Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter

by Beth McMullen

  “We are? We are!” Jin pumps his fist in the air. “Um… how exactly?”

  We dash to the water’s edge. Tied to the pier are a number of small fishing boats. I point to a particularly decrepit one that doesn’t look exactly seaworthy. “In that.”

  “Are we stealing it?” Hannah asks, eyes wide.

  “Borrowing,” I explain. Once we liberate the stone, I have every intention of using the same boat to get back to land.

  We lower ourselves into the old boat. It doesn’t seem likely to survive a large wave, but it has oars, and being as no one leaves their engine keys just lying around and I don’t know how to drive a boat even if I did have keys, it’s our only option for getting out to the Nebula. Jin and Hannah insist on rowing duty. This does not go well. Positioning themselves on either side of the boat, they row the small fishing craft like an awkward canoe, sending us in loopy circles.

  “I’m going to throw up,” I say.

  “Jin! Just row straight!”

  “I am rowing straight! You row straight!”

  “You’re rowing to the right!”

  “No, you are!”

  After a minute of this, we are a mere three feet from where we started and I fire them both. “Sit down,” I command, snatching Jin’s oar. They take up positions on the torn vinyl seat cushions, backs to each other, arms crossed defensively. Great. Let’s hope they don’t mutiny. But to mutiny, you need agreement, and these two can’t agree on the color of the sky. Which is now decidedly gray. The fog thickens.

  I try not to fall in the water as I crawl to the bow of the boat, clutching my slippery oar. On my knees, I paddle the fishing boat forward, three strokes on this side, three strokes on the other, no small thing when wearing a cast. The soupy air makes it hard to tell if we’re making progress. It’s just as likely that we are going in a circle as we are going forward. How annoyed will I be if we end up missing the Nebula entirely and drifting all the way to Hawaii?

  “Buoy to port!” Jin yells, startling me so much I almost pitch forward into the bay.

  “Which way is port?” I howl back.

  “Left!” Before I can react, our little boat crashes right into a giant red shipping-lane buoy. We spin hopelessly around. Hannah grabs the second oar and fends off. The Nebula drifts in and out of view as the wind whips the fog. In the past eight months I’ve done some stupid things. However, none had such a high potential for drowning. Emily would not approve of my choices.

  “Lola! Starboard!” If port is left, starboard must be right. And there is definitely something there. To be exact, the prow of an enormous cargo ship bearing down fast, like a great mythical beast emerging from a cloud, intent on devouring us.

  “Paddle!” I scream. Hannah jumps onto a seat and plunges her oar into the water. Jin leans over the edge of the boat and frantically uses his hands. The ship looms closer, quietly closing the distance. “Faster!” Sweat streams down my face. We tried, Dad! We really did. But then we got run over by a cargo ship.

  “Paddle port! I mean, starboard!” Our only chance is a surge of speed. The ship is upon us. We’re doomed. It’s over. But as the giant hull displaces the surrounding water, we get flushed away in its wake, riding a giant curling wave just like a surfer. A really bad surfer. We surge forward and rock violently side to side. I tumble back on my butt, barely able to hold on. Hannah disappears behind a row of seats. The massive ship moves by.

  A moment later, Hannah’s head pops up. “Are we alive? Did we make it?”

  I get on my hands and knees and look around. We are not actively sinking, so that’s good, but something is missing. Oh no. Jin! “Where’s Jin?” Panic blooms in my chest. The water roils around us. “Jin? Jin!”

  Hannah scrambles to her feet. Frantic, we scan the water around us, calling his name, but visibility is poor. What have I done? My vision narrows and I steady myself on the edge of the boat. Hannah shouts Jin’s name, but her voice sounds far away.

  “Jin!” I yell. “Say something!”

  “We are so dead if he’s dead,” Hannah mutters, slapping the water with her oar.

  “Not helpful,” I bark.

  “You are trouble, Lola Benko. I knew the minute I saw you.”

  I turn on her. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “That is a very good question,” she says. “I’m a smart person. I should know better. Our futures are over. We’re accessories to murder.”

  I really want to throw her overboard, but a tiny voice draws my attention. “Help. Over here!”

