by Ali Standish
“We should start on our essays,” Coralee says finally, reaching down to pull her binder out of her backpack.
I groan. “Do we have to?”
We’re supposed to write a three-page essay on our favorite character in the time-travel book for Ms. Silva’s class. Neither Coralee or I have started yet.
I force myself to get up and rummage through my backpack until I find my copy of the book and my binder.
“Do you have an extra pencil?” I ask. “I have a mechanical one, but it’s out of lead.”
“Nope,” says Coralee, sitting up and plonking her binder across her lap. “Check Mack’s desk.”
“Are you sure?”
“She won’t mind.”
Coralee heaves a long sigh as I walk over to the desk. Outside, Mack laughs with one of her customers. Above us, something scrapes against the floorboards.
I open the top middle drawer. Nothing there but stamps and envelopes and address labels. The drawer on the left is full of files.
I open the drawer on the right just as we hear a loud thump from above us.
Coralee’s spine straightens. We both lift our chins to look up at the ceiling.
“Is someone upstairs?” I ask.
“Mack’s apartment is on the second floor,” Coralee says. “It’s probably just her. There’s a back way up.”
“No,” I say. “Mack’s in the store. Listen.”
Sure enough, we can hear her instructing a customer on how to get rid of mold.
“That’s really weird,” Coralee replies. “Mack lives alone.”
I glance down to shut the desk drawer.
“Maybe it’s just Zora and Zelda,” says Coralee.
But I don’t respond.
In the desk drawer, there are piles of pens and pencils.
And behind them, at the very back of the drawer, something has been tucked away.
“Um, Coralee?” I say, looking up.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think it’s Zora and Zelda up there.”
“Why?”
I can hear myself gulp as I reach into the drawer.
“Because of this,” I say, holding up the red velvet box.
The Face in the Window
“THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING,” Coralee says, standing up and squinting at the box. “It’s probably empty.”
But it’s not. I can feel by how much it weighs in my palm. I open its lid and show her the glittering jewels inside. Her shoulders slump.
“Maybe she’s just keeping it safe until she can find the owners,” says Coralee.
“Maybe,” I reply. “But who’s upstairs?”
“Let’s ask,” Coralee says, marching toward the door. I put the box back in the desk drawer and follow her through the store, to where Mack is scribbling something on a sheet of paper filled with numbers.
“Mack?” Coralee asks.
“Mmm?” Mack doesn’t look up from her list. The radio is on next to her, and the weatherman is talking about the hurricane that could be headed toward us.
“Is someone staying with you?”
Now she raises her head and gives Coralee a sharp look like I’ve never seen before. Like Coralee’s crossed a line. Just as quickly as I see it, it flickers away, and her features return to normal. Mack wipes her hands on her overalls and pours herself a glass of iced tea from a pitcher on the counter.
“Why would you ask that?” she says calmly.
“We heard something upstairs,” I say. “It sounded like someone was up there.”
Mack looks from Coralee to me and back again. “It’s just me here,” she says. “You know that, Coralee. Y’all probably just heard some mice. They get in the walls sometimes. I’ll have the exterminator come next week.”
“But—” Coralee starts.
“What about all the taffy wrappers? Who’s been—” I say.
Mack cuts us off. “It’s almost dinnertime. And I have plenty to be getting on with here. Maybe it’s time y’all head out for the day.”
A look of almighty surprise crosses Coralee’s face.
“Can we come back tomorrow?” she says, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“I got business in Savannah tomorrow,” Mack replies. “Best you find somewhere else to play.”
Coralee purses her lips and places her fists on her hips. “Fine,” she says. “Come on, Ethan. Let’s get our stuff and go.”
She stalks back between the shelves to the library, where she’s already throwing her binder into her backpack by the time I follow her in.
I open my mouth to speak, but she shakes her head. “Not here.”
I sling my backpack over my shoulder and stop halfway to the door.
Then I turn, stride back to Mack’s desk, and stuff the velvet box into my bag.
Coralee’s eyes widen, but now I’m the one shaking my head. “Let’s go,” I say.
Coralee suppresses an indignant sniffle as we pass Mack on our way out. I think I hear her call good-bye to us, but it’s hard to tell if it was really her or just the wind chimes over the door.
Once we’re out on the sidewalk, Coralee jerks her head toward the inlet bridge. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to the cove. We can talk there.”
As we walk past the shop, I glance up, shading my eyes from the sun and squinting toward the second-story windows. And that’s when I see it.
Even though I’m sweating all over, my blood freezes.
“Coralee,” I whisper.
“What?”
She doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see the woman’s face in the window above Mack’s store.
“What?” she repeats again. And then she cries, “Oh!”
My gaze locks with the eyes staring through the window for just a moment. Just long enough for me to be sure of what I see. Then a curtain falls, and she is gone.
X Marks the Spot
“I KNEW IT,” I say, pacing the narrow beach. “I knew there was something weird going on. That’s why she didn’t want us to ask any questions. Why she wouldn’t tell us what she had planned.”
Coralee sits slumped in one of our new beach chairs, holding the red box in her hands, prying it open and snapping it shut every so often without speaking.
