The sky swirls gray when I wake up in the morning. No rain yet, but before I’ve been awake for five minutes, I see multiple flashes of lightning far off. Thunder woke me, I realize. For a while I just lie there, watching the gray clouds come in.

It’s Something Magic day.

We are on the winding-down days of our trip, or at least the driving part. We have an eight-hour drive to Tucson today, and I text the information for the rattlesnake bridge to Ellie and Eddie.

I lean over the edge of my loft. “Hey, I just text- ed you guys the link for this rattlesnake bridge in Tucson that I found. Do you think we’ll have time to stop there?”

“Rattlesnake bridge?” Eddie says, keeping his eyes on the road. “That sounds cool!”

Ellie checks the link I sent her. “Maybe we can stop there before we check into the hotel,” she says. She glances out the windshield and up at the sky. “Unless the bridge gets hit by lightning before then.”

Get Ellie and Eddie on board with my Something Magic plan: check. This time things will work. Then tomorrow we’ll drive the last six hours from Tucson to San Diego. San Diego and Sunset Cliffs, where Ruth and I will dig up our Something Gold, our final treasure.

Plus scuba tours start the day after that. I’m so electric with excitement that I feel like I’m going to be a target for that lightning. I want to pull my camera to me and cuddle it. I can see the underwater picture in my head, the glow of light above the water rippling through the waves to the moss-covered wood of a ship.

I grin to myself and stretch. Maybe it’s the increasing nearness of Wreck Alley, maybe it’s waking up to a thunderstorm, but my veins are buzzing.

Ruth is slouched against her pillow, her hood pulled low enough I can barely see her eyes from this angle. I send a thought her way, hoping maybe she’ll catch it and look up and smile, but she doesn’t. The white cords of her earbuds stream from the hood like IVs. Finally she does see me, and when she catches me looking, she turns onto her side, facing the wall.

We go out for pancakes. Ruth comes to the restaurant with us, but I only see her stab at her food without taking any bites, and mostly she sits there looking like she wishes she hadn’t come. I pour a cup of orange juice and slide it to her.

“Want to try some of my sausage?” Ellie asks.

Ruth shakes her head.

After breakfast Ruth is the first one to climb back into the RV. Ellie steps to the side and takes out her phone, and I stall long enough to hear her.