I can smell Salted Cabbage Lake's name the moment I step from the car. A breeze carries a salty whiff from the blue waters into my lungs. Strands of blonde hair blow across my face, over the neat part I drew this morning. I start for the beach, sand shifting under my sneakers. Only a few children race along the beach, squealing as they flick sand and water at each other.

"I remember those carefree days," Emi chuckles. "Do you?" She has a far away look in her eyes, trained on something just past the lake.

"Of course." I just don't think of them often.

"Life was so perfect back then. No job, bills, or taxes."

"Just a mountain of homework when we got home from school." I laugh at how anxious I got over getting a problem wrong or forgetting to turn something in. It's peaches compared to now. No more blissful ignorance; no more days where math was my only worry, recess was a constitutional right, and TV characters were my friends. There are expectations now, things I must complete to survive.

Time turns into a double-edged sword. Either you have none and live in a constant state of restless activity, or you feel guilty about having all the time in the world. I'm more of the latter. No work means no pay, no pay means no money to spend.

We settle several feet from the water. I unlace my sneakers and pull off my socks. My eyes gaze at the blue stretched before us. It's beautiful and glassy, and the beach is clean, sparkling in the sun like tiny nuggets of gold. If we were back in Dewhurst, there's a fifty-percent chance it'd be on the wrong side of town, polluted with trash and ripped plastic bags. Who knows what sorts of toxic pollutants would end up inside it?

"So what are we looking for?" Emi asks. Always one to get down to business. She can only stop and smell the salt for so long.

"Something having to do with the whole-tone scale." I brought the folder with me — it's right beside me — though I'm too lazy to open it at the moment. Emi takes the initiative, rolling onto her stomach as she inspects the page.

"Should've brought your viola after all. It might help us," she says.

"It might also get sand in it."

"Fair point."

Waves rise and collapse in small circles, rolling onto the shore. Sometimes, they almost reach my bare toes. I wriggle them into the sand, closing my eyes toward the sun so it beams on my face.

"Cerise, we aren't exactly here on vacation," Emi says. "We need to figure this out."

"Where would a clue be hidden?" I ask. "Certainly it won't be in the sand. Too easy for it to wash away."

"Maybe on a tree? Or in a tree?"

I crack my eyes open to look at her. "Whole tone scale, remember? And solar and lacquer."

Emi focuses on her phone. A moment later, she holds the bright screen up to my face.

"Read. Lacquer is a shiny finish applied to wood. So a tree might be the answer." She stands, brushing sand off her jumper. Reluctantly, I push myself to my feet, too.

Shifting sand warms the soles of my feet. It's mostly soft, though a few times, something pokes at my skin, probably sharp pieces of broken shell. We reach the first tree near the parking lot and inspect the bark for carved lines. Though rugged, none of the marks or missing sections of bark seem planned. So we move on to the next tree, and the next, until we run out of trees on our side of the lake.

At the edge of the beach, Emi and I stare at a forest clustering around the rest of the lake. Emi shakes her head.

"Nah, uh. No way," Emi says. "We are not checking every single tree in that forest."

While I agree with her, I can't help that part of my brain screaming, but it's part of the clue!

"Maybe we were wrong," I say.

"That's obvious. We should head back and regroup."

Emi and I survey the entire beach we walked after reaching the end opposite our car. It's a long way back, and though my steps are beginning to drag, I don't mind extra time in the fresh air. As we trudge back, we approach a gray-haired couple lounging inches from the lake. Their folding chairs are in a perfect position so the waves can soak their ankles before receding.

"I can't believe I found a pair of earbuds here." The man's gruff voice breaks the lake's serenity.

"That's a first," the woman chuckles. Her eyes sweep around, landing on us before she faces forward again. Though we keep walking, our pace slows as we near them.

The man tosses a glare over his shoulder. "Young people these days have no respect for the environment. They promote all these electric cars and zero waste lifestyles, and then they pollute this beach." His brown eyes jab us again. "Things are changing far too fast, Elizabeth."

Emi and I exchange glances. I feel like we should go, but at the same time, indignation flickers inside me. Old people have phones, too. It wouldn't be so far-fetched to believe that one owned earbuds too, and even further, that they were forgotten at a lake.

The woman looks back at us. "I'm, uh, sorry," she says quickly. "We're not talking about you."

"I most certainly am talking about them," the man says. He twists fully toward us now, like he's getting ready for a fight. "We've been coming to this lake for forty years, and it never used to look like this back in the good old days."

"Henry, it's one pair of earbuds," the woman murmurs.

"And I'm sure many more are to come." He crosses his arms and whirls around, leaning against his striped chair.

Forty years? That's a long time, a very, very long time. Perhaps they could be of some use.

"Wow, forty years," I say. "Must be nice to stay in the same place. Helps you get to the area."

"Indeed," the woman says with another nervous chuckle.

"Do you live nearby?"

"Yes, we live about a mile away. It's so wonderful to have a lake nearby. I always wanted to live on the ocean, but Henry said it was a liability."

