Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match

by Candice Ransom

  Text copyright © 2013 by Candice Ransom

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Heather Ross

  Cover art © 2013 by Heather Ross

  Cover designed by Tanya Ross-Hughes

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-8097-5

  Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  For Donna

  friend-cousin-sister

  with love

  Chapter One

  The All-Girl-Plus-One-Boy Trip of a Lifetime

  Iva Honeycutt watched her cousin Heaven pull a card from her Daily Life deck. Heaven looked at the pink index card and frowned.

  “What’s it say?” Iva asked, interested in spite of herself.

  “Make a soap dish from the lid of an oatmeal box.” Heaven shoved the card back into the deck. “I don’t feel like doing that today.”

  “Who would?” Iva said. “I thought you wrote those cards yourself. Why would you put in something so dumb?”

  Heaven shuffled the index cards. Iva noticed she was quite skilled at it. She wondered if her cousin might secretly be part of the thirteen-year-old poker game held every Friday night in the basement of the Odd Fellows Lodge. Iva’s father played in that game when he wasn’t driving his big rig all over the country.

  “Some days I wouldn’t mind making a soap dish out of an oatmeal-box lid,” Heaven explained. “But not today.” She drew another card.

  “Hey, that’s cheating!”

  “No, it’s not. I made up the rules. And the rules say I can pick another card.” Heaven smiled as she read her own neat printing. “Pack for a long trip.”

  Iva fell over laughing on Heaven’s bed. “A long trip! That’s a good one!”

  Heaven lived right next door, in a house not fifteen feet from Iva’s. Iva could look out her bedroom window and watch her cousin water her African violets. Heaven was the only nine-year-old Iva knew who kept houseplants.

  Iva had a plant in her room too—a fake tree that never needed watering. She pinned scraps of paper with names to the leaves. The names of people who were nice to Iva were pinned on leaves at the top of the tree. People Iva disliked stayed at the bottom.

  Recently, Heaven’s name had been promoted from the bottom to a spot near the middle of the tree, which meant Iva was getting along with her at the moment. One little slip, though, and Heaven would be demoted again.

  “You are not going on any long trip!” Iva said. “We never go anywhere. We will be stuck in this town for the rest of our lives.”

  This was a sore spot with Iva. She was a discoverer, and discoverers went places. Iva had never been outside of Uncertain, Virginia, except to go to Dawn and Central Garage, the next two towns over. And Central Garage wasn’t even a town—it was just a garage.

  “How do you know I’m not taking a long trip?” Heaven sniffed loudly. She had adenoids and bad sinuses. “I’m almost ten. I could go on trips.”

  “I’m almost ten too,” Iva said. “In”—she counted in her head—“eleven and a half months.”

  “Oh, please,” Heaven said in a pitying tone. “I didn’t tell you everything on that card. Like where I’m going. Sit up. You’re wrinkling my best chenille bedspread.”

  Iva decided to shift Heaven’s name back down to the bottom of her tree. It wasn’t Iva’s fault she was younger than her double-first cousin. Iva’s mother and Heaven’s mother were sisters who had married the Honeycutt brothers. If their mothers had had their way, Iva and Heaven would have been born on the very same day.

  “So, where are you going on this big trip?” She spit on her index finger to twist the tufts on Heaven’s bedspread into little peaks.

  “Luray Caverns,” Heaven said, as if the world were her oyster.

  Iva knew that the famous Luray Caverns had been discovered a long time ago by a teenage boy and his uncle. She dreamed of making an important discovery like that.

  Iva’s father had visited Luray Caverns when he was Iva’s age. He had told her about the organ made out of stalactites that played real songs. And Skeleton’s Gorge, scattered with the bones of ancient people, and Giant’s Hall, and Elfin Ramble.

  And now Heaven was going. At least her Daily Life card predicted she would be. Iva was acid with envy.

  Heaven opened her dresser drawer and began taking out shorts and T-shirts. She stacked them on the bed beside Iva.

