In Too Deep (13 page)

A
police car stood vigil against the curb outside. As I walked up the path, I noticed a uniformed cop inspecting a broken window at the side of the house and another in the living room through the open front door. My mom was waiting for me on the front steps.

“Annie,” she said, enveloping me in a reassuring embrace. “Please don’t worry. It’s okay.”

There was no way I could muster the patience to hug her back. I kept pushing forward until she had no choice but to let me go. I’d expected for the place to be torn up, like in the movies, with tufts of cushion bleeding out of knife holes in the sofa, the bookshelves crashed onto the floor, broken lamps. But aside from the broken window, the living room looked like it had hardly been touched.

“They didn’t take anything,” my mom was saying, following me from the living room to the hallway. “The alarm probably scared them off.”

I covered the last ten steps to my room at a dead sprint and slammed the door behind me. Bile was rising in my throat as I scanned the room, grasping for proof that whoever had broken into our house had left my room alone.

“Annie?” my mom said through the door. “Annie, can I come in?”

The mattress, was it off center, or had I left it that way? Were my pillows supposed to be on the floor? I was searching for something, anything, to convince myself that the truth wasn’t really the truth.

My mom pleaded, “Annie, I know how violating this feels. But these things happen. We’re lucky we weren’t home when it did.”

“They didn’t even take my silver piece of eight, if you can believe it,” my dad said.

My dresser. I knew before I opened it. The toe of a sock protruded from the top drawer, blinding white against the dark brown wood. There was no ignoring the truth anymore.

“What do you mean, gone?” Josh said, back at Neutral Grounds because I’d wanted to get out of the house but needed to be surrounded by people. Lots of people.

I’d lied to the police and to my parents—nothing of mine was taken, of course not!—but what choice did I really have? Was I supposed to tell them that I’d put my entire family at risk? That I’d smuggled a priceless artifact over international borders and stashed it with my unmentionables? My parents had spent the rest of the afternoon convincing me that everything was going to be okay, and finally I’d had enough. I told them they were right and thanked them for their reassurance, and I said that I had work to do.

“
Gone
is like
dead
,” I said. “Or
pregnant
. There is only one meaning.”

A middle-aged woman at the table next to us couldn’t help from tilting her head in our direction. Two teenagers, a nervous conversation, and the word
pregnant
.

I leaned my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said, staring at a dent in the wood.

“What do you have to be sorry about? Last I checked, it’s not the break-in-ee that’s responsible—”

“My sock drawer! What kind of an idiot puts something like that in her sock drawer?”

Josh patted the table and leaned back. He shook his head. “We were so close, too. I was sure of it.”

“It can’t be over.”

“They have the disk, Annie. The map. And we don’t.” He motioned to the backpack at his feet. “We have a folder. Printouts. Photocopies.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. Josh and I were just a guy and a girl with a library card and Internet access. Wayo had money, a team, and now he had the disk. My phone rang. I set it on the table and Gracia’s face smiled up at me. My phone. My phone!

“I’m a genius!” I yelped, energized as though I’d been struck by lightning. I spun the phone around and showed Josh, scrolling through the pictures I’d taken. One of each side of the disk. Then close-ups on different parts of each image. Then a self-portrait of me grinning like an idiot and holding the disk next to my face, and another one of me pretending to bite the disk as if it were an Olympic medal.

“Wow,” he said.

“Don’t pay attention to those ones,” I said, scrolling back.

“This is good,” Josh said suddenly. “This is great!”

His chair scraped against the floor when he jumped to his feet. Before I knew what was happening, he’d leaned across the table and wrapped his arms around me. But with the table between us, it was not the smoothest of maneuvers. I was so stunned that I didn’t meet him halfway, so he could only really get his forearms to me. He sat back down, seeming to realize the clumsiness of his gesture.

The woman next to us could hardly contain herself. She’d turned almost entirely toward us, her eyes wide open, her mouth slightly agape.

