Something like that storm outside shivers down my back. This close to the windshield, it’s almost like being on a pirate ship in the middle of a tempest. Easy enough to pretend anyway, or get the feeling. And I’m with a version of the Ruth who talked with me last night and told me important things, and then let me help her write a song this morning. Kind of. I’m going to get that Ruth back. I have to, now, in this storm.

“That thunder is crazy, huh?” I say, flipping my legs over the edge of my loft.

Ruth is hunched into her earbuds.

Just look up at me, won’t you? I think.

No. This isn’t going to happen. My sister is going to be here with me, enjoying where we are, enjoying it with me, us together in the middle of this pirate ship storm.

“Ruth,” I say.

In that gesture she’s perfected, that motion I’ve started seeing in my sleep, she pulls out an earbud and rolls her eyes. “What now, Olivia?”

“Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if there was a storm like this above us when we were diving?”

“You know that’s not how it works.”

“But it would still be awesome,” I say.

She rolls her eyes again.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

She raises an eyebrow like I’ve asked the stupidest question in the world. Like I’ve asked Benjamin Franklin if his kite experiment was a little shocking.

“Maybe I don’t even want to dive pirate ships. Just go back to flipping out about rain to yourself, okay?”

It’s like Ruth’s taken a magazine of all our games, our Anne Bonny and Mary Read, our couch-cushion planks and bedsheet sails and all our Treasure Hunts, and slapped me across the face with it.

“Not dive pirate ships?” I say.

“Honestly, sometimes it’s like trying to sleep with a flashlight shining in your eyes.”

“Not dive pirate ships?”

“It’s like living with canaries that won’t shut up.”

The storm whips and rages behind me. Instead of shriveling me up, her words steam under my skin, but I focus on the crucial point.

“What about our box?”

Now she looks up at me, and though her voice is quiet, her eyes stab. “That’s the other thing,” she says. “I’ve been playing along, but how can you be so freaking naive? You think that stupid box is still there? Look outside, Olivia. Look at the real world for a change. You think that box would survive this? And this is one day, let alone years and years. Are you kidding me? Right now, that dumb cave is completely submerged, and that stupid box has been swept away and lost—”