for sure.”
When they reached the water’s edge, Maryellen waved up at the lifeguard, who sat on the tower high above them, dabbing a line of white cream on his nose to block the sun. They dropped their towels on the sand. Maryellen pulled off the old shirt of her father’s that she used as a cover-up. Then she and Davy splashed into the waves. Davy dived beneath the surface and came up shaking his head so that his crew cut sent out a wild spray of water. “Race you to the pier,” he shouted.
“Go!” Maryellen called. She swam as fast as she could, legs kicking hard. She just barely beat Davy to the pier, but on the way back, her legs were tired and Davy beat her by a body length. Breathless, Maryellen put her arms down in the shallow water, anchoring them in the muddy sand as she kicked against the waves. She scanned the beach again, half hoping she would see Mr. Buckley just so she could point him out to Davy.
“Too bad you weren’t with me yesterday,” Maryellen said. “I met a man who was hunting for lost treasure on the beach. His name is Atherton Buckley, and he has a special machine that can detect things hidden under the sand.”
Davy listened intently as Maryellen explained how the metal detector worked. Ever since he and Maryellen had seen Treasure Island, they had both been fascinated by the idea of hidden treasure. “Jim Hawkins would have found the treasure a lot faster with that machine,” he speculated. He floated on his stomach like Maryellen, his hands planted in the sand. “Wouldn’t it be nifty if they made a movie like that and set it at Daytona Beach? They could use Mr. Buckley’s detector in it.”
Maryellen thought a movie set in her town would be pretty boring. A movie needed bad guys, and Daytona Beach just didn’t seem like a place that would have any. Jerry’s boss, Tank, was certainly unfriendly, and with his head wrapped in a scarf, he looked a bit like a pirate, but Maryellen couldn’t imagine him as a villain. “The detector would be cool,” she agreed, “but there aren’t any pirates around now to make it interesting.”
“No,” Davy agreed. “But there are sharks! That would make the movie really exciting.” He opened his mouth and snapped his teeth together. “Watch out! I’m a shark!”
Maryellen giggled. “You’re not a very vicious-looking shark,” she said, standing up. Water poured from her bathing suit and dripped into the ocean.
“Well, our football team is called The Sharks,” Davy said, “and I’m plenty tough when we play. In our last game, I made more tackles than any other player.”
The two friends waded back to shore. The tide was going out, leaving small furrows of wet sand between shallow pools of water. Maryellen amused herself by jumping from puddle to puddle as if she were Jim Hawkins trying to dodge the sinkholes in the swamp on Treasure Island. Just as she landed in one puddle, she spotted the fluted edges of a scallop shell peeking out. She reached down and picked it up. It was large, and unbroken.
“Aha!” she cried. “I found one the tourists missed!” She rinsed the sand off the shell, revealing reddish coloring along its ridges. “Beverly will love this for her shell collection.”
Maryellen held the shell out to Davy, and then bent to look for more. As the sun emerged from behind a small cloud, she spotted another round edge poking up from the wet sand. “This might be another good one,” she said, digging under it with her fingers.
What she pulled from the sand didn’t look like any shell Maryellen had ever seen. It was white and bumpy like some shells, but perfectly circular, with a hole in the middle. She swished the object through the water to rinse off the sand, then scraped her fingernail over the white crusty spots stuck to it. “I think it’s a ring.”
“Neato,” Davy said, coming over to inspect.
Maryellen tried the ring on her pointer finger, but it was far too large. It even slipped easily off her thumb. “It’ll fall off if I wear it,” Maryellen said, but the words were only half out before she realized she had the perfect place to put the ring. She untied the shoelace around her neck and slid the end of the lace through the ring. It pinged against the bike key as she retied the lace.
“It’s a good thing Mr. Buckley wasn’t sweeping his detector through the water,” Maryellen said, slipping the shoelace back over her head. “He would have found this first.” Then she remembered something. “Mr. Buckley said he turned in the wedding ring he found. I wonder if I should turn this in, too.”
“I don’t know,” Davy said. He toweled off and slipped his T-shirt back on. “That thing looks like it’s been buried under the sand for ages. Whoever lost it must be long gone.”
Maryellen nodded. The ring did look old, and she thought it would be nice to keep it. She shook out her wet hair and ran her fingers through the tangles. The cool breeze sent goose bumps racing up and down her arms, and she dried off as best she could. She slipped the old shirt over her wet bathing suit, trying to warm up.
“The ring could have been lost by some tourist from—from—Vermont!” she said, trying to imagine a wintry location up north. “Or maybe someone lost it ages ago while they were on a fishing trip. Maybe it took years for it to wash up this close to shore.”
“Let’s show it to Joan,” Davy suggested. “She might have an idea of what you should do with it.”
They ambled over to Sandy’s Beach Hut. “Shhh,” Sandy said as they approached. “It’s a slow day for customers, so I’m letting Joan study.” He motioned to a nearby spot, where Joan sat cross-legged in the sand, her head bent over a book.
Maryellen didn’t want to bother Joan, but she really did want to ask about what she’d found. She pulled the ring from under her collar and held it out to Sandy. “I found this in a sandbar just past the pier,” she said quietly. “Do you think anyone might still be looking for it?”
Sandy looked closely at the ring. “That looks positively ancient. Maybe you’ve found some buried treasure.”
Maryellen pictured a stash of pirate loot and felt goose bumps on her arms again, but this time it wasn’t because she was cold. She looked at Sandy doubtfully. “You don’t mean pirate treasure, like in Treasure Island?” Maryellen knew it was crazy even to imagine that, but it wasn’t easy to shake the idea.
“Aaarrr,” Sandy growled, rolling his eyes and imitating Long John Silver, the peg-leg pirate character from the movie. He squinted at the ring, and then scraped at the top with his fingernail. “Lookee here, mateys. Methinks there might be something carved in the top.”
Maryellen peered at the ring, but all she saw was the rough white coating that almost completely encrusted it. It looked nothing like the sparkling gold and jewels that young Jim Hawkins found at the end of the movie. “If this is what real treasure looks like, then I don’t know why anyone would waste time looking for it,” she declared.
“Anyway,” Davy said, “who ever heard of pirate treasure buried at Daytona Beach?”
“Not so fast,” Sandy said thoughtfully, in his own voice. He sat on the stool he kept behind the stand. “I’m something of a history buff. For years, I’ve been reading about the French and Spanish rulers who sent explorers to claim new territory around here. Hundreds of years ago, they scouted the seas up and down this coastline. Plenty of ships were lost just offshore.” He gestured out toward the horizon. “In fact, there’s a plaque up on the plaza to remember an entire fleet of French ships that went down in a storm right off the beach here.”
Davy
