I picked out a ladybug a little bigger and one a little smaller than the original.
“Now let’s go see where that rugby team went.” Carissa led the way out of Murphy’s.
“Or,” I said, “let’s find Quilly, who is the third link we need.”
“The third? Ooooooo. You know, it’s a magic number,” she teased.
“Stop it,” I said. “We need to get Finn and get going.” I wondered if there would be something extra lucky about Quilly, since he was third. Maybe something magical was going to happen.
“Quilly, Finn. Finn, Quilly,” Carissa said. “There’s something else you need first. Actually, it’s important. Possibly more important than a bug, but I’m not going to debate it with you.”
“What? Another good luck charm? I’m wearing my clover necklace and I have a rabbit’s foot in my pocket. I think I’m covered.”
“That’s all good,” she said. “But that’s not what I was talking about. I haven’t asked you why you’re dressed that way. And I don’t care. But I’m here to encourage you to get a new outfit. I don’t think you’ll get that kind of support from Mrs. Buck. She doesn’t look like much of a Project Runway gal, if you know what I mean. Capes are so last year.”
I looked down at myself and was reminded of the donations I was wearing. “Maybe just a shirt.”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Carissa said. “Wait here. I’ll take care of everything. That’s what a bestie is for.”
While Carissa went into a shop, I unfolded the soft felt and studied the three ladybugs. Each black spot was painted so nicely, probably by hand. I wondered whose. Less than three minutes had passed when Carissa returned with a cute tank top, hoodie sweatshirt, and tan yoga-type pants. “I outdid myself, I know,” she said proudly. “If I were you, I’d put these on now. Like ‘Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars’ until you change clothes.”
I ducked behind a bush and carefully put the tank over the shirt I was wearing and took the other one off underneath and slid it out from under the tank. I pulled the hoodie on. It made me feel like my old self. Then I hid behind a pile of hay and swapped the pants, superfast. “Okay,” I said. “Now let’s go find Finn.”
“Right, Finn. Who’s Finn? A boy, I hope.”
“Yes. A boy.” I wanted to say “And keep your paws off him” but didn’t.
I saw him at the edge of the crowd. He seemed like he was looking for me. My wave caught his eyes, and he caught Carissa’s.
“Hellooo, Finn,” Carissa said.
Twenty-Six
Carissa sat in the soup can’s front seat next to Mrs. Buck, who had put her gigantic headphones back on. We strapped most of her stuff to the roof and stowed one of her suitcases at my feet, so my knees were pretty much up my nose. The ride to Dublin was filled with the chatter of me giving Carissa all the information of our adventure.
At one point Carissa made a time-out T with her hands. “You left in the dark? Totally prepared to run away? Meghan McGlinchey, the girl who has never broken a rule in her life? I’m proud of you.”
I smiled.
She said to Finn, “Bravo to you, castle dweller, for encouraging her. You’ve got a little bad streak in you. I like that.”
“Not really bad,” Finn tried to correct her, blushing.
She was so embarrassing sometimes.
“Usually I have to talk her into stuff,” Carissa explained. “Maybe this funny-smelling Irish air has done something to her.”
Finn said, “Sounds like you’re a good friend. She needs someone to help her break out of her shell a bit, or she’ll never have any fun.”
“Amen to that,” Carissa said.
I saw the signs for Dublin—we were almost there. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a white, fluffy sheep darted out into the road. Mrs. Buck swerved to avoid it and landed us in a ditch that we weren’t getting out of.
Twenty-Seven
We stood around the soup can and assessed the damage. Not bad, but bad enough. We were stuck.
We only lingered a minute before Finn flagged down a red double-decker tour bus.
I rubbed the ladybug in my palm as the bus stopped. The door opened, and Finn quickly convinced the driver to take us to Dublin.
“Where’s the tour guide?” I asked. The driver pointed up to the second level. We were making our way to the stairs when a voice came from the speakers: “Hello, and welcome to Dublin. My name is Sean McCormick, and I’m goin’ to share our city with you. You can get on and off this bus at any stop. You just wait for another bus like this one, and with your ticket you can hop back on.”
