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layers heading in different directions. The box—with the bottom layer still in it—bobbed up and down in the current, and the whipped cream frosting, like foam, floated downstream.

C aroline and her sisters stood with their hands over their mouths, eyes like fried eggs.
    “Oh, Lordy!” gasped Caroline. “It really was a cake!”
    The box below was sailing away.
    “Enjoy!” said Wally, grinning. “Don’t forget to return the plate.”
    With that the four Hatford brothers turned around and went back toward their side, of the river, though the youngest lingered just long enough for one last look in the water. “Wow!” he said.
    “What are we going to do?” Caroline cried to her sisters.
    “Don’t ask me!” said Beth. “You’re the one who threw it in.”
    “But you didn’t believe it was a cake, either, Beth. You know you didn’t!”
    “We’re in this together,” Eddie agreed. “ I probablywould have taken the box and dumped it over their heads.”
    “I suppose we could always say we ate it,” Caroline mused, watching the whipped cream frosting leave a long trail in its wake. And then she cried suddenly, “The plate! We’ve got to return the plate!”
    The box seemed to be floating toward the Malloys’ side of the river. The girls ran back across the bridge and down the bank to the water’s edge.
    “There it is!” Eddie shouted. She looked at Caroline. “Go for it.”
    “It’s not fair!” Caroline cried. “We’re in this together, you said.”
    “Okay, we all go in,” decided Eddie, and the girls took off their shoes and socks, and rolled up their jeans.
    The water did not seem as warm as it had been a week ago when Caroline slid off the sheet and disappeared into the muddy brown of the Buckman River. Now it was almost six in the evening, August had become September, and that little change made a difference.
    The riverbed was rocky in places, and where it was bare, thick mud oozed up between Caroline’s toes. Now and then something tickled her ankles as she waded out toward the center, and she did not even like to think what it might be.
    The box had stopped at a pile of brush in the river, but one corner appeared to be sinking.
    “Hurry, Caroline!” Beth yelled, plodding along behind.
    Caroline took a deep breath and waded in up to her waist. The more water-logged her jeans became, the heavier they felt, and the harder it was to walk.
    “Hurry!” Beth screeched again.
    Caroline took a giant step forward this time, but her foot slipped on the slimy bottom. The last thing she saw before the water washed over her was the white box rising up over the debris with the current, and sailing on downstream.
    Glub, glub, glub. Water filled her ears, her nose—clouded her eyes. Gasping, she reared up, all her clothes heavy now. Before she could see anything, however, she could hear shrieks laughter from the opposite bank, and knew that the Hatford boys had been watching.
    “We’ll get them. ” Eddie called. “Don’t pay any attention, Caroline. Just get the plate.”
    But the box was moving faster than the girls could keep up, and—what’s more—seemed to be sinking slowly at the same time. More hoots from the boys. Caroline began to swim.
    Caroline Lenore, she told herself, you are an actress, and actresses don’t pay any attention to distractions. Make this your neatest performance yet.
    And so, as she swam toward the center of the Buckman River where she had last seen the box, she pretended that she was a young mother swimming, swimming, desperately swimming, to rescue hersmall child before he disappeared forever beneath the waves.
    Caroline tried to concentrate on her face. She would have a look of agonized terror, she decided, opening her eyes wide, teeth frozen behind half-parted lips, little gasps coming from her throat. She could see the Hatford boys back on the far bank, watching.
    The camera would move in for a close-up of her face, and just then she would close her eyes,