In Too Deep

• Title Page
  
• Also by Coert Voorhees
  
• Copyright
  
• Dedication
  
• One
  
• Two
  
• Three
  
• Four
  
• Five
  
• Six
  
• Seven
  
• Eight
  
• Nine
  
• Ten
  
• Eleven
  
• Twelve
  
• Thirteen
  
• Fourteen
  
• Fifteen
  
• Sixteen
  
• Seventeen
  
• Eighteen
  
• Nineteen
  
• Twenty
  
• Twenty-one
  
• Twenty-two
  
• Twenty-three
  
• Twenty-four
  
• Twenty-five
  
• Twenty-six
  
• Twenty-seven
  
• Twenty-eight
  
• Twenty-nine
  
• Thirty
  
• Thirty-one
  
• Thirty-two
  
• Thirty-three
  
• Thirty-four
  
• Thirty-five
  
• Thirty-six
  
• Thirty-seven
  
• Thirty-eight
  
• Thirty-nine
  
• Forty
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• About the Author
  

For my Annie

I
t turns out that sunken treasure and an unrequited crush have a lot in common, starting with the fact that it makes no real sense to chase either of them. But even though you’re an otherwise reasonably clearheaded and intelligent person, you can’t help yourself. The image of your triumph keeps hope alive regardless of the odds, regardless of the disappointment. Because make no mistake: the odds are long, and the disappointment will come.

“What little we do know about the Golden Jaguar,” I said as I turned, thankfully, to the last page of my presentation, my voice raspy and my mouth thick with cotton, “came from the journal of a lieutenant on the
Vida
Preciosa
, one of Hernán Cortés’s ships, which mysteriously appeared in Spain a full three years after it was presumed lost at sea.”

As I fought the urge to check if said crush was paying attention, my left kneecap went crazy, twitching up and down like an over-caffeinated Chihuahua. I tried to stop it by straightening my leg, but that only made me light-headed.

“In his journal, Lieutenant Juan de la Torre writes about a gleaming statue of solid gold, twice life-sized, with brilliant emerald fangs and eyes of deep ruby, guarding the entrance to the pyramid of the gods. He tells of a brutal and bloody fight with the native Aztecs, followed by a death march as Cortés’s men hauled the Jaguar through a ferocious, impassable jungle.”

This was going poorly. For most of the semester-long elective, Mysteries of the Deep, I’d kept my head down and managed to avoid standing in front of the class, but Mr. Alvarez had assigned me the Golden Jaguar, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it.

“But the journal ends there,” I said, mercifully close to the grand finale. “Nobody really knows what happened to the Golden Jaguar. Some people think Cortés never got it off the mainland. Others think it was delivered to Charles the Fifth as promised, in secret, and it was scrapped and used to fund what became the Spanish Armada.”

“And you?” Mr. Alvarez said with a strange little twinkle in his eye. “What do you think?”

“I think they’re both wrong.” My throat was raw from clearing it so much. I glanced at the
SHOOT FOR THE STARS!
poster in the back of the classroom: a little boy lying underneath a tree with his hands behind his head, staring up at a brilliant night sky. “It’s probably in the rotting cargo hold of a ship at the bottom of the ocean, covered in centuries of sediment, never to be found.”

I dropped my eyes down to my presentation as I waited for some reaction from the class—a sarcastic question, a disdainful smirk, anything. But there was only silence.

Mr. Alvarez slapped his hands on his knees. “Any questions for Annie? Anybody?”

I folded my paper in half and finally glanced up at my classmates. I hadn’t expected them to be on the edges of their seats, not for the only freshman in their elective, and a faculty kid at that. But I can’t say I was prepared for none of them even to be looking at me.

I licked the chap from my bottom lip and headed for my chair. “Okay, I’ll—”

“How much is it worth?”

The voice shocked me by belonging to Josh Rebstock. Six-foot-two Josh Rebstock. The Josh Rebstock with the lazy haystack of sandy-blond hair and dimples when he smiled, who up to that point had spoken directly to me only if he’d forgotten to write down a homework assignment. Maybe he was taking pity on me. Maybe he was even thinking forward to the afternoon, to the private scuba diving lesson my mom had railroaded me into giving him, and he didn’t want it to be awkward.

“The statue thing,” he said. “If someone found it.”

I pictured the Jaguar’s fierce ruby eyes, the mouth open in a roar, the tail curled around like a whip about to crack. “You can’t really put a price on it,” I finally said. “It means more than what—”

A voice shouted from the back. Nate Sugar. “Ballpark.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A hundred million?”

There was silence again, but this time everybody was looking right at me.

“Dollars?” Josh said.

