Sam made the jump look easy. He leapt from the gnarled old tree branch to the museum’s open second-Aoor window and was through in a single motion, disappearing into the darkness inside.
Easy. Sam was already adult-sized, but Nate could hold his own against his big brother. He was fast and strong, too. Nate took a deep breath, the tree’s old bark rough against his hands, the night air cool and secret in the rustling leaves, and then kicked off from the heavy branch, hurtling for the open window. I’m a bullet, a rocket, I’m an arrow fired straight and—
AAH!
The window had moved away somehow, and gravity was real. Nate lunged and stretched, but only his fingers hit the painted sill. He scrabbled for a hold, his vision of landing in a cool pose next to Sam Aushed away by the bright reality of plunging to his death.
“I got you!” Sam grabbed Nate’s right hand, warm fingers closing over his sweaty ones. Nate’s sneakers scuffed at the brick, his whole weight suspended by one arm. He looked down, saw the manicured grounds a million miles below, dark and bone-breakingly Aat.
“Help! I’m gonna fall!”
“I said I got you, be cool,” Sam said, and grabbed his other hand. Sam’s grip was like steel.
Nate’s heart was hammering but he looked up into his brother’s face, tight with the strain, and forced his panic into submission. Sam had him. He leaned over to pull Nate in, the ring he always wore on a cord around his neck bonking Nate’s forehead lightly.
Sam held on until Nate was safely inside, both of them standing at the end of a shadowy corridor. The air was silent and infused with museum smell: age and dust and Aoor polish.
“What part of ‘wait for me in the tree’ did you not get?” Sam whispered.
“I said I’m coming with you,” Nate whispered back. He heard the quiver in his own voice and wished it wasn’t there. He was twelve, not a little kid anymore.
“Okay, okay,” Sam said. He pulled a slightly smooshed cube of gum out of his pocket, held it out. “Bubble Yum?”
Nate quickly unwrapped the gum, eager for something to take the sour taste of terror out of his mouth.
“It’s my last piece, so let’s split it,” Sam said.
Nate was already defiantly chewing. Sam gave him a look, but Nate could tell he wasn’t really mad… and he realized that his heart was finally slowing down. The familiar sweet pink taste of Yum made him feel better. Not breaking his neck was good, too.
Sam led them down the hall, past dozens of big oil paintings and a few small glass cases full of pottery and the like. All the little spotlights were turned off, but the light by the stairs was enough for Nate to see some of the stuff—a hand-thrown pot decorated with birds, a tattered piece of blue cloth, a painting of Aowers along a forest trail… All of it had been created by people who’d probably been dead for hundreds of years. The idea was somehow awesome to Nate, and to Sam, too; they’d talked about it lots of times. The world was old and full of interesting things. Valuable things.
Downstairs was a hundred times better. The McKeown Museum’s main hall was a series of connected rooms, big and chock-full of glass cases and more paintings. The lighting was dim, but Nate saw a trio of antique cannons lined up in a big case near the front wall and just had to take a look. The biggest cannon was taller than him and made of heavy, pitted metal. It was on blocks. A ship’s cannon, maybe? He imagined manning a gunport, the air thick with smoke, blasting at the pirates coming in from starboard, the crash of the thundering cannon rattling the deck overhead…
“Badass,” he muttered, wishing he could touch the dark metal.
“Quiet,” Sam whispered, right in his ear, and Nate jumped. “Get down!”
Nate dropped and ducked his head, staring hard at his shoes. He’d been daydreaming, so he’d missed the approaching clack of footsteps echoing softly through the silent rooms. A Aashlight’s beam passed right over their heads and Nate shut his eyes, willing himself to be invisible. He held his breath.
The steps paused for a scary long time… and then started up again, through the room and out, the museum’s security guard continuing his beat. When the last echoes died away, Sam nudged him.
“We’re looking for the Age of Explorers exhibit,” Sam whispered, and stood up, lighting his prized silver Zippo and holding it up like a torch, like they were explorers, too. The Aickering light shimmered on his mop of reddish- brown curls, made his lean face look kind of haunted and spooky. Older. Sam wasn’t scared of anything, not jumping through windows or security guards or even Sister Bernadette. Nate crawled to his feet, exhaling his own fear, putting on a brave face.
Fake it ’til you make it. Sam said it was the trick to getting things done.
Sam led them through more big rooms, in the opposite direction to where the guard had gone. Nate saw a hundred things he wanted to stop for—an antique saber, a tarnished suit of armor, a huge pale statue of a Roman soldier on a rearing horse—but kept forcing his eyes back to Sam’s makeshift torch. He wasn’t going to miss hearing that guard again.
