Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match

by Candice Ransom

  The scores lit up. Heaven had earned seventy points. She picked out a stuffed cat that, she said, looked just like Yard Sale. London claimed one of the gigantic turquoise gorillas. It was so big she couldn’t even carry it.

  Iva, who had the lowest score, received the “house” prize, a cheap plastic Frisbee.

  “London’s the expert Skee-Ball player of all time!” Heaven said, rubbing her stuffed cat against her cheek.

  London blew on her knuckles and buffed them on her shirt.

  “So I lost,” Iva said. There was still one way to win London over. “I saw something today. Something real big. Bigger than that shark’s tooth Heaven found.”

  “What?” London asked in an offhand way.

  “Don’t get her started,” Heaven said. “Iva likes to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “I do not! Just for that I’m not going to tell you about the sea monster I saw!”

  Heaven and London began laughing so hard they had to hold each other up.

  “Honestly, Iva,” Heaven said when she could speak again. “How pathetic can you get? You’re just no match for London.”

  Iva stalked to the other side of the arcade. She shouldn’t have told them about Chessie yet. She should have waited until she had proof.

  Arden and Hunter were playing a tall red metal machine with lights around a large dial. THE LOVE TELLER, OR, HOW TO GET A DATE was written in gold at the top.

  “Give me a good answer!” Arden dropped a token into the coin slot. Lights chased around the dial and stopped on Spruce Up.

  Iva broke up. “Guess you’ll have to take more showers to get a date.”

  “My turn.” Hunter’s light stopped on Act Desperate. She pounded the machine.

  “I don’t want to act desperate around Mike.”

  Iva thought they were both desperate. “Poor old Rory,” she said. “Does he know you’re googly-eyed over the lifeguard?”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Arden asked Iva.

  Actually, she didn’t. She went outside and sat on the bench. Lily Pearl’s face was streaked with tears and chocolate ice cream.

  “Here,” Iva said. “I won this for you.” She gave her sister the Frisbee.

  Lily Pearl threw it across the boardwalk. “Don’t want it! I want the bride necklace!”

  “I think somebody had too much sun today,” Iva’s mother said, getting up. “Time we all went home. Iva, go tell the others we’re leaving.”

  Back at the beach house, everyone got ready for bed. Iva waited outside the bathroom door. Heaven brushed her teeth so vigorously it sounded like she was scrubbing the side of a battleship.

  When it was her turn, Iva pretended to brush her teeth and wash her face. She held one of her braids under her nose. It smelled wonderfully funky.

  On their sleeping porch, Heaven was dressed in her ladies’ nightgown. The stuffed cat she’d won was perched on Heaven’s side of the chest between their beds. She plumped her pillow and folded her extra blanket in exact thirds. Then she knelt by her bed for her prayers.

  “God bless Mama and Daddy and Howard and Hunter. God bless Aunt Sissy and Uncle Sonny and Arden and Lily Pearl. God bless Yard Sale and Miz Compton and Cazy Sparkle. Oh! And bless London Howdyshell, she’s new on my list.…”

  Iva climbed into bed, grumpy because Heaven had left Iva off her prayer list again. She shoved her feet down toward the bottom of the bed. For once she wished her sheets were nice and smooth, like Heaven’s. Her toes touched something gritty. She got out again and flung the covers to the floor. Sand!

  She brushed sand vigorously from her sheets. “How come you put sand in my bed?”

  “I don’t appreciate you accusing me, Iva.”

  “Who else would have done it?”

  “Maybe it’s from your own grubby feet!” Heaven moved her stuffed cat a half an inch to the right. Then she got into bed and turned the light out.

  Neither of them said good night.

  Iva twisted on her wrinkled sheets, trying to get comfortable. She had nearly dozed off when she heard an odd noise from behind the sleeping porch. A metallic flink, flink, flink.

  “What is that?” Sleep was impossible, so she got up and flicked more sand from her bed.

  Heaven raised herself on her elbow and looked toward the cottage behind them. All the lights blazed.

  “It’s coming from there,” she said. “I think somebody’s throwing silverware in a drawer.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. Who does their dishes in the middle of the night?”

