The Dare Sisters

by Jess Rinker

  “Easy,” Mom says, putting a hand on my thigh. “How do you know this, Savvy?”

  “She was sneaking around following our dads,” Peter says.

  “You can’t sneak in your own house,” I say.

  “All right, you two,” Uncle Randy says. “Can you chill out for one night?” But he only looks at me.

  “I would if Peter wasn’t always trying to get me in trouble,” I say.

  “I’m not! I was just telling the truth,” Peter says. He doesn’t get it. Peter’s like a truth serum. He can’t help it. I sigh and apologize.

  “All right, thank you, Savvy. Anyway,” Dad says. “Yes, you’re right. We have a lot of expenses with this old place and it’s become overrun with Grandpa’s finds anyway. We’d like you kids to all pick out something you’d like to keep to remember Grandpa. There will be more opportunities to do this later, but we thought it might be nice to begin tonight.”

  My brain starts running through all the things in the house. How could I pick just one? And how can I pick anything at all? Everything should stay exactly where it is. It feels like Grandpa is still here, with all his treasures around us every day. I don’t want anything to change. My ears heat up.

  “What about Robbie?” Frankie asks. “He’s the oldest of all of us. Shouldn’t he get to choose something?”

  “He didn’t want anything,” Uncle Randy says. “So it’s you girls and Peter, and we’ll pick something out for Will.” Frankie and I look at each other. Of all the cousins, Robbie spent the least time with Grandpa, but it’s surprising he wouldn’t want something to remember him by.

  “Is there anything that you can think of immediately, maybe a book or figure that would mean a lot for you to have?” Mom asks us. We all look at each other, no one brave enough to speak first. Or maybe none of us has any idea where to start. Outside the rain has started tapping on the metal roof and the noise fills the silence in the living room. I start hiccupping, because that’s what happens when I’m trying not to cry.

  Peter takes a big breath and talks fast. “I remember how Grandpa used to walk all over the island and how he’d take some of us almost every single time. He always carried that carved walking stick and I used to try to read what’s on it when we’d stop and sit on a bench at the harbor. He’d joke it was in an unknown language and that he found it on a deserted island in the Caribbean. I’d really like that carved walking stick.” He lets the rest of his breath out in a big burst of air. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course that’s okay, Peter,” Dad says. “That is a wonderful memory.” He gets up and heads out to the hall. I look at the floor and follow a swirly pattern in the rug so I don’t have to think too much about Grandpa’s walking stick leaving the house. Dad retrieves it and gingerly places it in Peter’s hands.

  “Girls?” Dad looks at us. His eyes are shiny with tears.

  “Are you sure, Dad?” Frankie asks.

  “This would make your grandfather so happy,” Dad says. “I’m sure.”

  Within a few minutes, Frankie chooses a leather satchel Grandpa carried his notebook and pen in. “He used to put seashells in this pocket and he’d have peppermints in this one,” she says, and lifts a pocket. Sure enough, there are still two candies in there. “I could use it as a new book bag?”

  “I love that idea,” Mom says.

  Jolene chooses a little wooden box carved with flowers and filled with sea glass and tiny misshapen pearls. “His treasure box!” Jolene announces. “I’ll keep it safe forever.”

  No one has the heart to tell her sea glass and the tiny pearls, although pretty, aren’t worth anything. I guess to her they are and that’s all that matters.

  Uncle Randy and Aunt Della pick out an old North Carolina state flag from one of Grandpa’s boats over the years to hang up in Will’s bedroom, and even an old oil lamp for Robbie, “Just in case he changes his mind someday,” Aunt Della says.

  And then I’m the only one left.

  “There’s no way for me to decide.” I nearly choke on the words. As each item was given away, it made me wish I’d chosen it, even though they seemed perfect for each person and everyone deserves to have something special. My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry. “I want to keep it all.”

  “We’ll find perfect homes for everything, but you need to decide what’s perfect for you first.” Mom hugs me tight. “You can have some time, Savvy. You don’t have to decide right this second if you’re unsure.”

  I nod.

