The sorrowful hound.
Otis woofed. My oh-so-casual lean against the rail didn’t fool him.
“Are we there yet?” Jules asked.
“We’re there,” I whispered. “Finally.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
True Fact: Technically speaking, you have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth only when you’re under oath in a court of law.
I’d pictured the first day of the hunt a million times since this winter, and none of those pictures had included Jules Buttersby. I knew what Pop Pop would have said if he’d been here: Avast ye whining, BB. Bear down and carry on.
I want to carry on, Pop Pop, but first I have to drag Jules around the water on a rubber doughnut until she gets bored. My plan was to swerve as much as possible at high speed, to fling Jules off the tube again and again so she’d hate it, give up, and go home. My plan also included testing my blood sugar while Jules was underwater.
My plan took fifteen minutes.
“Tubing was never this lame on Maui or Saint Lucia.” Jules spit a chunk of hair out of her mouth. “Or in the Seychelles.”
“Sorry,” I lied. “My friends and I like to go fast.”
Otis wasn’t happy either. He looked seasick, curled up as small as he could make himself with his front paws over his nose. Also, he was groaning. I offered him a treat and he didn’t take it. Definitely seasick. Sorry, Otis.
“Whatever.” Jules flicked her hair off her shoulder. “Okay, it’s your turn.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Legally you’re not allowed to drive unless you’re fourteen or you’ve taken a safety class.”
Jules raised her eyebrows at me, which I took to mean, “Who cares?”
I tried again. “Plus, you don’t know how to drive the boat.”
“How hard can it be? I watched you do it. You push the handle up to go faster and turn the wheel to steer.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said, even though it kind of is that simple.
“So, what, you just want to go back? Already?”
No, I don’t want to go back. I want to load you into a cannon and shoot you home to Hollywood—excuse me, the Palisades—so I can come here every day until I find my family’s legacy that’s probably buried in the sand twenty feet under us right this very second.
That’s what I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “It’s a really nice day. Let’s hang out for a while.”
I reached into my gear bag and pulled out a five-gallon plastic yellow pail with a clear Plexiglas bottom. I’d made it myself. It took half the night, but it was totally worth the D I got on my social studies essay that was due the next day.
“What’s that?” Jules asked.
“A view bucket. You use it to look at stuff underwater.” I demonstrated by sticking my face in the top and leaning over the edge of the boat. “I like to look at fish this way. It’s easier than snorkeling—way less gear and you can stay dry. We can take turns if you want.”
Jules crossed her arms and eyed me over the top of her sunglasses. “Do you think I’m a total idiot?”
“What? Of course I don’t think you’re an idiot. What makes you say that?” I sputtered, trying not to look like a person with a giant secret.
Jules glared at me. “You’ve been trying to get rid of me the whole day. You don’t want to go tubing. You made sure I didn’t want to go tubing. And now you expect me to believe that your idea of fun is looking at fish through a bucket? I mean, seriously. What. Is. Up?”
So much for my decoy plan. I was going to have to tell Jules the truth. Well, not the truth. The truth is I got the Incomplete on purpose so I could have an excuse to be alone on the water all summer.
A truth is: “Fine. You’re right. I got an Incomplete in science this year, and I have to do a water project to pass the class.”
“You failed seventh-grade science? What are you, stupid?”
I could feel my face burning, and it wasn’t because of the sun. “It was an Incomplete, not an F, and no, I’m not stupid! I just have better things to do. And I suppose you get straight As in every class?”
Jules picked her cover-up off the floor of the boat and shook it out. “As a matter of fact, I do. School’s our job, and jobs are things you work hard at. So unless you have a serious learning disability or a personal hardship or something, or you really are stupid—which plenty of people are and it’s not their fault because that’s how they were born—there’s no excuse for failing seventh-grade science. Or failing anything.”
I was pretty sure Jules was for real. Jules, who thinks diabetes is “a thing that happens to fat people,” was making me feel like an idiot.
To make things worse, after she finished her speech, Jules offered Otis the treat. And he ate it.
“Well, I got an Incomplete in science, and now I have to do this project. But you don’t have to sit here while I do it. I can take you back.” Say yes, say yes, say yes!
“What? And stay in my room all day while Anna Bobana bounces around our cabana? No thanks. I’d rather watch you stick your head in a bucket.”
Shih tzu.
I killed the engine.
“Keep an eye out for boat traffic,” I ordered Jules. “Fist bump, Otis.”
Otis raised a paw and I tapped it. Then I whispered in his ear, “I’m mad at her, not you,” and gave him a kiss on the nose for good luck.
I slid onto the tube with the view bucket and let out the rope so I’d have some distance from the boat. Otis watched me with his head hanging over the side.
“I’m not going anywhere, I promise,” I said. “Stay.”
I could tell Otis wanted in on the action, but he stayed.
The weather was perfect: no wind, almost no current. The water was as close to glass as it gets, and even without the bucket I could see almost to the bottom, which was about twenty feet away.
“What are you looking for?” Jules asked, leaning over the rail next to Otis.
My goal was to find the ballast pile. Ballast is heavy stuff that people stow in the bottom storage area of boats to balance cargo so boats don’t tip. In the old days, they used things like bricks or rocks or lead bars. Since ballast is heavy, when a ship sinks, the ballast sits on the ocean floor, and the good stuff sits on top of it. Usually, if you find the ballast pile, you’ve found the ship and everything in it. Find the ballast, find the ship.
My problem was that this particular ship sank 350 years ago, so whatever was left of it was probably buried under sand and mud. But sand and mud shift all the time, and you never know what will surface. My plan was to search the whole area around the sorrowful hound, bit by bit in a grid pattern, until I found anything that looked like something that might be something. Not that I could tell any of that to Jules.
“Um, you know, just stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” she asked.
“Stuff that’s in the water,” I said.
“Like?”
Why was Jules so interested in my boring summer project? It was a good thing I hadn’t told her the real reason I was out here. If she thought I was doing something exciting like looking for treasure, she’d probably duct-tape herself to the boat so she’d never have to leave, and I’d have to deal with her all summer instead of just today.