Shadows in the Water: A Starbuck Twins Mystery, Book Two – Four Sisters with Telepathic Powers Stop a Villain Poisoning Dolphins―A Thrilling Adventure (Ages 8-12) (Starbuck Family Adventures, 2) - Softcover

Lasky, Kathryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0152058745 ISBN 13: 9780152058746

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2008

Synopsis

[shared copy] The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash―they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. 
 
When the Starbuck family moves to a houseboat in the Florida Keys, Liberty and July discover they share a wonderful telepathic link with the dolphins in the area. When they find that someone is poisoning the water with toxic waste, and that the creatures of the Keys are dying, the twins must stop the culprits before it’s too late.

About this title

About the Author

Kathryn Lasky's many books for young people have received such honors as the Parents' Choice Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and a Newbery Honor citation. Her picture books include Sugaring Time, The Emperor's Old Clothes, A Brilliant Streak: The Making of Mark Twain, and Marven of the Great North Woods. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, photographer and filmmaker Christopher Knight.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1.

So Long Adventure;
Hello Boredom

liberty starbuck lay in her bed. It was too early to go to sleep, but her parents thought that she and her brother and sisters should start getting in practice for school. How dumb!

You can say that again!

How dumb! You still awake, July?

Of course I am. Who can fall asleep at eight o’clock?

July Burton Starbuck, or J.B., or Jelly Bean as he was sometimes called, was Liberty’s twin brother. His bedroom was in the turret that connected to her room through a small hallway of the old house.

All the twins in the Starbuck familyfor there was a younger set as wellcould communicate telepathically. Until recently, they could teleflash their thoughts to one another only when they were in the same room, but since they returned from a recent trip to London, they found they could send their thoughts even when in separate rooms or, on occasion, when they weren’t even under the same roof. The driveway experiment had proved that. July had stood at the end of the driveway while Liberty stayed in the house, and they had successfully teleflashed their thoughts to each other.

Remote teleflashing, as they called it, had even worked fairly well with the little twins, Charly and Molly, their five-year-old sisters. But you could never tell with Charly and Molly. They were totally unpredictable and forever distractible.

Everything seemed to have changed for the Starbuck twins since London, where their father had been sent as an undersecretary to the American ambassador. There, the twins had discovered a lost Sherlock Holmes manuscript and had become overnight celebrities. But fame, as someone had once said, was only a fifteen-minute phenomenon. Now their father’s job in London was done and they were back in Washington, D.C., in their comfortable old shingle house that stood in the shade of an ancient elm tree on Dakota Street.

Mom says our lives have been too disorderly since London.

Our lives were fun.

I know. Now it’s so boring.

It’s almost likethere was a midflash break as July resisted the thoughtit never even happened.

Liberty and July paused and reflected on the incredible months they had spent in London. There had been no school, no schedules. There had been adventure, danger, and, in the end, fame! Their lives had changed, yet everything now seemed to be returning to a dismal state of normality.

What had it all added up to? How could life be so . . . so . . .

Boring! The word itself seemed to thud rather than sizzle and crackle like the rest of the thoughts racing through the telepathic channels that linked the twins in their turret bedrooms.

Had anything exciting ever really happened? Of course they knew it had, but were they any different because of it?

There were footsteps now outside July’s door. Madeline Starbuck peeked in.

"Are you teleflashing in there? I can feel it. You have to go to sleep."

"Yeah, but how can we go to sleep this early?"

"School starts in a week. You children need to get back on a schedule." Putnam Starbuck, their father, had come to the door and poked in his bald head.

He needs to get a job, Liberty teleflashed, but of course their father had no idea what she said.

We won’t have enough homework to keep him busy, July replied. You know how it is at the beginning of school. They hardly give you anything. And he’ll be asking us all the time about our homework, wanting to help us.

Being a pain.

The children loved their father very much. But when Putnam Starbuck was between jobs, he tended to get overly involved as a parent. He became Super Dad, arranging family spelling bees so they could get 100 percent on the Friday tests, fixing healthy snacks for them, and scouring the news for topics for their papers. Liberty and July knew their dad was only trying to be helpful, but he could be very, very annoying.

Madeline and Putnam Starbuck said good night once more to each of their children. This was their fourth round of good-nights to both sets of twinsthat meant they had said good night sixteen times in the last forty-five minutes. They turned off the hall light and headed toward their own bedroom.

"I think Charly and Molly are on the verge of conking," July heard his dad say.

Wrong! Charly and Molly were not on the verge of conking. Twenty minutes later Liberty heard the unmistakable pitter-patter of four little feet. The youngest twins were standing by her bed with their Davy Crockett coonskin caps, their noses running as usual. Molly was wearing her coonskin cap on her head, while Charly clutched hers and sucked on its furry tail.