  “All right, we really need to get this little man to bed,” Aunt Della says, scooping up Will, who’s so sound asleep he doesn’t even move. “Thank you, Jack, Anne.” She hugs my parents. “Sad as it is, this whole day has been lovely.” She passes Will to Uncle Randy and they all say goodbye. Peter seems proud to use the walking stick as he leaves. Mom shuts the door, and except for the rain on the roof, the house is quiet again.

  Like nothing ever happened.

  Even though it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

  Frankie kisses our parents and goes upstairs to take a shower, and Mom and Dad put Jolene to bed, leaving me in the living room squeezing a pillow and wondering what in the world I will choose to always remember my grandpa by.

  His ivory pipe he used to smoke cherry tobacco with when he was younger?

  The bubbly glass balls I’ve always loved?

  A rusty, barnacle-covered compass?

  Nothing seems quite right. I’m still sitting on the couch when Dad comes back down.

  “Can’t decide, Savvy?” He sits and puts his arm around me. I lean into his warm side. We sit like that for a couple of minutes until he says, “I think I have just the thing.” He pops up, leaves the room, and comes back with a small box. He hands it to me.

  Inside is a thick gold ring I’ve never seen before. It has etchings on the sides similar to a compass.

  “Grandpa gave this to me when I was a little older than you. When I first learned how to sail. Watch this.” Dad takes the ring out of the box and somehow slides it so that inner rings unfold from the main ring until it looks like a tiny sphere. Each ring has writing and symbols on it.

  “Whoa!” I roll the little sphere in my hand. It’s about the size of a grape. “What does all this mean?”

  “Each ring is a line in the sky that goes around the entire globe—Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, maybe? I don’t remember the rest. Grandpa told me way back then that it was sort of a map of the sky and a tool for navigating the sea. It’s called a celestial ring.”

  I gently close all the rings so they fold back into one ring. “You can’t even tell it holds so many secrets.”

  “Nope.”

  “I love it.” I try it on my fingers, but it’s too big for any of them.

  “I thought you might.” He smiles. “I’ll get you a chain and you can wear it as a necklace. Sound good?”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I nod and hug him tight. “You’re sure you don’t want to keep it?”

  “I’ve had it long enough. It’s yours now. But it’s time to get ready for bed.”

  “Okay.”

  I pass Frankie in the hall on the way to my room and whisper, “We start looking for clues tomorrow.”

  “Aye aye,” she says, and before she disappears into her room, I tell her, “Grandpa’s bag looks great on you.”

  I lie in my bed opening and closing the celestial ring. It’s not the first night without Grandpa in the house, but somehow it feels like he’s farther away now and might drift a little more every day, like a boat without an anchor. “Don’t worry, Grandpa,” I whisper into the dark. “I won’t let anyone forget you.”

  7

  The Cord of Three

  The end of summer is like a long sigh. Everything starts to calm down in town. The village is clearing out. Vacationers wrapping up their holidays, fewer boats on the water, less noise. You can feel the salty air starting to change too; autumn’s crisper skies and cooler nights aren’t long off. Some
trees are starting to lose their leaves, tumbling to the ground like tears. But it’s still hot, really hot, even at nine in the morning. And the Queen Mary is a sad place to be right now. Leaving the house feels good.

  The three of us run down the front steps and grab our skateboards and helmets from the shed out back. Ms. Carolina Davis is also out back watering flowers in her yard and she watches us from behind her glasses.

  “Morning, Ms. Davis,” Jolene says, and waves.

  “Morning to you too, doll face.” Ms. Davis waves back. The rhinestones in her glasses sparkle around her eyes like little stars.

  “Do you think she sleeps with them on?” I whisper to Frankie, who says nothing but shoves my shoulder. “What? She can’t hear me.”

  “You have such a big mouth.”

  “Better than having a big butt!” I tease.

  Frankie looms over me, and she’s so tall I can see up her nose.

  “Sorry.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, and hands me my board. “Everyone on deck. Rope up.”

  Frankie leads the way, pushing off on her skateboard in front of me. She has a rope tied to her waist like a belt so that her hands are free. The other end trails behind her and leads to my board. I wrap the rope around my hand and help push off. Behind me, Jolene holds the very end of the rope and sits on her board, and we pull her through town. She has the bag with Grandpa’s map wrapped in one arm and grips the rope with the other. She hums a tune I recognize well, something Grandpa always whistled about pirates and rum.