“Well, it weighs probably a couple thousand pounds, solid gold—Aztec gold. And that’s before you get into its historical significance. Actually, I bet a hundred million is on the low end.”

Mr. Alvarez chimed in, “
Extremely
low end.”

The bell rang. It took a moment for the dollar-sign glaze to disappear from everyone’s eyes, but soon the shuffle started. Books in backpacks, whispers to neighbors, zippers and snaps.

“There’s still time to join the Borders Unlimited trip next week,” Alvarez said hopelessly. “Change your life. Make a difference.”

So far, only four of us had signed up for the field trip to Mexico, a community service/treasure hunting combo platter that Mr. Alvarez had dubbed “Good Deeds and Gold Doubloons.” Josh was going, as were the Sugar twins. Nate was built like a pit bull, all shoulders and neck, with brown hair that hid his eyebrows, while Katy had the lean, taut body of a distance runner. They were tae kwon do black belts and ex-gymnasts who performed every weekend in a kind of Cirque du Soleil knockoff show at the Santa Monica Pier. My fellow volunteers. A movie star’s kid and a couple of self-proclaimed circus freaks.

“And there’ll be more about the Golden Jaguar, too!” Alvarez said, like a salesman desperate to seal the deal. I seemed to be the only one who’d heard him.

“There will?” I said.

Mr. Alvarez said, “Annie, hold back a second.”

I took my time packing my stuff while the room cleared. My best friend, Gracia Berg, had called Mr. Alvarez a “welcome addition of faculty hotness,” which I had to admit was the truth. Sharp jaw, high cheekbones, he looked more like an actor playing a teacher than a real-life one.

“What did you mean, more about the Golden Jaguar?” I said.

He shrugged. “I was hoping your presentation might whet some appetites.”

“Didn’t work,” I said, motioning to the untouched stack of sign-up forms on his desk.

“Not for lack of detail on your part,” he said. “I’m impressed. The Golden Jaguar is pretty obscure, as far as these things go.”

“It’s not obscure if you know what you’re talking about.”

Over Alvarez’s shoulder, I noticed Gracia poking her head into the room, but as soon as she saw me nodding at Mr. Alvarez, she disappeared back into the hallway like she’d been yanked back by a giant fishhook.

“Cortés had a wife here, you know,” he said.

“What?”

Mr. Alvarez wandered behind his desk and began to fill his old leather satchel with stacks of our essays. “Your presentation could have used a bit more primary research. There’s an archive room in the Iglesia de la Virgen Madre, down in San Juan Capistrano. The archivist is Father Rubén Gonzales.” His smile was a challenge as he zipped the satchel and pointed to the door. “In case you
really
want to know what you’re talking about.”

Gracia snagged me as soon as I stepped into the hall. She is shorter than I am, with blonder hair and a bigger chest she never misses an opportunity to feature. She glanced back as she pulled me away from Alvarez’s door. “How’d it go in there?”

“Did you know that Cortés spent his final years—”

“Blah, blah, blah, priceless gold, blah, beautiful treasure, blah. I was afraid of that. How about Josh?” Her accent is Atlanta Southern, but she speaks too fast for it to be anything close to a drawl. She bit her bottom lip and nodded. “Maybe he looked a little embarrassed for you?”

The walk from the north hall to the lunch pavilion took us across the quadrangle and past a marble statue, a replica of
The Thinker
. The Pinedale Academy is Los Angeles’s foremost preparatory school; its students are children of movie stars and talent agents and entertainment lawyers. Gracia’s dad, for example, is the producer of
Return to the Stone Age
, a new reality show where two teams of contestants are supposed to mimic a Neanderthal clan and use only rocks and sticks and words with a maximum of two syllables. Everyone is expecting a huge hit.

My dad, however, is a Pinedale faculty member, famous only for his refusal to offer extra credit. He chairs the History department and teaches AP World and sophomore Euro, and, thanks to his years of dedicated service to the advancement of the Pinedale Academy’s mission, I received a faculty-offspring scholarship.

“I’ll have you know,” I said, “that Josh was extremely interested. He asked not one but two questions.”

Gracia laughed, but when I kept walking, her smile disappeared. “You’re lying.”

I winked at her as we stood at the pavilion doorway. Enough of the students had spent most of their time on movie sets—either visiting their parents or as actors themselves—that lunch was referred to as craft service. Today’s craft service was different from usual, with trays of food arranged on two long tables on either side of the room. Gracia spotted Mimi Soto at a center table, gazing into the distance and
mm-hmm
-ing into the phone at her ear.

“What’s with the buffet?” Gracia said as she sat.

Mimi covered the receiver and whispered, “One of the sophomores complained about no vegan options, so the school is auditioning new cooks. The gluten-free flautas are amazing.”

