Page 28

Twenty-One

Benny

Present Day

Benny and Zara were both silent.

“Forget the riddle for a moment,” Benny said, trying to process what she’d just read. “Is Evelyn saying what I think she’s saying? Does she think her friends are alive?”

Zara was nodding her head up and down as if she couldn’t believe it either. “Alive and on the island. Trapped on the island. Wait.” She threw her right arm out and grabbed Benny’s arm. “That could mean Aggy is there too, no?”

Benny got the chills. “Is that why her date of death isn’t noted in the Bible? Did someone know Aggy was still alive?”

“All this time,” Zara whispered, “waiting…”

“For two hundred years,” Benny added softly. Two hundred years trapped on an island. Was Aggy alive? Were the other kids Evelyn mentioned alive too? Why didn’t the letter mention Axel? “They can’t be. Can they?”

“I want to say no, but you said you just saw the island with your own eyes, and you also said Evelyn’s journal talks about Captain Kimble being alive for two hundred years, so…maybe it is true,” Zara said, sounding shocked.

“Her friends are alive,” Benny repeated, realization washing over her. “If that’s true, no wonder Evelyn went to such lengths to make sure I’d finish the game! She left me everything so that I couldn’t say no.”

“Who would? Look at what she’s left you. If you find the island. And apparently save her friends.” Zara placed her head in her hands and screamed. “This is bonkers! Bonkers!” She looked at Benny again. “And don’t take offense to this—why you? I know you’re related and all, but how did she know your name? Or that you’d be born?”

“I don’t know,” Benny said, staring at the journal pages in her hand. She froze when she read the entry numbers. “These journals skip entries again. Look.” She showed the pages to Zara. “Remember how last time they jumped from two to four and we thought it was a mistake? Well, these are numbered five, six, seven, and nine . That has to be on purpose. Don’t you think?”

“It is weird,” Zara admitted. “Evelyn seems to think of every last detail of this game, but somehow she mislabeled her journal entries? No. I don’t buy it. But where are the other pages?”

“I don’t know.” Benny’s thoughts were coming fast and furiously. Why wouldn’t Evelyn give her all her journal entries? “She also mentions me running into Captain Kimble. So he’s still here somewhere? Does he know about me too?”

“Maybe? It sounds like it, but where is he?” Zara rubbed her temples. “This is a lot to process. A lot.”

“ A lot a lot,” Benny agreed. “And this is all aside from the riddle. If we don’t figure out the final riddle, we don’t find the island.”

“Which means Evelyn’s friends stay trapped,” Zara added, sounding freaked out. “If they’re really there. If they’re still alive.”

“So many ifs,” Benny said. When she started this game, she couldn’t imagine more than the fortune being at stake. People’s lives were on the line. She had to figure this out. Her stomach was swaying as if she was still on the boat. Was this really happening? She had to clear her head and stop worrying about the other journal pages. Evelyn had to have her reasons. “Let’s talk about the riddle.” She looked at the page again. “‘In order to find it, down you’ll go to somewhere Jonas Kimble knows.’”

“So that must mean it’s somewhere off the island, right? Because how else would Kimble know what she’s talking about if he hadn’t been here?” Her eyes flashed. “Or wasn’t still here ?”

Benny couldn’t even think about that part yet. “‘Through a tunnel with no way out,’” she continued. “‘Until it’s time to take the route.’ Do you think she’s talking about Hooked? Ryan said they had a hidden Prohibition Era room.”

“The Prohibition Era wasn’t until the 1920s, but that doesn’t mean the storage room wasn’t there beforehand,” Zara reasoned. “That building—like many of the ones on Main Street—have existed since the 1800s. I think Evelyn even owned that location at one point.”

“So it’s possible,” Benny decided. “Maybe that’s where an entrance to the island is. Maybe it leads from Greenport to the cave. Evelyn mentioned there was one on the island.”

“And maybe when you bring that compass we just found to the room, during the Blood Orange Moon, the island will show itself again.”

Benny couldn’t believe what they were both saying. Outside, she could hear the wind picking up again. She heard someone cut the boat’s engine. “We have to get behind that bar. Right away.”

