by Various
“You are my prisoner!” some girl announces as she grabs my arm. I start to yank away but even in the dark, I can see that she’s kind of cute, with a contagious smile and hair the color of moonlight. “Hey, you’re that new kid!” She giggles, and loops her arm through mine like we’re an old married couple. “I’m Jaycie. I live in the Slater Farms development behind JimBeau’s house. Isn’t your name Dylan? Aren’t you JimBeau’s cousin? Didn’t you move into Auntie Z’s house?”
“Yeah. Nice to meet you.” Jaycie weaves us in and out between branches and bottles with frightening precision, and I can only hope I don’t trip over something, face-plant, and embarrass the hell out of myself. Someone or something is rustling through the dead leaves nearby, but Jaycie is oblivious.
“Teagan!” she shouts. “Check out my prisoner! It’s that new kid, Dylan!” We come to a clearing, and I barely even notice this Teagan person because she is standing in front of a knee-high pile of rocks.
“Hey.” I point. “Is that the Native American grave?”
“Yup.” Jaycie doesn’t even bother to look. “And it’s also your prison since I captured you. Sit!” She plunks herself down beside the cairn and pats a spot beside her. “Prepare to be interrogated.”
I sit carefully, reverently, on a bed of pine needles and broken twigs. Who is buried under these rocks? How did he or she die? And what’s left of the body? Dusty dirt sticks to my sweaty hands and I brush them off on my pants, then wish I hadn’t done that. Can bone dust work its way to the surface?
“So tell me about yourself,” Jaycie prods. “JimBeau said you’re from Orlando. That must be so cool! Isn’t the Tower of Terror the most awesome ride ever?”
JimBeau’s rough voice comes out of the darkness. “Where the hell is your flag, Teagan? I’ve looked everywhere.”
Jaycie grins and winks at me while she reaches into her shirt and offers me a peek at the flag and her cleavage, then she holds one finger to her lips. O-kay, then. “I won’t tell a soul,” I assure her.
My cousin and his friends are like a troop of beer can–carrying baboons. I get no hello from JimBeau, just a dirty look that I translate into WTF! You weren’t supposed to actually show up, moron! He walks over to us, smirks at Jaycie, reaches right down her shirt, and takes his time groping around for the flag while she shimmies around, giggling and squealing.
I add pervert to the list of my cousin’s offensive qualities.
“JimBeau!” Jaycie shrieks. “You just scratched me, you cretin!”
“Oh, you love it.” He yanks the flag from her bra and waves it in my face. “We win.”
Teagan scowls and gives JimBeau a filthy look.
“Hey!” One of JimBeau’s friends parks himself between Jaycie and me. He’s wearing a faded Dragon Ball Z shirt and he’s got a manga sticking out of the pocket of his cargo pants, so I think maybe he’s not a complete jackass. “I’m Mike. So you’re JimBeau’s cousin?”
“Yeah, I’m Dylan.”
“JimBeau says you play soccer.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Mike guzzles the rest of his beer down, crushes the can in one hand, and burps in my direction. “Real men play football, son.”
JimBeau laughs. “Dylan’s scared he’ll get his ass handed to him.”
“Shut it, JimBeau!” This is the first time I’ve heard Teagan speak and her voice swipes through the air like cat’s claws. “It’s not his fault Auntie Z didn’t leave you jackshit in her will. Maybe if you and your football buddies didn’t raid her medicine cabinet every chance you got…”
“Screw you! Maybe if you had what it takes to be a cheerleader, you wouldn’t be such a tight-ass bitch.”
Teagan flips JimBeau the finger and turns to me. “Would you mind walking me home, Dylan? I live right on the other side of the woods. In a neighborhood that doesn’t have a name!”
“Oh. Sure.” I stand up, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a tall, gorgeous girl with long strawberry-blond hair and an anime-style schoolgirl uniform leaning against a pine trunk, giving us all disapproving looks. I can’t say I blame her. She reaches up to touch a bottle, sending it into a slow spin. I smile at her as I trot off after Teagan, but Anime Girl doesn’t return the smile. Out of your league, Dylan, I tell myself. Don’t even go there.
