Mindy said, “Give me my chalk.”

“You can’t draw on this. It’s a dinosaur.”

Mindy said, “I want my chalk back or I’m telling Mommy.”

“They don’t even believe us,” Joel said. “And they’re sitting right next to it. If it was alive, it would’ve eaten them by now.”

Miriam said, “You have to give it back. That’s the chalk Daddy bought her. We each got something for a penny. You wanted gum. You could’ve had chalk. You have to give it back.”

“Well, don’t draw on the dinosaur.”

“I can draw on the dinosaur if I want to. It’s everybody’s dinosaur,” Mindy said.

“It is not. It’s ours,” Joel said. “We’re the ones who discovered it.”

Gail said, “You have to draw somewhere else or I won’t give you back your chalk.”

“I’m telling Mommy. If she has to come down here to make you give it back, she’ll scald your heinie,” Mindy said.

Gail started to reach out, to hand back the chalk, but Joel caught her arm.

“We’re not giving it,” he said.

“I’m telling Mother,” Mindy said, and got up.

“I’m telling with her,” Miriam said. “Mother is going to come and give you heck.”

They stomped away into the mist, discussing this latest outrage in chirping tones of disbelief.

“You’re the smartest boy on this side of the lake,” Gail said.

“Either side of the lake,” he said.

The mist streamed in off the surface of the water, and Mindy and Miriam walked into it. By some trick of the light, their shadows telescoped, so each girl appeared as a shadow within a larger shadow within a larger shadow. They made long, girl-shaped tunnels in the smoke. They extended away into the vapor, those multiple shadows lined up like a series of dark, featureless matryoshka dolls. Finally they dwindled in on themselves and were claimed by the fishy-smelling fog.

Gail and Joel did not turn back to the dinosaur until Gail’s little sisters had vanished entirely. A gull sat on the dead creature, staring at them with beady, avid eyes.

“Get off!” Joel shouted, flapping his hands.

The gull hopped to the sand and crept away in a disgruntled hunch.

“When the sun comes out, it’s going to be ripe,” Joel said.

“After they take pictures of it, they’ll have to refrigerate it.”

“Pictures of it with us.”

“Yes,” she said, and wanted to take his hand again but didn’t.

“Do you think they’ll bring it to the city?” Gail asked. She meant New York, which was the only city she’d ever been to.

“It depends who buys it from us.”