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Elliot was already on his knees digging out the perimeter. Kneeling opposite him, Ethan indicated how far it should go. Carter got down to work on his assignment as water delivery boy with Ethan’s bright pink bucket (“The only one the store had left when I got it,” Liz confided. “It was a buy-or-face-the-meltdown situation.”).
    Liz and Nolan pitched in after the walls reached four inches in height. By five o’clock, they had a moat and four seven inch high walls, and Ethan had started the first turret.
    “My stomach’s rumbling,” Nolan said. “Time to eat?”
    “I’m hungry.” Ethan rubbed his belly.
    Clapping his hands, Nolan rose. “Let’s go eat!”
    There was a picnic area up the beach. Ethan went over to a couple nearby to ask them to watch the sand castle while he was away. After gaining their promise, he returned. Instead of taking Nolan’s arm, he stood next to Carter and looked at him expectantly until Carter held his elbow out like Nolan had. Grinning, Ethan looped his arm through. “This might be hard because you’re short, but I need you for balance, not to hold me up or anything.”
    “I’m not short; you’re tall,” Carter said. He’d taken his shirt off, but Ethan still wore his. It brushed against Carter’s skin as they walked. Reaching out with his free hand, Carter grabbed a bit of loose fabric. He let go before he could decide if the movement had been a tic or something he’d wanted to do. Ethan grabbed his hand back and put it on his stomach.
    “It’s okay if you want.”
    “Sorry.” Carter took his hand away. “Your shirt was tickling me.”
    “Oh. Okay.” Ethan didn’t speak for a few minutes as they continued their slow trek to the picnic tables. Then he stopped and pulled Carter in even closer until their foreheads touched. “Can I show you something?”
    “Sure.” Glancing up the beach, Carter saw the others a fair distance away. Ethan pointed to the sky.
    “Look.”
    Carter looked. The sun had moved off its midday highpoint to begin its descent. The sky was a pale blue with broad clouds spaced among it.
    “Can you hear it?” Ethan asked.
    Realizing what was happening, Carter paused. Ethan was sharing his gift with him, his ability to hear music in everything. He stared up at the clouds. “Show me how.”
    “It’s in between,” Ethan said. “Listen for the spaces.”
    Carter closed his eyes. He listened to the wind and the ocean. And then, there, in the space between the water lapping the coast and the seagulls’ cries, he heard it. Silence. And in the silence, anything. Infinite possibility. Grabbing Ethan, he opened his eyes. “I heard it.”
    Ethan’s eyes grew wide. “What did it sound like to you?”
    “It sounded like… everything.” He yelped in surprise when Ethan pulled him into a hug.
    “I knew you’d understand. It’s because you’ve got your own music.” Breaking away, he patted Carter’s chest. “People who don’t have it, they don’t understand. But that’s the problem.” Ethan took his arm again and started walking. “Everyone has their own music; they just don’t realize it. But you do.” He grinned at Carter.
    “I didn’t until you showed me,” Carter said. “Thank you.”
    “I knew it was in you, that’s why I liked you from when I saw you. And you’re cute too.”
    Carter hid his embarrassment behind a cough as Ethan beamed at him. “Ethan, we’re just friends, remember?”
    “Yeah.” Ethan’s smile didn’t falter. “There aren’t any rules against saying you’re cute, are there?”
    “No. I guess not. Okay.” To disguise his embarrassment, Carter gave Ethan a light punch on his arm. “Good.”
    The picnic area was near a caravan where Ethan knew everyone, if the number of jubilant shout-outs to him was anything to go by. “Horatio!” Ethan yelled out to a tall chest-tatted thirty-something man with dreads and a goatee who came over for a hug. He had a waifish teenage Asian boy plastered to