Remarkable (22 page)

“Are you going somewhere?” Jane asked. Captain Rojo Herring sighed sadly and gestured for Jane to come inside.

“I have to get out of town as fast as I can. My old pirating crew has very nearly caught up with me.”

“So I suppose this means you don’t have time to help me,” Jane said despondently.

Captain Rojo Herring shook his head. “I couldn’t help you anyway, Jane. What that detective said today at the bell tower was right. I’m…I’m not a real pirate.”

“What!” Jane said. “But what about the hat? What about your pegs legs! What about your pirate clothes?”

“Fakes. All fakes. The peg legs screw over my real ones. My outfit is just a costume I borrowed from…well, never mind where I got it.”

“I don’t understand,” Jane said. “Why would you pretend to be a pirate?”

“It’s hard to explain. I used to have a job, you see. It was a job I didn’t like very much, and I wanted to get away from it.”

“What kind of job?” Jane asked.

“It’s not important. But I was good enough at it that no one wanted me to do anything else, even though I was sick of doing the same thing over and over.”

“How did you get away?”

“One day, I found myself dressed as a pirate. It…well, it made sense if you were there. And I was a little bit hungry, so I went out and got myself something to eat. I guess no one recognized me, because for the first time in as long as I could remember, no one asked me about…about my work. It was the most relaxing meal I’d ever had. So I kept the pirate suit. And every so often I’d dress up in it and go out on my own. And then one day, I got carried away and joined a pirate ship as the captain.”

“But you didn’t like it?”

“No. I hated being at sea almost as much as I hated doing what I was doing before. The only difference is that I wasn’t much good at sailing. So one day, I crashed my ship on a coral reef and put a hole in its bow. While my crew was fixing it, I slipped away and escaped. But now they’ve tracked me to Remarkable,” he said with a sigh. Then he looked out the window toward the balcony where he’d seen
his mystery woman. “I think I could have been very happy here.”

“You could stay anyway,” Jane said.

The doorbell rang. Captain Rojo Herring brightened again. “It’s the delivery truck. Would you do me a favor and answer that? I don’t think I can bear to start a new life without some of that fantastic Munch jelly to see me through.”

“Sure,” Jane said.

But it was not the driver of the jelly truck who had rung the doorbell. Indeed, the driver of the jelly truck had been forced to turn back when a sudden rainstorm had washed out the road between Munch and Remarkable.

So Jane was utterly and completely taken by surprise when she opened the door, because what she found on the other side were three mean and smelly pirates.

I
t would be nice to be able to say that Jane and Captain Rojo Herring put up a good fight against the combined forces of Jeb, Ebb, and Flotsam. It would have been nice to say that they at least held their ground for a short while. But alas, this would not be even slightly accurate.

Captain Rojo Herring was captured before he’d even had a chance to turn and run—and Jane soon found herself locked inside Salzburg’s enormous parrot cage so she wouldn’t bother anyone by going for help.

Jane did her best to escape. She kicked at the birdcage’s door, shook the bars with her fists, and yelled and screamed for someone to let her out. It was to no
avail. There was no one to hear her. She feared she’d be stuck in the cage until someone noticed that she was missing—and by then, it would be much, much too late to save Captain Rojo Herring.

When she had worn herself out, she leaned back against a wooden bird perch and tried to think what to do next. She’d heard once that people could focus their minds and send messages to loved ones when they were in trouble. She knew her brother would be at the school dance by now, and she knew that the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill had a clear line of sight to the top of Mount Magnificent. She closed her eyes and did her best to send him an urgent mental message, hoping he would come to her rescue.

Unfortunately, this was even less effective than kicking and screaming had been. Anderson Brigby Bright wasn’t thinking about Jane even a little bit. His entire focus was on Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa.

After so many months of worry and anticipation, Anderson Brigby Bright could hardly believe he was actually at the Science Fair Dance with her. He wanted to draw a picture of the moment so that he could keep it forever, but he feared that it might appear he was
showing off if he got out his oil paints and asked her to hold her position for the next hour. And he didn’t want anything to ruin his perfect evening.

Not that the evening had been perfectly perfect so far. Anderson Brigby Bright had already been forced to overlook a few small glitches—some of which might be considered his fault. For example, he’d been so excited for the evening to start that he’d arrived at Lucinda’s house a few minutes early. He assumed that she, like he, would have spent most of the day getting ready. He was a little surprised when she answered the door in an old pair of sweatpants and an oversized red T-shirt that complemented the color of her eyes, which were bloodshot and swollen from weeping.

Then, oddly, she seemed to have no idea what he was talking about when he said he’d come to take her to the dance. She didn’t even seem to want the wrist corsage he’d brought for her—not even after he pointed out how well its exotic flowers matched his small yet elegant boutonniere.

He might have still been on the porch trying to persuade her that it was time to leave if her mother hadn’t intervened. She told Lucinda that she might as well go do something fun like go to a school dance
instead of sulking about Ysquibel in her room. Lucinda had then screamed “You’ve never understood me or my torment!” before her mother replied “That’s absolutely enough, Lucinda!” and shoved her daughter out the front door.

