Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match

by Candice Ransom

  Good old responsible Heaven just smiled.

  “Rule number two,” Aunt Sissy Two said. “No one goes in the water unless one of us is on the beach.”

  Iva’s mother said, “You’ll each have five dollars to spend this week for souvenirs—”

  “Can I have mine now?” Arden asked eagerly.

  “Tomorrow. If you blow it all in one day, too bad. And no trading nickels for quarters with Lily Pearl and Howard or ‘borrowing’ from them,” said Mrs. Honeycutt. “That’s rule number three.”

  Iva planned to save her money until the very last day. She would go to all the gift shops and look at every single thing before she spent her five dollars.

  “Is that all?” Hunter asked anxiously.

  Iva figured Arden and Hunter had an imaginary date with Rory. Since he was an imaginary boyfriend, he shouldn’t mind if they were late.

  Suddenly, there was a thumping sound overhead. Iva had been so excited about the sleeping porch, she had completely forgotten the house had a second story.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked.

  “The second floor is rented to a gentleman,” Aunt Sissy Two replied. She glanced at Iva’s mother. “Little does he know.”

  Iva looked around for a staircase. “How does he get up there?”

  Her mother pointed to a door near the sofa. “The stairs are on the other side of that door. The rental lady said he keeps unusual hours and we’ll probably never see him come and go.”

  Unusual hours. What did that mean? Iva was intrigued. “Is it okay—”

  Her mother cut her off. “Rule number four. Do not go upstairs into that man’s room. Understand?” Her gaze rested on Iva.

  “The beach!” Howard yelled.

  “I now pronounce you wife and husband!” Lily Pearl shouted.

  Iva burst out the door with the others.

  “No one puts a toenail in the water till we get there!” Aunt Sissy Two hollered over the porch rail. “We’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

  Iva stopped in the oyster-shell driveway and turned to glance back at the second-story windows.

  Now she had two assignments. One, find pirates’ treasure. And two, find out about The Man Upstairs.

  Chapter Four

  London Howdyshell

  Iva ran like sixty across the scorching beach. People frowned as she kicked sand onto their towels. Seagulls preening on the rock jetty flew up like popcorn.

  Little waves rimmed with spitty foam curled on the hard-packed sand. Iva stopped at the water’s edge and let the waves cool her burning feet.

  She gazed at the horizon and imagined she was one of Captain John Smith’s crew. They had just landed in this new place. Not another person nor even a wild animal in sight, only wilderness, teeming with bears and wolves—

  “The notion!” Lily Pearl shrieked behind her. “Iva’s swimming in the notion!”

  “It’s not the notion,” Iva told her. “It’s the ocean, and do I look like I’m swimming?”

  Lily Pearl and Howard squatted down and began digging in the wet sand. Arden and Hunter halted by the lifeguard tower to gawk at the tanned blond lifeguard. They stood motionless, mouths slack, as if they’d been stunned by a ray gun.

  Last came Heaven. She slogged toward Iva, her big feet spewing sand like walrus flippers. “You broke rule number two. Nobody is supposed to go in the water unless our mothers are here.”

  “I didn’t go in the water,” Iva said truthfully. “The water got on me.” She splashed Heaven’s legs. “There. Now you broke the rule, too.”

  Lily Pearl piled sand around Howard’s ankles. “We wanna swim in the notion.”

  “It’s the bay, not the ocean,” Iva corrected. “It goes all the way to Maryland. Isn’t it great here? I never want to go home.”

  Heaven wiped the water off her legs, like it was evidence at a crime scene. “It’s too hot.”

  “It’s supposed to be hot. It’s the beach. Discoverers are used to being out in all weathers.” Iva puffed out her chest, as if daring the skies to hurl hailstones, snowballs, and lightning bolts at her.

  “Don’t you know everything in the world has already been found?” Heaven said.

  “Has not!”

  “Has too. Face it, Iva. People in your line of work are hard up. You need to go to Saturn or someplace to find anything new.”

  “I’m gonna send you to Saturn.” But Iva’s threat lacked passion. Much as she hated to admit it, her cousin might have been right.

