Remarkable (15 page)

No one could, of course, since it was their first pirate lesson, but this displeased Captain Schnabel, so she made each of them walk the plank once before letting them sit down in their seats again.

“The Code of the Pirates,” Captain Schnabel explained, “is an agreement between the captain of a pirate ship, in this case me, and the crew, which would be you three. The code sets forth the rules under which the ship will be governed.”

“What happens if we break one of the rules?” Eddie asked eagerly.

“You cannot break the rules. It isn’t allowed under the code.”

“But what happens if one gets broken anyway—say by accident.”

“Are you planning on breaking one by accident?” Captain Schnabel asked, giving Eddie such a ferocious glower that he shook in his wet socks.

“Um. No…not anymore.”

“Good. Now normally, the captain and the crew would come up with the terms together, but since you sorry lot didn’t even know what they were in the first place, I’ve written them myself.”

She unfurled a scroll she had tucked into the colorful silk sash wrapped around her pirate shirt and began to read.

“Number One: No breaking the Pirates’ Code, for any reason. Number Two: The captain’s word is law. Number Three: The crew must immediately obey all of the captain’s orders. Number Four: No one can challenge the captain or lie to the captain. Number Five: A pirate only keeps promises made to other pirates. All other promises must be broken immediately.
Number Six: The crew and captain will stay together until it is mutually decided that they’ve accomplished the mission of the ship. Now, are there any questions?”

No one said anything. Jane and the Grimlet twins just looked at each other nervously.

“Then sign the code,” Captain Schnabel said, brandishing a quill pen at them. None of her three students stood up.

“Sign the code or spend the rest of the day walking the plank!” Captain Schnabel roared. Jane and the Grimlet twins signed. They didn’t have much choice.

“I can’t help but feel that somehow our plan has backfired,” Eddie said glumly as he, Melissa, and Jane walked out of the public school. Their arms were full of fishing nets, compasses, spyglasses, cutlasses, maps of the ocean, and all of the other pirate gear that Captain Schnabel had given them as part of their homework.

“Who’d have guessed she’d be so enthusiastic about it?” Melissa grumbled. “Life was easier when we had nothing to do at school but cause trouble.”

“Do you guys want to go to the library with me and get started on our pirate book reports?” Jane asked.

“We can’t,” Melissa told her. “We need to get our
weather machine ready by Friday, and I don’t see how we’re going to manage it with all this homework she’s given us.”

“But the science fair doesn’t start until Saturday,” Jane said. “The only thing happening on Friday is the Science Fair Dance.”

“Oh, is that right?” Eddie was doing his best to sound innocent.

“What are you two planning?” Jane asked suspiciously. She’d been hanging around the Grimlet twins long enough to know that the only time they sounded innocent was when they were up to no good.

“Nothing,” Melissa said. “Nothing at all. And on the off chance we were planning something, wouldn’t you rather not know?”

She had a point, but before Jane could answer, Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III came running around the street corner.

“Jane! Jane! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he cried. “I need to ask you something.”

“What is it?” Jane asked, feeling more suspicious of her brother than she had of the Grimlet twins.

“I can’t speak about it in front of other people. I need to talk to you in private.”

“Right now?” Jane said. She and the Grimlet twins had walked all the way to the front of their creepy black house. As usual, Jane had been hoping that they would remember to invite her inside and introduce her to their notorious bank-robbing parents. But as usual, the Grimlet twins pushed and shoved each other down the broken front sidewalk and then disappeared behind the crooked front door without so much as saying good-bye.

“Jane,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. “You’re the only one I can trust. You’re the only one in town who knows anything about mediocrity!”

It was the closest that Anderson Brigby Bright had ever come to saying she had any abilities worth noticing. Jane tried her best not to feel flattered.

“What did you want to ask me?” Jane said. But Anderson Brigby Bright hadn’t waited for her. He was already running in the direction of the gifted school. Jane sighed and ran after him.

R
emarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted was located at the top of Mount Magnificent, which was slightly shorter than Remarkable Hill, but much steeper. But as Anderson Brigby Bright approached the school’s parking lot, he suddenly veered into the woods and down a small road not often taken.

“Anderson Brigby Bright! Where are you going?” Jane called as she followed him.

“We’ll be there soon,” he called back. A moment later he veered off the road not often taken and onto a trail nobody bothered with.

“I’m getting tired.” She was still carrying her pirate gear from school, and it was quite heavy.

“Quit complaining. We’re here,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. He’d stopped in a small clearing in the middle of the forest. “It’s the most secluded spot in all of Remarkable. I want to be sure we aren’t overheard.”

“Why?” Jane said wearily as she dumped her pirate homework on the ground.

“I need your advice, Jane,” he said despairingly. “My problem is that I had a brilliant idea.”

“Okay,” Jane said, not understanding how this would be a problem.

“I decided to woo Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa with a song, since she likes music so much. That’s brilliant, right?”

Jane gave him a dark look. “It was my idea, remember? I suggested it to you at dinner.”

Anderson Brigby Bright looked confused for a moment. “I don’t remember that.” Then he brightened. “But if it really was your idea, that probably explains why it isn’t working. Jane, it’s possible…just possible that I am not excellent at singing.”

“So?” Jane said.

