Page 59 of What You Wish For

“It sank in the 1600s in Matagorda Bay—and archaeologists found it not that long ago and excavated it. They built a wall to hold back the water. They found a crest of a French admiral. They found the hilt of a sword. They foundhuman bones.”

“Whoa,” I said.

“Max was going to take me overnight to the museum in Port Lavaca…” Clay stopped sifting for a second. “But now my dad’s going to take me instead.”

I tried to imagine Kent Buckley at a museum with his introverted, bookish, deep-thinking child. Clay would be reading every sign for every artifact twice, and Kent Buckley would be conducting some douchey meeting on his cell phone, talking too loud and hurrying Clay along.

It hit me then that, out of all of us, Clay might have been the person who’d needed Max the most.

“The museum sounds amazing,” I said, trying to say something true.

Clay met my eyes. “You can come with us if you want.” He gave a little shrug. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

For some reason, the way he said it made my eyes sting with tears. I blinked them away.

“You just pay close attention,” I said, “and then come back and tell me everything.”

“Roger that,” Clay said.

“Hey, Brainerd,” a kid called out to Clay a minute later, “I found a shark’s tooth!”

He held up a triangular piece of plastic.

“Awesome,” Clay said, refusing to take the bait.

That kid’s name was Matthew, but he’d just started telling people to call him “Mad Dog.” A few seconds later, I leaned over quietly and said, “What did Mad Dog just call you?”

Clay kept sifting. “Brainerd,” he said. “It’s a nickname.”

I tried to proceed gently. “How did you get that nickname?”

Clay paused. “It’s supposed to be insulting. You know: ‘brain’ plus ‘nerd’? But Dr. Alfred Brainerd happens to be one of my favorite rock-star scientists, so the joke’s on Matthew.”

“Don’t you mean Mad Dog?”

Clay wrinkled his nose. “I’m sticking with Matthew.”

I couldn’t tell how much the nickname bothered Clay. “Do you want me to tell Matthew to stop calling you Brainerd?”

He met my eyes and shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I take it as a compliment.”

I nodded, likeGotcha.

Whether he did or didn’t, this wasn’t the moment to take a deepdive into it. He seemed okay—better than okay, actually, as he went back to chattering along about the marine life and general history of the Gulf of Mexico: the dolphin stranding a couple of summers ago, the details from a book he’d read about the 1900 storm, the escapades of various pirates.

“There’s pirate gold buried everywhere,” Clay promised. “Max and I used to look for it with his metal detector.”

Max had loved that metal detector.

“He left it to me,” Clay said then. “In his will.”

There were those tears again. I swallowed. “Will you take me looking sometime?”

“You got it,” Clay said, and dumped a sifted pile of bottle caps in the trash bag.

A minute later, Mad Dog called, “Brainerd! What’s this?”

He pulled a nylon fishing net up from under a fine layer of sand. Some teachers came to help. By the time the whole thing was uncovered it was as big as a blanket.

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