by Annie Bryant
By the time they reached the Orleans Rotary, however, the only one who still seemed to be exerting energy was Patrice. As Katani rolled up, she saw that Dillon’s and Nick’s faces were bright red, and there was so much sweat on Charlotte’s face she looked like she had just stepped out of the shower. Katani could feel her own hair turning into a giant fuzzball.
“All right, then!” Patrice clapped her hands. “Shake it out, group, shake it out. Let’s take a quick breather and then push it to Orleans Beach.”
Katani pulled at her frizzy ponytail. “I don’t know, Patrice,” she objected. “The clue says something about the harbor’s rocky shore. I think we should check out Rock Harbor.”
“I kinda think Katani might be right,” seconded Nick. “Sorry…” he mumbled when he saw the disappointment on Patrice’s face.
“Yeah, me three,” Dillon echoed his friend.
Charlotte’s eyes danced between the Summers sisters. As a very observant only child, she knew better than to interfere when there might be a sibling disagreement.
Katani couldn’t even celebrate the boys siding with her against her sister because Patrice looked so stricken, like her whole team had let her down. Katani didn’t want Patrice to think she was trying to instigate a revolt. She just wanted her sister to SLOW DOWN.
Suddenly, Patrice smiled. “That’s cool.” Then she asked in a super mellow voice, “You guys ever been to Orleans Beach before?”
Nick and Dillon and Charlotte looked at one another sheepishly and shook their heads no.
“Oh, really? So then maybe you don’t know what it looks like…. Do you?” Patrice asked innocently.
“Uh, no, but if the clue says rocky shore…” a suddenly unsure Nick tried to defend the team’s choice.
“No, it’s totally cool,” Patrice replied, her smile growing wider, into—in Katani’s expert opinion—a smile that meant: I know something that you don’t.
“I just thought you guys were too smart to fall for the oldest trick in the book. Why would the clue just tell you exactly where to go? Haven’t you heard the expression ‘if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is’?”
Dillon smacked his head and turned to Nick and nodded. “Ohhh, dude. I forgot about that one!”
Charlotte and Nick looked at each other like they were a pair of kindergarteners who’d just spelled cat with a k.
“Patrice has that effect on people,” Katani mumbled under her breath. Charlotte chewed on her lip.
Patrice stood in front of her team with her arms folded. “Well, I happen to know for a fact that Orleans Beach has a very rocky section.”
Nick shrugged. “Cool. I mean…whatever. What do you think Char…Katani?”
Charlotte looked at Katani with a tentative expression that read What am I supposed to do now? Char said quietly, “Well, I guess we better follow the leader.”
Katani opened her mouth to object, but Patrice spoke too quickly. “Sweetness! Let’s go, team!” She hopped on her bike and began to zip away. Charlotte, Nick, and Dillon leaped on their bikes and zoomed after her with seemingly renewed energy.
Katani followed right after them but soon discovered that her gearshift was stuck in low gear, making it almost impossible to pedal with any speed. As the Salty Cods sped up, Katani cried out, “Patrice, STOP! My gears…”
Patrice looked over her shoulder and, seeing her sister struggling with her bike, circled back to her. “Kgirl, would you take a chill pill?” But then her volume dropped and she added, “You can do this, little sis. Just hang on. It looks like there’s a gas station ahead.”
“Okay.” Katani sniffed. She felt better that her sister at least recognized that she wasn’t trying to be a poor sport or anything.
But then Patrice ruined the moment by adding, “Just don’t be a crybaby.”
“You big…” Katani pedaled faster, unable to think of anything to quash her annoying big sister.
“Big what?” teased Patrice with a wicked twinkle in her eye.
“Big…” Katani could feel the anger bubbling up inside of her like hot magma, and she bit her tongue to stop the mean words from spewing out. “You know what? Never mind. You know what you’re being and I’m not going to say it because you would just tell Mom later and get me in trouble.” Katani concluded, “SO THERE!”
“Oh, that was mature,” scoffed Patrice.