  Jin! Off the port bow. Or the starboard. Whatever. Without really thinking, I pull off my shoes, ditch the ugly cardigan, and hurl myself into the water.

  “Your cast!” Hannah yells.

  Oh, shoot. The heavy pink plaster fills immediately with freezing water, like an anchor around my wrist. The shock of cold pushes the air from my lungs. I gasp and dog-paddle to stay afloat. My limbs slowly go numb.

  “Help!”

  I swim toward the voice. “Keep talking! I can’t see you.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t care!” I gurgle, my mouth filling with salty water.

  “Is port left or right?” Huh? He’s quizzing me during my sea rescue? “Well, what is it?”

  Swimming isn’t easy with the cast, but I move forward the best I can, fighting the slush quickly forming in my brain. “Right,” I say.

  “Wrong,” Jin says. “You’re hopeless.” Are we really having this conversation? Finally, Jin’s pale face appears before me. He bobs in the water, clutching a tattered orange life vest, teeth chattering. “Lola, your cast.”

  “I thought you were drowning.”

  “Safety first.” He gestures to the life vest. “But I might freeze to death. No wonder Merlin is going to Florida. No one freezes to death in that ocean. Lola, where’s the boat?”

  “Hannah!” We howl in unison, not even pretending to hide our desperation. By the time the creaky old boat emerges, I can’t feel any of my body parts. Hannah hauls us up over the side and we flop into the boat like giant frozen human fish. In the cargo hold, there are several oil-stained stinky towels. We huddle under them while admiring each other’s blue lips and shaking.

  But suddenly Jin tosses the towels aside and jumps to his feet, pointing. “The Nebula!”

  And there it is, our ship, looming large off the… ahem… starboard bow.

  CHAPTER 27 DID YOU HEAR THAT?

  CONTAINER SHIPS NEED ONLY A handful of crew members to operate, which is good because not only are we trespassing, but we are probably breaking a dozen international maritime laws too. The fewer people around to catch us, the better. Our footsteps echo on the steel deck. Bits of plaster cast peel off in my wake. How am I going to explain another ruined cast to Irma and Emily? I already used the exploding-volcano excuse. The shipping containers, stacked five high, tower above us like steel mountains. I jump at every shadow.

  “I’ve calculated the odds,” Hannah says flatly, glancing around. “And our chances of finding one tiny stone in all of this are exactly zero.” A container ship can be thirteen hundred feet long. That’s like the Empire State Building if it were floating on its side. There are probably close to eighteen thousand shipping containers on board, each packed full of stuff. The Nebula makes Merlin’s warehouse look like a shoebox.

  “Normally, I’d say Hannah is a pessimist and wrong,” Jin adds. “But looking around…” He holds his hands up in defeat. “Maybe if the stone were programmed with GPS coordinates or something. Or broadcast a radio signal. Or it could just, you know, yell for us.”

  “In the journal, Professor Benko says the stone calls out to its intended master,” Hannah says. “It finds you. Kind of like when your phone is searching for a Wi-Fi network and then, out of nowhere, service!”

  “Maybe you clear your mind like meditation and, BAM, there it is?” Jin suggests.

  My team has obviously lost their minds. “There are no talking rocks,” I say. The only way we
find it is by actually looking for it. And while we are standing around here debating meditation and mysterious psychic connections, the clock is ticking.

  “Let’s just try it,” Jin implores, glancing desperately at the container mountains. “We have nothing to lose.”

  Except valuable minutes. But fine, if it helps Jin focus on actual searching, I’m willing to give it a go. We stand in a tight circle and close our eyes.

  “Do we hold hands?” Jin asks.

  “This is not a séance,” Hannah snaps. “And yuck.”

  “Whatever.”

  “If you two don’t stop it,” I growl, “I’m pushing you both overboard. Now be quiet, hurry up, and meditate so we can get it over with.”

  I close my eyes. Meditation is about calming your mind, staying fully in the present, whatever that means. But shutting off my brain is no easy thing. It’s a mess in there. Images of my favorite places in the world, of Irma and Zeus, of school. There’s music, too, and the sound of ocean waves. And oh look, there’s my dad, wondering how my mission to find the stone and rescue him has gone so far off base. I don’t have an answer, so I shove him aside. Jin pops into my head next and thinking about how I almost lost him in the water makes my knees go a little weak. Okay. Push that aside. Way too uncomfortable. Now Hannah. What about Hannah? But my attempt at concentrating is blown when something brushes my ear, like lips whispering a secret, like a butterfly tangled in my hair.

