“What do you think they’re saying?” Brooke asked her big sister as she pushed a long, dark, sweaty tendril of hair out of her eye.
“How would I know?” eleven-year-old Shelly answered. “I think it’s called Morse code. I read about it in a Nancy Drew book once. You can do it with lights or sounds. Mostly I think it’s to get help when something’s wrong and you don’t have a telephone or anything.”
They watched in silence as the two lights blinked--two quick blinks by the first light, then one longer blink by the second. The lights moved around, and again one blinked quickly followed by two blinks from the other.
“They must be talking to each other,” Brooke said. “It’s too weird. Do you think Daddy would know? I bet he’s still awake.”
“I don’t know.” Shelly picked up her glass of strawberry KoolAid and took a big drink, never taking her eyes off the blinks, trying to determine if there was any kind of pattern. She readjusted her legs on the wooden picnic bench and slapped at a mosquito that buzzed her ear. “We’re gonna have to go in soon. It’s getting late and the mosquitos are getting bad.”
“I’m tired anyway.” Brooke had laid her head on the table and was obviously becoming bored. “Think we can look at them in bed?”
The back screen door opened and their mother called out, “Girls, it’s time to come in. Let those fireflies out of the jars. You don’t want them to die, do you?”
