Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match

by Candice Ransom

  Hunter came in, sat down, and put her foot on Arden’s knee. “Do me.”

  The front door banged shut, making them all turn toward the living room.

  “They can’t be back yet,” Iva said.

  Arden, who could see the living room best, said, “It’s that guy staying upstairs. He went out.”

  The Man Upstairs! Iva flew to the living room window but didn’t see anyone. The plain black car that belonged to him was still parked on his side of the driveway. The tires were muddy, and she spotted a bunch of maps on the dashboard.

  “I wonder who he is,” she said. “I’ve never seen him.”

  “Maybe he’s a movie star, hiding from his fans,” Hunter said, bracing her other foot against Arden’s knee.

  “Why would a movie star hide at Stingray Point?” Arden argued. “It’s hardly the Bahamas or anything. I bet he’s a spy.”

  Iva looked back at his car. Then it hit her. The maps, the mud. It all fit! The Man Upstairs must be an explorer. He was probably on his way right now to do some serious exploring. If only she could talk to him! Maybe get some tips.

  Then she heard the clang of a garbage-can lid. “He took his trash out!” she cried.

  “Call National Security!” said Arden. She and Hunter cracked up.

  Iva raced through the kitchen and out the back door, clattering down the wooden stairs. No one was on the sidewalk by the garbage cans. Iva checked the snowball bushes growing under the windows of their house. Not there, either.

  A cottage had been built on the tiny lot behind their sleeping porch. The cottage had a separate oyster-shell driveway that led to Bayview Avenue. Iva ran down the driveway but saw no one on the street. Where had he gone? How had he gotten away so fast?

  Then she stared at the garbage cans. How could she have overlooked the best source of information? She tossed the lid of the first can onto the ground and began pawing through the trash. Eggshells, Cheerios, coffee grounds, toast rinds. This was their can.

  The second can had only one small bag, at the bottom. She pulled it out and dumped the contents onto the ground. Six Styrofoam coffee cups tumbled out. And some coffee-stained papers.

  Kneeling, Iva spread the papers across the sidewalk. One was an envelope. The stains partly covered the first name, but she could read the last name: Smith.

  She nearly keeled over. Smith! The Man Upstairs must be related to Captain John Smith, a great-great-great-great-great…Iva lost track of the greats. Now she knew Mr. Smith was an explorer. He had followed his great-great-great-great-great-whatever John Smith’s footsteps. It was in his blood. Just like it was in hers. They had so much in common!

  Then she examined the other papers. Most were too stained to read. Iva frowned. Mr. Smith should have stuck to Kool-Aid. You could see through Kool-Aid spills.

  She smoothed the last paper. It was partly stained, but she could read most of it:

  You will locate 10 sites spaced no closer than 0.5 mile apart.

  Each site will be geographically sequential.

  You will try to locate [stain]

  You will avoid dangerous [stain]

  You will avoid private prop—[stain]

  You will establish your route in the daytime, but following your route at night will be still be difficult.

  Iva sucked in a breath. She was right! The paper proved it. Mr. Smith was some sort of explorer. And although Iva would never have admitted it in a million years, Arden was right, too. Mr. Smith was also a spy. He was…an explorer-spy!

  This was huge. And nobody but Iva knew about it.

  A car crunched up the cottage’s driveway. Two old ladies climbed out, hauling suitcases. One of them spotted Iva crouching over the trash strewn all over the sidewalk.

  “I hope you’re going to pick up that mess, young lady,” she said crisply. “We’re here to relax, and we don’t want to be bothered with a bunch of rowdy children.”

  Then you picked the wrong place to stay, Iva thought. She hurriedly gathered up the trash. But she put the piece of paper with Mr. Smith’s instructions on it in her pocket.

  “Sunscreen, camera, towels, books, snacks…” Iva’s mother sorted through the contents of her straw tote.

  “Can we go?” Dressed in her blue bathing suit, Lily Pearl swung her little plastic bag of beach toys. Howard waited patiently with his pail and shovel.

  “We’re waiting on Heaven,” said Aunt Sissy Two, hefting the cooler of drinks. “Usually it’s the big girls holding us up.”