Then she put her finger to her bright red lips. “Sure,” she said into the phone, and her eyes lit up. “Really?”

America had literally seen Mimi grow up before its eyes. As the child of a single-parent bar owner on the sitcom
Daddy’s Little Girl
, which dominated its time slot for eight of its ten seasons, she’d evolved from a spunky toddler into a saucy and confident teenager with long black hair she used as a weapon.

Now that the show was over, she swore she just wanted to be normal.

Mimi snapped her phone shut and pressed it between her palms as if in prayer. “Okay, guys, that was our house manager. Apparently, the gala my parents were planning to throw next week has been canceled. The governor of Hawaii’s not available or whatever. Point is, the villa in Malibu is free now, so we should take advantage.”

“Enjoy,” I said. “I’ll be in Mexico, remember?”

“That’s right. Such a noble thing you’re doing.”

“Shut up,” Gracia said.

“I’m serious.” Mimi looked shocked. “Hurricane victims are people too.”

Katy Sugar ambled past the table. “That was a fascinating presentation, Annie,” she said, nibbling on a flauta. “Really.”

“I am not a fan of yours,” Gracia called out, but Katy ignored her.

I put my hands on the table and leaned in to my friends. “Can you both sign up? I can’t handle her by myself.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said about the villa?” Mimi said. “It’s free next week.”

“Please? It will be fun with you guys. Right now it’s just me, Josh, and the Sugars.”

“At least you have Josh,” Mimi said.

“Or not,” Gracia said. She elbowed me and winked. “Annie went all Dorka the Explorer again.”

Mimi laughed into her sparkling water. “What was it this time? The Confederate gold or the lost Incan totems—”

“Is there a sign on my forehead that says ‘Give me crap’?” I said.

Gracia cupped my chin in her hands. “Perpetually.”

I brushed her away. “The Incans didn’t have totems.”

A huge roar came from the corner, where Josh and some of his friends were pounding on the table. Last year, his mom won an Academy Award for her leading role as an out-of-work truck driver in
The Long and
Winding
Road
. Her career—not to mention Josh’s status—was exploding because of it.

“What, exactly, are you guys going to be doing there, again?” Mimi said.

“Apparently we’re studying Cortés’s lost—”

“Here we go—”

“And cleaning up after the hurricane,” I said.

“Ooh, so Josh’ll probably be outside, shirt off, all sweaty and golden.” Mimi held out both hands as if weighing her options. “Golden Rebstock, Malibu villa. Golden Rebstock, Malibu villa.”

Josh picked up his backpack, but instead of moving toward the exit, he turned to us. He was looking at me.

Mimi froze. “Is he coming this way?” she said without moving her lips. “I think he’s—”

“Don’t be weird,” Gracia whispered back.

“Shh. Don’t tell me I’m being—”

“He’s like ten feet away—”

“Shut up—”

“You shut—”

“Ladies,” Josh said.

We all shut up. Mimi flipped her hair behind her shoulder and leaned one arm on the back of her chair. Josh glanced at my friends before settling his green eyes on me.

“What’s going on, Annie?”

I tried to say something, but there was too much pressure with everyone staring at me. Just be yourself, I thought.

“Just being myself,” I said.

Mimi let out a groan.

Josh laughed. “That’s the way to go, I guess.”

Why was he talking to me? In public, in front of Mimi and Gracia and Gracia’s boobs? I stole a glance behind him to see if his friends were watching, if they’d sent him over here on a dare, but the table was emptying out; nobody was paying any attention.

Josh shrugged, running his thumb under the backpack’s shoulder strap. “So, I’ll see you at three thirty?”

“On the dot,” I said. I didn’t need to look at my friends to know what they were thinking; I could feel the disbelief oozing from their pores.

He laughed at me again. “Right. On the dot.”

I watched him go—we all did, all three of us, heads tracking him slowly. As soon as he turned the corner, my friends whipped around and stared at me.

“What the hell was that?” Gracia said.

“What?”

Mimi pointed. “That. The ‘see you at three thirty.’ See you where?”

“I’m hurt.” Gracia blinked. “We both are.”

“You don’t shut up about him all year,” Mimi said, “and all of a sudden you have an ‘on the dot’?”

“And we don’t know about it?” Gracia said.

I dismissed them with a little head shake. “His mom hired my mom to give him a private lesson. They’re going to Fiji next month, and how can Josh possibly experience the breathtaking majesty of the open water if he’s not certified, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And you come in, how?”

“None of our instructors were available for a private, and my mom wasn’t interested. As a general rule, she can’t stand anybody who’s graced the pages of
Us Weekly
.” I turned to Mimi. “No offense.”