Two days ago I was two hundred and forty knots off the west coast of Australia when the ship’s radio operator, Alberto, knocked on my stateroom door with a “Shore to Ship” telegram in hand.

Grandmother ill. Close to death. Keeps asking for you and only you. Come home.

The only person that I’ve quietly been keeping known of my whereabouts is my brother Wayne back home in Milwaukee, so I assumed the message was from him even though it wasn’t signed. I told Alberto to return the following message:

Dear Wayne, I received your message. I’m coming home as soon as possible.

Alberto was swift on his feet and retreated back to the radio room to send my message. My immediate thought was how on earth I was going to get from Perth to Milwaukee under radar, but at the same time quickly. Commercial airliners were out of the question, so I got the idea in my head to find a FedEx plane at Perth Airport and sneaking my way on. Surprisingly, cargo planes have extremely low security and I knew that if I could just get onto the tarmac near one of their planes that I’d be able to sneak my way on and get back to the US by the next day. Hopefully grandma would be able to hang on until I get there.

I rode in the back of a semi truck full of “Cheddar Cheese” Pringles for eleven hours, stuffing my face along the way. By the time we reached a rest stop in Bloomington I was laying on my back with a mustache and beard of orange powdery deliciousness. When I smelled the yeast of the breweries, I knew we had finally reached Milwaukee. I gave Megadeath one last chip and popped him back into my backpack and brushed myself clean of crumbs.

I hid behind a stack of boxes when the back door opened and the driver began making his delivery to the Piggly Wiggly on Layton Avenue. As soon as he walked away I jumped out and ran into the grocery store, heading for the restroom where I knew there was a payphone. I dialed Wayne and he picked up quickly. I knew the phone would be tapped so I spoke in code.

“I won’t let the she-wolf tear us apart. Your Chinese food will be delivered to your mother in thirty minutes or less.”

He thanked me and hung up. I ran back outside and jumped onto the number 80 bus, all the while keeping my head down, my hair hanging in front of my face so that no one would recognize me. Even before my life of “crime” I was well known in the city of Milwaukee for my spontaneous hip-hop performances all over the city, so I really had to be careful.

It was only a ten minute ride to the house that I had spent seventeen years of my life in before I moved away to California. I got to the door and before I could even knock it opened and there stood my mom and Wayne. Wayne grabbed me by the straps of my backpack and pulled me inside then shut the door. He pulled me in and gave me a hug stronger and more filled with emotion than I had ever had from him or anyone in my life for that matter. Then my mom grabbed me and hugged me, then punched me hard in the arm and said, “What the hell is wrong with you? All of those poor people shitting themselves at Disneyland! You should have known better, Bethany Leigh. I’m glad you’re safe. Wayne has been keeping me informed each time he’s heard from you. You’re lucky you haven’t gotten yourself caught or worse yet, killed.”

I didn’t feel it was necessary to go into all of the details of my travels, so I just answered her with, “Can you run to Culver’s and get me a couple of butter burgers and some vanilla custard?”

During dinner the three of us sat around mom’s living room and she and Wayne gave me the scoop on grandma. They said that two months ago she had been diagnosed with an unusual cancer that was strangling her heart and lungs and that she didn’t have much time left at all.

“Well then what the fuck are we sitting around here for? Let’s get to the hospital!” I said and stood up with burger in hand.

“It’s not as simple as that, Beth. We’re going to need to sneak you in to see her. Not that there are cops at every entrance or anything like that, but they are definitely on the lookout for you, especially since grandma she’s been so adamant about seeing you before she goes.”

“Why does she want to see me?” I knew that she most likely had seen everyone else and that I was the last one in the family to say goodbye, but it just seemed like there was more to it.

“We don’t know. She won’t say anything to anyone except that she needs you there,” said Wayne.

Wayne and mom came up with quite the disguise. I ended up looking like a 14-year-old Japanese exchange student with the perfect gothic Lolita thing going on. Very bizarre.

We got to the hospital around midnight. Halfway down the hallway of the oncology wing, mom pointed and said, “She’s in the last room on the right. We’ll be waiting in here,” then he and mom walked into the family waiting room.

I walked down the hallway, my tall Kiss boots making loud clicks on the cold tile beneath them along the way. Room 428. The door was slightly ajar and I pushed it open slowly and heard the sound of a machine breathing for my grandma. And then I saw her. I began to cry and started to turn away when I heard her say, “Bethany?”

I walked over to the bed. She was so thin and barely resembled the busty, beautiful firecracker that I had known for the past twenty-six years. I sat in a chair next to her and held her bony hand.

“Hi grandma. How are you doing?”

“Bethany, listen to me. There’s a great treasure. And you’re the only one that can find it,” she said.

“What? What treasure? What are you talking about?”

“In the leg of the angel. You must go, Bethany. You must find the treasure.”

And with a last drawn in breath, she then exhaled the word “Pisa” and she was gone.

I walked out of the room and over to the nurse’s station where I told a blonde named Jenny that the old woman in the room at the end of the hall who I didn’t know at all had just passed. I walked into the waiting room to find Wayne and mom watching an episode of Golden Girls and sipping at chicken broth in Styrofoam cups.

“She’s gone,” I said with black tears streaming down my face from the massive amount of eyeliner my mom had applied to my eyes.

Wayne grabbed mom’s hand. “Well, what um, what did she say?”

“She told me that I need to go find some hidden treasure.”

“What? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like. Megadeath and I are leaving for Italy in the morning.”