“It was negative,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up. “Yay!”

She looked away, and Josh said, “What was negative?”

“Forget it.” I pointed to the backpack. “Today at school you were going to tell me why Cortés would have kept his discovery of Hawaii a secret?”

“Right!” Josh leaned over and pulled out the familiar manila folder. “Unless it wasn’t Cortés who did it. Unless it was one of his men. Or, unless the goal wasn’t to discover something but to cover something up.”

“Too much
unless
.”

“That’s what I thought. But then I found this.”

He glanced around the coffee shop before sliding a close-up of one of the sculptures across the table. A block, with some sort of embossed design carved into it that looked like a two-headed bird.

“And this.”

Another sculpture. This carving hadn’t survived the elements as clearly, but it looked like a pyramid of three of the same thing: crescent-shaped images, like bananas with the ends pointing up, and also with a point coming from the center. “Are those ships?”

Josh was biting his bottom lip. He could barely contain himself. “Crowns,” he said.

“Crowns? How do you know that?”

He handed me the photocopy of a drawing I did recognize: the
Vida Preciosa
as shown departing for Spain from the New World in 1540. Josh put his finger on the flag, drawn to be rippling slightly in the breeze.

I held up the two pictures next to each other, but I had to squint because the flag was too small to see clearly. “I don’t really—”

Josh gave me yet another picture, a close-up of the flag from a different source. Taking up the whole flag was a shield, split into quadrants, with images in each, including a two-headed bird and a triangle of three crowns.

“That right there,” he said, “is the crest bestowed upon Cortés by King Charles the Fifth when Cortés became governor of New Spain in 1519. It flew on every one of Cortés’s ships.”

The flag. The sculptures. The similarities were unmistakable. I tried to lick some moisture back into my lips, but my mouth was just as dry. It was like rubbing sandpaper on more sandpaper. “No way.”

“I know,” Josh said. “Crazy, right? I bet if we looked at other pictures of the sculpture garden, we’d see more images from the crest. Do you know what this means?”

I struggled to find the words. “You may have just found something that changes everything we know about the discovery of the New—”

“You really are a teacher’s kid, aren’t you?” He leaned in, whispering, “I just told you that I may have found the location of the Golden Jaguar, and you go
there
?”

“Sorry.” I tried again. “It means that you’re nowhere near as stupid as you come off in public?”

“Thanks, Annie. I’m trying to do something here—”

“No, Josh, I’m just kidding.” It was surprising how cute he was when insulted. It probably didn’t happen very often. “So, now what?”

“We’re going to Molokai.”

“Say that again?”

“Molokai, baby.”

“We don’t have the resources to handle something like—”

“Alvarez said it himself. All we have to do is get creative. We can turn our greatest weakness right around. Make it our greatest advantage.” He pulled out his wallet and removed a small rectangular piece of paper. “Oh, and before you give me a bunch of crap about how spoiled I am and how I don’t live in the real world, take a look at this.”

“That’s a temporary open-water certification card,” I said, trying desperately to make sense of everything. The sculpture garden, Cortés, the crest. And Josh Rebstock had just invited me to Hawaii. To repeat, Josh Rebstock had just invited me to Hawaii.

“You have to take me diving.”

“You said you spent all last weekend at the library—”

“Check-out dives,” he said with a shrug and a damn twinkle in his eye. “Your mom recommended another dive shop, no offense. I got the sense that she wanted to take some things off your plate. I just hope the water in Hawaii is warmer than out at Catalina. That was miserable.”

“You’re certified?”

“Try to keep up,” he said.

I started to let myself imagine the two of us on a treasure-hunting trip to Hawaii, but it wasn’t long before reality came thundering in. “Wayo.”

Josh started to blurt something out, but caught himself and leaned forward. “He’s only had the disk for a couple of hours,” he whispered as he pointed to the folder. “We have this. We have a head start on him. We have to act fast, though.”

