Sophie’s Secret (2 page)

Yeah, about sixty bajillion times,
Sophie thought.

“Everything is not always all about you,” he went on.
It NEVER is!

“We’re here to do what Aunt Bailey and Uncle Preston want to do, because they’re our guests. I don’t think that includes standing there watching you stare at the river for an hour, dreaming up trouble.”

Sophie straightened her thin shoulders under Daddy’s hand. “I was starting an idea for our next film.”

“Well, take notes or something.” Daddy stood up. “Are you going to stay with the team, or do I have to hold your hand like a little kid? That would be pretty embarrassing for an eleven-year-old.”

That was actually a tough question. Sophie did NOT want to be on any kind of “team” with her own sister, much less her aunt and uncle. But the thought of trailing behind her father all day was worse. She gave a sigh that came from her heels and blew the little wisps of hair on her forehead. It wasn’t wasted on Daddy.

“Don’t be a drama queen about it,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Just think of it as taking a hit for the team.” He nodded toward the statue. “Let’s go.”

Sophie waited until he finally let go of her shoulder, and then she squared herself off again and headed toward the “team.”

Antoinette tossed back her long, luxurious hair and put on a smile. She couldn’t let Papa take away the chance to pay her respects to her ancestor, Captain John Smith. He wasn’t French like she was, of course, but she thought of him as her forefather because he, like her, had been a pioneer, a taker of risks, a person who stood up against things more evil than good —

“Oh wow—he was a total BABE!”

Sophie glared at Lacie.

“I mean, look at that BODY,” Lacie said. She was gaping up at the statue.

Aunt Bailey sidled up next to Lacie. “That’s what I’M talkin’ about.”

Five-year-old Zeke furrowed his little dark brows at Aunt Bailey. “WHAT are you talkin’ about?” he said.

Mama cocked her head, all curly with frosted hair, and gave Sophie’s aunt a hard look. “Thank you, Bailey,” she said.

Aunt Bailey covered her very red lips with her hand—with nails all squared off and white at the tips—and giggled in Lacie’s direction. Although Aunt Bailey was OLD, like probably thirty, Sophie thought she acted like she was Lacie’s age.

“That’s John Smith, Z,” Daddy said to Zeke. “You remember him from Pocahontas?”

“Oh, yeah,” Zeke said. He cocked his head just the way Mama did, though his hair was dark like Daddy’s, and it stood straight up in coarse, little spikes on his head. “Did they get married?”

“Nah,” Daddy said. “They might have gone out a few times, but she married somebody else.”

“She married John Rolfe, Daddy,” Sophie said. “And I’m SURE she never went on a date with Captain John Smith.”

Uncle Preston gave Daddy a nudge with his elbow. “Silly you,” he said to him.

Then Daddy gave one of those only-one-side-of-his-mouth-going-up smiles that made Sophie want to punch something.
He might as well just come right out and SAY I’m a little know-it-all,
Sophie thought.
Because that’s what he thinks.

“Watch your tone, Sophie,” Daddy said.

WHAT tone?
Sophie thought.
I was just sharing information!

“All right, folks, now if you’ll just follow me,” Mr. Mouth was saying, “I’m going to take you to the 1607 James Fort site. I think you’ll be fascinated by what I have to tell you.” He puffed up his chest.

“Now, the question many folks ask me is, why do we need to dig up remnants of a civilization that no longer exists?”

“That would be MY question,” Lacie muttered to Aunt Bailey. They rolled their eyes in unison.

“Here is the best answer I can give you,” Mr. Mouth went on. “The present is better understood when viewed through the lenses of the past—”

Sophie jerked her head around, so that her face was sideways in the hood. Even before she could straighten it out, her mind was teeming.

The lenses of the past!
she thought.
The lenses of my camera— that’s what they are: “the lenses of the past.”

She really did wish she could take notes—although she was pretty sure she would remember a gem like THAT. Fiona was going to be so impressed.

