Summer of Lost and Found (17 page)

I
first heard about the storm on Wednesday night. While drying the dishes, I asked Mom if I could have a reduction in my hours. “I wouldn't mind going back to the gardens or the Festival Park. You said we might be leaving next week. This is my last chance.”

Mom pursed her lips, thinking it over. “I guess that's fine. Honestly, I'm running out of research-assistant work for you to do.” She rinsed a plate and handed it to me. “But don't forget our ground rules, sprout. You check in on your phone whenever you leave the cottage.”

“I know, I know.”

“Especially if you go near the water. Only swim where there are lifeguards. That's important this week: The first big storm of the season is brewing off the coast. It's early for it.”

“We're getting hit by a hurricane?” I asked. “Won't we need to evacuate?” When I was little, hurricanes didn't scare me at all. They were something that happened far away, to people who lived in oceanfront houses. New York City doesn't exactly feel like a beach town. But then we had
our
hurricanes, and now they terrify me. My parents, too—tucked in the back of our hall closet is a huge plastic tub filled with emergency water, food that won't spoil, flashlights and batteries, and a wireless radio. Mom bought Dad a cell phone charger that you crank by hand, which I thought was really funny. “It's for the new olden times,” she said. “Thank you, climate change. NOT.” A classic example of Mom's “NOT” jokes.

“More like an out-of-season nor'easter, according to the weather guy,” she said, handing me another plate to dry. I missed our dishwasher. “Don't worry—it should stay out at sea. But it might bring rain.”

That was a relief. If we got hit by a hurricane, there would be no way that Ambrose and I could sneak off on a skiff. But a faraway storm wouldn't stop us. The bay was calm as a bathtub, anyway. Except for the wind.

After Mom headed out on Thursday morning, I had the whole day to take care of business. The cottage's old-fashioned rotary phone sat on a little chest in the front hall, and tucked into one of the drawers was the Outer Banks/Albemarle Area phone book. I could hardly believe that the numbers and addresses for all the people and places on Roanoke and the surrounding area were contained in the slim volume. The Manhattan phone book was so thick, I used it as a booster seat when I was little. Roanoke's was so small in comparison that I almost felt like I could count the residents on my fingers and toes. First, I flipped to
V
for “Viccars,” but Ambrose and his mom were unlisted. Then I looked up the entry for Lila's family: “Midgett, Luke and Kate.” Their address was helpfully printed next to the number. They lived outside of town in the Mother Vineyard neighborhood—close to the water and the actual Mother Vine. It would be a short trip on my bike, once I made sure that Lila wasn't home.

If I borrowed her metal detector, Lila and her parents probably wouldn't even notice, right? All I had to do was return it first thing on Saturday, or even slip it into the garage late tomorrow, after Ambrose and I got back. The Midgetts would never know the difference. Asking them for permission wasn't an option—not if I didn't want Lila to know what I was up to. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Slowly circling past the bookstore on my bike, I saw the familiar reddish-yellow fur of Sir Walter Raleigh, collapsed in a lazy heap on the porch.
Excellent.
Lila must be inside, chatting up Renée or doing research. This was my chance.

I pedaled as fast as I could to the Midgetts' address, arriving at a cheerful white house with bright green shutters and a tidy yard. I had expected their home to look a little ramshackle or something, maybe because Lila's dad was busy with his artifacts and her mom didn't seem like the landscaping type. But like all the other houses on Mother Vineyard Road, the Midgett house was nice-looking. There weren't any cars in the driveway and inside the windows, everything looked still. I hid my bike in some bushes near the road and tiptoed across the yard, glancing behind me every two seconds like a truly paranoid person. I hurried around the house to the garage, which was a barnlike structure. The water of the sound glistened right behind it.

