CHAPTER 37

“Now that was awesome!” said Scooter, basking in the afterglow of a successful performance.

Jasmine nodded. “It’s so different with a real audience.”

My brother and friends were clustered around me, chattering gleefully as they waited to make their move. Our move now, since I was free to join them.

“Hey, guys, I’ve been thinking,” said Lucas. “When we get to the island, I think one of us should take some rope and go to the tunnel by the boulder, just in case—”

Scooter’s hand shot out, muffling him.

“Scooter!” I protested.

He jerked his chin toward something behind me. I whipped around to see Amanda Appleton standing there.

“Just in case what?” she said. Her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, but I knew they were focused on us with hawklike intensity.

“Nothing,” I told her, smiling sweetly. “We were just talking about the play.”

“Of course.” She smiled back equally sweetly and walked away.

I looked around wildly for my brother. “Hatcher! Diversion! Now! I think she overheard us.”

“One diversion, coming right up,” he said, pulling a bottle of Terminator hot sauce from his pocket. He grinned and waggled it at me.

I frowned. “What are you planning to do with that?”

“Spike the lemonade.”

“That’s your diversion? Hot sauce in the lemonade? Hatcher, what are you thinking? You can’t do that! Remember Uncle Rooster’s reaction? These are little kids we’re talking about! Somebody could get hurt!”

My brother’s face fell.

“You’ll have to think of something else—and fast.”

In the end, though, he didn’t have to. Whether inspired by Frederic and Mabel’s romance onstage, or by the sunset over the lake, or by something else entirely, Bud Jefferson chose that moment to drop to one knee and ask Lucas’s mother to marry him.

Beside me, Lucas went rigid.

We couldn’t hear Mrs. Winthrop’s response from where we were, but it was obvious from the whopper of a kiss that Bud planted on her that she’d said yes.

As everyone rushed to congratulate the happy couple, I scanned the crowd for Amanda Appleton, then turned to my brother and friends. “She’s going for her kayak! Grab that wheelbarrow and stick me in it—there’s not a moment to lose!”

They manhandled me in, shimmertail and all, and thirty seconds later I was jouncing down the beach as Calhoun trundled me off in hot pursuit.

Cha Cha trotted alongside me. “Where are we going?”

“Bud’s canoe,” I said. “He left it on the far side of the H dock.”

When we reached Mr. Jefferson’s boat, my brother and our friends ran over and started dragging it toward the water.

“Paddle as fast as you can for Cherry Island,” I told them. “I don’t know how the finders keepers law works, but my guess is whoever stakes their claim first wins. And she is not going to win!”

“What about you?” called Hatcher as he jumped in and grabbed a paddle.

I glanced back down the beach. Dr. Appleton was headed for the lake, kayak in tow. That gave me an idea. “As soon as I take this shimmertail off, I’ll borrow one of Camp Lovejoy’s kayaks,” I called back. “You guys go on ahead.”

“I’ll stay behind with you, Truly,” said Calhoun.

Giving the canoe a strong push, he launched my brother and our friends into the water, then came over to where I was struggling to get out of the wheelbarrow.

“Help me out of this thing,” I told him. “I’ve changed my mind—I don’t have time to take this tail off. I’m going to have to swim for it.”

He nodded. “I’ll grab a kayak and follow you.”

“Wait! Before you do, could you go tell my aunt True? We’re going to need backup, and she’ll know what to do.”

“Sure.” He leaned over to heft me out of the wheelbarrow. “Oof! Dude, you weigh a ton!”

“I’m wearing thirty pounds of shimmertail!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he gasped, staggering across the sand toward the lake, but he winked to show me he was only teasing.

Out on the lake, my brother and our friends were paddling furiously, as instructed, but Dr. Appleton was already rounding the H dock in pursuit.

“She’s moving fast,” I fretted. “They’re never going to beat her to the island!”

“They might not, but you will,” Calhoun told me. “You’re the best swimmer I know, Truly.”

He smiled at me, and I smiled back at him.

Now, I thought, remembering Mackenzie’s advice.

Maybe Calhoun was thinking the same thing, because a moment later our noses bumped together.

“Ouch!” I protested, rubbing mine.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just—”

“Yeah, me too.”

We smiled at each other again, and then he dumped me into the lake.