She bared her teeth and hissed.

  Howard stood up. “I don’t want to be a witch cat. I want to be a ghost.”

  Lily Pearl quit flapping and studied him as if she were going to paint his portrait. “Can you make ghost noises?”

  “Oooooh!” Howard moaned. Iva thought he sounded more like he had a stomachache.

  “Okay,” Lily Pearl said. “You can be a ghost. Now let’s go haunt something!” They raced around back, screaming and laughing.

  Iva watched them. Her mother’s and Aunt Sissy Two’s plan to have three sets of double-first cousin girls didn’t quite work. Aunt Sissy Two had surprised everybody with a boy to pair up with Lily Pearl. Yet Lily Pearl and Howard were closer than hair on a hog. And you never saw Arden without Hunter.

  How come, Iva thought, the other half in her set of double-first cousins was such a dud? If only she and Heaven could have a great big falling-out like the Priddys.

  Iva pictured a blue line painted on the grass between their houses. Heaven couldn’t cross that line. And Iva would never have to speak to her again.

  Eeeerrk. Sweetlips nosed the screen door open and wiggled through. Iva caught the handle before the door slammed, and eased outside behind him.

  “Shhh.” She tiptoed across the porch and down the steps. Then she ran like a wild thing toward the shed.

  The night before, Iva had decided she’d get up before anyone and go look for Ludwell’s treasure. Her family sure wouldn’t miss her. And she’d be gone before Heaven came crashing over to wreck her plans. Besides, discoverers always got up at daybreak to go to work.

  Iva used to think daybreak made a loud noise, like a clap of thunder. One night she’d heard a loud thump. She’d run into her parents’ room and cried, “Is it dawn yet?”

  Her mother had mumbled into her pillow, “It’s three in the morning!” The thump turned out to be Lily Pearl falling out of bed.

  Iva figured dawn broke at five o’clock, and that was the time she had set her alarm for. But she and Sweetlips woke up before her clock beeped.

  Early morning shadows still clung to the corners of the shed. Iva looked around. The pick was missing from its normal spot. Did she leave it on her last exploration? Oh, well. She needed something lighter anyway. She spotted the tall slim handle of a hoe. Her father chopped weeds with it in his vegetable patch, dirt clods flying. That should work.

  She balanced the hoe over one shoulder, then set off down the street. Sweetlips frisked along behind her. He held his head high, ears alert. He liked being out early, too.

  The morning was as fresh as a new-laid egg.

  Iva breathed deeply. The air smelled the way her mother’s sheets smelled billowing on the clothesline.

  “We should be up at dawn all the time,” she told Sweetlips. She tried to whistle but couldn’t remember if she was supposed to blow in or out. She blew out, hissing like a flat tire.

  They hiked to Henderson’s farm on the outskirts of town. Iva made a beeline for the grove of willow trees on the other side of the field. She waded into knee-high purple clover and tasseled ragweed. Sweetlips plowed along beside her like a possum nosing through grapevines.

  “I think this is the right place,” she said. “Not so close to town.” She had worked out this theory in bed last night. General Braddock wouldn’t have buried the gold with everybody in Uncertain watching him.

  “Let’s hurry and find the treasure so I can be famous,” she said. She would have her picture in The Uncertain Star!

  Sweetlips took off. By the time Iva reached the willow trees, he was sitting by Calfpasture Creek as if he’d been waiting for years.

  “Very funny,” Iva said.

  Time to get down to brass tacks. She lined up the sun with the road. Shifting the hoe, she began taking long strides away from the creek.

  “One, two, three, four—”

  A faint cry came from upstream.

  Iva dropped the hoe and froze. What was that? It sounded like a wild animal!

  Discoverers faced danger all the time. They wrestled with crocodiles and dodged charging rhinos. It was part of the job.

  Maybe it was a vicious boa constrictor. Iva had always wanted to fight a boa constrictor. Did boa constrictors have lips? Could they make noises?

  “We must do this!” said a human voice.

  Definitely not a boa constrictor. The voice sounded familiar.…

  Sweetlips lifted his nose, sniffing the slight breeze. Baying, he bolted into the creek. “A-roooooo!”

  “Get back here!” Iva yelled.

  Sweetlips ran as if he smelled the biggest plate of liver and onions in the universe.

