small and large boats zipping back and forth across.
“Please have a seat.” Ms. Begbie motions to an apricot-colored chair.
“Oh, ah…thanks,” I say, sliding a hesitant cheek onto the very edge.
“Orange reminds me o’ the sun risin’,” she says, sitting on the couch across the room and going back to her knitting. “My verra favorite part o’ the day. It’s the time when I have my orange spiced tea and my orange scones from a Wee Spot o’ Tea an’ Biscuits and I write in my mornin’ journal aboot all the possibilities that day can bring. Orange possibilities.”
“Orange ones?” I ask. “Are they different from the regular kind?”
“Och aye,” she tells me. “They are a verra special kind and only come up with the sun.”
I point to myself. “I h
ave a journal too, Ms. Begbie, but it’s more about feelings than possibilities.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” I say. “Maybe I should be adding the orange kind of possibilities too.”
She nods and I watch her knitting needles wiggle back and forth as she ties tiny knots together with the sharp ends.
“Wait,” I say then. “Like what kinds of possibilities?”
“Like anythin’,” she says. “Anythin’ can happen. That’s what makes each day so full. The possibilities. Who we will meet. What we will learn. How we will see somethin’ in a new way we never even guessed could be.”
I nod then. “I think I might know what you mean, Ms. Begbie,” I say. “I’m a writer, you know, and I’m searching for my story now. My story and all the supporting characters in it.”
“Brilliant!” she exclaims. “Have ye met Hamish Bean Tibby yet?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I met him yesterday.”
“He’s quite a canny wee lad.”
“If you mean a know-it-all, I agree,” I tell her.
She laughs. “He has a lot goin’ on in that heid of his,” she says. “I think he’d be an excellent addition to your adventure.”
“How do you know him?”
“I’m his teacher,” she says.
“You teach school and manage the university flats at St. Benedict’s Abbey at the same time?”
“Nae,” she says. “I homeschool him here.”
“Oh,” I say. “Why doesn’t he go to a real school?”
She pauses for a moment and then says, “This has proved to work best for his needs.”
I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I don’t ask any more.
“Why does he wear that plaid kilt?”
“He’s quite proud o’ his Gaelic heritage,” she says. “And it’s also used as the official uniform for many schools in the Highlands.”
“He has to wear it while he’s being homeschooled?”
“Nae,” she says. “It’s not required, he just wants to dress like the others. The thing is, he never takes his kilt off, while other children change into street clothes when school is over.”
“I’m planning on going to visit him today at his house,” I tell her. “He invited me. I guess he knows all about the Loch Ness Monster. And he believes the thing is real too.”
Nessie Quest Page 6
