by Jess Rinker
Blackbeard would never allow this treatment.
3
Queen Mary’s Secrets
After most of the family and friends leave, it’s only Peter’s family and our family. Peter plays with the dog, while Will walks around eating things off the ground. Peter’s dad, Uncle Randy, and our dad are brothers, and they never get along about anything, but they hang out all the time anyway. Kinda like me and Frankie, but louder, taller, man versions. Mom says Ocracoke is a small island and you get what you get.
Aunt Della and Mom are usually pretty good friends as long as Mom doesn’t bring up her writing, because even though Mom writes really smart things like language textbooks, Aunt Della thinks she and Dad should help them with their family business. Aunt Della and Uncle Randy run fishing trips from their charter boat for all the vacationers that come to the village. They make a lot more money than my parents, but they usually smell like fish.
While Mom and Aunt Della talk and clean up in the kitchen, I follow Dad and Uncle Randy as they walk through the house, “taking inventory,” as Uncle Randy says, whatever that means. They don’t know I’m following them.
Uncle Randy holds up a copper vase. “A lot of this stuff will fetch a nice price at auction, Jack,” he says. “You’re going to have to let it go.”
“I know, but it’s Dad’s life’s work. How do I decide?” My dad rubs his face with his hands. I can tell he doesn’t want to be having this conversation right now. Probably not ever. Grandpa’s treasures cover the inside of our three-story house, which is really Grandpa’s house and what he used to call the Queen Mary. He always told everyone our house was named after Grandma, but one day he told me a secret. He said it was also named after Mary Read, one of the most famous girl pirates ever. He said, like a ship, he wanted to name the house after an important woman. Or two. I asked him why did it have to be a girl’s name and he said because, like Grandma, a woman takes you into her heart and she becomes your home. And for the pirates, their ship was their home.
I never understood all the stories Grandpa told me, but I liked the way he talked about Grandma, especially because I’d never met her. I also liked the way he talked about pirates. Which is why I decided to become one. I just don’t have a good pirate name yet. Most pirates have nicknames, like Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach. I’m still working on mine.
The Queen Mary is unique in Ocracoke because there aren’t many big, old houses like this on the island. Most are small or built on stilts to withstand hurricanes, but Grandpa always said our house was watched over by the ghosts of all the pirates who used to sail around Ocracoke, especially Blackbeard, and of course Mary Read and Grandma. We never had to worry because we had them as our guardian angels.
All kinds of things Grandpa found fill the rooms of our house in the same way another family might have a pile of magazines on the coffee table or framed art on the walls. But instead of everything coming from a store, it all came from the ocean. Besides some of the bigger things, like antique anchors and some strange metal devices with barnacles growing all over them, there are plenty of artifacts we’re allowed to touch if we’re very careful.
My favorite are the glass bubbly balls on the windowsills. I pick one up now and gently roll it in my hands as I walk by jars of unique seashells, fishing nets, old picture frames and portraits, driftwood, shards of pottery and jewelry in boxed glass cases, and shelves of old worn books about sailing and pirates, shelves that never get dusty. Grandpa’s maps hang on nearly every wall. I love living here. It’s like walking around a museum every day. I can’t believe Uncle Randy would want Dad to sell any of it.
I crouch behind the big piece of driftwood that we use as an umbrella stand near the stairs and think about Grandpa’s map in my backpack. There’s no way they’re getting rid of the maps! Uncle Randy puts his hand on Dad’s back and hands him a little card. “Call Throop. I know you were closer to the old man, that’s why I’m leaving it to you to do, but you know what has to be done.”
Dad nods. It might be the first time they’ve ever agreed on anything.
But of all things to finally agree on, why does it have to be getting rid of Grandpa’s treasures?
And that name: Throop. It’s very familiar, someone Grandpa talked about a while ago but I can’t remember what he said. My knees start to burn from being so cramped in the corner, but I remain still.
“Before we do anything, I’d like the chance to at least go through everything and let the family choose what they want,” Dad says. “My girls, your boys, they’re all entitled.”
“You heard what Throop said earlier,” Uncle Randy says. “I hate to say it but he’s right. We don’t have time to go through all of it. We need to clean this place out as fast as possible.”
I stand up to run back to the kitchen to tell Frankie and instead run smack into Peter. The glass ball drops to the floor with a loud clunk.
“Peter! Why are you sneaking around?” I yell. “You almost made me break that!”
“Your mom wants to know if you want any dessert.”
“There are so many more important things than dessert!” I pick up the ball and rest it on a small table where my parents put their keys. I push past him and hear him say, “Does that mean I can have it?”
When I get back in the kitchen, I make an announcement: “Frankie. Jolene. Attic. Now.”
Jolene jumps off her stool and salutes me.
“Savannah,” my mother says. “First of all, tone of voice?”
“Sorry.”
“Second of all, to make things go faster, how about you help us wrap up the rest of the food and do the dishes since none of you were here to help set up? Then you and your sisters can go play.”
This is precisely why I never hang out in the kitchen.
