The truck was old and noisy and dirty. Its grille was speckled with smashed lovebugs. Frankie’s half of the wide front seat was swollen and bounced him up and down in front of the glove compartment. They took the road that ran behind the two neighborhoods and alongside a patch of swamp, then followed the edge of the swamp to where a Publix supermarket sat at the corner of the mall parking lot. Behind the Publix was a small, sandy jut of land that stuck out like an elbow into Newfound Harbor and was dotted with palmetto bushes. Frankie’s father slowed the truck down and turned off the pavement into the sand. He rolled forward a little ways, looking out both sides of the cab, humming to himself. Then he shut off the engine. “Let’s steal some beach,” he said, opening his door.

It wasn’t a beach; the sand dropped almost immediately into the brown-green water of the inlet, and there was no place where Frankie would have wanted to put a blanket. He stood at the back of the truck and watched his father open the tailgate and then stab the shovel into the ground and toss a blade’s worth of sand into the bed, where it scattered across the ribbed metal. “You watch the road for cops,” he directed, winking at Frankie. “What we’re doing is technically illegal. There’s nothing wrong with it, we’re just relocating a little bit of land, but the cops wouldn’t see it that way.”

He scooped and tossed, slowly covering the bottom of the truck bed.

After a while, he said, “There’s a man I know up at the Space Center, his name is Mr. Swilly, and he used to work at the Chamber of Commerce. He’s seen pictures of Merritt Island when it was nothing but swamp. Then people came along and did just what we’re doing. They relocated soil—brought it over from Cocoa and spread it around so they could build houses and roads.” He looked at Frankie. “Mr. Swilly told me something else, too. You know what this whole island used to be covered with?”

Frankie glanced toward the road. He shook his head.

“Take a guess,” his father said.

“Cops.”