"Oh?"

"Due to hurricanes."

I nod. "Of course."

"But this is truly the next best thing. It's a tight knit community around here, and you really get to know your neighbors."

"Really?" Here it goes. "Well in that case, since you're so familiar with this area and this lake, the name D.C. Silverenn wouldn't happen to mean anything to you, right?"

The woman's wrinkles deepen. "No, actually. Who might that be?"

I shrug. "I'm not totally sure. I heard her mentioned in a neighboring town, but I never asked who she was. It's been kind of bothering me. I thought it might be known throughout this region."

"Not here," the woman says. "Have you tried searching it up using Google?" Her husband harrumphs beside her.

"You know, that's a good idea," I say. "I never actually thought of that before since I just use my phone for work. You know, emails and calls and such. Thanks for the suggestion."

"It's no trouble at all," the woman laughs. "Have a nice day and enjoy the fresh air."

"You too." As Emi and I walk away, I hear the woman say,

"See Henry? Not all millennials are obsessed with their phones." A faint harrumph replies.

Emi grabs my arm and giggles. "Oh my gosh, Cerise! That was genius. You really showed him."

"And we found out some valuable information. Seems like Silverenn wasn't active in this town. I'm beginning to doubt that the clue is here at the lake. Granted, it's possible that the clue was so well-hidden that no rumors developed surrounding it. But still, I feel like we should have more confirmation by now."

Emi snaps her fingers. "We should've asked if they refer to the lake as a bay around here."

I cast a forlorn glance over my shoulder. Already, distance has rendered the couple to dots. "I think it's too late."

Emi plops into the sand first, and I follow suit. I realize how tired I am once the fine grains envelop me like a bubble bath, easing my sore legs. The rest allows me to settle, my limbs to grow limp as energy flows to my brain.

"The riddle says 'on route to the bay,'" I recall. "Maybe the clue isn't at the lake, it's on the way to the lake."

"Cerise!" Emi collapses backward. "That's so vague. We can't search every street that leads here."

"Then we must go back to the score. Clues five and six must be used in conjunction."

"Read the clues out loud for me again." Emi folds her hands across her chest, content to listen.

I open the folder and read the lines from Silverenn's letter. I do the same for the riddle typed on my phone.

"Could 'on route to the bay' be a phrase?" Emi asks.

"It is a phrase."

"No, I mean, could it be a saying or have some other significance?"

I shrug. "You're the research whizz."

Her cellphone appears in her hand, like it was whisked from thin air and not her pocket. I wait for her to connect to the internet and finish typing on the screen. Moments later, she shakes her head.

"It just popped up with random news stories. Most don't even pertain to the US."

I flip to 'The Sixth.' The clue has to lie in here, something that will help us with the poem. Minutes tick by, their passage marked by the waves spiraling towards us, the puffs of wind that cool my skin. My eyelids droop from the gentle beat of water on shore. I just want to close my eyes and rest here for a bit, soak up the sun and fresh air. But as Emi said, we're not here on vacation. We can return once we have the treasure. Actually, we can probably go anywhere when we find it. Images of Hawaii flash through my head, sitting on a sunny beach while sipping coconut water.

I'm not there yet, I have to remind myself. I try to focus on the tiny notes that decorate the page. Eventually, I break the lake's serenity.

"I'm lost."

"It's mutual," Emi says. Her elbow covers her eyes as she lies there, her breaths slow and steady. I suppose she deserves a break even more than me.

"You think we should just go home?"

Slowly, Emi pushes herself up, leaving the impression of a wingless sand angel behind her. A yawn stretches across her jaw. "Might as well. We're not making any progress here. Maybe something will come to us in the next few days."

A few days. I hate to think this, but what if someone else finds the treasure during that time? Or worse, what if someone finds us? I'm beyond certain that we're not alone in this hunt.

Emi and I start the long trek across the beach, back to our car. A couple of children race by with nerf guns, whooping as they squirt each other. We make an arc around them to avoid the splash zone.

Ahead, a young woman sits in front of a canvas on an easel. Her brush swishes across it in fluid strokes, like water running over rocks in a stream. She pauses, leaning back to examine her work so far. When we get a little closer, her gaze meets ours, and a smile crosses her lips.

"Lovely day for painting," she says.

"For sure," I reply.

She turns back to her canvas for a moment, then looks at us again. "Say, would you mind telling me which of these colors matches the sun best?"

"We can try," I chuckle. "But painting isn't our area for artistic expression."

"Oh?"

"We're musicians," Emi says.

Warmth floods the woman's face. "Really? What instruments do you play?"

"I play violin, and she plays viola."

"I love classical music. In my opinion, it just isn't appreciated enough."

It's always special to meet another person in the arts, an inexplicable bond that forms. Perhaps it's because all the arts tie together—music, art, language, poetry. Every art form has a heart, and from it, a beat radiates. We all feel it in this moment; we can sense the imagination and creative expression brimming inside each other.

