Читать книгу The Finders Keepers Rule - Jacqueline Greene - Страница 7

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Maryellen biked to the pier, then took a long walk on the beach to pass the time until she met her friend Davy Fenstermacher at the clock tower. She searched the sand for interesting seashells, but all the shells she spotted were broken. She would have to get to the beach earlier in the day if she ever wanted to beat the tourists, who seemed to claim the prettiest and most colorful shells to take home as souvenirs. As she strolled along, Maryellen found herself scanning the beach for any sign of Mr. Buckley and Pete, and listening carefully for the clicks of their metal detector. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to see them or not.

By the time Maryellen got back to the pier, she guessed it was about time to head over to the plaza to meet up with Davy, who was planning to come straight from a special football practice. She walked her bike up Main Street so she wouldn’t have to pedal uphill—with no gearshift, her bike was no match for hills. As she trudged up the street, she couldn’t help thinking about the first thing she would buy if she were as rich as Mr. Buckley: a bike with three gears.

At the top of Main Street, Maryellen hopped onto her bike and rode along Ocean Avenue. She turned off the road and coasted onto the park-like plaza, marveling at the beautiful wall that surrounded it. Every student in Florida learned about coquina stone, a special kind of rock that was studded with ancient bits of coral and seashells. The wall, the clock tower, and the outside of the band shell had all been built with it. Maryellen could spend hours counting the different shells that stuck up from the bumpy pinkish walls.

The far end of the plaza was framed by the huge band shell. Its wide stage and curving roofline were bookended by two tall towers, and a long parapet bridged the towers high across the top. Maryellen always expected a fairy-tale princess to open one of the tower windows and gaze down upon her subjects strolling below.

The afternoon sun was growing warm, so Maryellen parked her bike and plopped down in the sliver of shade cast by the clock tower. At its very top, there were four clock faces, one on each side. Instead of twelve numbers, each clock face had twelve letters. On the upper half, they arched around from the 9 to the 3 position and spelled D-A-Y-T-O-N-A. On the bottom half, they curved upward to spell B-E-A-C-H. The clock was a town landmark; Maryellen’s mother often sent her parents a postcard of the clock with a funny note that said, “It’s high time you came to Daytona Beach!”

Right now, the big hand on the clock was on the lowest A, and the small hand was at the N, so Maryellen knew it was almost two-thirty. Davy would be along any minute. She leaned over the fountain that burbled into a pool at the base of the clock tower and splashed her hand into the water. Just then, Davy skidded his bike to a stop in front of her.

“Half past N,” Davy said. “I’m right on time—Daytona time, that is.” Maryellen laughed. The clock could be a little confusing, but it was lots more fun than a regular clock.

Like Maryellen, Davy was already in his swimsuit. A towel was rolled up behind his bike seat. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he said, pedaling off.

Maryellen was eager to swim, too. Although the December air was cool, she knew she would feel warm enough under the water. She hopped on her bike and quickly caught up with Davy. They coasted down Main Street to the beach, then walked under the pier and chained their bikes together against one of the thick wooden posts that supported it. Just before closing the padlock, Maryellen felt for her key, which she kept strung on an old shoelace. She wore the key like a necklace whenever she rode her bike.

She snapped the lock shut. “Now that I keep my key on the string,” she said, “I never lose it. It’s a pretty good idea, if I do say so myself.” Maryellen was not naturally tidy or organized, so she felt happy whenever she came up with a clever solution.

“You’re always coming up with ideas,” Davy said, grinning. “I guess sooner or later, some of them have to be good!”

Maryellen knew Davy was just kidding. They had been friends almost all their lives, and living right next door to each other meant that Davy had been around for most of Maryellen’s Big Ideas—some of which had turned out great and some of which had turned out, well, not so great. It felt nice to know that they were friends either way, and that they liked the same things—or most of them, anyway.

“Are you going to the dance on Saturday night?” Maryellen asked as they carried their beach towels toward a spot near a lifeguard tower.

Davy made a sour face. “I’ll go just to watch,” he said. “Football’s my game—not dancing.”

“I want to dance this year, if I can,” Maryellen said. “Carolyn has been trying to teach me, but I’m terrible at it. The faster the music plays, the quicker I forget the steps. My feet get all tangled.” She pointed toward the end of the wooden pier where a group of brown pelicans were waddling awkwardly, looking for scraps of food dropped by visitors. A few of the birds suddenly took flight, soaring gracefully on currents of air. “See those pelicans? We have a lot in common.”

