The Secrets of Pimsim Cove - 2. Chapter 2

“It’s so not fair!” I grumbled as I stomped up to my bedroom and slammed the door behind Cassy. I was so angry that Mom didn’t trust me to do this by myself. “They treat me like a child,” I continued to rant.

I plopped down in front of my computer. A quick search turned up a list of flights from Atlanta to Ireland.

“What are you doing?” Cassy nervously asked when she saw the computer screen.

“I can do this,” I muttered more to myself, but Cassy knew exactly what I was planning.

Cassy quickly walked over to my bedroom door and peeked into the hallway. She made sure the coast was clear before turning on me. “Oh my freaking god, Anna, are you crazy?”

Jumping up from the desk, I told her to lock the door before I started searching for everything that I would need to go to Ireland. I still had my passport from when Grandma Gigi took Jimmy and me to Aruba last year. Mom and Dad stayed home and had their own little vacation and now she was pregnant with Marcus. Parent sex...oh gross!

I found the American Express card that Gigi gave me for emergencies, since this was absolutely an emergency. My cell phone with charger and of course my ipod, I gathered them all up and tossed them on my bed.

I tucked Dad’s photo inside of my new journal. I’d carried the old picture with me ever since I found it almost two years ago. I had memorized every detail and even the address on the back.

“Well, if I can’t talk some sense into you, I had might as well coordinate some outfits for you.” Cassy announced like I was totally fashion challenged. I rolled my eyes at her back and let her dig through my closet while I grabbed only the bare essentials from my make-up bin.

Since my face was already tanned and thankfully blemish free at the moment, I would only need my brown mascara. Blond eyelashes totally suck! I’d also need some lip gloss. Placing those along with deodorant and the new bottle of perfume, that was sitting on my dresser, onto my bed I was almost ready to go.

“Wow! That looks really good together.” I said when I noticed a top that had been crammed into the back of my closet. Cassy matched it up with a pair of jeans that I never wore. She was really talented. I told her to only pack for a week and she smiled and said that she picked items that could be mixed and matched to extend my ‘wardrobe possibilities.’

She was defiantly going to hit the fashion world like a mini-tornado someday. Two pairs of shorts, two pairs of jeans, two tank-tops (of course with the built in bra), two t-shirts, a super cute summer dress, and a knee length nightshirt, now all I need were socks and underthingies and I was ready to go.

“What about your hair?” Cassy said it as if my wild strawberry blond curls were an icky thing that should never be mentioned in public, like when you talk about someone getting an STD.

“What about it?” I glanced at my reflection in the mirror.

“Don’t all white girls need a whole cart full of sprays, spritz, irons, and blow-dryers?” Now Cassy had slept over a billion times and knew that I didn’t use all that crap. It wouldn’t work on my out of control, curly mess anyways.

Giving her a wink before telling her, “oh, don’t go there! We can’t all be as lucky as Ms. Lovely Cassandra Morgan and have a perfect hair day...every day. Besides Ireland is not as humid as Atlanta and my curls behave better when it’s cooler. I’ll just take a few more rubber-bands and tie it up in a ponytail or just braid it if I need to.”

With everything spread across my bed, I thought about how I was going to get a piece of my parents matching black luggage set without Mom catching me. My track & field bag!

I grabbed the red and blue bag with big white stars from under my bed. The side of it was ablaze with my name: A. McLoughlin, now, that could be spotted from a mile away and the American flare was an extra something, something! Soft tapping on my door pushed thoughts of lost luggage out of my head.

Cassy and I both froze.

“Anna?” Jimmy’s little voice squeezed through the door. “Can I come in?”

We glanced from the door over to the pile of stuff on my bed.

When Cassy walked over to unlock the door, I panicked until she opened it just wide enough to see him standing outside. “Hey Jimmy, you can help me make a big bowl of popcorn? Then we can watch a move. You can pick out any movie you want, okay?”

Cassy was as close to a sister as I was ever going to get and Jimmy totally adores her. As soon as the door shut, I shoved everything in the bag.

***

Since my flight wasn’t until 3am, I had plenty of time to fake my usual bedtime routine. Cassy and Jimmy watched a move as I finalized the rest of my plans.

I bought my ticket online, made reservation for a taxi, and wrote Mom a letter.

