The Secrets of Lake Road (2 page)

“What are you looking at?” Johnny asked.

“Nothing much,” she said, and approached the steps. She started up on nervous legs, taking her time not to trip or bump into Johnny or his friends. Two girls leaned away as she stepped toward them. She reached for the railing to steady herself, feeling self-conscious, like a little kid, the way she felt whenever she walked by Johnny’s best friend, Chris. He was one of the few locals who lived at the lake all year long. Something about his slightly dirty hair and his wide smile made him look as though he was up to no good. The thought gave her a sort of thrill that made her all the more uncomfortable. He was wearing swim trunks, his T-shirt draped over his leg. His skin was bronze and his stomach cut. His one eye was two different colors, half green and half brown, the other solid brown. She couldn’t explain how, but his two-toned eye made him that much cuter. Once, she had overheard Mrs. Nester at the Country Store tell a customer his eye made him look as though he were off-kilter, and maybe that attributed to his reckless behavior.

“Something ain’t right in there,” she had said, and pointed to her head.

Caroline didn’t believe this to be true. If anyone bothered to ask her, she would say there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. He was perfect.

Chris grabbed her ankle as she passed. He flashed a playful smile and stared at her with his captivating eye.

“Don’t let the snappers get you,” he said.

Her brother laughed and flicked his cigarette butt over her shoulder. For a split second she thought about telling her brother to screw off. Two summers ago he nearly had his toe chomped off by a snapper and he about cried.
Do you remember that, tough guy?
But of course, she wasn’t going to get into a sibling battle in front of his friends, in front of Chris, a battle she was sure to lose.

Chris released her ankle and her skin seemed to melt where his hand had been. She hurried up the rest of the steps and raced inside. The building was dark without the bright sunlight, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

“Caroline!” Megan called, waving her arms wildly. “Get over here.”

Megan was standing in front of the old jukebox, and as soon as Caroline was within reach, Megan threw her arms around her and proceeded to jump up and down, jiggling them both. She let Megan twirl her in circles, feeling totally ridiculous and unaccustomed to so much silly exuberance.

When Megan finally released her, she gave Caroline the once-over. She returned the favor and noticed Megan’s heavy blue eye shadow, pink shiny lips, and the two new bumps under her T-shirt. As if the pink bike wasn’t enough, Megan had gone all girly on her in the last year.

Megan started talking fast, in a rush to catch up on everything she had missed since their last text messages, which turned out not to be much, even when you considered how short and few the texts tended to be. Mostly, Megan babbled about some boy, Ryan, she was crushing on. Caroline told her about playing softball, her struggling grades, and how she was glad summer was finally here.

“I hope there are some cute boys this summer,” Megan said. “Maybe someone new. You do want a boyfriend, don’t you?”

“No,” Caroline said much louder than she had intended.

Megan shrugged. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do.”

“What for?”

“Duh.” Megan rolled her blue-lidded eyes and turned toward the jukebox. “I don’t want to be the only one starting seventh grade who hasn’t been kissed.” She turned back toward Caroline. “And I mean properly kissed, tongue and all.”

Caroline must’ve made a face as though she had tasted something awful, because Megan’s eyes opened wide and she said, “It’s not gross.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s not.” Megan looked back at the old jukebox. The outside world had moved on in terms of technology, but the lake and its community refused to succumb to any pressure to change. It was the sense of familiarity, of sameness, that Caroline found comforting year after year. She wished she could say the same about her friend.

They were both silent. The air between them felt awkward and strange. She didn’t want to think about the things Megan talked about, about kissing boys, but her mind jumped to Chris anyway. Her ankle tingled where his hand had touched her, the skin still warm. She bent down and swiped the feeling away, pretending she had an itch. She cleared her throat. She wanted to say something to make the queerness in her stomach and the weirdness between her and Megan go away.

“Come on,” she said, and tugged Megan’s arm, thinking if she could get her to jump into the lake, the water would take care of everything else. For one, it would wash the paint off Megan’s face and she would look more like the Megan from summers past. Two, it would rinse away the heat from Chris’s hand on her skin—and whatever feeling that came with it, the one that squirmed in her stomach, would drown.