“Let’s get off at the next stop,” Finn said. “We can hop on and off until we find Quilly.”
We agreed.
I saw Mrs. Buck playing a game on a cell phone. “Is that your phone?” I asked Carissa.
“No. It’s hers. I just showed her how to download Vintage.” Vintage was the hottest new game app.
“Did she ask for your help?”
“Of course. Do you think I read minds?”
“She’s supposed to be on a silent retreat.”
“That chatterbox? No way,” Carissa said.
The woman was talking to everyone but me. I didn’t get it. She gritted her teeth at the game.
Finn watched over her shoulder, asking questions about the game. “Who’s that guy? Can’t you jump?”
Mrs. Buck opened her mouth like she was going to reply, but when she caught sight of me, she zipped her lips.
I sighed in frustration, then said to Carissa, “You know this bus is going to break down, right? Maybe I actually am psychic, because I can predict that this bus will break down, probably on a railroad track, under a rain cloud, and everyone on board will be crushed.”
“Where are your bugs? Maybe you should hold them,” Carissa said.
I took the other two bugs out of the felt and squeezed them in my fist.
“Try to chill out,” Carissa ordered.
I looked out the window at dreary Dublin and tried to chill out. Sean McCormick told us about Molly Malone selling cockles and mussels. There was a statue of her with the cart she pushed around Dublin.
The bus stopped at the famous vampire creator Bram Stoker’s house, and that’s when we got off.
Sean’s bus pulled away.
“See,” Finn said. “No train tracks.”
Mrs. Buck continued to play her game while we toured the house and learned a lot about Dracula. Most people believed that Stoker invented vampires, but there had been tales of the undead bloodsucking creatures throughout England and Europe for centuries before Stoker. It wasn’t my favorite thing, but Carissa was in heaven—she was the biggest vampire fan out there. She asked tons of questions.
When we were done, we waited at the stop for the next bus. We saw that it was guided by a woman, who was obviously not Quilly. So we let it go and waited for another one.
“If so many cultures from different places around the world at different times in history believed in the undead, they must be real,” Carissa declared.
“You’re jokin’, right?” Finn asked.
Discussion of the undead made me nervous, so I subtly took a ladybug and rubbed it on my head, making it look like I was fluffing my hair or scratching. I made a mental note to get some garlic. Better yet, maybe I could soak the ladybug in minced garlic. I might have just invented a whole new charm to ward off bad luck and vampires.
“It’s just a folk tale,” Finn added. “Monsters aren’t real.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“I guess if a letter can bring a curse, then the undead can also be real.” I sensed Finn was being sarcastic, but it was tough to tell with his accent.
The arrival of another red bus interrupted the vampire talk. It was guided by a potential Quilly, so we got on. He looked like he was in high school, maybe older, and wore dark sunglasses. The bus company shirt he wore was too tight over muscular arms. He looked like he lifted lots of
very heavy things. His hair was light brown and looked like it could use a wash, cut, and brush. But who was I to talk?
Carissa bumped Finn out of the way and sat as close as she could to the guy. “Hey there,” she said sweetly.
Finn asked the guy, “Do you know Quilly?”
“I’m working, mate. Can’t help you.”
Carissa whispered to Finn. “Let me handle this. Watch and learn.” She took out a pack of gum, unwrapped a piece for herself, and handed a piece to the guide. “You wanna piece? Your throat probably gets dry from talking all day.”
He took it and looked at her over his sunglasses. “Thanks. You American?”
“Yeah. It’s Carissa. And that was watermelon flavored.”
“I’m Ryan, and I like watermelon.”
Ryan? That wasn’t anything like Lem, Leo, or Ted. This wasn’t our guy.
“Then this is your lucky day,” Carissa said to Ryan.
“I’m anything but lucky,” he said, and folded the gum into his mouth and talked into the microphone about Dublin City University as we passed by. Then he took a break and asked Carissa how she liked the city.
