by Obert Skye
“And remember,” Fuzzy said, “you are a visitor to our island. So keep your nose clean.”
“I have allergies,” I told him. “Sometimes my nose gets stuffed up.”
The sheriff and the captain turned around and left the room.
I made sure the door was locked and then took a shower and changed into a pair of brown cargo shorts and an orange T-shirt with the picture of a giant squid on it. It wasn’t Admiral Uli, but it was still pro-squid.
As I was getting ready to leave the room, I noticed the pile of pamphlets that my father had picked up yesterday. It sounds snobby, but I don’t really care about the tourist attractions on Bunny Island. Ever since I first arrived, I’ve been fighting to prove I’m not some Bunny Mooner who only wants to see the rabbits and do touristy things.
The top pamphlet was advertising the hike to Bunny Falls. But sticking out from beneath it was one that said, The Lost Hutchman’s Booty.
I pulled the advertisement out and studied it. It was an ad for the Lost Hutchman’s Booty Museum and Cemetery. On the front there was a black-and-white picture of a man named Harold Hutchman. He looked like a typical hermit, with a long beard and scruffy clothes. I was familiar with hermits. Admiral Uli’s stepbrother was a hermit crab who lived in the silt dunes near Briny Bay. Thanks to Fuzzy, I was also familiar with the Lost Hutchman’s Booty.
The short version of what the pamphlet said is this: Harold Hutchman was one of the first people to ever set foot on Bunny Island. He spent all his time in the hills with his dog, Wart, searching for gold. According to the stories, he found a ton of gold, and by a ton I mean a dump load. He mined his secret mine until the day he died, hiding all the gold in a secret spot. After he died, Wart walked into town and passed away just outside the old police station. Wart had gold dust all over his paws and a solid-gold collar.
Ever since then people have tried to find Harold’s hoard of gold. According to the pamphlet, the lost booty was worth an unimaginable amount of money. The pamphlet also invited tourists to visit the Lost Hutchman’s Museum—a small, one-room building next to the cemetery where Harold Hutchman and Wart were buried.
I set the pamphlet back down on the table. If the treasure did exist, I wanted to find it before Fuzzy did. That way I could rub it in his greedy, blobby face.
I made my way down to the lobby. I thought my dad would still be eating the free breakfast, but he was nowhere to be found. I was unhappy about his absence, seeing how he had promised he would go with me to check out warehouse fifty-six.
Summer was at the front desk, and as I approached her she looked up from what she was working on and saw me.
“There you are,” she said happily. “Your father’s outside waiting.”
“Really?” I asked. “For me?”
Summer nodded. “I think he has a surprise.”
“He’s not good at surprises,” I told her.
“Well, maybe this time will be different.”
“Hey, Summer,” I asked. “Before I get surprised, can I ask you a question?”
She nodded, so I asked.
“My dad said you grew up here, which means you must know a lot about the Lost Hutchman’s Booty.”
“Of course,” she said excitedly. “When I was a kid I always thought I’d be the one to find it. I didn’t, though.”
“Right, but do you think it’s real?”
“Who knows?” she said sadly. “Most people think it’s just a myth, and some people have spent their whole lives looking for it. But that’s not important now—your father is waiting.”
I wanted to stay and talk more booty, but instead I left the hotel and headed out to find my surprise.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A SICKENING AND EMPTY FEELING
I was glad there was no rain. I was gladder that my dad was outside sitting in a golf cart waiting for me. I was gladdest that my uncle Zeke was there sitting in a second golf cart. And I was gladderest that Juliet and Rain were there too.
“I rounded everyone up,” my dad said happily.
“I thought you had to work, Zeke,” I said with surprise.
“In a couple of hours.”
“How’d you find my friends, Dad?”
“Actually,” he said, “they came for the free breakfast. I invited them last night.”
“I’ll go anywhere for free pancakes,” Rain admitted.
“And I have nowhere to go thanks to you helping me quit my job,” Juliet said.
“Now that we’re all caught up,” my dad cheered, “let’s go see this warehouse.”
I was surprised and happy that my dad not only remembered we were supposed to go back to Port O’Hare, but also seemed pumped to do so.
“I need to be back by noon to take Summer to lunch,” he added as I got into the golf cart.
“Oh.” It was now clear why he wanted to hurry. “What if this takes longer than a couple of hours?”
“I like to think positive.”
The Port O’Hare thoroughfare felt completely different today. It wasn’t raining, and there were numerous golf carts driving on it. Most of them were going in the opposite direction we were. Once again I rode with my dad while my friends went with Zeke. The air felt clean and cool from all the rain, and the sunlight lit up the lush green Volcanto and Thump Back mountain ranges perfectly. My dad kept talking about how he had never seen anything more beautiful or lovely or fresh or good at her job.
“Are you talking about Bunny Island—or Summer?”
“Both.”
When we got to Port O’Hare, things were busy. People were streaming off the cruise ship and renting golf carts to drive around. The gift shop had tourists spilling out the door, and warehouse number fifty-six had two tractors outside it that were moving crates around.
