The End of Calico Jack

My name is Ricky Bradshaw and I have epilepsy. If you're thinking I have convulsions and spasms, I don't. I suffer from what my doctor calls absence seizures.

Most days I act and look pretty normal -- or as normal as a boy can when he's in the tenth grade. But when I have an "episode" I sort of zone out. Mom tells me that when it happens I look like I'm daydreaming. Which means I don't look much different from the rest of my classmates at Quiet Cove High. School is pretty boring some days.

If you've never heard of absence seizures, that's okay. A lot of people haven't. My teachers are a lot of those people.

I needed to tell you that because at the beginning of The End of Calico Jack my parents and I are on Coffin Cay, an island off the coast of the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola). We're looking for the treasure of the Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe. That's a spanish treasure ship. During one of my previous "episodes" I was in the exact same cave with the treasure. Only then I was there during the age of pirates, so that was like three hundred or so years ago. When I went back with Mom and Dad the cave was empty.

But I did find a ship's log with the exact course and route and longitude and latitude of where the Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe would be on a certain date .... three hundred or so years ago.

Then it happened - I had an episode. Now I'm sailing around the West Indies with Calico Jack, Ann Bonny, and Scary Mary Read. Tomorrow the Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe should be off the western coast of Haiti (also Hispaniola) which just happens to be the exact date when Calico Jack and his crew were captured three hundred or so years ago.

If I make it off this ship alive, I'll let you know.

If not, I'll be swinging on the gallows with Calico Jack.

Either way I plan to have a few pieces of gold and silver in my pockets.