Mom’s sweaters.
Then another.
Dad’s polo shirts.
Then another.
Bingo.
I find the hat I’m looking for next to Dad’s baseball hats and extra spiral notebooks. All blue.
I set the hat on top of my head. Last night, I spent hours Googling fashion choices for reporters and found that most old-time reporters used to wear this kind of hat, which is called a fedora. On the brim they attached a small sign that said PRESS. But most importantly, each reporter always, always stuck a yellow pencil behind one ear.
I straighten out the brim of Mom’s hat and tuck my freshly designed PRESS sign into the brim. Then I slip a newly sharpened pencil from Dad’s backpack behind one ear and examine myself in the mirror.
Perfect.
“Check me out,” I say, darting into the living room and turning in a circle to model my new look.
She stops clicking the keys of her computer and takes her glasses off.
“Well, well.” She beams. “What’s all this?”
“If I’m going to be a real reporter, I have to look the part, right? I’m interviewing the Loch Watchers today. I’m going to record the interview on my iPhone so you can upload it when Hammy Bean gets his podcast going.”
“Sounds great. You look fabulous.” She smiles. “Very official. I love it. Can’t wait to hear the interview. Do you have your questions ready?”
“No,” I say. “I’m just going to wing it, but it’s going to be epic orange.”
“Epic what?”
“It’s an inside thing between me and Ms. Begbie,” I tell her.
She grins big at me. “Well, good luck,” she calls. “Can’t wait to hear about it.”
* * *
The Loch Watchers are sitting in a line on the same bench just like they were that morning I took their picture. In the exact same order too. Just like Hammy Bean said.
Lord Grunter.
The Duke of Buttcrack.
And Sir Farts-When-He-Laughs.
Each one of them holding binoculars focused directly on the loch.
I stand tall and official-like right in front of the Loch Watchers and clear my throat.
“Excuse me, please,” I announce in a very official kind of way. “My name is Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh, and I’m a reporter for the Nessie Juggernaut.” I point to the brim of my hat. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about your Nessie-spotting experiences and see if you will go on the record with your responses.” I grab my iPhone from my pocket.
One by one each man lowers his binoculars and blinks at me.
Lord Grunter gives me a grumpy once-over. “Eh?” he grunts at me, cupping the back of his ear with one hand.
“Lass says she’s a reporter,” the Duke of Buttcrack shouts in his direction.
“A reporter?” Lord Grunter scoffs with a phlegm rattle, and goes back to his binoculars while the other two men stare up at me.
“That’s right,” I say. “If you would, please, take turns stating your name clearly, speaking directly into this.” I hold the iPhone up. “And any identifying features or relevant details about yourselves that you’d like us to share in our podcast.”
The Duke of Buttcrack and Sir Farts-When-He-Laughs look at each other and then back up at me.
“Your what?” Buttcrack asks.
“Our podcast,” I say again, slower this time.
“What’s a bloody podcast, lass?” Sir Farts-When-He-Laughs wants to know.
“It’s like radio stations, except instead of music there are shows and interviews and stuff like that. And instead of it being on the radio, it’s an app.”
“Who’d ye say ye are, lass?” Buttcrack asks.
“My name is Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh,” I say again. “I’m an official reporter for the Nessie Juggernaut and I’m writing a story on the Nessie Race. I’m hoping your team wouldn’t mind commenting from your perspective.” I show them my iPhone again. “On the record.”
The man on the end, Sir Farts-When-He-Laughs, lets his binoculars swing against his sweater and stands up first.
“Sterling Jack is the name.” He holds out a hand with five crooked fingers.
I shake his hand and then push the red button on my iPhone.
“You said your name is Sterling Jack, is that correct?” I say, into the speaker this time.
He nods.
I motion to him to say more.
“Aye,” he says. “That’s correct, lass.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jack,” I say. “Please, will you comment on your position regarding your beliefs and/or findings when it comes to the lake monster known as Nessie?” I hold the phone out in his direction.