“You saw the woman in the window, right?” I say.
Coralee nods.
“It has to be the same one who we saw at the Blackwood house,” I continue. “Why else would Mack lie about her being up there? Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to go to the police. Maybe it’s because Mack knows her. Maybe they’re both in on it.”
“I can’t believe it,” Coralee murmurs finally, shaking her head. “I can’t believe Mack would lie to me.”
I fall into the chair beside her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know you trusted her.”
She holds up the box. “What are we going to do with this now?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “I just didn’t want to leave it there. Now that we know we can’t trust Mack.”
Coralee furrows her brow and twists her lip back and forth, like she’s deep in thought. She keeps opening the box and snapping it shut.
“I don’t think either of us should take it home,” she says. “Sooner or later, Mack’s going to realize it’s gone missing and come looking for it. We need to put it somewhere safe, where no one would ever look for it. Just until we figure out what to do.”
“Where do you hide a box full of treasure?”
Coralee snaps the box closed, jolting to her feet. “That’s it, Ethan!” she says. “Treasure! We should bury it!”
“Like pirates?” I ask. “Like ‘X marks the spot’?”
“Exactly like that. We can bury it right here at Coralee Cove.”
I frown. “Isn’t that risky? Leaving it out in the open?”
“But it won’t be,” says Coralee. “No one but us ever comes here anyway. If we bury it deep enough, up past where the tide comes in, it’ll be really safe.”
“How will we
find it again?”
Coralee walks to the far corner of the beach, where the rocks meet the sand, and draws an X with her foot. “We’ll bury it here, then put a rock over it. One we can remember.”
She looks over her shoulder to where I’m still sitting in the beach chair. She must be able to read the uncertainty on my face, because she pops one hip out and crosses her arms. “You got a better idea?” she asks.
“No,” I admit.
“Then let’s get digging.”
After we dig for almost an hour, we’ve carved a hole in the mostly dry sand that must be at least three feet deep. We cast aside the sticks and sharp rocks we’ve been using to help us dig, and bend over the hole to examine our work.
“That should be deep enough,” I say. I glance into the trees again to make sure no one’s watching, like I’ve been doing every couple of minutes. Then I reach for the velvet box.
“Wait,” Coralee says, wiping a drop of sweat from her cheek. “One more thing.”
She pulls her pink lunch box from her backpack, empties it out, and carefully places the velvet box inside, then lowers them both into the hole.
“There,” she says. “Now it’ll stay dry.”
“Good thinking.”
It takes only a couple of minutes to fill the hole back up again. Once we’re done patting the sand down, Coralee looks for a rock to mark the spot with while I count the paces from the hiding spot to the beach, like I guess people who bury treasure are supposed to.
“Look!” she says. “This one’s shaped kind of like a horse.”
I stare at the rock, screwing up my face and squinting, but I don’t see it. “Nope,” I say. “Not a horse. What about that one with all the barnacles on it? That’s easier to recognize.”
Coralee agrees, and we haul the rock over, dropping it on top of our hiding spot.
We fall into the sand and sit for a minute, catching our breath.
When I look over at Coralee, I glimpse a spark of excitement in her eye, and suddenly her whole face lights up in its glow. “This is kind of fun, huh? Like a real adventure.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling a sudden squeeze of guilt.
It’s exactly the kind of real adventure that Kacey and I always wanted to have together.
The kind we’ll never have.
You can’t be with her. You can never be with her again.
Bullies
WHEN I GET TO the Pink Palm on Sunday for Herman’s party, Coralee hasn’t arrived yet, so I go to the Sand Pit to buy a handful of taffies for her. When I get back, she’s waiting for me at the gate to the pool, wearing a sun-faded pink swimsuit.
“I guess Herman didn’t need to worry about the turnout,” she says. I see what she means when she swings open the gate to the pool.
Colorful clumps of balloons hang from the backs of some of the pool chairs, all of which are taken, and the water is full of kids playing Marco Polo or paddling on foam noodles. A banner hangs above the pool that reads Happy Birthday, Herman! and a huge ice cream cake is slowly melting on a glass table.
It looks like almost the whole seventh grade has turned out for Herman’s party, except for Suzanne’s crew. It’s the hottest day of the year so far, and I bet the number of guests who have shown up has something to do with the temperature.
A woman who can only be a couple of inches taller than Coralee greets us at the gate. I can tell by her crinkly green eyes that she is Herman’s mother.
“Welcome!” she cries. “Welcome to the party!”
She hands us both party hats, the kind that are shaped like a cone and have straps that bite into the skin under your chin. I look around to confirm that no one else is wearing theirs before dropping mine to my side. “Grab some snacks,” she says, gesturing to the table behind her, where she has set out a cooler full of soda and bowls of chips and dip.
“Thanks, Mrs. uh—”
“Thanks, Mrs. Florence,” Coralee says, coming to my rescue. “This looks great.”
Herman’s mom rushes to greet someone behind us who has just come in, and Coralee and I wave to Herman. He gets up from his chair, which has been wrapped in streamers, trips, and stumbles toward us.
“You made it!” he says, beaming.