  Explorers these days didn’t have it easy like Captain John Smith. Four hundred years ago, he’d tooled up and down the Chesapeake Bay and that river with two p’s and two n’s, discovering creeks and points and islands left and right. It wasn’t fair.

  “You wait. I’m gonna find a creek or an animal or—a rock that nobody else has found!” Iva didn’t want Heaven to know she planned to find pirates’ treasure.

  “I could discover a rock.” Heaven walked over to the jetty and sat on a boulder half buried in the sand. “I dub thee the Heaven Rock.”

  “Discoverers don’t say that ‘dub thee’ stuff,” Iva sneered. She hopped up on the flattish stone to get a better look around. Maybe Captain John Smith had left behind an old sword or some-thing.

  “Get off my rock,” Heaven said.

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Iva tossed back. “I bet that’s what Captain John Smith said when he came here.”

  “Actually,” said a voice on the other side of the jetty, “he probably went, ‘Ouch!’”

  Iva looked down. A girl her age was hunkered down at the water’s edge. As she grinned up at Iva, her straight black hair swung out like a crow’s wing. She wore some sort of rock on a chain around her neck.

  “You know about Captain John Smith!” Iva cried. In her excitement, she leaped off the boulder, landing with a jolt that jarred her teeth.

  “You okay?” the black-haired girl asked.

  Iva brushed sand off her shins. “Yeah.”

  Heaven’s large shadow stretched over them. “Don’t worry about Iva. One time she jumped off the shed roof with a paper bag in each hand. Trying to fly.”

  “And I did, for a split second.” Leave it to Heaven to give the new girl the wrong impression about her. “I’m Iva. We just got here today. This is Heaven. We’re distantly related.”

  Heaven glared at her.

  “Hi. I’m London Howdyshell.”

  Iva was instantly struck by name envy. London Howdyshell sounded like somebody important. Maybe a TV newsperson. This is London Howdyshell, reporting from the Belgian Congo.

  London flipped her hair back. Tiny diamond earrings sparkled in the sun.

  “Are those real?” Heaven demanded. “How much did they cost?”

  “No idea,” London replied. “I’ve been wearing them since I was three.”

  She scooped up a wire strainer of sand and sifted it over a plastic bucket.

  “How come you’re playing in the sand like a little kid?” Heaven asked.

  “I’m looking for fossil sharks’ teeth.” London shook a baby-food jar with three tiny, triangular teeth.

  “Can I see?” Iva took the jar. “Wow, these are really cool.”

  “The teeth are from the Miocene period. From a bull shark. I want to find a tiger shark tooth. Morning is better, because the tide’s low.”

  London Howdyshell sounded like a regular scientist. Scientists and discoverers often teamed up together. Iva had just made her first discovery—a beach friend!

  In her National Geographic explorer voice, Iva said, “Captain John Smith almost died in this very spot. I’m going to look for the stingray skeleton that stung him.”

  “Stingrays don’t have skeletons,” London informed her. “Like sharks don’t. Anyway, Smith ate that stingray for supper that night.”

  “Ewww,” said Heaven.

  Iva sat back on her heels. She hadn’t known that. And she knew everything about Captain John Smith and Stingray Point. At
least, she thought she did.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Not only that,” London went on matter-of-factly, “most people think Smith’s doctor rubbed ointment on his arm to make it better. But what really happened was that a Native American put mud from Antipoison Creek on it. That’s what saved him.”

  “Where’s Antipoison Creek?” Iva asked. It sounded like a neat place.

  “Off the Rappahannock River.” London knew about that river with the two p’s and two n’s! They had so much in common!

  Lily Pearl and Howard came running over. They stared at London in awe.

  “I like your necklace,” Lily Pearl said to London. “Where did you buy it?”

  “I made it myself,” London replied. “I found the rock on this beach.”

  “Are you from this country?” asked Howard.

  “You kids are weird. Yes, I’m American. Part Greek, part Italian, part French, and part Scottish. But I’ve lived in other countries. We just moved from Singapore.”

  “You lived in Singapore?” Heaven asked.

  “And Germany and Australia and California. My dad’s in the navy.”

  Iva was flooded with admiration. London had been all over the globe! She didn’t want this cool girl to think she, Iva, was a plain old nobody.

