The Truth According to Blue

by Eve Yohalem

  “I just—”

  The words caught in my throat, packed into a big, hard baseball.

  “I—”

  “What is it?” Mom took my hand. I took it back.

  “Diabetes is expensive,” I said at last. They weren’t the words I was trying to say, but they were true. My insulin costs almost $1,200 a month. Insurance covers a lot, but it doesn’t cover everything. Not even close.

  “You mean you want to find the treasure because you think we need the money?” Dad said.

  “Well, don’t we?” I said. “I hear you on the phone fighting with the insurance company all the time. Why do you think I wait four days instead of three to change my infusion site?”

  Mom gasped, horrified. “You wait four days?”

  I flung up my arms. “Yes! Because insurance only covers enough for every three days, and if I stretch it I have spare sets, just in case.”

  “That’s not safe, Blue. You’ll build up scar tissue,” Mom said. “You have to promise you’ll change it after three because if you can’t manage your diabetes responsibly—”

  “My skin is fine, and I know how much extra infusion sets cost,” I grumbled.

  “That’s not something for you to worry about, Belly. That’s our job—Mom’s and mine,” Dad said.

  “But it’s so much money,” I said. “Thousands and thousands of dollars. And it never stops and it never will for the rest of my life.”

  The word-baseball throbbed in my throat. It hurt to breathe.

  Mom reached over and brushed a stray piece of hair off my cheek. “It’s true diabetes costs money. But we’re lucky—our insurance does cover a lot of it—”

  “Especially when we fight with them,” Dad interrupted.

  Mom smiled at him. “And Dad and I have jobs that cover the rest.”

  “But—”

  “It’s okay, Belly,” Dad said. “We’re okay. We have food on the table and a roof over our heads and clothes to wear, and don’t we go skiing with Aunt Jen every Christmas at her house in Vermont?”

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “Then what is the point?” Mom asked.

  “The point is that everything always boils down to diabetes,” I whispered. “And I just want…”

  I stared up at the ceiling to keep the tears from pouring over. Swallowed.

  “Blue?” Mom said.

  “I just want…”

  “Want what, Belly?” Dad said.

  Swallowed again. Hard.

  “This!” I held up the ballast. “This!” The baseball shot out of my throat. “I want to find one of the most famous missing treasures in the world. I’m so sick of the biggest thing in my life being my stupid blood sugar. There has to be something more to me than that!”

  Otis licked my knee and put his head on my lap.

  “There’s plenty more to you than—” Dad started.

  “And besides,” I cut Dad off before he could start listing all my unique, wonderful qualities. And before he could remind me that treasure hunting is too dangerous because I have a disease. “I got here, didn’t I? I mean, I didn’t find the treasure, but I got close. And lots of bad stuff could have happened, but it didn’t.”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other for what felt like an hour but was probably more like a minute, during which they were having a whole silent conversation with their eyes. Then Mom finally said:

  “What’s done is done. And we can’t fight Fitz. But from now on, no more secrets. No more lies.”

  Whatever flicker of hope that was still alive in me turned to smoke. The hunt was over. There was nothing more to lie about, no more secrets to keep. “None. I promise.”

  “And, Blue?” Dad said. “You may not believe this, but I really am sorry about how everything turned out. It doesn’t seem fair to me, either.”

  We had a depressing, awkward chicken dinner, where pretty much nobody said a word, and then Otis and I went up to my room, and I wrote new True Facts in my journal (TF: Failure tastes like curdled milk, lumpy and foul) while Otis gave himself a bath. I knew I should text Jules to tell her the bad news, but before I could make myself do it, the house phone rang. A minute later, Mom stuck her head around my door. “It’s for you,” she said. “Jules.”

  I picked up in my parents’ room. Otis and I lay down on their bed, and I put a pillow over my head.

  “What’s with the landline?” I said.

  “My dad took away my cell, and I had to look up your number,” Jules said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Amish serious.”