“What on earth makes you think my parents are going to let me go to Hawaii with you?”

Josh handed me the folder. He laced his fingers together and pressed his palms outward in a stretch. Then he cracked the knuckles of both hands and said, “You’ll see.”

“
T
his is the worst plan ever,” I said.

I was sweating, and the back of the shop smelled like extra chlorine, my mom having just recently given the pool a shock treatment. Josh leaned back in one of the folding chairs while we waited, but I couldn’t sit still, so I busied myself by filling empty tanks at the fill panel by the rental BCs at the rear wall. Attach the whip to the tank valve, step back, press the button, fill 200 psi per minute. Fifteen minutes to a full tank. Remove the whip. Repeat.

“It’s going to work out,” he said, his hands laced obnoxiously behind his head. “I promise.”

The hum of the compressor out back made it so that I could hear only the general rumbling of my parents’ deliberation, interrupted from time to time by Josh’s mom’s expansive actress voice.

Josh’s folder of research lay open on the workbench. I could only hope it had served its purpose. We’d given our parents everything we had on the mystery of the sculpture garden but kept any mention of Cortés or the Jaguar to ourselves. Now our fate was being decided.

“You know what I hate about you?” I said.

“Hold on, I’ve got to write this down,” he said, not moving an inch. “Let me get a pencil.”

“It’s not your carefree, let-life-come-to-me attitude, because whatever. I just hate that it
works
for you.”

He closed his freaking eyes and nestled his head back into his palms. “This is good stuff. Keep it coming.”

“Can’t you just respect the fact that things don’t come so easily to everyone else? Is that too much to—”

“Annie, I’m telling you.” This time at least he sat forward and looked at me. “This is a good plan.”

The door swung open, and Josh’s mom burst through like a gust of freshly shampooed wind. My parents followed.

I turned off the compressor but left the hose attached to the tank. I couldn’t read the expressions on any of them. Had they come to a decision? Were they angry at each other? Were they annoyed with us for even proposing this?

Oscar-winning actress Jessica Rebstock looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of a high-end activewear catalog. Her luscious hair was held back with a wide green headband, and she wore black capri tights and a fitted white tank. I love my mom and dad, but let’s be honest: there’s a reason some people are movie stars while other people teach history and own dive shops.

“I’m due for a reading at Warner Brothers,” she said, pressing her palms together as if to beg forgiveness. “Call me as soon as we know what’s happening, and I’ll have Violet make the necessary plans.”

My mom flinched at the mention of Violet’s name—as though she’d caught herself about to roll her eyes and managed to abort the maneuver.

“Bill, Eleanor,” Josh’s mom said, offering her manicured hand to my parents, “it was wonderful to see you.”

“Jessica.” My dad nodded as he shook her hand, and a little smile tickled his mouth.

She squeezed Josh on the shoulder and twirled around, looking over her shoulder at her son one last time before the door closed behind her. With her energy now gone, there was a void in the room, and I think we all knew that none of us could possibly come close to filling it.

My mom cleared her throat. “Josh,” she said. “Would you mind? And if anyone comes in, just tell them I’ll be right there.”

We were alone for at least a minute of silence. My mom disconnected the pressure hose from the tank and replaced the plastic cover on the tank valve. A dull thud rang out as she placed the full tank by the rear door.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Well?”

“Be honest,” my dad said. “Do you really expect us to go along with this?”

“It’s an amazing opportuni—”

“You’re fifteen years old, Annie. And he’s seventeen. He’s a boy.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, careful to keep any disappointment out of my voice lest they think I wished it were like that.

“I hope it doesn’t sound like we don’t trust you,” Dad said.

“That’s exactly what it sounds like.”

He waved a quick finger at me as though dismissing a student’s obnoxious remark. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure whether Mrs. Rebstock is an appropriate chaperone for a trip of this—”

“That’s why Violet’s going to be there the whole time,” I said.

