Island of Spies

A NOTE TO THE FUTURE IF YOU FIND THIS
There’s three graves hidden in the heart of Buxton Woods, all three held down with ballast stones painted white. We aren’t saying who’s resting in those graves and who’s not. We aren’t saying who dug those graves, or who wanted the bodies to never float up and give their secrets away.
All we’re saying is there’s three graves if you know how to find them.
If you want to know more, everything’s here in this book, which we wrote for Ada Lawson’s library. You can read it as soon as Rain finishes drawing the cover. We’ll add another book to that library bookshelf too—A Thin Book Written by a Spy—as soon as Neb finishes decoding it.
Fact: If you’d asked us Dime Novel Kids eight months ago if evenone mystery strolled our white-sand roads or swam our crystal-blue sea, we’d have said no. “Life on our island moves steady as the breath of the tides,” we’d have told you.
We would have been wrong.
We live on an island of mystery and change, double cross, and spies.

Alphabetically yours,
Neb, Rain & Stick—the Dime Novel Kids
Hatteras Island, North Carolina, August 30, 1942



Chapter 1
A Time for Danger
January 12, 1942
Fact: Change rarely shows up the same way twice.
It might stroll up comfortable as old boots, and take a seat on the porch. Or smile at you from across the room, shiny as a new friend. It might attack from the deep of the sea or the dark of the heart and slam your world hard enough to wobble your stars.
No matter how it shows, you can count on this: It never leaves until it’s done.
It first slipped up on us Dime Novel Kids one lazy Saturday afternoon as, downstairs, the door to the abandoned Hatteras Lighthouse scraped open.
My best friends, Neb and Rain, looked up from their work, and I closed my weather journal. Footsteps scuffed across the stone floor below and stopped at the foot of the spiral iron staircase leading to our headquarters in the very top of the lighthouse.
Neb snapped his ragged Boy Scout Handbook shut and straightened his neckerchief. He’s pale as a ghost crab—odd for an island kid. At twelve and a half, he wants to be a man so bad, he can taste it. Rain pushed her crayons aside and closed her latest artwork—Portraits of Island Cats, Volume 2.
She’s only ten, but her shipwreck of a life has matured her beyond her years.
They pointed to me—twelve-year-old Sarah Stickley Lawson, apprentice scientist and pre-FBI agent if the FBI ever writes us back. Everybody calls me Stick.
“You talk,” Rain said. “You’re a scientist. You’re good with the unknown.”
Fact: The unknown calls to me like a long-lost friend. “The Dime Novel Kids are in,” I shouted. “Who’s down there?”
Silence.
I glanced out the window at our homemade flag fluttering from our rusty balcony rail. Beyond it stretched sand dunes, Neb’s house, and the sparkling blue Atlantic Ocean. The flag means we’re in, and everybody knows it.
“Could be a lost tourist,” Rain said, pushing her wild halo of sun-bleached curls from her light-brown face. She’s sturdy, Rain, and graceful as the live oaks along the edge of Buxton Woods. Last year this time, she might have been right about the tourist. But my grandfather, aka Grand, says with a war coming, tourists are rarer than fish lips here on Hatteras Island.
War changes everything. That’s what Grand says.
It’s not changing us.That’s what us Dimes say.
As it turned out, of course, we were dead wrong.
Downstairs, something clunked. “Hello below,” Neb called. He turned to me, his dark eyes glistening. “Maybe it’s arich client,” he whispered, and straightened our poster:

DIME NOVEL KIDS FOR HIRE
Surveillance (after school preferred)
Solving mysteries of all kinds (pre-FBI certified)
Fishnet Mending
Yard Work
Housework
Babysitting (no diapers)

We went into business last year. So far we have two cases. First, we’re closing in on a thief—Tommy Wilkins. Second, we’re trailing Postmistress Agnes Wainwright, a possible spy. We self-assigned both cases to get the attention of the FBI, and hope to go famous nationwide. While waiting for fame we do chores for cash. For fun, we stake out my snotty sister, Faye, and her good-looking boyfriend, Reed Connor. They kiss.
Something rattled downstairs. “They’re touching our fishing gear,” Neb whispered.
“Let me,” said Rain, who’s practicing using good manners while being assertive. They don’t always go together. “Back away from our supplies,” she called, stamping her foot. “State your name. Now! Please!”
A voice floated up to us. “It’s Otto Wilkins the Second. Invite me up, Seaweed Brains.”
The hair on my arms rose. Otto Wilkins II.
Otto’s the meanest boy in sixth grade and also the best looking. I used to think time would make Otto as shiny inside as he is outside, but that hypothesis has proven false.
Fact: Otto’s a bully. He hates anything odd, and here on Hatteras Island we Dime Novel Kids are stand-out weird. Neb’s a fake Boy Scout with a faint polio limp and black hair that spikes up like he bit lightning. Rain draws like the angels kissed her fingertips, and lives in the island’s oddest house. Her skin’s darker than most islanders’—a point of interest for Otto and his mother. Me, I’m a fire-haired, freckle-faced scientist in a world of ghost ships and hurricanes.
In short, we’re walking targets.
“Hey Mollusk Brains, I’m waiting,” Otto shouted, and someone snickered. Otto’s goons!