Mom,

Please understand why I couldn’t wait for Grandma Gigi. Heck, if she wants to come to Ireland after she gets back home in the next day or so, that’s fine, but there is no way that I can sit around, doing nothing, just waiting. I have to go find Dad. I know that I can do this!

I love you,

Anna

Luckily, Mom and Jimmy were exhausted from the stress of the day and both of them were in bed before 11 o’clock. That made it easier to sneak out. I thought I was going to have to shimmy down the drainpipe, but with both of them asleep, I was able to tip-toe out the backdoor without either of them knowing I was gone.

The cabbie parked a block away from the house. There was always traffic in Atlanta, but only a few cars were heading towards the airport. Hopefully, I would be in the air before anyone realized I was gone.

***

Takeoff was a tad bumpy, but other than that, nothing else had gone disastrously wrong with the flight…so far. We still hadn’t landed yet and worried that just thinking the words was going to jinx us, I rapped on my forehead and muttered, “knock on wood,” under my breath.

The sweet old lady in the seat beside me looked like one of Grandma Gigi’s friends from the Country Club. Her perfectly tailored, green wool suit looked very expensive and only rich old ladies wore those super thick hose that made their legs look an unnatural shade of beige.

Shortly after takeoff, the woman reclined her seat and quickly fell asleep, leaving me alone to ponder my dreadful situation and try to come up with some sort of plan before landing in Dublin.

I grabbed my uber-cute Dolce & Gabbana handbag out of the stowaway bin and removed my new journal, but before writing down all of the thoughts buzzing around in my head, I pulled out the old photograph that I had tucked safely inside. The faded picture showed three teenage boys standing on the end of a wooden dock.

I don’t know how I knew, but I could tell the difference between Dad and his twin brother, Rook, the moment I picked up the picture even though they’re identical twins. The same strawberry hair and the same emerald green eyes, but when Rook smiled, it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

The boy in the middle didn’t look anything like Dad or Uncle Rook. His hair was blacker than night and his eyes were such a pale shade of gray that they almost looked white.

A chill ran down my spine as I stared at the old photograph. The fancy handwriting on the back read: ‘W.S., Michael and Rook,’ and underneath that was scrawled: ‘73 Spring Hill Lane, Pimsim Cove.’

Last year, when I couldn’t find much information on Pimsim Cove in any of the Google searches, while working on a geography report on Ireland, I went through Dad’s things and found this picture along with a beautiful drawing.

Dad had drawn a handmade map of Pimsim Cove. His elegant handwriting not only marked the Cove, but also all of the surrounding towns and seaports. The perfect drawings of trees and small family farms and even little boats were absolutely breathtaking.

Mom might be making some serious cash selling her paintings down on Vanburen Street, but Dad had an amazing talent for details. The delicate map attracted me to it like a moth to a flame and whenever I was alone in our house, I loved to just sit and stare at it for hours.

DING! The chime of the seatbelt sign snapped me out of my daydream, bringing me back to the airplane that was starting its decent for a landing. The flight attendant instructed everyone to bring their seats upright and close any open tray tables as we prepared to land.

“Lassie, you favor your father with those lovely green eyes and you both being so ginger.” The woman beside me spoke with a thick Irish accent.

“Ginger?” I had never heard that term before except when describing Jimmy’s favorite Christmas cookies.

“Yes dear,” her bony finger touched a curly lock of hair that spilled over my shoulder, “a ginger child is a redhead. With your red hair and those bright eyes…you look just like him.”

Redhead? Oh no, not me, boy was she mistaken! My hair is strawberry blond and not red or even ginger for that fact. While daydreaming, I had forgotten all about the old picture that I was still clutching in my hand.

The flight attendant gave me a friendly smile as she passed by our seats, getting ready to land. I quickly tucked the photo back into my purse along with my journal before pulling my seat straight up.

Yeah, a nine hour, non-stop flight and as far as coming up with any sort of plan to find Dad, I still had zip!

Bad guys = one! Me = zippo!

***

At least Ireland Air was super-efficient. They had all the passengers line up in neat rows like cattle. Each person was given a brief onceover inspection and instead of branding our ear, every passenger’s passport was given a quick stamp before sending them on their way.

My way just happened to lead over to the luggage carousel, but instead of dread, this time I was kind of looking forward to my patriotic hoorah, slice of home.

