Finding Fortune by Delia Ray Read Free Book Online

rubbed my finger over the white side of one of the blanks in my palm. It was smooth and let off a little gleam of light like a pearl, which probably explained how the buttons got their name.
    â€œYou can keep one if you want,” Hugh offered. “Hildy won’t mind. She says she’s going to give a button blank to every single person who visits her museum.” He rooted in the side pocket of his cargo shorts. “Here’s mine.” He opened his fist to show me the one he’d been carrying. “It’s my lucky charm.”
    â€œWay better than cereal,” I joked. “Never goes stale.”
    Hugh smiled crookedly. “Hey, that’s a good one. I gotta write that down.” He reached for the pencil behind his ear and pulled a fresh index card out of his pocket. As Hugh wandered ahead scribbling, I hung back and sifted through a few more handfuls of button blanks, searching for one that struck my eye. I’d never had a good luck charm before and suddenly it seemed like something I desperately needed.
    After I had chosen my favorite blank and tucked it in my pocket, it took me a while to find Hugh in the maze of cardboard boxes. “Ahoy!” he yelled when I came around a stack of storage bins. I laughed in amazement. He was standing inside a boat—a big one—that looked like it had run aground on the only island of empty space in the gym.
    â€œThis is the best part of the whole museum,” Hugh declared. “It’s a clamming boat. It used to be Hildy’s dad’s.” The wooden boat sat about three feet off the ground on a makeshift platform. It was long and flat-bottomed and smelled like it had a fresh coat of paint—emerald green with bright white trim.
    â€œIsn’t it great?” Hugh asked me. “I just wish we could name it something different.”
    â€œWhy, what’s it called?”
    Hugh didn’t answer. He rolled his eyes, jerking his thumb toward the back of the boat. I walked around to read the name that was painted across the stern in white capital letters. “What’s wrong with Little Miss ?” I asked. “I think it’s cute. It’s short for Mississippi, right?”
    â€œThat’s the problem. A boat shouldn’t sound cute . Why couldn’t Hildy’s dad have called it something like Sea Witch ? Or Discovery . That’s what Lewis and Clark named theirs. Those guys never would have gone exploring in a boat called Little Miss .”
    He had a point. The name sounded too sweet, especially considering the scary contraption full of long hooks that ran along the length of one side. “That’s the clamming rig,” Hugh told me, slipping into his tour guide routine again. He explained how the clammers used to drag all those hooks along the bottom of the river and the dopey mussels and clams got fooled into thinking the hooks were something tasty or an enemy floating by, so they chomped their two halves down on them. “And whammo ,” Hugh said, smacking his hands together. “After that, they got their insides boiled out and their outsides cut into buttons.”
    â€œYuck.” I grimaced.
    Hugh swung his legs over the side of the boat and hopped from the platform to the floor. “Come on,” he said. “I have to show you one more thing.” I scrambled after him as he ducked under another set of sawhorses. I flinched when we popped up next to a pair of spooky mannequins with yellow hair like straw. They were wearing matching vests decorated in a gleaming assortment of buttons, but I couldn’t stop to take a closer look. Hugh had already disappeared again. I squeezed past another row of old-fashioned machines, wrinkling my nose at the smell of engine grease. Hugh was on the other side holding a photograph in a silver frame.
    â€œGuess who?” he said, handing me the picture. I stared at the pretty girl who waved from the black-and-white