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do. If a girl wants something, you’re supposed to do whatever you can to give it to her. Not that it really worked out for him.” He sat back and looked up at a cloud passing over the new moon; it was almost a pale pink against the darkening sky. “You want that cloud?”
    Maggie laughed. “Yes, please. I’ve had my eye on it for quite some time.”
    Liam began drawing numbers on his palm with his finger, brows knitting together. “Just calculating the angle and velocity I need to shoot it out of the sky.” Maggie laughed, and two geese lifted off the lake and landed a few feet farther away. Liam looked toward the water again and began counting to himself in a whisper—counting out the number of geese. For some reason she couldn’t explain, Maggie thought about touching the back of his neck, how warm it would feel in the cold air.
    “I’d better get home,” she said, standing and brushing off her legs. “My parents will wonder where I am.”
    Without a word, Liam nodded and led her back through the woods, even though darkness had fallen almost completely. He knew the way by heart, taking turns where she could see only shadows ahead. At the edge of the lawn, Maggie handed him his shirt. “Good night. Thanks for the geese.”
    Maggie was halfway across the kitchen when her mom appeared in the archway, a look of relief on her face.
    “Oh, I’m glad you’re home, Mags. I’ve been worried,” she said. Then she turned back the way she’d come. “We’re just watching the news. How was your day?”
    Maggie followed her in through the glass doors to the parlor, where her parents had set up their small, ancient TV. “Why were you worried?” she said.
    Her eyes followed her mom’s to the television screen, which showed a high school graduation photo of a girl holding a rose. A news announcer was describing her as bright and beautiful and promising. Second girl missing , it said at the bottom of the screen.
    “She went hiking on the dunes and didn’t come back,” her mom said. “You always think about your own kids when something like this happens.”
    Maggie watched, bothered. Why did reporters always mention how the dead or missing girls looked? As if it mattered. Did they say missing guys were handsome? The young, handsome missing boy . . .
    “How was canoeing?” her mom asked. “Does Pauline have friend potential? What’s she like?”
    Maggie thought. “Yeah, I guess so. She’s”—she tried to think of the best word to describe Pauline—“really pretty.” Then thought what a hypocrite she was.
    Her dad cocked his eyebrows at her wryly. “Is that good or bad?”
    Maggie stuck her thumbnail in her mouth, absently. “Both, probably. For her.”
    “Well, you’re the best-looking girl I know.”
    “You’re genetically predisposed to say that.”
    “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
    That evening, after getting the chill out of her bones with a long, hot bath, Maggie sat on the back porch, bundled in a blanket, with a European history textbook on her lap, staring at the lake. Instead of thinking about the day on the water, she wondered if the missing girl might be out there somewhere, lost in the watery dark.

To Maggie and Pauline and Liam, Lake Michigan must look as pristine as a blank sheet of paper. But I’ve had a deeper view.
    I’ve been to the bottom of the lake I can’t remember how many times, and here’s what I’ve seen: old cars that once tried to cross the ice in winter and fell through; houses that have disintegrated along the water’s edge; things that people have thrown in, in the hopes they’d never be seen again: diaries, tires, refrigerators, even photos. If you’re a wisp like me, you can sink down underwater and see for yourself what’s been lost to the world above: skeletons trapped in boats, the rusted windows and doors of iron trawlers half sunk in sand. I don’t know where the ghosts that belong to these skeletons have gone. They’ve left only their bones.