Lakeside Cottage

by Susan Wiggs

  He stepped outside, and she stood alone in the small cabin. She spied a minimum of personal things lying around. A copy of the Olympic National Park Trail Guide, with certain pages marked. Next to the wood-framed sofa was a Coleman lantern, an extra pair of glasses and a well-thumbed paperback-thriller novel.

  Under that was a glossy magazine of some sort. Knowing she shouldn’t, but unable to stop herself, Kate sauntered over to the table and moved the book aside.

  It wasn’t a magazine but a catalog. “Applicant Information—The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.” She picked it up and flipped it open. There were notes on the inside cover in swift, ballpoint strokes.

  “What are you doing?” JD demanded loudly from the door.

  Startled, Kate let the catalog slip from her fingers. “Snooping?” she said tentatively.

  “I can see that.” He strode across the room to her.

  “Are you a medical student?” she asked, even though he clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. “Nope.”

  “Thinking about applying?”

  “I’m past the age of going to school. Given where I have to start, it’d be a seven-year commitment, minimum. By the time I finished, I’d be nearly forty.”

  “How old will you be in seven years if you don’t go?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to discuss this with you.”

  “Because I’m right and you have no argument.”

  “Because it’s none of your business.”

  She felt cornered. “Look, I—”

  “Here’s your tire pump.” He thrust it at her. “Keep it as long as you want.”

  She took it from him and refused to flinch despite his irritation. “Thank you,” she said yet again, her voice holding a crisp dismissal this time, as though ending the conversation had been her idea.

  He stood aside to let her pass and she did so with her chin slightly elevated. Coming here had been a mistake, of course. Pretty much everything she did when it came to dating and men turned out to be a mistake. She didn’t know why she had expected this one to be different. Or why his rejection stung worse than usual. Maybe it was because the attraction she’d felt was so intense. She couldn’t help it. He was strange and attractive, maybe even a little dangerous. And maybe it was because much as she loved being with Aaron and Callie, there were things she wished she could share with another adult, preferably male—a glass of wine on the porch at sunset, a conversation about her work on the Smithsonian article. It was one of her personal failings that she craved validation. She ought to figure out how to be happy with the way things were.

  And how stupid to let herself get excited over a guy. She was experienced. She ought to know better. It had been ages since she’d dated someone exciting. Of course, in her life, excitement always led to trouble. She ought to know that by now.

  Ten

  “You’re afraid of water, aren’t you, kid?” Callie asked Aaron as they paddled the kayak in tandem toward the footbridge and the Devil’s Punch Bowl, the most popular swimming hole on the lake. The Punch Bowl was surrounded by steep rock faces that plunged all the way down to the bottom of the lake.

  Aaron was glad he sat in front of her in the kayak so he could look straight ahead and not have to face her. They were getting good at paddling the kayak together. They’d been out nearly every day, exploring the rocky, forested edge of the lake for hours each afternoon. At first, his mom made them stay within sight of the house and then gradually, as she saw they knew how to be safe, she let them go anywhere they wanted. “It’s not the water,” he admitted. “I just don’t like getting in over my head.”

  “In my book, that means you’re afraid of water.”

  “So what if I am?” he said.

  “So I tell you to snap out of it,” she said easily. “Believe me, there are worse things in the world than water.”

  “What, like beagles?” Aaron couldn’t help getting in a dig.

  “There’s a reason I’m afraid of dogs,” she said.

  “What’s the reason?”

  The kayak rocked as she shifted in her seat.

  Aaron almost dropped his paddle as he clutched at the sides. “Hey,” he said. “Take it easy.”

  “Don’t have a cow,” she said. “I’m not going to tip us over. I’m trying to show you something. Check this out.”

  Aaron adjusted his grip on the paddle. With an effort, he swiveled around. The thick life vest restricted his movements, but he managed to wedge himself backward to look at her.

  Callie had her leg up on the hull of the kayak. She had rolled up her sweatpants to expose her knee. “This will tell you why dogs scare me.”

