The Truth According to Blue Read online

  “Ahoy, Otis! To the boats!”

  Otis woofed with joy. German shepherds aren’t usually big water dogs—not like Newfies or Labs—but Otis was raised at sea and loves the feel of spray on his muzzle. He’s not a fan of actual swimming ever since he tried to eat a jellyfish, but he’ll go in if I go with him.

  Before heading outside, I went to the bathroom to take insulin. I’d have to recheck my blood sugar on the boat without Jules seeing, but I had a plan for that.

  Otis led the way to our dock at the end of the yard, where the inner tube was leaning against the fence that separates our property from our next-door neighbor’s. The tube looks like a giant rubber doughnut with a thin bottom in the hole. You can sit in the hole or lie across the whole doughnut while somebody else drives the boat. It’s actually really fun—not that I had any intention of tubing today myself.

  “Tube, Otis.”

  Otis took the rope in his mouth and dragged the tube to the dock.

  “Will he do anything you tell him to?” Jules asked.

  “Well, he can’t open a jar of pickles,” I said.

  “He must be really smart,” Jules said with a look of admiration. Maybe she’s not a dog-hater after all. “I see the way he watches you and does everything you say.”

  Otis knows what I’m feeling as soon as I feel it, and I can read his every ear tilt, every eyebrow crinkle, every wag and thump.

  “It’s not just one-way,” I said. “We take care of each other.”

  “That must be nice for you.” Jules jammed on her giant sunglasses.

  Was she being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell.

  Otis left the tube in front of the long, skinny ramp to the dock and rolled around with his tongue hanging out, scratching his back on the prickly seagrass. I gave his belly a quick rub, and then he jumped up and followed me while I dragged the tube the rest of the way.

  Our boat’s a twenty-two-foot Mako with an outboard motor and a little sunshade over the wheel. It’s old and not super comfortable, but it’s also fast and reliable. Otis climbed on after me and settled into his usual spot in the well at the front while I tied on the tube with a bowline knot.

  Jules got on after Otis, grabbing the handrail to steady herself. “You sure you know how to drive this thing?”

  “Definitely. My grandfather taught me.” I could steer the Mako through a harbor full of paddleboarders in a dense fog and not clip a single oar. Well, maybe not quite, but Pop Pop made sure I knew how to handle a boat.

  After I finished with the tube, I rigged a sun awning for Otis by tying four lengths of rope around the corners of a beach blanket and then attaching the ropes to stanchion posts on the sides of the boat with clove hitch knots.

  I lowered the motor into the water and turned the key in the ignition. The water was calm, and we’d be in a bay, not the ocean, so I didn’t bother with life vests for me and Otis, but I gave Jules a vest for tubing.

  “We have to get to open water first,” I said, over the noise of the engine.

  There was open water a few minutes from our cove, but my plan was to go all the way to Gardiner’s Island, because that’s where the treasure was.

  At least, that’s where I thought the treasure was.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  True Fact: Cleft chins and folding tongues aren’t the only things people inherit from their ancestors.

  When Pop Pop first told me about the treasure, I was so little that we didn’t even have Otis yet. He called me into the living room, and I climbed up next to him on the couch. On the coffee table was a mess of a book with a cracked cover and warped pages, some of which were sticking out of the binding. Pop Pop ran his fingertips over the stained leather. The wrinkled, blotchy cover looked a lot like the back of his hand. The book had to be old. Super old.

  Pop Pop leaned in close to me, so I leaned in close to him. I could smell his smell, which I now know was a combination of mentholated shaving cream and diesel fuel.

  “You see this book, BB?” he said. “Inside is the name of every single person in our family.”

  “Whoa,” I said in a church-library-ghost-story voice.

  Pop Pop nodded, slow and serious. Then he opened the book and showed me the newest page, the one with my name on it. Next he showed me Dad’s name and his own and his parents’, all the way back to page one, to the very first names: Petra De Winter and Abraham Broen, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Black ink long faded to brown said that Petra was born in 1651 in Amsterdam, and Abraham was born the same year in Java. He was a carpenter, and she was a healer.