Teagan stomps off toward a distant light along an invisible path and I try to stay close to her. I still hear a stealthy something rustling through the woods nearby. “Sorry,” Teagan says over her shoulder, “I know JimBeau’s your cousin and all, but I can’t stand him. And I have zero interest in being a cheerleader. I’ve been playing soccer since I was in kindergarten.”
“That makes two of us, on all counts.”
“So you’re not interested in being a cheerleader either?”
We both laugh.
“I really loved your Auntie Z.” Teagan slows her pace to match mine. “She was such a character. Did you know she used to smoke cigars? She called them cheroots. God, they smelled foul! And she loved a shot of apricot brandy in her afternoon tea. But she was so sweet to us. She was always baking us snickerdoodles and she had the best stories.”
“Ghost stories?” I prompt her.
“Well, not a ghost, exactly. Auntie Z said there’s a banshee in the woods.”
“A banshee?” No wonder my mother never paid attention to the ghost stories—they sound ridiculous. “Aren’t banshees the screamers from Scotland?”
“Screamers, wailers, take your pick. She said she only saw it once when she was a kid, and it was all wispy in a long gray cloak and it sounded like this…”
Teagan makes a low inhuman sound, somewhere between a human scream and an owl’s hoot, and it raises goosebumps on the back of my neck. “That’s going to give me nightmares,” I tell her.
Teagan looks delighted to have spooked me. “And later that night, her grandfather died! Right in the house where JimBeau lives now!”
“No way!”
“Yes way! That’s how she figured out it was a banshee—they’re a harbinger of death. Although I’ve never seen anything even remotely creepy in our woods, except for those stupid bottles. That’s why they’re there, you know, to scare the banshee away, so who knows? Maybe they work. You’d think we’d have Native American spirits all over the place with that grave, but I haven’t seen a single one. Such a rip-off!” The woods seem far less scary with Teagan chattering away beside me. “I guess it makes sense, though, considering your family is mostly Irish.”
“Are we? My mom never told me much about my family.” I lower my voice as we cross from rough wooded ground to the trim soft lawn of someone’s backyard.
“Really? Your aunt loved to dish dirt about your relatives.”
“How dirty is this dirt?” I ask.
“Well, JimBeau the First was her grandfather, and she said he owned slaves.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t he my great-great-grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“But how is that even possible? There were no slaves this far north.”
“He sponsored girls from Ireland. He paid for their traveling expenses, gave them room and board, and in exchange, they worked three years for him on the farm. Unless they didn’t work out. Then he shipped them down to work in the mill, but that was before child labor laws, so the working conditions sucked.”
“I bet.”
“Yeah. But one of his girls disappeared. Supposedly, she ran off to New York City, but when Auntie Z was a teenager, she was friends with a girl whose mother was one of those Irish girls, and she thought the girl was murdered.”
“By who?”
“Who knows?” Teagan hauls off and kicks a stray ball across the dark yard and I hear it smack against something hard. For a second, I think I see Anime Girl coming toward us, but then I realize the ball hit a swing set and it’s only the swing moving.
“Auntie Z said there were a lot of transient people who worked on the farm during the summers so maybe one of
them did it. Although one day when Auntie Z had a few too many shots of apricot brandy, she said she wouldn’t put it past her grandfather, but we’ll never know, will we?” Teagan says mysteriously and then her voice mellows. “It must be hard for you to switch schools halfway through high school. What are you, a junior?”
“Yeah. We went down to sign me up for school this morning, so I’ll start tomorrow. What year are you?”
“I’m a junior, too. Your bus stop is right under the stop sign on Brewster Road, right beside the woods. You need to be there no later than six thirty. I get on one stop before so I’ll save you a seat.”
Things are looking up.
I barely slept all night because something was scratching around inside my bedroom walls. My mother diagnosed mice and promised to call an exterminator. Awesome. I get up before the alarm goes off, so here I am, alone at the bus stop at 6:15 with nothing to do but drool over JimBeau’s hot little red Miata sitting in his driveway across the street.
