Navigating Early

  ALSO BY CLARE VANDERPOOL

  Moon Over Manifest

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Clare Vanderpool

  Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Alexander Jansson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vanderpool, Clare.

  Navigating Early / Clare Vanderpool. — 1st ed. p. cm.

  Summary: “Odyssey-like adventure of two boys’ incredible quest on the Appalachian Trail where they deal with pirates, buried secrets, and extraordinary encounters”—Provided by publisher.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97412-9

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools— Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 5. Appalachian Trail—Fiction. 6. Maine—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V28393Nav 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012014973

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To my husband,

  Mark,

  and

  my children,

  Luke, Paul, Grace, and Lucy,

  the brightest stars in my sky

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The great black bear, awesome as Ursa Major, wagged her head from side to side, and her bellow shook the nearby passage of the Appalachian Trail. I say her, but the truth is, we had no way to tell. There were no female markings. No cubs in sight. But I knew. I knew her like I knew my own mother. It was in her bearing—her absolute authority over us two boys locked in her gaze. And it was in her unwavering will to keep us alive.

  PROLOGUE

  If I’d known what there was to know about Early Auden, that strangest of boys, I might have been scared off, or at least kept my distance like all the others. But I was new to the Morton Hill Academy for Boys, and to Cape Fealty, Maine. Fact was, I was new to anyplace outside of northeastern Kansas.

  I’ve heard it said that Kansas has a long-standing history of keeping its sons and daughters close to home, but in recent years there have been some notable exceptions. General Eisenhower, for one. Everyone was so proud of the way he led the Allied forces during the war with Germany. He came back to Abilene for a big parade, but once all the hoopla died down, he left. I don’t think he plans on taking up residence again anytime soon.

  My father is in the armed services too. Captain John Baker, Jr. He’s in the navy. You know what they say. There’s two kinds of fellas: navy men and those who wish they were. My father heard that from his father, Rear Admiral John Baker, Sr. I’m the third John Baker in a row. Believe me, I’d rather be a whole of something than just a third. But you get what you get and you are what you are. That saying comes from my mom’s side of the family. The civilians. They’re the fun side. They call me Jack. My mom calls me Jackie. At least she used to.

  But things changed. That’s how I ended up at the edge of the country. To say I was a fish out of water would be a good expression but the wrong way to put it. Because there I was, a landlocked Kansas boy standing on shifting sands at the ocean’s edge. And all I could do was burrow my feet down deep so I wouldn’t get swept away.

  I wasn’t a complete stranger to sand. There was a good-sized sandpit near our house. And I’d read a story put out by the National Geographic Society that told of whole dinosaurs being found in the Kansas plains. They think Kansas might have once been covered in water, and after the water was gone, it was the sand and soil that kept the dinosaur bones from being scattered and lost.

  Early Auden knew all about sand. But growing up in Maine, he had a whole ocean lapping up on his shore, washing it away. The first time I saw Early he was filling bag after bag with sand and stacking them like bricks. Just what he was trying to keep from washing away, I didn’t know. It was a crazy thing he was doing, but something in me understood it. I just watched him—sandbagging the ocean.

  I knew Early Auden could not hold back the ocean. But that strangest of boys saved me from being swept away.

  1

  The first time you see the ocean is supposed to be either exhilarating or terrifying. I wish I could say it was one of those for me. I just threw up, right there on the rocky shore.

  We’d flown to Maine a few hours earlier on a military cargo plane. The big beast lurched and rattled the whole way while my father read over some manuals on naval preparedness and coastal fortification. I felt queasy before boarding the plane, was nauseous by the time we were over Missouri, and clutched the barf bag over most of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The captain—my father, that is, not the pilot—didn’t say anything, but I knew he had to be thinking his son would never make it in the navy with such motion sickness. Besides, my green face wouldn’t go well against a smart navy uniform. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, still not used to being around him.

  I was nine when he left, and he’d been gone for four years in the European Theater. When I was younger, I thought that was a place where they showed movies. But from what he said, and more from what he didn’t say, there was nothing make-believe about it.

  Last spring, the war in Europe started winding down, and my mom and I were looking forward to my dad’s homecoming. We’d have our own welcome-home parade, with streamers and cowbells and homemade ice cream. I could imagine my father in his crisp blue uniform, with all his medals for bravery pinned above his breast pocket. He would plant a kiss on my mom’s cheek and he’d ruffle my hair like he always used to.

  But when my father came back to Kansas, it wasn’t for a parade. It was for a funeral. My mom’s. It was a misty day in July. Mom would have liked that. She always said that for her frizzy hair, a steady drizzle was the next best thing to a permanent wave.