  Then Pop Pop dropped an even bigger whoa: “In 1665 Petra and Abraham sailed right here to Sag Harbor”—he paused—“on a ship of gold.”

  I was so amazed that my eyes quadrupled in size. Or at least that’s how I picture myself when I look back now.

  “For really real, Pop Pop?”

  “Yup. I’ve even got proof.” He pulled a gold coin from his pocket, about the size of a half-dollar. “This coin came from their ship. See these letters? V-O-C. That means the ship was owned by the Dutch East India Company,” he said. “My grandpa gave me this coin. One day I’ll give it to you.”

  Pop Pop placed the coin, still warm from his pocket, in my palm.

  “Where’s the ship now?” I asked, tracing the raised letters with my index finger.

  “Good question,” he said. “It sank, and Petra and Abraham had to swim the rest of the way to land. But the gold was too heavy to bring with them. It’s still out there somewhere.” Pop Pop rested his hand on the book like he was taking an oath. “In view of paradise, watched over for eternity by a sorrowful hound.”

  I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what we have to figure out, BB.” He leaned in again, even closer this time. I loved the way the insides of his wrinkles didn’t get as dark as the rest of his face. It gave him tiger stripes around his eyes. “For three hundred and fifty years, people in our family have been looking for that ship. And you and I are going to find it.”

  From the first warm day in spring to the last warm day in fall, Pop Pop took me on his treasure hunts. “We’re partners, BB,” he used to say. “Shipmates.” When Pop Pop got sick last October, he promised he’d be better in time to hunt for treasure again this spring. But by the time the doctors found his cancer, it was already too late.

  After Pop Pop died in February, Dad sold his gold VOC coin, the one Pop Pop had always promised me. He wouldn’t tell me why. I was so angry that I didn’t speak to Dad for days. Now I have nothing left of my grandfather except our hunt.

  Finding the treasure for Pop Pop became my secret life mission. All winter and spring, I schemed and researched, but I had no idea where to look until one day in May when Nora and I were out on the boat playing that game where you pick a cloud and describe it.

  “I see a cloud that looks like soft-serve vanilla ice cream,” I said, peering through a pair of binoculars.

  “You think all clouds look like soft-serve vanilla ice cream,” Nora said. “Try again.”

  Unlike me, Nora always saw exciting things in the clouds: roller coasters, fettuccini alfredo, Kermit the Frog.

  I scanned the sky. Ice cream, ice cream, melted ice cream…

  My eyes drifted lower. To the houses along the coast, to the gulls swooping over the water, to a boulder on the southwest shore of Gardiner’s Island with two lumps sticking out of it that looked exactly like a dog’s head.

  I stood up and refocused the binoculars.

  “Well?” Nora asked.

  “Not ice cream,” I whispered.

  Goose bumps popped up on my arms. Suddenly, all the pieces clicked into place:

  In view of paradise, watched over for eternity by a sorrowful hound.

  Paradise = Garden of Eden = Gardiner’s Island

  Hound = Dog

  Sorrowful = No idea

  About twenty minutes after Jules, Otis, and I
left our cove, we got to Gardiner’s Bay, a big protected circle of open water with Sag Harbor and Shelter Island at our backs and Gardiner’s Island ahead.

  Picture a T-bone steak with a pointy hat on top. That’s Gardiner’s Island.

  I steered us to the southern end of the island—the left corner of the bottom tip of the steak bone—and shifted the boat to idle, my heart racing like an open balloon when you let go of the neck. Because there it was: a boulder with a long chunk sticking out of the side in a snout-ish fashion and a smaller chunk sticking up from the top in an ear-ish fashion.

  The sorrowful hound.

  Otis woofed. My oh-so-casual lean against the rail didn’t fool him.

  “Are we there yet?” Jules asked.

  “We’re there,” I whispered. “Finally.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  True Fact: Technically speaking, you have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth only when you’re under oath in a court of law.

