Thirteen Plus One (15 page)

“What are the early morning walkers?” I asked.

Alphonse shared a look with Virginia, who smiled. To me, Alphonse said, “People who take walks early in the morning.”

I blushed harder.
“Oh
. I thought maybe they were ... um....”

Ah, fudge.
I giggled. I couldn’t help it. And actually, it made things better, because it helped my chest loosen up.

“People like to get out early if they’re searching for starfish,” Alphonse said. “Some just want to enjoy the sunrise.”

Dinah found her voice. “Um, does that mean we’ll be getting up
before
sunrise?”

Alphonse furrowed his brow.

“Dinah isn’t a morning person,” I said. “She has been known, I am sorry to report, to fall asleep while eating her strawberry Pop-Tart—
after
her dad has already steered her out of bed and into the kitchen.”

“So untrue!” Dinah protested. “Dad,
tell
them.”

“Sometimes in her waffles,” Mr. Devine said. “Makes an awful mess.”

“Dad!”

“Nice one, Mr. D,” I said. I held up my hand, and he slapped it, looking pleased.

“There are plenty of jobs to go around,” Virginia said. “We’ll find a good fit for everyone. For now, let me show you the house.”

“Virginia, before you go,” Alphonse said. “More plastic netting?”

“Right,” Virginia said. “I’ll call in the order after I get the girls settled. And when Erica gets back, find out how Myrtle’s doing.”

“Will do,” Alphonse said, saluting.

“Myrtle has a skull fracture,” Virginia told us.

“Oh no,” I said, wondering who Myrtle was.

“We think she was hit by a boat propeller. Her jaw took a blow, too. She might pull through, might not.”

I cringed, thinking that Virginia seemed awfully casual about Myrtle’s chances of recovery.

“She’s got size on her side, that’s one good thing,” Virginia went on. “Old girl’s as big as a kitchen table.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it, realizing in the nick of time that this was another early morning walker moment.

“Is Myrtle ... a turtle?” Dinah asked.

“What else would she be?” Virginia said, surprised. “She washed up two weeks ago on Myrtle Beach. She’s still carrying a full clutch of eggs, so we’re crossing our fingers she survives.”

Myrtle from Myrtle Beach
, I thought.
Got it
.

“I’ve heard of Myrtle Beach,” I contributed. “That’s where college kids go for spring break, right?”

“Mmm,” Virginia said disapprovingly. “The beach is for everyone, but the creatures that inhabit the ocean were here first. All those hotels? All those bright lights? Why do you
think
the turtles no longer nest on its shores?”

I was fairly sure she wasn’t really asking, but I tried nonetheless to muddle it out. The hotel part was easy: If there were hotels everywhere, that meant less space for the turtles. But I didn’t know what bright lights had to do with anything.

“Well,”
Virginia said, as if ridding herself of a bad taste. “Enough of that. Let’s give you the tour.”

She led us across the living room to a stairwell. “This is the blue staircase,” she said. She paused. “Because it’s blue.”

Sure enough, the wooden stairs were painted bright blue, with gaps of air between each one. One flight led up from the main level, another led down.

“Below are the crew’s quarters,” Virginia said, gesturing. I peered through the slatted steps and saw a room with a partly open door. “Alphonse sleeps down there, along with Milo and James. Nice guys. Milo can be pretty quiet, but nothing wrong with that.”

I nudged Dinah, who could also be “pretty quiet.” She gave me a
shush
look. But so many guys—it was exciting! Not for
me,
but for Dinah, who had yet to have her first kiss.

Dinah is going to kiss a boy at the beach,
I decided right then and there. Or maybe it was a premonition? Either way, this was my prediction, which meant I could cross yet another item off my To-Do list.
Dinah’s first kiss will happen with the sound of the waves in her ears and a salty breeze lifting her hair.

Hopefully I’d get to cross off the “... and have it come true” part before our time at the beach ended, too.
Eeee!

Virginia climbed the flight of stairs and extended her hand toward a room on her left. “Master bedroom. Where I sleep. Also, the supply closet, if you need more toilet paper or lightbulbs or sunscreen.”

“And girls,
always
wear sunscreen,” Mr. Devine interjected.