“So far I love it. It would be even better if I could find my friend Quilly. He works for one of the bus companies. Maybe you know him?”
I waited for Ryan to say it was Quilly’s day off, or he’d been fired, or he’d moved away—maybe to Italy or Iceland. Instead his face no longer looked like he was happy to be talking to Carissa. “Whatcha need Quilly for? Does he owe you money?”
“Nah, nothing like that,” she said. “Do you know him?”
Ryan announced to the passengers, “We’re headed to the country. It’s a great place to look for that sheep with a red bow. He could be anywhere.” He narrated some more Dublin facts, then asked us again, “Who sent you guys for Quilly?”
“No one sent us,” I said. “We just wanted to talk to him.”
Ryan continued the tour. “In the mid-1800s Ireland was plagued by a great famine.” During his next break he said, “Look, tell whoever sent you that Quilly isn’t around.”
Finn said, “We just want to talk to him. Do you know where we can find him?”
“No, sorry. I can’t help you,” he said firmly. “Maybe you should go sit up top till the next stop.”
The bus driver slowed down and called back to Ryan, “Yo, Quilly. You’re gonna miss the cliffs. You gonna talk about the cliffs?”
Ryan was Quilly.
Quilly was Ryan.
“You’re Quilly?” Carissa asked him. “Why did you pretend you weren’t?”
He sighed. “I try to keep a low profile.”
“Here.” I took out a ladybug. “Anna said I should give this to you.”
He took it. “I need all the good luck I can get, but if Anna told you to give this to me, she must’ve thought you were trouble. Well, I don’t want any. You can get off at the next stop. In fact . . .” He called to the driver, “Mate, pull over. They’re getting off.”
“No,” Carissa said to the driver. “He’s just kidding; he’s a big kidder.” Then to Quilly she said, “We don’t want any trouble.”
I said, “We need to talk to you about the chain letter you sent to Anna.”
“We just want to know who sent the letter to you,” Finn added.
“If you have to know, it was my dear old granny, Grandma Leona,” Quilly snapped. “I sent it because she seemed into it, so I played along. Plus, if that sort of thing is true, I didn’t want any trouble, so I sent the letters like I was supposed to. End of story.”
Carissa asked, “Do you know where can we find her?”
“I’m a tour guide. I’m like MapQuest without the computer. Of course I know where you can find her. She’s at 825 Strand Street, Wicklow. It must be your lucky day, because guess what? We’re headed toward Wicklow.”
He called to the driver, “Mate, turn right.” Then to us he said, “We’re on our way. Until then, take your bad luck to the back of the bus.”
“Thanks, Quilly,” I said. “I mean cousin.” I raised my eyebrows and smiled.
“I don’t have any relatives in the US.”
“You do now. Are you ready for this? My dad and your mother are brother and sister. I’m going to introduce them at the Spring Fling. Will you come and bring her?”
“Maybe. If you give me that bug.”
“I heard they work better if you pass them off with a double handshake.”
“I never heard that.”
“It’s an American thing.”
“Fine.” We did the handshake. “Cousins, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Quilly pondered this for a moment. “I never had an American cousin before. I guess that’s cool.”
We were getting off the bus in Wicklow when something hit me. “Did you say ‘granny’?”
“Yeah.”
“As in grandmother?”
“That’s the idea, yeah,” Ryan said.
“Is it your mom’s mom?”
“That’s her, Grandma Leona McGlinchey.”
The bus door closed. That was my dad’s mother, my grandma Leona McGlinchey. I had a grandmother!
Twenty-Eight
Quilly called Wicklow “Viking City.” It was breathtaking, with its high rock cliffs and small jagged coves along the coast. Waves of the Irish Sea, probably freezing cold, crashed on the cliffs and coves. Those coves would’ve been a perfect place for Viking ships to hide.
Strand Street wasn’t hard to find, and neither was number 825. I expected a tiny row house with dusty lace curtains, a home in which Grandma Leona would be sitting with a quilt on her lap, drinking tea and doing cross-stitch. Maybe she’d be attached to an oxygen tank. I had a grandmother, and I was about to meet her. I wondered if she’d be able to tell just by looking at me that I was her granddaughter.
