I was not catching anything, but I did not mind too much. I had wanted to win a prize for biggest fish or most beautiful fish, but that was not really important. After all, it was a beautiful day. The sun was flashing off the water. Tiny waves lapped the sides of our boat. Hannie and Nancy were calling jokes to Keegan and me. I drank an icy cold root beer. It was a gigundoly great day.
The next person on our boat to catch a fish was David Michael. He caught a bluegill big enough to keep. Into the ice chest it went. After that everyone started catching fish. Daddy, Keegan, David Michael, Kristy, Mary Anne — they all caught fish. Our ice chest was full of trout and bluegills and even some bass. I was the only person who was not catching fish. But maybe it was because I was talking and laughing and snapping pictures and taking a poll to see who was using what bait. I was starting to think that maybe fish are vegetarians, but they had been eating Daddy’s worms, so …
Keegan was telling me another knock-knock joke when I realized my pole was being tugged gently. I sat up quickly and clutched my pole tighter. I pulled harder and harder.
“I have something!” I yelled. “I have something!”
Mary Anne got the net ready, but I could not pull up the fish. “It is too heavy!” I said to Daddy. “Help!”
Daddy held my pole too and helped me pull.
“Gee, this fish must be really big,” said Daddy. He pulled even harder.
“Do not let him get away,” I said. I held on to the pole and pulled as hard as I could. Suddenly my line popped out of the water. At the end of the line was a big brown … baseball glove.
I stared at it. It hung from my line, dripping water. It was a yucky old baseball glove that looked as if it had been sitting on the bottom of the lake since before baseball was invented.
David Michael was the first one to laugh. He pointed at it and doubled over.
“I am sorry, Karen,” said Daddy. “I thought you had a really big fish.” I could tell he was trying not to smile. For a moment I felt very disappointed. I had been practicing fishing all week, and I had not caught a single fish. Now everyone around me was catching fish (even Hannie and Nancy). My own little sister had caught a fish with a pretend fishing pole. And what had I caught?
A baseball glove.
I could not help it. I started at the dripping glove, and saw that everyone was trying not to laugh (except David Michael). Then I started to laugh too. It seemed so funny. It was the funniest thing that had ever happened to me. I could not stop laughing.
So everyone else gave in. Daddy laughed until tears ran out of his eyes. I opened the ice chest and put my glove in on top of everyone’s fish. Mary Anne and Kristy began laughing so hard they had to sit down. Keegan could not even hold his fishing pole. I grabbed my camera and took pictures of everyone. Daddy borrowed my camera and took a picture of me holding up my glove.
It was a great fishing trip.
Good-bye, Shadow Lake
Guess what. I won a prize in the Shadow Lake fishing contest after all. I won the “Most Original Fish” award. Keegan won the “Biggest Fish Caught by Someone Twelve or Under” award. I was gigundoly glad he had won something. He looked completely happy by the end of the day.
“I am the only person who caught any bass,” said Daddy smugly as we walked back to the house. He put an arm around me. “It is because I was using Karen’s special worms.”
That made me feel good.
That night the grown-ups cleaned the fish and we had a great fish cookout. Besides delicious fish, we ate corn on the cob, fresh green beans, baked potatoes, corn bread, and peach cobbler. Yum, yum, yum. I asked for seconds of everything.
* * *
The very next morning it was time to pack up and go back to Stoneybrook. We were sad to leave, but our mommies and daddies had to get back to work. First Nannie took off in the Pink Clinker with Emily Michelle and Elizabeth and Kristy and Mary Anne. Then Mr. and Mrs. Dawes drove off with Danny. Then Charlie drove away in Elizabeth’s car with Sam and David Michael and Linny Papadakis. Then the Papadakises left with Sari. Finally it was just the Three Musketeers and Daddy.
We were loading the last suitcase into the car when Keegan came running down our driveway.
“I just wanted to say good-bye,” he said, panting. “And to thank you again for the fishing contest.”
“I am so glad we got to see you this week,” I said.
“Me too,” said Hannie.
“Me three,” said Nancy. My friends liked Keegan, which made me happy.
“We will write and tell you the next time we are coming to Shadow Lake,” I said. “Then maybe you and your mom can come then too.”
“Yeah,” said Keegan.
Hannie and Nancy got in the car. I leaned over to Keegan.
“Try not to worry about your parents too much,” I whispered. “Getting a divorce is very hard. But your mommy and daddy still both love you. Do not forget that.”
“Okay,” whispered Keegan. “Thank you.”
Then I hopped in the car, fastened my seat belt, and we were on our way home.
* * *
“Can you come over?” I said into the phone. “Nancy is on her way. I just got all my pictures back from Shadow Lake!”
“I will be right over,” said Hannie.
One whole week had gone by since our fishing trip to Shadow Lake. Usually Hannie and Nancy and I played together every day. Not always, though. Sometimes even best friends need a little break.
But today I had five packages of photographs to show them. I had not even opened them myself yet. I had a brand-new photo album all ready to put pictures in.
Ten minutes later the Three Musketeers were sitting in my room at the big house.
“I have to choose a stack of pictures to send to Mommy and Andrew and Seth,” I said. “And a stack for the album. And some for Keegan and —”
“Open them up!” said Hannie. “Let us see.”
My pictures were mostly wonderful. A few were bad, because I had cut off someone’s head or feet. A couple were too dark or were out of focus. But there were a lot of great ones.
“Oh my gosh, here we are in our monster-watching shelter,” said Nancy. “In the rain!”
“Here we are making clover chains on the lawn,” said Hannie.
“This is the one that Kristy took of us,” I said. “I will have two copies made, one for each of you.”
“Thank you,” said Hannie. “Oh, look, this is the fishing contest. Here is the one your daddy took, of your most original fish.”
Hannie and Nancy started laughing all over again. The picture showed me standing proudly in Daddy’s boat. I was holding up my line, with the soggy glove attached. It was a really funny picture.
“What is that, in the water?” I asked when I had stopped laughing. I pointed to a dark spot in the background of the picture. “Is that the shadow of a cloud?”
Hannie peered at it. “No.” She shook her head. “It is too small for a cloud.”
“Maybe it is the shadow of a plane overhead,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Hannie. “I guess it could be.”
Nancy’s eyes grew big. “You guys,” she said. “Maybe it is not a shadow from above, but a shadow from below.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It is too big. No fish is that —”
I stared at Hannie and Nancy. They stared back at me.
“The Lake Monster!” we all yelled at the same time.
* * *
We showed the picture to everyone we knew. No one could say that it was not the Lake Monster. And no one could think of what else it could be. It was a dark, ripply shadow on the lake, with nothing there to make the shadow. Unless something was under the water.
We mailed a copy of the picture to Keegan right away.
“Next time he can monster-watch in our shelter with us,” said Nancy.
“We will need a bigger shelter,” said Hannie. “A rainproof one.”
“And we will need more film,” I
said.
We started planning our next trip to Shadow Lake.
And you know what? It looked as if I had caught the biggest fish after all! On film!
About the Author
ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.
Copyright © 1998 by Ann M. Martin
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, 1998
e-ISBN 978-1-338-06054-6
Karen's Fishing Trip Page 5