We parked our golf carts near the three round rocks and then walked in through the gate. I felt like we were the crime squad or crime squids coming to bust a dirty corporation for inflicting dangerous robot bunnies on the world.
“This is the place?” Zeke asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Prepare to be worried.”
A man wearing a yellow hard hat and driving one of the tractors spotted us. He got down off his machine and walked up to us. From where we were, I could see that the front door was slightly ajar. I looked at Juliet and Rain. We needed only to push past Mr. Yellow Hat and we’d be in.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” I said boldly. “The jig is up.”
“What?”
Yellow Hat was playing dumb.
Zeke spoke up. “What my nephew and his friends were wondering is, what do you have inside?”
“Oh no,” I insisted. “We’re not wondering. We know.”
The man with the yellow hat looked confused. It was obvious that Fuzzy had hired good actors to guard his place.
“I can’t see why it’s any of your business,” Yellow Hat said. “Or why you’d care. But you’re welcome to look inside.”
“Oh, we will,” I shouted.
Before anyone could say anything else, I dashed to the door and pulled it open as wide as I could so that my father and my uncle could see inside.
“Is this none of my business?” I yelled. “It’s over . . .”
I stopped talking, because through the door it was clear that the warehouse was stuffed to the gills with . . . nothing.
“What the sea shelf?!”
The entire warehouse was empty! There wasn’t a single robot bunny in sight. There wasn’t a single real bunny in sight. There wasn’t anything in sight. Just a couple of tables and a large metal cabinet against the back wall.
Everyone stepped in and marveled at the vast nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” I said dejectedly. “There were thousands of rabbits.”
“In here?” the man asked. “This warehouse has been empty for months.”
“That’s not true,” Juliet argued. “Perry saw them.”
>
“Just Perry?” Zeke asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “We were spotted before Juliet or Rain could look in.”
“Are you sure this is the right warehouse?” my dad asked.
I nodded and mumbled, “Fifty-six.”
“Listen,” the man with the yellow hat said. “I’m not sure what you’re doing, but you need to leave. There are no bunnies here, and this is private property.”
“Someone moved them,” I said, feeling my resolve return. “That’s it. Someone must have moved them.”
“Perry,” Zeke said sadly, “if there were as many as you said, there is no way they could have been moved in the storm last night. You must have just seen some weird reflection or distortion when you looked through the window.”
“What’s in that cabinet?” I asked the man while pointing to the back wall.
“Not thousands of rabbits,” he said. “Now out.”
The drive back to Rabbit Road was depressing. I knew that what I had seen was real, but there was nothing I could do to prove it—the bunnies had mysteriously disappeared.
When we got back to the hotel, we returned the golf carts and Zeke and Rain left us to go to their places of employment. Luckily, Juliet was unemployed, so she didn’t run off. My dad had his hotel lunch plans, but before he went in he challenged me to forget robot rabbits and try to have some fun.
“We’re on an island,” he said. “There are endless things to do.”
“You’ve spent most of your time here in the hotel,” I reminded him.
“And I think I’ll spend some more.”
My dad whistled as he shooed some bunnies away from the front door and went inside. I turned to look at Juliet. She was wearing her hair in short side ponytails, and she had on a blue T-shirt and green shorts. She was also wearing the kind of expression that made me think she didn’t know what to think of me at the moment.
“So, did you really see all those rabbits?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Juliet sighed. “Maybe I should start looking for another business that will hire a kid.”
“You can do that when I’m gone,” I said nicely. “I feel terrible about you quitting your job, but since you did, why don’t you come with me to do a little sightseeing?”
“Does it pay?”
“No,” I said. “In fact, it costs two dollars to get in. But I’ll cover the cost.”
Juliet stared at me in such a way that it caused me to keep talking.
“It’ll be like one of those things that people do when they go somewhere, and someone pays, and they call it something, a name, a name that means that two people are spending time together.”
“Like a date?” Juliet said, smiling.
“Your words, not mine.”
“So it’s not a date?” she asked.
“I don’t mind if we call it that.”
“And where are we going?”
“To a cemetery.”
For some reason Juliet liked the idea.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE LOST HUTCHMAN’S BOOTY
The museum was an old one-room house right next to the cemetery. It was back behind the airport and in the trees. It cost only one dollar and fifty cents to get in. Normally it was fifty cents more, but we got a discount because it was our first time.
After looking around the house for a few minutes, I couldn’t imagine anyone ever coming back for a second time. We were the only ones there besides the short Japanese man who had sold us tickets.
The museum didn’t offer much to look at. There were a few pictures of Harold Hutchman and a couple of his mining tools. Hanging in a glass box was a leather coat he once wore. And stuck to the wall I saw a few maps he had drawn of his mines.
“He wasn’t a very good drawer,” Juliet said as we stared at one of the maps.
“It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if they have his maps, shouldn’t they know where the treasure is?”
The man running the museum was named Dillion. He was listening to our conversation and felt compelled to speak up.
