Summer of Lost and Found

by Rebecca Behrens

  Unless he knew all that before he found the wreck.

  As I was about to ask, another huge wave hit the boat, stronger than any of the rest. Before I knew what was happening, the skiff flipped over. Ice-cold water filled my mouth, swirling over my head. The strap of my bag floated up and tugged on my neck. My hands moved through the water, one grasping an oar as it floated past my outstretched palm. With the other, I found the skiff’s bench and hooked my elbow around it. I pulled myself into the pocket of air between the water and top of the boat, spitting out a mouthful and coughing. Thank goodness that at summer camp, they’d taught us how to flip a canoe.

  “Nell! Hang on!” Ambrose swam up to me.

  I clutched the bench and blinked the salt water out of my eyes. I could hardly breathe, much less speak. My bag settled back at my hip, but underwater.

  “Pray pardon, do not move—I shall right us.”

  I was too weak to say anything, too weak to help. I don’t know how he had the strength to overturn the boat, but as I clung to the seat, it flipped right side up again. I lay on the bottom, still hugging the oar Ambrose had rescued from the deep. Seconds later, Ambrose flung himself over the side and next to me. It must’ve been a huge effort because he looked as pale and weak as I felt. I was so cold, so tired. Rain pelted me. I wanted to let it fall onto my tongue, I was desperately thirsty. But exhaustion wouldn’t let me open my mouth. Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink. Everything else from the skiff, my water bottle and goggles and the other oar, was gone. On the way to rest with the pinnace on the bottom of the sea. What was in my bag was surely ruined. How are we ever going to get home? I knew then what the answer was: We weren’t.

  We were lost now too.

  My eyelids fluttered shut, even though I fought to stay awake. I felt myself slipping, slipping. The last thing I heard was Ambrose crying next to me. “I am so sorry, Nell. This is all my fault. Please forgive me. I never meant for this to happen. But—but be not afeard. You’ll still be with me.”

  Barely do I possess the strength to write. More than a fortnight hath passed. With e’ry day, we grow weaker. We have little food remaining, only sparse grapes on the vines. The rest of our company hath given up all hope. They dismantled all the remaining homes and followed Manteo to his village on Croatoan. C-R-O, they carved into a tree, so the rest of our company would know whither they had gone.

  Mother and I did intend to go.

  But Mother, she is too weak and ill to journey. Whether lack of sustenance or an illness most wicked, I know not. A fever hath plagued her for days.

  We shall wait hither. On Roanoke. By my troth, I know my father shall return.

  E’ry morn, I walk yonder, to the edge of the sound. I wait for white sails on the horizon. Certes, my father shall find us.

  This is my tale.

  The story of how I journeyed across the sea, for a life in a new world.

  Alas, to be lost!

  Yet I still hope that by mercy we may be found.

  Ambrose Viccars the Younger

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I heard the barking first, so faintly that I thought I must be imagining it. The wind and rain had calmed a little, and the waves were still strong but not as scary. I struggled to sit up enough to see over the side of the skiff. Maybe we had drifted near the shore? But only open water surrounded us, at least as far as I could make out. Dusk had arrived, in addition to the darkness from the fading storm, and it was difficult to tell where the sea met the sky. We must be out in the ocean now.

  “Ambrose.” My voice came out all crackly and sent me into a coughing fit. My lungs ached. I tried again. “Ambrose, do you hear that?”

  He was sitting next to me. Had he been holding my hand? Or did I dream that? My hands were so cold—all of me was. “Hear what?” He leaned into the wind. He looked almost fuzzy to me.

  “Barking,” I coughed. My face, covered in a layer of salt, felt stiff and brittle like limestone.

  Ambrose stood up, not wobbly at all, and closed his eyes to better listen. That was when it appeared, off the starboard side.

  I saw the light. Or rather, the lights.

  The lights of a boat.

  The barking got louder, too. My stomach was threatening to revolt and my head spun, but I’d never felt so happy in my entire life. Someone was coming to save us. Found. We were found.

  A spotlight shined on Ambrose and me in the boat. I stuck up my hand to shade my face, then waved.