  Iva kicked off her sneakers and splashed after him. “Some faithful discoverer dog you are!”

  The water was shallow this time of year, barely up to her ankles. Iva flailed upstream, trying not to slip on moss-slick stones. She rounded the bend, then stopped.

  Heaven stood in the middle of the creek. She cradled a doll in one arm.

  The new-laid day suddenly turned rotten. Iva couldn’t believe it. What was Heaven doing in the exact same place she was? And why did she have a doll?

  The doll wore a white lace dress. A white lace cap was jammed on its head. Two ears poked up from holes cut in the cap, and the tip of a brown-and-orange tail switched beneath the long skirt.

  It was Yard Sale.

  “Please!” Heaven begged. “Just a few teensy drips and we can go home, I promise.” She leaned toward the water. The cat arched its back like a croquet wicket.

  Sweetlips bounded up and smacked his muddy paws on Heaven’s legs. He had never seen a cat in a dress before. Yard Sale spat at him and clawed up Heaven’s arm.

  “Go away, you stupid dog!” Heaven yelled. Sweetlips danced around her, eager to play.

  Iva sloshed over. “Heaven!”

  “Get that mutt out of here!”

  “He’s just trying to save your cat!”

  “I’m trying to save my cat!” Heaven breathed damply into Iva’s face. “Get her loose, will you? She’s scratching me.”

  Iva gently unhooked Yard Sale’s toenails from Heaven’s collar. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Heaven snatched the cat away. “What does it look like? I’m baptizing her.”

  Iva was so astonished, all she could say was, “Immersion or sprinkle?”

  “Sprinkle. You think I’d be crazy enough to dunk a cat?” Heaven puffed indignantly through her left nostril.

  Yard Sale’s tuft of orange fur bristled from beneath the white cap. Iva felt sorry for her. “Why are you torturing this poor cat?”

  “I’m baptizing her so Mama can’t make me get rid of her.”

  “Did she find Yard Sale in your room?” Iva felt a bubble of pleasure. High time Heaven got in trouble.

  “No, but Howard’s been sneezing something awful,” Heaven said. “If I baptize Yard Sale, then she’ll be a member of the family. And Mama will have to let me keep her.”

  “Do you really think Aunt Sissy Two will—” Iva saw her dog bunching his hind legs to spring. “Sweetlips! No!”

  Too late. Sweetlips leaped and nipped Yard Sale’s tail. Yard Sale squirted out of Heaven’s arms like a greased minnow. She landed on the other side of the creek and scrabbled up the nearest tree.

  Heaven screamed.

  Sweetlips a-rooed and chased after the cat.

  Yard Sale climbed higher.

  “Do something!” Heaven shrieked, floundering to the other side of the creek.

  Iva minced across, stepping on each stone carefully. She wasn’t about to rush. For the first time in the history of the world, Heaven needed her.

  Heaven hopped up and down. “Hurry!” Heaven was having a hissy fit with a tail on it. Iva knew why her cousin was so frantic.

  Last summer they had climbed Miz Compton’s mimosa tree to pick the frilly pink blossoms. Iva had planned to tie an army man to hers and drop it like a parachute. Heaven wanted to make ballerina dancers.

  Iva had shinnied up the trunk, nimble as a monkey. Heaven had huffed and struggled to the first slender branch. It snapped like a toothpick, and she hit the ground on her butt. From then on, Heaven refused to climb a tree.

  “What will you give me if I get her down?” Iva said, buffing her nails on her shirt.

  “Anything!”

  Iva thought. She didn’t want Heaven’s framed certificates for perfect attendance at Sunday school. She didn’t want a bottle of toilet water from Heaven’s collection. She certainly didn’t want a tea towel from Heaven’s Hope Drawer.

  There was only one thing of Heaven’s that Iva truly wanted.

  “If I get her down,” she said, “can I have her? Your mother won’t let you keep a pet, so you might as well give her to me.”

  Heaven’s gray eyes slid away from Iva’s. “Sure. Just get her down.”

  “Hold Sweetlips so he won’t scare Yard Sale any worse.”

  Heaven hauled Sweetlips away by his collar.

  Iva jumped up and snagged the lowest branch of the tree. She hung for a few seconds, then swung up. Her bare toes gripped each branch as she climbed.

  Yard Sale crouched above her. Her orange eyes flashed fire.