Davy shot Maryellen a puzzled look, which she ignored. “Right now I look pretty clumsy when I dance, like those birds do when they walk, but once I get better, maybe I’ll be as graceful as a pelican flying across the sky.”

“Sure,” Davy said. “You’ll be gliding on air.”

Maryellen shook her head. “I’ll never be that good,” she said firmly. “I just want to be able to dance without tripping over my own feet. Carolyn said she might dance with me for a song or two, but only if I’m a lot better than I am now. She won’t want to dance with a pelican, that’s for sure.”

When they reached the water’s edge, Maryellen waved up at the lifeguard, who sat on the tower high above them, dabbing a line of white cream on his nose to block the sun. They dropped their towels on the sand. Maryellen pulled off the old shirt of her father’s that she used as a cover-up. Then she and Davy splashed into the waves. Davy dived beneath the surface and came up shaking his head so that his crew cut sent out a wild spray of water. “Race you to the pier,” he shouted.

“Go!” Maryellen called. She swam as fast as she could, legs kicking hard. She just barely beat Davy to the pier, but on the way back, her legs were tired and Davy beat her by a body length. Breathless, Maryellen put her arms down in the shallow water, anchoring them in the muddy sand as she kicked against the waves. She scanned the beach again, half hoping she would see Mr. Buckley just so she could point him out to Davy.

“Too bad you weren’t with me yesterday,” Maryellen said. “I met a man who was hunting for lost treasure on the beach. His name is Atherton Buckley, and he has a special machine that can detect things hidden under the sand.”

Davy listened intently as Maryellen explained how the metal detector worked. Ever since he and Maryellen had seen Treasure Island, they had both been fascinated by the idea of hidden treasure. “Jim Hawkins would have found the treasure a lot faster with that machine,” he speculated. He floated on his stomach like Maryellen, his hands planted in the sand. “Wouldn’t it be nifty if they made a movie like that and set it at Daytona Beach? They could use Mr. Buckley’s detector in it.”

Maryellen thought a movie set in her town would be pretty boring. A movie needed bad guys, and Daytona Beach just didn’t seem like a place that would have any. Jerry’s boss, Tank, was certainly unfriendly, and with his head wrapped in a scarf, he looked a bit like a pirate, but Maryellen couldn’t imagine him as a villain. “The detector would be cool,” she agreed, “but there aren’t any pirates around now to make it interesting.”

“No,” Davy agreed. “But there are sharks! That would make the movie really exciting.” He opened his mouth and snapped his teeth together. “Watch out! I’m a shark!”

Maryellen giggled. “You’re not a very vicious-looking shark,” she said, standing up. Water poured from her bathing suit and dripped into the ocean.

“Well, our football team is called The Sharks,” Davy said, “and I’m plenty tough when we play. In our last game, I made more tackles than any other player.”

The two friends waded back to shore. The tide was going out, leaving small furrows of wet sand between shallow pools of water. Maryellen amused herself by jumping from puddle to puddle as if she were Jim Hawkins trying to dodge the sinkholes in the swamp on Treasure Island. Just as she landed in one puddle, she spotted the fluted edges of a scallop shell peeking out. She reached down and picked it up. It was large, and unbroken.

“Aha!” she cried. “I found one the tourists missed!” She rinsed the sand off the shell, revealing reddish coloring along its ridges. “Beverly will love this for her shell collection.”

Maryellen held the shell out to Davy, and then bent to look for more. As the sun emerged from behind a small cloud, she spotted another round edge poking up from the wet sand. “This might be another good one,” she said, digging under it with her fingers.

What she pulled from the sand didn’t look like any shell Maryellen had ever seen. It was white and bumpy like some shells, but perfectly circular, with a hole in the middle. She swished the object through the water to rinse off the sand, then scraped her fingernail over the white crusty spots stuck to it. “I think it’s a ring.”

“Neato,” Davy said, coming over to inspect.

Maryellen tried the ring on her pointer finger, but it was far too large. It even slipped easily off her thumb. “It’ll fall off if I wear it,” Maryellen said, but the words were only half out before she realized she had the perfect place to put the ring. She untied the shoelace around her neck and slid the end of the lace through the ring. It pinged against the bike key as she retied the lace.

