Big sister Heather told Miriam and Mindy to sit in the sandbox and play.
“What should I do?” Gail asked.
“You could go drown yourself in the lake.”
“That sounds fun,” Gail said, and skipped away down the hill.
Miriam stood in the sandbox with a little tin shovel and watched her go. Mindy was already burying her own legs in the sand.
It was early and cool. The mist was over the water, and the lake was like battered steel. Gail stood on her father’s dock, next to her father’s boat, watching the way the pale vapor churned and changed in the dimness. Like being inside a kaleidoscope filled with foggy gray beach glass. She still had her kaleidoscope, patted it in the pocket of her dress. On a sunny day, Gail could see the green slopes on the other side of the water, and she could look up the stony beach, to the north, all the way to Canada, but now she could not see ten feet in front of her.
She followed the narrow ribbon of beach toward the Quarrels’ summer place. There was only a yard of rocks and sand between the water and the embankment, less in some places.
Something caught the light, and Gail bent to find a piece of dark green glass that had been rubbed soft by the lake. It was either green glass or an emerald. She discovered a dented silver spoon not two feet away.
Gail turned her head and stared out again at the silvered surface of the lake.
She had an idea a ship had gone down, someone’s schooner, not far offshore, and she was discovering the treasure washed in by the tide. A spoon and an emerald couldn’t be a coincidence.
She lowered her head and walked along, slower now, on the lookout for more salvage. Soon enough she found a tin cowboy with a tin lasso. She felt a shiver of pleasure, but also sorrow. There had been a child on the boat.
“He’s probably dead now,” she said to herself, and looked sadly out at the water once more. “Drowned,” she decided.
She wished she had a yellow rose to throw into the water.
Gail went on but had trudged hardly three paces when she heard a sound from across the lake, a long, mournful lowing, like a foghorn but also not like one.
She stopped for another look.
The mist smelt of rotting smelt.
The foghorn did not sound again.
An enormous gray boulder rose out of the shallows here, rising right up onto the sand. Some net was snarled around it. After a moment of hesitation, Gail grabbed the net and climbed to the top.
It was a really large boulder, higher than her head. It was curious she’d never noticed it before, but then things looked different in the mist.
Gail stood on the boulder, which was high but also long, sloping away to her right and curling in a crescent out into the water on her left. It was a low ridge of stone marking the line between land and water.
She peered out into the cool, blowing smoke, looking for the rescue ship that had to be out there somewhere, trolling for survivors of the wreck. Maybe it wasn’t too late for the little boy. She lifted her kaleidoscope to her eye, counting on its special powers to penetrate the mist and show her where the schooner had gone down.
“What are you doing?” said someone behind her.
Gail looked over her shoulder. It was Joel and Ben Quarrel, both of them barefoot. Ben Quarrel looked just like a little version of his older brother. Both of them were dark-haired and dark-eyed and had surly, almost petulant faces. She liked them both, though. Ben would sometimes spontaneously pretend he was on fire and throw himself down and roll around screaming, and someone would have to put him out. He needed to be put out about once an hour. Joel liked dares, but he would never dare anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He had dared Gail to let a spider crawl on her face, a daddy longlegs, and then, when she wouldn’t, he did it. He stuck his tongue out and let the daddy longlegs crawl right over it. She was afraid he would eat it, but he didn’t. Joel didn’t say much, and he didn’t boast, even when he’d done something amazing, like get five skips on a stone.
She assumed they would be married someday. Gail had asked Joel if he thought he’d like that, and he shrugged