Baby-Sitters on Board!

by Ann M. Martin

  The man almost smiled then — but not quite.

  “My Gertrude’s favorite book was Pride and Prejudice.”

  It was my turn. “Who’s Gertrude?” I asked as I finished drying off and lay down on the lounge chair again.

  “My wife. Dead now.” The man turned away. His almost-smile had disappeared.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “Really I am. It’s awful when people die … or go away. Nannie’s husband — my grandfather — died. And my dad went away once and never came back. Now I have a stepfather.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah. He’s the one taking us on this trip. He’s taking my mom, my three brothers, my two friends, my stepsister and stepbrother, and me.”

  “No kidding. Sounds like a mighty nice person.”

  “Oh, he is,” I assured the man. “And generous. I think he’d do anything for our family. But you know what?” (Why was I confiding in this stranger?) “One of my friends that Watson brought along — her name is Dawn — well, she and I are sort of having a fight.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah. I hate having fights. Especially when you’re supposed to be having a good time. And especially when she’s my guest.”

  “What are you fighting about?”

  “We’re kind of like the Odd Couple on TV.”

  “No kidding. Which one of you is the messy one?”

  “Me.” I looked down at my hands.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of,” said the man. “My Gertrude and I were like that. I was the messy one, too.”

  “Yeah? Then we’re two of a kind.”

  “I guess,” he replied. “Except that you look like you’re having fun on this trip.”

  “Oh, I am,” I agreed. “Not counting the problem with Dawn. Aren’t you having fun?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t fit in on this trip. I should never have come. I came for the wrong reasons. Besides, I’m too old and I’m a big grouch.”

  I giggled. “My name’s Kristy Thomas,” I told him. “What’s yours?”

  “Rudy Staples.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Staples,” I said, and shook his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Kristy Thomas.”

  Mr. Staples told me all about Gertrude then — how even though she was a neatnik, she’d been his lawn bowling partner, his golf partner, his life partner. But she’d had a heart attack and died just two months earlier. Mr. Staples had taken the trip for a change of pace. He said he needed to get away from his memories.

  I didn’t think the idea was working too well.

  “You know what?” I said to Mr. Staples. “It’s getting awfully hot out here. We don’t want to get sunburned. Let’s go inside. Do you know how to play Centipede?”

  “That one of those noisy, beeping video games?” he asked with a scowl.

  “Yes,” I replied, undaunted. “Slobs like us love them. So come on down to the Tropical Deck. I’ll show you how to play. I’ll show you how to play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, too.”

  To my surprise, Mr. Staples came along. To my greater surprise, he was good at Centipede. When we were tired of the video room (Mr. Staples said his ears were ringing), we went back up to the Sun Deck. There Mr. Staples showed me how to play shuffleboard. To my surprise, I was good.

  I looked at my watch after we’d finished a couple of games. “Gosh!” I exclaimed. “I have to go! It’s almost lunchtime. This was really fun. Will I see you on Treasure Cay?” I asked. (That was where the Ocean Princess was going to dock for the afternoon, but you didn’t have to visit the island if you didn’t want to.)

  “Maybe,” said Mr. Staples. “Don’t know what I’d do there, though.”

  “Just look around,” I said. “See a new place. Treasure Cay is going to be almost like a deserted tropical island — I think. Anyway, even if it isn’t, don’t you just want to be able to say you’ve seen it?”

  Mr. Staples’ almost-smile returned. “Guess so,” he said.

  “Good…. Hey, I’ve got the perfect woman for you,” I told him. “I mean, if you ever decide you want to start, you know, dating again.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My nannie.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Listen, why don’t you eat dinner with Mom and Watson tonight? I know they’d like to meet you. And you could meet the rest of my family, too.”

  “Well —”

  “See you later!” I called. I ran off before Mr. Staples could say no. I ran all the way to our cabin. When I opened the door, I stopped and stared in horror. Someone had done something to the cabin while I was gone, and I knew who that someone was. Dawn. What she had done was straightened it up to within an inch of its life. Everything was folded up, hung up, put away, or thrown away.

