A soft sigh, strange and quick, a mature kind of sound. “It was a box.”

  June’s hands, almost of their own accord, froze, picturing that heavy frame, the light china-bone tinkle as it plummeted off the church roof. But her voice stayed light. “Oh yeah? What was in the box?”

  There was no answer. Only mournful silence. When she dared to glance at where the feet had been standing, there was nothing, not a single bent blade of grass, much less a person. June raised her head. The garden was empty. It seemed to breathe in and then out with her, and the lake rippled, offering no reply.

  * * *

  The hotter the weather got, and the closer the Fourth of July loomed, the more boats Bolt saw pulling up to the marina. The red water was forgotten. People loaded up with gas, gossiped about where they wanted to park their boats for the big show, and stocked their cubbyholes with sparklers, water bottles, and bags of chips. The water was choppy with activity.

  Bolt begged out of the breakfast shift at the Destiny to show up early and help tow the ancient fireworks barge out of its place in one of the enormous marina sheds. The old rust bucket sagged low in the water. It was a sturdy platform, as large as a jumbo houseboat but without the cabin, and weighed so much that it took the entire staff to drag it free of the reedy shed interior. The iron felt as rough as burned tree bark under his hands, and when he looked down into the hull, its pocked bottom was littered with spent fuses, abandoned wrappers, and one or two smashed beer cans.

  It had been years since a show of this magnitude had gone off on this side of the lake. Usually, the Charlene marina hosted the annual fireworks spectacle. The county turned out in droves, and boats from all over gathered dangerously close in the curves of the lake for a full night of grilling and fire in the sky. This year, Prosper would be competing for all that traffic, hosting their big show over the dam. Daley had been advertising up a storm, though he was nowhere to be found this morning. Today, they were all working from orders left by the old fireworks man.

  Dark spirals of Sammy’s hair were plastered to her forehead and the back of her neck. The marina workers were all lugging that barge out, except, of course, Rig, who was pretending to load the ice cooler while really playing around on his phone out of sight.

  “Hope you got your tetanus shot this year,” he teased after the barge was anchored and Bolt was free to return to the shop for water. “That wreck is rank, man. Lucky Dad isn’t here to see it.”

  Usually it was nice to be inside, sheltered from the heat. And yet, talking to Rig, Bolt wished he could be outside again. “Maybe you should put a firecracker in the pit and blow it up,” Bolt suggested.

  “Ha. I—” Rig seemed to catch Bolt’s tone a moment after. He rolled his eyes. “Didn’t know scholarship kids could afford to be so squeamish.”

  The photos and video Rig had caught on his phone from the night with the body had frequently appeared in the days since. Bolt couldn’t avoid it. Every time his eyes wandered, he caught sight of it beaming out of Rig’s phone—the sparks, chunks, horror of it all rushing right back. He couldn’t let it go, wrestling again with the urge to tell someone, to call the police, to file a report—except he couldn’t. He was in those videos, those graphic pictures. The fight was exhausting. Whenever he thought he’d found resolve and the upper hand, fear latched on and dragged him back, an alligator clamped on his ankle.

  “Have you ever seen anything in your life you haven’t found hilarious?” Bolt snapped at Rig.

  Rig was quiet for a moment, and then Bolt felt a hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “What’s this all about, huh?” Rig asked, voice dropping. Sometimes his rough edges smoothed over when they were alone. “Why are you on my case all of the sudden?” His kindling smile flashed. “Thought we were cool.”

  Cool. Bolt felt the phantom tingle of the blade moving over his skin and met Rig’s strange noncommittal eyes. His attention these days was short-lived, eyes moving like he was constantly seeking, always ravenous for something new to consume. For a while, Bolt had been looking for the boy he used to know and hadn’t been able to see him. “I don’t know you anymore,” Bolt realized.

  “Whatever.” The smile faded, and Rig’s expression shuttered. “I don’t know what you’re even talking about.” He turned and fixated on Sammy, who was watching them from over by the sunglasses. On her face was an unbridled hatred so raw, it was almost embarrassing to look at. “Hey,” he snapped. “Stop spying on me all the time. Little slut.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Bolt snapped back. “I’m getting real sick of your whole thing.”

