THE THING ABOUT THE sea caves was, they were nearly endless. While many of them had been mapped and explored, there were way too many—little offshoots from the main caves, dark mouths that yawned open and then curled back onto themselves—and it was easy to get lost. I couldn’t believe we were back here so soon after the last mystery Crystal Cove had had to face.

On the other side of the caves, most of Crystal Cove’s residents appeared to be gathering. We could hear murmurs of their conversations as they floated on the tidal air, ricocheting off the craggy landscape, sounding both so close and so far away.

“They could be anywhere in here.” The worry in my voice echoed at the mouth of the main cave. Daphne and I stood, ankle deep in the water, having shed our boots on the sand. We’d texted Shaggy to come meet us.

The last time we’d been here, we’d found a bunch of missing girls held hostage deep inside. This time, we were looking for something less sinister … but, in a way, more confusing. It was enough to make you believe there was something about Crystal Cove, something in the water, that made people lose themselves, all in the name of lore, of legends and ghosts and magic. Would we ever not bear the stain of the Vanished?

Staring into the abyss, I worried I already knew the answer.

“Come on,” I said heavily, kicking through the foaming water. “They’re probably not too far in, since they need to be close to the water to dump the jewels.”

“Stay close,” Daphne instructed. I nodded and gripped her hand. We were in agreement there.

We’d barely taken three steps into the mouth of the cave when we heard a bark and a series of splashes.

“Scooby!” I could hear the relief in Daphne’s voice. Scooby, tail wagging, leapt through the water as he splashed toward us. Shaggy’s long legs appeared behind him.

“We can help,” Shaggy said. “Scooby knows the Burnetts pretty well. Scooby, go!”

At his command, Scooby took off, and we rushed to follow him. The next cave split off into four openings, and Scooby darted for the third one from the right.

“Like, let’s go!” Shaggy panted. We picked up speed. Behind us, the late afternoon light was quickly fading. It was getting hard to see.

I was about to ask Daphne if we should call the police when we heard a shout, a bark, and a cry, in that order.

“Taylor!” Shaggy yelled, taking off. The light was disappearing rapidly, and within seconds Shaggy was swallowed up by the darkness. The caves sloped upward in this section, and we trudged after him, our feet thick with damp sand. My legs burned.

“Over here!”

I heard Shaggy before I saw him, and then, a burst of light. Daphne had turned on her phone’s flashlight and it caught on a pile of sparkles, casting hundreds of tiny lights over the cave’s walls and ceiling. It was … beautiful.

It was also proof.

“Hey!” I cried, running over to where Shaggy stood. Scooby was sniffing around, pacing between the cave’s walls, as Shaggy stared and pointed at the source of the light: two large boxes, multicolored jewels leaking out of them. And in between, fury painted on their matching faces, were Noelle and Taylor. “Gotcha!”

“Drop it, Taylor!” Daphne shouted.

“Huh?” Taylor brushed her bangs out of her eyes and eyed us in surprise. “What are you guys doing here? How did you …”

“We know what you’re up to,” Daphne said accusingly. “We figured it all out.”

“You don’t get it!” Noelle spat. In the dim light, her face was cast in long shadows. Her anger was palpable; I could practically feel it heating up the walls, the sand. “I had to do it!”

“Oh, we get it,” Daphne said. “Your daughter here orchestrated this whole thing, just to impress Shaggy. How cliché.”

“What?” Noelle asked blankly.

“No,” Taylor whispered. She looked shocked to see us, but there was something else underneath the surprise. I studied her face and realized: It was shame.

Daphne, unfazed, barked out a sarcastic laugh. “We know Taylor roped you into this crazy scheme!”

But Noelle was shaking her head, protesting, and something about the way she said no made me think, for the first time, she was telling the truth.

“Listen, I get it,” I said suddenly. I stepped forward, enclosing myself into a little circle with just me, Noelle, Taylor, and the jewels. I swallowed, my mind racing, my voice low and intimate. “I get what it’s like to not fit in. It can make a girl pretty … well, desperate sometimes. But it gets better. I promise, Taylor. It does.”