  Dawn had spent the morning committing a crime of tidiness.

  I banged my way into Mom and Watson’s cabin without even knocking. “Mo-om!” I cried. “Would you please talk to Dawn? She is driving me … CRAZY! No, better yet,” I rushed on, “can I switch rooms? Can I stay in here? Karen could move in with Claudia and Dawn. Please?”

  Mom was the only one in the cabin. She was sitting at the desk writing a postcard. “Honey, do you really think that’s fair to anybody?” she asked.

  “It’s fair to me.”

  “What about to Claudia and Dawn? Do you think they want to share a room with a six-year-old? And what about Andrew? He depends on Karen.”

  “Are you saying no?”

  “I’m saying I’d like you and Dawn to try to work out your differences.”

  “We can’t,” I said flatly. I left Mom’s cabin in a huff.

  At lunch, I spread the word that our daily meeting was canceled.

  But I made Claudia spread the word to Dawn.

  Treasure.

  I could feel it in my bones.

  We were going to find buried treasure on Treasure Cay. All the signs pointed to it. I had just finished reading Treasure Island, and what was one of the movies they showed on the boat yesterday? You got it, Treasure Island. I made Adam and Jordan, my brothers (we’re triplets), watch it with me. They didn’t want to at first (because Treasure Island, the book, is a classic, and they think all classics are boring). But finally they came along.

  On the other hand, our little brother Nicky and his friend David Michael begged to come with us, but we didn’t want them. You can’t keep people out of a movie theater, though, so they sat with us anyway. By the time the movie was over, we’d forgotten all about who did and didn’t want to see it, and who did and didn’t want to sit with whom. All we could talk about were pirates.

  “A really good pirate,” said Adam, “wears red-and-white striped stockings and has a black patch over one eye and a wooden leg.”

  “And a parrot that sits on his shoulder,” added Nicky.

  “And the parrot can squawk out, ‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,’ ” said David Michael.

  “He wears one big gold earring,” said Jordan. “The pirate, I mean, not the parrot.”

  “And he’s rude and mean,” I finished up. “He steals a treasure, buries it, and won’t tell anyone where it’s hidden. Except he tells his best friend —”

  “Whose name is Old Bad John,” said Nicky.

  “— but he doesn’t really tell him,” I went on. “He gives him a hint in a treasure map. That’s all. And he only does that when he’s about to die. He figures that if Old Bad John is smart enough to figure out what the map means, then he deserves the treasure. But if he isn’t smart enough, then the treasure should stay hidden.”

  “Right,” said the others.

  That was yesterday. Today we were still talking about pirates and treasures. And the Ocean Princess was going to dock at Treasure Cay! (Cay, which is pronounced either “kay” or “key,” is just a word meaning small island. I asked my dad.) We were sure the cay was going to be like islands in movies — all jungly and wild with monkeys and coconuts and maybe a couple of pythons.

  When w
e got off the ship, we sort of had a surprise. Treasure Cay didn’t look too different from Nassau. I saw hotels all along the beach.

  I glanced at my brothers and David Michael with raised eyebrows.

  “They must have let us off at the wrong island,” said Nicky.

  “No way,” I told him. “The captain knows what he’s doing. They announced ‘Treasure Cay’ so this must be Treasure Cay. But wouldn’t you know?”

  “Wouldn’t you know what?” asked Adam.

  “There are thousands of cays and islands in the Bahamas. Only a few are inhabited, and we get one of them. Why couldn’t we have gone to one of the other ones? It probably would have been real easy.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” asked Jordan.

  “I read a pamphlet,” I told him. “Come on, you guys. Let’s get going.”

  Since Treasure Cay was small, Mom and Dad had said that us triplets could be on our own, just like on the ship, as long as we behaved ourselves. The only thing was, Nicky and David Michael begged to come with us again. This time we didn’t mind so much. They made up pirate stories that were almost as good as ours. But we had to do some fast talking to get permission. We got it, though, and so the five of us set off to explore.

