Chapter 19
If you wanted to do something secretly in public, like dig up a time capsule in the middle of your hometown, you could wait
until four in the morning. But as Benny had said, you might have to avoid the occasional car, and of course if you’re unfortunate
enough for a cop to drive past, you’re a sitting duck.
You could try your luck at that.
The Wags, however, had come up with a different approach. The guy who’d stopped by to visit was working a booth at Haven Beach’s
annual Cherry Festival . . . the same festival at which I’d won Little Miss Cherry Princess when I was a kid. It was always
held downtown in June, a couple weeks before Traverse City’s Cherry Festival—the bigger draw in our state—to try to nab potential
attendees.
This year, the festival was being held this week. In two short days, downtown would be blocked off to traffic, and both tourists
and locals alike would gather in the street. Thousands of people. And with a little luck, not a single one of them would be
paying any attention to the four of us Wags.
Plus Lulu.
Ugh. I suppose even I could tolerate Mrs. SquarePants coming with us if she’d keep her nose out of my personal business.
So as the day turned to night, we sat around Benny’s party deck, making plans to dig up the capsule.
And thankfully, everyone was more interested in figuring out how to accomplish this task than Seb’s announcement to move into the cottage.
Since he’d already promised Jazmine’s dad that he’d drive an hour down the coast tomorrow afternoon to inspect a boat for
repair, Seb thought it would be easier for everyone if he continued staying at Benny’s for the next couple nights before moving
his things into the cottage with me.
“After the Cherry Festival,” I confirmed.
He smiled. “Looks like you and I have a plan, Malone.”
Yep, Seb and I had a plan; the Wags had a plan . . . It was plan central, and that made me happy. Only plan I needed to make
now was to track down my father in Grand Rapids.
Unless we find the golden statue. Then I’ll never need to lay eyes on him again.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
The action at Benny’s died down around midnight. Once we’d sobered up, Jazmine gave me a ride home, but not without grilling
me during the car ride about Seb moving in.
“Have you lost your mind? It’s a terrible idea. Didn’t I tell you he was obsessed with you?” she said. “If you string him
along, playing at roommates, he’s going to get hurt.”
She was concerned about him. Him!
“We’ll be fine,” I assured her. “It’s just a living situation for the summer. No one is going to get hurt.”
But as the next couple days passed, the anticipation I was feeling about him moving in continued ratcheting up, and Jazmine’s words haunted me.
I didn’t want to screw this up with Seb, whatever it was.
And I convinced myself that I’d made a terrible error in judgment, that we’d never be able to live together without burning the cottage to the ground, and our friendship would once again end up in tears.
Maybe I needed to discuss it with Seb again before he brought all his stuff over here.
By the time the Cherry Festival rolled around, however, I’d quelled most of my doubts. I hadn’t seen Seb in person, but we
texted a few times, with him asking various questions about what to bring—sheets? Towels? Definitely more towels, we decided.
He seemed fully committed to moving in, and everything was normal and good between us.
The next time I saw him was the morning of the Cherry Festival. It was already sunny and hot when Jazmine picked me up at
the cottage. We drove into town until traffic started piling up due to the festival parking, so we had to take an alternative
route, looping around the stretch of downtown that had been blocked off to traffic. It was nine and already filling with people,
so we met up with the others a couple blocks away from the festival area, in the parking lot of Dear Heart Donuts—who made
the best glazed doughnuts, period.
As Jaz pulled into a parking spot next to the Speed Buggy, I spotted Seb’s white-blond head ducking out of the shop, and my
nerves staged a coup.
He strolled toward us with a box of doughnuts, a faded navy baseball cap with a Red Wings logo sitting backward on his head.
When his eyes connected with mine, the sweetest smile lifted his cheeks. I smiled back without thinking. It felt as if someone
had suddenly come along, reached inside the darkness of my body, and flipped on a million lights.
“Mornin’, Wags,” he said, opening up the box of doughnuts on top of the Bronco for us. “They’re out of the festival crullers already, but the plain glazed is on point today. And I had them throw in a couple fancy ones, in case words like ‘cranberry mimosa’ rev your engine.”
I stuck with the glazed. And while Jazmine gathered our purses to lock them in her trunk, I had a small moment alone with
Seb.