He clears his throat and leans in closer toward the speaker. “I am a member of Team Loch Watchers, established in 1984. I’ve lived lochside since I was a wee lad,” he says. “I’ve had a total o’ five Nessie sightings in my lifetime.”
I can feel my eyes get wider. “Five whole times?”
“Aye,” he says. “And I will tell ye this wi’ all certainty. I know, beyond a doubt, that the thing swimmin’ out there in those waters is a sirenian.”
“A what?” I ask.
“It’s considered a sea cow, like a manatee, except the sirenian swim in cold water, an’ even though it looks like a whale, it’s closer to an elephant. The largest one ever found was over ten meters.”
Lord Grunter lowers his binoculars again. “Poppycock, Jack,” he grumbles. “Lass, don’t ye listen to his crackpot ideas for one more minute. I’ll tell ye exactly what’s down in that loch,” he adds, making sure to give a Mr. Mews hork to the word loch.
“Please state your name for the record, sir?” I hold the phone in his direction.
“Cappy McGee,” he says, leaning forward with one hand holding solid on his knee.
“Thank you, Mr. McGee. You don’t think it’s a sirenian, is that correct?”
“It’s a kraken, lass,” he tells me. “I ken that’s what it is because I’ve seen it six times and that’s more than five, as you well know. And I’m sure it’s a cephalopod-type creature and not a sirenian.”
Mr. Jack scoffs at him and waves a dismissive hand.
“Six times is a lot of times,” I agree.
“Will ye quit bloody fillin’ that lass’s head with such nonsense?” the Duke of Buttcrack grumbles.
I hold the phone toward him. “Do you have a comment as well?”
He stands up then and gives his baggy khakis a good yank up over his big, round middle. But even with the worn leather belt, they don’t seem to want to stay there.
“I’m Norval Watt,” he says. “I’ve seen the monster only once, but it’s not a kraken or a sirenian.”
“And your thoughts about what it might be are…?”
“It’s an undiscovered mammal o’ some sort, not yet catalogued. My best guess is a cross between a seal an’ something else. Or an otter an’ something else. Here, let me show you where we saw it last.”
We all watch as he heads to the edge of the pier, and when he takes his hand off his belt to point toward the water, we all see exactly why Hammy Bean calls him the Duke of Buttcrack.
“Ew,” I mumble, slapping a palm over my eyes. “Mr. Watt, I really think you should sit back down, sir.”
“Norval!” Cappy McGee calls out with a snort of laughter. “Pull up them bloody trousers!”
Norval Watt gives his pants another good yank, and a concert of laughter hits me.
A trio of hoots ending with a phlegm rattle and one solo toot.
As it turns out, Briony is no longer a Malibu Barbie shaver or a closeted thumb-sucker and she actually smells just fine. Not to mention she was right on about the chocolate-and-chili macarons.
They were scrummy big-time.
It’s her house that’s the problem.
Which I find out when we’re invited to a traditional Scottish dinner on Friday night after Uncle Clive closes up shop. Dad drives the backward car to a place just past Inverness called Dores, a village even tinier than Fort Augustus. It’s directly across the loch from Fort Augustus but it still takes over an hour to get there on the winding A82 highway.
Their house is kind of in the countryside and looks normal enough as far as I can see through the window of the backward car. It’s a stone house, covered in ivy, sitting on the very top of a hill, with two chimneys puffing ghostly shapes out into the night.
But once inside?
It smells even worse than when Mom boils Brussels sprouts for dinner, and that is a stink that lasts for days.
This odor is more like a combination of boiled turkey gizzard and vile vegetables.
“Hurry on now!” Briony calls to me, grabbing my arm. “I’ll show ye my room.”