  “I don’t see jungles anywhere,” said David Michael, looking very disappointed. “Just hotels and swimming pools. Where are we going to look for buried treasure?”

  “Where?” I replied. “Everywhere! Think, you guys. Were these hotels here hundreds of years ago?”

  “Of course not,” said Jordan. “So what?”

  “So years and years ago, this island was probably just as wild as those uninhabited islands. A pirate could have buried his treasure here as well as anywhere else.”

  “Yeah,” said Nicky slowly. “I bet lots of them did.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “That’s probably how the cay got its name.”

  “But everything must have been dug up when they built the hotels,” said Adam.

  “Not necessarily. Look at all this beach.” I pointed up and down the sandy coast of the island. “They didn’t dig here. And even if they did, that doesn’t mean we can’t be explorers.”

  “Adventurers!” added Nicky.

  “Discoverers!” cried David Michael.

  “Come on,” said Adam. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  Most of the people from the Ocean Princess had drifted away to try snorkeling or sailing or fishing, or to watch the shipbuilders I’d heard about. But my brothers and David Michael and I were happy on the beach. We peeled off our shorts and shirts and stood under a palm tree in our swimming trunks.

  “This beach sure looks different from the one at Sea City,” said Adam.

  “Yeah, no waves,” I replied with satisfaction. “Shallow water.”

  I hate swimming where the water is deep, especially when you can’t see the bottom. But here, not only was the water shallow a long way out, but it was a sparkling clear aqua blue. You could stand in it and see your toenails and every grain of sand around your feet.

  “Look!” cried Nicky. He’d waded out as far as his ankles. “Coral! I found coral!”

  “Look at this shell!” said David Michael, joining him.

  “Throw it back. It’s pink,” said Nicky, looking disgusted.

  David Michael dropped the shell.

  We waded through the water, following the coastline, until we came to a tide pool.

  “Cool!” exclaimed Jordan. “Look at all those little animals.”

  We watched crabs scuttle along the bottom. They sent up puffs of sand. And a school of tiny silvery fish darted back and forth near the surface of the pool.

  Then we walked to dry sand.

  “Let’s dig,” I said suddenly.

  “Huh?” asked the others.

  “Let’s just start digging. Right here. Right now. Maybe we’ll find something. Look at that cliff of sand over there. Wouldn’t that be a great place to hide a treasure chest?”

  We all began searching. We turned over rocks, we combed through masses of shells, we dug deep holes in the sand, and we clawed at the cliff I’d seen.

  Adam found a comb. Jordan found a pair of sunglasses with one lens missing. Nicky found a lobster claw. David Michael found another pink shell. (Nicky made him throw it back.)

  But I was the one who found the treasure map.

  It was under a rock, far back on the beach, in a spot where the sand would always be dry (unless it rained).

  “Hey! Hey! … Hey!” I cried. I could hardly speak.

  “What is it?” called Jordan, running over to me.

  “It’s — it’s a treasure map!” I exclaimed. I held out the small yellowed piece of paper. “Look! There’s a diagram and some funny words. They must be in another language. I wonder what language pirates spoke.”

  None of us knew. We tried to make sense out of the arrows and X’s and lines that had been drawn on the piece of paper, but since we couldn’t read the words, we couldn’t figure out directions or where the ocean was or anything.

  “Let’s show it to that fisherman,” I said, pointing down the beach to a man at the water’s edge. “He looks like a native. Maybe he knows some stories about Treasure Cay.”

  But when we showed the map to the man, he just laughed gently and shook his head. Then he got a bite on his line, so we left him alone to reel in his fish.

  Later, we saw Dawn Schafer walking down the beach with some boy we didn’t know. We showed the map to her, but she barely looked at it. She acted like she was in a daze.

  “It’s a treasure map, Dawn,” I told her urgently.

  But all she said was, “Mmm.”

