After I took Ethan home, everything felt different. All the good feelings left, and I didn’t want to drive anymore. I felt sick and tired. I shook the big dumb steering wheel and yelled. Not words, just noise, like my mouth was a staticky radio on full volume. I yelled until my head ached. I hadn’t asked for any of this. I didn’t want to have to worry about crashing the truck, or finding bears, or going to sleep. A kid shouldn’t have to worry about just falling asleep.

I pulled over on the way to pick up Dad and turned off the engine. I left the keys in the ignition and got out to walk. Dad could take it back. The first couple blocks were fine, but my leg shook going uphill on the third. I tripped on a tree root and knew I wouldn’t make it all the way home. I headed back to the silver danger-box-on-wheels and kicked it before climbing back inside.

I thought about the wooden bear, waiting at the beach. Anytime I went back, there he would be. “It’s just beach junk,” I said. But I didn’t want any junk on Echo Beach. It was one of the few places left on the island where I didn’t worry about anything. Nobody was around to see my leg. It was just Ethan, me, and the crabs. I didn’t want to let a stupid wooden bear ruin it.

I drove back to the beach. A girl I didn’t recognize was digging a hole by my favorite log. Her faded jacket blended into the wood. We don’t get many new kids on Murphy. Tourists from the mainland usually wear bright clothes and floppy hats, thinking Murphy is warm and tropical just because it’s an island. It was still a few weeks until summer, definitely jacket weather. The girl looked almost local, but she wasn’t. I might not be friends with everyone, but I still know them all. Even the homeschooled kids.

She looked my age, but she had a bun like my grandma wears, if my grandma used moss-covered sticks to hold a bun together, which she totally would never.

“Did you lose something?” I pointed to the pile of sand.

“I’m looking for clams. I don’t know if I’m doing it right,” she said. Dad and I used to go crabbing and clamming all the time to stock up for chowder and steamers and crab cakes. He loves crab cakes, but we haven’t been since before the attack.

She dusted sand off a manila clam and plunked it into her bucket.

“Those are really good in chowder. Or as steamers, if you like those.”

She looked at me like she’d forgotten I was there. “Nice beach.”

“It’s pretty perfect,” I said. Almost. I could see the wooden bear near the woods. Waiting.

“You live here?” she asked. I nodded. “Lucky.”

“Not really. Are you on summer vacation already?” The mainland schools always finished first.

“Yeah. It’s amazing here. I’m Izzy. What’s your name?”

“Newt.”

“Is that a nickname?” Two more manilas in the bucket.

“It’s short for Newton. But don’t call me Fig.”

“Why…Oh.” Izzy nodded and the sticks in her hair clacked together. She crinkled her nose. “That’s not very funny.” I smiled and she smiled back the way you’d smile at a little kid. “People used to call me Fizzy at my old school.”

“I’m sorry….I’m the only one with that kind of name. My brother is Carlos, and my sister is named Leti,” I said. “It’s short for Leticia. She might be a writer, a basketball player, or an evil genius. My dad says it’s too soon to tell.”

Izzy kept raking, two cockles and a softshell, and I kept talking. “She’s named after my aunt. Carlos’s name is actually Eduardo, who’s another uncle, but it wasn’t enough to be named after one uncle, so he’s named after two. I’m named after Isaac Newton, because my mom read a book about him while she was pregnant with me. My dad thought naming me after a scientist might make me grow up to be one. I told him they could name me after a volcano, but it won’t make me explode.”

She raked and dug and threw rocks to the side without looking up. I could feel my face getting red.

“What did your dad say about the volcano?”

“He said I was thinking like a scientist already.”

“And if you were a girl?”

“Florence, after Florence Bailey. She was a bird scientist. But they must have given up on the experiment, because they named Leti after someone they actually know who sends birthday cards.” I twisted my foot in the sand.

“I’m going to look her up. My favorite scientist is Jane Goodall or Biruté Galdikas.” I tried to look like I knew who she was talking about, but she laughed. “Goodall’s a chimpanzee expert, and Galdikas is an orangutan expert.” Izzy’s eyes flicked down to the tracks of pink scars from my calf to my thigh, but she looked straight back up to my eyes.

“Nice talking to you,” I said. I waved and walked toward the bear without looking back. I grabbed it on two spots where the barnacles had rubbed off. When I pulled it, I almost fell back into a tree.

I wouldn’t be able to move it by myself. And if I couldn’t move it, it could be here for weeks until someone else took it or the tide rose that high again.

I tried to hide my limp as I walked back toward Izzy. She found ten more clams in the time it took me to cross the sand.

“My friend and I found a bear statue when we were here earlier,” I said. “I want to get it off the beach and find its owner. Would you mind helping me? It’s kind of heavy.” She put the rake inside the bucket with the clams and moved it away from the water. I pointed at the bear shape near the trees. She stood up and matched my pace. She didn’t say anything about how slowly I went. We got to the bear, and she squatted down next to it.

“I’ve seen these before. My grandma has one just like it.” Izzy looked closer.

If we couldn’t find its owner, I’d chuck it in a dumpster. Or run it over with the truck.

We dragged it out of the trees, but its waterlogged body weighed a ton. Sand scratched the tight skin around my scars. I got splinters under my nails.

“We could just roll it back into the surf, and the ocean could take it back,” I said.

“It’s better to find the owner. Somebody probably misses it, and it’s not far.”

We fell over a lot and dropped it a couple of times. My shorts turned to sandpaper, and I ached all over by the time we got back to the truck. I opened the back doors and climbed inside. The whole truck groaned and wobbled. Izzy stayed outside. I stood the bear in the corner, wedged in where maybe a stove used to be.

A blue heron stood in the water down the shore, waiting for a fish with bad luck to swim between its pipe-cleaner-thin legs.

“This is your truck?” Izzy looked around, from the giant steering wheel to the fuzzy dice to the grimy window. I could’ve lied, but I nodded. She squinted at me. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Me too. Almost fourteen. But I don’t have a truck.” She traced the outline of the bear’s slingshot, or wishbone, or whatever. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how are you driving around?”

I tried to think of an easy answer, but she didn’t wait. “I’m glad I got to see him. Thank you.” She smiled and headed back to her clam bucket.

I waited until she went back to digging before I stretched my leg so it would stop feeling like it was on fire. I massaged my knee with shaky hands. I closed my eyes, but I could still feel the bear there.

If it granted wishes like Ethan thought, I wouldn’t want a bike, or a birthday redo, or anything else. I would wish to be off Murphy Island. The truck, and the bear, and the parts of the island where I don’t go anymore without smelling broken leaves and feeling raw—that could all get smaller and smaller as I rode away on the ferry. I’d miss the part when they disappeared, because I would never look back again.