“It definitely grows on you,” she says, then she takes off her hat and holds it in her hands. She fiddles with the gold brocade. “You should be captain really, Arthur. You know all the right words and you went to Sea Cadets.”

“Only for three weeks,” I say. One of the boys laughed at my sneakers and I never went back. “No, I can’t be captain. I don’t speak Honey Badger.”

“I could translate,” Rose says. “Honestly, I don’t mind. If you want to be captain, the job’s yours.” She holds the hat out to me.

I think about her offer, about her cool hat and even cooler cabin, but I shake my head. “No, you should definitely be captain. You’re the bossiest, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

She laughs. “Thanks . . . I think.” Then we lean on the railing as the ship cuts through the water. We look toward the End.

“Have you thought about what might come out of the Box?” I say, breaking the silence.

“I’ve tried not to, but it’s impossible.”

“Maybe it will be zombie spiders or a gigantic skeleton ghost,” I say.

Rose shakes her head. “It won’t be anything like that. I’m not scared of made-up stuff anymore.”

“Neither am I,” I say, thinking about Crowky’s whispered words.

She looks at me closely. “So what are you scared of?”

I badly want to tell her. It would feel so good to blurt out: I’m scared of Crowky getting into Home and doing something terrible to Grandad, but I can’t share this thought with her. What if it becomes her fear too? So instead I say, “I’m scared of getting hurt and stuff . . . What about you?”

Rose is so different from me—it’s hard to imagine what she dreads. Except for the dark and looking stupid in front of her friends she’s never really been scared of anything. Rose turns and looks back toward Roar. She thinks for a moment, then says, “I really hate orange slugs.”

And then I have one of those twin moments, like the ones Rose has all the time, and I know for certain that she’s lying. Rose isn’t scared of orange slugs any more than I’m scared of hurting myself. But she is scared of something. I can see it in her eyes.

Suddenly she jams the hat back on her head and strides across the deck. “Time for bed, shipmate,” she calls over her shoulder, “and that’s an order!”

Chapter 27

The rise and fall of the ship wakes me up, and when I look out of the porthole I realize that I’ve slept through the whole night.