*   *   *

Caroline continued to pull Megan through the Pavilion and out onto the beach. No one stopped them to check for swim passes. No one cared. Caroline tossed her baseball cap, kicked off her sneakers, and stripped from her shirt and shorts to the one-piece bathing suit she wore underneath. The sand was hot to the touch. The girls hurried past the chain-link fence with the sign
SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
,
and stepped onto the pier.

Caroline looked around for anyone she might recognize, and spotted Adam. His family was one of the regulars who rented a cabin on the lakefront. He was a few years younger, at ten years old. His body was thin and birdlike. His summer buzz cut made his ears appear too big for his head. On either side of Adam were the Needlemeyer twins, Ted and Ned. They were one year younger than she and Megan, and as they walked toward them, she could’ve sworn she heard Megan call the boys
babies
under her breath.

The twins ribbed Adam, bumping him in the shoulder. Adam shoved Ted back. “I’ll do it when I’m ready,” he said.

“Do what?” Caroline asked. Behind Adam was the high dive, and beside it the low dive and the one most used.

“We dared him to jump off the high dive and touch bottom, but he’s too scared. Chicken.
Bwack, bwack, bwack
.” Ted flapped his arms.

“Am not.” Adam shoved him again, which only coaxed Ted into flapping his arms faster.

“Let’s see you do it,” Megan said to Ted.

“What? You don’t think I can?” Ted folded his arms, puffing up his chest.

“I think you’re just as scared as Adam,” Megan said, and lay down on the pier, positioning her body under the sun’s rays.

“I’m not scared,” Adam said. His face paled, and he looked as though he might cry.

Caroline stepped in front of him to shield him from the others. She didn’t want Adam to cry, nor did she want them to see if he did.

“Go on,” Ned said to his brother. “Let’s see you do it. I
dare
you.”

Ted glared at his twin and then turned toward the ladder and started to climb. For as long as Caroline had known them, neither brother would ever back down from a dare. It was a brother thing, or maybe a twin thing, always trying to one up each other.

Caroline watched Ted ascend. She had to shield her eyes from the sun when he reached the very top. “This is stupid,” she said.

Ted walked to the end of the board. His brother called up to him, “Pencil jump.”

He dropped his head as though he were hoping no one would suggest how he had to do it, but of course his brother did. “Fine,” he said, and hesitated, head bowed, staring at the water below.

“Bwack, bwack, bwack.”
Ned flapped his arms.

Ted wavered. Ned kept squawking, taunting him. Until he jumped.

Caroline pulled in a sharp breath. At the last second Ted spread his arms wide to prevent a deep plunge. He hit the water with a slap.

“Chicken!” Ned called when Ted surfaced. Then he turned to Adam and said, “Your turn.”

Caroline looked at Adam, whose face was no longer pale, but more ash gray. “Don’t try,” she said to him. “It doesn’t mean you’re a chicken. It means you’re smart.” She climbed the ladder to the low dive, but everyone knew you could never touch bottom jumping off the low dive. The lake was just too deep. Still she said, “Watch this, Adam,” and pencil jumped clean into the water. At first it was cool and refreshing, but the farther she sank, the temperature dropped to near freezing. And although she kept her eyes closed, the darkness of what lay below deepened. She kicked her long legs wildly, her arms paddling at a frantic pace, and propelled to the surface, relieved when her head broke above water and her lungs breathed in air.

“Doesn’t count,” Ned said when Caroline climbed the ladder and stepped back onto the pier. “You have to do it from the
high
dive.”

Caroline made a face at him. Ned resumed flapping his arms like a chicken. A little girl poked her head out from behind him. She was maybe six or seven years old, with blond braids and bright blue eyes. Her bathing suit was yellow with pink polka dots. She must be new to the lake. Caroline had never seen her before.

“Hi,” Caroline said, pushing Ned out of the way. “Is this your first summer here?”

The little girl smiled and nodded.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Sara,” she said.