  The spotlight stayed trained on us. “Ahoy, Nell! We found you!” The voice was of someone who knew it all. Lila. Never in my life did I think that I would be so excited to hear her. Joyful tears rolled down my frozen, salty cheeks. Next to me, Ambrose softly said, “See, Nell? Remember, what you think is lost may still be found.”

  Lila’s mom boomed, “Sit tight, sweetheart! We’ll be there in seconds!” The barking sounded close.

  “Ambrose, we’re saved!” I turned to hug him, but he was no longer there. I whipped around to see if he’d moved to steer us, or get a closer look at Lila’s boat bumping across the chop. But the skiff was empty, except for my soggy bag, the pinnace oar, and me.

  “Ambrose!” I shrieked. Had he fallen overboard? Did he jump in to swim back to the wreck? “Ambrose!” In the dusky light, I thought I saw him in the water, heading away from me.

  The bow of the skiff bumped against the fishing boat, and the figures of Lila, her mom, and Sir Walter appeared in front of me like a mirage. I was so relieved to see that doggy grin. Then, amazingly, my mom popped up next to them. “Oh, my little sprout!” Her voice was raspy, like she’d been crying hard.

  “Mom!” I shouted back. My mom, too scared to even get on a water taxi back home or wade in the calm water at the beach, had gone out to sea to rescue me—and in a storm! My heart swelled with pride for her.

  “Nell, we’ll help you off your boat,” Kate called. Lila braced herself and held out her hand for me to grasp. Only her determined face peeked out of the bright orange rain gear she was wearing.

  “Come on, Nell, I got you!”

  I didn’t budge. “Ambrose! Where are you?” I screamed past the empty skiff. If only I still had the life jacket to throw to him. . . .

  Lila, her mother, and my mom exchanged worried looks. “Nell, take Lila’s hand. We need you to get into the boat. It’s going to be okay!” my mom pleaded. “We’re taking you home.”

  Kate’s strong arms held the skiff steady. I grabbed the oar and hobbled across so I was right next to them. “I know, but Ambrose must’ve gone back in! We can’t leave without finding him.” I sobbed.

  “You’ve been through a lot, Nell,” Lila’s mom soothed. “Just get on board with us, and we’ll figure it out.” Sir Walter barked as if to say, Listen to her!

  I felt a rush of wooziness and knew they were right. We couldn’t start looking for Ambrose while they were trying to coax me off the skiff. I let Lila guide me onto their boat. My legs were shaking so badly that I collapsed the second I set foot on deck. Sir Walter ran up to me and happily licked my stiff arms and legs. My mom lunged on top of me to give me a hug, one so tight that I thought she’d crack one of my ribs—but I hugged her back just as hard. Honestly, I never wanted her to let go. I clung to her shoulders and cried with relief. Lila hovered over us, watching. For once, she didn’t seem to know quite what to do.

  Her mom called, “Lila, grab a few blankets. Nell’s freezing.” Lila dashed off and came back with several huge, thick blankets. My mom bundled me up in them. They felt so good on my skin. Lila patted my shoulder awkwardly after my mom stopped hugging me for a second.

  “Ambrose,” I said weakly. “He’s out there.”

  Lila and my mom exchanged those worried looks again. Kate finished tying my skiff to her big boat, I guess to drag it in with us.

  “Nell,” Mom said quietly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe he went back to the shipwreck. He knows how to dive. But it’s so dark, I don’t know how he
could see.” I was so cold and tired that I felt delirious, like when I’d get the flu as a kid. The colors of everything around me were all bleeding into one another like a watercolor painting, and sounds were getting fuzzy as though I was hearing everything through the front-door buzzer intercom.

  “Shipwreck?” Lila perked up at that. “You found a shipwreck?” She handed me a thermos. “Drink slowly or you’ll be sick.”

  I took a sip; it was hot cocoa. It tasted like the most delicious thing in the world.

  “Ambrose and I did, off the little island we washed up on out there. He swam out to the wreck. That oar is from it. So is the silver cup. In my bag.” I coughed. “But Ambrose—we have to go back!”