  So, long story short, there was no ice cream. My mom wasn’t there for him to kiss. I wasn’t nine anymore, so he didn’t ruffle my hair. And from the start, we seemed less like father and son an
d more like two strangers living in the same house.

  I guess that shouldn’t have been a surprise, though. When he’d left I was a kid reading superhero comic books on the living room floor, waiting for my mom to call me to wash up for supper. When he came back, I was a thirteen-year-old boy with no mom and a dad I barely knew. And I didn’t believe in superheroes anymore.

  Anyway, that was how I ended up in a cargo plane heading to Cape Fealty, Maine, and Morton Hill Academy. It was the nearest boys’ boarding school to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where my father was stationed.

  After a bumpy landing, a military jeep drove us to the school. As we approached Morton Hill Academy, I read the words etched into the arched stone entryway. It was the Marine Corps’ motto: Semper Fidelis—“Always Faithful.”

  We passed through and arrived at the dormitory. Arrangements had been made with Mr. Conrady, the headmaster, to get me enrolled at this late date in August, and for that I should have been grateful. But right then, the only thing I was grateful for was that I would soon be out of that jeep and standing on solid ground.

  Headmaster Conrady greeted my father by his first name and shook my hand so firmly I winced. He led us on a sweeping tour of the campus. Morton Hill Academy was a prep school for boys established in 1870, but from the names of buildings and fields he mentioned, I thought it must have been a military school. He pointed out the two classroom buildings, Lexington Hall and Concord Hall. Lexington was the upper school, for ninth through twelfth grades, and Concord was for sixth, seventh, and eighth. He showed us the dormitories: Fort O’Brien for the high school boys, so named for the fort built near the site of the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War. Camp Keyes, for the younger boys, was where I would be stationed—I mean staying. Pershing Field and Flanders Field House, the former named for a general and the latter for a battlefield in World War I, were the athletic field and gymnasium, perched at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean.

  The newest buildings were the Normandy Greenhouse and Dunkirk Commons, aka the mess hall. When Headmaster Conrady pointed out the white clapboard chapel, I wondered whether there might be at least one structure with a softer name, like Church of the Good Shepherd or Chapel of the Non-Weapon-Bearing Angels. No such luck. Armistice Chapel was a place of peace, but only if you signed the treaty and sat at attention.

  The remaining building from the original 1870 campus—and the only structure that had escaped the onslaught of military names—was the boathouse, affectionately called the Nook.

  When Headmaster Conrady prepared to leave us at the dormitory, he had a few words in private with my father. I gathered from the look on his face and the occasional glance at me that he was expressing his condolences for the loss of the captain’s wife and offering words of assurance that the school would provide a healthy environment for his queasy son.

  In a louder voice meant for me to hear, Headmaster Conrady said, “We’ll take good care of him. He’ll be a new man when you come back for the Fall Regatta.”

  I didn’t know what the Fall Regatta was. It sounded like a dance, although at an all-boys school I didn’t know who we’d be dancing with.

  As Headmaster Conrady’s eyes rested on me, I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to salute. Instead, he motioned me forward, placed a broad hand on my shoulder, and lowered his bushy eyebrows.

  “Son,” he said, “the boys here at Morton Hill Academy are pretty much like kids anywhere. If you want to sit with a group in the lunchroom, they’ll probably let you. If you want to go off and sit by yourself, they’ll probably let you do that, too. So my advice to you,” he said, pumping a fist in the air, “is jump in.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my legs wobbling a bit. And with that, the headmaster finally dismissed me to my dorm.

  He didn’t say “At ease,” but upon entering my room, I let out a breath that I had apparently been holding for some time. There were two beds. The room assignments had been made already, and since I’d registered for school late, I wouldn’t have a roommate. Still, I only needed one bed, and I chose the one by the window. Then we—the captain and I, but mostly the captain—unpacked my things. Shirts went in a shirt drawer, underwear in an underwear drawer, and socks in a sock drawer—everything shipshape. I had already been given my own Morton Hill sweatpants and sweatshirt, and in the closet, my new khaki pants hung next to the navy blazer with the Morton Hill coat of arms stitched on it.

  Then the captain pulled out a set of sheets from the closet and swiftly made my bed with military precision. Crisp hospital corners at forty-five-degree angles and sheets tucked in tight enough to bounce a quarter on. I’d slept in a bed made by my father before, and it was a little hard to breathe.

  Even after the past couple of months, it still felt strange being alone with him. He’d been gone for so long, and now all of a sudden he was back—but only sort of. He seemed far away—like he was uncomfortable being off his ship and his sea legs hadn’t adjusted to dry land.