Sophie stood on a low concrete wall so she could get a better view of Mr. Mouth. He was now shouting like Lacie’s soccer coach, but at least he was finally saying something she wanted to hear.

“That’s why it’s so significant for archaeologists here at Jamestown to find, for instance, the remains of the fort,” he said, “because it was the center of their life, and this is where they set the precedents for our representative government and legal code.”

Sophie didn’t know what “precedents” were, but she was sure Fiona would. She stood on her tiptoes to see where Mr. Mouth was now pointing. There were several men wearing hard hats and very dirty clothes, down on their hands and knees, making tiny digs in the dirt with pointed instruments that looked like pens.

“You can see how precise the techniques are,” Mr. Mouth said. “But this is the way they discovered the rest of the palisade of the fort. It’s called a trenching technique. They’re following the white blocks in the ground where they think the palisades were.”

“Whatever,” Lacie mumbled. Aunt Bailey, of course, nodded. Sophie moved a few more inches away from them on top of the low wall and craned her neck to see the map Mr. Mouth was holding.

“We know where to dig for PHYSICAL evidence—such as building ruins and artifacts—by using the DOCUMENTARY evidence we find. This is a map left by one of the secretaries of the first General Assembly, giving the measurements!”

Mr. Mouth was so delighted with THAT piece of information, he sprayed the people who were standing directly in front of him with enthusiastic spit.

“Gross me out,” Lacie whispered to Aunt Bailey.

“We might need those plastic ponchos after all,” Aunt Bailey whispered back.

Mama turned and gave Lacie a don’t-be-disrespectful look. Sophie would have taken a minute to enjoy that if she hadn’t wanted to hear every word Mr. Mouth was saying. She decided to call him Mr. Messenger instead.

He’s like a messenger of knowledge from the past,
she thought. She KNEW Fiona would be impressed with THAT.

“These archaeologists have uncovered over three hundred and fifty thousand artifacts dating to the first half of the seventeenth century,” Mr. Messenger said. “They have even excavated two large trash pits.”

“They dug through the garbage?” Lacie said.

This time it didn’t come out in a whisper, and Mr. Messenger turned to her with wide eyes, as if he were overjoyed that she’d asked that question.

“Yes, young lady!” he said. “You would be amazed what we can learn about a society from its refuse. In fact, well-preserved trash is a Jamestown treasure!”

Sophie made a mental note of that. Lacie turned to Aunt Bailey and wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t think I’d want to know THAT bad,” she murmured.

“As you can see,” Mr. Messenger said, “they are still working. Where I’m going to take you next, they are excavating what may have been a graveyard.”

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Aunt Bailey whispered. “First old garbage, now dead bodies.”

“And then we’ll watch the further excavation of a well,” Mr. Messenger continued. “They’ve already found a metal armor breastplate—”

“Now THAT’s a bra,” Aunt Bailey said behind her hand to Lacie. “Speaking of bras, we need to go shopping. I know you’re wearing the wrong size right now.”

Sophie could feel her face going crimson. She checked out her parents to see if they were hearing all this, but Mama was deep in conversation with one of the archaeologists, and Daddy was watching Mama, his arms folded and his head bent toward Uncle Preston.

“What do you want to bet Lynda is at this moment giving that guy directions to our home?” Sophie heard Daddy say, “The woman never meets a stranger.”

Mr. Messenger was winding up his explanation before they moved on, and Sophie was now having a harder time focusing on him with all those other conversations going on around her. She leaned out just a tiny bit more.

“When we go into the tent where the archaeologists are working on the well site,” Mr. Messenger said, “you will see them using very small trowels to scrape one eighth of an inch of earth at a time and then sweep it into five gallon buckets. All that dirt goes through a screen—”

“Uh-oh,” Daddy said to Uncle Preston. “There go all my buckets. Lynda will be down here tomorrow with ten of them and a half a dozen gardening shovels.”

