I know what he means. Ever since seeing the old school, the names have been coming back to me, too. Joseph Yoon who lived in our neighborhood, Laura Wolfe who had gum stuck in her hair, Brodie Burris and Carter Kennedy. At lunch, a girl named Rachel would trade me her fruit punch drink.

And suddenly Dad’s talking to me again.

“First thing we need to do is clean off the motor, oil the shaft, flip it over to the other side. Go ahead, take the C-clip off, that’s the rusted thing there, we’re going to pull the platter free. Be gentle now, this thing’s been rusted for some time, no use treating it rough. All right, take out that spindle. Cycling gear’s all seized up, but we’ll get it working. All you really need is a needle, paper, and tape, and you’ll hear some sound.” And though I don’t know what he’s talking about, I’m listening to my dad, who seems happy for the first time in ages, and trying not to think about how it’s time for dinner.

In the morning, Dad and I untie the rowboat from the porch and carry it down the hill, past the barn where our abandoned sailboat sits and our lawn slopes into the sea. He holds the rowboat as I climb in, hands me the oars, then climbs in himself, and we row across the waves, out past the tarpaper of neighbors’ rooftops and into the open ocean. On the horizon, the old mall rises from the sea, and the cars in its flooded parking lot look like the shiny backs of horseshoe crabs.

A couple seagulls pass, squawking, and we stop at a buoy and pull up a rope. There’s a batch of mussels clinging to the twine which I pick off in dark shiny handfuls, rattling them into the bucket between us. Dad lights a smoke and looks at the shopping plaza on the small island. There’s the multiplex cinema and the old letters M CY’S and a handful of cars sitting above the tide line. There’s plenty of goods still worth harvesting there, but the mall looks eerie with its shattered windows and jagged gateways to hidden caverns.