  “Nice kitty,” Iva said soothingly. She stretched her hand out. “Co-o-ome here.”

  Yard Sale tensed. Iva grabbed the hem of the cat’s dress and scooped her up. Yard Sale dug her claws into Iva’s neck. Iva gritted her teeth as she scrambled back down.

  Heaven reached up and took the cat. “Poor baby!”

  Iva dropped heavily to the ground. “What about me?” She rubbed her stinging neck. “Okay, hand her over.”

  “No.”

  Heat rose in Iva like mercury in a thermometer. “You stinker! A deal’s a deal!”

  “My fingers were crossed behind my back,” Heaven said. “So it doesn’t count. Anyway, I changed my mind. I’m keeping her.”

  “I’m telling Aunt Sissy Two! That cat can’t live at your house!”

  “She won’t have to. Miz Compton said I could keep Yard Sale at her house,” Heaven said. “She told me that when she helped me buy her at Cazy Sparkle’s.”

  “You say!”

  “I do say! And Miz Compton told me I can visit my cat anytime I want.” With Yard Sale over her shoulder, Heaven walked toward the road.

  Iva boiled over with anger. How dare Heaven get to keep the cat and steal her best friend! “You can’t have everything your way, Heaven Honeycutt!”

  Heaven lifted Yard Sale’s paw in a little wave.

  Iva bent down by the creek to throw water on her face before she had a stroke. She was wrong. Heaven did always get everything her way.

  That was going to change.

  Iva dipped the tip of her spoon in her Cream of Wheat and ate the tiniest possible bite. Her mother would fix that awful cereal today of all days.

  Her mother banged a plate of toast on the paper-littered table. “Don’t let breakfast get cold.”

  Arden was slumped over her latest creation, a Johnny Cash–type song called “Uncertain Prison Blues.”

  “I can’t eat,” she said. “I’m doing hard time in Uncertain Prison.”

  “What do you think of this?” Hunter said. She was writing a Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of the Haunted Sewer Drain. “‘The pretty blond detective answered the jangling telephone. “Come at once,” a deep voice cried exultantly.’”

  “‘Exultantly’?” Iva jeered. “Do you even know what that means?”

  “Who taught that kid to talk?” Arden said. “Okay, my turn.” She began singing. “I hear the bus a’comin’. I know it ain’t for me. I’m stuck in this here prison. The sun I’ll never see.”

  Iva fell over laughing. “‘The sun I’ll never see’? You must be kidding!”

  Arden punched her on the arm. Iva whacked her back.

  “Girls,” their mother warned. “Lily Pearl! Where are you?”

  Lily Pearl whirled in, wearing last year’s Halloween costume. Her skinny legs stuck out like twigs beneath the too-short purple dress. Green stars glittered on the matching purple cape.

  “You are not wearing that getup to vacation church school,” Mrs. Honeycutt said. “Go change right this minute.”

  “No.” Lily Pearl’s bottom lip poked out.

  “I’m counting to three. One, two—”

  Lily Pearl started to bawl. “These are my bestest clothes!” “Do you want to go to vacation church school or not?” Mrs. Honeycutt said.

  Iva wished she had thought of putting on a Halloween costume to get out of going to church school.

  “Listen, Lily Pearl,” Iva said. “Why don’t you leave the cape at home? That way people can see your pretty dress.”

  Lily Pearl’s tears vanished like water in sand. “Okay, Mama?”

  “All right. But don’t tell anybody it’s a Halloween costume.”

  Mrs. Honeycutt set a bowl of Cream of Wheat in front of Lily Pearl. Lily Pearl just twirled her spoon.

  “Eat!” her mother said. “No wonder you’re no bigger than a bar of soap on wash day.”

  The back door opened and Aunt Sissy Two came in with Howard. Howard’s white shirt was so bright it hurt Iva’s eyes. Comb tracks raked his slicked-back hair.

  “Here we are. All ready for church school!” Then Aunt Sissy Two said to Iva’s mother, “Howard’s over that allergy attack. I don’t know what brought it on.”

  Iva knew. She thought about tattling on Heaven, but since Yard Sale was at Miz Compton’s, there wasn’t any point.

  “How come Arden and Hunter don’t have to go?” she asked.

