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            Sand had beat against the blue-tin lunchbox, griding away the color in a patchwork of scratches. Where the sand had failed, the seawater succeeded, and the only reason Angie perceived the lunchbox as blue was because blue, at the time, was her favorite color.
            Angie was at Cannon Beach in Oregon, shivering in her cobalt-blue frilly bathing suit that she was adamant about wearing. She could hear, “Angie! Where are you? Mommy needs to see you!” from the shore. Mommy said Angie couldn’t swim and the only thing Angie had dreamed of for weeks was foamy seawater caressing her toes and the smell of sea salt in her hair.
            Angie was dipping her feet in the water of the tidepools surrounding haystack rock—after running away from her mom—when she saw the metal lunchbox blinking at her in the distance. She leaned forward, the top half of her body becoming parallel with the ground, then she raised up on her tippy toes. There it was, a dented lunchbox, and ohmygoodness, what if it was from a mermaid? Or a pirate? Or a pirate mermaid?
            Angie waded deeper into the icy water, salt lapping to her ankles, shins, waist. She shivered harder and her swimsuit clung to her tummy. She could feel the current of the waves gently nudging her legs. “Angie where are you?” The lunchbox was just beyond her reach. She flapped her chipped-blue-nail-polished fingers at the box, scooting closer closer closer, the water rising higher higher higher. “Angie!”
           And then Angie was unlatching the clasps and flipping the lunchbox open to find a decayed, blue-fleshed, severed human hand with a seashell pendant wrapped around its fingers.