Gail looked over her shoulder. It was Joel and Ben Quarrel, both of them barefoot. Ben Quarrel looked just like a little version of his older brother. Both of them were dark-haired and dark-eyed and had surly, almost petulant faces. She liked them both, though. Ben would sometimes spontaneously pretend he was on fire and throw himself down and roll around screaming, and someone would have to put him out. He needed to be put out about once an hour. Joel liked dares, but he would never dare anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He had dared Gail to let a spider crawl on her face, a daddy longlegs, and then, when she wouldn’t, he did it. He stuck his tongue out and let the daddy longlegs crawl right over it. She was afraid he would eat it, but he didn’t. Joel didn’t say much, and he didn’t boast, even when he’d done something amazing, like get five skips on a stone.

She assumed they would be married someday. Gail had asked Joel if he thought he’d like that, and he shrugged and said it suited him fine. That was in June, though, and they hadn’t talked about their engagement since. Sometimes she thought he’d forgotten.

“What happened to your eye?” she asked.

Joel touched his left eye, which was surrounded by a painful-looking red-and-brown mottling. “I was playing Daredevils of the Sky and fell out of my bunk bed.” He nodded toward the lake. “What’s out there?”

“There’s a ship sank. They’re looking for survivors now.”

Joel grabbed the netting tangled on the boulder, climbed to the top, and stood next to her, staring out into the mist.

“What was the name?” he asked.

“The name of what?”

“The ship that sank.”

“The Mary Celeste.”

“How far out?”

“A half a mile,” Gail said, and lifted her kaleidoscope to her eye for another look around.

Through the lens the dim water was shattered, again and again, into a hundred scales of ruby and chrome.

“How do you know?” Joel asked after a bit.

She shrugged. “I found some things that washed up.”

“Can I see?” Ben Quarrel asked. He was having trouble climbing the net to the top of the boulder. He kept getting halfway, then jumping back down.

She turned to face him and took the soft green glass out of her pocket.

“This is an emerald,” she said. She took out the tin cowboy. “This is a tin cowboy. The boy this belonged to probably drowned.”

“That’s my tin cowboy,” Ben said. “I left it yesterday.”

“It isn’t. It just looks like yours.”

Joel glanced over at it. “No. That’s his. He’s always leaving them on the beach. He hardly has any left.”