Daddy!
Sophie wanted to shout at him.
I can’t concentrate!

She leaned out just a little more—and suddenly she was on the ground, tumbling down the incline toward the river.

She tried to grab onto something to stop herself, but she was tangled up in her cape, and half the hood was covering her face. Arms flailing, she knew she had to be within inches of the water, and all she could think was,
If I fall in, I’m going to be in SO much trouble!

And then something stopped her, and Sophie clung to it with both cape-entangled arms. With a jerk of her neck, she got the hood off her face and found herself looking up at Mr. Messenger. She was hanging onto his legs.

It was the closest she had been to him, and now she could see that his eyes were twinkling.

“No swimming allowed, missy,” he said.

He gave her a grin and a hand to haul herself up with. She dusted off her cape, and then she curtsied.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said.

He dipped into a deep bow. “You are quite welcome, m’lady.”

Behind her, Sophie could hear Lacie wailing, “She did NOT just curtsy to that guy!”

And she could hear Zeke yelling, “Mama! Sophie almost fell in the water!”

But all she really LISTENED to were the words of Mr. Messenger as he smiled down at her.

“You are a student of history, aren’t you?” he said.

“I am. I make my own historical films—well, with my friends.”

“And I imagine they are spectacular. How would you like to take a peek under these tarps here and see the chimney foundation and the floorboards of a house they’ve found?”

Sophie looked over at an area as big as their garage at home that was covered with a sheet of thick green plastic, and her heart started to pound.

“Oh, yes, sir, please!” Antoinette cried. She clasped the kind man’s hands in hers and looked up with tears shining in her eyes. “I would give anything to know more about those brave men and women who came before me and suffered so much for this new land—”

“You better keep an eye on her, Rusty—she’ll go off with anybody!”

Sophie turned to glare at Uncle Preston, but there wasn’t even time to narrow her eyes. Daddy suddenly had her by the arm, pulling her hands away from Mr. Messenger.

“That’s okay,” Daddy said to him. “We’re headed off for the gift shop. We have a lot of ground to cover today.”

With that, he dragged Sophie away. She barely got a wave in to Mr. Messenger before Daddy was halfway into a lecture. Something about never being able to take her anywhere because she wasn’t a team player.

Sophie didn’t hear most of it. She let her eyes, and her ears, glaze over.

Two

A
ll the way back to Poquoson, while Lacie and Aunt Bailey talked about how they wouldn’t have wanted to live in the seventeenth century because there were no malls, and Uncle Preston flipped through radio stations trying to get the Texas game, Sophie stared out at the drizzle and did what she did best. She imagined.
I can’t be Antoinette AND be an archaeologist
, she thought.
But I can be LIKE Antoinette and Captain John Smith: I will be a pioneer for all that has more good than evil.

Then she dreamed some more until she came up with the perfect name: Dr. Demetria Diggerty.

Of course, Sophie knew she would have to give Dr. Diggerty more than just a name, and to do that she needed quiet time in her room. So it really didn’t bother her that almost as soon as they got back to the house late that afternoon, she heard Aunt Bailey and Lacie go off to the movies without inviting her. What DID bother her was that the minute the house was quiet, with Mama and Zeke off to the grocery store to buy stuff for supper and Uncle Preston dozing in front of a football game on TV, Daddy came immediately to Sophie’s room.

Sophie curled WAY up on the purple rug in the library corner of her room. Daddy didn’t waste any words. He didn’t even sit down.

“Look,” he said, pointing at her from his towering height, “I’m trying to understand you, Sophie. I’ve had the sessions with Dr. Peter, I got you the camera, and I’ll let you keep it as long as you keep improving in school.”

He paused, and since Sophie didn’t know what she was supposed to say, she just shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Daddy said.

“It means I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t know what to say when I give you all that leeway and you still abuse it?”

Now Sophie REALLY didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even understand what he was talking about.