by Kieran Scott
“Okay. Fine.” Hannah raised her hands. “Your funeral.”
Katie glowered at Hannah until Hannah finally looked away.
“Whoa. Is that Prandya and Raj’s house?” Hannah asked in shock.
Off to her right, a huge, modern structure rose out of the trees. It was all glass along the lake-facing side and gray shingle everywhere else, with a rooftop walk that probably offered an amazing sunset view. An elaborate set of stairs led from a huge deck down to a wide dock, where cushy-looking chaises were lined up facing the water. A second dock had at least six slips for boats, three of which were full, and Hannah could also see the Jet Skis tied off, bobbing in the water.
“That’s it,” Jacob said ruefully, and slapped at a bug on his arm. “I’d hate them if it wasn’t for Raj and all the free pizza.”
Katie laughed at his joke, but it sounded strained. “Prandya was pretty cool, too, though. Great style,” she added. “How long have you known them?”
“Since we were little,” Jacob said. “Our families always hang out together when we’re up here. Their dad’s, like, the ultimate outdoorsman. He owns that catalog. You know, Edward Ollis? They sell camping gear and fly-fishing equipment that only, like, Hollywood actors can afford.”
“I bet they’ve had some serious parties out at that house,” Hannah said, studying the cool-looking deck.
Katie laughed wryly. “Do you even know what a serious party looks like?”
Hannah’s skin went hot and she shot a glare at her stepsister. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“Dude, chill,” Katie said. “It’s just a fact.”
“Don’t tell me to chill.” Hannah could feel the last of her patience disappearing. “So what if I’m not a huge party animal and like to do well in school? Does that really make me so uncool?” she demanded. “There’s nothing wrong with being smart, Katie. And it’s not like I don’t have fun.”
Katie barked a laugh. She sat up and turned all the way around on her seat so she was finally facing Hannah. The boat rocked with her movement, but for once she didn’t even seem to notice.
“Please,” she said, planting her feet squarely on the metal bottom of the boat with a thud. “When was the last time you had fun? And going out for ice cream with your little swim team pals doesn’t count.”
“First of all, that is fun!” Hannah said, leaning forward. “But you wouldn’t know that because you never bothered to come along, and secondly, this trip would’ve been fun if you hadn’t glommed your way onto it uninvited!”
“I was invited!” Katie snapped. “Jacob was just too big of a wuss to tell you!”
Hannah turned to glare at Jacob.
“Okay, let’s not drag the innocent bystander into the sisterly squabble,” Jacob said, raising the hand that wasn’t busy steering the boat.
“We’re not sisters!” Hannah and Katie both shouted at the same time.
Well, at least we agree on something, Hannah thought, her scowl deepening.
“Ooookay,” Jacob said.
“And news flash, Hannah. It wasn’t even Jacob that wanted to invite you,” Katie continued. “It was Colin.”
Dead. Silence. Hannah’s chest heaved as she attempted to catch her breath. She turned and looked at Jacob, whose guilty expression said it all.
“Excuse me?” Hannah said finally.
“He … he saw your picture on my phone,” Jacob said. “The selfie we took at the wedding. It’s my wallpaper,” he added gamely, as if that was going to make her feel better.
“And?” Hannah prompted.
“And he thought you were cute and suggested I invite you up for a few days. That’s all.” Jacob shrugged with his hands, removing them briefly from the boat’s rudder.
Hannah’s eyes prickled. “So this whole weekend was a setup? You were setting me up with Colin?”
“No! No! Not exactly,” Jacob said, and shot Katie an annoyed look. Somehow this just irked Hannah more. It reminded her that these two now had secrets. From her. “I wanted you to come, I just … didn’t think of it myself at first!” He swallowed audibly. “Colin gave me the idea, that’s all.” He glanced nervously at Katie. “I wanted both of you to come.”
Hannah pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets until she saw spots. Colin thought she was cute. Colin told Jacob to invite her there. And she’d accepted.
“Does he think I know about this? Did he think I came here as, like, a date for him?” she demanded.
“No. Not at all. I just—”
“So what if he did?” Katie cut in. “Would that be so horrible? A cute guy thinking you two had a shot? Or is romance part of your fun allergy?”
