CHAPTER 11

From Bird Brain to Sea Hawk

Milton was a little (a lot) disappointed that the path hadn’t been made by wildcats or wild boars or wild anything, even though he had been a tiny bit nervous that they might eat him (sometimes Sea Hawk got eaten). Crouching down behind the broad sea grape leaves, binoculars to his eyes, he pondered his next move.

The thing was, being short, skinny, more than a smidge on the quirky side, and definitely not quiet, Milton hadn’t always been the most popular kid in school. He still wasn’t entirely sure how Dev, who was into tech stuff and video games, had become his best friend in third grade, when Milton had been firmly entrenched in his Nature Phase. He had though, and for three years the two had eaten lunch together and hung out after school, switching back and forth between building robots and birdwatching.

Then, last summer, Dev had attended Full STEM Ahead camp. Milton, bored and lonely, had started playing Isle of Wild. And when they started sixth grade at the big, new middle school, it felt like those two months apart had somehow overridden their last three years together. They weren’t best friends anymore.

Then, after the Bird Brain Incident, they weren’t friends at all. So, truth be told, Milton was less than thrilled by the sound of the boys’ voices. Wildcats would have been far preferable. There was always a chance that they wouldn’t have eaten him alive.

Milton was 99.99 percent sure that these kids would.

He started to back away slowly.

Then a voice yelled, “Hey, is someone down there?”

Egad! He’d been spotted.

Above Milton, two boys’ faces had appeared at the railing of the tree ship. One was around his age and the other was maybe seven. They looked like brothers, with identical mops of curly dark hair and bronze skin. Their expressions, however, were not identical; the little boy’s face was split in a huge, front-teeth-missing grin, while the older one’s was scrunched up and closed.

Milton’s first instinct was to yell So long! Until we meet again! and then bolt. He got as far as opening his mouth, when the older boy yelled down, “Who are you?”

And Milton had a revelation.

These boys didn’t know anything about him. They didn’t know about the Bird Brain Incident. They didn’t know about his parents. They didn’t even know his name.

He could be anyone.

Maybe they would invite him into their tree ship. Maybe they would help him fill his field journal. Maybe they would become friends.

Milton took a deep breath, smoothed his peacock feather, and called out, “Ahoy there! Permission to come aboard.”

“Avast, ye scurvy dog!” the younger boy crowed down at him, still grinning.

“First answer the question,” the older boy said, crossing his arms on the railing and peering down at Milton like a ship captain eyeballing a would-be stowaway. “Who are you?”

Who was he? Not Bird Brain, that was for sure. And not Milton P. Greene. No, if he could be anyone, Milton knew exactly who he would be, without a doubt.

“My name,” he said, tipping his explorer hat, “is Sea Hawk. Sea Hawk P. Greene, Naturalist and Explorer Extraordinaire.”