  Arden and Hunter pranced at the front door like racehorses at the starting gate. They had brushed their hair until it crackled with static electricity, and they had checked to make sure they didn’t have tuna fish between their teeth.

  The sleeping-porch door opened, and out waltzed Heaven. She wore cutoffs, a T-shirt with a pink seashell on it, and very large, blindingly white tennis shoes.

  “Hey, thanks for getting me a rowboat, too,” Iva snickered.

  “Very funny. Today’s Daily Life at the Beach card is ‘Shell Collecting,’” Heaven explained as they left the house. “This is my beachcombing outfit.”

  “I don’t want to be seen with you.” Iva walked behind the group.

  On the beach, Arden and Hunter spread their towels directly in front of the lifeguard station. Then they lay down. Their pink toenails glittered in the sun.

  “Miss,” said Mike, the lifeguard, “you-all have to move. If I get a call, I’ll need a clear path.”

  “Oh, of course,” Arden said. She and Hunter dragged their towels a micrometer over to the right.

  “Girls, did you put on sunscreen?” Aunt Sissy Two asked them.

  “Yes,” said Hunter. Iva knew she was fibbing. She’d heard them plotting to get tans. Iva wasn’t about to rat on them, since she hadn’t had a bath in two days.

  She marched past her mother and aunt’s blanket, past the hole Howard and Lily Pearl had started digging in the sand, and down to the water’s edge. Armed with a tea strainer from the beach house, she was eager to collect sharks’ teeth.

  London and Heaven were already stooped over a heap of shells. Iva joined them.

  “London’s found nine sharks’ teeth already,” Heaven said, as if London had stumbled on a pirates’ chest of sapphires.

  “Bet I find twenty-five,” Iva said. She needed to impress London so she could pry her away from Heaven.

  “Do you know what they look like?” London asked.

  “Of course.” Iva scraped the tea strainer in the sand and sifted. Something black glistened at the bottom of the mesh. “Found one already!”

  London peered into the strainer. “That’s part of a shell.”

  “Oh.” Iva dumped it out and scooped more sand. “Here’s one!”

  “That’s a shell, too,” London informed her. “Broken shells look like sharks’ teeth, because they’re worn smooth. The tooth has three points. And it’s a lighter color at the bottom.”

  Iva scooped and scooped. She found fingernail-size clamshells and mussel shells and chalky bits of oyster shells. But no sharks’ teeth.

  “Heaven,” she whispered, “help me look.”

  “I don’t have anything to put sand in,” Heaven replied loudly. “I suppose I could use one of my rowboats—”

  Iva was desperate. “I didn’t mean that crack about your shoes. C’mon. We’re family. We should stick together.”

  “We’re family when it suits you.” Heaven scooped wet sand with one hand and picked through the pile with her fingers. Then she snorted so hard she choked. A shiny black tooth nearly an inch long lay on her palm.

  Iva stared at it. She’d been digging in that very spot!

  London reached for the tooth. “A tiger shark’s tooth! And it’s a beauty! Lucky you.” She gave the tooth back to Heaven.

  “I am lucky,” Heaven said, pulling the squashed penny from the pocket of her cutoffs. “Ever since Mr. Jackson gave me this I’ve been lucky as anything.”

  “I’ve always wanted a ti
ger shark’s tooth,” London said wistfully.

  Heaven handed the tooth to London. “Then you keep it. You should have it.”

  “Really? Heaven, you’re the best!” London squealed.

  Iva felt a sour taste in the back of her throat. For the last two days, Heaven had been drawing good luck like a magnet. And now she had drawn London to her, too. It was hard to ignore the power of that lucky penny.

  She got up and headed toward the fishing pier. Let lucky old Heaven and her new friend London play in the sand. She had more important things to do. Like discovering.

  There wasn’t much to discover at the end of the pier. An old man was packing up his fishing tackle. Seagulls circled, hoping he’d throw them some leftover bait.

  Iva shielded her eyes and gazed out into the bay. Choppy whitecaps hypnotized her. Up and down. Up and down. Shadows darted among the gray-green ripples.

  She thought she saw a dark gray snakelike shape rise from the water. A second loop surfaced not too far away.

