Part 8 (1/2)
Brian nodded. ”We go up that way to fish sometimes. It's not far,” the other kid said.
”Okay,” Zach said. ”Let's see this thing.”
Brian led them down to the end of the dock, where a few small dinghies and rowboats were moored. Three rowboats rocked gently beside one another, buffered by plastic fenders. Brian pointed to the one on the end, painted a slate gray. It was beat-up, but afloat, with no visible leaks. A lot better than the rotted-out one Zach had found near the dry dock.
”Can you give us a second to talk it over?” Zach asked.
Brian shrugged and headed back to where his friend was manning the net, trailing it through the water like he was going to catch something by sheer accident. As Zach watched the kid go he saw Alice crossing the gravel-covered yard toward them.
It was interesting watching her when she didn't notice herself being observed. Her coat was tied around her waist. She looked determined and sweaty and a little bit hopeful. Her angular face and thin eyebrows were utterly familiar, but he realized for the first time that she looked like one of those older, mysterious girls he wondered at sometimes in the mall, and that made her strange to him.
”All I've got is a necklace,” Poppy said, touching the thin silver chain around her neck protectively. She wore a tiny typewriter key charm on it. He hadn't seen her without it since she'd gotten it from her father on her birthday. ”I'll trade that, though.”
”I've got my watch and a flashlight,” Zach said. ”And a book I'm pretty sure they don't want.”
Alice walked up to them, pus.h.i.+ng back her braids impatiently. ”Hey, look, guys, I talked to an old guy up at the marina office. He said there was no way to walk to East Liverpool. I know you're going to be mad, but he said it was impossible, Poppy.” She sighed. ”I'm sorry.”
”What if we don't go by foot?” Poppy said, pointing to the gray boat.
”Do we even know which way the current of the river runs?” Alice asked. ”Or anything about boats?”
Poppy looked momentarily thrown, then she frowned. ”What's to know? We just row harder if the current is against us.”
Zach itched to be on the water, even in the little dinghy.
”You promised we'd go back,” Alice said. ”Both of you said that if we couldn't get to East Liverpool in time to get the bus, we'd go back to East Rochester. Well, it's time to turn around.”
Poppy hesitated, and Zach stayed silent far too long.
”Seriously?” Alice asked them. ”You're really going to break your promises?”
”It's not that,” Zach said, looking longingly at the water. ”It's just that I think we can still make it.”
Alice's expression hardened into a tight, unfriendly smile. Her eyes shone like chips of gla.s.s. ”Oh no, you have to come back with me,” she told Zach. ”Even if Poppy doesn't come with us.”
”Yeah?” he said, trying to sound like he didn't carea”like he didn't even know what she was going to threaten him with. He did know, though, and he did care.
”I'll tell her,” Alice said. ”That you lied, and what you lied about.”
”Tell me?” Poppy asked. ”Wait, what do you mean? Tell me what?”
”Nothing,” Zach said, stepping back from them. He took a deep breath of diesel and river muck. He couldn't thinka”all he knew was that if Poppy found out about the Questions, she would never stop picking at his reasons for lying about them until the whole story came out. Imagining that filled him with nameless panic. ”Alice is right about us promising. If she wants to go back, thena””
Poppy interrupted him, looking at Zach like if she stared hard enough, she could read his mind. ”What don't you want me to find out?”
He remembered, too late, how much Poppy hated her friends keeping secrets from her.
”It's nothing,” Zach insisted.
”Then tell me,” Poppy said. She hesitated a moment, then looked at Alice. ”Tell me.”
”Come on,” Alice said. ”Give up. The game's over. We're going back. Let's all just go back. It was still fun. It was still a quest.”
”No way,” said Poppy. ”I could tell Zach something that I bet you don't want him to know, Alice. I know a secret too.”
Alice's whole face changed. He wondered if he'd been so transparent, if it had been as clear when he'd figured out just what he had to lose. And he understood, right then, why Poppy was so upset about Zach and Alice not telling Poppy things. Because whatever Alice didn't want Poppy to say had to be pretty bad. Maybe Alice had talked about how much she hated him or said that he smelled or how stupid he was. Maybe she had made fun of him to Poppy, snickering behind his back.
”You wouldn't do that,” Alice said, her voice hushed. ”You're my best friend. That's a secret.”
”Just tell me,” Zach said. ”Come on. Whatever it is, I won't be mad. At least I don't think I'll be mad.”
Poppy laughed, and Zach thought he saw a strange dancing light in the gla.s.s eyes of the doll, as though the Queen was laughing too. When Poppy spoke, her voice was different. She could be mean sometimes, but never before did she seem gleeful about being cruel. ”She's not going to tell you. I win at blackmail. Alice has to come, and since you apparently have to do what she wants, you have to come too. So come on, let's buy this boat.”
”You don't understand how much trouble I'm going to get in,” Alice said, running her fingers through her braids.
”I don't care. You didn't care about me, and now I don't care about you either,” said Poppy.
”But you promised!” Alice said, her voice anguished.
”I don't care,” Poppy repeated.
Zach paced down the dock, too angry at everyone to be ready to give in to anyone, especially those kids with their fis.h.i.+ng net who were going to try and talk him out of all the cash they had. He glanced at Alice, who was staring at the water in an agony of indecision. And he looked back at the three rowboats and the dinghy, which, now, under his resentful gaze, looked increasingly shabby.
None of it was right. This wasn't how their quest was supposed to go.
He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who'd gone before those heroes, about whether they'd been heroic too or whether they'd been at each other's throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren't going to make it, weren't going to beat those long oddsa”that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed.
At the very end of the dock, Zach stopped. He drew in his breath.
In front of him was a tiny sailboat, low and slim, only a little bigger than the dinghy, but made from fibergla.s.s. A black-and-white striped sail was folded loosely around the boom, the symbol of a sunfish visible on the Dacron cloth. Someone must have just left it, intending to come right back, because the centerboard was pulled out and there were two life jackets piled together in the c.o.c.kpit.
Across the stern was one word in a curling script: PEARL.
Zach jumped down onto the hull, his sneakers. .h.i.tting the curved deck. The boat rocked wildly underneath him, and he had to pinwheel his arms and grab the mast to steady himself. With a grin breaking across his face, he looked up at Alice and Poppy.
”We're not buying anything,” he said. ”We're pirates, remember?”
Their twin expressions of disbelief only made his smile wider.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
POPPY NEARLY CAPSIZED THE BOAT GETTING INTO IT. Zach sat in the center, fingers splayed against the hull, with his legs in the shallow c.o.c.kpit as she climbed down rungs drilled into one of the pilings. First she handed him her backpack, which he dumped next to his, in a small cavity under the centerboard. The boat rocked lightly. When her foot touched the edge of the deck, though, it tipped dangerously toward her. Zach threw his weight hard to the other side, hoping to balance it out. Poppy staggered, falling on her knees with a yelp. After a few moments of wobbling, the boat settled.
”Wow,” she said, trailing her fingers through the water and lifting them up, like it was marvelous to be so close to the river and not swimming in it. ”We're actually doing this thing.”
”You're next,” Zach called up to Alice. ”If Poppy goes to the prow and I stay in the center, it won't be as hard for you to come aboard. At least I think it won't be hard.”