She darts up a long staircase while the grown-ups clink glasses, talking over each other in loud, happy voices. I follow Briony up the stairs, running my hand along a polished wooden banister, down the hall and into the room at the very end on the right. It looks nothing like mine on Tennyson. Instead of cornflower walls, hers are pink, and instead of ceramic kitties, she has strangely decorated glass eggs that she calls Fabergés lined neatly on the shelves of a glass cabinet.
I sit down on her bed and take it all in.
“What do ye think?”
“It’s pretty,” I say. “But honestly? Your house smells funny.”
She laughs. “That’s the haggis.”
“I’ve heard of it, but what is it…exactly?”
She laughs again. “You’ll find oot soon enough. It’s actually quite good, if ye don’t think aboot where it comes from. An’ even better if ye put ketchup on it.”
“Where does it come from?” I ask her.
“Believe me, ye dinna want to ken,” she says. “Hey, want me to show ye a game?”
I shrug. “Sure.”
“It’s called Cat’s Cradle,” she tells me, grabbing a string of purple yarn tied in one big loop.
I watch her wrap the yarn around her fingers until she’s created a fancy design.
“Now pinch the yarn where it comes together in an x,” she tells me. “That’s right. An’ wrap them back under and take the yarn onto yer fingers.”
I make a mess of it three times until I catch on and then we pass the fancy yarn knots we create back and forth on our fingers until Aunt Isla calls us for dinner.
Uncle Clive and Aunt Isla sit at either end of a giant table in the dining room with Dad and Briony on one side and me and Mom on the other.
I scan the table for recognizables.
Mashed potatoes. Check.
Vegetable medley. Gross, but check.
A gravy boat. Check.
Then I eye the platter in the center of the table, stacked high with gray meat patties.
Briony opens her eyes wide in my direction, giving the meat platter a nod, and then mouths the word haggis at me.
For a very brief moment I consider becoming a vegetarian and wonder if it’s against the rules to make pepperoni exceptions. Without the occasional pepperoni pizza, I might actually die a little inside. Plus, I hate all vegetables…so there’s that.
Maybe just a hunger strike would do the trick.
This one time, Ariana Shoesmith said she couldn’t eat hot dogs for hot lunch and no one believed her until she blew chunks all over the cafeteria. After that, they never made her eat hot lunch hot dogs again.
Blowing chunks may be the way to go here.
Leave it to Dad to find a positive spin on something as disgusting as stinky meat.
“Please pass the haggis,” Dad says, rubbing his hands together. “Mmm-mmm…I haven’t had this in years. It smells scrumptious, Isla.”
We pass the dishes around the table, filling our plates. I take an extra heaping mound of mashed potatoes and drown it in gravy in hopes there’s no room left for vegetable medley or haggis.
But lucky me, Mom finds room to slide a patty next to my mashed potatoes.
“It’s fabulous, Rutabaga,” Dad says. “My grandmother and grandfather used to make this dish for me and your uncle Clive every Sunday. It’s Scotland’s most famous food.”
“Don’t you want a better life for your daughter?” I ask him.
He smiles that smile. The one with all the teeth.
“You’re going to love it,” he says.
“That’s highly doubtful,” I grumble.
Uncle Clive and Briony laugh bellowing chuckles while Isla waves a hand at us.
“Hey, Rudy Tudy,” Dad says. “Did you end up finding any supporting characters in town today for your new story?” He turns to Uncle Clive. “She’s a writer, that one,” and he points a fork at me.
“Jings!” Uncle Clive beams over at me while he chews his gray meat.
“I certainly met some interesting people,” I say. “And just so you know, you all seem to be in the minority when it comes to believing in the Loch Ness Monster. There are a lot of people searching for that thing down in the water. Have you heard of the Nessie Race?”
“Oh, it’s rubbish,” Aunt Isla says. “They’ve never found anythin’ worthy of our time to even consider it.”
“This one kid I met says that everyone who’s anyone believes it’s true and that people who don’t believe it just don’t know the facts of it,” I say.
Dad takes another mound of meat from the pile at the center of the table and places it on his plate.
