Ethan Cooper had one summer to find a shipwreck, and no idea where to dig. He stood on the Sandy Shoals beach with his new metal detector, the green backpack sagging off one shoulder. He wanted the artifact in a real museum, with a little card bearing his name. But the coast ran for miles in both directions. Every stretch of sand looked the same. He could sweep the wrong spot for weeks and find nothing but bottle caps. He'd read about the wreck in an old library book. A trading ship, lost two hundred years ago, somewhere along this shore. The book never said where. Ethan pushed his glasses up and tried not to panic. He had eight weeks. He had a detector he barely knew how to use. And he had, he realized, absolutely no plan. Smoke drifted over from a grill up the beach. A tall, bald man worked it, shirtless, a spatula in one hand. A chef's knife was tattooed on his arm. Ethan had bought a burger from him yesterday. The man cooked for anyone who showed up and never said much. Ethan walked over, because he had no better idea. "The shipwreck," Ethan said. "The old one. Do you know where it went down?" The man flipped a burger. "North end. Past the lighthouse ruin." He said it like a fact about the weather. Ethan's heart jumped. "You're sure?" "Grew up here. Everybody's sure." He pointed the spatula down the beach. "That doesn't mean anybody's found it." A girl sat cross-legged near the grill, barefoot, short blue hair, a ring in her lip. She'd been quiet. Now she looked up. "North end's wrong," she said. "My mom sketched this coast for twenty years. She mapped the old timbers at the south shoals. I saw the drawings." Ethan blinked. Two answers. Opposite directions. "Which one is it?" "South," the girl said, flat. "North," the man said, not louder, just certain. The girl stood. "I'm Azure. I came here looking for her sketchbooks. Somebody stole them." She said it fast, like she'd said it before and stopped expecting help. "But I remember the south map. Timbers in the sand. I saw it." Ethan looked between them. He pulled a notebook from his sorted backpack and wrote both down. His hands were shaky. This was the break he needed and the trap at the same time. One of them was wrong, and following the wrong one would burn half his summer. "I can't check both," he said. "Not in time." Azure crouched and drew a line in the sand with her finger. A rough coast. She marked two X's, far apart. "Then you pick," she said. "Or you prove which map is real before you dig." Ethan stared at the two marks. He finally had a place to start. He just didn't know which one would cost him everything.

Ethan stared at the two X's Azure had scratched in the sand. He couldn't test both. So he made a rule for himself. He would walk south for one day. If he found no sign of a wreck, he'd head north the next morning. He told Azure the plan. She stood, brushed sand off her knees, and said, "I'm coming. It's my mom's map." They walked south for hours. Ethan swept his metal detector over the sand in slow arcs. The screen stayed dark. He got beeps, dug, and found a bottle cap, then a rusted hinge. His arms ached. The coast looked the same mile after mile. Azure walked ahead, scanning the dunes for timbers. She found none. At midday Ethan crouched to rest. A hermit crab crossed his sneaker, dragging its spiral shell. He almost laughed. That was his big discovery so far. Azure sat beside him and chewed her thumbnail. "The map had a landmark," she said. "Two big rocks. Close together. I haven't seen them." Ethan pushed his glasses up. "Maybe your mom drew a different coast." "She didn't." Her voice went flat. End of topic. They pushed on. The detector stayed quiet. By late afternoon the beach curved into a pile of black rock and rough water. No timbers. No ship. No two close rocks. Just dead ends and Ethan's burning shoulders. He stopped and lowered the detector. "That's it," he said. "South is clear. Tomorrow we go north." Azure didn't argue. That told him enough. She kicked at the sand and stared out at the waves. Then she went still. "Ethan." She pointed. Something caught the sun at the tide line. A bottle, half buried, silver glass. Ethan jogged over and pulled it free. A cork sealed the top. Inside sat a rolled scroll of music and a small clay ocarina, blue-green. He turned it in his hands. "That's not from a shipwreck," he said. "Too new." Azure took the bottle. Her hands shook. She stared at the scroll through the glass, at the lines of notes. "That's my mom's handwriting," she whispered. "The way she draws her clefs. I'd know it anywhere." She looked up the coast, north, toward the lighthouse ruin. "Whoever took her sketchbooks dropped this. Heading north." Ethan's stomach dropped. His plan had worked. South was empty. North was next. But now north meant two things at once. The cook's wreck. And whoever stole Azure's mother's work. "The thief went the same way as your wreck," Azure said. She gripped the bottle hard. "We're not splitting up anymore." Ethan looked at the silver bottle, then north. One day gone. South ruled out. He'd gotten his answer, but it came tangled with hers. Tomorrow they'd walk toward the lighthouse together. And somewhere up that coast, a thief had a head start.