“Most people think the maps are a trick,” he informed us. “A deception. Harold drew them to throw people off the trail.”
“This map is of the area out by the warehouse,” Juliet said pointing. “Look, there’re the three round rocks.”
I could see Harold had drawn a mine opening near the edge of the Volcanto mountains and right where warehouse fifty-six now sat.
“I didn’t see a mine entrance behind the warehouse,” I told Juliet.
“Me neither. Maybe Harold drew it to mess with people,” she said. “Or maybe it’s hidden by trees now.”
The drawing showed that part of the mine ran from the warehouse area back toward the Volcanto mountain range.
“Those hills are riddled with mines,” Dillion butted in again. “People have tried to use these maps for years to find the treasure.”
“Where do you think it is?” I asked.
“I don’t think it’s just sitting in some mine,” Dillion said seriously. “Everything’s been searched. He must have buried it deep in the mountain where nobody could ever find it.”
After studying the map, I looked at a few small pictures that were framed and sitting on a table. There was a picture of the gold collar Harold’s dog, Wart, had been found wearing. There was also a photo of an expedition team that had tried and failed to find the Lost Booty years ago. A third picture was of a man holding a bag and smiling. The small gold plaque on the bottom of the frame said Fredrick Newton. He didn’t look like a blob fish, but I could tell by his face that he had to be related to Fuzzy.
“Who’s that?” I said pointing.
“Oh,” Dillion replied, “that’s Fredrick Newton. He was obsessed with finding the Lost Booty. Forty years ago, he claimed to have found it, but after some investigation it turned out he was lying. The bag of gold he said was proof contained gold that was processed and brought from New York. He became a laughingstock. Nobody ever believed anything he had to say again.”
“We know a Fuzzy Newton,” I said.
“Captain Fuzzy is Fredrick’s son.” Dillion looked around the small room nervously. “He’s almost as obsessed with the treasure as his dad was. Of course, his business has made him so wealthy, I’m not sure why he needs more booty.”
“Maybe he just likes things that shine,” I suggested.
Juliet and I went outside to the cemetery and looked at the grave of Harold and his dog, Wart. They had a big square tombstone with their names on it. Carved beneath their names were four words:
THEY DIED IN VAIN
“Don’t you think it’s weird that one of the mines ends right next to the warehouse?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I just don’t know how all this stuff ties together,” I complained. “What’s Fuzzy’s game? What’s with the robot bunnies? And where did all those rabbits go?”
“And,” Juliet said, “how come I have the feeling that you’re not going to obey your dad and just have fun today?”
“Because you’re perceptive,” I replied, happy that she knew me so well. “Come on, I know what we need to do.”
For some reason Juliet followed me. Sure, she was perceptive, but judging by her actions, I’m not sure she was wise.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A SQUID, TWO KIDS, AND A CABINET
It took some convincing, but we were finally able to get Rain to let us use some of his bikes again. Well, it took convincing and twenty dollars. Rain tried to talk us out of what we were doing, but he knows how stubborn I am, so he gave up quickly.
“My mom will kill me if you guys get hurt.”
“Then come with us,” I offered. “Then you can claim you went along to try to help.”
My rock-solid reasoning caused Rain to cave in. He put a sign on a bike stand informing any customers he would be back later and joined us on our ride out to Port O’Hare.
When we got to warehouse number fifty-six, we set
our bikes by the three stones and then crept back into the trees behind the building. There was no sign of the man in the yellow hat, or of anyone in green shirts. We made our way to the front gate. It was unlocked, but when we tried the front door it wasn’t. Rain and Juliet looked defeated and relieved.
“There could have been people inside,” Juliet whispered.
“We can’t give up,” I whispered back. “Have either of you ever read issue number four of Ocean Blasterzoids?” I asked.
“Neither one of us has ever read any of those things,” Rain answered.
“That’s too bad. Because in that issue Admiral Uli uses a single spine from a tiger fish to pick a lock.”
“Do you have a tiger fish spine?” Juliet asked.
“No, I have my dad’s foot file.”
I pulled out the thin metal file that my dad used to file down his bunions. I had picked it up from the hotel after we stopped there so I could get a drink from the hotel lobby and tell my dad that we’d check back with him in an hour.
“Eww,” Juliet said as she looked at the foot file.
“Well, this eww is going to get us in,” I told them. “When we were here this morning, I saw that the lock was super old. So . . .” I stopped talking and slipped the file in between the door and the doorframe. By angling the file toward me, I was able to push the latch bolt in and the door popped open.
Even I was surprised by how easy it was. And I might be wrong, but I think Juliet was impressed.
Pulling the door open, all three of us quickly slipped in and closed the door behind us.
“I honestly didn’t think we’d get in,” Juliet admitted.
“I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t,” Rain said.
The warehouse was still empty. It was like a giant void mocking me. Where once there had been thousands of robot bunnies, now there was nothing.
“Are you sure you saw all those rabbits?” Rain asked.
“No dumb questions, please.”
“What’s the point of us coming back?” Rain complained. “Were you hoping the bunnies would return?”