“Yes, Dad,” Dinah said, sounding pained.

Virginia went up another flight of stairs and reached a landing, where she took a right. The staircase itself went higher, leading to an attic room with a closed door. Right as I was looking at it, it creaked open, and a sliver of face appeared. Someone’s eye locked with mine. The eye widened, and the door slammed shut.

Oka-a-a-ay,
I thought.
Creepy recluse in the attic. That’s ... atmospheric.

I grabbed Dinah’s forearm and whispered, “Dinah, there’s someone up there. In the attic.”

She shook me off. Virginia had opened the door to a different room, and Dinah stepped closer to hear.

“... the red room,” Virginia was saying. Past her shoulder, I saw two twin beds, each with a red bedspread.

Blood red
, a voice inside me said. To which I replied silently and fiercely,
Shut up, you’ve read too much Stephen King.

But somebody
had
peered out at me. I knew what I saw.

“Brooklyn and Erika share this room,” Virginia told us. “You’ll meet them at dinner.” She pulled the door shut, saying, “Oh, and do please keep the windows and doors closed during the heat of the day. This old house doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

No AC? In the summer? In South Carolina?!

Virginia looked at me, and I quickly fixed my expression, which I hadn’t intended to make.

“It’s part of its charm,” she said.

Past the red room was a bathroom, with a rolled-up tube of Colgate on the counter. After that, the hall opened into a den. The walls were lined with shelves, which held paperbacks, board games, and old VHS videotapes. Against the far wall sat a TV with rabbit ears antennae.

“There’s no reception,” Virginia said, following my gaze, “but the VCR works. Sometimes we have movie nights. Do you like movies, Winnie?”

I was about to answer when Dinah squealed.

“The ocean!” she exclaimed. “There it is! Winnie, look! ”

I turned to see her scrambling onto a long, cushioned window seat. She tucked her knees beneath her and her pressed her forehead to the glass, sighing rapturously. Outside, beyond a line of trees and another row of houses, stretched a shimmering expanse of blue.

The ocean.

I
loved
the ocean, and even the lack of AC and the possible presence of a crazy attic-dweller couldn’t take that away.

I joined Dinah on the window seat. Our shoulders touched, which was our bodies’ way of saying
yes
and
hi
and
isn’t it wonderful
? Sunlight danced on the water. My soul expanded and pressed outward against my ribs.

Even if the crazy attic-dweller does hack me to death with scissors in the night, I don’t care,
I thought.
At least I’ll die happy.

Well, except for the small fact that I’d be being attacked with scissors, which would put a damper on things.

“Let me show you the rest of the house,” Virginia said, “and then you two can get out there.”

Her voice pulled me back, and I slid off the window seat. I felt slightly embarrassed ... then decided that was dumb. How could anyone be faulted for loving the ocean?

Im-poe-
see
-bluh,
my French teacher would say in her Frenchy accent.

Virginia led us through the den and gave us a peek at the blue room, which was identical to the red room, except that the bedspreads on the twin beds were blue.

“Ryan and Mark,” Virginia said. She closed the door. To Mr. Devine, she said, “Five boys, five girls. The house can sleep more—the sofa in the den is a pullout, and three people can sleep on the living room sofa if they’re willing to scrunch—but ten’s a good number.”

“Are you the only chaperone?” Mr. Devine asked as she led us to a second stairwell. This stairwell was green, so I wasn’t surprised when Virginia told us it was called the green staircase.

“Yes, it’s just me,” she told Dinah’s dad. “I don’t think of myself as a chaperone, though. I’m simply the project leader.”

Mr. Devine frowned.

“I have some ranger friends from Huntington Beach State Park who stop by every so often. And Jason—he’s a naturalist, works for the state—he likes to help mark the turtle nests.” The green staircase, like the blue staircase, led both up and down. Virginia took the up route and kept talking. “There’s plenty of adult supervision, don’t worry.”

“Um, yes,” Mr. Devine said as he gripped the railing and started carefully after her. “Very good.”

Dinah turned to me and rolled her eyes.
Because I’m sooo in need of adult supervision,
her expression said.