“Just shut—” Katani began.
“Shut what?”
Katani put her head down and pedaled like there was no tomorrow.
“No, tell me. I’m sure Nick, Charlotte, and Dillon are curious. Right, guys?” Patrice turned to the rest of the Cods who had pulled up in front of the gas station.
Charlotte wished Mr. Moore were around to put a stop to the sister insanity. Though she was usually way jealous of her friends with siblings, today was not one of those times.
The funny thing was that Patrice didn’t seem to be bothered at all by her tiff with her sister. Charlotte wondered if she was just being an oversensitive only child. Nick and Dillon seemed okay, and now that Patrice was helping Katani walk her bike to the garage mechanic, Katani seemed fine too. Charlotte sighed. She would never understand the whole sibling thing.
Suddenly, she had a great idea and ran over to Patrice.
“Hey, Patrice, maybe we should talk to some locals and see which place is rockier,” Charlotte suggested.
Patrice looked at Charlotte like she’d just invented the cure for the hiccups. “Why, Charlotte Ramsey, no wonder they say you’re so smart,” she complimented her.
Charlotte beamed. “Thanks…”
As Patrice walked into the gas station convenience store to ask about where the rockiest shore was, Katani asked, “Charlotte, are you siding with Patrice over me?” Katani heard her voice crack and prayed that tears would not follow.
“No way, Katani, I would never do that! But I do think that you and Patrice are getting on each other’s nerves and it’s not all that fun for the rest of us,” Charlotte confessed.
“Yeah, me too!” Nick said. “You two need to calm down.”
“I need to calm down?” Katani balked. “But she’s the one—”
“I’m hungry,” Dillon interrupted, turning to Charlotte and Nick. “You guys want to eat lunch down at Rock Harbor? That looks like a sandwich shop right over there by the beach,” he said, pointing. “We can get some cold drinks.”
Charlotte felt a wave of relief wash over her. “That sounds like the most brilliant plan of the day!” Charlotte pronounced.
“Wordage,” Nick agreed.
“We’ll meet you at the shore!” Charlotte called out as the three of them took off on their bikes, leaving Katani and Patrice, who had just walked up, confused. The sisters watched as Charlotte, Nick, and Dillon laughed their way down to the harbor.
“The locals say both beaches are rocky. I doubt we’ll find anything down there, but whatever.” Patrice shrugged at Katani and hopped on her bike. Katani followed, testing her newly adjusted gears. They seemed to work just fine now, but somehow, it didn’t make her feel any better.
Finally Patrice muttered, “Are you gonna sulk all day?”
Katani ignored her sister.
“Oh, I get it. You’re doing the whole silent-treatment thaaang. That is so cute!”
Katani was not doing the silent treatment thing, she was doing the ignoring thing. As Patrice blathered on and on about absolutely nothing, Katani did her best to pretend she was totally alone. She knew Patrice was trying to be friendly, but Katani needed time to chill out before she could deal with her sister and her win-at-all-costs attitude.
As they rode down toward the beach, Katani noticed that Charlotte and Dillon were shouting on the boulders ahead—shouting and jumping up and down. She felt a rush of panic in her throat hoping that no one was hurt. In spite of her annoyance with her sister, she stole a glance at Patrice, whose eyes also were also filled with worry.
“Where’s Nick?” asked Patrice
. She hopped off her bike and ran, her long legs moving at the super speed she usually reserved for sprinting on the track field. Katani followed quickly behind her.
When they reached the top of the stony hill Charlotte jogged over and gave her hand a friendly squeeze. “We found it! Clue number two!” Charlotte beamed triumphantly and read the clue again for everybody. “‘From the Orleans circle round, toward a coastal town you’re bound. There is much for you in store at the harbor’s rocky shore.’”
“It is Rock Harbor,” Patrice said. “Which means…”
“I was right,” Katani couldn’t help smiling.
“Good job, Sis,” Patrice admitted. “Sometimes I let the power go to my head a bit,” she joked.
