[shared copy] The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash―they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. When the Starbuck family moves to a houseboat in the Florida Keys, Liberty and July discover they share a wonderful telepathic link with the dolphins in the area. When they find that someone is poisoning the water with toxic waste, and that the creatures of the Keys are dying, the twins must stop the culprits before it’s too late. Kathryn Lasky 's many books for young people have received such honors as the Parents' Choice Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and a Newbery Honor citation. Her picture books include Sugaring Time, The Emperor's Old Clothes, A Brilliant Streak: The Making of Mark Twain, and Marven of the Great North Woods. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, photographer and filmmaker Christopher Knight. 1. So Long Adventure; Hello Boredom liberty starbuck lay in her bed. It was too early to go to sleep, but her parents thought that she and her brother and sisters should start getting in practice for school. How dumb! You can say that again! How dumb! You still awake, July? Of course I am. Who can fall asleep at eight o’clock? July Burton Starbuck, or J.B., or Jelly Bean as he was sometimes called, was Liberty’s twin brother. His bedroom was in the turret that connected to her room through a small hallway of the old house. All the twins in the Starbuck familyfor there was a younger set as wellcould communicate telepathically. Until recently, they could teleflash their thoughts to one another only when they were in the same room, but since they returned from a recent trip to London, they found they could send their thoughts even when in separate rooms or, on occasion, when they weren’t even under the same roof. The driveway experiment had proved that. July had stood at the end of the driveway while Liberty stayed in the house, and they had successfully teleflashed their thoughts to each other. Remote teleflashing, as they called it, had even worked fairly well with the little twins, Charly and Molly, their five-year-old sisters. But you could never tell with Charly and Molly. They were totally unpredictable and forever distractible. Everything seemed to have changed for the Starbuck twins since London, where their father had been sent as an undersecretary to the American ambassador. There, the twins had discovered a lost Sherlock Holmes manuscript and had become overnight celebrities. But fame, as someone had once said, was only a fifteen-minute phenomenon. Now their father’s job in London was done and they were back in Washington, D.C., in their comfortable old shingle house that stood in the shade of an ancient elm tree on Dakota Street. Mom says our lives have been too disorderly since London. Our lives were fun. I know. Now it’s so boring. It’s almost like there was a midflash break as July resisted the thought it never even happened. Liberty and July paused and reflected on the incredible months they had spent in London. There had been no school, no schedules. There had been adventure, danger, and, in the end, fame! Their lives had changed, yet everything now seemed to be returning to a dismal state of normality. What had it all added up to? How could life be so . . . so . . . Boring! The word itself seemed to thud rather than sizzle and crackle like the rest of the thoughts racing through the telepathic channels that linked the twins in their turret bedrooms. Had anything exciting ever really happened? Of course they knew it had, but were they any different because of it? There were footsteps now outside July’s door. Madeline Starbuck peeked in. "Are you teleflashing in there? I can feel it. You have to go to sleep." "Yeah, but how can we go to sleep this early?" "School starts in a week. You children need to get back on a schedule." Putnam Starbuck, their father, had come to the door and poked in his bald head. He needs to get a job, Liberty teleflashed, but of course their father had no idea what she said. We won’t have enough homework to keep him busy, July replied. You know how it is at the beginning of school. They hardly give you anything. And he’ll be asking us all the time about our homework, wanting to help us. Being a pain. The children loved their father very much. But when Putnam Starbuck was between jobs, he tended to get overly involved as a parent. He became Super Dad, arranging family spelling bees so they could get 100 percent on the Friday tests, fixing healthy snacks for them, and scouring the news for topics for their papers. Liberty and July knew their dad was only trying to be helpf