“So? So I’ve always been good at everything I’ve tried. I don’t know how to be bad at something. That’s why I came to you.”

“But, Anderson Brigby Bright, the only thing you’ve ever tried to do is paint photorealistically…”

“That’s not the point. The point is that I can’t fail. I need you to listen to me sing.”

“Do I have to?” Jane protested. But Anderson Brigby Bright had already opened his mouth and started to…well, Jane wouldn’t have called it singing. It was more annoying than that. It was more horrible than the sound the Grimlet twins made when they were making raspberries with their armpits. It was more irritating than the rash Jane got when Melissa accidentally dropped one of Eddie’s experimental homemade itch bombs. Anderson Brigby Bright only sang for a few moments, but it was the longest few moments Jane could ever remember living through.

“Well?” he said. His face was full of hope as he waited for her to give him some good news.

“Um.” Jane tried to be diplomatic about it. “It’s not the best singing I’ve ever heard.”

“But it’s not the worst, either. Right?”

“I didn’t exactly say that.”

“But I’m good at everything I do,” Anderson Brigby Bright said, stomping his foot a little, as if this would change Jane’s mind.

From above them, up in one of the trees, came the sound of snickering. It was Penelope Hope Adelaide Catalina. She was sitting on a branch with a thick book about math in her lap.

“What are you doing up there!” Anderson Brigby Bright demanded angrily. “Did you follow me so you could spy on us?”

“Hardly,” Penelope Hope said as she swung down out of the tree. “I came here to work on my differential equations. It’s the most secluded spot in Remarkable, you know. I thought it would be nice to get away from your caterwauling for a while.”

“It’s not caterwauling!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted at her. “And I’m getting better. The only thing I need is more practice without all this criticism.”

“Anderson Brigby Bright, sometimes no amount of practice will make up for a genuine lack of talent,” Jane said gently. It was something that she knew better than anyone. But Anderson Brigby Bright didn’t want to listen to her.

“You just feel that way because you’re you,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. “I’m me. Singing isn’t hard. I know I can learn to do this.”

“You might try attempting something easier to impress Lucinda,” Penelope Hope suggested with as straight a face as she could manage.

“Like what?”

“Like locating Ysquibel.” She started laughing again. “You’re probably at least as good at finding people as you are at singing.”

“I could find Ysquibel if I wanted to!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted. “It would be easy for someone like me. I’m right, aren’t I, Jane. Jane?”

He looked around, but Jane was nowhere to be seen. She’d had the good sense to slip out of the clearing before she had to answer him.

W
hile Penelope Hope and Anderson Brigby Bright continued their argument about whether he had the skill set to find the world’s most famous missing musician (if such an activity was worth his time, which it almost certainly wasn’t), Jane headed off to the library to find a book for her book report.

As you might imagine, Remarkable had one of the finest public libraries in the world. Millicent Margaret VanderTweed, the head reference librarian, had always believed that the library’s collection had one or more books on every worthwhile topic under the sun. But on this day, she found that her faith was being tested.

“How do you spell his name again?” she asked Jane.

“R-O-J-O space H-E-R-R-I-N-G,” Jane answered.

“And he’s a pirate captain, you say?”

“Yes. I’m supposed to do a report on a legendary pirate for school. I chose him because he just moved to town and is very nice.”

Ms. VanderTweed typed his name into the library’s computer again—then tried alternate spellings, like
Roho Hairring
and
Rouxhoux Herhing
. The computer still produced no results.

“It’s just so odd…” she muttered to herself as she went into the book stacks to the pirate section. By the time Jane caught up with her, she was atop a long, rolling bookshelf ladder, reading the titles of books on one of the high shelves in the nonfiction section.

“You are absolutely certain that Captain Rojo Herring exists? Because if he existed, we’d have a book on him.”

“I’m very sure he exists,” Jane said. “I’ve been to his house. He lives in the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill.”

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in a book about the mansion instead. We have several interesting histories about the ghosts that inhabit it…one of the ghosts is called The Gruel. Apparently it wanders the hallways as a lumpy, oatmeal-like apparition.
And don’t even get me started on the Vicious Valkyrie.”

“No, thanks,” Jane said. “Ms. Schnabel would never accept a book report about ghosts.”

Ms. VanderTweed sighed and climbed down from the ladder.

“It’s possible, I suppose, that any book we have on Captain Rojo Herring might have gotten lost in our vast section on Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific. Now there’s a legendary pirate captain.”

“What’s he famous for?” Jane asked.

“
He’s
not famous for anything. Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific is a woman. I believe her first name is Mirabel.”

“I never heard of her.”

“Well, you should have. She was quite famous in her day. She once captured the entire Portuguese Navy using a piece of old string and a variety of lobster baskets.”

“Really?”

“And a few years back she had a school of trained sharks. No one’s ever been able to train sharks before, but they were apparently so afraid of her that they’d do anything she wanted. She was the scariest thing in the ocean up until the day she disappeared.”

“She disappeared? What happened to her?”

“She collected so much treasure that her pirate ship,
The Wild Three O’Clock
, sank to the bottom of the Sea of Cortez,” Ms. VanderTweed said as she pulled a thick book off the shelf. “She was then captured and sent to prison in the port town of Ferragudo.”