  “Because vacation church school is for babies,” Arden said. She sang in her low-down Johnny Cash voice, “I spend all night a’cryin’. I got the Uncertain Pri-son blues.”

  “Go on, Iva. You’ll all be late,” her mother said. “Arden, there is no prison in Uncertain.”

  Yes, there is, Iva thought. She followed Lily Pearl and Howard outside and headed for the Joyful Noise Temple of Deliverance Church.

  The Sunday-school room was stuffy and hot and smelled like old socks. Heaven greeted everyone with a stiff nod. Iva felt as if she were in the principal’s office.

  Fidgety little kids sat in all but three of the small wooden chairs. Lily Pearl and Howard fought over the chair by the stained-glass window.

  Iva turned to Heaven. “I thought more kids our age were coming.”

  “Nobody our age signed up but you,” Heaven said, arranging colored pencils next to a stack of dreary-looking worksheets.

  “I didn’t sign up! Mama signed me up because of you!”

  “You’re here now. Sit down so we can start.”

  Iva flumped down in the last chair. Her knees bumped her chin. She was the biggest one in the class.

  Miz Compton breezed into the room with a big smile.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Welcome to vacation church school. We’re going to have lots of fun today. Heaven, would you pass out the activity sheets?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Heaven handed out papers with an air of grandness that made Iva sick. When Miz Compton wasn’t looking, Heaven tossed the last sheet at Iva, then flounced to the front of the room.

  The little kids studied their papers as if they were taking a test.

  “First, cut out the boy and the wagon,” Miz Compton instructed.

  “Then paste them on the middle of your paper. We’ll have to share scissors and paste.”

  Iva stared at the blurry boy printed on the cheap grainy paper. He looked like he had three eyes. She ripped the paper, using scissors that wouldn’t dent melted butter.

  “Give me that,” Iva said to Howard, who was eating paste straight from the jar. She swiped sticky paste on the back of the blurry boy and his stupid wagon, and smacked them down with her fist.

  “Next, color your pictures,” Miz Compton said brightly.

  Heaven doled out colored pencils with a warning not to break them. When she got to Iva, she dropped a single chewed pencil in her lap. Chestnut brown.

  “I need more than one,” Iva said, but Heaven was already collecting the scissors.

  Iva scribble-scrabbled her picture with the chestnut-brown pencil. She didn’t even try to stay inside the lines.

  “Heaven has chosen our quote for the day,” Miz Compton said. “Be a friend, find a friend. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Heaven glowed like the angel in the stained-glass window. Iva was surprised she didn’t sprout wings and start playing a harp.

  Miz Compton wrote the saying in large, neat letters on the blackboard. The little kids copied the words slowly. Iva noticed Howard made his f’s and r’s backward. Lily Pearl drew a witch in a ball gown riding in the wagon.

  Iva pressed the tip of her pencil so hard into the paper, it snapped. Leave it to Heaven to pick such a dumb saying. What did she know about being a friend? And what did the quote have to do with the picture? Was the wagon the boy’s friend?

  It was all so dumb. Iva had to get out of vacation church school.

  “You may take your papers home,” Miz Compton said. “After our snack, we’ll have our flannel-board story. Heaven, will you get the board ready?”

  Heaven glanced longingly at the wood-framed flannel board. Iva knew Heaven’s greatest wish was to have a flannel board of her own.

  “But first,” Miz Compton told Heaven, “take everyone to the washroom.”

  “Line up by the door,” Heaven ordered the little kids. “We’ll be right back all shiny clean!” she trilled to Miz Compton. Then she marched the kids down the hall.

  Iva nearly gagged. Her cousin was putting on an act. If only Miz Compton could see Heaven was no angel.

  Miz Compton spoke to her. “Iva, would you like to help with the refreshments?”

  Iva had an idea. Now was her opportunity to show her best friend that Heaven was a big fat fake. This time, Heaven wouldn’t get her own way.

  “In a minute,” Iva said. “I have to use the restroom, too.”

  When Miz Compton went into the little church kitchen, Iva sprang out of her seat. She opened the box of soft flannel figures and dumped them on the desk.

  First she slapped a flannel palm tree in the middle of the board. Grabbing a handful of people, she stuck them on the palm tree. Zacchaeus the tax collector. Moses. The Three Wise Men. Noah. Joseph wearing his coat of many colors.

 

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