Summer of Lost and Found (19 page)

I nodded. “Have fun with the tour.”

She stopped in the doorway. The way she stood reminded me of how Sir Walter's ears pricked up at Fort Raleigh, when he was barking at some unseen thing in the woods. My mom could sense that something was up. “Sure you don't want to come with me? The fermentation process is pretty interesting. You see, the sugar in the scuppernong grapes—”

“Mom,” I interrupted. “No offense, but grapes and vines are your things, not mine. I'll be fine hanging out here today. Reading in the garden.”

She smiled at me, and I felt a twinge of guilt for lying. Telling her that I planned to spend the day reading was a flat-out lie, not even a little white one. “If you say so. Bye, sprout.”

“Fare thee well,” I said. I listened to her footsteps to the front hall, the jangle of her car keys falling into her purse, the rattling
slam
of the door, and the
thunk
of the lock turning. Then the engine starting up, and Mom honking as she pulled out of the driveway. I leapt out of bed and stood at my window, watching her go. Time to move.

I looted the bins in the carport, finding goggles among water noodles. I added them and one last item to my overstuffed bag: a thin rain poncho I found in the hall closet, next to an out-of-batteries flashlight. My fingers were perma-crossed that we'd miss the coming storm, but it couldn't hurt to bring it anyway. I spread thick knifefuls of peanut butter and fluff onto two bagels in the kitchen, wrapping them up in tinfoil. I pulled a baggie of scuppernong grapes out from the fridge—their taste was growing on me. Then I filled my water bottle and headed out the door. It was cumbersome to get going on my bike, having to balance the metal detector in the front basket.

The air felt even more humid than usual as I pedaled toward the Elizabethan Gardens. I scanned the sky above me. Even that patch of blue was gone, and the clouds looked thicker and bumpier. Something about the quality of the air or the gloominess of the light made my stomach knot up a little. Maybe it was nervousness, too—about going out on the water. I'd been in a canoe once at camp and on a rowboat a handful of times, but always on the lake in Central Park. You really wouldn't want to fall into the slightly sludgy water there—it has an alarmingly oily sheen—but nothing truly bad would happen if you did. Shallowbag Bay surrounding Manteo seemed quiet and clean, and the sound was calm for the most part, but they were connected to the ocean and the thought of a little wooden skiff in the big waves by Corolla was scary. I reminded myself,
We're not going to
be
out in the ocean
. The plan was to skim the coastline of Roanoke, looking for signs of where the settlement might have been.

After locking up my bike at the edge of the parking lot, I hurried to the entrance building. I felt like a huge dork, carrying the metal detector in with me. What if they weren't allowed? I stopped to pull the poncho out of my bag and drape it over the detector. It hid it, but now I was carrying an oddly shaped poncho lump. I took a deep breath and walked inside, standing really close to the pamphlet-laden counter in hopes that the admission lady wouldn't be able to see below my belly button.

“I remember you! The girl who accidentally took a dip in the sound.”

I blushed. “Yup, that's me. One sticker, please.”

“Just one? You're all by your lonesome?” She gave me a pitying look.

“No, I'm meeting my friend. Again,” I said, frowning. The lady was nice, but she did not know the meaning of MYOB.

“Ah, that's right. Your
friend.
” She smiled at me in a way that meant she thought I was meeting a made-up boyfriend. “Well, I hope you and your
friend
have fun. Let me know if you
all
have any questions.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed my sticker.

“We have some lockers, you know,” she called after me. “If you're feeling weighed down by all that stuff.”

“I'm fine, thanks,” I called over my shoulder, hurrying outside. Once past Shakespeare's garden, I stopped to readjust my poncho/detector bundle so I'd look less like a bag lady when I met up with Ambrose. I checked my phone to make sure Mom hadn't called or anything while I was biking over. My stomach knotted up even more when I thought about lying to her. That's when I had the excellent idea to text Dad and tell him my whereabouts. If Mom found out and got mad, I could always say that I'd let one of my parents know—just the one who wasn't around. I wrote:
Hi, Dad. I am going out on a boat with a friend today. Like I told you in that e-mail—we're hoping to unmuddy the shores. I'll let you know what we find.
Vague enough, but still honest.