“Jersey and Scrape, wait outside. Now!” Rain bellowed. “Thank you. Otto, stand by.”
Otto’s goons, who’ve flunked sixth grade twice, hover around him like flies around stink. Downstairs, the door opened and they shuffled out.
“Don’t let Otto up here,” Neb said, his voice low.
“I wanna discuss a paying case,” Otto shouted.
Neb’s dreamed of a real case since we started reading dime novels, three years ago. He says once we start landing paying cases, we’ll be somebody. He looked at Rain. “Otto may have changed. Let him in.”
“He hasn’t changed,” she said. “Otto was a rat yesterday and he’ll be a rat tomorrow. I don’t want his business. Stick?”
I hesitated. On one hand, I trusted Otto as far as I could spit him. On the other hand, science supplies cost money. “I vote yes. We can pump Otto for information on his thieving brother, Tommy.”
Rain sighed. “Otto! Relax in the lobby until I buzz you up!”
“You got no lobby, Seaweed.”
“Sit on the bottom step now please,” she shouted, stomping again.
Technically, Otto had a point. We don’t actually have a buzzer or a lobby. Here on the island, this year looks like every year. But thanks to the brightly colored dime novels lining our shelf, we know modern even if we’ve never seen it. My stuck-up sister, Faye, says dime novels are trashy and pointless. We say they’re full of clues to life beyond the island.
Rain strolled to our Coca-Cola calendar and circled today’s date with her red crayon: Monday, January 12, 1942. She glanced at my sundial and wrote: Meeting—Otto, 4 PM.
“Hide the valuables,” she said, slipping the gold ring she wears on a leather necklace inside her dress. It’s a man’s ring, engraved with the letter M. So far, the M stands for Mystery. She scooped her crayons into a cigar box withTitus & Son General Store written across the top. Titus, aka Grand, runs the store.Son means Papa, who sails up and down the coast, buying and selling.
Faye says Papa stays gone so much, she almost forgets what he looks like. I never do.
Neb shot to our bookshelf and slipped his Boy Scout Handbook behind the dime novels. I stashed our cash box behind my Curious Plant Collection. Current balance, $7.15—enough to buy each of us a suit of clothes and a new hat, if we want them—which we don’t. There’s no dress-up to the island, unless you count church.
Top Secret: Thanks to our hard work, we’re the second-richest kids on the island. We’d bethe richest if we stopped sending off for things: art supplies (Rain), pony supplies (Neb), and science supplies (me). No Secret: Otto isthe richest kid on the island. His preacher daddy married money from the mainland, and Otto makes sure we know it.
As Neb and Rain arranged our chairs and dragged up a Pepsi crate for Otto, I reviewed our second poster:

LIFE RULES LEARNED FROM DIME NOVELS
#1. If you must lie, use true details to avoid slip-ups.
#2. Never give your heart to a suspect.
#3. When undercover, blend.
#4. In times of danger, bet on each other.
#5. Make up new rules as needed.

“We’re in unknown territory. Use Rule Number Five,” I said.
I shrugged into my lab jacket—technically one of Papa’s white shirts, but it looks scientific when I roll up the sleeves. Neb straightened the yellow Boy Scout neckerchief the surf tumbled ashore at his feet a couple years ago, making him the island’s only Boy Scout. Rain adjusted her trim pink-and-white-flowered dress and pulled up her white socks, one of which still had lace.
“We won’t ever look more normal than this,” Neb said.
We put our fists together and whispered our motto: “Non tatum sursum”—Latin forDon’t mess up. 
Everything sounds better in Latin.
“Bzzzzzzz. You may enter,” Rain sang, and Otto began the long trek up our iron stairs.
Neb counted Otto’s steps under his breath—a nervous habit. “Two hundred fifty-five, two hundred fifty-six, two hundred fifty-seven.”
Otto stepped in wearing shiny, store-bought clothes and a smirk.
If the sun swallowed a boy and spit him out golden, that boy would be Otto. Yellow hair, sky-blue eyes, rosy pink cheeks. He’d have what Faye calls Leading Man Good Looks, except for his ears, which stick out like dinner plates, and his soul, which is dark as the inside of a widow’s chimney.
Otto stuffed his hands in the pockets of his new red jacket—$1.29 from the Sears catalog—and checked out our headquarters: Neb’s neat posters; Rain’s bright cat-and-Jesus art; my weather vane, thermometer, bottles, and barometer. He eyed my photos of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and scientist Dr. Madame Curie, autographed by me on their behalf.
I followed his gaze to our desk. No! I left my weather journal out!
Otto swaggered over, licked his finger, and ran it down the page. “January 12, 1942. Unseasonably warm. 67 degrees F, SSE Wind 10 mph.”
“Step away from my data,” I said.
“Data. Okey-dokey,” Otto said, turning to the windows. “Nice view.”
Actually, it’s a very nice view when Otto isn’t in it. From our headquarters, you look down on our long, thin island as it stretches north and south—our white-sand dunes edged in sea oats, our fishing village on the sound-side of the island. To the east, the Atlantic Ocean glittered like sapphires, sea and sky melting into a hazy, blue-gray horizon. To the west, a few boats dotted the dark blue Pamlico Sound.