I heard a sniffle behind me. Daphne, I knew, thinking about that day when, at ten years old, my whole world collapsed around me: my parents’ jobs, our house, our friendship. Everything, gone seemingly overnight, and things were never the same after that.

“Your sob story is irrelevant,” Noelle sneered. I stepped back. A sliver of fear cut through my stomach at the expression in her eyes. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Yes, you caught me. I dumped the jewels. I lied. And I took the Crystal Cove Crystal. But I had a right to. It’s mine!”

I heard a gasp from Daphne, a whine from Scooby. I glanced at Shaggy. He was staring at Noelle, silent, his pale skin almost translucent in the glittering light.

“What?” he whispered.

Noelle lunged at him, jabbing a finger into his face. Scooby leapt to attention, placing himself in between Noelle and Shaggy. He growled.

Taylor grabbed her mother’s elbow. “Mom, please, stop,” she begged.

But Noelle was rolling now, letting loose with her long-held litany of complaints. “The Burnetts have been in Crystal Cove almost as long as the Rogerses. But we get no respect! The Rogerses have stolen everything from this town! I had to get back what’s rightfully ours! Taylor has nothing to do with this!”

Her movements were stilted, tight. Robotic, almost. It was like she wanted to hold in these thoughts and feelings that had been building up inside her for so long, but she just couldn’t do it anymore, and she spat them out in a pitch that was much higher than her usual speaking voice. Like she couldn’t control her own voice.

“But I thought …” Daphne’s voice trailed off. She flicked her eyes between Taylor and Noelle, and then her expression cleared. “Oh.”

“You didn’t know?” I said to Taylor. Her scared eyes darted toward her mother before landing back on me. She shook her head nervously, like she didn’t want to.

She was torn, Taylor. Anyone could see that.

And suddenly, I saw what she really was, what we should have seen all along: not a creepy new girl who was crushing on and stalking one of my oldest friends. She was just a scared kid dealing with some problems she couldn’t control. Whose mom had put her up to some weird stunts that she’d probably explained as practical jokes. But there was nothing funny about what Noelle was really up to.

Shaggy’s voice was flat, his face emotionless, as he processed Noelle’s admission. “You … stole the Crystal?”

“Stole it?” Noelle howled. For a moment it felt like I was back in the haunted amusement park where I’d worked, with the canned recording of screaming voices blaring through the hidden speakers in the haunted house ride. “I didn’t steal it. I took it back. It doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to us all,” she hissed. “The Rogerses can’t keep getting away with your lies, your deceptions. I’ll show everyone who you really are!”

“Mom!” Taylor was openly crying now, gripping her mother’s arm. Tugging at it. But Noelle didn’t seem to notice. “Just come with me, please! Stop this!”

Just behind Shaggy’s eyes, there was a crumpling. A flash of pain before his face settled back into its usual placid, blank expression. “But you’ve known my family … like, forever.”

“Yes, forever, and we still never got an invitation to your house,” Noelle raged, her eyes like lightning. “Every party your parents threw, every fund-raiser, we’d wait for our invitation. Your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother would come into the store and pore over necklaces and bracelets with my parents and me before making their selections for what jewels to flaunt at whatever gala they were hosting. But we never got an invitation to the ball. Our families go back generations, yet we were never good enough to associate with you publicly!”

Noelle’s eyes bulged. Her breath was ragged, echoing through the cave, through our shocked silence. She flailed her arms as she spoke, and the movements were jerky; something about her body’s awkward gesticulations triggered a new level of panic inside me. Noelle wasn’t just mad, I realized. She was dangerous.

And then I saw it, glinting in the light from Daphne’s phone. I froze. It was almost like my body registered the danger before my eyes could. Run, my legs told me.

But I forced myself to stay. To look.

It was a knife.

Sleek and silver and long, it waved back and forth in Noelle’s hand in triumph. A sick, satisfied smile stretched across her face as she grabbed Shaggy with her free hand and pulled him close to her. Close to the knife’s shining blade.

As if by instinct, Daphne stepped toward him. “No!” she cried. Scooby growled at Noelle.