He squinted into bright sunlight and spoke in a low voice. “So, is Jaz giving you a hard time about our living arrangement?”
“A little. What about Benny?” I licked crackled sugar off my finger. “Did Lulu tell him she saw us in the hammock?”
“Oh, she did,” he said, tugging his cap down more tightly. “I told Benny she must’ve been wasted because we were just goofing
around.”
“He believed you?”
“Everything is hunky-wunky,” he said, making an okay sign with his thumb and index finger.
“It’s hunky-dory, dumbass.”
“Hunky-wunky sounds best,” he said, giving me a little wink. “Anyway, guess the hammock is still our little secret.”
Jazmine returned from the trunk as Benny’s car drove up and parked next to us.
Lulu waved from the open window, sunglasses up. “Hey, everyone!”
“Hey,” Jaz and I said flatly.
“Yo, I got it,” Benny told Seb as he closed the driver’s door.
“Yes! Excellent!”
“What did you get?” I asked.
Benny waved us behind his Land Rover, where he lifted the back to reveal three shovels, a pry bar, chain, and a long metal
tool with a handlebar with the words “Big Red.”
“Perfect,” Seb said.
“What is that thing?” Jazmine asked. “Some kind of mutant car jack?”
“Hi-Lift jack,” Seb said. “This is the extra muscle we need. You can use them off-road, like, if you’re stuck in the mud.
Or you can use it like a winch to lift heavy objects.” He showed us how you could attach a chain to it and pump its handle
to lift. “See? A Hi-Lift can pull concrete posts out of the ground, so I figure it can pull out a little, ol’ time capsule
that’s been buried in concrete.”
“My dad calls it a farm jack,” Lulu said.
We all looked at her. “Is your dad a farmer?” I asked.
“Oh, God no. He’s a bookie.”
All righty, then. Next time I needed to place a bet on a horse race, I’d know who to call.
“I scoped things out, early this morning on foot,” Seb said. “Where they’re setting up the festival, and everything.”
“How was the time capsule spot looking?” I asked. “Are we still good to go?”
“Exactly as we anticipated.” Seb checked the time on his phone screen. “Speaking of, live music starts in an hour. We should
probably sugar up and get a move on.”
Benny pulled out a small cardboard box from behind the Big Red jack. Inside were five intensely red T-shirts printed with
the festival’s double-cherry graphic and, in big white letters, STAFF.
“Compliments of Brad,” he said.
Guess we were really doing this. I blew out a long breath to calm my jangly nerves as Benny handed out shirts.
Jazmine and I just put ours on top of our own clothes, but Lulu insisted on running into the doughnut shop bathroom to change.
Once we were all decked out like actual festival staff, we loaded the shovels and jack into an old wheelbarrow that Seb had brought in the back of his Bronco, and we covered them with a painter’s drop cloth.
“Remember, Wags,” he said, taking the handles of the wheelbarrow. “If we’re approached by any real staff who ask what we’re
doing, we—”
“Offer them a glazed doughnut,” I said, gesturing toward the box.
Jaz crossed her arms. “Then we change the subject to politics and start spewing conspiracy theories.”
Benny waved his hand mystically. “No, we just say, ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.’”
Seb shook his head slowly and picked up the wheelbarrow. “When we’re all sitting in front of the judge, I’m going to remind
you that you made that joke.”
“What’s a droid?” Lulu asked.
While Benny tried to explain the plot of Star Wars to Lulu, I walked alongside Seb while he pushed the wheelbarrow. The walk to the festival area took about fifteen minutes,
which doesn’t seem long unless you’re pushing a bunch of metal tools up inclining sidewalks. So we took turns with the wheelbarrow
until we began to hear sunny, 1960s Motown hits being blasted over speakers—that’s about when the crowds on the sidewalks
started to thicken. Seb took over the rest of the way, and we formed a line behind him, smiling at people as we made our way
to the center of downtown.
A dizzying array of food scents swirled in the air. Moms and dads pushed strollers. Kids carried cherry balloons: red balloons
tied to green plastic “stems.” Street performers staged magic tricks. Artists created chalk drawings in the middle of the
street.
Not a single person asked what we were doing.