  I’d already pleaded my case for staying back home with Grandpa Henry and my mom’s bachelor brother, Uncle Max, but the decision had been made to put me close to my dad. Nobody seemed to understand that I could be standing right next to him and he would still be a million miles away.

  “Do you have all your gear?” he asked.

  Gear? He made it sound like I was getting ready for boot camp. Maybe that was what he wanted. To put me someplace where I’d get whipped into shape and turned into a real navy man.

  “I have everything I need,” I said quietly.

  I lifted my suitcase to put it on the shelf in the closet, but it wasn’t completely empty. I pulled out the stack of my favorite monthly magazine put out by the National Geographic Society. I’d been a member since I was seven and had dozens of issues at home, but I’d grabbed only a few to bring along. I thumbed through to see which ones were in the stack. January 1940—“Whales, Porpoises, and Dolphins.” October 1941—“Daily Life in Ancient Egypt.” September 1942—“Strategic Alaska Looks Ahead.”

  Then I realized that the rest of the magazines were old comic books I thought I’d left back home. Superman. Batman. Captain America. These figures, who had once been part of my daily life, now seemed as foreign to me as ancient Egypt. And I didn’t feel like getting reacquainted. Superheroes were for people who hadn’t grown up yet. I shoved the whole stack of magazines in the bottom drawer of the desk against the wall.

  The last item in the suitcase was a small box. I had put tissue paper in it, but the contents still rattled. I could see the red-and-white pieces of broken china without lifting the lid, so I quickly hid the box back in the suitcase and stuck the whole thing in the closet.

  The captain suggested we get a bite to eat in the cafeteria. I said I wasn’t hungry. So we said an awkward goodbye that involved a salute and a handshake as he told me to take care of myself. I winced. He’d told me to take care of my mom when he left four years earlier. Was he giving me a reminder that I’d failed? I wondered as I watched the jeep sputter off.

  I stared at my newly made bed and was reminded of the time I built a car for the annual soap box derby. It had a roomy carriage with perfectly balanced wheels for a fast, smooth ride and was decked out in shiny red paint. I knew I’d win the big race. The only problem was, I left it outside the day before and the car got waterlogged and warped, and the shiny red paint peeled off.

  My father was put out that I had left it in the rain and said, “Well, son, you made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it.”

  But my mom shook her head at him and said to me, “Yes, you made your bed, but for heaven’s sakes, don’t just lie in it!”

  I stared at her, lost in my attempt to figure out what she was getting at. My mom had a way of using expressions that were as mysterious and confusing as an upside-down map.

  She folded her arms. “Jackie, if you don’t like the bed you’re in, take it apart and make it right.”

  It took all night to make it right. To strip dow
n that soap box car and rebuild it with new wood and fresh red paint. I don’t even remember finishing it and almost fell asleep at the wheel the next day at the race. I came in second.

  Standing there, looking at my crisply made bed, I took a deep breath. But just then I didn’t have the wherewithal to take it apart and make it right for me. So I left the room.

  The dormitory was deserted. Most of the boys wouldn’t arrive until the next day. I didn’t like the way my footsteps echoed in the hallway, and I needed some fresh air. That was it. Seeing the ocean, feeling the salty spray I’d read about in books, would help get the quease out. So I took off my socks, cuffed up my pant legs, and headed down the dirt path to the shore.

  Suddenly, there it was. The ocean. With its never-ending swells and lapping waves. Its heaving movement that made everything around it look like it, too, was in sympathetic motion. I took one look at the swells and bent over—and that was when I threw up.

  Once I was sure the waves wouldn’t come and swallow me whole, I lifted my head but tried to keep my gaze off the moving water. I looked up the shore. It startled me to see someone, but there he was, surrounded by sand and trying to fit it in neat little bags. Stacking them to form a wall.

  He didn’t say anything, so I guessed he hadn’t seen me. I turned and walked away. It might have been silly, walking away like that, but school hadn’t even started yet, and who wanted to be known as the new kid from Kansas who couldn’t hold his lunch just because he’d laid eyes on the ocean?

  Besides, the sand made me think of my mom. She always described my hair as sandy brown, and noticing the different shades of brown and taupe and even red, I could see why. I felt the tears coming, and I gave in to a moment of remembering her.

  My mother was like sand. The kind that warms you on a beach when you come shivering out of the cold water. The kind that clings to your body, leaving its impression on your skin to remind you where you’ve been and where you’ve come from. The kind you keep finding in your shoes and your pockets long after you’ve left the beach.