Zara googled the restaurant as the boat seemed to bump its way into the dock. “But we need to get inside when no one is there. Otherwise no one will let us down there. Later tonight after dinner service? Ryan’s dad owns the place. Maybe he can get us inside.”

Benny’s skin tingled. “No. I know we included him in the lighthouse, but Evelyn keeps stressing for me to be careful who I share all this with. We should keep this next part between the three of us.” She heard footsteps.

It was Ryan. His raincoat was soaked. “We made it back. Keep what between us?” Ryan asked suspiciously.

“We have to get to Hooked,” Zara told him. “Benny thinks that might be the place the last riddle refers to.”

“Hooked? You mean the island entrance is in my dad’s restaurant?” Ryan said incredulously. “But…but…”

Benny cut him off. “There’s more.”

“More?” Ryan’s eyes widened as Benny held out the riddle for Ryan to read. At the end, he looked up. “It sounds like Hooked, alright. But my dad will never let me back out tonight in this weather. He’s still kind of mad we took so long at the lighthouse.”

“But the Blood Orange Moon is tomorrow,” Benny reminded him. “This can’t wait.” Lives were on the line here.

Thunder cracked loud overhead and Ryan jumped. “Can’t going to Hooked wait till tomorrow? They have dinner service tonight. We won’t be able to get in till late anyway.”

“No,” Zara said stubbornly. “We go tonight. No matter what time dinner ends. I’ll meet you there,” she told Benny. “Sorry, Ryan. But if you can’t get out, we’ll have to go without you.”

“Seriously?” He looked mad. “I just took a hit with my dad so you could find the riddle.”

“There’s too much at stake here!” Zara argued as she pushed up the sleeves on her wet shirt.

Benny whistled loudly and they both stopped. “No one is going alone. We’re a team. We finish this together.”

This last week with Zara and Ryan was the closest she’d come to caring about people the way Evelyn seemed to care about her own friends. Yes, the clock was ticking, and there was more at stake than she even realized. This was more stressful than asking for more time on their rent or helping Mom find a new job. It was worse than broken air-conditioning or playing Sal for a free lunch. The whole life that she was trying to build for her and her mom was on the line here. Evelyn’s friends’ lives were on the line here. She couldn’t screw this up. She needed Zara and Ryan’s help to finish this.

Be careful who you trust , Evelyn had said. But the words Be careful who you hide yourself away from, Guppy , rang in her mind too. It was something Grams said a lot too. Maybe it was time she fully let Ryan and Zara in on the game. She was trusting her gut. She looked at Ryan.

“Please find a way out tonight. We could wait till the morning, but I don’t think we should. If we’re wrong, tomorrow is our last day to get it right, and I have to finish this game. Now more than ever.” She looked at both of them. “I trust you two. And only you two.” She held up the journal pages. “As soon as I get home, I’ll send you everything I have so far to read. We can see if there is anything I missed in these journal pages before we get to Hooked.”

Ryan grinned. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Benny told him. “I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I’m sure Evelyn would tell me to trust my friends.” Friends. The word felt good. She looked from Zara to Ryan. “I can’t finish this game without you two.”

Ryan was quiet for a moment. “Alright. I’ll find a way out of the house. They stop serving dinner at nine. Ten o’clock?”

Zara nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Ten o’clock,” Benny repeated.

“That was some nap!” Earl said suddenly, scaring them. Benny had forgotten the lighthouse volunteer had been on board. “Thanks for the ride back,” he added as he walked past her and Zara to go above deck.

“Ryan!” Harris called down to him. “We need to go.”

The three headed abovedecks. Ryan ran ahead to talk to his dad, and Earl was gabbing away with Zara as they headed off, huddled under an umbrella. Benny pulled her hood up to follow them, but then she heard someone call her name.

“Are you Everly Benedict?”

Benny turned around.

Ansel was standing on the dock staring at her. His hood was drawn tight around his head, and he was soaked from head to toe, but he didn’t seem to care. “Is that your name, kid?” He sounded agitated. “Or isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s my name,” she said, getting wetter by the second. Ansel just kept staring. “Why? Do I know you?” She could feel the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

“I’m…not sure,” he said strangely.

“Benny!” Ryan was waving to her from the parking lot.

“I’ve got to go. Bye,” she said and ran off.

When she looked back, Ansel was still standing there in the rain, watching her go.