  “Hey, mister,” she said to the fisherman. “Are there porpoises here? I think I saw a couple.” But when she pointed, the dark gray shapes were gone.

  He looked in her direction. “Sometimes they play around the pier.”

  “What I saw looked like this.” She sketched the loops in the air. “Only longer.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Porpoises are short and stubby. Sometimes people mistake them for dolphins, but dolphins have a longer snout.”

  “I didn’t see any snout,” Iva said. “Whatever it was, it was real big.”

  The man chuckled. “Maybe you saw Chessie.”

  The sea serpent Critch Jackson had talked about! It was supposed to live in the Chesapeake Bay!

  Iva almost sprained her neck whipping her head toward the water. “Have you ever seen it?”

  “Naw. I wasn’t even around back when she was first spotted. People saw her a few years after that. Don’t know as I believe in that stuff, but it makes a good story.”

  Iva tingled all over. She had just seen a sea monster! She was sure of it! Let London and Heaven have their dumb old sharks’ teeth. She had made a valuable discovery. Probably even better than Mr. Smith, the explorer-spy, had ever made.

  “I’m gonna be famous,” she said, “because I just saw her!”

  “If you want to say you saw Chessie,” the man told her, “you need proof.”

  “What kind of proof?” Iva imagined herself trapping the huge sea monster in a net and hauling her to shore.

  “A photograph. There’s only one old picture of her, and it’s real fuzzy.”

  “My mother has a camera!” Iva wasted no time. She pounded back down the pier and tore across the beach.

  Luckily, her mother and Aunt Sissy Two were helping Howard and Lily Pearl dig their hole in the sand. Iva knew her mother wasn’t likely to hand over her camera, not even to let Iva take a picture of a rare sea monster.

  She slid the camera out of her mother’s straw bag without being seen and plowed sand as she ran back to the pier. The fisherman was still there.

  “Did she come up again?” Iva asked breathlessly.

  “Nope. And I been keeping an eye out.” He bent to fasten his tackle box.

  Iva gazed unblinkingly out at the up-and-down water, willing Chessie to show herself again. She stared into the brightness until her eyes hurt.

  After a minute or so, she spotted something gray bobbing in the water. Was that Chessie’s head breaking that ripply wave?

  “Look!” she cried. “It’s her again!”

  “Where?” The fisherman leaned over the rail.

  “There! See her?”

  “That looks more like—”

  Iva had to get this picture. She braced herself against the rail, squinting through the viewfinder. She jerked the button so hard the camera slipped from her hands.

  “—A herring gull,” the fisherman said. “They like to ride the waves.”

  Iva watched in horror as her mother’s camera fell down, down into the green bay below. It plunged beneath the surface. And was gone forever.

  Chapter Six

  The Love Teller

  Iva trailed behind her family as they went down the boardwalk. She was in no mood to browse for souvenirs or eat ice cream. She didn’t even make fun of Heaven, who tripped along in a sundress and flowered sandals—her “boardwalk outfit.”

  Iva kept replaying the afternoon in her head. She had seen a sea monster! Twice! Okay, the second time was really a fat seagull pretending to be Chessie, but Chessie could have just been underneath the water.

  No one would believe her, because she couldn’t prove it. Even if she’d spotted twenty sea monsters and taken a picture good enough for the cover of National Geographic, her mother’s camera lay at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

  Just before they left the beach house, Mrs. Honeycutt had searched her straw bag. “I thought I put my camera in here this morning,” she said. “But I don’t see it.”

  “It’s somewhere in this hog-pen of a house,” Aunt Sissy Two had said. “You’ll find it.”

  Only if Mama has scuba-diving equipment, Iva thought now.

  “There’s Mike!” Arden shrieked to Hunter, pointing at the lifeguard by the Crab Shack. “Act grown-up so he’ll notice us!”

  She laughed her new fake laugh, startling a flock of robins from a tree. Then she shoved Hunter off the boardwalk.

  Mike glanced over at them, then turned away instantly, as if from a car wreck.

  The little kids were on fire to spend their souvenir money. Iva followed everyone into the Beach Shop. Clutching his five-dollar bill, Howard made a beeline for a tank filled with hermit crabs.