  Disgusted, we let her and the boy walk on. It was almost five-thirty, and we were supposed to be back at the Ocean Princess by then, so I folded the treasure map and put it in my pocket. We headed for the ship.

  “You know,” I said to my brothers and David Michael on the way, “this map could be for anywhere. We don’t really know. We could use it to look for treasure in lots of places. It doesn’t have to be a map for treasure on Treasure Cay.”

  “Right!” cried Jordan. “We’ll look everywhere. On the ship, at Disney World. Who knows?”

  “Yeah,” said Nicky, and his eyes lit up. “You know, there’s a stowaway on the ship. Vanessa and I saw him. Maybe he has something to do with the map and the treasure!”

  We all began talking at once. We had big plans.

  “Ow!” cried Kristy. “Claudia, for gosh sakes, do you have to step on me every morning?”

  “No,” replied Claudia, sounding offended. “I don’t. Not if you sleep on the top bunk. Then you can climb up and down the ladder.”

  “Nice try,” said Kristy. “This is our last day on the ship. Tonight we’ll be in a hotel. I have a feeling there won’t be any bunk beds.”

  “Good,” said Claudia.

  “And wake up Dawn, will you? I wouldn’t want to contaminate her or anything.”

  I smiled. This morning, Kristy couldn’t bother me. Even the messy room couldn’t bother me.

  I was pretty sure I was in love.

  Love is a tricky thing, so it’s hard to tell, but there was no doubt that I felt different that morning. I felt a way I had never felt. It was a pleasant feeling. And since love is supposed to be both different and pleasant, and I had spent the afternoon before with the boy of my dreams, I assumed that I was in love.

  It all made sense — in a confusing sort of way.

  Even though I knew we were supposed to get up so we could meet Kristy’s family for breakfast, I rolled over and closed my eyes. I wanted to try to remember everything that had happened the day before, on the most wonderful afternoon of my life.

  Kristy and Claudia and I had gotten off the ship together. The three of us were going to spend the afternoon — at least the beginning of it — together, because we all wanted to try snorkeling. We’d heard about the water sports on Treasure Cay, and snorkeling sounded like the most fun. So when
the ship docked, we immediately asked directions to the nearest snorkeling class.

  When we found the place on the beach we also found a whole bunch of other people from the Ocean Princess. They were wandering around, trying on the masks and breathing tubes, and asking the instructor questions.

  But I couldn’t have cared less about masks or breathing tubes or questions. That was because I’d spotted someone from the ship, and he was the only thing I could see, hear, or think about.

  It was the Gorgeous Guy. Ever since the first time I’d seen him — that time when we’d actually spoken — we’d been eyeing each other, watching each other, smiling at each other. But that was it. However, when he saw me on the beach that afternoon, he came right over to me.

  Kristy’s jaw dropped. (Mine may have, too.)

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I replied.

  (What great conversationalists we were.)

  “You here for the class?” he asked.

  It was a dumb question, because why else would I be there? But all I said was, “Yup. You too?”

  He nodded.

  Claudia nudged Kristy then, and it occurred to me that I should introduce them to the boy, but I swear I couldn’t even remember their names. (Plus, I didn’t know his.) Claudia didn’t care, though. She just smiled at me, nodded her head slightly as if to say “Go get ’im” or “Good luck,” and walked away with Kristy.

  “You know something?” said the boy. “I don’t know if I really want to go snorkeling. This is probably the only time I’ll ever be on this island. Why spend it underwater? That’s no way to see it.”

  My heart sank. What was it about me? The boy and I had barely spoken two words and now he didn’t even want to be in the same snorkeling class with me.

  I had to look away. I couldn’t let him see my disappointment.

  But the next words out of his mouth were, “Do you really want to go snorkeling? Why don’t we take a walk instead?”

  I tried to remain calm. “Sure,” I said. “That would be nice.”

  Nice? Nice? Couldn’t I come up with a better word than that?

  Apparently not. But the boy (what was his name?) didn’t seem to notice.