When we’d come up with the plan, Josh and I had played devil’s advocate with each other, offering rebuttals to every objection we could think of. Josh’s mom was easy to convince; she practically fell all over herself saying yes, reminding me how in my debt she was for saving her son’s life, et cetera. But my parents were much trickier, and only partly because I was younger and a girl. There was the element of me associating with “those people” that couldn’t be ignored.

“How well do you know this assistant?” my mom said.

“She’s nice. Graduated from Princeton, near the top of her class. Summa cum laude, I think.” I was making this part up. I needed to stop. “Super detail oriented. Good person.”
Just stop.
“Likes dogs.”
What?

“This isn’t how normal people live. You can’t just up and go to Hawaii whenever you need to research a school report—”

“Some people
can
,” I said. “That’s the point. Why do you even send me to a fancy school like Pinedale if you’re not going to let me take advantage of the connections I make?”

“What does Mr. Alvarez think about this?” Dad said.

“How many times have we talked about the importance of primary research, of getting as much information on the subject as possible? And here I have the chance to do exactly that.”

Considering that I didn’t directly answer his question, I convinced myself that it wasn’t actually a lie. Of course we hadn’t told Alvarez a thing.

A couple of days before, I’d happened to mention that Josh and I were thinking about doing our final presentation on the use of primary-source documents in shipwreck research. I’d said that I knew that a lot of his Golden Jaguar stuff had been lost when Wayo had taken off, but I was hoping he’d made some copies.

“I threw everything away,” he’d said. “What little I didn’t take down to the island with me.”

I’d waited for more, but he was too busy pretending to fiddle with one of the zippers on his satchel.

“You’re giving up?”

That’s when he finally looked me in the eyes. “We were friends for over ten years. At least I thought so, but now I can’t help but wonder, was he just using me the whole time? Pretending, on the off chance that I’d discover something he could use?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I’d gone with something vague that could be interpreted as insightful. “It’s a lot of money. Who knows what people are capable of?”

Now, talking with my parents, I picked up Josh’s folder—maybe a bit melodramatically, I admit. I felt like a defense attorney pulling out all the stops in my closing argument. “Printing pictures from the Internet and photocopying old library books can only take us so far. Look at these sculptures. Why are they there? What do they mean? I know you, Dad. Wouldn’t you like to find the answers, too?”

“I’m not questioning the validity of your topic—”

“Alvarez is totally on board,” I blurted. It was a risk I had to take. Simply not lying wasn’t going to cut it. “He practically begged us to go.”

My parents exchanged a series of meaningful parental facial expressions: some eyebrow raises, a squint, the shake of a head, the furrowing of a brow. It was like apes doing sign language.

“There will be ground rules,” my dad said sternly.

I almost bounced up and down, but I had to prove to them that I was mature enough to spend a weekend with a boy, so I offered a quick nod instead.

The buzzer rang out front.

Annie Fleet! You’ve just won…a fabulous trip to the
beautiful and secluded island paradise of Molokai!

“Annie!” Josh called out.

“So it’s a yes?” I said. “I can go?”

It was my mom’s turn to act all severe. “Please don’t make us regret this.”

“I won’t,” I said, clutching the folder against my chest.
I’m going! I’m going!

Josh again: “Annie!”

I was going to fly on my first private plane for my first trip to Hawaii. I was going to have my own room at the resort. And yes, I was going with Josh Rebstock. I practically floated into the retail shop.

Josh stood by the front counter, his face a mask of surprise and—was it fear? The man he was looking at wore a faded blue baseball cap and had his back to me. He turned his head slowly, following Josh’s gaze, and—

Wayo.

“
Hola, señorita
. Is good to see you.”

I was unexpectedly grateful that I’d told Josh the truth about Cozumel. It gave me the freedom to be as scared as I needed to be without having to wonder what he thought of me.