  Flink, flink. Flink. Those old ladies next door were going to drive her crazy, one fork at a time. She got back into bed and pulled the pillow over her head.

  “By the SEA, by the SEA, by the beautiful SEA!”

  Iva sat up so fast her pillow sailed to the floor. “Don’t tell me—”

  “They’re singing,” Heaven groaned from the darkness.

  “You and ME, you and ME, oh, how HAPPY we’ll be!”

  Iva couldn’t stand it. If anybody could make the night peaceful, it was Heaven. With the power of that lucky penny, she could do anything.

  “Heaven, do me a favor. Pray for them to shut up.”

  “I’m not a machine you put a token in and get a prayer,” Heaven said, insulted.

  “WHEN each wave comes a-rolling IN—”

  “Please?” Iva begged. “It’ll be good practice for when you become a Sunday-school teacher.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll make your bed the whole rest of the time we’re here!”

  “You don’t know how to make a bed right.”

  “WE will duck or SWIM—”

  Iva played her last card, flattery. “Will you show me how to make a bed? You’re so good at it. And then I’ll make both our beds all week.”

  “All right.” Heaven sighed. She got out of bed and assumed her praying position. “Dear Lord, please make those ladies over there shut their yaps and go to sleep.”

  Amazingly, the lights in the cottage blinked out. Then there was silence. “It worked!” Iva cried. “Yippee!”

  “Of course it worked.” Heaven turned over to face the wall. “Don’t forget our deal, Iva. I’m gonna watch to make sure you do the beds right.”

  Iva pulled her sheet up to her chin. She had traded sleep for a nonvacation chore, making beds. Worse, she would be supervised by Heaven, Queen of Housekeeping.

  She had nearly drifted off again when she heard another sound, above Heaven’s puffing and snoring.

  It was the front door, slowly opening and closing.

  Someone was leaving the house. Iva sat up again. A car door chunked in the thick night air. Headlights flared across the porch, blinding Iva for a second.

  It was Mr. Smith sneaking out, off on his mysterious explorer-spy mission. Iva longed to follow him.

  But she was so tired her eyes kept clunking shut. If Captain John Smith himself had come back and asked her to go exploring with him, she’d have had to tell him no.

  “Iva!”

  Iva cringed at the unmistakable smell of chocolate breath.

  “Lily Pearl,” she mumbled into her pillow. “Go back to bed.”

  Her sister slipped in beside her. “Iva.”

  “Wha…?” Would this night ever end?

  “I’m sorry about the Frisbee. It was a nice present.”

  “S’okay. Don’ worry about it.”

  “You’re my favorite sister of all.” Lily Pearl slid quietly out of the bed and tiptoed out.

  Iva stretched her legs and her toes touched something gritty. Sand.

  Chapter Seven

  Sugar and Salt

  “You work on that side,” Howard ordered Iva, pointing with his plastic shovel. He was coated with sand, like a catfish rolled in cornmeal.

  “Aye, aye.” Iva tossed a pailful of sand over her shoulder.

  Each day Howard dug industriously from the second they hit the beach until it was time to go home. His hole was abou
t three feet deep and almost as wide. Mike, the lifeguard, gave them orange cones to put around the edge so people wouldn’t fall in.

  Lily Pearl skittered crablike around the top of the pit. She patted the sand Iva and Howard threw out into a neat mound.

  “I’m making a mountain,” she said.

  Iva scraped out another pailful. A shadow darkened the sky. It was either a solar eclipse or Heaven’s large self.

  “What?” Iva looked up at her cousin.

  “We’re going in the water,” Heaven asked. “Wanna come?” London was with her, a boogie board tucked under her arm.

  Lily Pearl handed a small white pebble to London. “Is this a pearl?”

  “That’s just a dumb old rock,” London replied curtly, tossing the pebble.

  Lily Pearl drooped with disappointment.

  London wasn’t very good with little kids, Iva thought. Maybe because she was an only child.

  “Lily Pearl, did you know pearls come from oysters?” Iva said, accidentally-on-purpose shoveling sand on London’s feet.

  “No. What’s an oyster?”

  “It’s an animal that lives in a seashell. A grain of sand gets in their shell and the oyster turns it into a pearl so it won’t be irritated.”

