Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Louisa
“What’s on the itinerary for today?” Louisa asked, peering through binoculars at a disturbance in the water she thought might indicate a whale about to breach.
“Itinerary? What kind of vacation is this?” Tom stretched, smearing sunscreen on his arms despite the fact that the sun had only just risen a few hours prior.
“Well, you’re taking us in closer to land, so I figure there’s something you’re planning to do in one of the Keys.”
“You got me,” Tom said. “Can’t get anything past you. I have a buddy out here named Jackson. He made a fortune right out of business school on a good investment, and decided that what he really wanted to do was become a treasure hunter.”
Louisa had never met a treasure hunter before. She didn’t even know that was a real thing that a person could do. “What kind of treasure?” she asked.
Tom shrugged, a mischievous smirk on his tanned face. “You’ll see. I think you’re going to like it.”
After a while, a lush shoreline came into view. There was a massive mansion with its own private docks where a handful of boats, some sailboats and some motorized, were anchored. Tom expertly navigated the Sunray Venus into an open spot, shouting to whoever was inside the giant house.
A tall black man with a perfectly bald head and round sunglasses came out onto the docks, waving them in. “Hey, Tom!” He tossed Tom a heavy rope, which Tom quickly tied off to a hard point on their boat.
“And you must be Louisa! I’m Jackson.” Once Louisa and Tom were off the boat and standing on the dark stained wood of Jackson’s dock, he shook her hand warmly, then pulled Tom in for a hug. “I was so glad to hear you were in the area, and that Vinny wanted you to take his boat out. I don’t think he’s spent more than two days on that thing since the day he bought her.”
“Ah, well, you know Vinny.” Tom’s reply made Jackson laugh, and Louisa wondered what it must have been like back at business school, hanging out with all these guys.
“Well, Louisa, has Tom told you about what we’ll be doing today?”
Louisa shook her head.
“Excellent! I love a good surprise. Even better if I’m the one doing the surprising. Come with me. Let’s get you outfitted.”
Jackson led them into a room just inside his house, with tile floors and tall, floor-to-ceiling windows. Lining the room were hooks, on which were hanging scuba gear, dive masks, flippers, and wetsuits in all colors and sizes.
“Let me see,” Jackson said, looking Louisa over. “I’d say you’re a purple with a half three on the seam.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Louisa whispered to Tom as Jackson strode purposely over to a purple wetsuit that looked smaller than most of the others in the room.
“No one does,” Tom replied. “That’s just Jackson for you.”
“So we’re going scuba diving?” Louisa asked as Jackson wheeled over an oxygen tank in a bright matching purple color. “I thought Tom said you were a treasure hunter.”
“Can’t one be both? We all contain multitudes.”
Louisa was still baffled. Jackson found Tom a set of gear—apparently he was a red seven with no seam—then left the gear in neat stacks outside on the deck before leading them into the main room of his house.
Taking in the sight, Louisa couldn’t help but let her mouth fall open in awe. It was a spectacular beach house, the likes of which she had never seen. Giant gnarled driftwood beams arched high across the ceiling, and the walls were covered in nautical antiquities, from an old copper diving helmet to detailed models of Spanish galleon ships.
Dominating the room was a massive table of polished dark wood, which was strewn with maps, photographic printouts of underwater images, high-tech navigation tools, and some plastic bags with bits of metal inside them, tagged with labels in black marker.
“This is command central,” Jackson said, standing over the table and pointing at one of the maps.
“For treasure hunting?”
“Exactly.” Jackson beamed. “But not just any kind of treasure. There are a number of shipwrecks in the area that are causing lasting damage to the wildlife—collapsing coral reefs, or letting rotten cargo poison the waters. I lead expeditions that allow people to scavenge these shipwrecks for interesting artifacts in exchange for helping me haul out metals and rotting cargo that pose a danger to wildlife.”
Louisa shared an excited look with Tom, who was looking very pleased with himself. An adventure on the high seas that also helped protect native habitats was just what Louisa dreamed of.
“I have a special dive site to take you and Tom to. I don’t usually open it up to visitors, because it’s a bit delicate, but you two aren’t just any old tourists. It’s a Portuguese pirate ship from the eighteen hundreds named after its captain, Afonso. Because it’s so old, there isn’t much in terms of toxic chemicals to clean up, but the debris is getting in the way of coral reef growth and choking out the sunlight that sea plants need to flourish. If you all help me clear out some of the mess, you can keep anything interesting that you find. Sound like a plan?”
“Yes!” Louisa could have jumped for joy. She couldn’t wait.
They took one of Jackson’s motorized boats out to the site of the Afonso’s shipwreck. After Tom helped her zip into her purple wetsuit, Jackson went over the procedures for using the oxygen tanks and other safety information for scuba diving, as well as the cleanup project methods they would be using that day, and then they were in the water.