But Noelle just pulled Shaggy closer to her, lifting the blade to his throat. He shook his head at Daphne and me, a warning in his eyes. I swallowed. I knew he’d do anything to protect us—and Scooby and Taylor.

“And when I moved away, for years I had to listen to my parents’ complaints and worries as the Rogerses used them. Ignored them!” Noelle ranted. “They grew older and weaker, and still the Rogers family couldn’t be bothered. The two oldest families in Crystal Cove, but we were never good enough for you. You Rogerses are all the same—greedy and selfish and small. Do you know, when my parents died, your parents didn’t even send flowers?”

Taylor was whispering now, begging. “Put it down, Mom. Give it to me. Please. Don’t hurt Shaggy. He’s our friend, I swear.”

I had a sick feeling in my stomach, a swirling, like a tornado was circling my insides. I had to do something. Keeping my hand close to my body, leveraging the way Noelle seemed to be distracted, focusing all her ire on Shaggy, I tapped a frantic text message to the first person I could think of.

911, send police to the caves! I wrote. The whoosh of the Send button was barely audible over the roar of Noelle, over the sobs of Taylor, over the steady thrum of the tide flowing in and out of the cave.

I began to wonder what was more dangerous: the rising tide, or Noelle herself.

But then she moved the knife around again, brandishing it closer to Shaggy’s neck. The tide was beyond my control, I decided, but Noelle was not. Not yet, anyway.

She wasn’t finished. “My parents just wanted some acknowledgment for all the ways they’ve supported the Rogers family over the years,” she hissed. “If someone had given them that, they might still be here with us.”

Shaggy stood in front of her, still as a statue and just as silent. She was irate, spouting horrible accusations about how Shaggy’s parents had helped speed up her own parents’ deaths. About how no one in Crystal Cove treated her family well enough, no one respected their legacy. About the Rogers family’s deception, their duplicity.

“That isn’t true, Mom, stop it,” Taylor said. “You said you wanted to come back here to make things right with our neighbors. But not like this! Stop it, Mom! Please!”

But Noelle didn’t seem to hear Taylor. “You’ve never let anyone in this town forget that you were the first ones here. Like it matters. This place is cursed!” Her eyes dimmed; her face crumpled. “And my daughter … you promised, Shaggy. You promised she’d belong here.”

I swallowed, cleared my throat. Behind me Daphne murmured a warning. She could tell I was about to interrupt, and she didn’t want me to.

But did I have a choice? We had to keep Noelle busy, distracted from the fact that she had a weapon in her hands and every reason—in her mind—to use it.

“Everyone feels the same way about my family,” I said quietly. Surprised, Noelle looked my way. The knife faltered, moved a few inches away from Shaggy’s exposed Adam’s apple; I pretended not to notice. “My mom’s not from Crystal Cove. Her family’s not even from America. And some people … well, they never let her forget that. They think it makes her inferior somehow.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Noelle exclaimed. “No one here ever lets you forget where you came from! We Burnetts were the first to settle here after the Vanishing, but, noooo, since we aren’t descended from the original settlers, Samuel Rogers thinks we don’t count. And I’m sick of it! And of them!”

“But—” Shaggy began to protest. He tried to step forward, away from her.

It was the wrong move. Noelle jerked him closer, bringing the knife’s edge right up against the flesh of his throat. I choked back a scream.

“Shut up,” Noelle commanded. “I will never forgive the Rogers family.”

She let that declaration hang in the air. I stared at the knife, my mind racing with ideas and yet also, somehow, paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t move. The whole thing felt like a scene in a play, and one wrong move could make the theater explode.

And then Taylor, tiny and meek, stepped closer to her mother.

My stomach dropped.

But Taylor’s voice rang out across the darkness of the caves, stronger and surer than I’d ever heard it. “Mother,” she said sharply, holding out a hand. “This is too much. I love you, but we’re done here.”

Noelle blinked. She turned and stared at her daughter.

Drip, drip, whoosh, went the water. I heard my own heartbeat racing in my ears; I felt it thrumming in my lungs.