“Oh, shut up, Katie.”
“Shut up?” Katie screeched. “Shut up? What are we, five?”
“Ladies, please!” Jacob tried again. “Look around you! It’s a beautiful day, we’re out on the lake, and we have a whole day and night without parents to look forward to. Why don’t we just—”
Suddenly the engine sputtered, and then died. Silence.
Jacob’s face fell.
Katie’s forehead crinkled. “Um, what just happened?”
“I don’t know.” Jacob turned around and yanked the rip cord on the engine. There was a violent whirring, but then nothing. He pulled again, then again, but the engine refused to turn over.
“Is it jammed?” Hannah asked. She knew from the few boating trips she and her dad had taken that sometimes vegetation in lakes and ponds could get sucked into the engine and stall it. The reeds would get wrapped up around the propeller and jam the mechanism.
“I don’t think so,” Jacob said, popping the engine up out of the water on its hinge so he could inspect it. “How could it be? We’re in the middle of the lake and this is the deepest part. There’s nothing growing out here.”
“The deepest part?” Katie asked tremulously. She grabbed up her life jacket and began to fumble with the straps.
Hannah looked over the side of the boat at the water. Even in the heat of midafternoon, she felt a sudden chill and all the tiny hairs on her arms stood up. Something wasn’t right. The water looked dark. Too dark. Almost like ink or oil. At first, she thought a cloud must have blocked the sun, so she was looking at its shadow, but no. When she glanced back over her shoulder there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and suddenly the sun felt very hot on the back of her neck.
Her heart thunked. That thing she’d seen in the lake that morning … had it been near here? As if that even mattered. It was a lake. It could be anywhere by now. Part of her wanted to tell Jacob and Katie about it: Hey, guys … remember that lake monster Colin mentioned yesterday? Well, I think I saw it …
But something held her back. Maybe the fact that she didn’t want it to be real, and saying it aloud would make it real.
“You guys. Does the water look … weird to you?” she asked instead.
Katie clucked her tongue. “Hannah—”
Jacob looked up from the motor and glanced around. “No. She’s right. It almost looks … thick.”
Katie leaned over for a better look. At that moment, something bumped the underside of the boat. Katie yelped. She had her arms in the life jacket now, but hadn’t had a chance to click the three buckles.
“What was that?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know.” Jacob was pale.
“Jacob,” Katie said calmly, though her knuckles were white as she gripped the seat at her sides. “Could you please get us out of here?”
“Uh-huh.” Jacob shoved the motor back into place with a splash and yanked on the rip cord, then yanked again.
Nothing. Jacob’s house looked so far away, suddenly, and they were drifting farther out, rather than closer. Hannah scanned the shoreline for Colin or Alessandra, but they must have gone inside. The house was perfectly still. She turned to look at Prandya’s house, but the decks were all empty—not a soul in sight.
Someone, Hannah thought. Someone do something.
Then came a long, shoulder-curling scraaaaaape along the bottom of the skiff. It was like someone had taken a pirate’s hook and dragged it across the metal. Or maybe it had been a claw. A long, sharp, blood-hungry claw …
Jacob cursed under his breath.
“Omigod. Omigod, you guys,” Katie said, curling her knees up toward her chest.
Hannah’s teeth clenched. “Jacob …”
“It’s probably just a lake trout or something,” he said, his voice tense. Sweat beads trickled down his temples. “They can get pretty big.”
Suddenly the bow of the boat lifted up so high that when it came down again, it made a splash. This time, Hannah screamed, and Katie started crying, fumbling for the stays on her life jacket. Jacob reached for the cord but then the boat tilted sideways again and the cord slipped from his grasp. Hannah gripped the sides of the boat for dear life as Katie let out a screech and was thrown overboard.
“She can’t swim!” Hannah shouted, her voice cracking painfully. “She can’t swim!”
Her fingers dug into the sides of the boat, her nails screeching on the metal as they clawed, sending teeth-jarring tremors up her arms. There was no way a lake trout was strong enough to lift the entire front end of the skiff with three people in it, nor tip it far enough for someone to tumble out. Something else was out there. That thing. And whatever it was, Katie was now in the water with it, her life jacket floating uselessly on the surface of the lake.