  Captain Silva.

  Wait. Who said that? I swat at the air. A bug? Some sort of ocean creature picked up while rescuing Jin? But there’s nothing there. I open my eyes. The fog is thick. Jin and Hannah are shimmery silver outlines. My eyes fly open, but weren’t they already open? What did I hear? Oh, never mind. Jin and Hannah crystallize before me.

  “Anything?” Jin asks. “You know, like, a stone calling out for rescue, that kind of thing?”

  “Nothing,” says Hannah, clearly disappointed the stone didn’t jump at the opportunity to connect with her. “This is hopeless.”

  I glance around at the mountains of cargo containers. There’s a thought in my head, something important, but I can’t grab it. It’s lost in the fog like Jin was. What is it?

  “How do we even look?” Jin asks glumly. “The cargo containers are all locked.” He’s right, of course. Sealed up and secure and intended to stay that way until they reach their final destination.

  Come on, brain! What is it? Oh! There it is! “Captain Silva!” I yell. Jin and Hannah startle. “Sorry. Marvelous Merlin said Captain Silva liked the stone. Which means he probably took it for himself. Which means it’s probably in his cabin or office. Right?”

  Hannah raises an eyebrow. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s as good a place to start as any,” Jin adds.

  The Nebula’s living quarters are easy enough to find, a narrow, six-story structure sprouting from the deck amid a garden of cargo, but twice voices send us scurrying behind steel containers to hide. Any second now the crew is sure to catch us. And out on the water, that probably means we walk the plank.

  Once we’re inside the living quarters, the corridors all look the same, white-walled and narrow. Finally, we push open a steel door to what we hope are the captain’s rooms. There’s a large sitting room, with a couch and a few chairs. A tidy bedroom is visible just beyond. To the right is a table stacked with magazines, and on the magazines is a gray rock the size of a tennis ball. It’s not very pretty. It’s kind of boring. Can this possibly be it? I remember it being less gray and less boring.

  Except it’s not really gray and boring, is it? When I turn my head just a little, the rock shimmers with a kaleidoscope of colors. When I turn back, it goes flat. I try again. Same effect. I take a few steps toward it.

  “Do you guys see that?” I whisper.

  “It’s like a glitter bomb.” Hannah’s face lights up. “It’s so beautiful. It sparkles.” Everything else in the room fades away.

  Jin leans into me, as if to steady himself. “It makes my eyeballs hurt,” he says, flinching. I shiver, the air heavy. It’s as if a ghost is breathing in my ear. My shoulders hunch up as I try to shake off the sensation.

  Jin covers his eyes with his palms. “I can’t look anymore. It’s freaking me out.”

  I have said all along that the Stone of Istenanya is a rock and that’s it. But what if it’s not? What if those things the elders told my dad are true? What if Jin and Hannah are right and there is magic in this world? My skin chills at the thought. Either way, I have no doubt in my mind that this is the stone we’re seeking.

  CHAPTER 28 ESCAPING THE NEBULA

  FOOTSTEPS IN THE HALLWAY RIP our attention from the stone. We need to get out of here. I lunge for the stone and stuff it deep in the pocket of my still-damp plaid skirt, where it is not likely to fall out. Hannah’s eyes swirl around in her head. Great. I give her a shove. “Wake up!”

  “Huh?”

  “People coming,” I hiss.

  “What happened?” she asks, as if she were not in the room for the last three minutes.

  Jin shakes his head, clearing the cobwebs. “I feel like I went somewhere.” His forehead wrinkles. “But I didn’t, right? I was here the whole time?” I’d love to debate the specifics of what just happened, but we are about to get busted. I shove a dazed Jin and Hannah into the bedroom closet and pull the door snugly closed. Jin’s elbow is up my nose and I have a knee in Hannah’s spine. Plus, it smells like feet in here.