He’s wearing bright orange swim trunks and a soggy party hat on his head. “We have lots of snacks, and there’s cake later, and—”
Herman freezes. He’s staring over my shoulder. “I can’t believe it,” he murmurs. “They actually came.”
I turn to see Suzanne, Daniel, Maisie, and Jonno walk past us.
Coralee makes a noise like an angry cat as they stop in front of Herman’s chair.
“Guess we’ll have to share this one,” Suzanne says to Maisie, her eyes flickering over the streamers before she sets her bag down, tearing some of them in two. “The boys can just lie on their towels.”
Herman’s face falls.
“Don’t worry, Herman,” says Coralee. “We’ll take care of it.”
“No,” he pleads. “Please, don’t. I’m just glad they came. I don’t need to sit down.”
“They’re bullies, Herman,” I say. “You shouldn’t care so much what they think.”
“Yeah,” says Herman, looking down at his bare feet, which he keeps lifting up and down off the hot pavement to keep them from burning. “I know that.”
Suddenly, I have an idea.
“Actually,” I say, “it just so happens that Coralee and I got you a present that might come in handy right about now. Right, Coralee?”
Coralee blinks at me.
“We just have to go get it,” I say. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
“Right,” Coralee says blankly. “Back in a minute.”
“What exactly is this gift we got Herman?” she asks once we’re out of earshot.
“The beach chairs!” I say. “The ones Mack gave us. We’ll give one to Herman. Then those jerks won’t have ruined his party.”
Coralee smiles. “Excellent.”
The Tunnel
MY HEARTBEAT PICKS UP when I see Mack watering plants on the sidewalk in front of her store. As we approach, Coralee lifts her nose up in the air and crosses to the other side of the street.
“Hi, Coralee. Ethan,” Mack calls.
“Ma’am,” Coralee retorts. I put up one hand in a feeble wave.
Coralee doesn’t even look at Mack, but I do, and I see hurt written on her face. Her mouth hangs open, like she wants to say something else, but she lets us keep walking.
I guess that means she hasn’t realized the jewelry is missing yet. Which is good, because Coralee and I still haven’t figured out what to do with it next.
“Coralee,” I say as we turn down the path toward the cove. “We need to come up with a plan. What are we going to do when Mack realizes the jewelry is gone? What if she—”
But Coralee stops dead in her tracks as the cove comes into sight.
Everywhere I look, holes have been dug in the sand. There are food wrappers strewn about, too. Steaks chewed to the bone, foil knots emptied of baked potatoes. Like someone got hungry after so much digging and stopped for dinner.
I jump down onto the beach and head straight toward the barnacled rock. I see with relief that it’s still there, still in the exact same position we placed it.
“Someone’s been here,” I murmur. “Looking for the jewelry.”
Coralee hops down after me, wearing a dazed expression. “Someone must have been watching us.”
“But how?” I say. “I kept an eye out the whole time we were digging. There was no one there. And besides, if someone was watching us, why didn’t they see where we hid the box?”
“Ethan. Look.”
Coralee points to the storm drain, where the chicken wire she taped to the tunnel has been peeled back in one corner, leaving a quarter of the mouth exposed. A hole just wide enough for someone to crawl through.
Someone could have easily been in there yesterday, spying on us, without us seeing a thing. B
ut their view of our hiding spot would have been blocked because of the angle and Coralee’s duct tape job.
The hairs on my neck prickle when I realize someone could be in there right now.
My heart quivers in my throat, but I put my eyes up to the chicken wire and cup my hands around my face to shield out the sunlight. I still can’t make out anything in the darkness.
“Hello?” I yell. “Is someone there?”
At first, I hear nothing. Then there’s a scuffle and a scratching sound.
“Coralee, someone’s in there!” I cry.
I fall back from the wire as Coralee’s foot makes contact with it. “Go away!” she screams, kicking. “Whoever you are. Leave. Us. Alone!”
From my place in the sand, I hear the muffled echo of someone splashing away from us through the tunnel.
Big Trouble
CORALEE STANDS GUARD WHILE I dig as fast as I can. I heave a sigh of relief when I see the neon pink of the lunch box. I pull it out by its strap and fumble with the zipper.
The red velvet box is still there, and so is all the jewelry.
But there’s no way we can bury it again. Not now that someone knows it’s here.
I sling the lunch box over one shoulder and grab one of the beach chairs in my other hand as we leave, just barely remembering the reason we came down to the cove in the first place.
Herman’s eyes light up when we return and hand him his “present.”
I follow Coralee to the edge of the pool, where we find a space by ourselves to sit. I keep a firm grip on the lunch box, not caring how funny I must look clutching a bundle of neon pink.
“Coralee,” I murmur, looking around to make sure that no one is close enough to overhear us. “This isn’t fun anymore. This is serious.”
“I know,” she replies.
“There was someone watching us in there. Someone who might be dangerous. We could be in big trouble.”
Coralee still wears a blurry expression, and I wonder if her blood sugar is low. I offer her one of the taffies I got at the Sand Pit, which are probably melted by now, but she shakes her head. Then she lowers herself into the pool without a word and turns around to face me, resting her forearms on the wet concrete.