  Jules without a cell phone was like Planet Earth without oxygen.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “He talked to my dad?”

  “Ten points for Gryffindor,” Jules said. “Don’t worry about it. I get the phone back tomorrow.”

  I pushed the pillow off my face. It was too hot under there. Otis, who has no shame whatsoever, sprawled on his back with all four paws splayed out, taking up most of the bed.

  “Is this How to Punish Your Teen, Hollywood Edition?”

  “This is my dad trying to instill responsibility in me, even though he’s actually ecstatic that the documentary just went Oscar supernova now that the producer’s daughter is trying to scoop the billionaire.”

  In other words, Ed was looking out for Jules a little and looking out for himself a lot.

  “Did you get a cease and desist letter too?”

  “Are you kidding? Why would Fitz want to tick off the world-famous actor who’s producing a movie about him?”

  But Fitz has no problem at all ticking off the local guy who builds houses.

  “Listen, Jules, I have to tell you something.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not.”

  I told her what Marisol had said.

  Jules listened. And then she paused. And then she said, “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘so’?”

  “I mean, so what?”

  I sat up and put the phone on speaker so I could crush the pillow tight to my chest. Otis, picking up on my change in mood, wriggled himself into a more modest position. “What do you mean, ‘so what’? So we can’t hunt anymore. The whole thing is over!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Jules said. “Did Henry Hudson have permission from the Dutch authorities to sail west when he founded New Amsterdam? No. Was Clara Barton following the rules when she treated wounded soldiers on the battlefields of the Civil War? No, she most certainly was not.” Jules’s voice trumpeted through the speaker. I could almost hear the sound of a marching band playing behind her, like she was in one of those movies where the coach yells about spirit and guts and the underdog team goes on to win the championship. “Did my friend Kaylee’s older sister Izabelle have permission when she hacked the school’s emergency contact system and sent messages to every high school family canceling school for the day so all the kids could go to Coachella? That’s right, she didn’t. Because people who do great things don’t ask for permission. They just do the great thing, no matter what.” Jules paused, her voice still ringing in the air.

  Do the great thing, no matter what. Fair or not fair. Rules or no rules.

  Just like nobody ever asked me if I wanted diabetes, nobody ever offered to wrap up the Golden Lion payroll with a big red ribbon and dump it in my lap. There was nothing I could do about diabetes, but there was something I could do about the treasure. I could go back to the place where I knew it was buried… and take it.

  “Blue, are you really going to let a creep like Fitz tell you what you can’t do?” Jules asked.

  “That’s exactly what she’s going to do.”

  Dad. Who was standing in the doorway. And had heard Jules’s whole speech.

  “Right, Blue?” Dad asked. Even though we both knew it wasn’t really a question.

  This was it—I could feel it: my do-the-great-thing moment. I slid off the bed and stood as straight and tall as I could, facing Dad with m
y hand on Otis’s ruff for courage.

  “No, Dad. Not right. Our family searched for years and years and years—and now Fitz gets to keep the treasure just because of some permit? We already know exactly where to look—find the ballast, find the ship, remember? Besides, Fitz might not even see us there. And even if he does see us, by the time he tries to do anything or call anybody, we’ll have found it. We just need one last day to go get it.” I let go of Otis’s ruff. In my head the marching band was playing for me now. “Think of it like civil disobedience! Let’s stand up for what’s right.”

  Dad’s mouth hung half-open, which I took as a good sign.

  “Please. One day is all we ask.”

  Dad squeezed the bridge of his nose, and his head bobbed from side to side like two debate teams were competing for the nationals in there. Finally, the match ended and he announced the winner:

  “One day,” Dad agreed, then added, “As long as it’s okay with Mom.”

  And it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy lands in Oz and the movie goes from black and white to color, except without the evil flying monkeys and the witch with the green face.

