Chapter 8
We barely made it back up the rope. It took all my remaining strength to climb, even with Seb’s help. By the time I made it
to where the gang could haul me up, my hands were stinging, and my ankle was giving out.
“Don’t move!” Jazmine commanded when we were both safely in the back cavern, dripping wet and exhausted. “Are you hurt?”
Seb shook his head as he caught his breath, gesturing loosely toward my leg. “Check her ankle.”
My shoe was still mostly intact. The rubber sole was breaking away from the shoe, which was streaked with green algae and
mud. My ankle was red and scraped up, hurting, but I hadn’t broken it.
“I’m okay,” I told Jazmine grumpily when she tried to remove my wet shoe. “Just leave it.”
“Holy shit,” Lulu said, holding her face in her hands. “I can’t believe you guys went down there. You’re both nuts. You almost
died!”
She wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t stop coughing.
Wet clothes sticking to every line of his body, Seb lay on his back on the cave floor, sprawling, with one arm draped over
his face as he huffed out hard breaths. “Wags . . . not for . . . the faint of heart, Lulu.”
“Jesus, Paige. You all right?” Benny asked, squatting over me as I wrung out my hair. “I seriously thought you were going to drown. You were down there for well over a minute before Seb went in—I checked the time on my phone.”
I’d always had good lungs. “Yeah, that was dumb, huh?” I glanced at Seb. “Can’t believe you came down after me.”
“Red Cross lifeguard certification finally paid off,” he joked.
I’d forgotten he had that. I shook my head, feeling stunned.
“Never again,” Jazmine said. “You really scared me, Paige. This treasure hunt is officially not happening. We end it today.
No one is going back down, you hear me?”
“Don’t need to.” I summoned the strength to fish the skeleton key out of my pocket and held it up. “Found this . . . at the
bottom.”
“A key?” Benny asked, big eyes blinking. “Wonder what it unlocks.”
Everyone stared at it for a moment before Seb snatched it up. The key itself was dark and rusted, but it was strung on a single
ring next to an oval brass tag. That must’ve been what glinted in the water.
Seb polished the tag on the bottom of his shirt and inspected it closely. “Fuuuck,” he said in awe. “We’ve got more code,
folks.”
“Are you kidding?” Jazmine squinted at Seb’s hands.
I leaned closer. “Seb? What does it say? Is it more numbers that we need to decipher with the ‘Prison Poem’ text?”
He squinted at it, moving his lips in silence. “Letters, not numbers. Starts with ‘N.’” Seb continued calling out letters
as he interpreted the dots and dashes. “‘N . . . O . . . S . . . E . . . S.’”
“Noses?” Benny squatted down to look at it in the light.
Seb polished the brass tag once more, then flipped it over. “‘U . . . N . . . D . . . E . . . R . . . T . . .’ Wait, there’s spacing here. ‘Under’ is one word. Then, ‘T . . . H . . . E . . . I . . . R.’”
I blinked at Seb. “Under their noses.”
“‘Under their noses,’” he repeated, nodding as a smile ghosted over his face. “It’s the next clue, people. Fuck yes!”
“But what does it mean?” Benny said, taking the key from Seb. “No noses in this cave but ours.”
“Let me see,” Lulu said eagerly. “This looks really old. Nothing inside this cave that it would fit into, right?”
“The first clue got us here, to Pinemoon Cave,” I pointed out. “Maybe this clue takes us somewhere else.”
“Where?” Jazmine asked, snatching the key from Lulu’s fingers. “To another place where you can jump in some weird water? We
don’t even know who left these clues, or where they lead. Probably to you drowning again!”
“No one drowned,” I pointed out. “We almost drowned.”
Seb snickered, which only further irritated Jazmine.
“Both of you could be dead right now, you know?” she said, sounding agitated. “And Benny has a point. Whose noses? This could
mean anything. I mean, come on. Get real. We didn’t really come here today thinking we’d actually find treasure. Do we really believe that Nana Malone has been hanging on to this all her life—the solution to one of the
biggest lost treasures in the US? And that it was passed down through the family from Wyrd Jack himself? Not to mention that
it’s a terrible clue.”
“All clues are terrible until you figure them out,” Seb said, taking the key back from Jazmine. “Why are you getting so worked
up about this?”
“Maybe because I thought you idiots were going to die and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help you,” she said, tucking her hurt arm tight against her side.
“Jaz—”
“The Wags were nothing but an excuse to do stupid things when we were younger,” she argued. “Think about it. When’s the last
time we were out here? Oh, wait. I remember. It was the week before two idiots drove a stolen car off a pier.”
“Which idiots?” Lulu asked brightly.
Benny groaned.