  “Mama,” he said. “Can I have one? I’m not sneezing.” Howard was allergic to everything but oxygen. Heaven’s cat, Yard Sale, had to live with Miz Compton, the Sunday-school teacher.

  Aunt Sissy Two studied the spidery crabs poking out of their shells. “I guess.”

  A gum-chewing clerk put Howard’s crab in a plastic cage and told him how to care for his pet. “His name is Hermy,” Howard told her happily.

  “Me next. I’m after something bride-ish,” Lily Pearl said, sailing up and down the aisles. She braked suddenly by the jewelry counter and screamed.

  Iva, who had drawn Lily Pearl duty again, ran over, afraid she’d cut herself or something.

  Lily Pearl stood stock-still, her hands clasped near her mouth as she goggled at a silver chain with a single pearl. The sign read, PEARL NECKLACE. $19.50.

  “I can read one of those words!” she said. “It says, pearl. That’s a pearl, isn’t it? Like the one Mr. Jackson found? The bride necklace is the perfect snooveneer.”

  “Very pretty,” Iva said. “Except it costs nineteen dollars and fifty cents, plus tax. You only have five dollars.”

  Lily Pearl’s mouth squared and Iva knew what was coming.

  “No use bawling. You don’t have enough money. Period.”

  The dam burst anyway. “Dearly beloved! I want the bride necklace!”

  Iva pulled her sobbing sister out of the store. Her mother and Aunt Sissy Two and Howard were sitting on the bench outside with Howard’s new pet.

  Lily Pearl threw herself at her mother’s shoulder and cried as though her heart were breaking.

  “Iva, leave her with me,” her mother said, patting Lily Pearl’s back. “The others are in the arcade. Here’s a dollar.”

  The arcade was crowded with kids. Arden and Hunter were playing a car-driving machine. And Heaven was talking to—surprise, surprise—London Howdyshell.

  Ignoring them, Iva cruised the machines. Skee-Ball had the best prizes. Gigantic stuffed turquoise gorillas. Hats with propellers. And—Iva’s blood stopped circulating for a beat—a fancy camera. Almost exactly like her mother’s.

  If she won the camera, she could slip it into her mother’s straw tote under a towel or something. Her mother wouldn’t know the difference.
>
  London sidled up. “I’m good at this game. Want to see who gets the highest score?”

  Iva lit up like a pinball machine. London must still want to be friends! Plus, the challenge was just what Iva needed. If she played against somebody, she’d win the camera for sure.

  “You’re on.” She bought a dollar’s worth of tokens, enough for one game.

  “I want to play, too.” Heaven jingled tokens in her sundress pocket.

  They chose three Skee-Ball machines that were together in a row and dropped their tokens in. Iva pulled the lever on her machine. Nine wooden balls rolled from the chute.

  “You want to roll your balls over the bumper and into the rings with the highest number,” London said. “The counter adds your score.”

  Iva could see this wouldn’t be easy. The ramp inclined steeply upward. A net over the alley kept a person from simply throwing the ball into the rings.

  Heaven went first. Her first ball wobbled up the ramp but bounced off the bumper. “London, what am I doing wrong?”

  “Use your wrist,” London told her. “Make the ball hop over.”

  “No fair giving hints.” Iva went next. Her ball skipped over the ten-point ring and landed in the twenty-point ring. “Your turn.”

  London rolled her ball powerfully up into the thirty-point ring. Heaven scored a thirty-pointer, too. “Yay!” she cried, hopping up and down.

  Rattled, Iva couldn’t get her next four balls over the first bumper. The counter on London’s machine racked up more points. Even Heaven was doing better than Iva.

  Iva had one ball left. She needed to get it in the fifty-point ring, at the very top of the ramp. She took a final look at the camera on the prize shelf, then rolled the ball. It shot up, bouncing off the rims of the rings.

  “Go! Go!” Iva yelled, punching her fist in the air.

  The ball glanced off the rim of the fifty-pointer and banked off the side of the alley. It came to rest pathetically at the very bottom. No points.

  London had one ball left, too. She took aim at the fifty-pointer. Miss, miss, Iva thought, hoping to jinx London’s throw. London’s ball flew up, hit the net, and slipped neatly into the fifty-pointer. Game over.