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same colour but sort of square, with roots shaped like fingers.
    I realized I had been holding my breath and started breathing normally. This was no big deal, it looked like.
    â€œSo far, it’s yawn time,” John commented.
    In went the tweezer, out came a piece of reddish-brown stuff shaped like a small triangle. “What’s that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he answered, just as the thing slipped from his hand. It floated to the floor. John picked it up again, carefully.
    â€œIt might be … yes! See the hairs! It’s a piece of skin. Wait! It’s an ear !”
    â€œUgh. What kind of ear?”
    â€œMust be a small dog or something like that. Or maybe a fox.”
    He put the ear beside the teeth and shoved his tweezer into the bag one more time.
    John gave me a funny look. In his hand he was holding a bone. It was clean and yellowy-white. And very small. My curiosity won out and I got up and stepped over to John to look at it.
    â€œAnything more in there?” I pointed to the bag that still rested in his palm.
    John laid the bone down on the sheet, then upended the bag. A round gold object plopped onto the bed. It was about the size of a nickel, maybe a little bigger, but not as big as a quarter.
    John picked it up and turned it over slowly, so many times I thought he’d gone nutty.
    â€œWell?” I snapped.
    â€œIt’s a coin.”
    â€œBrilliant deduction, Watson!” I burst out. “Let me see it!”
    â€œWonder if it’s gold,” John muttered as he handed it over. “Might be worth a lot.”
    It sure looked like gold. It was really shiny and worn almost smooth. I could make out the remains of a face on one side, but couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. The other side was so smooth I could see nothing except two numbers, a one and a seven.
    â€œLook.” I showed John the numbers.
    â€œWell,” he said, “the coin was minted in Something Seventeen or Seventeen Something.”
    â€œBrilliant again,” I huffed. “As if I needed you to tell me that.”
    â€œI’ll bet it was Seventeen Something,” he said, ignoring my words. “This coin sure looks at least two hundred years old.”
    â€œYeah. it does.”
    He put the coin on the sheet, then lined up all the objects—two teeth, the piece of skeleton, the ear, and the coin—and laid the bag beside them.
    Did they mean anything , I wondered. And if they did, did I want to know? I realized that half of me said Yes and the other half said, Put the junk back in the bag and toss it in the garbage and forget you ever went to Chiefs’ Island.
    As if he was reading my mind John asked, “Well, what do you want to do with this stuff?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell, if you don’t want it, can I have it? I’d like to go to the library and see if I can find out anything about little skin bags that Aboriginals used to wear around their waists.”
    I almost said Yes. I looked down at the strange objects on my bed, and suddenly thought, Kenny would have loved all this stuff . I said in a low voice,
    â€œNo, I think I’ll keep it for a while.”
    On my windowsill I had a big clear glass candy bowl with a lid. I dumped out the comb, barrettes, paperclips and other junk onto my desk and, using a comer of the blanket on my bed, I polished the bowl and lid. Then I carefully laid the deerskin bag, ear, teeth, coin, and bit of skeleton in the bowl. I put on the lid and carried the bowl to the windowsill, putting it down in the middle so it wouldn’t get knocked off when I opened or closed the side panes.
    â€œThere,” I said, and brushed my hands together.

Saturday Evening
    That night I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. I tossed and turned and punched my pillow and smoothed my blanket. I listened to the radio for a while with my earphones on, but that didn’t help either. Instead of