Not when we passed a couple of food vendors who were rolling a commercial barbecue grill, and not even when a toddler with a cone of pink cotton candy meandered up to us and asked what we were hauling—his mother merely snatched him away and apologized.
So by the time we turned onto Main Street at the intersection with the time capsule, we were all feeling more positive than
I anticipated. Especially when we saw what Seb had already scoped out earlier.
The live music stage was set up on the grassy median in the middle of the roundabout, bisecting it. The front of the stage
faced the final three blocks of Main Street, and the back of the stage faced the flagpole that stood over the time capsule.
A small trailer was parked between the flagpole and the back of the stage, at the edge of the roundabout—the door marked private, performers only—and several portable barriers with black mesh screening had been erected around it to cordon off the backstage area and block
it from public view.
The time capsule spot was wedged between these black barriers and a fire truck that had been parked across the road to block
it off from traffic.
“Oh my God, are we are really doing this?” Jazmine whispered upon seeing it all. And I didn’t blame her. Inside my head, I
was trying to keep a panic attack at bay.
The stage basically marked one end of the festival. Three blocks toward the harbor, a roped-off beer garden marked the other
end.
“No cold feet,” Seb warned. “We’re here to get what Mabel hid in ‘deep corners.’ In and out. We’re part of the festival crew,
and we’re supposed to be here.”
“It’s our job, and we’re getting paid to do it,” I said, settling into my role as I tried to pump myself up, exhaling long
breaths.
“If we get caught, I’ll take the fall this time,” Benny told Seb.
“Over my dead body.” Jazmine shot Benny a dark look.
“Christ, stop it with that negative talk,” Seb said. “You guys are messing with my vibe.”
The bulk of the crowd were out of sight from back here. Most festivalgoers were in the three blocks on the other side of the
stage, browsing long rows of booths filled with cherry-themed art, food, and tchotchkes. Yet stragglers were continually strolling
past this part of the roundabout. The fire truck helped to block the area—it sat empty and unguarded—but the time capsule
wasn’t as shielded from view as I would’ve preferred. However, when I glanced around to survey the area, I spotted something
that would help.
“Look! There’s a couple extra of those black barrier screens leaning against the trailer,” I said. “Jaz and Lulu, help me.”
The girls rallied to lift the barriers, and we walked them toward the time capsule while Seb turned the wheelbarrow around
to lug it over the roundabout’s curb with Benny’s help. All the while, I told myself that everything would be okay—We belong here—while my pulse raced faster and faster. Somehow, we managed to set up the barriers around the time capsule, making a “V” shape
around the flagpole that blocked our activities from both passersby who milled around back here and the backstage area.
Well, mostly blocked. But it was the best we could do, and every second we stood on the green seemed to count.
“Everyone cool?” Seb asked, handing out shovels. “All we have to do is dig a trench around the plaque, deep enough to wrap
the chain around it. Then we can hook up Big Red and pull it out.”
It seemed to make sense, and I trusted that Seb knew what he was talking about. There weren’t enough shovels to go around, so Lulu played lookout while the four of us stuck in and got to work, digging.
When my shovel first broke ground, I had a moment of indecision because it felt as if I were destroying the town like some
kind of hoodlum. A pang went through my heart. Nana would not approve of this one bit. I’m sorry, I told her inside my head as I dug. But I need to find this in order to stay in school, please forgive me . . .
Despite my angst, I continued digging around the time capsule’s plaque with the others, making a channel around it. When Benny’s
shovel clanked against something hard, we stopped for a minute.
“Concrete,” he informed us while he and Seb squatted over the hole. “Looks like they built some kind of concrete shaft to
hold the capsule. Was probably meant to be unbolted at the plaque, then you could reach into the shaft and pull out the capsule.”
We’d already considered trying to unbolt the plaque, but Seb thought it would take some industrial equipment we couldn’t get
our hands on. Our only option was to dig out as much dirt around the concrete shaft as we could, so that’s what we continued
doing. How deep could it be, anyway? A foot? A yard? I didn’t know, so I just dug, dug, dug, then wiped away sweat and peered
through the black barrier to make sure no one was noticing us. Then back to dig, dig, digging. I just kept my head down and
repeated these actions, trying not think about what would happen to us if we got caught.
Until I heard a small voice behind us.
“What are you doing?”