“You haven’t told her, Ben? Don’t blame you,” Jazmine said. “If I’d stolen a Ferrari from one of the biggest assholes in town
as a joke—”
“How many times do I have to say that we didn’t ‘steal’ the Ferrari,” Benny insisted, getting agitated. “It was just a prank.
A joy ride!”
Jazmine’s eyes narrowed. “Were you experiencing joy when you couldn’t distinguish forward from reverse and backed that Ferrari
off a pier?”
“Jesus, Jaz,” Benny said, darting a nervous glance at Lulu. “Can you not do this now?”
“Why?” she asked. “Are you embarrassed that you let one of your oldest friends take the fall for the stunt, even though he
wasn’t the one driving? People who have important parents in this town can’t do jail time. And who cares if Seb gets sent
away to boot camp, right? Everyone just assumed he was a loser anyway.”
“To be fair, I kind of was . . .” Seb said.
“Benny?” Lulu asked, squinching up her face at him. “What is she talking about?”
“Don’t take this out on him,” Seb told Jaz. “You guys always give Benny shit for the Ferrari incident, but it took two to tango, you know? Benny wouldn’t have even dreamed of taking the Ferrari on his own.”
That much I believed was true. After Seb and I stopped speaking in high school and the Wags fell apart, Jaz and I got closer
while Seb started hanging with Benny again . . . something we weren’t made aware of until we saw them goofing around in front
of a fancy steak house along the harbor front, both in uniform, working as valets part-time after school.
The boys were on duty the night the Ferrari rolled up to their valet stand. Whose idea was it to take the car for a spin around
the block? That was up for debate. But thanks to some panicked driving on Benny’s part, putting it in reverse instead of forward,
that’s when everything went so wrong.
“None of this matters,” Seb insisted, “because it’s in the past.”
Jazmine turned on Seb. “Then leave it there! Stop doing dangerous shit! I came here today wanting to have a good time and
reconnect with old friends, not drive them to the ER.”
“I think we all did, Jaz,” I said, hoping to calm her down. She was so upset. “No one’s going to the ER. My ankle’s sore,
that’s all.”
“Every time we did these treasure hunts, someone got hurt,” Jazmine insisted. “Even when we’re not hunting treasure, the Wags
attract disaster—like that dumb Ferrari stunt. Nothing was the same for all of us after that happened, you know that, right?”
“I know,” Seb said very seriously. “Trust me, Jaz. I know.”
“So do I,” Benny said, eyes pleading. “If I could take it all back, I would. I’ve regretted it every day the past two years.
Spending a month in the hospital with a collapsed lung was not my greatest moment, okay? Not saying I had it worse than Seb—”
“Stop comparing,” Seb said. “It’s oranges to apples.”
Jazmine shook her head. “Idiots. Both of you should understand why I’m not going to sit around and watch my friends almost
die. I’m going back to town. Stay out here if you want. This place is a grave.”
“Jazmine, wait!” I called out. Was she truly this upset over what we’d just done? Or was this outburst caused by something
else, like maybe her being hung up on Benny? I hated that I didn’t know. “Please, Jaz. Stay and talk this out.”
“Not in a talking mood,” she answered. She tried to stomp away, but she had to stop and duck into the tunnel, ruining the
impact, especially when Punkin came through after her.
Dammit. This was not how I wanted this trip to end. Now I was anxious about Jazmine and hating that she was upset enough to leave.
Across the cavern, Lulu argued with Benny. I tried to listen to what they were saying but couldn’t concentrate because it
was all I could do to stand, with my ankle beginning to swell. Seb pocketed the rusty key and offered a hand to help me up.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, helping to brace me up while I hobbled on one foot. “Hate to tell you, but that’s going to suck
later when it really starts hurting.”
“We need to go after Jaz.”
“Give her some time to blow off steam. Can’t paddle a canoe with one arm,” he pointed out. “She ain’t goin’ nowhere without
us.”
Oh. Right.
“I just don’t understand why she’s so upset . . .”
Seb lifted his eyes to me. “No one likes to feel powerless. Especially Jaz.”
Why did she feel powerless? Her sprained arm? Maybe. I just couldn’t help thinking about that conversation I’d overheard when the two of them showed up at the cottage this morning. Did that have anything to do with her mood?
I didn’t get a chance to find out, not while everyone was squabbling. I focused on hobbling my way out of the cave without
reinjuring myself. We found Punkin guarding Jazmine, who was outside by the canoes, sullen and not interested in talking to
any of us, which hurt my feelings. But I gave her space, and we paddled our way back down the Little River to the party dock
in Benny’s backyard. And once there, everything fizzled out pretty fast. If I thought the Wags would be spending a nice day,
hanging out together, I was wrong. Benny was busy with Lulu, and Jazmine’s mood hadn’t improved. To all our surprise, her