“Dylan, is it?”
I spin 180 degrees toward a sudden, sexy voice with an inscrutable accent. Anime Girl is leaning gracefully against a bare trunk of a pine tree, looking amused.
“I’m sorry. Did I frighten you?”
“No! You just surprised me.” To the point of nearly peeing myself. “Didn’t I see you in the woods last night?”
“Yes, and I saw you, as well.” Anime Girl pushes away from the tree and circles me, appraising. “You don’t appear to be very fond of your cousin.”
“I can’t stand the guy,” I admit.
Anime Girl laughs and the birds laugh with her. Anime Girl smiles and the sun shines brighter. She is way hot, sizzling, steamy, out-of-my-league hot. My mom raised me to be a gentleman, so when that bus pulls up, I’ll let her get on first, of course, and then what? Teagan said she’d save me a seat. I have to sit with Teagan, but oh, man! What if Anime Girl asks me to sit with her? What if…
“Hey, wait a minute. How do you know my name? And—” I can’t keep calling her Anime Girl “—what’s yours?”
“Vanessa.” She says her name like it’s a whisper, a kiss, a rose-scented breeze.
“Vanessa,” I repeat, but there’s no magic when I say it. “Do you live in the Slater Farms development, too?”
She arches her fair eyebrows delicately. “I would never live there. It broke Auntie Z’s heart when your uncle sold off the family farmland. Why do you think she left your uncle rubbish in her will?”
“I was wondering that myself.”
“I’m sure. Are you excited about starting school?”
“Meh. Do you consider dread a form of excitement?”
Vanessa laughs and the angels dance.
“What year are you?” I ask hopefully.
“Oh, I don’t go to your school.”
“Aren’t you waiting for the bus?”
“Not your bus.”
“Do you go to private school?”
Vanessa smiles. “Very private.”
“Well, that explains your…uniform.”
Her face clouds over. “What’s wrong with my uniform?”
“Well…” How do I explain this without sounding like some kind of pervert? “Your skirt is kind of, uh, short.”
“Really?” Vanessa’s blue eyes gape at me. “But it’s no shorter than the skirts in the book.”
She must be talking about the student conduct book. “At the school I went to in Florida, you couldn’t wear a skirt or shorts more than six inches above your knee.”
“Is this more than six inches above my knee?”
I look down and do a double take. I could swear her skirt was several inches shorter than it is. “It’s, uh, no. Sorry. Maybe you were leaning over and it just looked shorter.” I feel like a total idiot now, but at least Vanessa looks relieved.
“Your bus is coming.”
I look down the street, but I don’t see anything. “Where?”
“Listen.”
I’m silent, listening, and I still can’t hear anything but birdsong.
“Close your eyes,” Vanessa suggests.
It’s only then that I hear the signature rumble of a distant school bus, and when I open my eyes, Vanessa is leaning against the pine tree’s trunk once again. “Did you know your cousin used to steal from Auntie Z?”
“I did hear that. He used to take her prescription drugs?”
“Yes, he used to sell those. He took her money, too. And jewelry.”
“What a jerk!” No wonder Aunt Z would rather leave her inheritance to my mom who she rarely saw rather than to JimBeau and his family, who obviously took advantage of her.
“She used to bury things so he couldn’t steal them,” Vanessa says as she watches my bus turn the corner toward us. “Meet me in the woods after school and I’ll show you where she buried her treasure.”
She winks at me as my bus chuffs to a stop. “Don’t forget a shovel.”
True to her word, Teagan has saved me a seat. The bus driver waits until I drop down beside her before he roars off, and the first thing I say to Teagan is not “hello” but “Do you know her?”
“Who?”
“That girl.” I point out the window, but Vanessa has already disappeared into the woods.
Teagan shrugs. “I don’t see anyone.”
I bounce Vanessa’s theory that my great-aunt Z has buried treasure in the woods, and Teagan’s face lights up.