  “I’ll need a sweatshirt,” she said, sounding like she was fifty. “I hear it’s always chilly in the caverns.”

  “You don’t even know where the caverns are.”

  “Do so!”

  “Do not!” Then Iva added, “I can find it on my globe.”

  For getting all Bs on her report card, Iva had received a small tin globe that was also a bank. It had belonged to her father when he was a little boy. His grandfather, Ludwell Honeycutt, had given it to him.

  The Pacific Ocean was dented and somebody had spilled shoe polish on the North Pole. Iva loved the globe because it came from her great-grandfather, a discoverer like her, and because of the strange countries like French Indochina and the Belgian Congo. She couldn’t find those countries in the atlas at the library.

  “I’ll find the caverns for you,” Iva said, “for a fee.”

  “A fee!” Heaven snorted. She was a mouth-breather and could snort like a registered hog. “Like I’d pay money to see your tacky old globe that I can look at any time I want.”

  Iva kept the globe on her dresser, along with Ludwell Honeycutt’s geography-bee medal and other treasures. The top of Heaven’s dresser was littered with bottles of cheap perfume with names like Morning Glory and Pretty Peach.

  “My globe is a lot better than your crummy bottles of toilet water,” Iva said. “You spray that stuff on and stink to high Heaven. Hee-hee!” She laughed at her own joke.

  Heaven huffed with her left nostril. “If anybody stinks, it’s you. I’ll have you know I’ve almost got enough perfume to wear a different smell every hour of the day.”

  Iva was bored. “Let’s get something to eat.” She rocketed from Heaven’s bedroom into the kitchen.

  Iva’s mother was sitting at the table with Heaven’s mother, drinking iced tea. They murmured over numbers scratched on the back of Howard’s Big Chief tablet. A plate of Toll House cookies lay between them.

  Heaven snatched a cookie and asked her mother, “What’re you-all doing?”

  “Figuring,” Aunt Sissy Two replied. “Sissy,” she said to Iva’s mother. “If we rent this house, Howard can sleep on the sofa bed and—”

  Just then, Iva’s little sister, Lily Pearl, trudged in backward, dragging Howard by one arm across the floor. Lily Pearl wore an old lace curtain pinned on the top of her head. Howard was as limp as a dishrag, and his eyes were closed.

  Aunt Sissy Two jumped up. “Howard, honey! What happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Lily Pearl. “Howa
rd won’t marry me, so we wrestled. I won.”

  Iva wasn’t surprised. Spindly Lily Pearl appeared to be whipped up from toothpicks, but she was strong for a five-year-old.

  Lily Pearl dropped Howard’s arm. “Aunt Sissy Two, do you have any rice? You’re supposed to throw rice when people get married.”

  Iva’s mother rolled her eyes. “Lily Pearl has left her witch phase.”

  “Now she’s in a bride phase.” Arden, Iva’s older sister, slouched into the kitchen, stepping over Howard’s limp body. “Oh, good. Cookies.”

  Hunter came in behind Arden. Always as famished as wolves, the girls grabbed fistfuls of cookies.

  “Rory loves Toll House cookies,” Arden said to Hunter. “They’re his favorite.”

  “We should bake some and send him a box!” said Hunter.

  “How can he eat them?” Iva asked. “He doesn’t exist.”

  Arden flashed Iva a withering glance. “You’re far too childish to understand affairs of the heart.”

  “If this Rory guy was real, which he isn’t, he wouldn’t be caught dead with a couple of twelve-year-olds,” Iva said. But she was glad Arden had quit her summer project of screeching Johnny Cash songs on her alto sax.

  Hunter’s summer project—reading all the Nancy Drew mysteries in order—was at least quieter than Arden’s. Then they dreamed up this imaginary boyfriend named Rory, who couldn’t decide which one he was going to ask out on a date. Every day, he changed his imaginary mind.

  Sitting back down, Aunt Sissy Two poked Iva’s mother. “Sometimes I think we should have thought twice before we had our babies together.”

  “We should have thought twice before we had babies, period,” said Iva’s mother.