“That kid said every story has some fact to it,” I go on.
I watch Uncle Clive, Aunt Isla, Mom and Dad all exchange amused looks.
“Rutabaga,” Dad says to me. “I told you, Uncle Clive and I grew up on this loch. Your aunt Isla too. It’s nothing but a story.”
“Well, there’s nothin’ wrong with tellin’ stories and gatherin’ some good research, but just make sure ye dinna get caught up in the hype o’ it all. There’s nothin’ to it,” Aunt Isla tells me.
Dad puts his elbows on the table and leans in my direction.
“It’s already been proven that the loch doesn’t have the ecosystem to support a species of animal that large,” he tells me. “The loch only contains approximately twenty tons of fish, and a species of animal that large would need far more to sustain itself and continue to reproduce. Also, the bottom of the loch is flat and perfect for discovering fossils and they’ve never found anything. Not to mention, the water is too cold, and historically we know that plesiosaurs are tropical animals and couldn’t survive the temperature of Loch Ness.”
I eye him suspiciously. “You sure seem to know a lot of facts about it,” I accuse him.
“We grew up here,” he says. “You don’t think we did our own investigating?”
I sit up in my seat. “You did?”
“Of course,” he says. “And we’re saving you the heartbreak of getting your hopes up.”
I look at Uncle Clive and he nods.
I sigh and slump in my chair, poking at the meat mound on my plate.
“So is this like some kind of a stinkier, more crumbly hamburger patty or something?”
“Just try it,” Dad says
“Ada Ru.” Aunt Isla leans in my direction. “Ye dinna have to eat it, darlin’. I won’t be offended in the least.”
“Thanks, Aunt Isla. No offense, but…it kind of stinks like gizzards,” I tell her. “Like the kind that come with the turkey at Thanksgiving. Except it’d be like if Nan Fitzhugh forgot to cook all the rest of the good turkey parts like the legs or the wings or even her yummy almond-orange stuffing packed on the inside. It’d be like all she did was boil the gizzard, grind it up and serve it in
gray meat patties without any sweet potatoes with toasted marshmallows on top or pumpkin pie either.”
“I love her orange stuffin’,” Briony pipes up. “When they were here last year for Thanksgiving she made her famous stuffin’ and it was pure deid scrummy. Her tatties too. She makes the smoothest tatties, withoot a single lump.”
I look at Dad.
“Mashed potatoes,” he tells me.
“Oh,” I say.
I eye the meat again and cut into it with my fork. “I mean, like, what’s it made of…exactly?” I ask again.
Dad takes a big breath and lets it all out. “A meaty pudding made with chopped heart, blended with lungs and encased in the stomach of a lamb and thickened with savory blood—”
I hold up a hand and swallow down a gag.
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“Wa-ah-ah.” Dad laughs his evil laugh.
And it’s at this moment in time that my official haggis hunger strike begins.
Lucky for me, after dinner, Dad stops at the McDonald’s in Inverness for a six-piece chicken nuggets with BBQ sauce.
And that night before bed, I make good and sure to thank God for chicken nuggets, but I leave out the haggis. There’s nothing about bloody meat encased in a lamb’s anything that I’m even remotely thankful for.
Hammy Bean wasn’t kidding about manning that stupid radio day and night.
He beeps in the very next morning before the crack of possibilities even has the chance to show its orange face.
Beep.
“Captain Green Bean to Denver. Come in, Denver. Over.”
I one-eye the antique alarm clock sitting on the night table.
The big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the…I squint…five.
I pull the pillow over my head.
Beep.
“Hello? Come in, Denver. Do you read me? Over.”
I squeeze the pillow even tighter against my ear.
Beep.
“I sure hope ye can hear me because you’re supposed to be mannin’ this radio at all times. Denver, do you read me? Over.”
I grab it from the table and push the button. “I’m here,” I say.
Nessie Quest Page 10
