Edward Buttersby had rented a house in East Hampton for the summer. Or more like he’d rented an entire estate. From the road all we could see was a mile-high hedge (privet, according to Mom) that stretched across a property at least three times as wide as any other property on the street, and a driveway so long you couldn’t see the end of it.
“Three biscuits says he’s a weirdo,” I whispered into Otis’s ear. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and Otis was in his favorite spot in the middle of the back seat, where he could see out the front and breathe on my neck at the same time.
“I heard that,” Mom said.
Her pickup truck crunched along the driveway, trailing mud on the pearly white pebbles.
“Dramatic dogwoods,” she said.
“Astounding azaleas,” I said.
“Hexcellent hydrangeas.”
“Such an elegant English plane,” I said.
“You knew that was an English plane tree?”
“Mom, please. I’m your daughter.”
And then we were there. At the circular part of the driveway in front of what looked more like a beach club than a private house. It had gray shingles and white shutters and was huge. Humongously so. Ancient weeping willows drooped across the front lawn, making shaggy-dog shadows on weed-free grass.
Mom rang the bell, and the three of us waited for someone to answer it.
“Please don’t do anything embarrassing,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Mom said.
“When you meet Edward Buttersby. Please don’t do that thing where your voice gets really high.”
Before Space Voyager, Edward Buttersby starred in a miniseries based on one of those nineteenth-century English romance novels, which Mom may have watched two or ten or a hundred times.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Mom said, smoothing her hair in the reflection of the window next to the front door. “Just make sure you don’t do anything embarrassing either.”
“When have I ever done anything embarrassing?” I protested.
Mom smiled and smoothed my hair. “Never,” she said.
The door swung open. Instead of Edward Buttersby, it was my friend Robin’s mom, wearing a white chef’s uniform.
“Hey, Mrs. Alvarado, how are you?” I said.
Mom and Mrs. Alvarado kissed hello. Over their shoulders I could see a white floor with a white rug, white walls, and white furniture. I looked down at my fuzzy black dog and pointed to the mat.
“Wipe, Otis,” I said.
Otis wiped his paws, and we went inside.
World-famous actor Edward Buttersby emerged from the whiteness. His feet were bare; he had on jeans that were frayed at the bottom and a denim shirt that had one more button undone than any dad I know would wear.
“I’m Ed. You must be Emily and Blue.” He stuck out a hand for Mom and then me to shake. “And who’s this?”
It felt wrong seeing Command Pilot Jasper Jones out of uniform and wearing a leather necklace with a bead on it. I couldn’t decide whether to thank him for saving humanity from mutant alien fungus or tell him that Nora got the same necklace at the surf shop in town.
“Blue?” my mother said.
“Sorry,” I said, praying I hadn’t been staring, or if I had that no one had noticed. “Otis, meet Mr. Buttersby.”
Otis stuck out a paw, which Edward Buttersby shook. Otis has excellent manners.
“He’s a diabetic-alert dog,” Mom explained in a Minnie Mouse squeak. “He can smell blood sugar that’s too high or too low. I hope you don’t mind him inside the house. We can always leave him out—”
“No, no,” Ed said, leading us into a snowy-white living room with a wall of windows and a view of what everyone calls the most beautiful beach in America. “Jules and I love animals, right, Jules?”
I turned away from the ocean and buried all thoughts of boats and treasure. Lounging on the couch was a supermodel, scrolling on her phone with a piece of long gummy candy hanging out of her mouth. She was so into her phone she didn’t hear the question.
“How old are you, Blue?” Ed asked.
“She just finished seventh grade,” Mom said.
“My daughter, Jules, just finished seventh grade too,” Ed said. “We got here a couple of days ago, and she doesn’t know a soul. This is perfect. Isn’t it perfect, Jules?”
Jules, who I guess wasn’t a supermodel after all—or maybe she was, if it’s possible for middle schoolers to be supermodels—dragged her eyes up from her phone. “Perfect.” She held out a fresh piece of dangly candy. “Worm?”
“Jules!” Ed said. “Blue has diabetes, remember? She doesn’t eat candy.”
Actually, I eat candy every day, but I didn’t think Mom would want me to give Ed a blood sugar management lesson two minutes after saying hello.
“Sorry,” Jules said, twisting the worm around her finger.
“Hey, why don’t you two go hang out while Emily and I work on the boring party stuff,” Ed said, like he’d just been struck by the most brilliant idea ever.
There was a long awkward pause while Jules went back to scrolling and I sent my mom a look of misery and she gave me back a look of helplessness and Otis licked the fluffy white rug.
“Jules?” said Ed.
“What? Oh. You wanna go outside or something?” Jules asked me.
I pictured grabbing Otis and making a run for it out the door, down the driveway—and then nine miles home, where I’d collapse from exhaustion and low blood sugar.
“Sure,” I said to Jules. “Let’s go outside. Come, Otis.”
Jules and Otis and I went through one of many sets of sliding doors to a giant deck with an infinity pool that looked out over the ocean. We sat on white lounge chairs under white umbrellas for another long, awkward pause.
This one was even longer and more awkward than the first. It went on and on and on and on and—
“Aren’t you supposed to be fat?”
“What?” I said.
“You know. Because you have diabetes. Isn’t diabetes a thing that happens to fat people?”
Deep breath.
I get this all the time. Lots of people think you get diabetes because you eat too much sugar or you don’t exercise, and if you just lose weight and choke down a bottle of cinnamon every day, it’ll go away. Lots of people are wrong.
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“Oh. Cool.” Jules flung her sheet of shiny blond hair over one shoulder. “It’s hot. You wanna go swimming?”
It was really hot, but I’d have to test and deal with my blood sugar if I wanted to swim. Exercise would bring my sugar down, which would be fine if my blood sugar was already high, but if it was normal or low I’d have to eat something to get my sugar up, and then wait fifteen minutes and check it again to make sure it was in a good range, and then if it wasn’t I’d have to eat some more, wait fifteen more minutes, and test again, which would mean we’d stay here even longer, which would mean waiting even longer to start the hunt. So…
“No thanks. But you go ahead.”
I looked down at Otis, who was using my foot as a chin pillow. Save me, I mouthed. But Otis just snorted.
Otis and I proceeded to have a totally fantastic and not at all awkward time. He lay under a glass table pretending to be a rug, and I watched Jules do laps in the pool like she was training for the Olympics instead of killing time while her dad made her hang out with me. When Mom and Ed finally came out, it was past noon and I was ready to explode. By the time we got home and had lunch, it’d be too late to take the boat out and do any real work. First day of the treasure hunt, totally wasted.