  If Iva had been around back then, she would have told them their Grand Plan wouldn’t work. How could they have three sets of almost-the-exact-same-age double-first girl cousins who would be best friends with each other? For one thing, one of the planned-on girls turned out to be a boy, Howard.

  Yet Arden and Hunter were best, best friends. They did everything together. Lily Pearl and Howard were tighter than ticks on a yard dog’s back. Iva liked Heaven sometimes. She wasn’t quite ready to claim Heaven as her best, best friend. She and Heaven had nothing in common.

  Aunt Sissy Two sketched a flower on the tablet. “Maybe it’s a mistake to put Heaven and Iva on the sleeping porch. You know how they are.”

  “What sleeping porch?” asked Heaven.

  Iva’s mother said, “I think they’ll be all right. They’re getting along better.”

  “What’s a sleeping porch?” asked Lily Pearl. “Does it ever wake up?”

  “Why do I have to sleep on a porch with Heaven?” Iva slid her question in sideways. That’s the way it was at Heaven’s house. Everybody talking at once. It was like that at her house, too.

  Her mother ignored her. “You know, Sissy, if we want a real good time, we should leave the kids home.”

  “Shoot.” Aunt Sissy Two flipped the pencil across the table. “Let’s send the kids, and we’ll stay home!” They cackled like a couple of setting hens.

  “What,” Arden demanded, “are you talking about?”

  “It’s been so hot this summer,” Iva’s mother answered. “We’re going away for five days. Just us girls—”

  Howard’s eyes flew open. “Hey!”

  “—plus one boy,” Aunt Sissy Two finished. “Since Buddy and Uncle Sonny can’t take off work, we decided we could manage a few days somewhere with you kids.”

  “But we’re rethinking the whole thing,” Iva’s mother said, teasing.

  “Aunt Sissy!” Hunter said.

  “Don’t worry. We’re going. All of us.” Iva’s mother gently bopped Howard on the head with the tablet. “Even you, Peanut.”

  Iva nearly fainted. She was finally getting out of Uncertain! She needed to know immediately where they were going.

  Heaven beat her to it. “We’re going to the Luray Caverns, aren’t we, Mama?”

  “The Luray Caverns!” Aunt Sissy Two snorted. She was almost as good at that as Heaven, Iva thought. “My idea of fun isn’t stumbling around a damp hole in the ground with two five-year-olds.”

  “Till death do us part,” Lily Pearl told her sternly.

  Aunt Sissy Two stared at Iva’s mother. “What did she say?”

  “Wedding vows. Lily Pearl memorized them,” Arden said. “Where are we going?”

  “Stingray Point,” Iva’s mother replied. “It’s on the Chesapeake Bay. We leave day after tomorrow for the trip of a lifetime!”

  “Yay!” Iva cried.

  “Yay!” Heaven said. She hugged Iva. Iva hugged her back.

  Stingray Point! The very name promised adventure and danger. For five whole days, Iva would become Iva Honeysuckle, Great Discoverer. She ran to the door, eager to pack her discovery shorts and pup tent.

  “My Daily Life card was right,” Heaven said smugly. “I am too going on a trip.”

  “So am I!”

  “You’re going on my trip. Don’t take too much stuff, Iva. You’re staying with me on the sleeping porch, and I hate to be crowded.” Just like that, Heaven could flip back into her old self.

  “And you leave those bottles of toilet water home. I don’t want my porch stunk up!”

  “I think I’ll make a special Daily Life at the Beach card deck,” Heaven said. “All the cards will have fun things to do. With other people.”

  “Fine!”

  Iva slammed the screen door behind her, even though it wasn’t her house. She didn’t need Heaven’s dumb old Daily Life cards to tell her what to do each day.

  Iva knew exactly what she would do at Stingray Point. Find pirates’ treasure.

  Chapter Two

  Stingray Point

  “Captain John Smith discovered Stingray Point,” Iva said from the front seat. She turned around to make sure Arden and Hunter didn’t miss a word. “I read about him in the September 1939 issue of National Geographic. You can borrow it if you want.”

