“That’s a tale I have not told before, but I will tell you. Once, many years ago, I received a prestigious award for my study of meteorites from Mars. I stood at the podium where I was presented the award and began the acceptance speech I had prepared. I held up that stone you now have in your pocket and recounted the childhood tale I told you and your family. Then I went on to say that I believed that, just as a magnet attracts another magnet, there might be meteorites with a composition that attracts water, perhaps from a planet in a distant galaxy. And when that meteorite gets within Earth’s orbit, it is attracted to large bodies of underground fresh water.”

“Like what we have here under Bower Hill. And what did they say when you told them that?” I ask the curator, leading him in the direction of the big rock. Birdie runs ahead of us.

“They laughed, Henry. Oh, did they laugh. They thought I was being humorous. In fact, they laughed so long and hard I never did finish my speech. Afterwards, when I left the podium with my award, they slapped me on the back and pronounced me Water Man and told me not to forget to put the stone back in the road where I got it on the way in.”

“They didn’t understand.”

“No, they did not. And because I felt humiliated and disappointed at the reception of my speech, I never again spoke about my water rock theory.”

“But you’re a scientist. Why didn’t you test the meteorite and prove it to them?”

Dr. Morgan doesn’t answer, because just then the big rock comes into view, and he stands very still gazing at it.

“What a magnificent specimen, your stone from the sky.”

Water bubbles out of the ground around us. Birdie runs to the rock, her red coat billowing out in the wind. Dr. Miles Morgan kneels down, cups both hands together, fills them with water, and tips his hands into his open mouth.

Then he stands, takes the camera out of his pocket, and snaps photographs as he observes the big rock. He steps back to take a picture of the whole rock in its crater and then moves in to take close-ups of the surface of the stone. He talks to himself.

“Fusion crust.”

“Regmaglypts.”

“Impact crater.”

“Metallic flakes.”

“Is it as big as the Ahnighito at the museum?” I ask Dr. Morgan.

“It is substantially bigger.”

When the curator says our rock is bigger, I understand for the first time the way Braggy must feel when he finds out something he has is larger or taller than someone else’s.