The Dare Sisters

by Jess Rinker

  Then I grab the plant sketchbook too.

  “That’s four things,” Frankie whispers.

  “Like they will even know. Grandpa’s drawings are so pretty. The museum is not getting them.”

  “Then I’m keeping this too,” she says, and grabs one last leather journal with a picture of a lighthouse etched on the front. “I like the cover.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any,” I say.

  “I hope we made good choices,” Frankie says.

  I look back at the huge pile of Grandpa’s belongings that will now get boxed up and sent to Mrs. Taylor. We’ll always be able to visit, but it’s hard to see them go.

  “Me too.” Flipping through the plant sketches again to admire Grandpa’s drawings, something occurs to me. The handwriting is different. Instead of Grandpa’s normally loopy writing, these letters are blocky and very small.

  “Frankie, did you ever see Grandpa write like this?” I show her the pages.

  She shakes her head, but doesn’t seem to be bothered. “Maybe he had different styles for different projects. I’m going to go put this stuff in my room.”

  I nod as Frankie walks up the stairs, turning the book over in my hands and opening the back cover, starting from the end. The last sketch is of an oleander flower. In the bottom right corner there’s a date and a blocky signature.

  Dunmore Throop, 1985

  I stare at it for a long time, trying to figure out how Throop’s book got in Grandpa’s things.

  Did Throop give it to him?

  Did Grandpa steal it?

  Are there more of Throop’s things in the piles?

  I don’t have time to sort through anything more, because Mom calls down to me to tell me to wash up for dinner. I close the book, slide it between the others in my stack, and head to my room thinking that one thing I know for sure is I’m not telling anyone what I found just yet.

  Just in case the answer to my second question is yes.

  Just in case Grandpa stole it.

  11

  Carousing with Landlubbers

  Monday is the worst day of the week. School is not my favorite place in the world, even though Dad works there. He teaches high school science. He leaves earlier than we do in the morning, so he’s already gone by the time we head out the door with our skateboards. This morning before he went to work, he left a chain on the counter for Grandpa’s ring so I can wear it to school.

  It’s such a pretty morning, warm and a little damp from the rain. Everything smells like the ocean washed up into town overnight, a musky, salty smell. Gulls everywhere grab whatever crawled out of the ground, tiny little ghost crabs, and trash people left behind. Makes me want to run to the beach and spend the day there instead. Or better yet, stay home alone and go through the rest of Grandpa’s notebooks looking for more clues. As Frankie skates us to school, I drag a stick in the sand alongside my board.

  “Savannah, you’re slowing us down,” she scolds.

  “Kinda my goal,” I say.

  “Well, knock it off. I’m not going to have another tardy because of you. We’ve only had two weeks of school. I want perfect attendance this year.”

  “‘I want perfect attendance this year,’” I mock, and throw the stick into the scrubby brush on the side of the road. “What’s so great about perfect attendance?” I ask her, but she ignores me. “Do you get a large sum of money at the end of the year? Being late is not missing a day anyway.” Still ignoring me.

  Jolene’s sprawled out on her board humming her pirate song, with her eye patch on the top of her forehead. Mom said she had to keep it off her eye for school so she could see the board properly. Jolene had a fit. This was the compromise.

  Everyone else is walking to school too. Ahead of us are Peter and his friend Colin. And Kate and LouAnn, who might walk with me now but I’m too afraid to find out. Frankie calls out to her friends Ashley and Dawn to wait up.

  “Keep your arms and legs inside until your vehicle comes to a full and complete stop,” I announce into my hand when Frankie hops off her board. Jolene and I roll to a stop. I pretend to put on the brake and hand Frankie the rope, and she ties our boards to the rack outside the school building. Dad’s bike is already parked there.

  We probably have the smallest school ever built. It’s a tiny gray building with wood siding, like nearly every building on the island. Only this one has an American flag out front so you know it’s something important. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go to one of those giant three-story brick buildings with the loud bells and huge cafeterias and hundreds of kids like I’ve seen in movies, but I think that might end up being way too much school for me to handle. Here we’re like a family. We’ve all grown up together and usually all get along. Although I messed it up a bit when I pushed Kate.

  Frankie waves to Ryan and then ditches us and runs in with her friends, which leaves me to walk in with Jolene. Kind of annoying, but at least I’m not walking in alone every day. That would be worse.

  I walk Jolene to her room and then trudge to my own. I like my teachers enough, it’s just I’d rather be looking for a clue as to why Grandpa’s elbow riddle is important. There’re probably more codes in the map and I really wish I could go through the rest of Grandpa’s books, but all the homework is going to totally get in my way! Who wants to go home and practice fractions when you could go fishing or walk to the beach or, most important, look for buried treasure? Besides, I’m pretty sure if pirates had kids they wouldn’t go to school. They’d learn everything they need to know on the ship.

  “Savannah Dare?” my teacher, Mrs. Erickson, calls out. I didn’t even realize all the seats had filled in around me already. Kate and LouAnn sit on the other side of the room since we sit alphabetically. Everyone looks at me as I raise my hand to show Mrs. Erickson I’m present.