“Auntie Z used to complain to JimBeau’s parents about the stuff he stole, but they didn’t do a damn thing about it,” she informs me. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Auntie Z did bury stuff, but I don’t know anyone around here named Vanessa.”
“Long, reddish hair? Tall? Thin? Blue eyes?” I swallow the word “beautiful.”
Teagan shakes her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“She said she goes to private school.”
“Oh, no wonder! The kids who go to St. Claire’s won’t be caught dead slumming with us. There’s a bunch of kids a few streets over in the Juniper Pines development that go to St. Claire’s and sometimes they hang out in our woods. She’s probably one of them.”
“And they catch the bus at the same place I do?”
“No, they have a bus stop at the end of their street.”
I sit back and contemplate this bizarre puzzle. Who is this girl who knows my name, who trolls the woods alone at night, who knew my great-aunt Z so well that she knows where her money stash was buried?
“I’m just really surprised, you know?” Teagan chews on the string of her hoodie. “Auntie Z used to tell me all kinds of stuff. I don’t know why she told this Vanessa chick where she buried her loot but not me.”
The words spurt out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Do you want to come digging for treasure with us?”
“Ohmigod, yes! I’d love to!” Teagan does a sneaker drumroll on the floor of the bus and grins at me. “I’ll bring my own shovel and help you dig! This is going to be so cool!”
Teagan sticks to me like honey all day, giving me the grand tour of the school, introducing me to her friends, scowling at JimBeau and his friends any time we pass them in the halls.
“So I know he’s a jerk,” I say after lunch, “but you seem to have a concentrated amount of hatred for James Beauregard the Fifth. How come?”
“Because he treats girls like dirt! Did you see what he did to Jaycie when he wanted the flag?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“He tried that with me exactly once, and I kicked him so hard there may never be a JimBeau the sixth.”
Which would be no great loss to civilized society, but still. “Sorry my cousin’s such a douche.”
“It’s not your fault.”
After the bus drops me off, I change into my grungiest jeans and head out to the shed, where I assume all good shovels live. The latch lifts easily enough, but the door won’t budge. I yank twice, three times, before I hear Vanessa’s voice. “That door hasn’t been opened for ages. I expect the w
ood’s swollen from the heat. Give it a kick and see if it helps.”
I kick it once and pull. Nothing happens.
Vanessa laughs. “Put some muscle into it, boy.”
I give her the who are you calling boy? look, haul back, and wham! Nothing.
“Imagine you’re giving your cousin a good swift kick in the pants!” Vanessa suggests.
I grin. “You want to help?”
“As much as I would love to…” She steps back, crosses her arms over her chest, and smiles. “I have faith in you, Dylan. You can do this.”
With one final kick and pull, the door wheezes open, releasing a fine cloud of dust into the sunlight, my mouth, and up my nose.
I cough it out, and when I inhale, I notice the shed smells a lot like my bedroom.
“Why does everything around here stink?” I complain.
Vanessa slips past me into the dark shed and points to a small pile of furred and feathered corpses in various degrees of decomposition in the corner.
“Ack!” My feet seem programmed to run away from death. I stop myself after two steps, but not before Vanessa notices.
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Auntie Z’s cats have been busy, I see.”
“Yeah, fine.” I laugh it off and hope she doesn’t think I’m a total wuss. “Stupid cats. Didn’t my aunt ever feed them?”
“Yes, but cats are soulless creatures—they kill for the sport of it.” She smiles sympathetically. “Breathe through your mouth. You’ll be fine.”
The shed is full of antique tools, wooden handles polished smooth from years of use and metal crusty with rust. When was my last tetanus shot? Vanessa points to a corroded, dirt-caked shovel leaning against the wall. “Take that one and this sack—it doesn’t have nearly as much dry rot as the others.” I wish I had thought to bring some gloves, but even if I had a little more foresight, the only gloves I own are bike gloves, which have no fingers and cost me thirty bucks. I’ll deal.
“Do you want a shovel, too?” I ask.
“I’ve no need for a shovel,” Vanessa assures me. “I’m the treasure map.”