  “I’m a bunch of parts, too,” she announced. “Part English, part Cherokee, and—part Irish setter.”

  London laughed. “An Irish setter is a dog.”

  “And we are not part Cherokee,” Heaven put in. “We have exactly the same relatives on both sides.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Iva squinted at her cousin. If only she could ditch Heaven so she and London could hang out like real discoverers. But Heaven stood in front of them, legs apart, solid as the lifeguard stand.

  “Here comes our mamas,” Lily Pearl shrieked, racing Howard up the beach.

  “We have to go,” Iva told London. “Are you just here for the day?”

  “My dad’s friend is letting us stay in his house for three whole weeks,” she replied. “It’s only our second week.”

  “Then we’ll see you around,” Iva said, matching London’s casual tone.

  “Isn’t she smart?” Heaven said to Iva as they plowed through the sand. “I’ve never met anybody that smart. And she has real diamond earrings.”

  But Iva was busy thinking. She’d finally met the girl she was supposed to be best-best friends with. Best of all, they weren’t related!

  After supper, they all rambled up Bayview Avenue. Clouds like scatter rugs drifted over the bay. Iva caught sight of the boardwalk—a covered walkway lined with restaurants, food stalls, and gift shops—and streaked ahead.

  “Get back here!” her mother yelled. Iva marched back to the others. “Iva, would you keep an eye on Lily Pearl tonight? Heaven, will you watch Howard?”

  “We’re free!” Arden and Hunter sang, heading for the shops.

  “If you spend your souvenir money tonight,” Aunt Sissy Two warned them, “you don’t get any more.”

  “What about ice cream and stuff?” Hunter asked. “Do we have to spend our money on that? It’ll never last!”

  “We’ll spring for food,” her mother replied.

  There was a lot to see, but Iva felt chained to Lily Pearl, who minced along wearing that stupid lace curtain on her head. “Come on, Lily Pearl!”

  “Brides have to walk slow,” Lily Pearl said.

  Iva jerked her into the gift shop. Howard obediently followed Heaven up and down the aisles. Lucky Heaven, Iva thought, assigned to a normal kid.

  Arden was trying on a pair of red sunglasses with colored stones. “What do you think?” she asked Hunter.

  “You look divine.” Hunter held up a pair of purple sandals. “Gorgeous, huh?”

  “Okay, I’ll buy the sunglasses. You get those purple sandals. We can swap.”

  “You shouldn’t spend your money the first night,” Heaven told them. “I’m not.”

  “That’s because you’re tighter than the skin on a grape,” Hunter said as she and Arden paid for their purchases.

  “Hee-hee,” Iva said. Heaven scowled at her, but it was the truth. Heaven rarely parted with a dime unless it was at Cazy Sparkle’s yard sales.

  Back on the boardwalk, Iva spotted a tanned blond boy talking to a guy with a camera. “Hey, isn’t that blond guy the lifeguard?”

  “It is!” Arden gasped so hard Iva was surprised all the sand on the beach didn’t swirl up in a giant sandstorm.

  The photographer snapped a couple’s picture, then gave them a ticket. “Gotta get busy. See you later, Mike.” He went away, and the blond guy moved on, too.

  “His name is Mike!” Arden squealed, so shrilly that sled dogs in Anchorage could hear her. She grasped Hunter’s elbows and they jumped up and down.

  “Hey, there’s London!” Heaven said.

  London Howdyshell was strolling with her parents, licking a triple-scoop frozen-custard cone.

  Heaven waved like she was on the deck of a cruise ship. “London! Over here!”

  Iva frowned. London was her friend. She should have called her.

  London sauntered over. “You should try the frozen custard.”

  “Can I?” Iva asked her mother. “A triple-decker cone like London’s?”

  “Two scoops,” her mother said. “Get Lily Pearl a single-dip cone.”

  Iva dragged Lily Pearl over to the frozen custard stand. “Vanilla and chocolate cone. Big scoops. With sprinkles.”

  “I’ll have the same,” Heaven ordered. “Please.” She gave Iva a look.

  Arden and Hunter split a hot-fudge sundae. Lily Pearl and Howard each got a small cone.