They stepped into some kind of lobby area, past a dark reception desk, and saw a massive gold and red banner hanging over the archway to another dimly lit exhibit hall, off to the left. Hidden Treasures: Lost Artifacts from the Age of Exploration. Nate’s guts tingled, and Sam was grinning as he snapped the Zippo closed, both of them hurrying for the entrance.
Right at the front of the exhibit was a pair of sailing ship replicas, perfect miniatures of carracks down to the way the sails were rigged, with triangular sails on the mizzenmast. Sam rested his hand on the glass of one of them, his gaze going dreamy for a beat.
“Think about what it was like, on one of these galleons,” he said. “No idea what’s ahead of you.”
“Technically they’re carracks,” Nate said. “Galleons came later.”
“Technically you’re a nerd,” Sam said, and started walking again, leading them toward one of the smaller adjoining rooms. Nate cracked his stolen gum and followed.
There was a painting at the entrance to the smaller room, a glowering, black-bearded face topped with a funky black hat. Sam put his hand over the gold name plate.
“Alright, smart guy, who’s this?”
“Too easy. Ferdinand Magellan, first guy to sail around the world.”
“Wrong. Magellan never made it all the way around, he just got the credit…”
Sam trailed off and walked to a tall case deeper in the room, the kind made to show off documents. Behind the glass was an old map of the world that looked like the artist had been drunk. The continents were smooshed and weirdly rounded. Tiny cherub faces were painted around the Aattened globe shape.
Nate joined Sam just as he reached out to touch the glass, tracing the narrow black line that wavered across the misshapen seas, beginning and ending in Spain and spanning the entire map.
“First map of the whole world,” Sam said, following the line around the southern tip of South America and across the Pacific. “Know what he was looking for?”
He glanced back at Nate, who shook his head slightly. “Gold. A shit ton of it.”
Wow. “Did he find it?”
“Legend says he did,” Sam said. “But he never made it back.”
“So all that gold, it’s just gone?”
“Lost, not gone,” Sam said. “There’s a difference. If something’s lost, it can be found…” He turned back to the map. “But you gotta be willing to risk everything. Even your life.”
Fake it ’til you make it, Nate repeated to himself. Sam wasn’t faking, though, he always meant what he said. Nate wished he was half as courageous.
“Lucky for us, we have pirate blood,” Sam continued. “Descended from Sir Francis Drake himself. At least, that’s what Mom and Dad used to say.”
Nate’s chest tightened a little. Sam never talked about their parents. He looked back at the map, at the weird blobs of land, the broad emptiness of the oceans. Before he knew he meant to, he was talking.
“You know, sometimes I think they’re out there somewhere. Like they’re just lost…”
“They’re not lost, they’re gone,” Sam said, firmly, and Nate suddenly couldn’t swallow, the pain a lump in his throat.
“But hey, we got each other, right?” Sam caught his gaze and smiled a little. “All you need is one person you can trust. Then you’re never alone.”
Nate nodded. Sam was right. St. Francis’ wasn’t home, just a stop on the way to their true destiny, to their real life. They were going to travel the world searching for lost things, they were going to have adventures and fights and see everything there was to see.
Sam Aipped his Zippo open, chink, and spun the wheel. He held the wavering Aame to the edge of the sealed case, to the putty or glue holding the glass together. When it was good and scorched, Sam took out his pocketknife and used the blade to pry at the seal.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Nate asked. Sam hadn’t said anything about trying to steal a map. What if the guard comes back?
“We’re pirates, remember?” Sam dug at the softened sealant. “This thing’s worth a fortune.”
A shrieking alarm went off suddenly and all the lights snapped on, the shadowy, dreamy silence wrenched away at dizzying speed. Nate turned for the exit and saw the security guard coming right at them.
“Oh crap!” Nate cried, even as Sam held up his hands, his knife clattering to the Aoor. They were busted.
* * *
The ride back to St. Francis’ was miserably silent. The back of the police car stank and Sam looked defeated, his head down and shoulders slumped. Being escorted up the steps to St. Francis’ Boys Orphanage by the grim-faced cop was bad enough, but when Sister B opened the door to let them in, Nate felt a thousand times worse. His face was on fire, and his heart thudded like a funeral drum. She was going to be so mad.
Nate stood next to him, staring down at the nasty old linoleum of the front hall, worn and scoured. St. Francis’ smelled like cafeteria food and hard work, like disinfectant and hopelessness. Even the lights were old, yellow, bathing everything in sickness. Sister B’s stern, lined face looked especially forbidding as the blustery middle-aged cop laid out the situation in no uncertain terms. Breaking and entering, attempted burglary, destruction of property.