Instead of a house we found a grand cathedral. The stone exterior had soaked up the moisture in the air, making it dark gray. There were tall pointy peaks that gave it an eerie Gothic feel.
“Do you think Quilly got the address wrong?” I asked.
“He’s like MapQuest, remember?” Carissa said.
Finn walked to the double doors and heaved one open. Before going in, I hopped a pattern: two, one, two, one, one, two. Finn watched but didn’t ask me what I was doing and didn’t even make a funny face. Mrs. Buck copied me, although she probably had no idea why.
We walked down a red carpet that might have been plush a long, long time ago. Pews lined either side. Mrs. Buck sat down in one and continued her game.
A woman wiped the altar with a rag.
Grandma Leona, at last. The final link.
I could feel the curse lifting already.
She looked exactly like I thought she would: apron, white hair, bifocal glasses. Finally the end of our search and the end of my bad luck. I could tell by looking at her that Quilly’s grandma Leona was a kindhearted woman who would give me a double handshake and forgive me. In a matter of seconds the curse would be lifted. The clouds would disappear, and maybe angels would sing.
The woman stopped cleaning and looked at us. She didn’t recognize me just yet. “Mass, six o’clock,” she said. “Not now.” She sounded Spanish or Portuguese. Strange that Grandma Leona wasn’t Irish.
I asked, “Are you Quilly’s grandma Leona?”
“Mass, six o’clock,” she said again.
Carissa whispered, “That’s not gonna happen.”
I shushed her.
“Thank you,” Finn said to the woman. Then to me he said, “I don’t think her English is very good.”
“Why doesn’t Grandma Leona speak English? Isn’t that weird? I wonder who wrote the letter for her.”
Carissa said, “Um, I don’t think this is our gal.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, because we’d gotten so close. I really thought we’d found her. I thought she’d take away my bad luck right then. But instead I got this woman—darn that curse! My shoulders slumped.
Finn said, “I hate to say it, but I think Quilly sent us on a wild grandma chase. He just wanted to get rid of us, so Mr. MapQuest picked some random location and bumped us off the bus.”
We left the church and sat on its front steps. Carissa said, “We should go back and make him tell us where she lives. I’m going to go find a bus schedule.” She walked down the street and into a little shop. I knew she was going to come out with more than a bus schedule.
A priest walked down the sidewalk and up the steps. He looked at his watch. “A line already? I knew my Masses were getting popular, but I didn’t think there would be a line this early.”
We forced smiles.
The priest asked, “You’re not here for my Mass, are you?”
Finn said, “Not exactly, Father.”
“No?” he asked, disappointed. “Come on anyway. You can tell me what’s on your mind. I have some time now.”
“Actually,” Finn said, “we’re lookin’ for someone. She’s our friend’s grandmother. Her name is Leona.”
“Oh, yes. Leona. Wonderful woman. Follow me, and I’ll show you where she is.”
“Really?” I asked. Things started looking better. I would find Grandma Leona and beg her to forgive me and break the curse. Of course she would, and we’d all have tea and scones and talk about what Quilly was like when he was a baby.
I was so deep in thought about Leona that I wasn’t paying attention to where we were walking. When I looked up, I saw Finn staring at a tombstone: Leona McGlinchey.
My grandmother. This was her grave.
She was dead.
Twenty-Nine
She just passed away recently,” the priest said. “Stay as long as you like.” He left us there in the small cemetery behind the church with Leona McGlinchey.
For, like, ten minutes I’d believed I had a grandmother. I stared at her headstone. It was very strange to see the word “McGlinchey” engraved.
I would’ve loved to have met her. That was the worst luck ever. I was never hopscotching again.
Whether she’d intended to or not, she’d somehow brought me and my family to Ireland to find the rest of our relatives. Her whole family was together because of her. It was a shame she wasn’t there to enjoy it.
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