“I’m Caroline.” She pointed to Megan, who hadn’t moved from sunning herself. “That’s my friend Megan. And the boys, well…” The boys had stopped teasing one another, and they jumped off the pier, splashing around in the lower end of the lake. “Don’t listen to them. They’re not very smart.”

Sara’s eyes widened. “Why not?”

“Because they’re not. They were just being stupid.”

Sara twisted her mouth to one side as though she was considering what Caroline was telling her.

A woman wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat was standing on the beach waving her arms at them. Caroline waved back. “Is that your mom?”

The little girl nodded.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Sara’s mother called.

“Okay,” Caroline called back.

“What are they up to now?” Megan interrupted, pointing to Adam and the twins. Adam was holding something in his hand. The twins were hunched over him, looking at whatever he had found.

Megan stood. “I’m going to find out what it is.”

Caroline hesitated, wanting to follow her. But Sara’s mother had turned her back, and Caroline couldn’t just walk away from the little girl.

“So,” Caroline said, looking over her shoulder at her friends. The circle they made around Adam tightened while she tried to think of something to say to Sara. “Do you like to swim?”

Sara smiled and nodded again.

“Me too.” Caroline looked toward the beach, where Sara’s mother was struggling with a beach umbrella. “Did you feed the ducks yet?”

“No,” Sara said.

Caroline used to love feeding the ducks when she was Sara’s age, although she couldn’t remember the reason why she had thought it was so fun. “Ask your mom if you can feed them.” She glanced at her friends again. The twins were holding whatever Adam had found, and Adam looked upset. “The ducks like it when you do,” she said absently, wondering what the twins were teasing Adam about this time.

Megan motioned to Caroline. “Come here!” she called.

But Sara’s mother still had her back turned as she continued to fight with the beach umbrella. Caroline glanced at her friends again. Adam’s face was flushed.

“Did you ever touch bottom?” Sara asked.

“What? No,” Caroline said. “Never.”

Megan continued waving her over. Caroline shifted her weight from her right foot to her left, gazing at her friends. Sara stared at the diving boards.

Finally Caroline couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to know what her friends were up to. Sara’s mother had said she would only be a minute. She reasoned Sara wouldn’t be left alone for long. She bent down so she was at eye level with the little girl. “Wait for your mom, okay?”

Sara nodded.

“Okay,” she said, and in the next moment she was racing down the pier. “And remember,” she called, “the boys were just being stupid!”

CHAPTER TWO

Jo fooled herself into thinking she didn’t know the reason she had hopped into the old Chevy and sped down the dirt road away from the cabin. She rolled down the window. A warm breeze blew her long hair from her shoulders. “Three Times a Lady” by the Commodores crackled on the radio. You couldn’t get a decent radio station within twenty miles of the lake. With the Pocono Mountains surrounding you on every side, reception was scant, and the outside world as distant as outer space.

She was stuck in a time warp, and the year was 1978, when the lake was at its finest if you listened to the old-timers tell it. Vacationers were attracted to the sense of familiarity, simplicity, sameness. It was the lake’s charm and the reason you came back year after year. The place and the people and their desire to cling to the good old days were what pissed Jo off. There wasn’t anything good about the good old days, at least none that she could remember.

Still, the song wasn’t bad, and for awhile she sang along as she drove around the colony and fought the urge to turn onto the highway and leave the blasted lake and everything that came with it behind.

Tired and worn from years of battling with Gram, her mother—whom she had stopped calling Mom when Johnny had come along—she sunk farther into the driver’s seat. Her right hand lay limp in her lap while she loosely gripped the steering wheel with her left. Everything caught her eye as she passed by, the cabins and screened-in porches, the fishing poles and tackle boxes left outside front doors, the maple tree she had stood under the first time she had kissed Billy.

She turned the corner and looped back around. The smell of sun baked earth filled her head, and the dampness from the lake clung to her skin. The sights, the smells, the feel—all of it reminded her of Billy.

If only Gram knew what she was asking, demanding she stick around for a couple of days, but then again maybe she did know and she just didn’t care. “You can’t change the past,” Gram had said. “All you can do is live with it.”