  “Too bad people can’t do the same,” Heaven said. “Iva, are you coming or not?”

  Iva crawled out of the hole. She was itchy and hot. “Okay.”

  “We’re gonna surf,” London said as they walked down to the water. “When I lived in California, we went surfing all the time. I’m teaching Heaven.”

  Heaven wore a bathing-suit top and baggy knee-length nylon shorts she had bought at Cazy Sparkle’s yard sale. The shorts were patterned with orange palm trees and lime-green coconuts.

  “Those are boys’ shorts,” Iva told her.

  “Nuh-uh. They are vintage surfing jams, I’ll have you to know. Isn’t it lucky I picked the Surfing card from my Daily Life at the Beach deck?”

  “You and those stupid cards,” Iva said. “Why don’t you just grab a suitcase and put on whatever’s in it? Live dangerously.”

  London stopped at the water’s edge. “I can take one of you out at a time. Who wants to go first?”

  “I know how to surf,” Iva lied. “I’m gonna swim. At least fifty miles.”

  “Fifty miles!” London stared at her. “You’d be all the way in the ocean!”

  “Okay, ten.” Iva couldn’t really swim well at all. She mainly dog-paddled.

  “Watch out for jellyfish,” London warned.

  “What’s a jellyfish?”

  London pointed to a clear, round, blobby thing lying in the wet sand. “That. If you touch one or it touches you, it’ll sting like crazy. My father says the tide brought them in today.”

  Iva had never seen anything so disgusting in her whole entire life. The jellyfish looked like a huge loogie somebody had hocked up.

  “Ew, gross,” said Heaven.

  “It stings?” Iva remembered the stingray that had attacked Captain John Smith.

  “You bet,” London said. “I got stung once. It hurt a lot.”

  Iva looked dubiously at the bay. “But you’re going in?”

  “Sure. Once we’re out a ways, there won’t be hardly any.” She splashed into the water, the boogie board balanced on her head. “Heaven, you coming?”

  Iva knew Heaven was terrified of anything that stung. If she saw a little sweat bee, she’d thrash her arms like a windmill, run inside the house, and bolt the door.

  Heaven kicked off her flip-flops. “Wait for me!”

  “Aren’t you scared?” Iva asked. For once, she was hoping Heaven would stick with her.

  “Not me! I’ve got my lucky penny!” Then she hurtled into the waves.

  Iva couldn’t believe it. Her great big sissy of a cousin, who wouldn’t make a move without drawing a Daily Life card, was swimming in jellyfish-infested waters!

  “C’mon, Iva!” Heaven called. “It’s okay. Really!”

  It was put up or shut up. But all Iva could think about was Captain John Smith being zapped by that giant stingray. He had thought he was going to die. And he was an explorer, who braved starvation and wild animals!

  Slowly Iva waded into the water. She whipped her head around. A big jellyfish bobbed at her right. Stringy things hung down from its slimy body. Stingers! Quickly she backed away. Then she spotted two baby jellyfish, each no bigger than a quarter. But they were still deadly. She swished around them.

  Heaven and London were out where the waves were bigger. They lay on their stomachs across the boogie board, paddling and giggling.

  Something brushed Iva’s calf. She pictured hundreds of jellyfish and stingrays lurking just below the murky surface. She thrashed back to shore, leaving a wake the size of a tidal wave’s. Unable to stop, she tore through the middle of a little kid’s sand castle.

  “Mama!” the boy bawled. “That girl wrecked my castle!”

  “Sorry,” Iva told him and kept running.

  Why did she ever think a trip to the beach would be exciting? So far, she’d lost her mother’s camera, been kept awake by fork-slinging old ladies, and was now being chased by poisonous sea creatures.

  Iva collapsed at the dock to catch her breath. A double-decker boat was chugging alongside. People sat on benches on the top. On the main deck, more people clustered at the rail.

  When the boat was tied up, tourists with windblown hair and sunburned faces filed off. Many wore cameras around their necks. Iva looked at the cameras longingly.

  The sign on the ticket booth said that the Chesapeake Zephyr cruised “Captain John Smith’s Bay” twice each day. Tickets cost ten dollars for a one-hour tour.