“We came here first out of respect, Sister B, but it’s his third strike,” the cop said. “He’s the city’s problem now.”
Reform school. Sam would be eighteen soon, but that was a whole month and a half in a place where kids got stabbed and beat up, where you were locked in a room at night with actual criminals.
Nate waited. Sister Bernadette had told the last cop that she would personally see to it that Sam stayed out of trouble, then given Sam high hell and every kind of detention; she’d made him scrub toilets for two weeks straight and pray while he did it. And that was for shoplifting a book.
Sister B didn’t look mad, though. She nodded at the cop, then looked at Sam. Her eyes were almost sad.
“Go get your things, Sam.”
Shocked, Nate looked at Sam, who looked back at him with no real expression at all, only a kind of stony determination. Sam glanced at Sister B’s calm lined face and then turned for the stairs, jogging up the dented steps to the dorm.
Nate felt hot tears spring up. He couldn’t help it, and his stomach was in knots. What was even happening? Sister B watched Sam disappear into the upstairs hall, her mouth a pinched line.
“You can’t just let them take him away!” Nate felt the tears fall and didn’t care.
The old nun looked at Nate, her eyes hard. “Actions have consequences, Nate. You need to learn that or you’re going to end up just like him.”
He stared at her, unable to fathom her casual cruelty. Sam was his brother, he was all Nate had! If he even survived to eighteen, he’d be too old to come back to St. Francis’. How was Sam going to get a job and a place for them if he had a record?
Sister B’s gaze softened just a little. She tipped her head to the stairs. “Go on. Say your goodbyes.”
Nate ran up the stairs, wiping his cheeks. Sam couldn’t be leaving, none of this was real. I should have stopped him from trying to take the map, I should have said something—
He turned into their tiny, shared room, just the two of them, and saw Sam opening the window, his pack on his shoulder.
“What the hell?” Nate’s jaw dropped. “Where you going?”
Sam turned and shushed him with both hands, glancing at the doorway. “I’m not letting them lock me up. No way.”
“So you were just gonna leave?”
“No choice,” Sam said. “I gotta get out of Boston.”
“I’m coming with you,” Nate said. He could pack fast, he just needed a few things—
Sam unshouldered his backpack and crouched in front on Nate. He took off his necklace, the shining silver ring on its leather cord. “Nate, you ever see me go anywhere without this?”
Nate shook his head, not trusting himself to speak without sobbing. “So you know I’d never leave it behind. I’ll always be with you.”
Sam spread the leather cord and put it over Nate’s head. The ring landed on his chest and he grabbed it, the silver cool on his fingers. It was heavy, perfectly smooth. He squinted to read the writing etched inside.
“It says Sic Parvis Magna,” Sam said. “Greatness from small beginnings.
That’s you and me.”
Nate smiled a little through the tears. Sic Parvis Magna. Sam never lied to him, they were going to have the most amazing life once—
The cop’s growly voice bellowed up the stairs. “Let’s go, kid! Hurry it up!”
Nate could hear the boys in the next room stirring. In a minute there’d be a dozen curious faces leaning out to watch Sam get dragged away.
Sam scooped up his pack and hurried back to the window. He got one leg over the sill and looked at Nate, his gaze serious and fierce.
“I’ll come back for you, Nate. I promise.”
And just like that, Sam swung out and dropped from sight. Nate could hear him shuffle down the crumbling brick, heard him thump to the ground, and then nothing.
Wiping his tears, he turned back to the door—and saw a folded piece of paper on his bunk. He picked it up and Sam’s Zippo slid out. Like the ring, Sam always had it with him.
The paper itself was blank. Nate turned it back and forth, then remembered the trick Sam had shown him last week, from the code book. Homemade invisible ink. Sam had snuck down to the kitchen to steal lemon juice to see if it worked.
Nate lifted the weighty, well-made lighter and opened it, then Aicked the wheel. It took him three tries before a Aame appeared, burning steadily. He carefully held the paper over the fire, passing it back and forth as the paper started to singe.
The letters bloomed orange and then smoky brown on the blank page.
Never forget you’re a Drake.
Nate closed the lighter and put the secret message on his scratchy blanket. He could hear the heavy tread of the cop coming up the stairs and doors opening in the hall, but he only stared at the crooked letters, holding the ring tightly. He wouldn’t forget, and Sam was coming back. Just because it felt like the end of the world, didn’t mean that it was.