  “Wait, before I hear anything else . . .” Lila glanced, greedily, at the oar lying on the deck, like she was considering abandoning the blanket-covered heap of me to inspect it. But then she yelled to her mom, who was back at the controls, “See if you can head back past the nearest sandbar! There might be a wreck there.” Lila turned back to me. “Okay? Now you have to tell us what this Ambrose business is.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing we’d find him safe. “We were on the skiff together. I know you saw him. You shined your spotlight right on us. He was next to me when you waved and called my name. I turned to him and smiled. Sir Walter started barking again. Then somehow, he was gone.”

  Lila’s eyes widened. “Nell. You were alone on that boat. I was watching the whole time after I turned on the spotlight. I didn’t even blink. Nobody was ever with you.” She patted my hand with concern. “I think you were hallucinating.”

  I sat up, thanks to strength from the cocoa. “No way.” I tried to shake my head but that made me feel like I had roller coaster vertigo. “Ambrose was with me. He knew the oar was from a pinnace.”

  “Sprout, I saw you in the boat too,” my mom said. “You were alone.” She squeezed my shoulder to reassure me. “You’ve been through a lot. Perhaps you imagined someone was there with you.” Mom bit her lip, nervous about the idea of her daughter hanging out in a boat with imaginary friends. “Try to rest. I’m going to see if Kate has any food for you.” She gave me another hug, stood up, and left me, Lila, and Sir Walter on the deck. Sir Walter helpfully plopped down to cover my freezing feet.

  “There is no Ambrose, Nell.”

  “But he’s been all over Roanoke with me,” I explained. “I first met him at the Festival Park. He found the flask—the one you stole, by the way—with me near the Watergate at the Elizabethan Gardens. He was the one who wanted to take the ring from the visitor center at Fort Raleigh. Because he was wearing an identical one! And I’ve seen him in the woods by my mom’s vine, too. It’s not like he’s some boy I dreamt up while I was marooned in a skiff.”

  “Wait, you saw him in the woods by the vine?” Lila looked very excited all of a sudden.

  “Yeah, once or twice.”

  “Think carefully: Did anyone else ever talk to him?” Her eyes glittered.

  “Sure,” I started. Then I thought about it. Ambrose never met my mom. At the gardens, he’d avoided the sticker lady. He conveniently disappeared whenever Lila and Sir Walter were nearby. The tightening in my chest lessened when I remembered that Lila’s dad spoke to him, briefly. “Your dad talked to him—he said he’d seen him hanging around the fort. But he thought he was from the play. . . .” Which Ambrose, conveniently, had been very vague about—only saying that he “had been” a villager.

  “I met his mom,” I said. “I mean, I saw her. She was at the Festival Park. They both work there. They reenact the settlement.” Yet I never saw him or her leaving work.

  Lila shook her head. “So he’s not our age? Because you have to be sixteen to work there. No exceptions.” She scrunched up her eyebrows in thought. “Was his mom dressed like a colonist woman?”

  I nodded. “She had on a heavy, old-fashioned dress.”

  Lila’s eyes widened. “The people at the park reenact the 1585 colony, so it’s historically accurate to only depict men. Although one supercool lady plays a blacksmith—but she still wears men’s clothes.”

  Now I thought of how Ambrose never sweated. How he always wore the same tattered clothes. The lack of sound as he crashed through the forest and the lack of ripples as he moved through the sea. Ambrose didn’t have a telephone, and he didn’t go to school. He’d come from England with his family, only to have his father leave on a ship and never return.

  “What is a pinnace?” I asked Lila.

  “A small vessel. Large ships use them to ferry people around. I mean, large old sailing ships did.”

  “Ones like the colonists came here on?”

  “Yup. In fact, the lost colonists still had a pinnace when John White returned to England.” She frowned. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you say—”

  “Ambrose said his father left the island on one.” Lila’s mouth dropped open.

  I thought of Ambrose in the water. He could hold his breath longer than any person I’d ever met, almost like he didn’t really need to breathe—anymore. He seemed afraid of nothing except me getting hurt. When we were in serious danger during the storm and I thought I might die, he cried and comforted me. But what did he say? “You’ll still be with me.” I’d thought he meant trapped on the skiff. What if he’d meant something else?

  Although he spoke briefly to Lila’s dad, he let him be deceived into thinking he was an actor. Kind of like how I thought he worked as a reenactor.