“Otto, please sit,” Rain said. “What can we do for you?”
We quickly took the chairs, leaving Otto to crouch on our Pepsi crate like a frog in a prince’s jacket. Behind him, on the ocean’s horizon, something flashed. Sunlight off a northbound ship, bringing oil or sugar, I thought. Or a southbound ship laden with passengers, machinery, or goods. Fact: All East Coast ships pass along the North Carolina shore. The trade winds and strong north-south currents see to it.
“Tick tock,” Rain said—a line fromDime Novel #5: A Time for Danger.
Otto licked his lips. “So, America’s at war. Pearl Harbor, attacked by Japan,” he said, swooping his hand in like a bomber. “Hitler spreading death and destruction across Europe.” He rose and tugged his red jacket neat. “I hate to think of war coming ashorehere, but . . .”
“Daddy says it won’t,” Neb said, very quick.
“When it does, I figure my brother Tommy will join the navy,” Otto said, like Neb hadn’t said a word. “He’s hero material.”
Tommy Wilkins? A hero? Tommy filches anything unguarded, and sells it on the mainland. Nets, fishing gear, boots. He even stole Mr. Olsen’s tie pin. I smiled. “I hear your hero-material of a brother has a camp in Buxton Woods. Have you seen it yet?”
He ignored me. “Point is,” Otto continued, “I want to buy Tommy a going-away gift. Something nice.”
Rain frowned. “If you came to borrow money, the answer’s no.”
Fact: Trusting Otto’s like lip-kissing a snake.
Otto smiled a little too long. “I worry about you kids,” he finally said. “Neb, you’re too thin. You should eat more.”
Neb flushed. Lately, somebody’d been robbing Neb’s dinner pail at school. We knew it was Otto, but we couldn’t prove it. Yet.
“And Rain,” Otto continued, “it hurts me the way people talk about you and your batty mother. And this stuff you call art,” he said, glancing at her latest masterpiece on our wall. Rain’s colors shriek and leap across her oceans and skies. Her people and cats walk with their bodies front-ways and faces sideways, like ancient Egyptians from our history books. Her portrait of her father she keeps at home. It’s a work in progress.
“If you ask me, this isn’t art,” Otto said, squinting at her masterpiece. “It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Yet it’s true,” I said. “Which is why it’s art.”
“And Stick, my pale, gangly, carrot-top friend,” he continued. “I worry about your good-looking sister, Faye. She walks four miles to high school—alone, some days. With your papa always gone, who’ll keep her safe when the Germans come?”
My stomach dropped. If Faye was a chemistry experiment, I’d dump her down the drain and start over. She’s a self-worshipper, pushy and annoying. Still, she’s blood. “We have that in hand,” I lied. “If you have a case to discuss . . .”
“The Germans came in the last war,” Otto continued. “U-boats sat right out there.” A shiver whispered across my shoulders. “They’ll be back. In fact, I say they are back, and waiting to rush us. Rain, they’ll get you first. Or you, Neb, and your folks. Your daddy was a big man when he was keeper of this lighthouse, but now he’s sick and you’re, well . . . you. Your folks need protection. Yours too, Rain Lawson. Or whoever you are.”
Rain’s claimed the name Lawson since first grade.
Mama had walked Rain, Neb, and me to school that day. “Miss Pope,” Mama had said, herding us into the schoolhouse, “I’ve come to enroll these children in school.”
“We’re a three-fer,” I’d added. “Where do we sit?”
Miss Pope had stared into Rain’s face. It’s a pretty face—square-jawed, and a Caribbean shade of brown. Not a fisherman’s crusty surface tan, but a warm, always-tan. Rain’s zigzag hair’s a tumble of dark-and-light blond curls streaked in brown.
Rain smiled at Miss Pope, her dark eyes dancing. She’d wanted to go to school since she was three. Miss Pope cleared her throat. “Ada, the law says . . .”
“Rainneeds to be in school,” Mama said. “There’s nobody to say she can’t be.”
Except Miss Pope, I thought.
Fact: The law is, white children go to the white school. One drop of Black blood, and you go to a Black school off the island or you don’t go to a school at all. Rain’s mother is white and freckled, and has curly blond hair. Her father’s a lost page in their personal history. His blood’s an unknown.
“Rain reads like she could drink the ink off of the page,” Mama continued. “Rain, please spell something for Miss Pope.”
Rain nodded, setting her curls rocking. “S-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g.”
Neb shifted to stand like his daddy, Mr. Mac. “Rain and Stick found each other in the sea,” he said. “What the sea gives is yours to keep. Stick and Rain together are a given.”
Miss Pope tapped her pen against her role book and gave Mama the look women share when they’ve hatched a rebels’ plan. She picked up her pen. “Welcome, Rain. Your full name?”
I went still inside. Rain didn’t have a last name, only the ring with the letter M. Rain looked at Mama. “May I? Mama Jonah said I could ask.” My mother nodded and put her hand on Rain’s shoulder. “My name is Rain Jonah Mystery Lawson,” she announced. Her parents plus the second family she’d found at the edge of the sea—mine.
“Good enough,” Miss Pope had said, and that’s how Rain and me became sister-enough.