  Aaron felt a little seasick as he looked at the thick, shiny red damage. Frankenstein scars tracked across her knee, twisting in all different directions like mountain roads. There were deep dimples on either side of the kneecap.

  “A dog bit you,” he said.

  “Mauled.” She slowly folded down her sweatpants. “The word is mauled. A dog mauled me.”

  Aaron had never heard the term before. Malled. It sounded evil and painful, like shoe shopping with his mother.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I stupidly trusted a dog just because he looked friendly and was wagging his tail. I should’ve kept walking, but no. I had to pet the dumb thing because I thought he was cute. Two seconds later, he practically took my leg off.”

  Aaron didn’t know what to say. He made a picture in his mind of a cute dog latched onto Callie, growling like a monster. “Must’ve hurt.”

  “Like nothing I ever felt before. I needed like a hundred stitches, and then they treated me for toxic shock. So anyway, that’s my reason,” she concluded. “Whenever I see a dog, any dog, I remember that one.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Bandit’s not just any dog. He’s real gentle. He’d never bite anybody.”

  “Tell you what, kid,” she said. “I’ll make friends with Bandit if you’ll swim with me in the lake.”

  His teeth chattered at the very thought of getting in over his head, the water closing over his mouth and nose, his eyeballs. “I can’t.”

  “Fine. I can’t make friends with Bandit, then.”

  He worked the pedals of the kayak, steering it toward the Punch Bowl.

  “Come on, Callie,” he said. “Bandit’s great. He’s my best friend. He’d never hurt a flea.”

  “The lake water doesn’t hurt anything, either, as long as you respect it and learn to be a strong swimmer.”

  “I can’t do it,” he said again.

  “Bummer,” she replied easily, dipping in her paddle. “It would have been fun swimming with you in the lake.”

  “But—”

  “A deal’s a deal,” she said.

  Aaron gritted his teeth. She didn’t understand. No one did. He really really wanted to swim and play in the water like any other kid. He had forced himself to wade out into the shallows clear past his knees. Some nights, he even dreamed about swimming, plunging in, coming up for air, diving back down. In his dreams, he was the best swimmer in the world. And this was the best place in the world to do it.

  “It’s cool of your mom to let us take the kayak out,” Callie said.

  Cool? His mom? Aaron had never thought of her as cool before. “She likes you,” he said. “She trusts you.”

  “Amazing,” Callie murmured.

  On weekends, the swimming hole would be crowded with college kids and teenagers from town, but today was a weekday and they were the only ones out here. The kayak glided silently under the narrow arch of the bridge, the only man-made structure on the whole lake. He leaned back, pressing into his life vest.

  The rock walls rose in steep stair steps, most of them big enough to stand on. Those who were brave would jump off into the cold, crystal water. Aaron tried to imagine it, free-falling and landing in the water, getting sucked down into mystery. He leaned over the edge of the kayak. Seeing the blue depths of the lake gave him a dizzy, shivery feeli
ng.

  “There’s supposed to be a ghost that haunts this place,” he told Callie. “It’s the ghost of a boy who dived off and drowned here.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “They say he was a Makah Indian. He thought if he dived deep enough, he would turn into a fish and live forever. But he didn’t turn into a fish. He became a ghost, and every evening he climbs up the rocks and dives into the water, over and over again.”

  “Really?” she asked in a fake-sounding voice.

  “Really.”

  “Well, guess what, kid? My bullshit detector is going off.”

  Aaron grinned. He liked it when Callie talked like that. It made him feel grown up. “It’s true,” he insisted. “My grandfather said so, and my uncle saw the ghost when he was a boy.”

  “With all due respect to your grandpa, kid, he’s full of shit.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is so. Is that why you’re scared of water? Because you think there’s a ghost in it?” Callie snorted.

  Aaron hesitated, seriously considering her question. Unfortunately, he was afraid of all water, haunted or not, swimming pools, the lake or the ocean. “There’s no reason for me not to like water. I just don’t. Like a cat.”