“What…what are you doing here?” I stammered.

“I hear so much about your dive shop from el Señor Alvarez.”

Josh came around and stood at my side. Very casually, he grabbed the folder from me and held it under his arm.

“You’ve seen him since our trip?” Josh said.

“A little, yes. I was hoping he has more information on the Jaguar, but he tells me he has given up the chase.”

“You were supposed to be his friend,” I said.

“What is a friend, really?” Wayo opened his palms. “Someone to pass the time with? Someone to get you from one part of your life to the next?”

My parents came from the back, and Wayo turned on the charm. He removed his cap—freeing that familiar wisp of hair—and his eyes lit up. “Annie’s parents?”

“Bill Fleet,” my dad said, shaking his hand. “And you are?”

“A friend of her teacher, el Señor Alvarez. Annie was come down to Cozumel to help us with the
huracán
.”

He was pleasant, friendly, and completely unrecognizable from the man he’d been only seconds before. His posture was different, all laid-back and welcoming. He was a psychopath, or a sociopath. Whatever kind of
path
that shows no concern for other people and no remorse for mistreating them, that’s what he was. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a collection of kitten heads in his freezer.

My dad smiled. “You’re from Cozumel?”

“I own a small dive shop myself,” he said, looking around. “Not as nice as this one, of course—”

“I’m sure it’s wonderful,” my mom said. She was
blush
ing
. “We’ll have to look you up if we ever make it down there. I’m sure Annie would enjoy diving with you.”

Josh gripped my elbow so hard I thought my forearm was going to fall off.

“I bet she is a good diver, the daughter of a dive shop owner,” Wayo said, looking at me. “I am sure she does never panic underwater. She can deal with almost any emergency. Maybe surprising to some people.”

“Well,” Mom said, “she has had a lot of training.”

Wayo let his eyes linger on me for an excruciating moment, and then he replaced his cap. “I only come to say hello.”

A nod to each of my parents, a toothy grin to me and Josh, and he was gone. I flinched when the buzzer sounded.

My dad checked his watch and excused himself, citing a stack of ungraded AP essays. “We’ll talk specific ground rules tonight, okay?”

He kissed me on the forehead, but I hardly felt his lips. It was as though my entire body had been shot up with novocaine. Josh thanked my mom, and I mumbled that I wouldn’t let them down, and the next thing I knew, we were standing on the sidewalk. The rush of street traffic was muted and distant, as though I was hearing it from underwater.

“He knows I know he took the disk,” I said. “He’s trying to scare me away.”

“We have a problem,” Josh said.

This was enough to snap me out of my daze. “You think? You think Wayo showing up
at my mom’s shop
might be—”

“Easy. Take it easy.”

“You take it easy—”

“I mean, we have a problem on top of that. Another problem.” He put his hand between my shoulder blades and steered me toward his car. His other hand still gripped the folder. “The people in charge promise the airport is secure, but I’ve never flown from there without seeing at least a couple paparazzi. One of the staff must tip them off. There’s so much money—”

“Focus. The problem.”

“The problem is that Jessica Rebstock and her son are going to Hawaii this weekend. Somebody will find out about it. And that means there will be pictures. And if you’re there with me—”

“Wayo’s going to know.”

“He’s only had the disk for a few hours, and maybe he doesn’t know about the sculpture garden.” Josh nodded to himself. “We can still do this. We could sneak you onto the plane beforehand, then my mom and I could get on.”

“Unless he’s watching you, too,” I said.

“If he
is
watching me, then we need to give everyone the impression that what I’m doing has nothing to do with you.”

“Like a diversion.” An idea flashed into my head, and I knew instantly that it was the right one. “Crap.”

“What’s wrong?” Josh looked around, suddenly panicked.

We reached the passenger side of his car, and I leaned my elbows on the roof and contemplated a half-eaten Snickers bar stuck in the gutter. “I know what to do.”