The bright bold colors made it easy to spot my bag and watching the Irish passengers glare at it, like it was a big American turd sliding down the luggage carousel, was even better. Turd...hehehe!

So, where to now? I slung my bag over my shoulder and read all of the signs posted on the walls as I made my way out of the building with all the other travelers. A big yellow arrow pointed to a line of taxicabs.

One guy was leaning against the front of his car reading a newspaper. He glanced up and smiled when I approached him, but when I asked him if he could take me to Pimsim Cove he just shook his head no, just like the second and the third cabbies all did.

“The next bus to Waterford departs in five minutes. All passengers heading to Waterford, please proceed to bus terminal three.” The overhead announcer called out.

I trotted over to the map on the wall beside the ticket counter and dropped my bag to the concrete. “You’ve got to be kidding me?” I scanned the smurfing thing again and again and there was no Pimsim Cove.

Just then, a flash of green scuttled behind me. It was the old lady from the plane! She was from Ireland. She had to know how to get to Pimsim Cove.

“Hey wait!” I shouted in her direction, but she kept up her bustling pace and disappeared between two buses. Without thinking, I chased after her and caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner and crossing the street. For an old lady wearing heels, she sure could move fast.

“Wait up...Lady in Green!” I was afraid that if I took my eyes off of her, she would be gone, so I dashed between the buses and ran across the street to catch up with her.

Darn she was fast. She disappeared down a set of metal stairs that led down to a big park on the other side of the street. Glancing back at the bus station, a big white and green bus pulled out of the terminal while another one patiently waited in the street for its turn to pull into the empty space.

I needed to get back to the station, but if I didn’t know which direction led to Pimsim Cove, then it wouldn’t matter anyways. I kept following the Lady in Green, hoping that the narrow stairs would slow the old woman down just long enough to ask her for directions, but when I reached the bottom of the steps they were empty. Now, where did she go?

Looking past the dim shadows of the trees, a small flicker caught my eye. It had come from the narrow passage under the bridge. “Crap! That can’t be her.” I muttered and crossed to where I saw the movement. “I’ll just peek inside and when I find some old wino, I’m gonna have to haul butt back to the bus station.”

It was dark and dirty in there, but there weren’t any drunken wino’s hanging out. Instead, I saw another glimpse of green disappearing further down the tunnel. “What in the world was going on? Rich old lady lives in the dirty tunnels under the streets of Dublin?”

I walked into the tunnel just enough to see that it was much bigger than it looked. I could still hear the clickity-clack of her high heels and ran after the sound.

“Hello?” I called out.

Silence.

“Uhmmm… It’s me,” crap, me who? I cleared my throat and spoke a little louder, “I’m the ginger American from the plane...”

Still silence.

“I was wondering if you could give me directions--”

A deep growl echoed through the tunnel, and was then followed by a loud snarl. “I don’t know why you even bother, Maggen!” The woman’s gravelly voice sounded like she chain-smoked three packs a day.

“Just because Marcella moved to the United States doesn’t mean she’s no longer a part of this family!” I recognized the Lady in Green’s voice.

“Maybe…but you stink! You reek of them!” The other growled.

That’s when I crouched down and snuck up a little closer to the corner and peaked around. I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Cigarette Voice was huge, like an Amazon Woman huge and she was covered in wild, thick blue hair. Even her eyes were blue, not just the center, but both of her eyes looked like two huge blueberries were stuck in her head. No wonder the woman hid down in the tunnels, she was disgusting!

I could see the back of Mrs. Green and watched her pat Cigarette Women’s furry blue arm. “I know! I know! Zela, it’s going to take me two whole days of soaking in the mud pits to get this Human stench off me.”

Just as she finished, I watched the old lady’s fine wool clothes grow into long, wiry green hair. It sprouted out through her beige hose and grew from her back and legs and continued to sprout until it even covered her small wrinkled hands. It was everywhere. Thick and wild just like the other woman.

Oh my goodness...they were Trolls! Both of them, they were real Trolls! I gasped trying desperately to suck air into my lungs. Mrs. Green must have heard me and turned around. She blinked her solid green eyes and peered into the tunnel’s dim entrance.

Too scared to think or scream or even breathe, I turned and ran. I ran out of the dark tunnel, across the park, up the steps, over the street, back to the bus terminal just in time to see my American motif, red, white and blue, track & field bag ride off down the street, strapped to the back of some guy’s motorcycle.