Just a kid, I told myself as my heart raced out of control and visions of prison filled my head.Calm down.
“Uh, hey, little buddy,” Seb said. “We’re doing dangerous work. Where are your parents?”
The kid shrugged a moment before a woman’s hand grabbed the back of his shirt. “I told you to hold your sister’s hand and stay close, Carl! What’s wrong with you?”
Carl gave us a desperate look before disappearing in the crowd with his mother.
“Holy shit,” Benny said, clutching his chest. “For a hot moment, there, I was sure the FBI was coming to haul us away.”
“You and me both,” Seb said.
“Let’s refocus, okay?” Jazmine said. “Can’t be too much more to dig. How far down does this concrete go?”
Seb stuck his shovel into the channel we’d been digging and made a noise. “It goes to here, like another inch down. Let’s—”
Before he could finish, a stack of speakers on the stage crackled to life, and someone from the mayor’s office walked onstageto applause as the canned music was turned down. From where we were, if we put our faces close to the black barrier, we could see through to the back of the stage, framed in bright lights, and the back of a woman with big hair and the same T-shirt we were all wearing.
“Good morning, Haven Beach!” she called into the microphone. “Welcome to the fifty-third annual Cherry Festival. We’ve got a tremendous lineup of performers for you throughout the day. But right now, we wanted to kick off the festival with a local favorite, former Atlantic recording artist and two-time Michigan Music Award winner for best doo-wop group... put your hands together for the Haven Beach Smugglers!”
Seb pretended to cheer and scream in excitement while Jazmine mimed sticking something sharp in her ear.
“Hey, I like the Smugglers,” Lulu said, pouting.
I started to ask where she’d heard them before—I mean, they played county fairs and the Fourth of July fireworks display, but other than that, they were retirees with bad hips who couldn’t do a lot of synchronized dancing anymore. But they could get a crowd going with “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” which they tore into to start their morning set, cutting off any conversation I considered having.
Bass and drums thumped beneath our feet as the crowd cheered on the Smugglers. It was hard to hear anything over the music, so the Wags used hand signals to communicate. We’d dug far enough to give up the shovels and switch to the tool that would pull the concrete shaft out of the ground.
Time for Big Red.
Seb and Benny seemed to know what they were doing. They set up the tool on the edge of the hole we’d dug. Benny stabilized itand wrapped a chain around the concrete shaft below the plaque. Once the chain was secured, Seb began pumping Big Red’s handle while we all held our breath and stared at the concrete. Each pump of the handle lifted the chain by a sliver, at best, and it took strength to use the tool.
It was slow work. Too slow.
As the Smugglers ended an original tune to sweeping applause, Benny switched with Seb to pump the handle. And it’s possible that I was distracted when I peered through the black barrier screen for a hot minute because I could’ve sworn I spotted the back of Pretty Paul’s buzz cut creeping around the backstage trailer. But while I was trying to tell if it was actually him or just some army recruit enjoying the lake before being shipped overseas, I didn’t notice the security officer walk into our little hiding spot.Why isn’t Lulu doing her job? She’s supposed to be lookout!
“Whoa, what’s happening here?” A ginger-haired man in his twenties frowned at the hole we’d dug around the time capsule. Dressed in an unmarked black uniform and wearing a walkie-talkie, he was definitely a rent-a-cop that the festival hired for security. Only problem was that I recognized his flaming orange hair and beady, suspicious eyes.
Off-duty cop!
Chaos erupted inside my head. I forgot everything we’d rehearsed. Visions of my life being ruined filled my head. Losing Harvard, going to jail...
“Mornin’,” Seb said brightly, wiping sweat from his brow. “Just digging up the time capsule for Miss Betty.”
Miss Betty was how the town referred to our mayor.
The security guard cocked his head. “The mayor is digging up the town time capsule?”
“For the award ceremony this afternoon? They announced it yesterday. They’re going to open up the capsule onstage.”
Good God. Seb sounded utterly convincing. No one could lie like he could. The security guard wore a pinched face for a moment, then he seemed to buy it.
Maybe...
“No one said anything about a time capsule in the morning meeting. Who told you to do this?”
“Mrs. Hawsley,” Benny said, referring to the mayor’s assistant who’d announced the Smugglers onstage. “We’ve got about half an hour to get it out so that the capsule team can get it ready.”
Capsuleteam? Lord, the lies were flying fast and loose.
