For the record, my hair is black and curly. Most of the time, I wear it in a ponytail.
Otis and I were so not into this. Otis because he’s not allowed to eat spicy food from the Shark Pit, and me because all I wanted to do was ditch Jules and go treasure hunting. Which, judging by the fact that we hadn’t even been at the beach for two hours, wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
I was putting nylon dog booties on Otis’s paws (black, to match his fur) so he wouldn’t burn them on the asphalt when a little red convertible with the hood emblem of a horse rearing up on its hind legs zoomed into the parking lot. Even I knew it was a Ferrari. Ferraris aren’t exactly uncommon in the Hamptons, especially in the summer, but a Ferrari with Anna Bowdin driving it? Now that’s something you don’t see here every day.
Everyone on the planet knows that Anna Bowdin is probably the hugest movie star in existence. And that even though she’s only twenty-three, she’s already been a superhero, a Revolutionary War spy, a Disney princess, and a coal miner with lung disease.
The parking lot, which had been noisy with moms reeling in their screaming kids, went silent. Even the sun hid behind a cloud, like it knew its light wasn’t needed anymore now that Anna Bowdin was here.
Anna parked her Ferrari a few cars away from us and waved a big wave. “Hey, Julie Jules!”
The mouths of Douglas, Wilder Douglas, and Fritjof dropped open even wider than they already were. Douglas may actually have had drool in the corner of his. I made sure my own mouth was shut, but, really, I couldn’t believe I was about to meet the world’s biggest movie star.
“You know her?” Douglas said.
Jules gripped my upper arm like a claw and whispered in my ear, “We’re leaving.”
“Jules, you know Anna Bowdin?” Douglas said again.
“We have to go,” Jules said, ignoring Douglas and squeezing my arm even tighter. “Now. To your house. Call your mom.”
No way. If Jules came to my house, I’d lose another whole day of treasure hunting. “I can’t,” I said back. “I have stuff I’m supposed to do. Besides, why do you want to go to my house all of a sudden? And how do you know Anna Bowdin?”
“Don’t you ever go on the Internet?” Jules was practically shouting. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper again. “Anna Bowdin is my dad’s girlfriend. She’s the reason he walked out on my mom. So can we please go to your house? Right. Now?”
No wonder Jules was frantic. I called Mom—even though every cell in my body was screaming at me not to. She was with a client, installing four hundred wisteria vines on the side of their pool house.
“Can you come pick us up?” I asked.
“Are you having a blood sugar reaction?” she said, instantly on the alert.
Just to be sure, I did an automatic body scan for symptoms. Nothing. Plus, Otis would have told me if there was a problem, and he was currently sitting on my foot and scratching his rump with his teeth, the only person in the parking lot who couldn’t care less about Anna Bowdin.
“I’m fine,” I said. “But Jules isn’t. I’ll explain later.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Mom said, and hung up.
Ten minutes was forever to Jules, though, especially after we got our stuff and had to stand around watching Anna Bowdin sign autographs. After she finished, she peeled a pair of twin six-year-olds off her legs and came over to us.
“Hi, sweetie.” She kissed Jules on both cheeks. “You know your dad hates the sun, and I couldn’t take being at the house another second. I mean, this weather! Oh wow, who are your friends? They’re adorable.”
The guys just stared. Finally, Fritjof said something, except he said it in Norwegian.
Jules put her hand on Otis’s head and said, “This is Otis. He’s half-wolf, so you better not get too close.”
Which is absolutely not true—even though Otis looks like a wolf, he’s 100 percent dog—but I decided not to tell Anna Bowdin that.
Otis stood between Jules and me, looking powerful and majestic, even in his nylon booties. Whatever Anna Bowdin had been about to say, she didn’t say it. She took one look at Otis the wolf-dog and got very quiet. And kind of smaller, like she was a regular person instead of a MOVIE STAR.
A horn tooted.
“That’s Blue’s mom,” Jules said. “We gotta go. Sorry.”
Otis jumped into the bed of Mom’s pickup truck, and Jules and I climbed into the back seat of the cab.
“Is that Anna Bowdin?” Mom asked, sticking her head out the window for a better look.
“She’s my dad’s girlfriend.” Jules practically spit the word “girlfriend.”
“I take it you two aren’t very close?” Mom said, pulling out of the parking lot.
“About as close as Earth and Neptune,” Jules said.
“Neptune is the farthest planet from Earth,” I helpfully explained to Mom, a fact I know because even though I got an Incomplete, I did pay attention in Earth Science every now and then.
“Thank you for rescuing me, Mrs. Broen,” Jules said with none of her usual snark. “I really appreciate it.”
“I’m glad I could help,” Mom said, looking at Jules in the rearview mirror instead of at the road the way I hate. “You know what they say, girls: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough go to sea.’ Why don’t you two have some fun and go boating?”
For the record, nobody says, “When the going gets tough, the tough go to sea.” That’s not a thing; it’s Mom-code for Why don’t you get some homework done, Blue? And while there was nothing I’d rather do than go secretly hunt for treasure while pretending to do my homework, there was nothing I’d rather do less than take Jules Buttersby with me.
CHAPTER SIX
True Fact: For most of human history, ruling the seas meant ruling the world.
I like our house. It’s on a cove that leads to the harbor that leads to the Long Island Sound that leads to the Atlantic Ocean, so if I want to I can sail from my backyard all the way to France.
But now I was seeing it through Jules’s eyes, and I noticed the peeling paint on some of the shutters, the crooked screen door, the wobbly handrail. Dad makes jokes about how he’s like the cobbler whose children have no shoes, but I know business for both my parents has been rough recently, and diabetes isn’t cheap.
Our house has three bedrooms, which always seemed like enough, but now it seemed small. And old. Which, to be fair, it is. About two hundred years old, in fact. Dad’s great-something-grandfather built it, and before he did, there was another house here that his ancestors built back in the 1600s. There’s still an old family graveyard across the street. Turns out a lot of my female relatives were named Lucretia in the early 1800s.
Mom dropped us off with a friendly “There’s tuna salad in the fridge if you’re hungry!” Which was code for Don’t forget to eat, Blue, and remember to check your blood sugar before and after. What was especially annoying was that she was right: Just as her truck turned out of the driveway, Otis headbutted my leg.
“High or low?” I asked.
Otis bowed.