Fact: There’s two ways to break a rule. Bust it wide open, like I do, or ask an insider to help bend it. People underestimate Miss Jonah’s smarts: She had asked for Mama’s help.
Now Rain rose. “Otto, you know who I am and you know my name.”
“Rain, Rain, go away,” Otto sang. He swiped at her hair, and she slapped his hand away.
Otto picked up the unmarked bottle of distilled water I keep for my experiments, and tossed it hand to hand like a baseball. “Put that down,” I said.
Otto glared. “Say please.”
“It’s nitroglycerin,” Rain said, her voice even. “You could blow us all up.”
Nitroglycerin. A reference toDime Novel #12: Boom Times. Rain might look waifish and naïve in her homemade, pink-flowered dress and hand-me-down Mary Janes, but she’s a thunder-clap thinker.
Otto gingerly lowered the bottle to the desk. “Listen, Seaweeds. Our men will go to war, and you’ll need me to keep your families safe. I’ll let you in now—at a reduced rate.”
So that’s it. He wants us to pay protection money.
“A paying case—us payingyou. No thank you. Bzzzzt, meeting over,” Rain said.
“Two bucks a month buys your safety. You can afford that. I hear you fixed up that shack for Postmistress Agnes Wainwright,” Otto said. “She pays good, right?”
Fact: Miss Agnes pays great. She also swore us to secrecy, maybe because cleaning up a guest shack without tourists is flat-out stupid. “What shack?” I asked.
He sneered, trotted down the stairs, and slammed the door behind him.
“Two dollars a month?” Neb said. “Who has that kind of throwaway money?”
Faye does, I thought. In her secret box under her bed, with her diary. So far she’d saved forty dollars in get-away money—a fortune. She plans to leave for Hollywood the day she finishes high school. In fact, lately she wanted us to call her that—Hollywood Faye Lawson.
Faye would never tell Otto about her cash, but she tells Neb’s sisters everything. Gossip flies around the island at the speed of a gale-force wind.
I jumped up. “Let’s go. Otto will shake Faye down too. We need to warn her.”
“She’s with the sisters,” Neb said. He never saysmy sisters. Only the sisters. “At least Otto won’t be hitting my folks for money,” he added, like that would be a good thing.
Fact: Neb’s family is dead broke, from Neb’s daddy being sick for so long. Faye says the sisters have elevated Making Do to an art.
I grabbed my spyglass and swept Neb’s whitewashed brick house fifty yards up the beach. No Otto. I turned to Rain’s house.
Rain and her mother, Miss Jonah, live in a giant wine cask that rolled off a ship in a storm. It’s just bigger than a pickup truck—small for a house, huge for a barrel. It lies on its side with a door cut into one flat end and a window cut in the other. It’s tall enough to walk around in and nice if you don’t crave corners, but Miss Jonah prefers to sleep outside beneath the stars.
“No Otto at your place,” I said as Rain stepped up beside me.
As I searched for Otto’s red jacket, two men darted from the dunes—one man blond and slender, one bulky and dark-headed. The Island Bus, which chugs up the island once a day, stopped and they hopped on board. “Strangers,” I said, frowning.
Rain took the spyglass. “Worse than strangers. Kinnakeet’s invited two outsiders to play on their baseball team. One’s smart and one’s big. They’re brought-in talent. Ringers.”
Ringers. The word sounded shiny and dangerous as a switchblade.
Baseball means everything on the island, where each village has a team. Kinnakeet is mad to win. So are we. I spied Otto cresting a dune. “Otto’s at Buxton Woods.”
The woods are dark and swampy—a herpetologist’s paradise. They’re flush with deer and raccoons, birds and frogs. And a-slither with snakes—some deadly poison, others pink- bellied and bite-happy. “I knew it. Tommy Wilkins does have a hideout in the woods,” I murmured.
I gave the broad Pamlico Sound, on the other side of our narrow island, a sweep. A sloop with red sails sliced through the bright blue water. “It’s Papa!” I shouted, snapping my spyglass closed. “Papa’s home!”


Chapter 2
Danger Knocks
We sprinted downstairs and out into the blinding afternoon sun. “Wait,” Neb called. “The Matchstick Alert!”
The Matchstick Alert is a state-of-the-art security technique borrowed fromDime Novel #16: Danger Knocks. As the firm’s tallest member, I hold a matchstick high on the door jamb and Neb tugs the door closed. If the matchstick’s there when we return, headquarters is secure. If it’s not there, we’ve got trouble.
“Alert set,” he said, pulling the door closed. “You two warn Faye about Otto, and I’ll get Babylon. We’ll ride to the dock.”
Neb and Rain love riding his pony, Babylon. I hate it.
I squinted across the ocean. Far offshore, something glinted, and a shiver skated my spine. “I saw that flash from headquarters. Somebody’s watching us. I feel it.”
“You feel it? That’s not very scientific,” Rain said, reading the sea. “Porpoises,” she said as three graceful, gray-blue creatures rolled in the water, their broad backs glinting.
“U-fish,” Neb teased.
“Porpoises are mammals. Race you!” I said, and we took off.