  Rig laughed, but there was no real humor in it. The fissure between them had widened decisively. “Chill, dude. God.” He threw up a hand in idle farewell and went out, back to the empty cooler and the bags of ice melting on the dock beyond it.

  Bolt glanced at Sammy again and shook his head. Yet, bizarrely, part of him was tempted to run after, catch up to Rig. It was probably what Rig expected him to do; Rig liked to be chased after.

  He had been the one to give Bolt his first ride on a Jet Ski, his first taste of wakeboarding, even his first taste of whiskey, stolen from Mr. Daley, hard stuff—uncut and uncensored—that went down like lighter fluid.

  Bolt had always loved him a little because of those times. But Rig had cut out a piece of Bolt for himself, for kicks, and wouldn’t give it back. It was that lost little piece that kept his feet rooted to the floor; he refused to be the one to budge.

  For the rest of his shift, he ignored Rig and Woody altogether, though he felt eyes burning on his back now and again. Sammy stuck close in solidarity, and they washed oil stains until noonlight became afternoon light, the dock gleamed, and they had nothing to do but lean on the rail and rest their tired hands, comparing new freckles on their forearms. The fireworks man had arrived about an hour before and was loading all his packages, glittering like huge pieces of hard candy, onto the barge.

  “When do you head back home to your parents?” Bolt asked. “Where are they again?”

  “Vicksburg,” Sammy supplied, shaking strawberry Pop Rocks into his hand. She wasn’t succeeding quite as much at ignoring the other two, who were goofing off just a few yards away. Any sudden sound made her flinch. “I think my mom is coming in like two or three weeks?” She sighed around the candy sizzling on her tongue. “Nonnie will be really sad when I leave, though. I guess I feel—sort of guilty?”

  “They don’t want to be out here too?” Bolt asked and tipped his palm into his mouth. Pop Rocks snapped against the insides of his cheeks. The fireworks man picked his way back toward his truck, parked catty-corner in the lot. Rig sat on the side of the dock, dangling his legs in the water, his phone balanced on the wood beside him.

  “Parents divorced, and my mom has a boyfriend right now.” Sammy’s voice was dry. “And my dad has a new family, so…I don’t see him much.” She raised a pale eyebrow at him.

  A fast jab of laughter drew their attention. Woody had caught one of the younger kids, Jamie, by the waistband of his swimsuit and was pulling it down. Jamie wore the awful, shaken smile of the bullied, hoping if he played at being friends, Woody would stop. Rig, grinning, had his phone out and trained on the scene. He liked to play filmmaker, liked to be in the role of spectator, there only to be entertained, performed for. Bolt had seen this kind of arrangement from them before, been at Rig’s side when he’d say to Woody, Hey, wouldn’t it be funny? or, Dude, what if someone… And then Woody, the good friend that he was, gave Rig a show.

  Sammy didn’t seem to consider her next move, even for a moment. What had happened out in the houseboat graveyard had changed something. There was no more spectating in either of them. That naked rage was there in her face again, her empty candy wrapper landing in the lake as she darted toward the tableau. Bolt saw it in slow motion, the stretch of her gangly arm, chipped blue polish flashing on her nails as they fastened around the phone in Rig’s hand. He wasn’t expecting it, and it slid easily from his grip. He stared at her in shock before something in his expression hardened. He hated her then, maybe always had, and the seething rage now carved itself into every muscle in his face. And that was before she gave her wrist a fearless flick and the phone went soaring in an avian arc into the water.

  Sammy didn’t wait for a reaction. She turned on her heel and marched back to Bolt. “Come on,” she said in a soft huff.

  “Hey, you dumb bitch!” Woody howled, as Jamie, forgotten, escaped into the marina. “Did that actually just—”

  “You’ll die for that,” Rig said, very quietly.

  Bolt threw a glare back at him, then the finger and followed Sammy away from the marina. “He had it coming,” he said as calmly as he could despite the prickle of hostile eyes on their backs.

  * * *

  In the yellowed light of a reproduction Tiffany lamp, Cassie flipped the chest onto its side, reading the grain with her fingers for any groove, any dip, any tear, any hint.