  “Don’t even breathe,” I warn. Through the slats in the closet door I can see a crew member, a young man with a goatee and a walkie-talkie. He keys the walkie-talkie. “Stowaway check complete. Clear to set sail.”

  Set sail? Uh-oh. A horn blasts. The floor beneath our feet begins to vibrate. Somewhere below, huge engines rumble to life, growling with effort. The ship is moving.

  Hannah’s fingernails dig into my thigh, expressing exactly how she feels about this situation. I get it. I don’t want to be a stowaway to South America either. When the man with the goatee leaves, we tumble out of the closet in a heap.

  “We need to get off this boat,” I say.

  “You think?” shoots Hannah. We backtrack down the narrow corridor as quickly and quietly as we can. Finally, we spill onto the deck, winding back through the mountains of shipping containers to the railing. Below, the water moves rapidly by. The horn sounds again, much louder out here. Seriously. Sailing to another hemisphere right now is just not an option.

  “The ladder!” Hannah shouts, pointing. If we go down the cargo net ladder we used to climb up here in the first place, theoretically we should end up back at our little boat. The ladder has been pulled up and stowed for the journey and it takes all six of our hands, minus one, to heave it over the side. Scrambling over the edge, we descend, the three of us spread out like flies caught in a spiderweb, clinging for our lives. The ship cuts fast through the water now, gaining momentum. I can’t see our little boat. Of course, I didn’t use a fancy clove hitch or figure eight knot when I hitched it to the Nebula. No, I tied it like a shoelace. It would never hold at this speed.

  “Slow down, Nebula!” I yell into the wind. In my mind’s eye I see how this precarious situation plays out. Jin, Hannah, and I are discovered as castaways halfway to Brazil. We create some massive international incident. Emily freaks out. We miss the meeting with Lipstick. I lose my father again. The fingers sticking out of my soggy cast drift to my pocket and wrap around the stone. It feels warm, like it might be glowing. Again, I feel the strange sensation of something faint and soft at my ear, like a bug tangled in my hair.

  But suddenly the boat lurches, the engines belching and grinding. The force of the stop pulls me loose from the dangling cargo net ladder. In a panic, I grab for the net and somehow end up dangling by one foot, upside down. My horrible skirt bunches up around my waist, exposing the shorts I always wear underneath it.

  Well, now what?

  This is another two-handed job, but if I use the cas
ted hand to help right myself, I’ll drop the stone. The blood rushes to my head. Jin is down at water level already, Hannah just above him. I kick my foot, trying to free it from the tangle. I don’t relish a plunge into the ocean from this height, but probably I’ll make it?

  “Lola!” Jin stares up at me from below.

  “I’m okay!” I’m not, clearly, but this is very embarrassing.

  “Yeah! Sure you are!” Hannah shouts as she begins to climb back up the cargo net ladder. I will never live this down. The ship’s engines rev back to life. Hannah picks up her pace. When she reaches me, she wears a sly grin. “Nice shorts.”

  “I could get myself out,” I protest. “But I don’t want to drop the stone.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And I only have one good hand!”

  “Yup.” Working quickly, she untangles my foot and holds me tightly as I right myself. The ship picks up speed.

  “We need to jump, like, now!” Jin hollers from below. He’s right. But we’re kind of high. No, we’re really high. My mouth goes dry as a bone.

  “Now or never,” Hannah says. She grabs ahold of my cast and pulls me off the cargo net. She did not! Yes, she did. We sail through the air for what feels like much too long, Hannah whooping with delight the entire time. We hit the water with a splash five feet from Jin. Oh, it’s so cold. Breaking the surface, we both gasp for air.

  “Move!” Hannah commands. We swim rapidly away from the ship’s hull, clearing a current that wants to suck us under, Hannah dragging me in her wake. The Nebula speeds forward, disappearing into the fog.

  Of course, we are not exactly safe. We’re in the middle of the bay, in the freezing water, in the fog, with no boat. My pink cast disintegrates before my eyes. But at least I have the stone, heavy in my pocket. I struggle to keep my head above water. I wonder if there are sharks around? Oh, now why would I go and think that? Now I see dorsal fins everywhere, all headed straight for me. A late lunch of girl in uniform. Delicious.