  “Eat your custard before it runs away,” Iva’s mother told Lily Pearl and Howard.

  Lily Pearl put two fingers under the point of her cone. “Mine is running away!”

  The mothers sat on a bench. Iva and the others dashed in and out of the gift shops. London joined them. She pointed to a restaurant called the Crab Shack.

  “We eat there every night. The crab cakes are excellent,” she said with the authority of someone who’d been at Stingray Point a whole week already. “You’re a slow eater,” she said to Iva. “Bet I finish my cone first, and I have three whole scoops.”

  “Bet you don’t.” Iva began licking furiously. An ice-cream-finishing contest! Heaven would never bolt her food. This was the perfect way to show London how much she and Iva had in common.

  Iva ate so fast a sharp pain stabbed her temple. She gobbled her ice cream in great, throat-freezing gulps. Her cone was half gone when she heard a familiar cry.

  Lily Pearl! Where was she?

  Her little sister stood just inside the doorway of the Beach Shop. Iva hurried across the boardwalk.

  “I was just making the scarfs go around like butterflies,” Lily Pearl said defensively.

  Her ice-cream cone was stuck in one of those spinning displays of silk scarves. Vanilla smeared every single scarf on the rack. They were all ruined.

  Iva glanced across the boardwalk. London and Heaven were talking. And Howard—the good little kid—was sitting quietly beside them. Lucky Heaven.

  “My cone,” Lily Pearl whimpered. “Iva, get it out.”

  “I can’t.” Iva hoped the clerk wouldn’t notice them. How much would all those scarves cost? “We have to leave it.”

  “I want my cone!” Lily Pearl opened her mouth and let loose a wail like a firehouse siren.

  “Shh!” Iva pushed her out of the store. There was only one way to make her sister be quiet. She gave Lily Pearl her own cone.

  London came over with Heaven. “I won,” she said, brandishing the nubbin of her cone.

  Heaven said to Iva, “You broke rule number one. You didn’t watch Lily Pearl.”

  “So, tell on me. You’re two tattles behind.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” Heaven linked arms with London and they ambled down the boardwalk.

  Iva couldn’t believe
it. Just like that, Heaven had swooped down on London Howdyshell. But their friendship wouldn’t last. Heaven had nothing in common with London.

  She trudged along with Lily Pearl, who licked Iva’s cone very, very slowly. Little bitty licks, she told Iva, the way a bride would eat ice cream on her wedding day.

  Chapter Five

  Chessie

  “This house is a teetotal wreck,” Iva’s mother declared. “Girls, straighten up. And sweep. There’s more sand in here than the Gobi Desert.” Then she and Aunt Sissy Two and the little kids zipped off to the farm stand, leaving Arden in dubious charge.

  “Iva, do the dishes,” Arden said. “Heaven, you sweep the floors.”

  To Iva, a vacation meant a break from doing chores she had to do at home. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “Supervise.” Then Arden barricaded herself in the bathroom for her forty-seventh shower. When she came out, Hunter hurled herself in to take her shower.

  “When are we supposed to use the bathroom?” Heaven grumbled, pushing the broom over Iva’s feet.

  “I don’t know why they have to take showers this morning anyway,” Iva said. “We’re going swimming later.”

  “That doesn’t count. The water is all salty.”

  That didn’t bother Iva. She was taking a vacation from being clean. The way she saw it, she was doing the environment a favor. Arden and Hunter had already taken so many showers it was a wonder the water level of the bay didn’t drop, leaving the poor fish stranded.

  Last night, before she went to bed, Iva fixed her hair in two pigtails. If she wore her hair the same way every day, no one would notice she never washed it. And she simply wet her toothbrush and put it back in the cup.

  Arden shuffled in and plunked herself down at the kitchen table with a bottle of pink nail polish. She propped her foot up on an empty chair and began painting her toenails.

  Heaven hung the broom on the rack. “Iva, you didn’t make your bed.”

  “What’re you? The bed police? I did so make it.”

  “You just slung the sheet up over your pajamas and a bunch of those moldy old magazines.” Heaven snorted righteously through one nostril. “That is not making your bed.”