As I stood waiting for my message to send, the hairs on the back of my neck started to prickle. I felt watched. I turned, wondering if nosy sticker lady was snooping on me. I didn't see her or any other staffers around. The gardens were peaceful and quiet, except for the tinkle of fountains. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that somebody was paying awfully close attention to me.
It can't be Lila, right? How would she know that I'm here?
I shook off the feeling and headed for the Colony Walk to the sound. Passing the Virginia Dare statue, I remembered Ambrose's blah reaction to my distant family connection. I was kind of bummed he wasn't more shocked and excited about that.

I managed to climb over the Watergate on my own. It was windy, and all the tall sea grasses whipped at my legs as I walked along the rocky sand, stepping over puddles. I shaded my eyes with my free hand to see if Ambrose was there yet. I didn't find him, but I spotted the skiff tied up at the little pier. I wondered to whom it belonged—on my way to the Elizabethan Gardens, I'd watched for a road or even an unpaved path from the highway toward the sound. There were none until the park's driveway. Looking inland, I didn't see a house or anything. The only building nearby was the Waterside Theatre. If there had been a path leading from the dilapidated dock somewhere, it was long overgrown. Weeds curled up the rusted metal poles that stuck deep in the sand, and the wooden planks were old and covered in green fuzz. Some were even broken or bowing in such a way that I wouldn't dare step on them. I set my things up on a relatively stable-looking section of the dock and peeked inside the skiff. It was dry and clean, with one oar lying on the bottom. Next to it was a single life vest, much newer than the rest of the boat. I sat down at the edge of the pier, carefully.

“Nell!” Ambrose ran to me along the shoreline, from the direction opposite of the theater. “Pardon me for being so late!”

“How did you get here?” I asked as he stopped next to me. Even though he'd trudged through a few feet of sandy water and sloppy seagrass, there were no stains on him. His pants were rolled up almost to his knees, and his long shirtsleeves past his elbows. Below the crystal-clear surface, I could see that his feet were bare again. “No shoes?”

“You don't need shoes if you're on the water,” he pointed out.

“Is there a road to this spot? I looked for a path from the highway, but I didn't see one.”

“Er, I know a shortcut.” I wished he had shared it so I could've avoided paying admission and awkwardly parading in front of the sticker lady.

“Maybe I'll take that to get home.” I glanced across the water, noticing that the clouds out at sea were even more dramatic than the last time I'd checked—far off in the distance they had turned a charcoal color and carved into huge banks. High cirrus clouds coming from the other direction swirled into them. The wind continued to blow, and there were even a few whitecaps on the surface of the sound. I'd never seen it this choppy. “I don't know about this,” I said. What was off in the distance looked like more weather than my thin rain poncho could handle.

“Worry not,” Ambrose assured me. He examined the mossy rope tethering the skiff to the dock, to see how he could untie it. “We won't venture too far.”

“If you say so.” I set my stuff down in the bottom of the boat. “Oh! I brought some things that might help us—a pair of goggles I found at the cottage, and a metal detector.”

“Oh, summer's day!” Ambrose grinned as he watched me unpack the tools. “That is
super
helpful.”

“I swear, you have the weirdest sayings. ‘Oh, summer's day'? I've never heard that before.” Ambrose blushed.

He used one arm on the dock's piling to vault himself from the sandy water over the skiff's edge. It barely shifted as he plopped inside. “Come on!” he encouraged me. “Time's a-wasting!”

I gripped the dock with one hand and held the edge of the boat steady with the other. Taking a deep breath, I lowered one foot onto the seat inside the skiff, then the other. I let go of the dock and the boat started pitching back and forth. “Ambrose!” I shouted, struggling to steady myself, and the skiff, before it capsized. “Balance me out!” Jade and I used to try sitting on the same side of a Central Park rowboat, testing to see how much we could make it dip toward the water before our parents or the guy in charge of the boats yelled at us to stop. Ambrose was sitting on the opposite side from me. He was bigger than me, but not so much that the boat should have been so unbalanced. I braced my hands on opposite sides of the skiff, and it slowly stopped rocking.

“Okay over there?” He giggled.

“You're not impressed with my graceful boarding?” I asked, rolling my eyes. Ambrose went back to untying the boat. I turned on the metal detector, holding it a few inches below the top of the water. I slid the attached headphones over my ears. No
bleep
s, so far.

“I'm ready to set sail if you are.” He tossed the rope back onto the top of the dock. “Push us out to sea, Nell.”