But I was thinking about something else.
Five boys, five girls,
Virginia had said. The five boys were Alphonse, James, Milo, Ryan, and Mark. The girls were me, Dinah, Erika, and Brooklyn—but together, we made four, not five. Who was the fifth?

“Um, Virginia?” I said. This stretch of stairs was supersteep, and Virginia’s body disappeared as she went up, swallowed by a small rectangular door in the ceiling.

“Yes?” she called.

“Who’s the fifth girl?”
It’s not the creepy attic-dweller, is it?

“She’s in the rainbow room getting settled,” Virginia said, which didn’t answer my question. “You and Dinah will be rooming with her. It’s close quarters, but the view is terrific from up there.”

I stopped still.
The view is terrific from “up there”?
The only bedroom that could be described as “up there” was the attic room, which meant that ...
holy crudballs.
Creepy Attic Girl was our roommate!

“The view is terrific from
here,”
Dinah said from above. “Omigosh. Winnie, come
see
! ”

I climbed the last couple of stairs, emerging in a room made entirely of windows.

“Wow,” I breathed. Out of the front window was the ocean, blue and sparkling and forever. To the right was more ocean, plus some houses, and then a stretch of undeveloped shore. To the left was pretty much all houses, and out the back window was the marsh. The sun was beginning to go down, making the reeds glow reddish-gold.

“We call this room the Crow’s Nest,” Virginia said. “It’s the highest point in DeBordieu. In the evenings, if a storm’s coming in, we come up here to watch the lightning. If the wind’s strong, we sometimes feel the house sway.”

Aye-yai-yai,
I thought, sharing a glance with Dinah.

“And sometimes we spot—oh, look!
There!”
She pointed toward the ocean. “Those humps coming out of the water ... do you see? It’s a school of porpoises, swimming along the shoreline.”

I scanned for humps.
Humps, humps, humps, where are you?

“Well, I’ll be,” Mr. Devine said.

“Omigosh, look how
cute
they are!” Dinah cooed.

My ribs constricted. Where were the porpoises? What if they disappeared before I got to see them?

Virginia stepped behind me, placing her hands lightly on my shoulders and rotating me an inch to the left. “About halfway between the horizon and the shore. Look for the curve of their backs.”

But I didn’t see them. Everybody else saw the porpoises, but all I saw was—

“Ohhhh,”
I said.
There
they were. A dozen gleaming bodies, maybe more, smooth and muscular as they made their rhythmic crescent dives. They were glorious.

We watched until every last porpoise was out of sight. Then Virginia breathed out big and clasped her hands. Smiling, she said, “Shall we go see your room?”

We descended single-file from the Crow’s Nest and backtracked to the blue staircase. I doubted I could have done it on my own, not without getting lost. My thoughts wandered to Cinnamon, who would have adored this maze of a house with all of its nooks and crannies. She would have even dug the gothic possibility of Creepy Attic-Dweller-and if she were here, maybe I’d have felt better equipped to deal with Creepy Attic-Dweller myself.

I wanted to check my cell, to see if Cinnamon had called or texted.

“I’m confused,” Dinah whispered, falling behind with me. “Where
is
our room?”

I shrugged. It had to be the attic room I’d glimpsed when we first came to the second level, but I was still clinging to the hope that it wasn’t.

“Okey-doke,” Virginia said. She extended her arm like a tour guide, and my heart sank. “I’ve put you girls on the third floor. How does that sound?”

“Just great,” I said weakly.

She climbed the stairs. I hesitated, and Dinah nudged my spine to make me proceed.

“Like I said, your roomie’s already here,” Virginia said.

“Is she nice?” Dinah asked. “What’s her name?”

“Does she play well with others?” I said.

Virginia rapped on the door. “People to see you—your new roommates!” To Dinah and me, she said, “I’d say she’s nice. Sure. A little strange, but we like strange, right?”

“Depends,” I said. “Hacking-with-scissors strange?”

Virginia laughed.

“Winnie,
shush,”
Dinah said. “She could hear you!”

“What’d you say her name was?” I asked Virginia.

“Hmm?” Virginia said.

“Her
name.”
Why was she avoiding the question? Was it something unspeakable, like Trixie “The Nose” Gaglioni? Bloody Amy? Elvira?!