“I’m glad I found the creature with you. We’ll probably be doing interviews about this our whole lives. When we’re in our nineties, people will still be asking us about the day we found the monster. I’m sure we’ll still like each other even then.”

She said, “The first thing we’ll say is that it wasn’t a monster. It was just a poor thing that was run down by a boat. It’s not like it ever ate anyone.”

“We don’t know what he eats. Lots of people have drowned in this lake. Maybe some of them who drowned didn’t really. Maybe he picked his teeth with them.”

“We don’t even know it’s a he.”

They let go of each other’s hand and turned to look at it, sprawled on the brown, hard beach. From this angle it looked like a boulder again, with some netting across it. Its hide did not glisten like a whaleskin but was dark and dull, a chunk of granite with lichen on it.

She had a thought, looked back at Joel. “Do you think we should get ready to be interviewed?”

“You mean like comb our hair? You don’t need to comb your hair. Your hair is beautiful.”

His face darkened and he couldn’t hold her gaze.

“No,” she said. “I mean we don’t have anything to say. We don’t know anything about it. I wish we knew how long it is, at least.”

“We should count its teeth.”

She shivered. The ants-on-skin sensation returned. “I wouldn’t like to put my hand in its mouth.”

“It’s dead. I’m not scared. The scientists are going to count its teeth. They’ll probably do that first thing.”

Joel’s eyes widened.

“A tooth,” he said.

“A tooth,” she said back, feeling his excitement.

“One for you and one for me. We ought to take a tooth for each of us, to remember it by.”

“I won’t need a tooth to remember it,” she said. “But it’s a good idea. I’m going to have mine made into a necklace.”

“Me, too. Only a necklace for a boy. Not a pretty one, like for a girl.”

Its neck was long and thick and stretched out straight on the sand. If she had come at the animal from this direction, she would’ve known that it wasn’t a rock. It had a shovel-shaped head. Its visible eye was filmed over with some kind of membrane, so it was the color of very cold, very fresh milk. Its mouth was underslung, like a sturgeon’s, and hung open. It had very small teeth, lots of them, in slanting double rows.

“Look at ’em,” he said, grinning, but with a kind of nervous tremor in his voice. “They’d cut through your arm like a buzz saw.”