“Ya think?” Katani shook her head.
Charlotte leaned in and added to Katani in a whisper, “Family trait?”
Katani grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry I snapped at you before.”
Charlotte shook her head and gave her friend a forgiving smile. “Water under the bridge. The Salty Cods are on fire! I vote we charge ahead and try to get some bonus items while we’re on this beach.”
“Agreed!” cheered Nick and Dillon.
“On one condition,” Katani added. “Please, can everyone not ever say ‘pump it’ again?”
“No problem,” the rest of the group shouted cheerfully.
She placed her arm in the center of their circle. “Everybody in!” she ordered, and the rest of the Salty Cods followed. “1…2…3…WIN!” they yelled.
Katani’s face brightened. She loved winning way more than fighting with Patrice, and that word coming from her friends’ mouths sounded like the most glorious thing she’d heard all day.
“I’m starving!” Dillon suddenly announced. “Who’s ready for some grub?”
Actually, that was the most glorious thing Katani had heard all day.
What Bog Are We In?
Normally, Maeve wouldn’t have minded being lost in the woods. Pretending that she was a lost princess waiting for a fabulous prince driving an all-terrain vehicle to her would be sooo fun. In fact, “let’s pretend” was #1 on Maeve’s list of favorite things to do. There was that time just a month before when she and Sam got lost in the grocery store and pretended they were space aliens from Planet Pickle-sausage who could survive only on the human super power fuel foods of chicken sausage and dill pickles.
Of course, that little fantasy had only lasted for ten minutes, until their mother found them and demanded that they replace the six jars of pickles and four packages of sausages that they were toting around with them. The problem was that this time, in these woods, the person in charge was also lost!
And Betsy’s insistence that they were heading in the right direction when they were so obviously not was making Maeve too nervous to get her fantasy groove on. Instead, she chewed on her finger as she watched Fabiana trying to keep her cool.
Unfortunately, Fabiana kept scrunching her eyebrows together and checking her cell phone every two seconds—which was a dead giveaway that they were totally lost. Even Betsy finally stopped talking and looked at Fabiana, who said feebly, “Maybe we should turn around.”
What if we never find our way back to society again? Maeve wondered. Maybe they would have to learn how to make houses out of leaves and tree branches, eat berries and squirrel meat, and start their own society. Maeve shuddered to think of the awfulness of it all.
When the Boggers had been wandering around the woods for more than an hour, Maeve had to tell herself to stop thinking that any moment a space ship would land and they would all be taken off to another planet where people had big huge bug eyes and collected human beings to keep in hamster cages. Her one consolation was that at least Riley would be with her, and they could hold hands and sing their troubles away.
“Isabel,” she whispered. “Doesn’t it seem weird that in a place as tiny as Cape Cod we can’t find any signs of intelligent life around?”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Isabel as she clutched her friend’s hand. “I mean, what if we’ve like stumbled through one of those portals into another time period, you know, like those kids in A Wrinkle in Time?”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice boomed in the distance, “Arg, avast me buckos!”
Everyone froze—just like in the statue game. Riley looked like he was drumming. Betsy had her arms crossed like a stern first-grade teacher, and Fabiana looked very perplexed, with her head cocked to one side.
Maeve would have giggled if a horrified Isabel, her brown eyes wide with fear, hadn’t said in a trembly voice, “What was that?” Poor Izzy. Maeve knew her friend hated anything scary. She reached over, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it gently.
“It sounded like pirates—real ones,” said Danny in a high-pitched voice.
Betsy nodded. “In pirate lingo that sentence translates to: ‘Who goes there, mates?’ He sounds angry.”
Riley and Maeve looked at Betsy, who turned to look at Fabiana, who for some strange reason didn’t seem nervous at all. Is that a good sign, Maeve wondered, or has Fabiana already been taken over by the alien pirates?
Finally, Riley asked “Where are we?”
Betsy’s face turned white. “The path should be right ahead….”