“Bon voyage!” I shoved the dock away from us, and the boat cut through the water. It was exciting to be moving, on our way to adventure. The possibility of finding something—something significant—felt so strong it was almost tangible, like a scent carried on the breeze. The
increasingly strong
breeze: The wind had picked up to a strength beyond gusty. I pulled out the oar. “Do you want to steer us, or should I?”

“You can steer, and I will scan the depths.” Ambrose's head stuck out past the edge of the boat, his eyes searching for something below the surface. I hefted up the oar and took a few tentative paddles. I balanced the metal detector by squeezing it with my knees, hoping that the steady sound of
ping
s would speed up from a discovery. After all, we were near where we'd found the flask.

After a few minutes, I pulled off the headphones. “Want a sandwich?” I hadn't eaten much for breakfast. I dropped the oar and rummaged in my bag to pull out the PB-and-fluff bagels. I took a big swig from my water bottle. Even though I definitely didn't want to wear my swimsuit in front of Ambrose, I wished I had it on. The water, although rough, looked inviting. Despite the heavy cloud cover, the air was hot and prestorm sticky.

Ambrose eyed my gooey bagel hungrily, but when I tried to hand him his own, he shook his head. “I'm quite all right. I couldn't eat a bite.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.” I reached into my bag for the grapes. “Not even a scuppernong?”

Ambrose's eyes lit up. “From that vine?”

I nodded, popping one into my mouth. “Yup. But I washed them and everything.” Ambrose held out his pale hand and I dropped a few into it. He ate them greedily, which seemed odd considering he'd said he couldn't eat a bite.

“Steer us out a bit?” he called from the bow. The island rounded to our left, and he pointed to the right. That would lead us into the open water.

“Are you sure?” Erosion of a quarter mile couldn't have put the site of the colony smack in the middle of the sound, after all. “I thought we weren't going to head away from the shoreline.” A gust of wind battered us, rocking our skiff from side to side. At least
I
didn't want to stray from the island, especially as the sky and water darkened. But it wasn't raining yet, or anything.

“Trust me!” Ambrose called back to me. The wind carried his voice in an odd way, so it sounded like he was much farther from me than the front of our boat. Dutifully, I stuck the oar in the water to turn us and then paddled for the skiff to move out from the reedy, shallow water. Already I could see that the Waterside Theatre and adjacent patch of rocky sand were far behind us. We moved fast for a skiff with only one oar. Another gust of wind powered us from behind, sending us into the waves. The lurching motion made me slide off the bench, and I banged my knee against the hard side of the boat. “Ow!”

“Are you all right?” Ambrose looked back at me with concern.

I rubbed at my knee, which was already turning bright red. A rainbow of bruising was sure to follow. “I don't know,” I said. “I mean, my knee is fine. But the weather is freaking me out, Ambrose. Honestly, I'm not sure this is such a good idea anymore. Maybe we should head in and call it a day.” I swallowed hard. “I want to find the clues to the lost colony just as much as you do, but this doesn't seem very smart.”

No sooner had I said that than the first crack of lightning lit up the sky, far off in the distance. I listened for a clap of thunder, but even after ten seconds I didn't hear one. “Did you see that?” I yelled to Ambrose. “There was lightning!” I scrambled to pull the detector back into the skiff and turn it off so we wouldn't have a big piece of equipment hanging off our boat like an electrical-charge bull's-eye.

“Fie on this weather!” The wind tousled Ambrose's hair and he struggled to brush tendrils off his face. “Perhaps you're right. . . .”

I'd been so busy listening for thunder, and making sure the lightning didn't flash any closer, that I didn't notice how far we'd drifted. I could still see the theater, but it was approaching speck-size. “We're really getting far from shore,” I said, my voice wavering a little, but I wasn't sure Ambrose heard me. The farther into the sound we got, the more the skiff rocked in the waves. I took another sip of my water and tried to focus on the horizon so I didn't get seasick. I thought about my mom and the canoe accident she'd had as a kid. She'd told me so many times that if she hadn't had a life jacket, she could've drowned. I picked up the one we had and hugged it tight. I stuck the paddle in the water and tried to move us back toward the shoreline, which was fading even more into the distance, and fast. “Ambrose,” I struggled to keep panic out of my voice. “We're moving too far away.” He was looking the other direction and didn't seem to hear me over the wind. I set the oar in the boat and tried to climb over the junk in the bottom and the seats to talk to him, but moving only made the shakiness of the skiff worse. “Ambrose!” I finally screamed. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, both embarrassed that I was stressing out so much and too anxious to care.