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was walking down the hall. Professor Tooth saw me and gave me this. She mentioned how she thought you might like to see it.”
    Kate paused to lean against a boulder at the base of the cliff path. She pulled a small envelope out of the binder she carried and passed it to Darrell. Darrell leaned against the boulder too, and the two of them looked carefully at the picture that Darrell pulled from the envelope. It was a small print of a detailed woodcut, depicting a number of very disturbing images.
    â€œWhat do you make of that?” asked Kate. “It’s from a book called
Medieval Art
. She said the book showed how people lived during that period of time.”
    Darrell looked for several minutes at the print in silence. It was quite primitive in style and depicted people working in fields and along the streets of an old village. A closer look showed several people on the ground, in various stages of decomposition, many in the form of skeletons. Other skeletonswalked through the picture, some carrying scythes, others rosaries.
    Darrell looked at Kate. “This must’ve been done around the time of the Black Plague that swept through Europe.” She thought for a moment. In the distance, they heard the bell chime for dinner.
    â€œI think I know why she gave me this,” Darrell said finally, as they started up the winding path. “Remember how Professor Tooth said that art was often more reliable than written history during those times? She said only the elite were literate, and they didn’t ever look at life through the eyes of all the poor people. As we left the classroom, I mentioned to her that I never saw people who weren’t physically perfect depicted in portraits.” The line between her eyebrows deepened. “I guess she wanted to show me that I was wrong.”
    They puffed their way up to the top of the cliff path, Darrell limping slightly.
    When she had caught her breath at the top, Kate changed the subject. “The other reason that I came to find you was that Mr. Neuron said that the school was having a bit of trouble with people poaching crabs on school property. He told us to watch out for any suspicious activity. I thought you should know, since you seem to like walking on the beach by yourself a lot.”
    Darrell laughed a little as she held open the front door. “I guess I’d better talk to Mr. Neuron, then.”

    As they sat down to dinner, she told Kate about the incident with the crab trappers the day before. Kate was appalled. “You need to tell Professor Tooth, Darrell. Throwing a rock like that is common assault!”
    Darrell shook her head. “He would just say that I threw a rock at him first.”
    A boy sitting across the table from them was listening closely. He cleared his throat.
    â€œExcuse me for interrupting,” he said quietly. “But I think I’ve seen those guys on the beach as well. Except when I saw them, they weren’t catching crabs. They were cutting up a big fish, further down the beach, past the rocky spit.”
    â€œThey might have been cutting bait for their traps,” said Kate, triumphantly.
    Darrell looked with interest at the boy who had spoken. “I’m Darrell Connor,” she said.
    â€œBrodie Sun.” He stuck out his hand, and Darrell shook it.
    Kate smiled. “And now you know who ‘this Brodie guy’ is!”

C HAPTER F OUR
    Darrell was given her first real challenge of the summer the following week when Mr. Gill assigned a self-portrait in painting class. Though she actually enjoyed portraiture as a rule, Darrell scowled into the mirror Mr. Gill had set up beside her easel. Glaring back at her was a girl with medium brown hair caught up in a ponytail, deep brown eyes, and olive skin. Looking to see that the teacher’s attention was on another student, she turned the mirror aside.
Who wants to see a painting of some kid with one leg?
She spent the rest of the