“Whatever,” Mike said, climbing clumsily back down the tree, then lumbering off once he got to the ground, heavy backpack weighing him down. The kid moved like a bear. He was built like one, too: tall, rounded shoulders, big belly. People at school said he was a retard and he got that way ’cause his parents were brother and sister, but none of that was true. Olive knew Mike was a thousand times smarter than anyone she’d ever met. Scary smart. He could read a book and remember every single thing in it and was doing math that some seniors in honors classes wouldn’t even attempt. She felt a little bad sending him away like this, but what choice did she have?

She’d make it up to him later. Buy him one of the chocolate puddings he loved from the school cafeteria or leave a new comic in his locker. Mike loved the Green Lantern. When they were younger, they used to play this imaginary game where Mike was always the Green Lantern—he even made his own magic ring out of a short piece of copper pipe that turned his finger green—and Olive was the bad guy he was trying to catch. Olive knew Mike still carried that old ring—far too small now—around in his pocket, his own weird good luck charm.

Olive looked back at the out-of-state couple now, binoculars pressed against her eyes, and felt anger writhing around like worms in her belly.

“I banish you,” she said, which sounded dumb, really, but it was something she’d read in a book once. A book about a kingdom and dragons and magical things, and she thought maybe they were magic words that might drive the people away. “I banish you.”

She was no better than Mike and his dumb old ring. There was no such thing as magic. She was fourteen years old. Too old to believe in stupid things like wishes and magic words or rings.

Their being here would ruin everything.

She would never find the treasure if she had to sneak around in the dead of night. And she had to find it soon. Time was, as they say, of the essence.

Some people said it was all a lie, a rumor, that it didn’t even exist. Even Mike didn’t believe. Not really, anyway. He pretended to, just to make Olive happy. He went along with her whenever she searched for it and acted like she might find it any day, but she could tell he didn’t think it was ever gonna happen.

But Mike, smart as he was at math and reciting every fact he’d ever read in any book, was also clueless about so much. And of course, most people were idiots.

Olive knew better. She knew because her own mother had told her the truth.