  I’d pictured the first day of the hunt a million times since this winter, and none of those pictures had included Jules Buttersby. I knew what Pop Pop would have said if he’d been here: Avast ye whining, BB. Bear down and carry on.

  I want to carry on, Pop Pop, but first I have to drag Jules around the water on a rubber doughnut until she gets bored. My plan was to swerve as much as possible at high speed, to fling Jules off the tube again and again so she’d hate it, give up, and go home. My plan also included testing my blood sugar while Jules was underwater.

  My plan took fifteen minutes.

  “Tubing was never this lame on Maui or Saint Lucia.” Jules spit a chunk of hair out of her mouth. “Or in the Seychelles.”

  “Sorry,” I lied. “My friends and I like to go fast.”

  Otis wasn’t happy either. He looked seasick, curled up as small as he could make himself with his front paws over his nose. Also, he was groaning. I offered him a treat and he didn’t take it. Definitely seasick. Sorry, Otis.

  “Whatever.” Jules flicked her hair off her shoulder. “Okay, it’s your turn.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Legally you’re not allowed to drive unless you’re fourteen or you’ve taken a safety class.”

  Jules raised her eyebrows at me, which I took to mean, “Who cares?”

  I tried again. “Plus, you don’t know how to drive the boat.”

  “How hard can it be? I watched you do it. You push the handle up to go faster and turn the wheel to steer.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said, even though it kind of is that simple.

  “So, what, you just want to go back? Already?”

  No, I don’t want to go back. I want to load you into a cannon and shoot you home to Hollywood—excuse me, the Palisades—so I can come here every day until I find my family’s legacy that’s probably buried in the sand twenty feet under us right this very second.

  That’s what I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “It’s a really nice day. Let’s hang out for a while.”

  I reached into my gear bag and pulled out a five-gallon plastic yellow pail with a clear Plexiglas bottom. I’d made it myself. It took half the night, but it was totally worth the D I got on my social studies essay that was due the next day.

  “What’s that?” Jules asked.

  “A view bucket. You use it to look at stuff underwater.” I demonstrated by sticking my face in the top and leaning over the edge of the boat. “I like to look at fish this way. It’s easier than snorkeling—way less gear and you can stay dry. We can take turns if you want.”

  Jules crossed her arms and eyed me over the top of her sunglasses. “Do you think I’m a total idiot?”

  “What? Of course I don’t think you’re an idiot. What makes you say that?” I sputtered, trying not to look like a person with a giant secret.

  Jules glared at me. “You’ve been trying to get rid of me the whole day. You don’t want to go tubing. You made sure I didn’t want to go tubing. And now you expect me to believe that your idea of fun is looking at fish through a bucket? I mean, seriously. What. Is. Up?”

  So much for my decoy plan. I was going to have to tell Jules the truth. Well, not the truth. The truth is I got the Incomplete on purpose so I could have an excuse to be alone on the water all summer.

  A truth is: “Fine. You’re right. I got an Incomplete in science this year, and I have to do a water project to pass the class.”

  “You failed seventh-grade science? What are you, stupid?”

  I could feel my face burning, and it wasn’t because of the sun. “It was an Incomplete, not an F, and no, I’m not stupid! I just have better things to do. And I suppose you get straight As in every class?”

  Jules picked her cover-up off the floor of the boat and shook it out. “As a matter of fact, I do. School’s our job, and jobs are things you work hard at. So unless you have a serious learning disability or a personal hardship or something, or you really are stupid—which plenty of people are and it’s not their fault because that’s how they were born—there’s no excuse for failing seventh-grade science. Or failing anything.”

  I was pretty sure Jules was for real. Jules, who thinks diabetes is “a thing that happens to fat people,” was making me feel like an idiot.

  To make things worse, after she finished her speech, Jules offered Otis the treat. And he ate it.

  “Well, I got an Incomplete in science, and now I have to do this project. But you don’t have to sit here while I do it. I can take you back.” Say yes, say yes, say yes!