“Betsy!” Maeve exclaimed. “There is no path. The bug-eyed aliens are going to come join forces with the pirates, and the prince will never make it out of the swamp…. Oh,” she wailed, grabbing her hair, “why, why didn’t we follow that map?”
“Are you okay, Maeve?” Riley looked worried.
For once, Betsy had nothing to say. She just hung her head, and shoved a couple of twigs around with her foot.
Fabiana ran ahead and turned around. “Please tell me someone else can see that.”
Isabel crept up to join her and gasped. “It’s a…a…village! And is that a—”
“Pirate ship?” Fabiana finished and exhaled deeply. “Yes! Thank goodness. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“Thank goodness?” Isabel squawked. “No, no, no, not thank goodness. A pirate ship is a bad, bad, very bad thing.”
Maeve agreed and began to feel a little dizzy. Before them, in the clearing, was a village full of pirates and women in shabby gowns, carrying buckets of water. There was even a cow walking down the street.
“They look like real people,” Danny said matter-of-factly.
“And that’s where they live,” Isabel whispered, pointing to the tiny little thatched houses and huge, colorful Native American tepees surrounding an enormous, very old-looking pirate ship. Men in raggedy britches were hoisting sails and shouting “Arrgh!” and “Shiver me timbers!” at each other, and the women, looking angry and feisty, were carrying trays of silver mugs overflowing with frothy liquid.
So this isn’t just my imagination, Maeve thought. They really had stumbled into another century, maybe even another dimension. Could we actually be in Neverland?
“Oh, no,” groaned Isabel. “That man over there just saw me. Should we run?”
Fabiana touched Maeve and Isabel on the shoulder and motioned for the Cranberry Boggers to stand still and be quiet. Just as Maeve was wondering if Fabiana would be able to protect them, she heard a voice yell, “CUT!”
CHAPTER
7
Real Pirates Don’t Wear Makeup
With mouths agape, the Cranberry Boggers watched as the villagers stopped what they were doing and began acting normal. The pirates stopped talking like pirates, and, from out of nowhere, regular-looking people appeared, handing them coffee and water bottles.
“Oh, wow!” Riley exclaimed. “It’s a real movie set.” He turned to Maeve and grinned. “We have just landed on Planet Pirate Movie!”
Duh! How could I, with all my professional actor experience, have missed something so obvious? Maeve thought, looking up at the bright lights and wires hanging from the trees and the gigantic cameras lurking behind the houses.
Me and my imagination
…, she scolded herself as she clasped her hands together in delight. After all, a movie set was way more fun than a lost princess trying to battle aliens while time traveling to some weird galaxy.
All of a sudden Maeve heard footsteps, but before she could turn around, a shadow fell over Isabel. Maeve had never before seen her friend jump so high!
“Who’s there?” Izzy yelped, and, feeling shaken, turned to see a scowling woman wearing moon-shaped sunglasses and a backward baseball cap.
“Where have you kids been? Call time was over an hour ago.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “Oh, well. I’m Bethany, the costume director. Come with me. Hair and makeup are waiting.”
“I think there’s been some mistake,” a calm and in-charge Betsy began to explain. “We aren’t with the movie. We’re just on a field trip and we got a little lost in these woods.” Maeve knew that honesty was the best policy, but would it have killed Betsy to keep quiet just this one time?
The woman in sunglasses frowned. “Bummer. Ozmond is going to flip! How am I ever going to find replacements for extras at the last minute?” she sighed and walked away, slapping her hands against her legs in frustration.
Maeve’s heart was thumping. “Wait!” she called out.
Bethany frowned and peered over the top of her glasses. “Look, I’m very busy here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“We could be your extras,” Maeve blurted.
Bethany turned around. “Hmm…you are the right age…. We needed more boys, but with the right costumes…We’ll just need to get you some release forms,” Bethany said, as her expression changed from My life is quite possibly over to Things are definitely looking up.
“Maeve, have you forgotten? We have clues to solve and we should be getting back to the bike path….” Betsy scolded. “Besides, who’s going to sign our release forms?”