  Ambrose knew so much about the lost colony, almost as though he’d experienced it himself.

  Then I knew the truth, with certainty as solid as the silver cup he’d recognized. It’s all so obvious now—how did I never see this before?

  “Nell, I think Ambrose was—” Lila started. I could finish her sentence.

  “A ghost.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lila ambushed me with questions the rest of the way to Roanoke, at least whenever her mom was at the controls and mine was out of earshot. “Let her rest!” Kate chided when she came out to check on us. My head spun from exhaustion but also from knowing the truth about Ambrose. And I knew it was true. I’d noticed his little quirks—like his funny slang, or his commitment to wearing reenactor clothes—and sensed that something was different about him. I thought it had been a city–country thing. An American–British thing. Or a North–South thing. Apparently it was actually a human–ghost thing.

  When I’d told Lila that his name was Ambrose Viccars, her eyes widened like saucers.

  “He was one of the colonists! I’ve seen that name at the visitor center, in the exhibit room with the wood paneling. Ambrose came here with his father, whose name was also Ambrose, and his mother, Elizabeth.”

  If my head didn’t hurt so much, I’d have slapped my forehead. Maybe if I’d read all the placards in the museum, I could’ve put two and two together. But how was I supposed to know that?

  “If I’d met him, I  would’ve picked up on that, like, immediately,” Lila added. That actually made me feel better: If I were going to die on the deck of their fishing boat, from seawater overdose or something, Lila probably wouldn’t be acting like such a know-it-all. The universe was righting itself, and I was going to be just fine after I got home, took an extralong hot shower, and slept.

  Still, I said, “Don’t be a knave, Lila.”

  “I do know what that means,” she replied.

  The rain had mostly stopped when we finally docked. My mom got out to drive the Jeep close to the pier. I stood up, shaky on my sea legs, so Lila and Kate helped me step off the boat. Before they guided me into the idling car, Lila tugged on my arm. “I’ll come by tomorrow. We need to talk about this”—she lowered her voice so our mothers couldn’t hear—“ghostly new development.”

  I weakly nodded my okay. After Lila helped save me in that storm, I owed her some time and information. I also owed her for wrecking the metal detector—and I’d use the money I’d earned from my mom to pay for it. Although the balance
between Lila and me seemed a little more equal now that I was the one who’d found both a shipwreck and a ghost.

  Kate leaned into the driver’s-side window, talking to my mom. “I’d keep a close eye on Nell tonight.”

  “Do you think she should go to a doctor? What about dry drowning or hypothermia? Or if all that salt water hurt her electrolytes . . .”

  Kate wrote something down on a slip of paper. “The medical center’s closed, but here’s our family doctor’s number. Call Dr. Parrish and let him know what happened—tell him the Midgetts referred you. Make sure Nell stays toasty and dry, keep an eye on her breathing, and give her lots of warm fluids. But I think she’ll be just fine. She’s one tough cookie.”

  As soon as we got back to the cottage, Mom had me take a hot shower. She actually wanted to stay in the bathroom with me, to make sure I didn’t pass out or anything. But I wouldn’t let her, so instead she checked in with the doctor. Afterward, Mom got Dad on the phone.

  “Nell!” His voice sounded tinny and faraway. “Thank goodness you’re okay. I—I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you. . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” Even though it was so good to hear his voice, I could barely hold my head up, and I kept blinking away sleep. I hardly remember what he said because I was in such an exhausted daze. After a few minutes Mom took back the phone and I shuffled to my room, where I could still hear her muffled voice. For the first time since before we left for Roanoke—since my dad disappeared on us—she said, “I . . . love you, too,” before hanging up the phone. I smiled as I ran a brush through my hopelessly tangled hair.

  Mom didn’t interrogate me, but just wrapped me up in all the blankets and told me to rest. I think she might’ve sat in my bedroom, watching me sleep, the whole night. The next morning, though, she may as well have thrown me on the griddle with the pancakes and bacon—because she really grilled me. “We both have a lot of explaining to do,” she said as I limped into the kitchen. My everything was achy: head, knees, back, feet, eyes, neck. Even my hair hurt. I yawned and lowered myself into the chair next to her. Mom poured me a glass of juice.