  “No, thanks,” said Hunter.

  “I also read about him in a library book. Captain John Smith discovered Jamestown. You remember, don’t you, Mama, back when you were in school?”

  “I seem to recall something along those lines,” said her mother.

  “Everybody was unhappy at Jamestown. They were starving and arguing.”

  “Starvation tends to make people grouchy,” Arden said. She and Hunter were chewing bubble gum and drawing pictures of the bikinis they planned to wear when they met their imaginary boyfriend, Rory. Apparently, he was going to the beach, too.

  Iva went on. “Captain John Smith took a bunch of men, and they sailed off. They were looking for food and gold for the starving colonists—”

  “Yum! A gold sandwich,” Hunter said, poking Arden. They laughed their new fake laugh, which sounded like a cross between a hiccuping donkey and squealing tires.

  “Mama!” Iva complained. “Tell them to quit it.”

  Looking in the rearview mirror, Iva’s mother made hard eyes at the girls in the backseat. “Do you two want to ride in the other car? Split up this time?”

  “No, Mama.”

  “No, Aunt Sissy.”

  “Then let Iva talk.”

  Arden flung herself dramatically against the window. “But, Mama, Iva always tells these boring old stories about boring old stuff.”

  “I do not!” Iva twisted around again. She had learned the fine art of making hard eyes herself.

  “Arden, honey,” their mother said, “you know Iva can’t do anything without reading about it. It’s her nature. Let her tell her story.”

  Iva resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at her sister and faced forward again. She might not have been the pretty older sister or the young cute one. She was the one who learned about things. That was why she called herself Iva Honeysuckle, Great Discoverer. She was her own self, not just a Honeycutt cousin or sister.

  “Captain John Smith’s men
weren’t very good about getting food. They tried to catch fish in a frying pan!” She giggled.

  Her mother changed lanes to keep up with Aunt Sissy Two’s car.

  Arden began kicking the back of Iva’s seat.

  “Mama, Arden’s kicking my seat!”

  “Mama, Arden’s kicking my seat,” Arden said, mimicking her.

  Flipping on her right blinker, Mrs. Honeycutt checked the traffic, then swung off the highway into a bank parking lot.

  “Listen, girls. It’s a long drive to Stingray Point, and everybody has to get along. That means you, too, Arden.”

  “We’d get along a whole lot better if Iva would be quiet,” Arden said.

  Iva was amazed. Her sister was really skating on thin ice.

  In her you’re-plucking-my-last-nerve tone, Mrs. Honeycutt said, “Arden, if you don’t straighten up, I’ll turn this car around and take you back. You can stay with your Uncle Buddy. He’d be tickled to have somebody fix his breakfast and pack his lunch.”

  Uncle Buddy, who worked nights at the box factory, was staying at Iva’s house to take care of Sweetlips, her beagle. Iva’s father, a long-distance trucker, was in Oregon.

  Arden slumped in her seat. She didn’t say a word. Neither did Hunter, even though she wasn’t in trouble. As cousins and best friends, they stuck together.

  “We’ve switched cars once already because Iva and Heaven were acting up,” Mrs. Honeycutt reminded them.

  Now Iva slumped in her seat. It was true. She and Heaven had begun squabbling before the car doors were shut.

  Heaven had wanted to sit by the left window. She said the view was better. But Iva claimed that window. Heaven grumbled that Iva’s National Geographic magazines took up too much of the room between them. Iva said nobody needed to bring daisy-embroidered bedsheets to the beach—they’d just get all sandy.

  After fifteen minutes, Iva’s mother pulled over and put Howard in the back with Iva. Heaven smirked, because now she got to be up front. The Queen’s Seat, she called it. Iva said Heaven needed a seat all to herself, because her butt was so big.

  At the next rest stop, Lily Pearl, Heaven, and Howard were exchanged for Arden and Hunter. “Like prisoners of war,” Arden had said bitterly. She and Hunter could get away with murder in Aunt Sissy Two’s car.