  “You crack me up, you really do.”

  “It’s not funny. The kid jumped off that high ledge right there.” Aaron pointed it out. “He dived off, only instead of swimming to the surface, he just kept going, straight to the bottom. He never came up, ever. And now, every once in a while, people see his ghost, still jumping off the ledge, year in and year out.”

  Callie chuckled in an annoying way. It was annoying, because he could tell she didn’t believe a word of his story.

  “Kid,” she said, “you’ve seen one too many reruns of Unsolved Mysteries.”

  “Have not,” he said, twisting around in the kayak to glower at her. “I never get to watch TV. I don’t even have a TV or cable.”

  “Not at the lake house,” she conceded. “I’m talking about the city.”

  “Not there, either. My mom thinks it’s bad for me.” Usually Aaron was sheepish about admitting he was forced to live in a TV-free zone, as his mom liked to declare their house. Now that it proved his point, he didn’t mind.

  “Bull. Everybody has a TV.”

  “We don’t. Ask my mom. My friends all think it’s weird, but she refuses to have a TV in the house. Do you think it’s weird, too?”

  “We didn’t have TV either, where I grew up,” Callie said, her voice soft and kind of far away, like she wasn’t even talking to him.

  She never said much about that, not to Aaron. He knew that for some reason they took her away from her mom and made her live with different families. Foster families, they were called.

  Aaron was curious about Foster families, and now he decided it was time to ask her. They paddled around in small circles in the middle of the Punch Bowl. The sunlight shot like lasers straight through the water in wide golden slants, and he could see so far down that it made him woozy with awe. He didn’t look at her when he asked his question.

  “So when you went to live with the Fosters, then did you watch TV?”

  She snorted again, the way she did to show she was feeling sarcastic.

  Aaron was sorry he asked, but it was too late. The words were out, hanging there between them.

  “They’re not named Foster,” she said. “They’re foster families. These are people who take care of kids who can’t live with their real parents.”

  Aaron waited. He sensed she would keep talking if he kept his mouth shut. It was really hard, but he stayed quiet.

  Sure enough, she told him more: “A few years ago, they decided I was in an unhealthy living situation and my mom was a loser who tried to ditch me, and I went to live with my first foster family. They were okay, I guess. The state gives them money to keep foster kids and they took in a bunch of us. And you talk about TV.” She gave a low whistle. “There was a TV on in every room. I watched about a hundred years’ worth of TV when I lived at that house.”

  Aaron tried to decide if that was a fair trade, giving up your own mother in exchange for a hundred years’ worth of TV. No, he decided, even though Nickelodeon was just about the best thing ever. He watched it at his friends’ houses every chance he got.

  “I had to move every year,” Callie explained. “I’d just get used to a place and then they’d move me.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the way it works. They never explained it to me. Just told me to pack up my stuff. The last place, I left on my own.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t…get along with the family. I decided to try living on my own. I thought I’d check out Canada, but I couldn’t go there without picture ID and a birth certificate, so I ended up in Port Angeles, and Mrs. Newman gave me a job.”

  “And then you met us,” Aaron filled in for her.

  “That’s right.”

  “Are we your family now?”

  She fell silent, but he didn’t turn to look at her. Then she lightly punched his shoulder, teasing a little. “Yeah, kid,” she said. “You’re my family now.”

  That was cool, he thought. Callie wasn’t as much fun as his cousins, but she was still somebody to paddle around with, and—

  “What was that?” she asked suddenly, in a snake’s hiss. Her tone of voice made his skin itch.

  “What?” Aaron asked.

  “I saw something, up in the woods.” She pointed at the cliffs, which were shadowed by giant evergreen trees.

  “I didn’t see anything.” Aaron’s skin itched some more.

  “Look again. It’s—oh my God.”

  That was when Aaron saw it, too. Saw him. The ghost boy. He gave a war cry as he burst through the trees and hurled himself off the ledge, arms pinwheeling as he plunged headfirst toward the water. It all happened in a splash of blinding sunlight that quickly disappeared into the cold shadows of the lake.