The woman mixes up a few colors of paint, a dab of yellow here, a dab of orange there, white to lighten, gold to brighten. "I'm Veronica, by the way."

"I'm Cerise."

"And I'm Emi."

"It's nice to meet you. And this is the perfect time, too. I've been trying to figure out the sun's color for days now, but I just can't get it to look right." She shows us the color she has mixed on the palette.

"Looks good to me," I say.

Emi regards it a moment longer. "You know, I think it could use a touch more yellow. The current color edges too much on a sunset, but it's a tad early for that."

"I think you're right," Veronica says. "Thank you so much. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't come along."

"It's no problem. No matter the color, I'm sure it'd be as beautiful as the rest of the painting. You've nailed the perspective."

"Oh, thank you," Veronica chuckles shyly. "It just takes practice." She dabs a bit of paint on the canvas. "Yes, I think this color is perfect. It's always nerve racking to put it on for the first time, not knowing how it will look."

"I'll bet. Well, good luck with your painting," I say.

"Thanks. I hope to display this in the local art gallery next week. Hopefully, it will dry in time for the exhibition."

"I'm sure it will," Emi says.

Veronica waves, paint brush still clutched in her hand. "See you around."

"See you." I don't know why I said that, since we don't live here. I guess it just seemed like the polite way to respond.

As we walk away, I turn to Emi. "How do you know so much about painting?"

"I took some art classes in high school. Competed a bit, too."

"I didn't know that."

A smile crosses Emi's lips. She keeps her eyes on her feet as they imprint the beach. "I guess it's not something I really think about."

"Were you good?"

"I guess."

"How good?"

"I mean, I won a few prizes..."

"Such as?"

"Second place in State."

I stop in my tracks. Emi does the same, tilting her head toward me at last. It takes me a moment to catch my breath before I can speak.

"Emi, if you won second place in a state competition, that doesn't mean you're good. That means you're flippin' amazing."

"There was low competition," Emi tries to protest.

"Honey, I don't care if there were only two competitors in your division. You still made it to the state competition somehow and won second place."

"It's not a big deal," Emi says with quiet amusement. "I never really mastered scale or shadowing or any of those other techniques."

I snort, my eyes traveling to the Honda elevated above the beach. It's a steep climb up, and my legs are already sore from exertion. Nevertheless, I force my legs to move one at a time. The left-right, left-right rhythm keeps me going despite my muscles' protests. Words start to dance through my head, in sync with my steps.

Perspective.

I glance at Emi, then over my shoulder at the distant artist.

Perspective. Shadowing. Scale.

It's kind of funny, the overlap between music and art. Music has scales, too. The whole tone scale, for instance.

See it while the eyes are struck.

My foot catches on the loose ground, and I fall forward. All I blink at is the yellow sand encircling my wrists and knees.

"Cerise! Are you okay?"

I twist so I can stare into Emi's wide eyes. "I need you to look up the definition of scale."

"What? Right now?"

"Yes, right now!"

"Okay, okay." Emi grabs her phone. "An instrument by which measurements are made."

"No."

"A thick exterior or coating for certain animals."

"No."

"To remove scales—"

"No."

"A specific series of musical intervals—"

"No."

"A relative proportion."

"Getting closer."

"An object or idea in relation to another."

"Also known as perspective," I say. "That's the one."

Emi folds her arms. A scowl has hardened onto her face. "Now do you mind telling me what this is all about?"

"The first part of the clue is talking about the whole tone scale since it's zipping up and down unstuck. 'See it while the eyes are struck' is talking about perspective because you have to think about something in a different or unique way. The answer is perspective!"

"Okay..."

"This whole time, we've had to think about the clue in a new way. We've some needed perspective, just like it's the answer to the puzzle."

Emi's entire body sags with a sigh. "Cerise, what are you getting at?"

A breeze brushes strands of hair into my face. I tuck them behind my ear, sorting through the clues again. Solar and Lacquer. On route to the bay. Perspective. It's just a thought, a sudden shot in the dark, but I have to satisfy my curiosity.

"Emi, isn't lacquer an artsy term?"

"Yes."

"Can you look up the nearest art gallery? Veronica said one was in town."

Emi dutifully searches it up. I know the moment she sees the answer because her hands freeze right above the screen. She can't look away from it.

"Cerise..."

"What?" I ask.

"Cerise, you won't believe this."

"What?" I shift so I can look over her shoulder. Four words glow up from the screen, not two important ones like Silverenn claimed. I'd say the last two are more important, but then again, there are millions of art galleries out there. Only one is located in Cabbage Edge, one named Solar Lacquer Art Gallery.

"On route to the bay," Emi says. "It's not just a phrase. It has to be the title of a painting."

"Or some other form of artwork," I say. "We need to check it out."

"We can't."

"What do you mean?" Desperation creeps into my voice. Doesn't she realize how close we are?

"The museum closes in half an hour. Even if we can drive there in time, there won't be time to look around."

I groan. "Fine, then we'll go tomorrow." The clue has lasted decades. I hope another day won't hurt.