  Treasure hunting was Grandpa’s hobby but he also made many maps in his life, and this one is unlike any other. The first time he showed it to me, he said, “There’s a secret in this map, Savvy.”

  I ran my hand over the crinkly paper. “What kind of secret?”

  “The kind that can change your life, if you let it.”

  “Will it make me rich?”

  “In some ways, I suppose.” Grandpa smiled. “Maps have a way of giving you what you need at just the right time.”

  I need it to have the secret to save everything aboard the Queen Mary, everything we’ve ever loved and known.

  “Grandpa left us the map so we could finish his search, prove he was right all along,” I say, thinking about his hand-drawn lines of Ocracoke Island and how delicate and fancy his handwriting was. “Grandpa will be super famous after we find the treasure.”

  “I’m going to trust you on this one,” Frankie says, “because we have no other options.”

  “Yeah.” Jolene sighs. “We’re despicable.”

  “I think you mean ‘desperate,’” Frankie says as she pushes off the sandy pavement with extra force to get us across an intersection. I help a little bit by leaning forward and to the left as she makes the turn.

  “That’s what I said.” Jolene adjusts her eye patch. She’s been wearing it since yesterday and I’m pretty sure she’s never taking it off again.

  We pass Mr. Brown, the librarian and one of our teachers from school, who shakes his head every time he sees us. Frankie does most of the work to pull us through the village, but she doesn’t mind. She’s tall for her age and strong, and only I know this, but she’s been hanging out with a boy named Ryan who’s fifteen and has taught her how to surf. She says she wanted to prove she could do it. But I think she just wants to hang out with him.

  In the center of town, we go around Silver Lake, the inlet from the bay that has a harbor and little shops and restaurants around it. Morning near the water is all clanking masts and screaming seagulls competing for scraps of fish thrown overboard. Pelicans wait at the end of the docks and dive in when they see fishermen throwing leftovers into the water. And there are tons of out-of-towners zipping around on bikes, talking very fast and loud. Near our house, things are much quieter, but here there’s always someone to watch and eavesdrop on, at least during half the year. After September, when most of the Northerners go home, the island becomes much quieter.

  Uncle Randy’s boat is docked and we wave to him as we pass.

  “Morning, girls! There’re still a lot of vacationers in town. Make sure you pay attention on the road!”

  “We will,” Frankie shouts back. She skates harder, nearly losing both me and Jolene. But I keep my balance and Jolene holds on tight; we’re used to Frankie’s skating. And we’re used to Uncle Randy thinking our parents shouldn’t let us run around all over town, so it’s all good.

  A car with New Jersey plates passes us and then slows down. When we catch up, a lady leans her head out the window and says, “Look at you three, aren’t you inventive! Look at them, Dan, like three little nesting dolls, exact copies of each other in different sizes. Three little Southern belles!”

  I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about; we don’t look anything alike, but we all smile and glance at each other because she sounds like she’s pinching her nose when she talks and there’s too many “W’s” in her words.

  Before the lady and the Dan guy pull away, she tells Frankie we better be careful going down the road like that. “Even though you’re tall as a sycamore, your sisters are hard to see on those skateboards.”

  Frankie says, “Yes, ma’am,” but when the car pulls away, she mumbles, “Mind your own beeswax, dingbatter.” Jolene and I laugh out loud. Grandpa used to say “dingbatter” all the time. Vacationers are a way of life in the village, at least in the summer, and as Uncle Randy says, we need them, but that doesn’t mean we want all of them. Although Uncle Randy really needs them, since his whole job is to take people out on deep-sea fishing trips.

  “What did she call you, Frankie?” Jolene asks.

  “A big tree,” Frankie grumbles.

  Jolene giggles nonstop the rest of the way. “Frankie’s a big tree.”

  The historical society is like a little museum and library in one. It has a lot of Grandpa’s published articles and artifacts on display, so first thing Sunday morning, that’s where we go looking for clues. We know after Grandpa stopped searching for shipwrecks, he spent many hours with a special detector hunting for gold coins at Springer’s Point before he died, so we’re thinking that’s the best place to start. Hopefully between the map he left us and the stuff at the museum, we can find something more about what he knew and found.