We blasted past Neb’s picket fence and across the compound of whitewashed buildings. Neb veered toward his pony, Babylon, who grazed beyond the clothesline. Rain and me pounded up the steps, startling the cat. We zipped across the porch and skidded into the parlor. Faye and the sisters walked around the room like teenage zombies, books balanced on their heads. “Eerie,” Rain whispered.
Faye let her book slide off, and caught it in one hand. “We’re walking like movie stars, kiddos. You should try it.” She frowned. “You look like something a gull hacked up.”
I glanced in the mirror. Rain and me both washed our hair before school. Hers hung in accordion waves just past her shoulders. Mine hovered around my head like an orange cumulus cloud. My hair’s a perfect hygrometer. I know how humid it is by how big my hair gets. Sometimes I tell people I have a head for science, but so far nobody gets it.
Fact: Faye’s movie-star pretty. Hair the color of cedar bark, violet eyes. She looks sweet, but then, so do crabapples. “Why are you wearing Papa’s shirt?” she demanded.
“It’s my lab jacket. Listen—”
“You think that looks like a lab jacket?” She grinned. “You slay me, kiddo.”
“Faye, Otto plans to blackmail you,” Rain interrupted.
Rain cuts through chitchat like a shark through a school of fish.
“Blackmail?” Neb’s sisters let their books fall. Ruth, who’s tall and bony, put her hands on her hips and glared at me. Naomi, who’s short and island smart, spoke up. “Otto’s blackmailing Faye? Why?”
“Guess,” I said. People will guess things they’d never flat-out tell you.
Faye went red. “Did that little rat follow Reed and me to the edge of Buxton Woods last night? Ithought I heard somebody.”
I tried to look horrified—which I was. We try to be quieter than that. “It’s more like extortion than blackmail. Otto’s fishing for protection money,” I said. “Don’t take his bait.”
Faye snorted. “That twit’s hittingme for cash? Thanks for the heads-up, doll babies.”
Doll babies? Sometimes I wonder if Faye and I are related.
Neb clip-clopped past the window on Babylon’s back, and Rain and I sped to the door. “Hey, Hollywood,” I said. “One more thing. Papa’s home,” I said, and slammed the door.
Faye isn’t the only one who knows how to make an exit.
Rain hopped onto Babylon’s bare back, light as a grasshopper. I hurled myself across the pony’s shaggy rump and grabbed the back of Rain’s sweater to keep from sliding off. Neb and Rain ride like water flows. I ride like a kid born to hunch over a microscope with a pencil clenched between her teeth. I hung on as Babylon followed the footpath across the dunes, to the village where old wooden houses line the shady, white-sand street.
“There’s Papa’s sloop!” I shouted, sliding to a graceless heap in the grass by Grand’s store. The store sits at the heart of the village with its back to the water, a little warehouse and two fuel tanks to one side. I ran to Grand’s rickety dock, which stitches its way into the sound, as Neb tied his pony and left her to graze.
Papa had dropped anchor a hundred yards from shore. I lifted my spyglass. He stood square-shouldered and trim on the deck of the Miss Ada, giving orders to his crew—a red-faced white man named Onslow Banks, and a dark-skinned Black man from Pea Island, Richard Oscar. Together they let the sloop’s red sails fall gracefully to the deck.
The Pamlico Sound, the nation’s largest, is mostly too shallow for big boats. Grand had already sent two smaller barges—called lighters—to lighter Papa’s goods from the sloop. Trouble rolled ashore in the very first load. “Fifteen barrels of flour?” Grand yelped. “And ten rolls ofblack cloth? Are we expecting a plague?”
Grand whipped off his spindly gold glasses and raked his fingers through his white hair, standing it up like meringue. I could see him counting beneath his breath. He says it calms him. “Take it to the warehouse, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll sort it out later.”
The odd parade of goods continued: candy but little sugar, garden seeds, box after box of fishhooks, coffee, and peanut butter. Mountains of canned goods, fresh apples, gallons of gasoline, bags of animal feed in pretty flowered sacks just right for making feed-sack dresses and blouses. “We’ll never sell this much gas,” Grand said. “Your father has lost his mind.”
At last, Papa rowed ashore in his skiff. As he stepped to the dock and pushed back his sun-streaked brown hair, I charged down the dock and leaped into his arms. My toes barely grazed the dock’s rough boards as he swung me around. He plopped me down and kissed the top of my head as Rain sprinted up. “Rain,” he said, scooping her into a hug. “How are you? How’s your mother, how are the cats?”
Before she could answer, Neb clomped into place and gave Papa the Boy Scout salute. “Neb,” Papa said. He snapped to attention and fired off a three-finger salute. “At ease, Scout.” Neb was the most at-ease boy I knew until his daddy got sick. Now he’s tight as a new clothesline. Without the Boy Scout Handbook, I think his life would fly apart.
Papa smiled—something he does so much, his tanned face shows pale laugh lines around his brown eyes. “I know I’ve only been gone a few weeks, but I swear you’re all taller. Any word from the FBI yet?”
“Any day now, sir,” Neb said. “It’s only been—”
“Six months and two days,” Rain said. She recited:

Dear FBI,
The Dime Novel Kids of Hatteras Island welcome a prime assignment.
