Funny how mad I had been at Stephanie before, and now I wasn’t. She’d told on me, but so had Cody. He’d had to tell the truth to the police sergeant. And what Stephanie had said, about helping Cody by finding out who really hit the horse, had made sense. Really doing something to help the horse was so much better than running around just being mad. It was funny that Mom and Norm were suddenly okay with us hanging out with Cody, mostly to prove to Cody and his mom that we didn’t think he was guilty of hitting the horse.
And since last night my feelings about Cody had completely changed.
Back at our house, Stephanie texted Cody and said to meet us out by the turtle’s nest. We were rushing out onto the beach with our bikes to meet him when Mom stopped me, her cell phone in her hand.
“I thought I’d call your dad, Diana, and double-check to make sure everything is on for tomorrow. Why don’t you wait a minute before you go bike riding?”
“Do I have to?” As much as I wanted to see Dad, I didn’t want to listen to Mom talk to him. If he wasn’t going to be there tomorrow, I didn’t want to know right now. Besides, we only had a couple of hours of daylight to search for the ATV.
Mom cocked her head and looked at me with suspicion. “You’re not even interested in talking to your dad on the phone?”
“I just talked to him yesterday. I’ll see him tomorrow.” I headed down the walkway, a hand on each handlebar, as Mom yelled for us to be back by dinnertime at seven–thirty. Stephanie was right behind me. We stood near the turtle’s nest with our bikes, waiting for Cody. The tide was low and the sun was just above the trees in back of Cody’s house, throwing long shadows on the beach that made us look like girls on stilts and our bikes look like the ones in the circus with gigantic wheels. A cool late afternoon breeze ruffled the hairs on my arms. With sharp cries, a few seagulls landed near us and strutted across the sand, waiting to see if we had any food.
“I can’t believe you didn’t want to talk to your dad,” Stephanie said.
“We have a lot of searching to do before dark.” It had also occurred to me that going to see Dad would mean Stephanie and Cody would be together without me for a whole day.
“I get it,” Stephanie said. She was redoing her shiny, dark ponytail, something she did almost every hour.
We didn’t have to wait long before we heard the rumble of the ATV engine. Cody flew over the dune, airborne, and then landed and skidded to a sideways stop. The seagulls scattered.
“Hola,” he said.
“Whoa!” I laughed, and Stephanie kind of jumped back with a little squeal.
“Okay,” he said. “What should we do? Should we split up or what?”
“I don’t like to be by myself,” Stephanie said.
“Let’s stay together. We can go up each path from the beach together and investigate the houses in each neighborhood.”
“And what are we looking for?” Stephanie asked.
“An ATV that’s damaged. And it might be hidden somewhere, like inside a garage, especially if the guy thinks the cops are looking for him,” I said. “If we find one, we’ll take a picture of it with a cell phone to show to the police.”
“Okay!” Cody said and gunned the ATV motor.
Stephanie and I jumped on our bikes, and the three of us headed down the beach. At the first path through the dunes, we rode as far as we could on our bikes, and when the sand became too soft to ride through, we dropped them and continued on foot. Cody continued on the ATV, driving slowly so he wouldn’t leave us behind.
Three houses were arranged around a sand cul-de-sac. Like our rental houses, the driveways were no more than packed-down sand. No ATVs were in sight, and none of the houses had garages. We headed back to our bikes, rode down the beach to the next neighborhood, and repeated the pattern.
“This is going to take a long time,” Stephanie said, wiping sweat from her temple as we rode up the path to the third set of houses.
Later we passed the place on the beach where it had all happened. High tide had washed away most of the hoof prints and tire tracks, but above the waterline we could still see some. We stopped and stood there in the darkening light for a few minutes, without talking. I thought about the thing that had happened there. I could hear the mare’s groans again and see her trying to lift her head, with Dark Angel neighing and pacing nearby. The sounds of their pain were so vivid in my memory.
Cody took off his helmet and held it in his lap, bowing his head.
“Come on,” I finally said. “Let’s catch whoever did this.”
We scoured five more neighborhoods but found no ATVs. A couple of houses had large storage areas underneath them, where an ATV could be hidden, but we didn’t go up to the houses because some people were still coming in from the beach, carrying beach chairs, umbrellas, and bags with bright towels. We didn’t want to be arrested for trespassing.
The sky turned indigo, and a cool breeze threaded through the sea grass. I was covered with sand and sweat, and the muscles in my legs ached. We hadn’t glimpsed a single ATV, and we hadn’t seen any of the wild horses either. Since the accident they seemed to have melted into the woods and disappeared.
