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I mean, that watch must have been there for”—I tried to do the math in my head—”more than sixty years.”
    â€œSixty-five years,” she said.
    I felt terrible. That watch had been in the jungle since way before my parents were born. Then someone had found it and had traced it back to Jana’s grandmother. Now I had ruined everything.
    â€œMy great-uncle was twenty-five when he died,” Jana said. “That’s why my grandma wanted my brother to have his watch.”
    I didn’t get it.
    â€œWhat’s why?” I said.
    â€œMy brother is in the armed forces. He turned twenty-five this year. He’s in Afghanistan right now. My grandma was on her way to a watch repair place to see if they could clean it up and get it working again.”
    Oh.
    â€œMy dad says my grandma probably doesn’t care about anything else that was in that purse. But she does care about the watch,” Jana said. “He also says that whoever took her purse probably thought the watch was just a piece of junk and probably tossed it into the garbage.” I feltmy cheeks get hot. “He says she’ll never see the watch again, but he hasn’t told her that yet. He doesn’t want to say anything until he knows for sure the police can’t find it or at least find out who stole her purse. He also wants to make sure she’s going to be okay before he gives her the bad news.” Her eyes started to fill with tears again, which made me feel even worse.
    â€œI wish there was some way I could help,” I said.
    â€œIt’s nice of you to say that, Kaz,” she said, wiping away her tears. “But what could you possibly do?”
    It was a good question.
    â€œI have to go,” she said. “I want to see how my grandma is. Have a good weekend.”
    â€œYou too,” I said.

chapter nine
    I was supposed to go straight home after school, but I didn’t. Instead I went back to the alley where Drew and I had ditched the purse. The Dumpster was still there. Or, at least,
a
Dumpster was there. I couldn’t tell if it was the same one. I also couldn’t tell if it had been emptied or not. To find out, I had to drag some crates over and stack them up so that I could climb on top and look inside. The garbage came three-quarters of the way to the top. I didn’t see the purse,but if this was the same Dumpster, a lot of other stuff must have been thrown into it in the past three days.
    I looked around but didn’t see anyone. There were eight or nine doors that opened into the alley, but no windows. I was in the clear.
    I took another look into the Dumpster. There were a lot of green garbage bags in it, but there was no bad smell. I also saw scraps of foam rubber, big chunks of Styrofoam, a broken chair and a big tangle of wire. I didn’t see anything that looked like rotten food or, worse, anything moving, like, say, rats.
    I hauled myself up until I got one leg over the edge of the Dumpster. Then I pulled my other leg up and sat on the edge with my legs dangling down inside. I looked at all the garbage. Maybe the purse was in there, and maybe it wasn’t. There was only one way to find out for sure. I took a deep breath and dropped down into the Dumpster.
    One of my feet landed on a green garbage bag and broke it. Something leaked all overmy sneaker and soaked into my sock. I pulled my foot out. It was covered in goo. At first I thought, what
is
that? what if it’s poison? what if it eats into my foot? what if—? I almost gave up right then. Then I thought about what Jana had told me, and I put my foot down onto another spot.
    I wished I had a pair of gloves, but it was too late to do anything about that. Carefully, in case something sharp was hiding under all the garbage, I began to hunt through the Dumpster. At first I piled stuff on one side as I dug down. But when the pile got too high, things began to fall back onto me. So then I