Alphabetically yours,
Neb, Rain, and Stick

Rain has a memory like flypaper. Everything sticks.
“It will come,” he said, studying the jumble of boxes in his skiff. “Any new cases?”
“We’re closing in on the notorious Tommy-Gun Wilkins,” I said. “Citizen’s arrest, like in Dime Novel #54: Polly Pounces.”
Papa’s eyes went serious. “A citizen’s arrest? Let’s talk that over first,” he said, waving to Faye, who strolled toward the dock. Faye’s too proud to run.
“Plus we got an around the clock watch on the postmistress,” I added.
“Miss Agnes?” Papa said. “Any crime, or just general bad taste in men?”
Fact: Postmistress Agnes Wainwright circles Grand like a buzzard circles carrion. “Grand’s too good for her, but it’s more than that,” I said, lowering my voice. “Miss Agnes is suspicious. She won’t let us into her house despite our charm. She prowls while the village sleeps, and hangs up laundry when it’s not even wash day.”
“Shocking,” he said. “Glad you’re on it. Let’s see, I know there’s something for you Dimes somewhere.” He leaped nimbly aboard his skiff, opened a new blue-green satchel, and snagged a small, bright-colored box. “Paints for my favorite artist,” he said, handing them to Rain. “Neb, I saw this in Norfolk—a balsa slide, for your Boy Scout neckerchief. The blank face should be easy to carve. Bear, bobcat . . . whatever you like.”
Even Neb’s hair seemed to wilt. “Thank you for this . . . chunk of wood, sir.”
Papa grinned. “Your dad’s the best decoy carver on the island. Ask him to show you,” he said. “How’s your mother?”
Neb’s lip quivered. I spoke up before he had to. “She’s gloomier than usual, with Mr. Mac sicker than usual,” I said, and Neb nodded his thanks to me. Neb’s so angry about his father being sick, he’s even stopped speaking to God.
“I’m sorry, Neb,” Papa said, placing a hand on Neb’s shoulder. Neb’s face righted itself like a ship on a pitching sea. Papa glanced at Otto and his goons, who’d slumped on the shore like a pack of hyenas. “How’s Otto?”
“Greedy and mean.”
“Same as always, then. Too bad.”
“James Lawson!”Grand shouted from the other end of the dock. He slammed his clipboard against his leg and stalked toward us. He’s wiry, Grand, and bowlegged as a pair of parentheses. “Explain yourself!”
“I’m in trouble,” Papa said. “You’ll have to wait until supper for your gift, Genius. Do me a favor? Tell your mother I’ll be home soon as I can. Lord knows I need a bath and a shave,” he said, rubbing the reddish stubble on his face. “And Stick . . . or is it Sarah now?”
“It’s Stick,” I said, very firm.
Papa’s dark eyes went warm. He says I’ll get tired of being called Stick one day. I say never. Stick’s a wild-card name, a name for a girl who makes her own rules. “Stick, please tell your mother I can’t wait to see her.”
As we ran to Babylon, Papa’s voice boomed out: “Titus, I know this isn’t what you expected, but I can explain.”
“Wonder what that’s about,” I muttered.
“The war,” Rain said.
“The war’s not coming here,” Neb said, fear sharpening his tone.
“It is,” she said. “Mama Jonah says she feels it coming like a rising storm.”
“Mama,” I shouted, letting the back door slam at my heels.
I sprinted through the kitchen to our living room. Faye says its white-and-blue-checked linoleum tiles and overstuffed furniture are fuddy-duddy. I say she’s a snob.
Mama peeked in from our library. “Stick, what’s wrong?” Mama’s a perfection of ordinary except for her eyes, which are rare and violet like Faye’s, and her smarts, which are sharp as my own. If Papa’s our sail and fate’s our wind, Mama’s the ballast holding us steady.
“Papa’s home,” I said, and her smile made her square face beautiful. “He wants a bath and a shave, and he can’t wait to see you.”
She sprang into action, as usual. There’s not an ounce of sit-down in her. I followed her into the kitchen. “I’ll bring the bathtub in off the back porch,” she said, her eyes bright. “What shall we have for a welcome home supper?”
My chief rooster, Galileo, crowed in the backyard.
Bad timing.
I glanced out the window as my hens sprinted toward Galileo, eager for the bug feast he’d announced beneath our fig tree. “Not chicken,” I said, very quick. “Chicken would ruin my genetics experiments, and the hawks are bad enough already.” A hawk will wipe out a flock of chickens, if you let it. “See, I’m crossing my Rhode Island Reds and white leghorns to—”
She held up her hand. “Jonah brought us a mess of flounder this morning. We’ll fry them up and make some slaw.”
“And butterbeans,” I said, checking the shelves over our windows. The stout jars of last summer’s canned vegetables stood warm and inviting.
“And cornbread,” she added. “Your papa can smell it cooking while he bathes. Pump some water please, ma’am, and put it on the stove for his bath. And bring some clothes down for him. Then set the dining room table.” She smiled, her eyes dancing. “When Faye comes in, ask her to help you. Papa can help me in the kitchen.”
Papa’s home.
I don’t know what love smells like, but I’d bet on fried fish, cornbread, and butterbeans.