  I wrapped my arms around Dad and hugged him as hard as I could. He hugged me back just as hard. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Dad let me go. “When you get off the phone with Jules, come downstairs so we can go over your plan as a family.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “A benevolent dictatorship family, not a democracy family,” Dad said. “Where your mother and I are the dictators, and you are the oppressed citizen.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Dad left.

  “You know,” Jules said from the speaker, “if you did more of that at school you might actually get some decent grades.”

  I’d promised no more secrets. Which meant there was still one thing I had to do before getting everything ready for tomorrow.

  I found Mom folding laundry on the dining room table. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Absolutely. As long as you fold at the same time.”

  Mom handed me a T-shirt, still warm from the dryer. I laid it flat on the table, smoothed out the wrinkles.

  “I’ve been thinking…” Tucked in one sleeve, then the other. “I’ve been thinking that I want to get a CGM.”

  Mom paused for just a fraction of a second and then shook out a dish towel. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Which was true.

  “What changed your mind?”

  I half shrugged. “You were right.” Which was also true. “Otis can’t be on sniffing duty all the time anymore. He needs backup… and I do too.”

  Mom looked up from the towel she was so carefully folding into thirds. There were tears in her eyes. “C’mere.” She opened her arms and I stepped inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  True Fact: Everybody should get to tell their own story.

  By seven forty-five the next morning I’d loaded the Mako with provisions and an airlift pump. I’d even scrubbed three weeks’ worth of dirt and gunk off the boat. And I had Nora’s letters tucked in my shorts pockets so she would be with me today, no matter what happened. I promised myself—and Nora—that as soon as the hunt was over, I’d write and tell her everything. No matter how many trees I had to kill to do it.

  We were 100 percent totally ready to go. Dad had to be at a job site to make sure the foundation of a house got poured right, but he promised to take a break for a couple of hours at lunch and meet us on the water later.

  At eight thirty Jules still wasn’t at my house. She wasn’t there at eight forty-five either. Meanwhile, our one day to search was leaking away like air from a bike tire with a nail in it. I texted. I called. Nothing.

  And then, finally, at 9:03, while Otis and I were eating microwavable mac and cheese on the front porch, Ed’s black SUV swung into the driveway. Ed, Anna, and Jules got out. Ed had a fancy video camera in his hand, Anna was patting sunscreen on her cheekbones with her fingertips, and Jules’s eyes were doing that laser thing where they got fierce and squinty, and it seemed totally possible that they could incinerate things.

  “Hey there, Blue,” Ed called, his I’m irresistibly charming so just let me do what I want smile lighting up his face. “Anna and I thought it would be fun if we came along with you and Jules. Get some exciting action shots on the big day.”

  Jules shook her head like Otis does after a swim and mouthed NOOOO.

  I searched for a good reason why I could tell Jules’s father he wasn’t allowed to accompany his daughter and her friend on a possibly dangerous mission that involved boats and evil billionaires. Come to think of it, why wasn’t Ed with Fitz right now? The movie was supposed to be about Fitz, not us.

  “Um… I don’t think my parents would want me to be in a movie, Mr. Buttersby.” I felt proud of myself. Maybe I was getting good at the whole finding-convincing-excuses-on-the-spot thing. It helped when they were true.

  “Don’t worry,” Anna said. “Ed checked with your dad already.”

  Maybe not. But either way I was positive Ed had lied. No way would Dad have agreed without checking with me first.

  “Besides,” Ed said, “don’t you want to be famous?” Without waiting for an answer, he motioned for all of us to follow him and headed around the house toward the backyard. “This way, right?” he said to me.

  Anna clapped her hands. “Come on, Otis!”

  Otis ignored her and waited for me to give the go-ahead before we caught up with Jules by the side of the house, next to the piles from the basement.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered. “He’s lying about my dad, right?”

  “Of course he’s lying.” Jules was so mad I could see the muscles bulging in her jaw. “He talked to your dad this morning—”

  “My dad said he was calling him yesterday,” I interrupted.