“I loved your parents, Noelle,” Shaggy said, his voice thick with the threat of tears. “And Taylor is like a sister to me. I’m so sorry you think that … like, that my family …” He couldn’t get the words out.

“You’re just as bad as your father,” Noelle countered, turning away from Taylor. Her arm was still raised, the knife close to his heart now. “What’s worse is, you don’t even know it.”

“I’m sorry if you think that’s true,” he said quietly. “But I …”

“This isn’t about you,” Noelle spat. “This is about your father. He’ll get what’s coming to him, believe me!”

Shaggy swallowed hard. “Please, Noelle. Don’t.”

“Mom,” Taylor begged.

Noelle pulled Shaggy closer.

“Please,” Taylor whispered. “Mommy. Put it down. For me.”

A sob broke out of Noelle, her body convulsing.

“Freeze!”

The voice boomed, a long, lingering note that seemed to come from the cave walls. We halted, each of us, and I felt my bones loosen in relief as a trio of flashlights rounded the corner of the cave, casting a spotlight over our terrified tableau. Noelle blinked in surprise, and then screamed.

Lieutenant Rogers appeared first, running up the sand with one hand on her flashlight and the other on her holster. Behind her were two deputies, who immediately surrounded Noelle. She collapsed to her knees and raised her hands in the air. When one of the officer’s flashlights landed on her face; she looked defeated. The burn from her eyes had dissipated, replaced with a blank stare.

As soon as Noelle was safely in cuffs, Lieutenant Rogers turned to Shaggy. “All right?” she asked. Her voice sounded curt, but I could see the concern in her eyes.

So could Shaggy, who nodded. “Where’s the Crystal?” he asked, his voice high, scared.

“Where it belongs.” Noelle fixed Lieutenant Rogers with a stare. One of the deputies began reading Noelle her rights. “That Crystal is from these caves, and that’s where it will stay.”

“You just left it out here? Like, unprotected?” Shaggy was aghast.

Noelle’s face darkened as Lieutenant Rogers pulled her to her feet, her wrists locked tightly in front of her. “It’s where it has to be. The Rogerses have never understood that.”

“Come on,” Shaggy’s mother said, gesturing for the other two officers to lead her out of the caves. “You too,” she added, nodding to Taylor.

Taylor crossed her arms, her eyes cast to the ground, her long brown hair doing its best to hide her, to cover her.

As they rounded the corner, Noelle’s voice rang out once more. “It has to remain here in the caves! Only then will the curse on this town finally be lifted! Only then will all this deception end!”

We stood in silence for a few minutes, me and Daphne and Shaggy, and even Scooby, who had decided it was the perfect time to take a nap. He was curled up near Shaggy’s feet, eyes closed.

Noelle’s final words still rang in my ears, almost as if the walls of the cave were refusing to let them go. My heart clenched as I repeated them to myself. Only then will the curse on this town be lifted.

“Hey,” Daphne said softly. Shaggy shook his head, as if waking himself from a trance, and looked at her. “You okay?”

He stared for a moment. Anyone could see he was not, in fact, okay. His skin was still paler than usual; his eyes glassy.

“Like, see?” he finally said, low and tense. I strained to hear him. “This is why Scooby and I keep to ourselves. Nobody wants a Rogers around. We’re poison. Just like this whole place.”

Suddenly, footsteps. A throat clearing. At the entrance of the cave, backed by the dull reflection of flashing police lights, stood two tall, slim silhouettes. One figure stepped forward, out of the shadows and into the ray of light from Daphne’s phone.

“Come, son.” Mr. Rogers beckoned. Behind him, Jack Rogers stood, a mirror image of his uncle.

If they had heard what Shaggy had just said, they didn’t let on. As always, Mr. Rogers’s face was unreadable, his presence commanding. I was used to being invisible, but the way he looked only at Shaggy was a new sensation, even for me. It wasn’t that he didn’t see me or Daphne; it was that it didn’t matter whether he did or didn’t. We didn’t matter.

Without a word or a look back, Shaggy heeded his family’s call. Scooby roused himself from his nap and followed, leaving Daphne and me alone in the glittering dark.