by Annie Bryant
“I am with Avery all the way. You should have seen the Salty Cods today! Man, we were on fire,” Patrice announced proudly.
“You were?” asked Avery.
“So check it out. We got Charlotte who’s, like, a human dictionary and knew all the hard words on the list. Nick and Katani who are, like, masters of the map, right? And Dillon and me to motivate everyone to go as fast as they can. Between the five of us, the Cods are unstoppable!” Patrice beamed at her team and winked at her sister. Katani was surprised and pleased that her sister mentioned her map skills.
Avery felt a pang of jealousy. Even though she’d really enjoyed her day at the beach, Patrice’s enthusiasm had triggered her competitive streak. Okay, it wasn’t so much a streak as it was a full-blown lightning bolt. She would have to get the Beach Barnacles on the ball! Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow!
“We worked so hard getting clues today, I bet all my fish are ready to rest,” Patrice shared.
“Is this true? Does everyone feel that way?” asked Mr. Moore. Hands raised included the Cods and the Barnacles nay, the Boggers yay. Majority ruled, and Charlotte was thrilled to be exempt from an opportunity to embarrass herself in a fast-paced game in the pool. But she couldn’t help that nagging feeling…the one that said it was strange that Avery didn’t want to do an athletic activity. There is something rotten in the state of Cape Cod! Charlotte remarked to herself.
“What about a ghost story?” Nick suggested. “My family always tells scary stories when we go camping.”
“Yeah!” Fabiana agreed. “Sometimes we even act them out.”
“WOOOooooOOO!” Yurt jumped up, waving his hands in the air. “I’m a ghost!”
“That will be enough, Henry.” Ms. O’Reilly put a hand on his shoulder before he went spinning straight into the hot grill. “Who has a tale that they would like to share?” she asked.
Maeve’s hand shot up. “I have one!”
Ms. O’Reilly shook her head. “Why am I not surprised? Maeve, go ahead.”
Maeve took a deep breath and began, “High on a hill lived a lonely goatherd, lay-ee odle lay-ee odle lay hee hoo….” She was yodeling.
“Um, Maeve, is this, like, a song from a musical or something?” asked Avery.
Maeve nodded. “I borrowed it from The Sound of Music.”
The group shifted uncomfortably. “Can we just hear a regular spooky campfire story instead?” Avery followed up bluntly.
Maeve sat down, looking only slightly wounded. Leave it to Avery to make a comment like that. However, Avery’s honesty was welcome to the rest of the group. It was obvious by the looks on everyone’s faces that no one particularly wanted to hear Maeve’s yodel story, except for Isabel who said, “I love The Sound of Music!”
“Okay, scavenger hunters. I’ve got a good one,” Mr. Moore announced.
“It’d better not be about cows,” Dillon whispered to Maeve, who, even though she was still smarting from Avery’s comment, managed a tiny smile.
But Mr. Moore’s story, thankfully, had absolutely nothing to do with cows. It was about—much to the Cranberry Boggers’ delight—pirates. “Once upon a time, in the deep, blue waters of Boothbay Harbor in Maine, lived three merry pirates. These pirates didn’t have much to speak of in terms of treasure…and they weren’t much to look at. There was Old Googles McFlanagan, who would’ve been a rather handsome lad if it weren’t for his one googly eye and his propensity for spitting when he spoke. Very unfortunate, really. Then there was Red “Lettuce Head” Johnson. Crazy pirate was an organic vegetarian! Have you ever heard of anything so preposterous? Very hard to maintain that kind of diet on the Seven Seas, I’ll have you know.”
The kids giggled. Mr. Moore was turning out to be a very entertaining storyteller! “And finally, we had the leader of the pack—Four-Eyed Charlie. Yeah, they weren’t really that creative back in the day. Four-Eyed was small, but he was the only pirate the other two goons listened to, because he was the only one giving any sensible orders. Anyway, these three pirates were an odd band of fools, you see—a motley crew, a mishmashed bunch. All the other pirates in Boothbay Harbor would laugh at them as they sailed around with their fancy boats. But the crew of the Wamalama Ringding—that was their boat—didn’t let the laughter of the competition get them down.
