“Why not?”
“ ’Cause. It’s Hattie’s, right? Are you sure you want to go messing around with anything that belonged to her? It’s probably, like, cursed or something.”
Olive chuffed out a laugh, picked up the metal detector, and slipped the headphones back on. Mike sat down on a fallen log and pulled a bag of Skittles out of his backpack, offering some to her. She shook her head and went back to work.
They were searching the northwest corner of the bog. Even with the headphones on, she heard hammering and Helen’s and Nate’s voices. Olive and Mike weren’t technically on their land, not way over on this side of the bog, but still, Olive didn’t really want them to catch her. But she had their routine down by now. They worked every morning, took a break for lunch, then worked until just before dinner. They’d usually take a walk down to the bog either before or after dinner. And they couldn’t see the bog from their house. They were uphill, up a steep path through a little strip of woods. So Olive felt safe. And even if they caught her, she wasn’t doing anything illegal. She’d just smile real big, introduce herself as a neighbor, and tell them she was fooling around, looking for old coins and stuff.
She’d been watching Helen and Nate enough to know things had been tense lately. They snapped at each other when they were building, accused each other of misplacing tools. This morning, Nate had a big freak-out about his cell phone, which had been missing for days.
Olive smiled, thought they’d be gone soon. They’d realize they couldn’t hack it, then pack up and leave. She’d also been buoyed by the rumors she’d been hearing in town. People were saying that Helen and Nate should never have come. Olive liked the idea of the whole town being against them, making them feel unwelcome; this would drive Helen and Nate away for sure.
Olive marked her map with a big, satisfying no-treasure-here X and tagged the corners of the grid with tiny pieces of red string tied around saplings—something no one would notice if they weren’t looking. Then she moved on to the next part of her grid: a six-by-six-foot section along the northern edge of the bog. Her sneakers were already soaked, so she didn’t mind working on such soggy ground. Her feet sank into the mossy carpet, the water well above her ankles in places. Tall rubber boots would have been better. There was always the chance that Daddy would notice her wet sneakers and ask how she’d gotten so soaked going to school and back.
She was playing hooky more and more these days—she figured with just days of school left before summer vacation, it didn’t really matter all that much. As long as she did decently on her final exams and turned in her papers, she figured she’d pass ninth grade. She’d been ripping up the notes they gave her to bring home for her dad, asking to set up a special meeting, saying Olive’s truancy had become a serious issue. Deleting the messages from the school on the digital answering machine (yeah, they still had an answering machine—something her mom had picked up at a yard sale—and the weirdest part washearing Mom’s voice on the recording each time someone called:You’ve reached the Kissners. We’re not home right now, but leave a message and we’ll get back to you;neither Olive nor her father could bear to erase it). Sooner or later, if he didn’t already know how much she’d been skipping (of course he knows, dumbass), he’d find out. But by then, she’d have found the treasure, and it wouldn’t matter anymore. He’d be so happy, so proud, that he’d understand completely why conducting her search had been way more important than showing up for freshman biology and English each day.
Mike was giving her a lot of shit about missing school, too. He’d cut out early himself today, sneaking out after lunch to come meet her here in the bog. But he’d been trying to make her feel guilty about it all afternoon—like if his dad found out, he’d get hell and it would be all her fault for being such a bad influence. Like he didn’t have a choice. Like she actually had that much power.
Olive looked out across the bog. “Maybe Hattie’s here now, watching us.”
“Quit it, Kissner,” Mike barked.
It always amused Olive, how easy poor Mike was to scare.
“Are you here with us, Hattie?” she called out. “Give us a sign.”
“Shut up,” Mike said.
“Okay, Hattie,” she said now as she stood with her metal detector. “If you are here, help me out, okay? Show me where the treasure is!”
Mike gritted his teeth. “You shouldn’t be talking to her like that,” he warned.
She held the metal detector out in front of her like some heavy dowsing rod, pretending to be pulled right, then left. Mike’s eyes got bigger, more frantic.
Odd Oliver,she thought.Being cruel to her one and only true friend. Talking to ghosts.
She wondered if there were people who really could talk to ghosts. Aunt Riley said there totally were. That mediums were real and had a special kind of gift.
“Canyoutalk to ghosts?” Olive had asked her once.
“I know people who can. I haven’t been able to myself, not yet, but I keep trying.”
Now Olive wondered if being able to talk to ghosts was something you were born with. Like people who had a photographic memory or were supertasters. Which brought Olive back to thinking about natural selection again. About Darwin sailing around on his boat, theBeagle,and writing notes, drawing pictures of birds.
Everyone’s looking for something,she thought.Ghosts. Scientific explanations of the world around us. A new and different life somewhere else.
Buried treasure.
She started sweeping the metal detector over the ground in front of her, through brush, tall grass, and sedge. Nothing. She startled a moth, which came fluttering up from the grass. A damselfly darted down in front of her. A junco chattered from a nearby cedar. She continued slogging forward, sweeping carefully, making her way through the thick brush at the edge of the bog. Then the high-pitched beep of a signal. A strong one. Her heart banged in her chest.
The gauge on the detector said it wasn’t far down.
“Mike, I got something!” she called out.
“Are you messing with me?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and Mike trotted over.
She got down on her knees, pants soaking through because the ground was so wet here, the carpet of moss deep and spongy. She pushed back the tall grass, cotton sedge, and old dead leaves. She had a trowel and a small folding camp shovel in her backpack.
