Marty was speechless. He turned toward her. Something had happened since his chat with Mr. Garraway. Nothing big. Nothing earth-shattering, but something had woken up inside Marty that he hadn’t known was asleep.

“Listen, Gracie. You’re the best dancer I’ve ever seen. Training or no training.” He sucked some air between his teeth. “I don’t even think they could teach someone to dance like you can. You have to try…” He looked at the flyer again. “When’s the audition?”

“End of summer.”

“You’ve got plenty of time.”

“What would Dad say? If I went behind his back? You know he wants me to be an accountant.”

Marty smiled. Shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But you’ll never know if you don’t try.”

Gracie smiled. “I’ll remind you of that, one day…”

They smiled at each other until they heard someone shouting. They looked up. The tide had gone out far enough for Grandad to put his plan into action. He was standing down by the tide line waving at them frantically.

“Come on, troops!” he boomed across the beach.

“Could he be any more embarrassing?” Marty asked flatly.

“Probably not,” Gracie said as she stood up, “but he’s brilliant! Come on,” she added, putting her arm out to pull him up, “let’s see what he’s got in store for us!”

By the time they got down to the tide pools, Grandad had dropped his jacket on a nearby rock and rolled up his sleeves and was filling the buckets with green and brown slimy seaweed. Marty looked at him in bewilderment.

“Come on!” he encouraged. “Get cracking!”

Gracie rolled up the sleeves of her dress, and Marty pushed up the sleeves of his woolly sweater, and they started gathering.

“Get all of it. All the different colors,” Grandad shouted. Marty had never noticed before—I mean, it wasn’t every day you spent your day with your head in seaweed—but there were all different types. There was a rubbery one that grew in long belts and another one that was fine like hair and one that grew in the shape of a tree but that had little bubbles in it, which Marty supposed helped it float. He looked over at Gracie, who was hauling a particularly stubborn specimen from a rock. Then when the buckets were almost full, Grandad grabbed the barefoot Gracie and dropped her in one bucket after another so she could pack down the seaweed. Marty laughed as she stamped, the seaweed squelching in undignified farts beneath her feet. It took them another half hour to fill the buckets to the brim, and then they stood, each one breathless, the sun starting to sink slowly in the sky. Gracie wiped her brow and looked over at Grandad.

“So? What now?”