  “How are you doing this morning, sweetheart?” The sound of her voice makes my face turn red.

  I reach for Grandpa’s ring and hope she doesn’t ask me any other questions. “Fine.”

  She moves on without saying anything about Grandpa, but I know that’s what she’s talking about.

  Then she calls on Peter, who sits right next to me. Even though he’s a year older, he’s in my class because our school is so small. Fifth and sixth grades are in the same room.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answers. Mrs. Erickson asks him how he’s doing and he has the same answer as me. No matter what happens in this town, everyone knows. Everyone knows each other and secrets and rumors spread in the air like pollen in the spring.

  After attendance and the pledge, we’re off to the races. Although instead of a racehorse, I’m more like a donkey. And all day long I cannot sit still.

  I sharpen my pencil thirteen times.

  Get a drink twice.

  Go to the restroom during every class.

  I don’t learn anything new. But that’s okay because we learned all this stuff last year anyway.

  At lunch we’re allowed to go home but we usually bring lunches and sit at a picnic table outside. We don’t have a cafeteria. Frankie lets me sit with her and her friends because she knows my worst fear is eating alone. It’s an agreement we have—I keep her secret about the summer surfing with Ryan and she makes sure I always have a place to sit. Thing is, I’d keep her secret anyway.

  I drop my ham-and-cheese sandwich on the table across from Frankie’s friends Ashley and Dawn. Ashley has different color nails every single day because her mom owns the nail salon in town, and Dawn always smells like coffee because her mom owns the coffee shop. My sisters and I might be the only kids at the table whose parents don’t own a business in town. Between Mom’s research and lectures, Dad’s teaching, and Grandpa’s treasure hunting, we probably smell like books and beakers and ink and sailing ships.

  Frankie and I can’t talk about our plans for the afternoon, so we write notes down on a piece of paper and pass it back and forth under the table while Frankie pretends to listen to Ashley and Dawn.<
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  Me: Maybe the answer is in the rest of Grandpa’s stuff.

  Frankie: Why wouldn’t he have made that clear?

  “And then my mom actually wanted me to wear that horrible purple polo,” Ashley says. “I don’t wear purple.”

  “Purple is horrendous,” Frankie says.

  Frankie: We could ask Dad.

  Me: Seems risky.

  “But you look so good in purple,” Dawn says. “It goes great with your hair.”

  “You really think so?” Ashley asks, flipping her hair.

  “Yeah, purple is so pretty.” Frankie nods as she passes me the paper.

  Me: We can’t let them donate all of it to Mrs. Taylor before we know exactly what’s going on.

  Frankie: We may never figure this out.

  “Why do you look like you’re going to kill your sister, Savannah?” Dawn asks me, forcing me to take my evil eye off my sister.

  “Because she knows how much I despise purple,” I say, and gather up my books to head to science.

  “What’s her problem?” Ashley whispers as I leave. But I don’t hear Frankie’s answer.

  The rest of the day is more of the same. Two minutes before the last bell rings, I’m completely packed and ready to go home. Mr. Baranski says, “Savannah, the bell hasn’t even rung yet.” But before he can get a response from me, the bell does ring and I’m out of my seat, down the hall, and outside by our skateboards in four seconds flat.

  Kate and LouAnn come out together and as they get closer, my breathing gets faster. I know I should apologize for last year, but I can’t seem to get the words out. Both girls sort of give me a half-smile as they pass but nobody says anything.

  It’s a special kind of awful.

  When Jolene and Frankie finally get there, I ask them what took so long.

  “Jolene had a class trip today. They got back late and had to get everything together,” Frankie says as she zips Jolene’s backpack. “Calm down, okay?”

  “We’re running out of time.” I pass Jolene her board and Frankie hers and we line up and head home. “I want to know what we’re supposed to do.”

  “So do I, but you also have to be prepared to not know.”

  “I don’t like not knowing,” Jolene says.

  “No one does.” Frankie pulls us home, and the entire time I think about elbows and Dunmore Throop’s signature in that book. Nothing makes sense. I’m starting to get a little mad at Grandpa for making this so confusing.

  When we get home, Dad is loading something into a strange car. I know whose it is before we even come to a stop. His green hat gives him away. And my dad is giving him a table lamp Grandpa made from a rusty lantern from a ship.

  “What are you doing?” I yell when we reach the driveway. I grab the door of the car and startle my dad.

  “Savannah Mae! What in the world are you doing?” He looks at me with such disappointment that I don’t say anything. I glance at Throop, who almost looks like he’s smiling at me. But not in a nice way. In a way that seems to say, “You lose, I win.”

  “Apologize to Mr. Throop, please,” Dad says, “for so rudely grabbing his door and shouting at us like you’ve been raised in a barn.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Mr. Throop says. “The child was taken by emotion. There’s no harm in a little passion.”

  My dad disagrees and tells me to apologize again.

  “I will not,” I say, and run into the house and up to my room, where I slam the door extra hard. Slamming the door never does anything but it feels good anyway. Usually Dad will come and check on me. But this time he doesn’t. I watch out the window as Dad and Mr. Throop talk in the driveway. Dad has his arms crossed and he nods while he looks at the sand. Mr. Throop waves his hands around and even points at my dad. My dad is a teacher! You don’t point at teachers.

