“I never said he was repugnant,” I mutter.

“I’m pretty sure you did.”

“Need more flyers?” I ask, seeing her empty hands.

She takes another stack from the bag on my hip and flounces away.

I make a point of not looking for Quint as I head the other direction. Smiling. Chatting. Telling people all about the center and tomorrow’s animal release celebration.

Until my attention snags on a kid, maybe ten years old, at the exact moment he stomps his foot through his baby sister’s sandcastle.

I gasp. Indignation flares through me. Before I even realize I’m doing it, my hand has clenched into an angry fist.

A second later, the kid gets hit in the head with a beach ball. It knocks him over into the sand.

I flinch. I mean, I don’t think it hit him that hard, but still. I feel especially bad for their poor mother, who now has two crying children to contend with.

I start to loosen my fist, but now that the surge of cosmic power has rushed through me, it’s like my antenna has been recalibrated. I’m newly aware of the people around me and their less-than-exemplary behavior.

A few seconds later, a college-aged girl cuts in line at the shaved ice stand. Within seconds of taking her first bite, a swarm of black flies lands on the cone, attracted to the syrupy sweetness. When she tries to shake them off in disgust, she sends most of her treat toppling to the ground.

Then I see a middle-aged man taking one of the blue flyers from Jude. But as soon as my brother turns away, the man makes a face, scrunches up the paper, and tosses it over his shoulder. It gets caught in the breeze and bounces along the sand a few times before getting caught against someone’s cooler.

Annoyance roars inside my chest. That paper is advertising for a beach cleanup, you inconsiderate jerk!

Both fists tighten this time.

From nowhere, a toddler appears, waddling toward the man in nothing but a diaper and a pink bow in her wispy hair. The child pauses and looks up at the man, a perplexed look on her face. He tries to step around her, at which point, she bends over at the waist and pukes on his sandaled feet.

He’s wearing flip-flops, so there is a lot of barefoot contact.

He cries out in revulsion. The girl’s mom appears, apologizing profusely … but the damage is done.

I’m laughing and wincing at the same time.

All the while, Jude remains oblivious, making his way through the crowd, his back to me and the litterbug. With a satisfied smirk, I start making my way toward the piece of crumpled paper that’s been tossed away from the cooler and is bouncing around like a tumbleweed between the rows of beach towels.

There are people gathered all around, but if anyone’s noticed the piece of garbage in their midst, none of them have bothered to pick it up. It’s a little thing, maybe, but I can’t help feeling exasperated at their laziness. It would take all of five seconds to pick it up. There are garbage cans positioned every thirty feet along the boardwalk!

I stomp after the paper, even though the wind keeps kicking it out farther and farther from me. I’m finally starting to close in on it when a long-armed grabber appears out of nowhere and clamps around the crumpled flyer.

I pause and meet the eye of a woman. She looks to be about my grandma’s age—somewhere between seventy and a hundred. It’s impossible to tell. She’s holding a metal detector in her left hand, the grabber in the right. A belt is slung around her hips with implements of beachcombing and garbage collecting. Rubber gloves, a small trowel, a reusable water bottle, a large garbage sack.

She sees me and winks. “I’ve got this one,” she says, depositing the crumpled blue paper into her garbage sack.

Then she turns and starts making her way down the beach, away from the crowd and the festival, her metal detector swinging meticulously from side to side. She stops every now and then to grab another piece of litter and stuff it into the bag.

I lean back on my heels, bewildered to realize how rare and unexpected a sight that was. To witness someone doing a good deed—not for glory, not for a reward—but just because it’s the right thing to do.

And yeah, I know that picking up a bit of garbage is a small thing. Perhaps most people would even think of it as inconsequential.

But that one act leaves me feeling uplifted and encouraged, especially when it seems that lately all I’ve seen are strangers being rude and inconsiderate.

A thought occurs to me.

I look down at my hands, lips twisted in thought. What if.

I mean, Quint did find that twenty-dollar bill when I tried to punish him for being so late. I didn’t know about the sea otter … but the universe did.

So maybe …

I look back up at the woman. She’s picking up a beer can. She flips it over, emptying the last dregs of beer into the sand, before tossing it into the sack.

This time, instead of clenching my hand into an irritated fist, I inhale deeply and snap my fingers.

