“I’m going to need to check with her,” the off-duty cop said. “No one gave me notice.”
Seb shrugged, chest heaving. His reply was cut off by the band onstage starting “Runaround Sue”—a crowd favorite—and once the drums kicked in, no one could hear a thing. The security officer gestured toward the trailer, and Seb gave him a thumbs-up.
The officer slipped around the black barrier and disappeared.
All of us shouted, “Fuck!” to one another but we still couldn’t hear anything. All I knew was that if the security guard found Mrs. Hawsley, we were toast. Was she in the backstage trailer? I didn’t know. But by the way Seb and Benny started pumping the Hi-Lift jack, I was pretty sure they also were worried that we had mere minutes to get this thing out of the ground.
All at once, the concrete suddenly gave way and came loose. It must have been a couple feet deep and a foot or so in diameter. On Seb’s signal, we all pitched in to pull it up—Why is concrete so heavy?—but when we hoisted, it slipped sideways and knockedagainst Big Red, punching a hole into the old concrete, which crumbled and fell apart to reveal a glimpse of silver inside.
The time capsule!
Seb had seen it, too. As the crowd sang in unison beyond the stage, he picked up his shovel and struck the concrete, again and again, until the hole widened and a spherical tube about the size of a yarn skein fell out.
No markings. Old. Definitely the time capsule.
Joy raced through me.We got it!
But our triumph was short-lived. Lulu waved and flapped her arms, and when we looked up, she pointed toward the other side of the black barriers, where the security officer was emerging from the backstage trailer with a serious-looking man and woman.
Shit!
We didn’t have time for anything, just up and left it all—Big Red, the shovels, and the wheelbarrow. I grabbed the time capsule, and we took off like wild things, racing through the crowd and weaving around couples and kids with cherry-flavored slush drinks. I could feel something dinging against the side of the time capsule with every step, and that freaked me out. I lost the group for a minute when I ducked behind a frozen lemonade truck to see if the security guard was chasing us. Then someone grabbed my shirt.
“Come on!” Seb shouted.
I kicked into gear and raced down the sidewalk with him until we spotted the others and followed Benny, who cut through a narrow side passage between two buildings. We all ran through it, and when we came out the other side, we all stopped to catch our breath.
“Are we safe?” Jazmine asked.
“Maybe for a second,” I said, peering down the side passage to make sure we weren’t followed.
“Fuck me,” Seb said, face red with exertion as he rested against the brick of a nearby building. “People saw us.”
“Of course they saw us,” Jazmine said. “We ran out of there like a nuclear bomb was headed this way. Did you not hear me shouting, ‘Don’t run, idiots’?”
I hadn’t, honestly. I just panicked.
“Hope they can’t trace Big Red back to where you got it,” Seb said.
Benny shook his head. “I ended up buying it at that little pawnshop near Paw Paw Lake. I doubt any detective in Haven Beach has the time or interest to drive around to all the regional pawnshops to grill the owners.”
“So we just gotta hope no one recognized any of us back there,” I said, glancing in the direction of the festival.
“If we get taken down by that little kid with the cherry decal on his cheek, I swear to God...” Jazmine said.
“Seb’s right. Let’s not poison the well with negativity,” Benny said. “We might’ve barely scraped by back there, but come on, Wags. We just had a win.”
Huh. I guess we did. Everyone stared at the time capsule, and I felt the same pull to get it open. Double-checking the side passage one last time and finding it empty, I examined the lid of the time capsule. It wasn’t even sealed properly, not really. It had a wire lightning-closure mechanism on the lid that was similar to Nana’s old canning jars, with a rubber ring around the edge. Just pull up the rusty wire, and...
The seal popped. The lid swung open. We stared into the cylinder’s darkness.
“Empty?” Seb whispered in disbelief.
It couldn’t be! I’d felt something rattling around when I was running. I turned the time capsule upside down and something small fell onto the sidewalk. Seb crouched and grabbed it before I could get a look.
“What is it?” Jazmine asked as we all stood in a circle to see what he’d picked up.
Seb held it out in the palm of his hand, a shocked look on his face. I soon realized why.
