The Bazlintons had rented their boat for a half day, so we didn’t have to keep an eye on the time as much as you do when you rent by the hour. Mr. Bazlinton, Jennifer’s hearty father, and Eunice, her tired-looking mother, had decided we would row out of the bay toward Santa Margherita, then pull up on the little pebble beach halfway between our bay and the Santa Margherita beach. There was no way down to this beach from the road above, so the only people on it were those who arrived by boat. And since it was a pebble beach, not sand, no one went to it except the English. When we pulled the pontoon boat up onto the beach, it was empty. Mr. Bazlinton unloaded a picnic hamper the size of a suitcase. And Eunice unpacked a little Primus stove, a bottle of fresh water, and a little saucepan that fit into the ring over the burner. She boiled water and made a thermos full of tea. She and Jennifer and Mr. Bazlinton all drank a lot of tea before they did anything else. I wished we had something cold to drink. Mr. Bazlinton said that there was “nothing like good hot tea.” And I agreed, there wasn’t. In my head I was thinking that you could take what he said two ways. Then Eunice told Jennifer and me to go play until lunch and she would call us when it was all laid out.

We walked to the end of the beach, about one hundred yards from Jennifer’s parents, and started to climb on the rocks. There we found a lot of stuff stuck in the crevices where it had washed up from the waves in some winter storm. Jennifer found a rubber thing like a balloon that wasn’t blown up. The part where you blow was too wide around and its color was like a rubber band, sort of milky brown, not red or green like a regular balloon.

Jennifer held it up between her thumb and forefinger like she didn’t really want to touch it. Then she giggled and asked me if it was mine. I just stared at her because I didn’t get the joke, so she giggled some more and said that if I didn’t know what it was, she wouldn’t tell me.

I said I didn’t care what it was, and I grabbed it away from her and said I’d take it to her mother and ask her. Then Jennifer said, “Go on, I dare you.” Which I thought was stupid because dares are for scary or dangerous things, and this was probably just something from a kitchen appliance or a part of some machine or maybe a hospital sort of thing.