An hour later, Papa’s foot hit the back porch floor exactly the way it does—ba-BAM—same way every time, a way that means he’s home and all’s right with the world.
I strolled into our dining room carrying a small jar of inky water, and three tiny flowers. “What the heck is that?” Faye demanded, placing a fork by a plate. “A bouquet from the dead?”
“They’re crocuses,” I said, setting my makeshift vase on the table.
“They look like death in a jelly jar.”
“I put black ink in the water to highlight their capillaries. They’re my latest science project. Papa will want to see it.”
Fact: I’m the only kid on the island who does freelance science projects.
“You are too strange,” she muttered, and then went misty. “One day, I’ll set the table like they do at the White House so we’ll know which fork to use when the president invites us, once I’m a movie star and you’re a famous scientist. If girls canbe famous scientists.”
“Madame Curie,” I replied.
She raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?” The things Faye doesn’t know could fill an encyclopedia.
At the table that night, we went full-blown ritual. Grand said grace. Mama passed the fish. Faye and me gave our school reports. A’s and B’s for Faye, who’s miraculously above average. “All A’s for me except a D in spelling,” I said.
Papa raised his eyebrows. “D?”
“Spelling wastes brain space,” I explained. “We do own a dictionary.”
Fact: Mama buys books at shipwreck auctions. We own two walls full of shipwrecked books, and add our own books as we create them. Only the library at the Pea Island Coast Guard Station rivals ours.
So far I’ve penned one book on the medicinal plants I collect for Mama. Rain’s seminal work,Portraits of Island Cats, Volume 1, sits next to mine. Neb avoids books, except the 1915 Boy Scout Handbook he checked out last year. The Universe Encyclopedias—complete except for Volume K—loom large in my own life. Encyclopedias hold every scrap of knowledge known to man and womankind.
“Work on that D, Stick,” Papa said, loading his plate. “I’d love to see you claw your way up to average if you can,” he added, giving me a wicked grin. “How was Christmas?”
“Fine,” Mama said. Christmas means eating nice foods, going to church, and visiting family and friends—not like the hubbub Christmas on the mainland. (See Dime Novel #75: Santa’s Gang of Little Thieves.) “You next,” Mama said. “What’s the news out in the world?”
His smile died. “Nothing fit for the dinner table, I guess. What’s the story on those poor petunias?” he asked, glancing at my centerpiece.
“They’re crocuses,” I said. “Therehas to be news. Mama doesn’t like me to listen to the radio news without her there to explain, but I’m hearing rumors of U-boats and war.”
He peppered his butterbeans. He peppered them again. He’s stalling, I thought.
“James?” Mama said, worry washing her smile away.
He sighed. “From Boston to home—we saw men enlisting by the truckload, military bases going up. The government’s rationing goods, so people can only buy a little at a time.”
“What?” Faye yelped. “Since when can the government tellus what to buy?”
“Since we’re at war,” he said. “They’re already rationing cars and sugar. They’ll retool the car factories to make military vehicles. Maybe even airplanes. The military will need more sugar. And they use sugarcane to make explosives,” he said, and Mama’s fork clattered to her plate. “I’m betting they’ll ration other things too. Candy. Nylons, shoes, rubber. Gasoline. Oh, I brought you a newspaper, Titus, for the store.”
Grand posts important stories on the store’s wall, for the village to read.
“Thanks. And I was wrong about the gas,” Grand said. “Agnes already bought ten gallons for her old Buick. Don’t ask me why. She never drives it. Three apples too.”
The skin across my shoulders tingled. Miss Agnes bought gasoline? On an island with next to no roads? “How did she know gas would be rationed?”
Grand frowned. “Didn’t say she did know. Don’t start, Stick. There’s nothing suspicious about Agnes. You just don’t like her.”
“Nothing suspicious? She showed up out of the blue, she has no known people—”
He put his fork down. “You’re afraid she’ll steal me. So what if she does? You can borrow me back. You could at least try to be friendly.”
“The trick to business is knowing what people need before they know it themselves,” Papa interrupted, looking at Mama. “Prices will skyrocket, Ada. For everything. That’s why I have to leave in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?” she said. Even the crocuses looked stunned.
“You can’t!” I said, my voice going too high. “We need you on a consultation basis. Tommy’s a one-man crime ring, you haven’t seen Rain’s new art, and Otto’s stealing Neb’s dinner and trying to shake us down!”
Faye elbowed in. “Don’t worry, kiddo,” she said. “I’ll speak to Tommy about his repulsive little brother. Tommy’s shooting pool with Reed Sunday night. I’ll snag him then.” When Faye’s nice to me, she generally has an ulterior motive. Wait for it, I thought. “I’ll probably have to stay out later than usual to see it through. Say, eleven?”
Mama was so rattled, she nodded.
The war isn’t even here, and already it’s got its hands all over my life. Papa’s never looked so worried or left so soon. Mama’s never looked so pale. I pictured Dime Novel #132: Eye of the Storm, and tried to find a still place in my whirlwind feelings. Reed’s shooting pool, I thought, breathing deep. Reed spins steady as the earth beneath my feet.
Mama cleared her throat. “No,” she said.
The word hung on the air like smoke.