  Mrs. Taylor runs the museum, and when we get there, she gives us an enormous hug. She’s been a friend of our family’s for many years. Although so has almost everyone else.

  “Oh, my sweet little girls,” she says. “I’m so sorry about your grandpa. I wanted to come to the services yesterday but I had to help my daughter with the new baby and all, and…”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Taylor,” Frankie says. “We know you loved Grandpa.”

  Mrs. Taylor looks like she might melt on the floor. “I did, so. What can I do for you, loves?”

  “We’d like to be near Grandpa’s things, if that’s okay?” I ask.

  “You know you’re always welcome.” She happily gestures toward the room with Grandpa’s papers and special findings. She disappears for a moment and then returns with a large envelope.

  “I didn’t think you’d be by so soon after,” she says. “But I have a special package for you.” She hands the envelope to Frankie. I lean over and Jolene stands on tiptoe to see. Our names are on the front with Do not open until September 1996 in Grandpa’s handwriting. I look up at Mrs. Taylor, but don’t even have to ask.

  “Whatever is in there, he specifically asked me to hold on to it for you girls.” She smiles and leaves the room.

  We were here all the time with Grandpa, and sometimes I volunteer to help Mrs. Taylor with special events and ghost tours in the village, which is why I’m pretty sure she’d hire me if I ever needed a job, even though I’m four years too young to have a job. She was a good friend to Grandpa for a very long time.

  But this is unexpected.

  “Open it, Frankie!” Jolene says, bouncing on her toes so she can see. We all sit down among the glass display cases and Frankie
carefully tears the envelope open. Inside is a single piece of paper with a coded message:

  OWXRY, BWJRY, INBR, NOG EIBR

  NXWJOG RYI QBSNOG NENQRB N HJIBR.

  YQGGIO RWWSB NOG KSJIB NXI ZWJOG,

  MQXNRI RXINBJXI RYXWJPYWJR AWJX RWEO.

  XQGGSIB NOG MJTTSIB AWJ’FI NSENAB VOWEO;

  BRWXQIB Q’FI RWSG AWJ NB AWJ’FI PXWEO.

  BRNXR EQRY RYI UNM NOG RXJBR AWJX AWJRY,

  BWUIRQUIB RYI WCFQWJB QB RYI RXJRY.

  NOG XIUIUCIX EYNR Q’FI BNQG WZ RYII:

  BRXIOPRY RWPIRYIX, N KWXG WZ RYXII.

  EYIO QO GWJCR, MSINBI XIUIUCIX:

  Q’U EQRY AWJ NSENAB NOG ZWXIFIX.

  Jolene squishes up her nose and eyes. “What does that say?”

  “‘Owxry, bwjry … nog…’” Frankie reads the words just the way they look on the paper.

  Jolene laughs. “You made up a new language!”

  I take the paper away. “It’s not a language,” I whisper. “It’s a cryptogram.”

  “How can you tell?” Frankie asks.

  “Because Grandpa made these all the time for me. And you can buy books of them at the big market in Hatteras in the checkout line. I do them when I’m waiting for the lady to ring Mom up. Each letter just stands for another letter.”

  I pull a pencil out of my backpack and try a couple of combinations. It can take a little while to figure out what the letters are supposed to be, but if you look for patterns it helps reveal the true words. Punctuation helps too.

  “Look,” I show Frankie. “This word ‘NOG’ shows up a lot and then there is an ‘N’ all by itself, so I know ‘N’ is either ‘A’ or ‘I’ so I’ll start with ‘A’…”

  “Ugh, Sav, you’re killing me,” Frankie says. “You lost me at ‘NOG.’”

  “I can do it.” I start decoding the letters. Frankie never has patience for puzzles. I was the only one who’d ever sit with Grandpa and try to figure them out. Which makes me pause for a minute and wonder if he was making me practice for this reason. Maybe he knew someday he’d have to give me a very important code to crack.

  “What?” Frankie asks. “Why’d you stop?”