On the swings we kicked our sneakered feet and placed silent bets on which cloud would win the regatta taking place above our heads. We spoke of the shipwreck we had found: an old pirate ship at the bottom of the lake behind Owen’s uncle’s house with waterlogged cannons and a mast leaning like a molding umbrella against some unseen wall. We decided the ship had gone down because Captain Darby himself—the Mythical Master of Seas, Ian called him, bellowing in his best pirate voice—sank the ship to protect his diaries, hidden in an empty gunpowder barrel. We wondered what it might be like to read Darby’s diaries, to hold the storied wisdom of twenty years at sea and know what monsters he’d seen. Our parents heard this and laughed and whispered to themselves that the only things we’d find in that damn lake were the half-smoked cigarettes Owen’s uncle would flip into the water as he sat nightly at the lapping edge yelling at the moon, “Who are you? Who are you?”—it was then that we remembered we had a reputation for being liars.
SHIPWRECK