“It’s a good thing Mr. Buckley wasn’t sweeping his detector through the water,” Maryellen said, slipping the shoelace back over her head. “He would have found this first.” Then she remembered something. “Mr. Buckley said he turned in the wedding ring he found. I wonder if I should turn this in, too.”

“I don’t know,” Davy said. He toweled off and slipped his T-shirt back on. “That thing looks like it’s been buried under the sand for ages. Whoever lost it must be long gone.”

Maryellen nodded. The ring did look old, and she thought it would be nice to keep it. She shook out her wet hair and ran her fingers through the tangles. The cool breeze sent goose bumps racing up and down her arms, and she dried off as best she could. She slipped the old shirt over her wet bathing suit, trying to warm up.

“The ring could have been lost by some tourist from—from—Vermont!” she said, trying to imagine a wintry location up north. “Or maybe someone lost it ages ago while they were on a fishing trip. Maybe it took years for it to wash up this close to shore.”

“Let’s show it to Joan,” Davy suggested. “She might have an idea of what you should do with it.”

They ambled over to Sandy’s Beach Hut. “Shhh,” Sandy said as they approached. “It’s a slow day for customers, so I’m letting Joan study.” He motioned to a nearby spot, where Joan sat cross-legged in the sand, her head bent over a book.

Maryellen didn’t want to bother Joan, but she really did want to ask about what she’d found. She pulled the ring from under her collar and held it out to Sandy. “I found this in a sandbar just past the pier,” she said quietly. “Do you think anyone might still be looking for it?”

Sandy looked closely at the ring. “That looks positively ancient. Maybe you’ve found some buried treasure.”

Maryellen pictured a stash of pirate loot and felt goose bumps on her arms again, but this time it wasn’t because she was cold. She looked at Sandy doubtfully. “You don’t mean pirate treasure, like in Treasure Island?” Maryellen knew it was crazy even to imagine that, but it wasn’t easy to shake the idea.

“Aaarrr,” Sandy growled, rolling his eyes and imitating Long John Silver, the peg-leg pirate character from the movie. He squinted at the ring, and then scraped at the top with his fingernail. “Lookee here, mateys. Methinks there might be something carved in the top.”

Maryellen peered at the ring, but all she saw was the rough white coating that almost completely encrusted it. It looked nothing like the sparkling gold and jewels that young Jim Hawkins found at the end of the movie. “If this is what real treasure looks like, then I don’t know why anyone would waste time looking for it,” she declared.

“Anyway,” Davy said, “who ever heard of pirate treasure buried at Daytona Beach?”

“Not so fast,” Sandy said thoughtfully, in his own voice. He sat on the stool he kept behind the stand. “I’m something of a history buff. For years, I’ve been reading about the French and Spanish rulers who sent explorers to claim new territory around here. Hundreds of years ago, they scouted the seas up and down this coastline. Plenty of ships were lost just offshore.” He gestured out toward the horizon. “In fact, there’s a plaque up on the plaza to remember an entire fleet of French ships that went down in a storm right off the beach here.”

Davy leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Did any of the sailors survive? Or were they eaten by sharks?”

“Nearly all the sailors managed to swim to shore,” Sandy said, “which shows you how close they were. Now, I’m not saying this ring is from one of those ships, but who knows what might have been lost in these waters?”

Maryellen looked at the ring with new interest. She arranged the shoelace under the collar of her shirt so the ring was on display. As she and Davy walked back to their bikes, she said, “That’s probably just a made-up story.” Then she hesitated. “Right? I mean, even if it’s true, it doesn’t have anything to do with this ring.”

“That’s the problem with grown-ups,” Davy said. “You can’t always tell when they’re serious, and when they’re just pulling your leg.”

“I know,” Maryellen agreed. Still, Sandy had sounded convincing.

They walked their bikes toward the large open plaza, where a group of workers were busy setting up for the dance. Some were perched on ladders, adding lights around the opening of the band shell. Others were busy stringing rows of bulbs on the two towers at either side. As Maryellen tried to imagine how bright and festive everything would look when the party began and the plaza was filled with people and music, she heard someone calling her name. She turned toward the street and spotted Carolyn waving as she pedaled toward them on her bike.