“It’s getting dark, and I’m tired,” Stephanie complained as we picked up our bikes from the foot of a dune about a half mile past where the accident had occurred. We’d searched all the houses along the beach for at least a mile and a half, and it was becoming clear to us just how many houses and how much distance would need to be covered. And acres and acres of dunes and woods stretched further inland, all without roads.
“This is impossible,” Cody said, cutting the engine on the ATV. He gestured to encompass our surroundings. “We could search all week. A whole year.”
“We can’t give up!” I said, practically crying. How could we? Yet I was feeling completely discouraged and overwhelmed by the size of the project we’d taken on.
“We have to go back,” Stephanie said. “Daddy and Lynn are going to be really mad at us if we’re late. We’re in enough trouble already.”
“We can start again tomorrow,” said Cody.
I didn’t want to tell him that maybe I wouldn’t be there tomorrow. I thought about Cody and Stephanie spending the whole day together without me. I almost hoped Dad forgot.
“I wish we knew where those two guys lived,” I said. I was beginning to realize that it was one thing to suspect someone had done something and another thing to be able to prove it.
Stephanie and I turned our bikes around and began riding back down the beach, with Cody slowly riding alongside on the ATV. The tide was low, and parts of the beach shone with translucent, rainbow-colored puddles where the surf had been moments before. Lights popped on in the houses as dusk deepened and shadows stretched over the sand.
We hadn’t been riding long when we saw two horses running down the beach near the water. One was light-colored and the other was chestnut. As they ran by, their long tails rippled in the evening breeze.
“Hey, look!” I said, turning to watch them. “That’s Firecracker! He’s found a friend! He’s not alone anymore! He’s found a new herd! That’s fantastic!”
The three of us watched for a few moments as the two horses cavorted on the beach in the dusk. They seemed to be dancing, ducking their heads and coming together, and then galloping along neck and neck. Then a third horse raced up to join them.
Other people walking on the beach stopped to watch and admire the horses.
“Yay!” Stephanie said. She stopped and turned a cartwheel on the sand. What a show off. But I wished I could do one. Then I thought, Why not?
“Hey,” I said. “Show me how to do one!”
“Okay.” She showed me how to hold my arms up high and to follow my arms around with the cartwheel, pointing my toes and letting them wheel around with gravity.
“You’re coordinated and athletic. That’s good!” she said after my first try. I practiced doing two or three more, each a little better than the last.
“Great!”
As a joke, Cody tried one too. It was awkward.
“You look like a frog,” Stephanie said, laughing. “Standing on its head.”
Cody did another one with his legs even more bent.
“A sick upside-down frog,” I said.
“Thank you very much,” Cody said, using an Elvis accent.
The light was fading now, and we turned on the flashlights we’d brought. The air was cooler, and I zipped up my sweatshirt. The sand felt cool under my feet. Crabs skittered across the sand in front of our flashlight beams. The stars were starting to come out, and the sky was splashed with their brilliance. On the moving surface of the water, there seemed to be a sparkling path to the moon.
“This would be the perfect time for bioluminescence,” Cody said. “I wish there was some tonight.”
“There is,” I said, pointing to a lightning bug that floated past us, slowly flashing on and off.
“Are lightning bugs considered bioluminescence?” Stephanie said.
“Well, actually, yeah!” Cody said.
“Why do they light up?” Stephanie asked.
“I don’t think scientists know for sure. Some say it’s to attract a mate.”
“And how do they light up? And don’t tell us we wouldn’t understand this time,” I said in a teasing voice.
“It’s caused when lightning bugs release a little bit of luciferase, and it reacts with ATP and luciferin. They have a special organ where the chemical reaction takes place. When one of the chemicals runs out, their light turns off.”
“When I was little and Mom and Dad took me to church sometimes,” Stephanie said. “We sang this song in Sunday school called ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ That’s what the lightning bugs make me think of. The idea that there’s a light inside each one of us.”
“Cool,” I said. “Mom takes yoga, and after a yoga class they say ‘Namaste,’ which means ‘the light in me honors the light in you.’ Kind of the same idea.”
“Namaste,” Stephanie said to me. Then she turned to Cody and said it to him.
“Ditto,” Cody said.
The triangular window in front of our house was lit.
“We’ll meet you out here tomorrow!” Stephanie said to Cody. He waved good-bye and drove behind the dune to the path to his house, and we walked our bikes up the walkway, their wheels making a rattling sound on the wood.
We opened the sliding doors, and Norm was sitting on the couch in the great room, watching the news. “There you are!” he said.
We smelled fish cooking and saw Mom in the kitchen. She turned around.
“Did Dad cancel?” If he did, I was ready to find out now.
“Nope. We’re meeting him tomorrow at ten by Jockey’s Ridge. He’s got big plans, apparently,” Mom said, but she raked her hair off her face in a way that I knew meant she was nervous. So was I.