Most important, I have my new underwater camera in its own special case, a purple case with a long black strap. It took me four months and extra chores to save up for this camera, but it was more than worth it.

I’m sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor next to my mostly packed luggage when Ruth pokes her head through my doorway. As quickly as I can, I slide the four old pictures I’m looking at under my suitcase. This time Ruth doesn’t notice. “Mom and Dad want us downstairs,” she says.

“Mmkay, coming,” I say. Ruth steps out of view. “Hey, Ruth?”

Her head pops back into frame. “What.”

“Um…” Now I’m hesitant, but I say, “What do you remember most from last time?”

“Last time?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugs. “I dunno. It was years ago.”

Only three years ago, I think. “Do you remember what’s in our secret box?”

“I dunno,” she says again.

I nod. Ruth disappears from my doorway.

It’s not like our secret box is huge or special or anything. It’s just a box. A simple wooden box about the size for shoes. Ruth and I thought it looked like a treasure chest when we were younger, so we put a few of our most treasured things inside, like Polaroid pictures and key chains and plastic bracelets and shells we’d collected. We buried it in a cave at Sunset Cliffs, San Diego, before we moved away three years ago. Not even a cave, really, more an open room in the cliffs along the beach half a mile away from our old house. We walked there all the time, played there, and left our treasure there when I was ten and Ruth was thirteen.

And now? Now we’re going back.

Only for a visit, true, but a visit where Ruth and I get to dig up our box of memories. Together.

There’s another secret too. A secret plan I came up with as soon as this trip was scheduled. I haven’t even told Ruth about it.

I slide the four pictures back out in front of me. Each one is from that first drive across the country, our big move. The first three are of Ruth: In one, she’s jumping in front of a mural with the word NEW written on a banner across the top. The second photo shows her standing next to an old tyrannosaurus skeleton at a dinosaur museum, a matching tooth-baring grimace on her face. I remember we were both laughing so hard I could hardly take the picture. The third shot is more distant, showing Ruth on a bridge with railings covered in metal locks. She’s got a hand on the railing and is looking out over the water, and she’s wearing the green pants she used to wear when we played pirates.

When Ruth and I were little, we used to play pirates the way most people play the floor is lava, jumping around couch cushions on the floor, making each other walk the plank off the edge of the couch, battling with empty paper towel tubes. When we found small treasures we could keep, we used our special wooden box as the treasure chest.