Papa blinked like a confused owl. “No? No what?”
“There’s more to life than business, James,” she said. “There’s me. And Faye, and Stick, and Titus. You may not leave after one meal at my table, not after you’ve been gone so long. Especially not with a war coming.”
Papa captains his ship and Mama captains our home, but I’d never heard them cross at a command level. The table went so quiet, I could hear my heartbeat. Papa took a deep breath and looked at Grand. “As I was saying, Titus, I plan to be here a few more days. I’ll set sail first thing . . . Sunday morning?” he said, crooking an eyebrow at Mama. Papa is the only captain on the island who sails on Sundays.
“Agreed,” she said, relaxing.
My world went a little less catawampus. “Excellent,” I said. “Faye, what time?”
“You’re babbling again,” she replied.
“Reed and Tommy Wilkins. What time do they shoot pool Sunday night?”
She sighed. “Eight o’clock, if Grand doesn’t mind.”
“Done,” he muttered. “Just act like you have good sense.”
Fact: It’s illegal to open a store on Sunday, but shooting pool isn’t the same as open.
Sunday’s the perfect time to stake out Tommy Wilkins, a cold-blooded chameleon of a teenager. Put him in a church, he’s the color of the choir. Put him by a pool table, he goes an ugly shade of slick. Let him walk by an unlocked warehouse, he’s the color of stolen.
“Thanks for stepping up, Faye,” Papa said. “Stick, remember: No citizen’s arrest until we talk. And your gift’s on the back porch.” He grinned at Faye. “Yours too.”
Gifts. Incredibly, Faye didn’t bite.
“Papa,” she said, “are the Germans coming to our island?” Papa’s eyes lost their light, and fear spidered through me like lightning across the sky.
Is Otto right? Are U-boats coming?Are they here?
“Your mother and I have made our plans. You don’t need to worry. If we need to, we’ll move inland to Cousin Leah’s place, in Tarboro.”
“Tarboro? We can’t go inland. We’re notwoodsers,” I said. “You can’t even smell the sea there! What about Rain and Neb? And Miss Jonah? And what about my chickens? I can’t leave them to the hawks and raccoons!”
“If we go, we’ll invite Rain’s family. And Neb,” Mama said, very firm. She looked at Papa. “But I won’t go unless we have to, James. People depend on me. Two of my ladies have babies coming, and Mac’s sicker than he lets on.”
Fact: Mama’s a healer by nature and by trade. People come looking for her when someone’s being born or dying, and everything in between.
“Agreed,” Papa said, and squeezed my hand. “Nothing changes an economy faster than war, Genius. This may be my lastsafe chance to sail. Just one more trip, and I’ll be home so long, you’ll get sick of me. Faye, if you’d pass the cornbread?”
Just like that? The war’s here, Papa’s going—and pass the cornbread?
Normal settles my fear the way baking soda neutralizes acid. I said the first normal thing I could think of: “Faye likes us to call her Hollywood these days.”
“Hollywood,” Papa said, trying it on. He winked at Mama. “I like it.”
Faye swerved to his flattery like a shark to chum. “I’m trying to get a stage name going,” she said. “Kids my age picked it up like crazy. The old and the dimwitted are a challenge.”
“They always are,” Papa said, giving Grand a fake-sad look. “It’s pitiful, really.”
Papa’s the funniest man I know. “Mental sharpness declines with age,” I added, shaking my head. I love double-teasing with Papa.
“Refocus,” Faye said. “We’re talking about me.” She dimpled up and tilted her head thirty degrees to the right, like a Hollywood starlet. She practices in the mirror. She does a nice Katharine Hepburn too—hands on hips, I-dare-you-to stare. “I’m auditioning for the school play,” she added, and Papa’s smile made the room happy clear to the curtains.
I butted in before Faye could go into her audition piece. If I hear the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet one more time, I may heave. “Papa, all day, I’ve felt somebody watching from the sea. And I’ve seen glints on the water. Otto says U-boats sit out there. But—”
“Don’t let that pompous little wart get to you,” Grand warned.
“Yes, sir.” Grand’s a shrewd judge of character, if you don’t count being head-over-heels for Miss Agnes.
“Wartime jitters, I expect, Genius,” Papa said. “Settle down.”
“I am settled. Observation is the first step in scientific investigation. As a scientist, I know what I saw.”
“Stick, we’re fine,” he said, his voice going harsh. The table fell silent. I felt like a bird with nowhere to land. Papa’s never harsh, unless you count my one science project gone bad, when I accidentally glued Faye’s hair to her mattress.
“I’m sorry, Stick,” Papa said. “I guess I’m the one with jitters. I’ll ask around, see if anyone else saw something unusual.”
“A war,” Faye murmured. “I guess we’ll . . .” Her voice faded away.
“We’ll do what we always do, only better,” Grand said.
Grand has been in a war. They called it The War to End All Wars—apparently a premature conclusion—but a plan from him definitely beats a guess from Faye. Even so, questions raced around inside me like squirrels in a barrel.
Will the Germans come? Will they knock on our door? Sit at this table?
Someone rapped at the back door.
I jumped, hanging my heart on the ceiling. “Nazis,” I gasped. “They’re here.”