  “What? And stay in my room all day while Anna Bobana bounces around our cabana? No thanks. I’d rather watch you stick your head in a bucket.”

  Shih tzu.

  I killed the engine.

  “Keep an eye out for boat traffic,” I ordered Jules. “Fist bump, Otis.”

  Otis raised a paw and I tapped it. Then I whispered in his ear, “I’m mad at her, not you,” and gave him a kiss on the nose for good luck.

  I slid onto the tube with the view bucket and let out the rope so I’d have some distance from the boat. Otis watched me with his head hanging over the side.

  “I’m not going anywhere, I promise,” I said. “Stay.”

  I could tell Otis wanted in on the action, but he stayed.

  The weather was perfect: no wind, almost no current. The water was as close to glass as it gets, and even without the bucket I could see almost to the bottom, which was about twenty feet away.

  “What are you looking for?” Jules asked, leaning over the rail next to Otis.

  My goal was to find the ballast pile. Ballast is heavy stuff that people stow in the bottom storage area of boats to balance cargo so boats don’t tip. In the old days, they used things like bricks or rocks or lead bars. Since ballast is heavy, when a ship sinks, the ballast sits on the ocean floor, and the good stuff sits on top of it. Usually, if you find the ballast pile, you’ve found the ship and everything in it. Find the ballast, find the ship.

  My problem was that this particular ship sank 350 years ago, so whatever was left of it was probably buried under sand and mud. But sand and mud shift all the time, and you never know what will surface. My plan was to search the whole area around the sorrowful hound, bit by bit in a grid pattern, until I found anything that looked like something that might be something. Not that I could tell any of that to Jules.

  “Um, you know, just stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” she asked.

  “Stuff that’s in the water,” I said.

  “Like?”

  Why was Jules so interested in my boring summer project? It was a good thing I hadn’t told her the real reason I was out here. If she thought I was doing something exciting like looking for treasure, she’d probably duct-tape herself to the boat so she’d never have to leave, and I’d have to deal with her all summer instead of just today.

  “Stuff that people leave behind. You know, litter,” I said. “It’s an environmental project.”

  I lay belly-down on the tube, eve
ry cell in my body tingling. It could be right under me. Right here. Right now. A brick or a cup or a coin. A spoon that my great-times-twelve-grandma Petra used to eat salt peas 350 years ago.

  I squinted up at the clouds—This is for you, Pop Pop—then gazed out at the boulder: Okay, sorrowful hound. Fetch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  True Fact: Although it’s traditional to kill rival treasure hunters, it’s not required.

  Looking through the view bucket was like snorkeling with super-wide-angle goggles. The sunlight was strong and the Plexi magnified rocks and seaweed on the uneven sand. Everything was light and shadow, crisp and wavy.

  Professional treasure hunters use things like electric blowers and magnetometers. But a MAD (that’s short for “magnetic anomaly detector”) costs around $50,000, so I was using a bucket.

  Which was not as hopeless as it sounded. Low-tech was how every sunken treasure in history was found up until about a hundred years ago, when fancy salvaging machines started getting invented. Pirates got rich for centuries by plundering sunken ships with no MADs or sonar. It helped to know where to look (which I did), and to search in an organized way (which I would do), and to kill other treasure hunters who tried to get there first (which I would try not to do).

  Besides, I did have one high-tech skill: I knew how to scuba dive. Pop Pop told me how he used to dive for treasure when he was younger, and I decided that if we ever found the ship of gold, I would want to dive down with him to get it. After months of begging, pleading, fighting, and guilt-tripping, I made a deal with my parents that if Dr. Basch said yes, then they would let me get certified when I turned twelve. Dr. Basch said yes.

  Jules listened to music and scrolled on her phone while I covered a ten-foot section of the bay. Each time I finished going over a square, I hand-paddled to another. I spotted plenty of shells and rocks, and even somebody’s lost laptop, but nothing that looked like it maybe came from a ship 350 years ago. I also saw a ton of jellyfish—I couldn’t believe Jules hadn’t gotten stung all those times she’d fallen off the tube.