Chapter 2

It was a beautiful day in May last year, Lake Superior had a color of Atlantic. We just got back from a long trip in Maine, and our heads were filled with folk tales about underwater palaces and talking beavers. Well, we did dive into huge beaver wetlands and saw their little dams, but we definitely didn't see "palaces". Oh, and of course, who would believe beavers can talk? Come on, we are no experts, but at least we are biologists!

I admit we were a little bit frustrated. First we thought there could be plenty to explore in Maine. We spent half of our funding money on this trip, and we got no valueble information. Summer was a month away, and it was time to get serious and publish our paper.

'Hey...wanna come to my house and have a cup of tea?' Emilly suggestted wearily. Some college Freshmen were playing frisbee on the beach while we were staring at nowhere. We nodded without any further discussion. ('That was the first time we agreed something without arguments!' Katie pointed out happily on the way to Emily's.) I was pretty sure the truth was no one wanted to mention our research project.

Emily lived in a tiny house with three other roommates, and they were all spending the semester in Spain taking a few classes together. So Emily had the house to herself all semester. She always complained that a great biologist like her deserves a better place to 'continue her way to Nobel Prize'. But honestly we all knew it was a bad joke. I personally had a very limited vision seeing our project going anywhere. It was 3 O'clock in the afternoon, and the house already had a long, skinny shadow on the deserted lawn. I yawned. 'You should stop doing thhhaaat...' Mandy yawned and gave me an it's-all-your-fault look. I shrudded and walked in after everyone else.

There were an impressive pile of mails on the tea table.

'Looks like we have to trash the mails first!' Said Emily, hugging all the envelopes and magazines to the green recycle bin outside.

'Wait, you just dropped something!' Jenna, the quietest among us, spoke.

We turned our heads down and saw a brown, square postcard lying on Emily's rotten wooden floor.