Chapter 5
It took me a long time to calm down after Seb left. I didn’t know whether I was pissed that he’d cracked the cipher first
or excited about the discovery. Maybe both.
But I double-checked his work, and it was exactly right: Drop anchor at Pinemoon Cave.
For all we knew, this Morse code message was written by Wyrd Jack a hundred years ago in reference to something else—stolen
cargo, a rendezvous. Without Nana here to tell me why it was hidden in her painting, I couldn’t say. However, I couldn’t help
but think that Nana really had been keeping secrets about the treasure, that she’d known more than she let on. After all, she was the one who first told
us how to find Pinemoon Cave and encouraged the Wags to use it as their official hideout.
What even is this, Nana? I thought, staring at an old photo of her on the wall. If only she could’ve answered.
The next morning, I was showered and dressed before eight.
I found some recently expired coffee in the cupboard and was able to brew it in the Mr. Coffee that had been sitting in the same spot on the same kitchen counter since long before I was born.
But just when I was about to take my coffee out to the back porch, I heard a vehicle enter the driveway.
Two car doors opened and shut, and I started to get up when I heard muffled voices.
“Just saying, before we go in there, you need to promise me that you won’t say anything. Not even a joke.”
That’s Jazmine, no doubt about it.
“And I’m just saying that you should just fess up before she hears it around town.”
Seb? What were they talking about? A terrible paranoia swept through me.
Their shoes crunched on the sandy gravel in front of the cottage, so I scrambled up from the porch swing and rushed inside
to hear them knocking. I took a moment to compose myself, then I opened the door to find Seb leaning against the doorframe
in a pair of shorts, blue hoodie, and dark sunglasses pushed up into his blond waves.
“Mornin’, valedictorian,” he said, giving me a little flash of dimple as his black dog squirmed past his legs into the house.
“Dammit, Punkin. Don’t give me grief today . . .”
The dog made a beeline for the kitchen, then stood there and looked back at us, disappointed.
“Do you mind . . . ?” Seb asked, sliding past me. “She needs water. I think she doesn’t understand why her water bowl is gone.”
“My nana’s vintage mixing bowl? I picked that up when I was cleaning that first night. Thought it was just part of the wreckage.”
Far too comfortable in my house, Seb went straight for the kitchen cabinet that held the vintage bowl, filled it up with water,
and offered it to his panting dog. “There we are.”
A noise drew my attention outside, and when I leaned through the open doorway, I spotted Jazmine, setting down my paddleboard next to the side of the garage.
“Hey, Paige,” she called out. “Bringing back your property. Stashing behind the bushes in case your robbers come back.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Why did you even need it to begin with?” The board was nice, but nowhere near as good as any of hers.
“I took Benny and his new girlfriend out by Eagle Pointe. She didn’t have a board.”
“Benny has a girlfriend?”
“He does.” Walking back to the open doorway, Seb squeezed one eye shut while making a face. “Lulu. She’s . . . quite something.”
“She’s not coming with us today, right?” Jazmine asked Seb after tossing my paddle next to the board. “Please tell me she’s not.”
Seb shrugged. “Not a Wag, so she wasn’t invited. Doubt she’d be interested, anyway. Lulu isn’t exactly a lover of the great
outdoors.” He put his fingers inside his mouth and whistled at his dog, who trotted through my house, dripping water from
her shaggy maw, but obediently went outside. Seb turned to me. “Ready to find some treasure?”
Was I? I squinted at him, searching his face for a clue to what he and Jazmine had been talking about when they arrived. When
he cocked his head at me, puzzled, I dropped my eyes. Either I confronted them about what I’d heard, or I kept the card close
to my chest while I observed them.
“Ready,” I said, deciding on the latter. No need to start any drama right now.
“All right.” Seb clapped his hands together. “We’ll go in the Speed Buggy, since you don’t have transportation. I’ll take
a look at your car when we get back. Sound good?”
I nodded.
“Okay, Wags,” he said. “Let’s load up.”
It was strange but nice to hear him call us Wags. Jazmine gave me a little side hug with her good arm before we piled into
Seb’s Bronco—me on the passenger’s side of the long front bench seat, while Jaz and Punkin got in the back. Seb started the
noisy engine, dropped his shades over his eyes, and backed out of my driveway.
A calming male voice was talking through the car’s speakers about a train ride through Switzerland. “What is this?” I asked.