“They were underdogs, see. They knew that they didn’t have the largest crew or the biggest boat, but they had something that the other pirates did not. Who can guess what that was?”
Betsy’s hand shot up. “Heart. They had heart.”
“Wrong!” Mr. Moore declared. “Anyone else?”
“Brains?” Danny ventured cautiously.
“Yes, but everybody has a brain, Daniel. Your body needs one to live. No, the crew of the Wamalama Ringding had keys to the local perfume shop. That’s right! You see, Four-Eyed Charlie’s mother owned the store.”
Riley raised his hand. “Um, Mr. Moore, why would pirates want perfume?”
“Exactly! That’s what was so brilliant about it, Riley. No self-respecting pirate would want to be caught dead in his mother’s perfume shop. But every night it was Four-Eyed Charlie’s curse to have to lock up the store and dust the store windows. Oh, it was the most dreadful form of torture. The store was right next to the dock, and all the other pirates would go around the harbor and laugh at him. They would call him Flower Four-Eyes and Charlie Cologne…oh, the laughter. Lettuce Head and Googles were powerless to stop the evil pirates.
“Well, finally Four-Eyed became fed up with whole thing and decided to put a stop to the tormenting once and for all. The crew of the Wamalama Ringding decided to get their revenge. They were going to take a whole basketful of eggs from Lettuce Head’s organic farm and when the clock stuck midnight go down to the docks with a super-powerful egg catapult that Four-Eyed invented and just go nuts. Imagine! Eggs everywhere! Oooh, the smell! The SMELL!”
Mr. Moore rubbed his hands together deviously. “All those evil pirates would beg for perfume and Charlie wouldn’t give them ANY!” The science teacher was so into his story, Maeve could sense the anticipation of the audience. Would the crew of the Wamalama Ringding succeed?
“But then…on the night of their fatal attack…disaster! Four-Eyed’s mom got a shipment in of ten extra boxes of exotic pink lotus blossom bubblegum scent.”
“Hideous!” Katani murmured just as Maeve uttered a wistful, “Awesome!”
“Four-Eyed’s mother had no room for the boxes in her tiny store. ‘You must do something with these,’ she ordered her son. ‘Honestly, I don’t care what you do with them, but I can’t keep them in this attic. Not only is it a fire hazard, but I’m afraid the weight might cause our roof to cave in.’
“Four-Eyed was, at heart, a good pirate, and he did not want to see his mother’s store destroyed by surplus bottles of flowery bubblegum-scented perfume, so he agreed to help her out. As he was dragging the first box out the back, and wondering how he was also going to get rid of 419 eggs now that the catapult plan was off, a single bottle fell out of the bottom of the box and started rolling toward the harbor…and that’s when Four-Eyed had an infinitively more brilliant epiphany.
“Four-Eyed got the crew of the Wamalama Ringding together and the three pirates spent the entire evening…baking. They stirred and mixed and measured like they’d never baked before.”
Nick raised his hand. “Uh, Mr. Moore, had they baked before?”
Mr. Moore rolled his eyes. “Don’t forget, at least one of those pirates had an organic farm….”
Nick and Charlotte giggled.
“Anyway, they baked until just before sunup. They almost didn’t think they would finish! Finally, they carried their magnum opus down to the harbor and left a little gift on the deck of every single ship in that bay. As the dawn started breaking they sat on the beach to wait.
“‘I’m starving!’ Googles declared. He was always the first on the Wamalama to want to eat something, and they had spent the entire night cooking.
“‘What about all those eggs I’ve been saving in my fridge?’ Lettuce Head suggested.
“With that the three merry pirates scuttled back to Lettuce Head’s farm and not only collected their eggs, but picked a whole bunch of fresh veggies and brought them back down to the harbor. At this point it was light out and the rest of the pirates were gathering on the decks of their ships, cheering and wondering whose birthday it was. For the crew of the Wamalama Ringding had baked cakes for every single ship.
“But when the meanest, most evil pirate of them all, Fritz Fang, sliced his cutlass through the cake, what should explode all over his ragged crew but the overwhelming stench of lotus blossoms and bubblegum! That’s right, the cakes were just a disguise baked around a thin bag full of the hideous perfume.
