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, like Gotcha.

Whether he did or didn’t, this wasn’t the moment to take a deep dive 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.

“It’s a ghost net,” Clay said.

The kids perked up at the word “ghost.”

“That’s the name for nets that have been abandoned and end up floating free in the water,” Clay explained. “They’re made of nylon, so they don’t disintegrate, and they kill wildlife all the time. Fish, and sea turtles, and pelicans, and dolphins—they all get caught in them and suffocate. Or starve.”

“Well, not this net,” a little girl named Angel said, marching over to Mad Dog with a trash bag. Mad Dog got her meaning and started stuffing the net in the bag. Soon it was disposed of.

“Thanks, Brainerd,” Mad Dog said, and then a bunch of other kids chimed in, high-fiving him and cheering the demise of the ghost net.

Such a hard moment to read: the nickname seemed mean, but the thanks seemed genuine. I decided to follow Clay’s lead on it—and he seemed happy, so I concluded it was a win.

And just at that moment, when I was feeling glad we were there, and proud we’d snuck the kids to their rightful beach cleanup, and happy to have learned so much beach trivia from my brainy little pal, and maybe just a little triumphant over the disposal of the ghost net myself, I looked up to see a figure standing on the seawall, looking down at us.

A male figure, backlit by the cloudless sky.

Duncan.

He came halfway down the concrete steps and surveyed us all—kids and teachers alike—as if we were the most shameful batch of heartless rule breakers.

“What’s going on here?” he said at last, in a low, none-too-pleased voice.

The teachers all looked around at each other. Alice seemed to hunch a little shorter.

Finally, I stepped forward. “Just cleaning up some beach trash.” Then I pointed at the trash bag full of the net, and said, as if it would make any sense, “Just being heroes and saving the ocean.”

The kids cheered, and Duncan turned to stare at them.

Then he looked at me like I was very naughty. “Didn’t you get my memo?”

I nodded.

“Did you read it?”

“I did. All nine single-spaced pages.”

“So you know that all field trips have been suspended.”

“I do.”

“You’re not here by mistake, is what I mean,” like he was offering me an out.

I guess I could have taken it. But I didn’t. “We’re not here by mistake.”

“You knew this field trip was canceled, but you came here anyway?”

“Correct.”

Duncan looked me over. “Did you think I just wouldn’t notice that the entire third grade was missing?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t,” I said, with a shrug. “If you weren’t taking attendance.”

Duncan turned to the teachers. “Start packing up. We’re going back.”

But I motioned to Duncan to come the rest of the way down the steps. “Can I talk to you please?”

When Duncan stepped onto the sand, after taking a second to adjust to the cognitive dissonance of a man in a gray suit, in recently polished black oxfords, standing on the beach, I added, “Privately?”

I started marching away from where the kids were, and Duncan, to my relief, followed.

When we were out of earshot, I said, “Don’t do this. Let us finish what we’re doing.”

He shrugged. “You broke the rules.”

“Well, they’re bad rules.”

“I disagree.”

“We’re fine,” I said, gesturing to the kids. “It’s been a lovely day. The kids have learned things and cheered for each other. We’ve been building toward this day for weeks—the moment when the kids get to do something to help out the ocean. It’s been very inspiring for them.”

“Irrelevant,” Duncan said. “They can’t be here.”

“Why not?”

“Because field trips have been canceled.”

“So uncancel them.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“You can cancel them, but you can’t uncancel them?”

“Not when people break the rules.”

I pointed at the kids. “Look how happy they are. Why not just let them stay?”

“I can’t protect them out here.”

“You’re not the Secret Service. They’re just kids on a field trip.”

“Not anymore.”

He took a step like he was about to go back and round them up.

“Wait!” I said, putting my hand on his arm to stop him.

He looked down at my hand.

“Listen to what you’re doing,” I said, counting off of my fingers. “You’re putting gates on everything and bars on the windows. You’re painting everything gray. You’re putting the kids—and the teachers, by the way—in gray uniforms. You’re hiring a whole new flock of security guards. And you fired poor Raymond—”

“He was asleep all the time!”

“He has sleep apnea!”

We glared at each other for a second.

Then I said, “Can’t you see what you’re doing?”

He blinked at me.

“Bars? Gray walls? Gates? Guards? You’re turning our school into a prison. An actual, literal prison.”

It was my zinger. Meant to get some kind of reaction—prompt even some tiny new awareness. Maybe even spark an epiphany and make him realize how astonishingly wrong he’d been all along. Wouldn’t that have been nice?

But what’s the opposite of an epiphany? A shrug? Duncan said, “It’s necessary.”

“Says who?”

“I’ve consulted extensively with security experts.”

“How do you know they know what they’re talking about?”

“Um. Because they’re experts.”

“So? Experts are wrong all the time.”

“That’s fine. But it’s my job to keep these kids—and the faculty, by the way—safe.”

“That’s not your only job.”

“That’s my number one job.”

“They can’t learn if they’re miserable!”

“They can’t learn if they’re dead!”

At that, we both fell silent.

The wind was flicking at his hair, and his oxfords were now brushed with sand, but despite how ridiculously out of place he looked on this beach in that suit, he still managed to ooze authority. Duncan Carpenter, of all people, oozing authority. He should have been flying a kite! He should have been doing handstands in Hawaiian-print board shorts. He should have been helping.

The wrongness of the whole situation helped fuel an indignant courage in me. Me, in my straw hat, and heart-shaped sunglasses, and a T-shirt with a drawing of an octopus with all its arms stretched wide that said FREE HUGS.

I refused to back down.

And that was the moment—right there—when my need to understand what the hell had happened finally outweighed my need to protect myself. Before he could turn and walk back to the group and round everybody up before they were even finished, I found myself asking the question that had been following me like a ghost net ever since he’d arrived.

“How is it possible that you don’t remember me?” I said then, taking a step closer.