Nora planted her forehead on the desktop, smooshing Otis’s head in her lap. Not that he cared. “What if Jules becomes your new best friend, and you forget I ever existed and move to LA and star in a reality TV show?”
I fake-gagged. “Definitely not possible. I’m not even going to see her again after tomorrow.”
Nora sighed and sat up. “Is she really that bad?”
I pictured Jules ignoring me while she swam laps, Jules ignoring her dad when he tried to talk to her, Jules ignoring Otis. “Put it this way,” I said, outrage building. “She didn’t say a single word to Otis the entire time we were there. She didn’t even try to pet him.”
Nora’s eyes narrowed. “A dog-hater,” she said. “The lowest form of life.”
Her phone chirped. Nora checked it. “My mom’s on her way. She said to meet her in the parking lot.”
But we didn’t move. Even Otis stayed perfectly still, like he wanted to freeze time as much as Nora and I did.
Suddenly, Nora said, “Wait, I almost forgot!”
“What?”
“I have a going-away present for you.” She lifted Otis’s head from her lap and slid out from behind the desk. “Hang on, I know it’s here somewhere.” She rummaged through her bag, taking out a knotted ball of rainbow yarn (Nora was learning to knit), a half-eaten roll of cherry Life Savers (for me, when my blood sugar gets low), black socks (no clue), and, finally, a decrepit copy of her favorite book, Whitman’s Jolly Limericks.
Nora flipped through the pages. “It’s right… here.” She pulled out an envelope. “A new True Fact for your journal.”
I’ve been keeping a True Facts journal since I was nine, which was around the same time I started understanding diabetes. I don’t mean understanding all the day-to-day stuff—I’d been dealing with the highs and lows and everything that went with them since I got diagnosed when I was two. I mean the other stuff. Like how I was the only kid I knew who had to have her parents come on every school field trip, or who had to miss the third-grade triathlon to prick her finger and drink juice in the nurse’s office, or who had never been on a sleepover at someone else’s house.
I’d stay awake half the night worrying about how there was no cure for diabetes, which meant that I was going to have this disease for the rest of my life. My parents tried to help, but nothing made any difference until one day Mom finally said, “Blue, feelings and facts are both important, but they’re not the same thing. You feel sad because you may go blind one day, but the fact is, you’re not blind today. Try to stick to the facts.”
After that, instead of worrying about what was going to happen in the future, I’d stay up making lists in my head of all the facts that were true today: True Fact: I’ve never had a stroke. True Fact: My kidneys work. True Fact: I don’t have any sores on my body that won’t heal. Then I started writing down my True Facts, and after that I started sleeping better.
I got up and took the envelope from Nora. Inside was a square of pale blue paper that Nora had illustrated with musical notes, a boat, a quill, and a rabbit poking out of a top hat. In the center of the paper, Nora’s loopy, swirly handwriting said:
True Fact: Matthias Buchinger was an artist, a magician, a cardsharp, a musician, and a sharpshooter, and he liked to build ships in bottles. Also, he was twenty-nine inches tall and was born without hands or feet.
“He reminds me of you,” Nora said, reading over my shoulder.
“Because… I’m twenty-nine inches tall?”
“Because no matter what you’re born with, you can do anything.”
My eyes welled up, and I threw my arms around Nora. Otis sandwiched himself between us because he was going to miss her as much as I was.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a going-away present for you,” I said, my voice muffled by her shoulder.
“I’m sorry my rabbit looks like a snowman,” Nora said into my neck.
And then, because we couldn’t actually freeze time no matter how much we wanted to, the three of us headed out to the parking lot to wait for Nora’s mom to pick us up.
“Are you still not telling your parents about the treasure hunt?” Nora said.
“You know I can’t. If I tell them, they’ll never let me do it. Or they’ll make so many rules the search won’t be mine anymore.”
“Well, I need to know everything that happens. Swear you’ll write to me.” Nora held out a hand and we hooked pinkies.
“I already put a card in the mail this morning,” I said. A happy anniversary card, because Nora and I choose cards based on their covers, and this one had a fuzzy picture of two striped kittens touching noses on a bed of clouds. “And I need to know everything that happens with all those plays you’ll be starring in. Swear you’ll write to me?”
“I swear.” We crossed pinkies again. “Three times a day, at least.”
Nora’s mom pulled into the parking lot. Before getting in, Nora turned for one last look at the ISLAND BOWL sign with its missing B.
“Farewell, owl, our faithful friend!” she sang, flapping her arms like a bird and swerving around the parking lot. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Well?”
I did a couple of noodly flaps. Nora gave me another look. I picked up steam and flapped like I meant it.
“Farewell, Island owl!” I called.
We flapped and spun and hooted. Even Otis joined in, chasing us in circles, until finally Nora’s mom called out the window, “I’m getting old here waiting for you! Enough craziness! It’s only seven weeks.”
For Nora and me, there could never be enough craziness. And seven weeks felt like a lifetime.
CHAPTER FOUR
True Fact: Sometimes you have to suck it up for a good cause. (Wisdom bomb from Mom)
The next morning, I made Jules get to the beach at nine thirty. I figured nobody would be there that early except moms and toddlers, and Jules would get bored and want to leave, so I’d get to dump her and start the hunt.
No such luck.
After her dad dropped us off (“Stay as long as you like, kiddos! Here’s forty dollars for snacks.” Forty dollars?), Jules and Otis and I set up our things right behind the tide line, where the dry sand started. She spread her towel while I dug a hole for the umbrella.
“Don’t you like to lay out?” she asked. “Umbrellas are for old people.”
“It’s for Otis,” I said. “He likes shade.” Although, at that particular moment, Otis was lying a few feet away, directly in the sun, happily devouring an old sandy hot dog.
“Leave it, Otis. Don’t be a cannibal.”
Otis dropped the hot dog and gave me his big-eyed Why have you robbed me of all joy? look. I tossed him his chew toy as a peace offering.
Jules kneeled on her towel and started putting on sunscreen. Otis lay down under the umbrella, and I sat in the shade between him and Jules.
“So what’s it like living here?” she asked.
“It’s okay, I guess,” I said. “Most of the year it’s pretty quiet, and then in the summer it gets crazy when all the tourists come.” Tourists like you, who clog the movie theaters and shove people like me out of line at the Five & Dime.