  Learn a few tricks, get yourself a nice, well-lit table, and there’s nothing broken you can’t fix, Grandad would have said if he could have seen her there, fishing for clues.

  In addition to the word “Pearl,” carved so carefully and deeply that erosion couldn’t touch it, she’d found a small chicken-scratch symbol of a fish on the chest June had given her, a craftsman signing their work. A swirling pisces, circling itself in the grain.

  Cassie looked at the box, where it sat beside her counter.

  I wonder, Grandad would have said, running his hand over the top. Wouldn’t that be something?

  In the Great Depression, Prosper’s name must have tasted like cruel irony, fool’s gold to sharecropping families who came for the promise of land no one ever meant to give them, to its inhabitants, who scrambled for work building the dam that would flood their homes. They chopped down oaks and whole pecan orchards; they abandoned fields, houses, the general store, the post office, and the school. Strangers came in droves from across the South, hungry for pearls, for construction work, filling the basin with new blood. The Fischer pearls had passed into legend.

  Cassie was tracing the curve of the letter “P” when there was a knock at the door. Through the glass, Lark waited, weighed down by a box of telescopes almost as big as she was.

  “We’re getting close,” she panted when Cassie opened the door for her and held it as she hefted the box to her counter. “Three or four more of the big boxes, maybe.” Lark turned, pulling off her hat, the floppy kind that protected her from the sun despite the settling dusk. “Hi, by the way.” She gave Cassie a winded smile, fanning her face with the brim. “How are you?”

  “Fine—here,” Cassie said, beckoning her behind the counter, where Grandad had always kept an ancient metal fan that creaked when it started up, but once it got going, it could, as he put it, blow the lipstick off a lady.

  Lark sighed in relief as the fan roared into her face, then fumbled for the notepad sticking out of her back pocket. “Here’s some more of my chicken scratch—” She stopped abruptly, hand loose on the pad. Cassie followed her gaze to where the box waited.

  Emotions flickered quickly over Lark’s face. “So it is here,” she said. “June…told me she brought that to you.” She seemed to stick on the name, stopped mid-sentence to worry it for a moment too long. Her voice was low, as if she didn’t want the chest to overhear. “So no luck with it?”

  “A little.” Cassie picked up a few loose odds and ends from the collection—binoculars and a sleek industrial silver scope.

  Lark gauged her expression, then didn’t press, dragging her attention away from the box with difficulty. Somehow she sensed the strange privacy of this thing, the precious quiet of it. She wouldn’t prompt Cassie for more information than she felt she could share.

  But Lark, who had some of Mitch’s gentle containment, was a safe place for this secret. The sunset burned beyond the trees. A rush of boldness caught Cassie, and she said, “I have one idea what’s inside.”

  Lark glanced up again. “Really?”

  “It’s probably silly, but I feel like I could be on to something. She—June—hasn’t come by again. She doesn’t want it back, does she?”

  Lark shrugged, deflating. “I haven’t seen her either.” She fingered a small magnifying loop—the kind jewelers held to their eye to appraise diamonds—that hung from her neck by a shimmering chain, and for a tick or two, she seemed lost in thought. But soon she roused herself, and her wry smile returned. “What do you—” Again, Lark was stopped short, head whipping toward the window. The sound had been a sudden sharp crack. A dirty metal collision, just a few feet from them. “That car just ran through your sign,” she said.

  When Cassie turned to see, Lark’s beat-up old Explorer was not the only one in the parking lot. Another car was now catty-corner to it, a brand-new, gleaming white Jeep, its hood spewing angry black smoke from where it had struck the sign. The car was familiar, as was the haggard figure stumbling out of it in the bright backlight of the sunset. Jeff Daley, paying another social call. Except things were different this time. She could tell from the bowed, tense curve of his body, his back bent like a barbed fishhook. No friendly greeting crossed the lot ahead of him. Cassie stood up fast, nodding at Lark to go out rather than let him in. Lark seemed to know too, some instinct passing between them. Cassie locked up quickly, the heavy box and Lark’s telescopes safely within.