A few boats leaned against the side of the garage: a dingy yellow kayak, a shiny red rowboat, and a tattered Sunfish sailboat. I peered into the belly of the rowboat. I'm not even sure what I was looking for—something for shipwreck hunting, I guess. Sonar equipment? Magnetometer? I didn't even know what the tools I needed looked like, other than the Ping-Pong paddles Luke had said maritime archaeologists use to brush sand away from objects buried underwater. Maybe this was kind of a dumb plan, hunting through Lila's stuff without a clear idea of what I wanted to find. Anyway, wouldn't all their special equipment be on her mom's big fishing boat?

The door to the garage was slightly ajar. As I pushed it wider to let me into the darkened space, something fell over with a loud clatter. “Jeez!” I exclaimed, tripping all over myself. I bent down to pick up whatever I'd knocked over, and that's when I realized what it was: a metal detector. Judging from the label, it could be used in the water.

I'd seen people using them at the beach when Mom and I went—a potbellied old man slowly scanning the
bleep
ing wand over white mounds of sand. I watched him for a while, until I realized that steady noise of
pings
didn't lead him to any treasure. But if that detector could find metal buried deep under the sand, couldn't it find metal buried in the shallow water along the shore? Wherever the colonists had made their village, there had to be some metal artifacts: silverware, drinking cups, tools. Even if they took almost everything with them when they vanished, surely some things got left behind and buried by time. This was what Ambrose and I needed to find them.

I grabbed the metal detector, sneaked out of the garage, and hurried down the gravel path back to the street—the detector was compact but cumbersome, so I couldn't hustle that fast.
Now,
this
is dangerous
, I thought. It was one thing to trespass on the Midgetts' property to poke around. It was another to steal, I mean
borrow,
something of theirs. Lila and Sir Walter could come ambling up the path at any moment. I couldn't wait to be safe on Budleigh Street.

That's when I heard painfully off-key singing. It sounded like it was coming down Mother Vineyard Road. And getting closer.

I stopped in the middle of the yard, wondering what to do.
That warbling might not be Lila—but then again, she did have an “audition debacle.”
My stomach dropped when I heard Sir Walter's bark through the trees. He was yowling at something, maybe a squirrel. Perhaps he didn't like Lila's singing. Or maybe he could sense me, terrified and standing as still as that deer in the Grandmother Vine woods.

I took off running as fast as my battered-from-the-forest-floor feet would allow and while clutching the clunky detector. I sped toward the dense brush bordering the Midgetts' yard and threw myself into it. Brambles and leaves tugged at my hair and my exposed skin, but I plunged in as deep as I could to hide myself. I crouched low to the ground, panting, hoping that I'd made it to safety before Lila and Sir Walter had rounded the corner.

Lila trotted up the walkway to her house. She was reading a book, singing, and walking simultaneously, so Sir Walter nudged her back to the center of the path whenever she drifted. I started to breathe easier. I watched her stop halfway to the front door and slowly turn a page. All I needed was for her to go into the house, and then I could make a mad dash to my bike. Home free.

Doot doot-doot-doot doot-doot-dah!
That's when my phone decided to play backup for Lila. It blared the British-sounding fanfare music that I'd assigned to be the special ringtone for my dad's calls. Of all the times for him to make himself unlost to me.

I fumbled to hit silent, but it was too late: Lila had stopped in her tracks. The hand holding her book fell to her side, the pages fanning out as they moved through the air. She quit singing, and her eyes narrowed to a squint. I could see the concentration on her face as she listened, trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from. She slowly turned around and around, scanning the edges of her yard. My heart pounded; the sound of blood pumping through my ears was deafening. I didn't dare breathe. I clasped the cold metal of the detector, and prayed that she wouldn't look over to these bushes and see part of me sticking out.

Sir Walter barked in my direction, his tail wagging happily.
“Shush.”
 Lila pressed a finger to his wet nose. “Be quiet,” she said softly. She took a few tentative, tiptoeing steps in my direction. I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear to see her approach me, knowing with each step the very deep depth of the trouble I was in. My sweaty hands struggled to hold tight to the detector.