“Rick motherfucking Steves, that’s who.”
“Oh God, here we go . . .” Jaz muttered from the back seat.
His head briefly turned toward me, gauging my reaction. “Just one of the greatest living travel writers. He’s the dude with
the PBS show about traveling in Europe. Seriously? Little Miss Smarty-Pants doesn’t know Rick Steves?”
“Is this . . . an audiobook?” I asked.
“It’s all he listens to in the car. Audiobooks about nature, animals, and travel. It’s like driving around with someone’s
eighty-year-old hermit uncle.”
“Look,” he said, defensive, “audiobooks are free to check out from the library, and they’re just like reading real books.”
“Of course,” I said. “They are ‘real’ books.”
“Yeah, no one’s arguing that, weirdo,” Jaz added.
I smiled at Seb, pleased to hear about this new interest of his. But my smile didn’t last long, because looking around at
my surroundings, I realized the inside of the Bronco was almost worse than the outside. “What’s that smell?”
“Weed?” Jazmine said. “It always smells like a discount dispensary up in here.”
“That may be, but this is a storm car,” Seb said, turning down his audiobook. “It was damaged in that mega blizzard in the Yoop two years ago.”
The “Yoop” was another name for the U.P., the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which contained a third of the land in our state
but only, like, 3 percent of the population. I’d never been much farther north than Traverse City, and neither had Jazmine,
so we often referred to the Yoop as the North Pole.
Seb went to boot camp in the Yoop.
“Anyway,” he said. “What you’re smelling is some massive, massive water damage that happened after its former owner left the
window rolled down in a blizzard. Snow filled the truck, then melted, and water sat inside the cab for weeks. You can still
see the waterline on the doors, look.”
“Charming,” I said.
His head turned toward me for a moment. “So you’re saying that boys who drive you around campus back in Cambridge don’t own
fine, restored vehicles such as this?”
I ignored that. “Surprised the state of Michigan will even let you buy a car after the Ferrari incident.”
Seb’s fingers twitched as they rested on top of the steering wheel. Maybe I’d just pushed his button. I wished I could tell
what was going through his head, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses.
“Yeah, well, that was Juvenile Seb. You’re riding with Adult Seb now, and I don’t want to hear any more Speed Buggy or Rick Steves slander.”
Was that true? Had Seb grown up? Changed? Or was he still bad news? Would Nana be disappointed that I gave him another chance
to be friends? Or disappointed if I didn’t?
I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. But I wanted to find out, and that was a start, I supposed.
Both Seb and Jaz were remarkably quiet for the remainder of the quick drive across town while I allowed memories of when we
were seventeen to roll through my mind, still wondering about the conversation I’d overheard this morning.
Maybe we were all thinking about the same thing.
Whatever that might be.
We headed through town and took the bridge across the Little River into Northside. Years ago, that bridge was a dividing line
in town. South of the bridge, where the marina and Heron Cottage both were, was the blue-collar side of town. North of the
bridge was where the Haves lived. Old money, old Michigan. The Pink House—a big Victorian that Wyrd Jack built at the turn
of the century that used to be my family home before my father caused all our money problems—was on this side of town, on
a bluff overlooking the lake, now owned by a company that rented luxury estates to rich tourists.
If you turned to the right immediately after crossing the bridge, as Seb was doing now, and drove a block down River Street,
you’d find a small residential neighborhood with contemporary mansions that backed up to the river. The first one was the
home of Benito “Benny” Morales, the fourth and final Wag.
Benny’s family was from Argentina, and both his parents were surgeons.
All things equal, Benny should have been the one at Harvard, not me.
He was definitely smart enough: his SAT scores were better than mine, even, and he was a minor tech genius, able to write code for just about anything.
But Harvard has a 3 percent acceptance rate, and Benny’s grades back in high school went downhill after Seb went away to boot camp.
So he ended up enrolling in a tech program down the road at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
When Seb pulled into the circular driveway and parked beneath a sleek, covered entrance next to a Land Rover, forgotten memories
resurfaced of all four of us meeting up here back in our peak Wag days, and I was suddenly eager to see Benny again. To be
reunited.
Punkin jumped out of the Speed Buggy as if she were just as familiar with Benny’s house as she was with mine. As she trotted
across the lawn, the mansion’s front door swung open and two people emerged. I recognized the first immediately.