eyes met her gaze.
“Like.. a-bologna?”
“Not quite,” she laughed. She reached into the mesh bag, pulling
out a wet shell. “This is abalone. It’s a little snail that lives in this shell,”
she said, pointing to the opening where the tentacles now glistened with
droplets of water. “See?”
The boy moved closer. “It lives in there?” he asked.
“Yep. It clings to rocks on the bottom of the ocean.”
“I bet it’s not comfy to live in a shell,” he said, cocking his head
every which way to try to see into the depths of the shell. “I caught sand
crabs earlier with my brother,” he told her, pointing to a slightly older boy
who was digging in the sand closer to the water. “But I didn’t keep them
like yours ‘cause they can’t live out of the sand.”
“Sand crabs are pretty neat,” Riley rep