The second that I do, I hear a beep.

It’s far away, but I know it came from the woman’s metal detector.

She pauses and swings the detector back and forth over the spot. It beeps again and again as she homes in on the exact location of whatever treasure is buried there. My heart is racing, but she hardly even looks curious. I wonder how often a “treasure” turns out to be nothing more than a buried bottle cap, an aluminum can, a penny.

I inch closer, biting my lower lip. Because I know. I know it’s not junk. I know it’s not just a penny.

The woman crouches and unhooks a small hand shovel from her belt. She begins to dig.

It takes longer than I think it will. She’s moving slowly, shuffling a bit of sand at a time, occasionally scanning the detector over the pile to make sure she hasn’t missed whatever is buried there.

Then—she goes still.

Her fingers reach into the sand and pick up something. It’s small and shiny and, for a second, disappointment surges through me. Maybe it is just a penny.

But then it glints in the sunshine and I gasp.

A smile stretches over my face.

I think it’s an earring.

I think it has a diamond in it.

“Ever done metal detecting before?”

I scream. Literally, a complete and total over-reactionary scream comes out of my mouth as I spin around and whap Quint in the shoulder.

“Ow!” he says, stumbling back a step and rubbing where I hit him.

“You scared the daylights out of me!” I say, pressing my hand against my chest. “Why are you standing so close?”

He looks at me like I just asked him why fish swim in the sea. “I was coming to see how things are going. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare the daylights out of you.”

He’s teasing me, but my heart rate hasn’t calmed down yet and I don’t have the willpower to be annoyed. Or amused.

“Did you … see anything?” I say, suddenly self-conscious. What must it have looked like? The snap of my fingers, watching the beachcomber like some obsessed stalker. And then for her to find something so precious …

But Quint only looks confused. “I saw a gyro stand back there, and now I’m starving.” He peers at me, but must be disappointed when I don’t even crack a smile. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Nothing! Nothing.”

His eyebrows rise. Funny how his eyebrows almost seem to speak a language all their own—and I think I’m beginning to understand them. “Two nothings always means something.”

“Oh, you’re a psychologist now?” I glance over my shoulder. The beachcomber has started walking away, still swinging her detector back and forth with as much patience as before. I wonder if I’m imagining the extra bounce in her step.

“So?” Quint says.

“So, what?”

“So, have you ever been metal detecting before?”

“Oh. No.” I tuck a stray hair behind my ear. I’m giddy with the new realization that my power works both ways. I probably should have figured it out sooner, with Quint and that money he found, but I was too irritated then.

But now—oh, the possibilities—I can punish and I can reward. It makes perfect sense. I’d just been so eager to right wrongs before that I hadn’t considered how karma flows in two directions.

I realize that Quint is staring at me and a flush spreads down my neck. I turn my attention to him, trying to concentrate, trying to act normal. “What were we talking about?”

“Metal detecting,” he deadpans.

“Right. Yeah. I don’t know. It seems like it would take up a lot of time just to unearth a lot of junk.”

He shrugs. “I have an uncle who used to be really into it. I went with him a few times. It was kind of fun. You never know what you’ll find. It is mostly a lot of junk, but on one trip I found a watch. Got forty bucks for it at the pawnshop.”

“Wow. Score.”

“I’m not gonna lie. I felt like I’d dug up Blackbeard’s treasure.”

“Do you ever think that you might be too easy to please?”

His eyes spark with a challenge. “Do you ever think you might be too hard to please?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t like wasted time. You know that.”

“One man’s wasted time is another man’s”—Quint seems to contemplate how to end this aphorism for a long time—“hobby, I guess.”

I grin. “You could embroider that on a pillow.”

“Har-har. I just think it’s okay to be excited when something good and unexpected comes your way. Even if it is just a watch. Heck, even if it’s just a penny. It’s still, like … a good omen. Right?”

I want to make fun of him, and maybe in the past I would have. It sounds like something Ari’s abuela, who I’ve learned is very superstitious, would say. Good omens, the language of the universe, the power of intuition.

Except, I sort of have to believe in that stuff now, don’t I?

I wonder what the beachcomber thought when she dug up that earring. Does she believe it’s nothing more than a happy coincidence, or does she know, on some deeper level, that it was a reward, a cosmic thank-you for helping keep this beach clean?