  Aaron tried to cry out, but his voice was gone. Then he saw, to his horror, that he had let go of his paddle. It was floating an arm’s length away from the kayak. For a second, he just looked at it, regretting that he hadn’t used the nylon line and Velcro wristband to secure it to his arm. In a complete panic, he lunged for the oar, coming half out of his seat.

  “Kid, sit still,” Callie yelled at him. “You’re going to dump us—”

  It was too late. The kayak rolled over, taking them both into the water.

  Aaron’s face hit the surface and he knew he was lost. If they were better at kayaking, they’d keep rolling and turn upright again, but that didn’t happen. The lake dragged at his arms and legs, icy cold, inescapable. He was heading down, down, and maybe he would turn into a fish if he managed to go deep enough. Or a ghost boy. He was going to become a ghost just like the Indian boy.

  He screamed, but the water sucked away his voice. He was drowning, with the cold water filling his mouth and nose. Terror closed around him, pressing in, squeezing the life out of him. Someone—something—dragged at the collar of his life vest, and he didn’t sink at all. The life vest, which his mom said was the best money could buy, buoyed him up and he floated, his legs dangling above the eternal depths. The terror thrilled through him again and he peed a little, but since he was in the water, no one could tell.

  Callie, also floating in her vest, whipped the hair out of her face and spat out a mouthful of lake water. “I swear, kid,” she said, gasping. “You are such an idiot.” She glided over to the kayak, which lay with its underside toward the sky. “Help me get this thing turned over.”

  “I can’t swim.” Aaron’s teeth clacked like train wheels on a track.

  “That’s why you’re wearing a vest, genius.” She didn’t even try to save him and haul him out of the water to the safety of the shore. She was just going to let him stay in the water, scared out of his mind.

  Just then, the ghost swam over. Aaron was too horrified to scream. He could only shiver and stare. There was
nothing under his feet. Nothing but hundreds of feet of deadly water.

  “Need some help with your kayak?” asked the ghost.

  And of course, Aaron realized, it wasn’t a ghost at all, but a kid. A big kid with tanned shoulders and a tattoo on one arm.

  “Yeah,” said Callie, sounding tough. “You scared the crap out of us.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do.” The kid swam over to the kayak. Working together, he and Callie rolled it upright. Water sloshed in the hull, causing it to ride low.

  “It worked,” she admitted, looking at him all soft-eyed. “You shouldn’t swim alone.”

  The boy grinned. Maybe even winked at her. “I’m not alone now. Your brother looks like he needs some help,” the boy added.

  “He’s not my brother. And he can make it. Come on, Aaron, kick.”

  Aaron didn’t know what else to do. He could barely think, he was panicking so bad. He fluttered his feet and waved his arms. He wondered if the motion would attract the monsters of the deep, and that made him want to hurry, and he fluttered faster.

  With surprising speed, he made it to the kayak. By that time, Callie and the boy were facing each other, two floating heads, talking like old friends. The boy said his name was Luke Newman. He’d just finished high school and was spending the summer with his grandmother, who was Mrs. Newman.

  Aaron’s fast, wheezing breathing made him light-headed, and he started to gasp, hoping Callie would notice and drag him to safety. Instead, she scowled. “Chill out. This is not going to kill you. Just pretend you’re on Fear Factor.”

  “I’ve never seen Fear Factor.”

  “It’s pretty much like this, only you win a million bucks at the end. Nobody gets hurt, just scared a lot.”

  He wanted to scream at her in a rage. This was all her stupid fault, and he was so scared, he knew he was going to die any second. But he was too afraid to spend any of his energy screaming, so he forced himself to slow down his breathing. He kept kicking and scooping his arms toward dry land.

  “We need to bail out the water from this thing,” said Luke, pulling the kayak to the rocky shore. “Give me a hand, will you, Aaron?”