4
From the Crow’s Nest
After the kitchen is clean enough for the queen of England, we finally escape to the attic, alone. This is our room to arrange how we want. Like the rest of the house, it’s full of Grandpa’s things, but up here it’s more like couches and lamps and old wooden chests, all the furniture that was moved to make room for the more interesting treasures downstairs. A couple of years ago, Grandpa helped us clear out the middle of the room, and we laid down a colorful braided rug. Then Grandpa pulled over a couch and little table that Jolene uses to color on, or that we play games on.
This is where we developed our plan to bomb Peter from the second story with water balloons after he told on me and Frankie for taking the kayak too far into the bay. And where we spy on our neighbor, Ms. Carolina Davis, who we’re convinced is a famous celebrity in disguise because she always wears gigantic sunglasses even when it’s raining. Every now and then Grandpa would peek his head up into the attic and say, “How are you scallywags doing in the crow’s nest?” The “crow’s nest” is the lookout on a pirate ship. It makes me sad to think no one will be checking in on us anymore. We have to sail our ship alone now.
I tell my sisters what I overheard in the foyer about Uncle Randy wanting to sell Grandpa’s treasures. “We can’t let it happen,” I say, clinging to my backpack. “These things belong to our family. And Grandpa entrusted the map to us, to carry on his search for Blackbeard’s treasure.”
Frankie looks more worried than I thought she would. “I want to know why it’s happening,” she says. “Mom and Dad love Grandpa’s things. They’d never choose to sell them unless something was wrong.”
“What could be wrong?”
Frankie shrugs. “I have no idea.”
“I told you, I heard Uncle Randy talking to that man in the green hat about it at the church,” Jolene says.
“No, you didn’t,” I say.
“Yes, I did. I’m telling the truth! Before we left. Something about partners in a hairy dance.”
“Jolene, you are so strange sometimes,” I say.
“Am not.”
“Are.”
“Am not!”
“You two s
top it.” Frankie pushes our faces away from each other. “Maybe that man in the green hat is Throop?”
“I bet you’re right!” Suddenly the memory is clear. “Remember that day Grandpa took us to the museum in Beaufort to donate artifacts?”
“No.” Jolene shakes her head earnestly.
“It was a long time ago,” Frankie says. “You didn’t go, you were too little. But yes, I remember. Why?”
“He said something that day about how Throop was the reason Grandpa had to donate those artifacts to the museum. I just can’t remember what or why.”
“I don’t remember that,” Frankie says.
“Well, no matter what the reason is, they want to sell everything now. And we can’t let it happen. We’re going to have to hide it all.”
Frankie leans back against the couch. “Unless you have some kind of invisibility power that we don’t know about, that wouldn’t even be possible.” She twirls a long section from the underside of her hair. She always does that when she’s thinking. Once, she was thinking so hard she made a giant knot that Mom had to cut out of her hair, and she had a bald patch on her head for months.
“We have to stop them,” I say.
“I agree,” Frankie says, “but we also need to find out why they want money so bad. And since you are the best sneak, Sav, I enlist you to figure it out.”
“I can listen through the grate in the floor when Mom and Dad go to bed.”
“Or try to catch them when they’re having their coffee before we get up for school,” Frankie says.
Jolene sits up straight. “Or just ask them!”
Frankie puts her arm around Jolene. “There’re a few things you haven’t learned yet. If Mom and Dad wanted us to know something, they’d have told us already.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Something’s going on.”
“A constancy,” Jolene whispers.
“I think you mean ‘a conspiracy,’” Frankie says.
“That’s what I said.” Jolene nods.
“In the meantime…” I lean into my sisters and slide an old wooden board out from under the couch. Grandpa covered it with a star chart, something sailors once used to navigate the seas. We call it our Star Board. “We could ask Blackbeard for help.”
Jolene looks unconvinced. She’s not a big fan of the Star Board.
“Help us do what?” Frankie asks.
“Find his treasure once and for all,” I say.
“What good is that going to do?”
“Because if we find Blackbeard’s treasure, we prove that it’s real and that Grandpa was right all along. Then no one is going to want to get rid of or sell anything of his ever again.”
“They’d probably want to put it all in a museum in New York City,” Frankie says, her face lighting up when she realizes the genius of my plan.
“Better yet, they’d probably create a whole museum here about Grandpa!” I say, and spread my hands out like I’m holding a banner. “The Cornelius Franklin Dare Museum of Pirate History.”
“And nobody will laugh at him anymore?” Jolene says, her little eyebrows troubled.
“Exactly,” I say. “Now let’s do this.”
5
Ghosts in the Rafters
One of the cedar chests in the attic is full of pirate clothes Grandpa collected for us. Some of it’s too big, but Grandpa said he did that on purpose so that we’d always have proper attire as we were growing up on his ship. I put on purple-and-black-striped pants with suspenders and a white buttoned-up shirt. Frankie wears a poufed-sleeve shirt and a huge pair of brown buckled pants that are so baggy they look like an old-fashioned skirt. She has a big feathered hat in her hand that she usually wears but this time she tosses it back in the chest. Jolene puts on her favorite thing—a cloth eye patch—but then she sits near the cedar chest and frowns.
