She looks up the sky, past the birds flying south and further than the clouds lounging in the cool blue troposphere.  Squinting, she tries to zoom in.  Her glasses are perched on the tip of her freckled nose.  She wants to see outer-space.
“Lindsey, what are looking at?” Jared asks her from the creekbed.  He is using a plastic shovel and an old butter container to look for gold.
“I want to see stars,” Lindsey responds, glancing at Jared for only a moment before returning her watchful gaze to the sky.
Jared laughs at his twin sister and walks over to where she is sitting on the grass.  He sets down his container full of rocks and mud before sitting down and looking at the sky.  He laughs again.
“Lindsey, the stars won’t be out until nighttime!” He smiles and starts to dig into the butter container, throwing unwanted rocks and debris aside.  His careless aim scares away a grasshopper.
“But I know that they’re up there!  Where do they go during the day?” Lindsey turns her attention to Jared’s container of rocks. 
“The sun scares them away,” Jared says matter-of-factly.  He is older than Lindsey by mere minutes, but his older-brother confidence is still strong.
“That’s not right!  What science is there in that?” Lindsey exclaims.  She is sometimes appalled at how Jared simplifies everything, as if she was three instead of eight.
Jared stays silent as he continues to methodically sort through his butter container, unaware that his sister is fuming beside him.  She scowls at the growing pile of unwanted rubble that Jared is building.  They had started learning about the gold rush in school last week, and ever since Jared has been panning away without any luck.
Their mother said that if he found something, he’d get to take the whole family out for dinner.  Lindsey’s face softens.
“I thought gold was only in California,” she says quietly.  She carefully plucks a small rock from Jared’s container, and after a short examination she throws it the side.
“Well, some might have ended up in New York!” Jared replies, smiling yet again.
“What restaurant will you take us to when you find some?” Lindsey asks.
“Oh, I don’t know.  What’s your favorite restaurant?” Jared’s container is almost empty.
Lindsey has to think about that for a moment.  She likes the chicken nuggets at McDonald’s, the pizza at Roma’s is okay, too.  Does the ice cream place across from the school count as a restaurant?  She knows that Jared likes Applebees. 
“I think Applebees is good,” she says.
“Then we’ll go there!  And I’ll bring you, Mom and Dad, Uncle Jim and Aunt Lynn, maybe even grandma!” Jared excitedly dumps out the leftover mud from his container, and goes to refill it with his plastic shovel.
Lindsey looks back up at the sky.  She wants to know where the stars are, and, if Jared is right, why were they are  scared of the sun.  She has a good opinion of the sun, and is thankful that it feeds the animals and the trees and the flowers.  She had just finished her Earth Science unit in school.
“Lindsey!  Come look!” Jared shouts from the creek. 
Startled by Jared’s sudden excitement, Lindsey stumbles up and runs clumsily to the creek bed where her brother stands with cupped hands.  He is smiling ear to ear and Lindsey can’t help but smile herself. 
“What’s in your hands?” Lindsey asks.
“Hold out your hand, it’s a surprise!” Jared says, and like the little sister she is, Lindsey listens.
Jared drops a thumbnail sized piece of metal into her outstretched palm.  Lindsey almost screams when she looks at it.  To young eyes and innocent minds, the star-shaped bronze girl scout pin looks like gold.  Had they known that girl scout troops regularly walked through this nature trail, they might not have been as excited, but as they stood together, eight years old, they knew that they had found a treasure.
“It’s gold!” Lindsey exclaims.
“It’s a star too, just like you were looking for!” Jared says. 
“Jared, is this what happens to stars that are afraid of the sun?” Lindsey asks thoughtfully.
Jared looks at his twin sister and then up into the sky.  He thinks a little bit, imagines even more, and pauses before giving his sister an answer.  When he makes up his mind, he smiles and says, with absolute older-brother certainty: “I think so.”