The only thing Lucinda wanted to talk about as they walked to Remarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted was how her unreasonable mother didn’t appreciate her musical passions. Anderson Brigby Bright tried to sympathize, but this was difficult because he’d never met anyone who didn’t appreciate him.

And now, at last, they were together at the dance. Despite her informal attire, Lucinda looked beautiful under the twinkling lights that hung over the gifted school’s outdoor courtyard. Giant woven tapestries of the periodic table hung down from the roof of the school’s gymnasium, and twirling models of DNA double helices dangled from nearby trees. They were standing right next to an ice sculpture of the Large Hadron Collider, which was so detailed that it looked as if it might start circulating high-energy proton beams at any moment. It was all too romantic.

“Are you as happy as I am, Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa?” Anderson Brigby Bright asked as he
looked soulfully into her red-rimmed eyes. She just stared back at him—the kind of deep and meaningful stare that a girl gives a boy when she thinks he’s being especially stupid.

“This is the worst day of my life,” she told him.

“It is?” He couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. He’d caught a glimpse of his reflection in the punch bowl and knew he looked debonair. Most of the other girls at the dance had swooned with jealousy when Lucinda walked in with him.

“I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for months. I’ve never been so disappointed.”

“You’re disappointed?” Anderson Brigby Bright was starting to get confused.

“Of course I’m disappointed! I was supposed to hear the latest and probably greatest composition by Ysquibel today. But it didn’t happen. It’s even more disappointing than not being able to locate him after months and months of trying.”

“You’re still thinking about Ysquibel?” he asked incredulously. She was clearly wasting her time obsessing about that musician when she could be enjoying his company. Despite the fact his own grandfather had been arrested, he hadn’t given the bell tower a
second thought since learning it had been sabotaged. But then, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought even if it had worked perfectly.

“Now there is absolutely nothing to look forward to. Nothing!”

“Now now, that’s not true, dear Lucinda,” Anderson Brigby Bright said, hoping to cheer her up. “I’ve prepared the most marvelous surprise for you.

Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa groaned. “It’s not another painting, is it?”

“What if it was? You’d be lucky to get another painting. I’m going to be quite famous one day.”

“You’re going to be famous as a
painter
.” She said the word “painter” like it was a particularly vile form of toe fungus. “That’s not like really being famous. Not like being a musician.”

“How dare you!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, but he couldn’t help himself.

“If a painter went missing, no one would even bother to form regional clubs to look for him. He could just stay missing forever and no one would even notice.”

Anderson Brigby Bright opened his mouth and then closed it again. He didn’t want to ruin his perfect
evening by fighting with Lucinda, no matter how wrong and crazy she was being.

“As I mentioned before, I’ve prepared a surprise for you,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. He made himself smile even though what he really wanted to do was clench his teeth. “It’s not a painting and I think you’ll quite like it.”

He left the table and went up to the microphone. He signaled for the band to start playing the opening bars of “You Enchant Me, Yes You Do.”

But just before he filled his lungs to belt out the first note, he had a moment of doubt. What if Jane was right? What if he really wasn’t a gifted singer, despite all of his practicing?

No. He couldn’t stop now. Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa was watching him, and she deserved nothing less than greatness. He opened his mouth and prepared to sing.

But just as the first horrible note of the song came out of his throat, it was drowned out by a deafening clap of thunder. The band stopped playing as the lights in the trees flickered on and off. And then a storm like no other broke over the Science Fair Dance.

O
h how it rained! The clouds boomed the loudest thunder in the history of thunder, and the sky was lit up by the flashiest lightning in the history of lightning flashes.

Students at the Science Fair Dance scattered in all directions. The crepe paper decorations dissolved into mushy puddles. The lights in the trees blew down in a tangle of sparking electric wires. The punch bowl overflowed with rainwater, and the dance floor grew squishy and slick.

Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III found himself separated from Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa in the commotion. He’d taken shelter in the gazebo, and she had taken refuge in the bandstand.

Anderson Brigby Bright was scared of thunderstorms, although this was not something he would admit, even to himself. So when his hands began to shake and his knees began to tremble, he told himself that he was only concerned for Lucinda. He thought about bravely making his way across the courtyard to the bandstand to be with her. It seemed so romantic to hold each other’s hands for comfort during the storm.

KABOOM!

As the whole courtyard shook from an exceptionally close lightning strike, Anderson Brigby Bright reminded himself of how she’d said that no one would care if a painter went missing. He could just barely make out the bandstand through the torrents of rain that were pouring down—torrents that would undoubtedly flatten his wonderfully wavy hair into a dripping mess—and decided to stay where he was. Maybe after she endured the storm with nothing but the comfort of a bunch of musicians and musical instruments she’d realize how crazy she’d been acting and learn to appreciate him and his photorealistic paintings more.

Across town, Ms. Schnabel was once again standing on her front porch in her fuzzy pink slippers. She was
watching the rain pour down in front of her as the sky lit up with brilliant flashes of light.

She was not supposed to be at home. She was supposed to be up at the gifted school helping to chaperone the Science Fair Dance. Her sister had insisted that she volunteer as a way to demonstrate her commitment to her new life as a teacher instead of her old one as a pirate.