“All the other townsfolk were also waking up and they wondered what that horrid smell was. Why, word spread, and there were villagers from ten, twenty miles away making the journey to catch a whiff of the Boothbay Perfumed Pirates!
“Now, Lettuce Head, see, he was pretty handy on the grill, so he broke out his grill and a pan. Next thing you know he’s making the most delicious veggie omelets you’ve ever seen and selling them to the tourists at four bucks an omelet. In today’s economy, that’d be around twelve bucks each. So, true to his pirate creed, he was essentially robbing the villagers blind. And that morning was the start of Lettuce Head’s House of Organic Omelets and Produce, which still stands in Boothbay Harbor to this day. And, might I add, still overcharges the townsfolk.”
“And what happened to the other pirates? The ones who got perfumed?” Maeve asked.
Mr. Moore shrugged. “Fritz Fang and his gang tried tomato juice, they tried jumping in vats of ale, they even tried washing—none of them had had a bath in twenty years—but no matter what they did, they still smelled like flower-scented candy. And they never messed with Four-Eyed Charlie again, I can tell you that right now!”
The kids and adults started clapping, and as Mr. Moore took a bow, Mrs. Moore announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, Four-Eyed Charlie in the flesh…my husband!”
The crowd laughed and Mr. Moore turned a little pink. “Well, I was a bit of a merry prankster back in the day. But remember, kids, not a single pirate was harmed, and not vial of perfume was wasted. We recycled all the glass bottles.”
“That’s very nice, Charlie,” Ms. O’Reilly said with a chuckle. “You know, I heard that there’s actually a bit of a pirate craze hitting Cape Cod right now as we speak. Yes, apparently a major studio is shooting a movie here about Black Sam Bellamy. I heard that Simon Blackstone is going to be playing Black Sam! Can you believe it?”
Charlotte wasn’t sure, but she thought she noticed Maeve giving Isabel’s elbow a little pinch. She was positive she heard a sharp intake of breath from Riley.
“Black Sam is the man!” Yurt cheered. “I read up on him after Danny mentioned him in class. Turns out he was like a Robin Hood dude, and would steal from the richer pirates and give the loot to the poor. Every time he got a bigger ship, he would give his old one to the captain whose ship he was stealing. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it?”
Before the kids could begin to discuss the moral dilemma of a Robin-Hooding pirate, Mr. Moore announced, “Okay, kids, I hate to break this party up, but it’s getting late. Nick, Charlotte, Chelsea? Who wants to announce where we’re going to be bunking down for the night?”
“We all will,” Charlotte said, motioning for her friends to stand and join her in the middle of the circle. “Nick, you want to tell?”
Nick stood up and announced, “You guys are going to love this! We have arranged to stay in an old Coast Guard station called the NEED Building. It’s the coolest old house and it’s been converted into, like, a hotel for school groups to stay in.”
“Not really a hotel,” Chelsea went on to explain. “I mean, don’t expect to find mints on your pillow or tiny shampoos in the bathroom. But it does have bunk beds, and it’s right by the ocean!”
“It also has a kitchen with cooking utensils. I think it’ll be sweet!” Nick continued. “Like if we all lived together in a house by the sea in the 1800s. Pretty cool, if you ask me!”
“Dude, is it haunted?” Dillon asked.
“Probably with the ghosts of those perfumed pirates.” Yurt pinched his nose and made a whooo sound that came out in a funny squeak.
“Are you sure I can’t just stay in my own house?” Kiki whined to Ms. O’Reilly.
“No way!” Nick, Charlotte, and Chelsea chimed in together. “We came on this trip together, we stay together!”
Isabel was feeling a little nervous. Staying at an old house by the ocean seemed exciting and all, but she also thought it sounded a little spooky. She wanted to check in with Charlotte to make sure that there weren’t any rumors that this place could be haunted, but she was afraid someone would hear her and think she was a major scaredy-cat…which she was. But she decided that now was as good a time as any to practice being brave, and so she took a deep breath and boarded the cars with her friends.
Kiki gave her parents a hug good-bye before she left, and as she did, her mother whispered, “It was so nice to meet all your friends! These kids are such a refreshing change from the usual bunch. If I have to hear Anna McMasters and her ‘duh’ one more time…You should have these kids over more often.”
