Brett Martin

In which each of your mistakes doesn't narrow your life, but expands it.

In which the worst thing that could possibly happen is being bored, and you can go to sleep on stormy seas and trust that when you wake up, if you're very lucky, you'll be in Utah.

What I'm trying to say is this.

Alex does something I never in a million years would have thought possible.

He makes me think it might be cool to be a teenager again.

There's a story that back in the 1830s, a ship carrying $54,000 in Mexican gold was hijacked by pirates outside Jamaica Bay, and that the treasure was buried somewhere near Ruffle Bar.

On our way back from the island, I tell Alex this, and he listens with great interest.

If he found the treasure he wants to know, could he keep it?

Maybe, I say, if he didn't tell anybody.

To which Alex answers precisely as I know he will, the only way he possibly can.

He says, but what if I told everybody?