  “Well, he didn’t until today,” Jules said. “Whatever. The point is, your dad told my dad about the ballast.”

  Which explained how Ed knew today was the big day and why he’d want to be there if—when, I reminded myself—we found the treasure. The death-drop ride was back in my chest again.

  “There’s more.” Jules pulled me close to her by my T-shirt. She lowered her voice. “After he got off the phone with your dad, my dad called Fitz and told him about the ballast.”

  Whoosh… boom.

  “Why would he do that?” I said, my voice cracking. But what I meant was When did Ed turn into an evil overlord?

  “He’s trying to make the movie more exciting,” Jules said. “It’s all he really cares about.”

  Her eyes weren’t laser-ish anymore. They were just sad.

  Otis licked Jules’s hand, and she squatted down and scratched him behind both ears at the same time. Otis, who is not only an expert blood sugar sniffer but also an expert sadness sniffer, gave Jules a long, wet sympathy lick on her face. Which Jules didn’t even complain about. She hung her head for a few seconds, and when she stood up, the laser eyes were back.

  “Stop!” she yelled at Ed and Anna.

  They turned around, confused.

  “What’s wrong?” Ed said.

  “Everything!” Jules said, marching toward them with Otis and me bringing up the rear. “Stop means no. As in, no, you can’t come with us. This is our thing and you can’t take it over and make it your thing like you always do.”

  “Girls.” Ed smiled at us and only us. “I promise you, I’m not taking anything from anybody. You two are heroes! You’re stars! You’re the underdogs fighting the corporate titan.”

  “You’re doing that thing again,” Jules said, pointing a finger at Ed’s chest.

  “What?” Ed said.

  “Telling the story your way. Blue and I aren’t heroes or underdogs—we’re just us. Blue and Jules. Not Ed and Blue and Jules.”

  “Babe, this movie’s got everything. It’s going to be huge. There’s plenty of room for everybody. For Blue, you, me, Anna—�
�� Ed and Anna shared a lovebird-ish look. Gross.

  Jules shook her head. No no no no no. “There’s no such thing as everybody with you, Dad. There’s only you.” She clenched her fists into tight balls of anger. “How could you even have agreed to produce this thing in the first place?”

  “Hey, I had no idea you were involved when I signed on. Maybe if you hadn’t kept it a secret—”

  “That’s not even the point!” Jules interrupted. “As soon as you found out, you should have dropped it. Fitz Fitzgibbons is a bad person, and you picked him over me.”

  Ed’s smile dimmed, and suddenly he was the dad in line at Harbor Burger before the crowd got hold of him and switched his Hollywood star back on. He opened his arms to Jules. “Jules… Julie, honey, you know why this documentary is so important to me.”

  Jules took a step back. “And you know why this treasure hunt is so important to me. For once I want to be somebody other than Ed Buttersby’s daughter.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re much more than my daughter. You’re…” Ed did a swirly thing with his hands in the air. “You’re you. Anyway, I promise it’s going to be okay this time.”

  “No,” she said. “It won’t.”

  Ed let out a huge sigh. And then the Hollywood star switched on again, but this time he was the villain in a horror movie. “Let’s go. Move. Now.”

  Ed pushed Jules, Otis, and me ahead of him and Anna so they could keep an eye on us, and he herded us to the dock.

  “I tried,” I whispered to Jules.

  “I know,” she whispered back. “I tried too. We failed, but we totally tried.”

  At the dock, Jules climbed onto the Mako and started untying stuff. Otis jumped after her.

  I tried one more time. “The ballast is fake,” I said to Ed.

  “Your dad didn’t seem to think so,” Ed said.

  Jules turned on the engine; I got on the boat. Anna started climbing on after me.

  “Okay, look this way, girls.”

  I turned toward Ed, who had the fancy video camera on his shoulder—and almost lost my balance when Jules revved into reverse and pulled out. Anna, who had one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat, fell into the water.