“I agree, Pumpkin,” Charlotte heard Mr. Underwood proclaim. “That Avery girl is a hoot. And Maeve Kaplan-Taylor…what a character. Oh, and Yurt, was it? Real stand-up guy.”
Kiki nodded. “Okay, great. Good night, guys.”
“Oh, and darling?” Sienna Underwood added, “Your father and I are so proud of you.”
“Parents just don’t get it!” Kiki muttered tragically.
“Come on, Keeks,” Yurt teased her. “You know you can’t wait for tomorrow.”
Kiki turned her head, but Charlotte could tell she was smiling.
CHAPTER
13
Creepopalooza!
Why do all the girls have to be on the second floor?” Maeve griped as she dragged her heavy sleepover bag (Maeve’s sleepover bags were always the heaviest) up the creaky wooden stairs at the NEED Building.
“Come on, Maeve, you can do it. All that dancing has made you Super Maeve!” Charlotte cheered on Maeve as she huffed and puffed up the stairs.
“That’s not it!” Maeve retorted. “I just kind of imagined that we would all stay up late telling ghost stories together. It would be so much fun! I bet some of the guys have some really funny stories. It could be like a party!” she gushed.
“Well, that’s never going to happen!” scoffed Katani. “Everyone’s too tired, including me. Come back to planet Earth,” she said, tugging on Maeve’s backpack.
“Well, it sounded fun, right?” exclaimed Maeve with an infectious smile. “I hope all the BSG will at least be able to room together,” she whispered to Charlotte.
Maeve detected a little something something in Charlotte’s look when she turned to answer. “Actually, Maeve, I had my dad call the NEED Building in advance to ask about the setups of the rooms. They said that whoever took the downstairs would all be bunking together in one huge room, but the upstairs people would have to break down into smaller groups. The largest room up here…” Charlotte ran ahead, dramatically opened a door, and ushered her friends inside. “…has exactly five beds!”
“Yay!” Isabel squealed, clapping her hands together in short little energetic bursts and running over to claim the lone twin bed.
Avery rushed to the bunk beds, crawled up like a monkey, and threw her sleeping bag down like an explorer marking newly discovered territory. Charlotte was also partial to the top bunk, which was fine with Katani and Maeve, who preferred the lower.
“This is almost like camping in the wild! I love it,” Charlotte declared. Sure, the mattress might have been a little weathered and worn, and yeah, maybe the floors were a little dusty, but this is what rough
ing it was! When the pitter-patter of plump raindrops began sounding on the roof above, Charlotte was positively in heaven. Could she have asked for a more perfect evening?
But some of the BSG were a little less excited.
“This does remind me a little of Montana…. It’s kind of spooky,” Avery murmured. Over the winter, Maeve, Charlotte, and Avery had gotten stuck in an abandoned—well, almost abandoned—mining town in Montana with Charlotte’s dad.
“Bite your tongue, Avery.” Maeve nodded toward Isabel, who had begun to chew on her finger.
“I can’t even imagine if I had been out there with you guys!” Katani shivered, remembering the huge storm that had them stranded for days. She and Isabel had been worried sick at the hotel, waiting for their friends to show up!
Just then, the doorknob turned.
Isabel nearly jumped out of her skin, but it was just Chelsea. “It’s a little too quiet and creepy in my room,” she said. “Betsy is reading and Kiki went to shower.”
“Okay, everyone,” Charlotte assured them all. “Patrice and Fabiana are in the room right next door, Ms. O’Reilly is across the hall, and Ben Briggs is staying with the boys downstairs. We’re totally safe!”
“I wouldn’t be relying on Ben if I were you.” Chelsea shrugged.
“What do you mean, Chels? Your brother sure looks like the big and strong type. I would trust him to wrestle down a little old ghost,” Maeve said with a nod, confident that a star football player like Ben would defend his sister and friends against any evil that might befall them.
“Normally, I would agree with you,” Chelsea answered. “But didn’t you see how he stumbled into his bedroom yawning like a giant lion? I promise you, my brother is probably already out like a log,” Chelsea said. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty tired too. See you guys in the morning.” She yawned and headed back to her designated room, feeling better that she was surrounded by friends.