  I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about this Throop guy I don’t like.

  12

  May Day, May Day!

  An entire week goes by and we can’t find any more clues in Grandpa’s stuff. Every day after school, I sit in the crow’s nest and go through Grandpa’s journals—the ones I’m allowed to keep and the ones left in boxes that will be going to Mrs. Taylor next weekend. Everything is sprawled around me on the floor. But most of the entries are about trips he took when he was a young man and have nothing to do with Ocracoke or Blackbeard.

  Frankie and Jolene help a little bit, but they both get bored and end up doing other things. One evening Dad peeks upstairs and asks me what I’m up to.

  “I just like reading about what Grandpa did,” I said. “He went on a lot of adventures.”

  “Yes, he definitely did.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Do what? Travel?”

  “Figure out where everything is, like shipwrecks and stuff?”

  “Well, you remember his boat, right? He used to have all kinds of equipment for that sort of thing. Kind of like Uncle Randy’s fishing boat with the radar.”

  “He didn’t have to crack codes or follow treasure maps.”

  “No.” Dad smiled. “He liked that sort of thing for fun mostly. Look, Sav, I came up because your mom and I actually have to talk to you girls downstairs. Your sisters are already down there.”

  I look up at him over my book. “Another family meeting?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sigh and follow him downstairs. He sits next to Mom on the couch. Mom looks worried when she sees me.

  “They’ve had a lot this week, Jack. Maybe this should wait.”

  But Dad shakes his head and holds Mom’s hand. “I like things out in the open. The girls are smart and strong. They will understand.” He looks at the three of us lined up on the bench Grandpa salvaged from an old sailing ship. Jolene swings her feet. Frankie and I glance at each other. Whatever it is, I hope Dad’s right.

  “I’m just going to say it and not keep you girls in suspense any longer.” He lets out a long breath. “We have to sell the house. We’re going to be listing it as soon as possible, so we only have a few weeks to go through everything, sell what we can, give away what we can. And, of course, find a new place to live.”

  Jolene’s feet stop.

  “Sell the Queen Mary?” I squeak out, hardly believing what I’m hearing. “Selling Grandpa’s things is bad enough, but the whole house? Our whole house?”

  Frankie starts twirling her hair but doesn’t say anything at all.

  Jolene bursts into tears and runs into Mom’s arms.

  My insides seem to disappear. Like I’ve turned into a hollow ghost with no lungs to breathe. I feel like I might throw up.

  “But I’ve lived here my whole life,” Jolene says through her sobs. “Why do we have to move?”

  “It’s complicated, sweetheart, but mostly it’s because we can’t afford the house,” Mom says. She has tears in her eyes too. “We were struggling as it is. I’m so sorry, girls.”

  “Are we going to stay in the village?” Frankie asks.

  Mom and Dad look at each other. Dad says, “We wish we could, but Dunmore says this house will sell very fast, probably to someone who wants to turn it into a vacation home, which is the best deal we can hope for. And considering there’s nothing small for sale that we can afford right now, we will probably have to move to the mainland.”

  I stare at Dad. “Who is this Dunmore Throop guy anyway? And why does he get to decide what to do with everything in our lives?”

  Mom gives me a warning look to lower my sails. “He doesn’t get to decide everything in our lives, Savannah.”

  “Mr. Throop was Grandpa’s business partner,” explains Dad. “Everything that Grandpa owned is half his. At least he says it is. We’re trying to find all the documents.”

  Frankie and I stare at each other.

  “On top of that, our half of the inheritance is supposed to be split with Uncle Randy,” Mom says.

  “‘Hairy dance,’” I mumble, and press myself deeper into the cushions.
Now I understand what Jolene overheard. Uncle Randy talking to Throop about his half of the inheritance.

  “What?” Mom asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Frances?” Dad says. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Frankie says quietly, looking at the old trunk we use as a coffee table instead of looking at Mom’s or Dad’s face. I think she’s trying to be smart and strong like Dad said we would be.

  I stand up. “Well, I know what I’m thinking!”

  “Please don’t shout, honey,” Mom says.

  But I don’t listen. “I’m thinking this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard! Grandpa would be so mad if he knew what you were doing!” I stomp my way up the stairs, ignoring their calls for me to please come back so we can all talk. What is there to talk about? They’ve obviously already made up their minds. No thanks to Throop.

  I hear Mom say to Dad that they should’ve waited a little longer and let everything settle before they told us. Dad says, “And then shake everything up all over again? No. Sav will be okay. She needs some time.”

  But he’s wrong. I slam my door to prove it. Time will not make this better. Nothing can make this better. I throw myself down on my bed and cover my face with a pillow.

  A few minutes later there’s a knock at my door and Dad lets himself in.

  “Sweetheart, can we talk?”

  “About what?” I mumble from under the pillow.

  “About what you’re feeling right now. I know you’re angry.”

  “I don’t want to move, Dad.”