Louisa could see the dark shadows of the shipwreck below her, but she took her time swimming down. Through her goggles, she could see the clear blue waters of the Florida Keys, and caught a few glimpses of fish darting around, their scales flashing in the sunlight. This wasn’t a wildlife viewing trip, she knew, partly because sea life wasn’t very common around this wreck.
As she got closer, Louisa could see why. The wood of the ship was rotting, making foul clouds in the water and blocking the sunlight that filtered down through the water.
Jackson pointed to an area where a pile of half-broken planks and the curved wood of old barrels was piled near a big boulder. Then he gestured for them to help him out. Together, Louisa and Tom looped a thin nylon rope around some of the larger pieces, and Jackson secured them with a heavy carabiner.
Jackson went off to return to the surface so he could pull the rope up and deposit the vintage garbage on his boat, and Louisa knew that this meant she and Tom had a few minutes to explore the shipwreck on their own before he returned for the next haul.
She stuck close to Tom, kicking her purple flippers as she moved through the water. Jackson had told them to keep an eye out for anything shiny, and Tom had clearly seen something, because he sped up, reaching out toward a dull silver gleam.
Louisa watched, the suspense mounting as Tom cleared away some muck and sand, trying to reveal the object he had seen. It turned out to be some kind of flat metal rod, which looked like it might have been used to hold part of the boat together. Tom turned it over in his hand, then shrugged and tucked it into a pocket hanging from his wetsuit.
When Jackson returned, Louisa and Tom helped place a pile of smaller wooden pieces in a netting bag Jackson had brought down, swimming back and forth until it was full. The work wasn’t easy, and it took a while to fill the bag, but once Jackson determined that they had cleared enough to warrant pulling the net bag back onto the boat, he left them once again to their treasure-hunting escapades.
Louisa got distracted by a crab skittering over the sandy ground, following it and watching it run around until it got spooked by her shadow and decided to hide under a piece of the shipwreck. Peering into the little cave where the crab had disappeared, Louisa couldn’t see the crab, but she did see a glint of yellow light and wondered what that might be.
Knowing better than to stick her hand into a crevice where crabs and all other manner of creatures might be hiding, she swam around until she found a stick and poked it in, trying to drag out whatever she had seen. Tom, seeing her focused on this, appeared by her side to watch.
After a few fruitless attempts, pulling out only the seafloor muck, Louisa finally felt the stick catch on something that felt hard and smooth. Gently, she tugged, and out slid a round shape. It had the yellow glint she had seen on one edge, but the rest was caked with algae.
Taking it into her hand, Louisa wiped some of the gunk off it, then gasped when she realized what she was holding. Tom, too, was looking down with wide, astonished eyes, bubbles flowing from his scuba mask as he gasped too.
It was a gold coin, its edges ridged, its color bright and shiny where Louisa had rubbed it clean. She turned it over in her hand, taking in its elaborate design. It was perfectly round and bore the image of a woman wearing a huge, intricate crown. On the other side, two swords were crossed, and there was some text she couldn’t make out, partly because it was in Portuguese and partly because it was still obscured by the algae and dirt covering most of the coin.
Thrilled, Louisa stuck the coin in her pocket bag. She couldn’t wait to show Jackson her treasure!
When they returned to the boat for lunch, Louisa felt quite proud of their cleanup efforts. The area of the boat dedicated to carrying the shipwreck pieces was nearly full, the mound of rotten wood peeking up over the metal sides of the portable dumpster. Jackson explained how he composted the wood, removing the salt and any toxins before recycling it into soil for local gardens.
Jackson asked if they had found anything during their treasure-hunting expeditions, and Tom pulled out the flat piece of metal to show Jackson.
“That’s a piece of old riveting,” Jackson said, taking a quick glance at it before handing it back to Tom. “They don’t use this style anymore, and that thing is over two hundred years old—but it’s not worth much unless you’re especially fond of nineteenth-century ship crafting techniques.”
“Still pretty cool,” Tom said, pocketing it with a shrug. “But Louisa, show him what you found.”
Louisa produced the coin, and Jackson let out a celebratory holler. “That’s the find of the summer, Louisa! May I?”
Louisa handed Jackson the coin. He grabbed a rag from a toolbox on the boat and polished it clean with quick, practiced movements.
“I’ve been working on this ship for years,” Jackson said, “and only found a few of these. I don’t think the crew of the Afonso were very good pirates, since it seems their ship sunk before they were able to collect much gold. This is probably something they left home with, in case they needed to spend it in port somewhere.”
“So it’s from Portugal?” Louisa asked.
“Yep. Right there, you can see the inscription. It’s an oath to the king and queen.”
“Cool!”
“That right there is worth a nice sum of money,” Jackson said, handing the now very shiny coin back to Louisa. “But I wouldn’t sell it if I were you. Put it up on your wall, or hang it around your neck—there’s a lot of luck to be found in pirate gold.”
“Not for those guys,” Tom said, looking at the pile of trash collected from the shipwreck.
“Ah, yes.” Jackson winked. “The luck is in the finding, not the losing.”