I peeked one eye open. Lila had stopped again, listening. Slowly, she raised the hand holding the book. She fumbled to stuff it into the tote bag slung across her shoulder, her gaze never breaking from the bush in which I was hidden. She grabbed hold of Sir Walter's collar and paused again. Did she see me? Could she hear me, struggling not to hyperventilate? Was part of my shorts showing through the brush, or was the metal detector glinting in the midday sun?

It felt like years passed in those moments until Sir Walter started whining at Lila and she grudgingly let go of his collar. And then he dashed—or as close to
dashed
as a slightly overweight old dog can do—across the yard, on a beeline to me.

Frantically, I tried to slither farther into the bushes. I couldn't squirm away faster than Sir Walter could speed-lumber, and soon enough his wet nose was pushed up into my muddy, scratched hand. “
Not now, good sir!
” I hissed.
“You're blowing my cover!”
He panted happily at me. I'm sure if I could've seen his butt, which was still outside of the bushes, I'd have seen his tail wagging with joy.

I heard Lila running across the yard. In seconds, I would be caught. And then, a miracle in the form of a squeaky frog toy. My elbow found it, actually, pressing down hard enough that the resulting squeak made both me and Sir Walter startle. Lightning fast, I snatched the frog and gave it a more powerful squeeze before chucking it out of the bushes. It arced across the yard, and Sir Walter speed-lumbered after it. From within the bushes, I saw him almost knock Lila over like a bowling pin.

“Your froggy!” Lila exclaimed. “You finally found it, good sir!” Sir Walter proudly ran circles around Lila, squeaking frog clamped in his grin. The trespasser in the bushes was forgotten, for now. I watched through the brambles as Lila petted him. After what felt like an eternity, she stood up, taking the toy from Sir Walter's mouth. She tossed it to the front door, and after one final glance in my direction, headed after dog and toy. She was even caterwauling again. Now I could totally understand why her audition had gone so poorly.

I didn't shift, not even to swat at the flies and mosquitoes having a party on my bare arms and legs. I let the trickle of blood from a scratch drip down my thigh. I held my breath, waiting for Lila to disappear inside the house. By some miracle, maybe just maybe, I was going to be able to escape her.

Finally, Lila reached her green front door, pulled a key from her pocket, and slipped inside with Sir Walter. The screen bounced back open from the impact of her slamming shut the heavy inside door, and then everything in the yard was still again.

I wanted to collapse onto the dirt below me as all the adrenaline flooded out of my body. I knew, though, that if I did Lila might come bustling out of her house the minute I eventually picked myself up to leave. I had a small window of opportunity now—those minutes when you first get home, when you're preoccupied with checking the mail or pouring a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge. That's not the time when you stand at the window and watch your yard for trespassers and thieves. (Or stand in the hallway and watch through the peephole, for city dwellers like me.) So I clutched the metal detector with one hand and pushed up from my crouch with the other. My legs burned from squatting for so long, and I got the world's worst head rush. That plus the heat was almost enough to make me pass out. As soon as the edges of my vision stopped twinkling, I scrambled through the scratchy bushes and ran along their perimeter to the road. I never glanced back, not wanting to slow myself down and being afraid that the act of looking would somehow make Lila catch me.

At the cottage, I hid the detector under my bed and recovered by making lunch. Mom had totally relaxed her grocery-shopping rules for this trip, possibly in another attempt to avoid conflict, and so our cupboards had stuff like marshmallow fluff and sugar cereal. As I chewed my fluff-and-puffs sandwich, I checked my phone to see if Dad had left another message, but it only showed a missed call. I sat and watched the cat clock on the kitchen wall tick-tock in time with the moving tail while I tried to work up the nerve to call him back. I hadn't talked to Dad in so long, and my current feelings toward him had been colored by worry and hurt. I didn't know whether I wanted to—or could be—happy and excited if I finally reached him. Maybe I'd still be mad and confused. What had he quoted in his last message?
“The approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shores that now lie foul and muddy.”
Maybe I didn't want to clear things up. Finally, I dialed his number and waited. The phone rang four times before I was sent to voice mail.