  Lark hovered beside her at the locks, squinting over her shoulder as he approached. His car keys swung loosely from his hand. Something in his expression made her take a step back. “I’m picking up a seriously bad vibe,” she muttered.

  “Mr. Daley,” Cassie called across the gravel, taking a few steps toward him. “I’m sorry, I’ve just closed.”

  “Change your mind, Cassie,” he said, in a voice slightly too quiet for the distance that still separated him. He might’ve been talking on the phone or to himself. His eyes didn’t meet hers but skittered. “Change. Your. Mind. Change your mind.”

  Lark seized Cassie’s hand, her fingertips cold. “This is not good,” she murmured.

  “Mr. Daley,” Cassie repeated, pressing backward with Lark. Cassie’s car was behind the shop. Lark’s was ahead. But Daley’s car blocked the only narrow exit, pinning them in. “You need to go home. I’m closed.”

  “You don’t listen. Change,” Daley growled. Shadows purpled his eyes. “You don’t care. The lake. Can’t you hear what it wants? Change.” His hands fisted. Then he moved fast, no longer walking, charging at them with the force of a battering ram.

  Lark yanked Cassie into motion.

  They hurried away from him, skidding the bricks of the shop as they rounded it and hurled themselves into the deep shade of the woods. Behind them, the pound of Daley’s feet was uneven, a half stumble. An odd gurgling roar ricocheted off the tree trunks.

  Cassie kept a grip on Lark’s hand, horror piercing her throat at the sound of him at their heels. She could hear his fingertips scrabbling over loose tree bark. There was no time to get to the car. It was like a bad dream. Cassie’s ankle wobbled over an uneven divot in the land.

  Cassie had lived on the edge of the lake all her life. But she’d never known what it wanted, except for one thing. It was hungry. It wanted and it ate, and when it was done eating, only a husk was left. How long had it been eating at Mr. Daley?

  “Where?” she gritted out to Lark, not daring to let go of her.

  Lark dodged a monumental fallen trunk, scrabbling downhill through feet of brush. The smell of damp soil, leaf mold, and dry pine needles filled Cassie’s nose. Daley was larger than they were and probably stronger, but he wasn’t nearly as lithe. “We can lose him.” Lark’s voice shivered like they ran through arctic winds, not tepid July heat. “I think we can hide if I can—just find—” They were too panicked to stop, but as soon as a particularly fetid crack of lake water appeared through the trees, Lark veered them away and toward the sunset. “See that gravel road?” she hissed. “We’ll follow that and—”

  “CASSIE, CHANGE YOUR MIND,” howled the eaten-up thing that chased them from somewhere beyond the last dip in the land.

  Suddenly, Cassie knew where Lark was taking her. “Right. Okay.” She charged ahead with one last glance back. Soon the two of them burst from the forest into the clearing that was the houseboat graveyard. Cassie had never explored it herself. She had been too terrified of the lake by the time her classmates wanted to go kiss under the moonlight and old motors. But she knew where those husks were, the huge beached boats rusted and spilling parts into the water, across the concrete of an unused boat launch.

  Lark allowed herself half a second’s pause, clutching her side as she scanned the skeletal silhouettes. “There,” she managed, snatching Cassie’s hand again and sprinting for the moldering half-drowned dock. It would be the closest Cassie had been to the water in more than twenty years. But for once, she feared something behind her more.

  They tripped over soggy planks. Beneath them, the dock creaked out a series of complaints. Here, above the lake, something smelled of rot, a sickly stench of decay so thick, they nearly gagged as Lark towed Cassie farther in. Something dead was near.

  “This one.” It was the second boat abandoned here, its hull half encased in dried mud and shallow water. The visible half of its rusting sides were spray-painted with diamond shapes, again and again—eyes.

  “Cassie.” A voice rang over the graveyard, maybe from the clearing’s edge. “CASSIE.”

  They threw themselves over the rails, then slid through one of the narrow broken windows on their bellies. The close, airless cabin pressed in around them. They stared at each other through the darkness, sucking in panicked gulps of oxygen through their noses.

  Outside, heavy footsteps. The crunch of rubber sole on gravel. Cassie shrank in her own skin. Please, the most fragile piece of herself whispered. Please don’t see us.