"Oh yuck, Charly! Get that tail out of your mouth!" Inch for inch, Liberty thought, these were two of the most disgusting little five-year-olds in the universesnotty noses and wet fur. "So what’s the problem this time?" Liberty sighed. She had more than a sneaking suspicion what it was.

"The ax murderer," Molly whimpered. Her red hair stuck out in a frenzied halo around her head. There was a sickening smell of perspiration mingled with mousse. The little twins loved hair mousse.

"It’s really scary!" Charly said in a whispery voice. She started to put the tail back into her mouth, but then remembered.

"The ax murderer." Liberty spat out the words. "I could just kill that little twerp Felicity Farnham for ever telling you that bunch of rot. She brings out the ax murderer in me!" Felicity had told Charly and Molly that if you went into a dark room, stood in front of a mirror, and said the words Bloody Mary one hundred times, an ax would slash through the darkness and chop off your head. The twins had been unable to go to sleep with the lights off for a week now.

Liberty sat up in bed and turned on her night-light. The little twins blinked. Their upper lips were glazed with snot. Of the twenty fingers on the hands of the youngest Starbuck twins, at least eight had press-on nails painted a color that, as Putnam said, was never to be found in nature.

"Mom’s told you time and time again never to sleep in your press-on nails. You could poke your eyes out. That is a much greater danger for you guys than the ax murderer."

"But we saw it!" protested Molly.

"Saw what?" Liberty asked.

"The ax," Charly said.

"Almost . . . We got to ninety-eight and quit."

"Jeez Louise!" Liberty slapped her forehead and fell back against her pillows.

"This is nonsense," Liberty began slowly. "There is nothing to be afraid of. You must know by now that Felicity Farnham is a complete jerk." She paused. "She just told you this ax thing to get back at you for what happened to her dog."

The little twins’ cheeks flared red as they recalled the trouble they had gotten into when they convinced Felicity to let them give her dog, Chiclet, a hair permanent, or a fur one, in their traveling beauty shop, Bu-Tee-On-Wheels. There had been big trouble over that.

"The poor dog nearly died," Liberty persisted. "That’s why Felicity wants to scare you."

"It didn’t nearly die. It was just allergic," Molly said.

"It had to be rushed to the vet’s office," July said. He had entered through the connecting hallway when he heard the little twins. "The ax murderer again?" he asked, leaning against the door frame. His jet-black hair fell in a thick slash across his forehead.

"How’d you guess?" Liberty replied.

There was a sound at the end of the hall. A door creaked. The little twins jumped.

"I’m hearing voices! Somebody up?"

"Nothing, Dad," Liberty called.

The twins switched to their telepathic channels.

They wouldn’t be caught up with this ax murderer thing if life weren’t so boring,July teleflashed. If they had something really exciting to think about . . .

Right, replied Liberty. That’s our problem these days. Acute boredom.

Not so cute!

Come on, Liberty flashed. I’ll take you two back to bed.

Liberty led Charly and Molly tiptoeing down the hallway. She found two flashlights so that the little twins could sleep with them under their pillows and flash them on immediately at the first glint of an ax blade. She tucked the twins in, promising them candy in the morning if they stayed put.

Please go to sleep! Liberty flashed.

But July’s right. Nothing exciting ever happens anymore, Charly replied.

It’s so boring, Molly flashed.

Well, life can’t always be exciting. Oh dear, Liberty thought. She was beginning to sound like a grown-up. How dreadful. Well, maybe something unboring would happen. One could always hope.

Liberty walked out of the little twins’ room and turned down the hall toward her own. It sounded as if July might already be asleep. She crawled into bed. The branch of the elm outside her window almost brushed the panes, and the moonlit leaves printed a shadowy design on her curtains. It was more fun to think of them not as leaves but as something else: to read pictures and figures into them the way one could find animals in the clouds. Liberty thought the oval leaves swam across the moon-bleached curtains like schools of fish.

Even though it was still the last week of August, there was the quick feeling of fall in the air. Those leaves would soon turn bright colors, and it would be time for plaid skirts and shoes with socks, new spiral notebooks and pencil boxes, and all the stuff that was supposed to make you feel great about going back to school. It was so long to bare feet and Popsicles, to shorts and wet bathing suits. But of course they really hadn’t had any of those, for they had been in London. So for the Starbuck children it was simply this: So long adventure; hello boredom.

 

Copyright © 2008, 1992 by Kathryn Lasky Knight

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Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152058745
• ISBN 13: 9780152058746
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224