“What’s the matter with you?” I ask.
“Grandpa never got me a pirate princess dress.”
“Aye, that’s because dere’s no such thing as pirate princesses, matey. They’re all queens,” I tease her, trying to make her laugh, but she frowns harder. I’m pretty sure it’s not the dress that’s making her sad. I hope she doesn’t start crying. I can’t handle crying.
“Wear what you’re wearing, then,” Frankie says as she lights a few candles around the room. “You don’t have to dress like a pirate if you don’t want to.”
I give Frankie a look.
“What now?” Frankie raises her hands.
“It works better if we’re all in character.” I try to hand her the feathered hat.
“Sav, just set up the Star Board.”
“Grandpa loved when you wore this hat.”
“Fine.” She puts it on but doesn’t look happy about it.
I set the Star Board in the middle of the rug and place the wooden paddle on top. Grandpa said he found the old board on a ship and then he made this flat paddle that has little legs and a small hole in the top to look through. It’s like a Ouija board, to contact ghosts, only instead of an alphabet across the board, it’s star constellations, and each one stands for a letter. But I am the one who took the time to memorize all the names of the constellations, so only I can interpret the messages.
With stars as the code, he said, if it ever works, I’ll know it’s legit pirates talking to us. Or at least dead sailors. Across the top he painted THE LONGEST LIVER SHALL HAVE ALL!, which is part of a quote from Blackbeard about who would find his buried treasure. And it has nothing to do with the length of your liver, which Jolene is still trying to get straight. I could tell her it just means whoever lives the longest, but she’ll figure it out. It’s always more fun to figure things out on your own than to be told the answers all the time.
We all have to gently put our fingers on the paddle and ask Blackbeard a question. If his spirit is in the attic, he’ll maybe answer our question. Grandpa often said Blackbeard’s ghost liked to swing from the rafters when the house was creaking in a storm. But we have to be serious and really believe he’s here. We’ve only tried this a few times because honestly, even though Grandpa meant it just for fun, it is a little creepy. Although the only thing that’s happened was when Jolene knocked over a glass of water that shattered and made us all scream. And that scared the dog and sent her out of the crow’s nest with her tail between her legs. Now whenever the board is out, Py leaves the room immediately.
We’ve also never had a real question to ask Blackbeard. It’s always been silly stuff like if Frankie would get an A on her math test and when would Jolene’s tooth fall out.
Now everything feels much more important.
I remind my sisters of all the rules. Frankie rolls her eyes. Jolene shivers. We place our fingers on the paddle and I do the talking. Because I always do the talking.
“Dear Edward Teach,” I say, using Blackbeard’s real name so he knows we are friendly and smart.
“You don’t have to say ‘dear,’” Frankie says. “You’re not writing a letter.”
I tell her to close her eyes and shut up.
I start over. “Edward, if you’re here, we really need your help this time.”
Jolene echoes me, “Yes, Mr. Edward, we really, really, really need your help.”
I almost tell her to be quiet too, but she’s actually kind of cute and not bossy like Frankie. So I keep going. “Edward, our grandfather, your greatest fan, died on Wednesday and left us, his three favorite grandchildren…”
“You don’t know that,” Frankie says.
I open my eyes and look at her. “Yes, I do.”
She doesn’t argue and closes her eyes again so I can continue. “He left us the map he’s been using his whole life to look for your treasure. It’s a map of the island, and he made it himself based on his years of pirate research and treasure hunting. And we already know he was looking somewhere at Springer’s Point, so we…”
The portal window across the room rattles. We all jump. It rattles even harder. Like someone’s shaking it
, trying to get out.
Or in.
“Batten down the hatches!” Jolene yells, and ducks as if something is sailing over her head.
“Tell him we don’t want to steal it!” Frankie hisses at me. “We just want to keep it safe!”
“I’m trying to! Stop interrupting me!” But I don’t get a chance to say anything.
The window rattles so hard in its frame that it suddenly pops open and slams against the wall. Wind rushes into the room. The lamp on the table blinks out.
We all scream and jump ship.
Dad meets us at the bottom of the attic stairs where we run into him and scream again. “What in the world is going on?” He stops us from all falling into a pile in the hallway.
“Nothing,” Frankie says, catching her breath first. “We were playing and it freaked out Jolene.”
“It sounded like you freaked out the entire neighborhood. I was coming to get you so you can say goodbye to your cousins. They want to leave before the storm picks up too much.”
I look at Frankie and she says, “It was only the wind.”
Dad ushers us down the hall. “What was only the wind?”
“Nothing,” we say.
“All right, then, come on. We’re having a quick family meeting in the living room.”
Frankie takes off her feathered hat.
Family meetings are never good.
6
Saying Goodbye
“We already know you’re selling all Grandpa’s treasures.” I flop onto the couch and cross my arms around a pillow against my chest. A roll of thunder in the distance times itself perfectly with my mood. Uncle Randy, Aunt Della, and Peter are all at the dining table and look quite surprised by my declaration. Little Will is sacked out on the couch with chocolate all over his face from the dessert I missed.