  If she could ride on the Chesapeake Zephyr, she’d see the island where Captain John Smith had wanted to be buried. She might even see Chessie again! She could borrow somebody’s camera and take Chessie’s picture quick, before anyone else spotted her.

  Then she’d sell the picture for a bunch of money and buy her mother a new camera.

  Best of all, she’d be a world-famous discoverer of sea serpents. London Howdyshell would beg to be Iva’s best friend. And maybe Iva would let her.

  Arden posed wearing one old brown sandal and one new purple sandal. The toenails of her brown-sandaled foot were painted pink. The toenails of her other foot were red.

  “Which looks the best?” she asked Iva. “Don’t rush. Think about it.”

  Iva was trying to figure out how she’d get the extra five dollars for the boat ticket. But she pretended to ponder this vital question. “Red toenails.”

  “Really? I think so, too.” Then Arden frowned. “What’s wrong with the other foot?”

  Iva’s mother came into the living room. “No one leaves this house tonight until the sand is back outside where it belongs. Who left these wet towels on the sofa?”

  “Iva!” Heaven replied at the same time that Iva said, “Heaven!”

  Mrs. Honeycutt flashed her hard eyes and everyone got busy.

  Hunter swept and Arden picked up beach toys, stray flip-flops, and bathing-suit bottoms. Heaven carried the wet towels outside to hang on the line in the backyard.

  “If you see those old ladies, tell them to be quiet tonight,” Iva said.

  She gathered Lily Pearl’s vast shell collection, shocked that there were any shells left on the beach. She wondered why the shells looked so pretty wet but were so drab and ordinary after they’d dried.

  The dull shells reminded her of Heaven, who still clung to her souvenir money.

  Maybe Iva could bargain with her. She was already making Heaven’s bed. What else could she do for her cousin?

  “Where are Howard and Lily Pearl?” Aunt Sissy Two asked. “I asked them an hour ago to brush their teeth.”

  “They’re out back, playing bride and groom,” said Hunter.

  Hermy the hermit crab made scuttling sounds in his cage on the windowsill.

  “The only one who listens around here is that c
rab,” Aunt Sissy Two declared.

  At last the house was straight, everyone was reasonably clean, and both of Arden’s feet matched. Iva and Heaven each had three dollars to spend on snacks. They walked together to the boardwalk.

  “I think I’ll buy my souvenir tonight,” Heaven said, going into Surfside Gifts. She picked up a box covered with whirly seashells.

  Iva’s heart skipped a beat. Now tightwad Heaven wanted to spend her money!

  “You don’t want that,” she advised. “The glue looks cheap. I bet the shells drop off before you get it home.”

  Heaven set the box down and picked up a picture frame. Iva found something wrong with it, too. Getting her cousin’s five bucks wasn’t going to be easy.

  “What about this?” Heaven held up a T-shirt with the words I HAD A BLAST AT STINGRAY POINT printed across the front.

  “The words go under your armpits,” Iva said. “You’ll have to keep raising your arms so people can read it.” She flapped her own arms like a chicken.

  Heaven refolded the shirt. “I know what you’re doing, Iva.”

  “What?”

  “You’re gonna tell me something ugly is perfect so I’ll buy it. Then you’ll go buy something really nice after I’ve wasted my money.”

  “I just don’t want you to get ripped off is all,” Iva said. Unless it’s by me, she thought.

  They went back outside. Arden and Hunter were talking to Mike.

  “The Sno-Cone stand is right there,” he told Arden, who was standing almost inside it.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I still don’t see it. Maybe you could show us.”

  As he walked away, shaking his head, Arden exclaimed, “Spruce Up, phooey! He didn’t even look at my feet. That stupid Love Teller lied!”

  “I still have my fortune to try,” Hunter said. “One of us still has a chance.”

  Iva was about to ask Heaven to lend her five dollars when London Howdyshell came over with her mother.

  “You know the best way to eat boardwalk food?” asked London.

  “Hey to you, too,” Iva said. She didn’t want London to see her trying to chisel money from Heaven. Maybe she could send London away for a few minutes.

  “Sugar and salt,” London replied. “First, you eat a bunch of sweet stuff. And then you eat salty stuff to get the sugar taste out of your mouth. Then you go back to sugar.”