Mum and Da bought a tiny instrument with five strings. But in the morning after their second night of sleeping there, I go to the store and find them gone, their pale instrument left on a table of shirts.

So they left, and they forgot it. I put it in the back room of the store before Ange comes over and opens the store and a customer finds it, asking to buy it.

It's not terrible they forgot it, though--Ange can take it up to the surface the next time he goes for supplies. Unless our parents meant to leave it here, like a secret gift. How are we supposed to tell though?

Never mind, Ange can figure that out, not me.

Even though the store's not open yet, I keep checking the sign on the door, I keep checking the deadbolt to make sure. And whenever I go through the middle door out of the back room, my stomach knots up like someone's going to be waiting at the checkout counter expecting to buy something.

The store's not open, I tell myself, carrying boxes of shirts and cloth and hats and bowls out into the aisles. My stomach keeps not believing it, over and over I check the "closed" sign facing into the street, the door's deadbolt.

The torn up price tag roll still lies at the bottom of Wrass's figurine box, and I don't know what to do with it. Throw it away in the trash at the checkout counter, and Parro or Ange might notice it, same for the trash in our kitchen. I could wait until I go through the whole rest of the price tag roll, but that'll take months probably--Wrass's figurine box will get empty, it'll either get sold or re-used to bring more supplies from the surface; why does Da keep making new boxes anyway, why don't we just re-use all the same ones?

Though we wouldn't have a box maze if he didn't keep making new ones.

I don't know what to do with the price tag roll, maybe I'll stuff it at the bottom of a different box, maybe...

I could go keep it in the cave.

I could take Easel for a visit to the cave.

I could take that bottle of orange headache tablets Parro bought at the shopping center down to the cave, for memory's sake, even though the single headache tablet I had made me so numb to the headache pain it also made me numb to about everything--vibrations, my fingers, Parro poking my shoulder to drag me back to the musical instrument store and...whatever happened with our day after that, that faded into a prickly haze.

Except I do remember that Mum and Da bought a tiny handheld instrument with five strings. I think you hold it vertically with one hand so you can pull the strings sideways with your other hand, but if someone played it yesterday, I don't remember.

Or maybe, I can hide the price tag roll in my fist, and swim back home, and stuff the price tag roll inside the orange glass bottle on my dresser, and throw the whole thing away.

Ange materializes through the box maze, I jump, act like I was just taking the box on the shelf in front of me out into the store. I get through the middle door and my stomach knots up, and my heart sinks too because of course the box right in front of me was the box of Wrass's figurines, the few we haven't sold yet, wooden bases covering up the yellow pencil conversation.

Ange comes out the door after me, waves, paddles to the front door to open it. I slink back through the middle door and slide the box back, grab a box of Da's wooden spoons from below it and return to the store to stock the shelves.

Mum and Da slept in the back corner, they cleared out some long shelves of mini wooden globes (and piled them on a shelf across the aisle, covered with mini bowls) and turned the shelves into bunk beds with the blankets they borrowed from us. I leave my box on the floor, and stack the wooden globes back on the shelves. I carry the borrowed blankets back to the back room and set them beside the five-stringed instrument, then go back to the box of wooden spoons.

Mum and Da left this morning without saying goodbye, they didn't come to the house and wake us all up, or maybe they did but the headache tablet kept me all hazy and I don't remember it.

Mum and Da left, maybe they said goodbye last night before we all fell asleep but I don't remember it either and they probably said it out loud anyway and now I'm cleaning up the corner of the store after them, leaving their musical instrument in our back room.

I don't think I miss that they're gone. But maybe a little bit?

***

During lunch, when Parro and Ange are both working behind the checkout counter, I take down Wrass's box of figurines from the shelf. Skin tingling like one or both of them is going to appear through the door at any moment, I dig out the ripped-off sheet of the price tag roll, crumple it in my fist, and slide the box back onto the shelf.

I hurry out through the box maze, swim up the hill over the stores and houses to our house, I eat a handful of fried fish sides in the kitchen, then grab Easel and the orange bottle from my room and I go out into the open hillside, down to the cave.

I pry the rock free, quickly, the bottle and the paper bobbing past my head, Easel sinking to my feet. I collect everything in my arms again before a current seizes them and I paddle inside, the deep vibrations of the ocean blanketed to nothing within the stone walls.

Hello, Finzee and Fluorescent, Pinky and Popper, Voyage and Yewel. Hello Arbincu.

The bottle and paper go in the far corner, Easel goes by Finzee so they can stare into each other's black glimmering eyes.

I pick up two scallop shells from the floor, change them out for two cone shells, white with brown-orange speckles. The more-magenta shells I switch out for two urchin spines; I change the auger for the third auger plus the lone cowrie; I switch the abalone for two chunks of coral. My fingers arrange them into a zig-zag line diagonally across the cave, from Finzee's feet to the other side of the cave entrance.

The name for the second pink doll (beside Arbincu) comes out of nowhere, Delica, like Delicate without the -te. I sign the letters in my hand, then I sign the motion for "delicate" but cut my fingers short; I like the letters signing better. The third pink doll pretends to wave at me, but this name doesn't come. Nothing for the triangle eyes or the single pair of floppy fins on the arms.

I grab the orange bottle, the scrap of price tag roll. Then I hover, paddling in a circle. The shelf puttied to the ceiling is for the fifteen shells not decorating the floor--for those shells, nothing else. Neither the bottle nor paper will sit contently on the floor, they'll bob and float around.

I stick the paper under Yewel, but she doesn't like that, doesn't like the waxy paper to sit on. Taking it back, I nibble my lip at the line of kelp dolls, but every one of them agrees with Yewel, they want to sit on the rocks, not a waxy paper. Even Voyage--who likes to try new things--doesn't want to.

I should've brought another box, to putty to the ceiling for the bottle and paper to go into.

Except my brain squirms at the idea of a second cubby on the ceiling, brand new, startling me with its presence each time I come here.

I only got used to the first cubby here because I put it here right after I found the cave. A second cubby would be wrong; the cave how it feels with only one cubby works perfectly.

Except I have a bottle and a paper I don't know where else to put. The bottle won't fit inside any of the shells on the floor. The paper will fall out of any of the ones big enough to hold it.

I shudder my arms, shoulders; quiver my back fins.

This was a bad idea, the paper doesn't belong in this cave.

Possibly I should've asked Easel's opinion, since he didn't belong in this cave either when I thought he did; he might've known this was a bad idea.

Maybe I can wait until the kitchen trash is nearly full, then I can stuff the yellow pencil conversation to the bottom, and volunteer to take the trash up the street for the trash collectors.

And the orange bottle clearly doesn't belong here either, with kelp dolls and shells. It clashes; too bright, too glassy. Maybe I should stuff the bottle to the bottom of the trash too and take it out; taking one tablet made one whole day disappear into a haze so it terrifies me to take any more, even with another headache.

So. I cling to the bottle and paper in my fists, pick up Easel in the curve of my elbow. I say goodbye to Fluorescent, Finzee. Goodbye, Pinky, Popper. Goodbye, Yewel and Voyage. Goodbye, Arbincu and Delica.

I swim out of the cave, let go of my paper and bottle and Easel, slide the rock with one crack into the entrance, cover most of it with mud. Then I scoop up Easel from the ground and swim after the bobbing bottle and paper, curling them into one hand, and I go home.