Why didn’t I tell anyone what I saw? Hannah thought desperately, her brain whirling with terror and regret. Why didn’t I say anything?
Hannah looked over her shoulder at Jacob, but he seemed frozen with fear. She ripped off her life jacket, yanked off her shorts, and dove into the lake in her bathing suit and T-shirt. Her muscles seized up the second they hit the cold water. So much colder than it had felt this morning. Was it because the lake was deeper out here, or was something really wrong with the water? She thought of how viscous and dark it had looked just moments ago and then shoved that thought away. If she dwelled on that, she’d have a panic attack, and that wasn’t going to help anyone.
Holding her breath in her lungs, Hannah dove deep at the spot where Katie had gone under. There was another splash as Jacob finally shook himself out of his catatonic state and followed her down. Under the surface, Hannah opened her eyes, searching the murk for a flash of Katie’s white tank top. Her eyes stung. She saw nothing. Even when she put her hand directly in front of her face, she could barely make out the blurry shape. She reached all four limbs out, stretching them until her joints locked, hoping to feel her toes or fingers brush Katie’s arm or face or hair—and at the same time praying they wouldn’t brush anything else.
The skull, she thought. The hand …
Her fingers caught on some reedy vegetation, and her toes slipped over something soft—more plants, she hoped—but there was nothing solid. She swam farther out, staying down, pushing her lungs to their breaking point. When they began to burn and beg for air, she shoved herself to the surface.
Her chest screamed as she sucked in a full breath and let the oxygen revive her. Hannah could hold her breath longer than anyone she’d ever met—two full minutes at last test. Her friends on the swim team had taken bets on how long she could last and no one had even come close. Hannah could remember sitting at the bottom of the room-temperature lap pool at her school, her legs crossed yoga style as she counted out all the Mississippis in her head, completely calm and cool and collected. This was nothing like that.
She dog-paddled for a few seconds to catch her breath. By her estimation, she’d probably been under for at least a minute and a half just now, and there was no sign of Katie. The lake around her was still. Disoriented, Hannah flailed in a circle until she spotted the boat.
It looked terrifyingly empty, bobbing on the surface. The sun reflected off the back of the skiff, and she had to squint her eyes shut. She heard something splash up out of the water and screamed.
“It’s just me!” Jacob shouted, gasping for air.
Hannah wrenched one eye open, reaching her hand up to clear water and sunlight from the other. Jacob was treading water a good twenty yards away.
“Anything?” she shouted.
With nostrils flared, he shook his head, droplets of water arcing off his soaked hair.
Hannah started to swim toward him, and something caught at her ankle. She let out a mewl and kicked at it. After a brief struggle, she was free. More lake plants. Apparently Jacob had been wrong about there not being vegetation this far out.
“I’m going down again!” he shouted, and before she could reply, he was gone.
Hannah dove down, too, but she couldn’t see Jacob or Katie or anything else for that matter. When she resurfaced, she spotted someone pacing on the shoreline in front of Jacob’s house—Colin, she was pretty sure—but he was so far away, he wouldn’t have understood her if she tried to shout. She flailed her arms instead, hoping he would figure out something was wrong and call for help.
What was he doing over there? Was he talking on his phone? How could he be if there was no service? When Colin didn’t stop walking back and forth, Hannah gave up trying.
Where the hell was Jacob? She’d already been above water for at least thirty seconds, and he’d been under since before that. Where was he? Had something gone wrong? Was he caught in the weeds?
Katie, where are you? Tears suddenly filled Hannah’s eyes and a sob caught in her throat, making it harder to tread water. Her stepsister had been under for a couple of minutes now. She’d probably sucked in water on her way down, inexperienced as she was with swimming and survival tactics. If her lungs had filled, she would have sunk like a stone. What if she was at the bottom of the lake? What if she’d drowned, right beneath Hannah’s toes?
The sob escaped and Hannah swam as hard as she could toward the boat. She needed to hang on to something or she was going to go down, too. She was a few yards from the skiff when Jacob broke the surface right next to it, scaring the living daylights out of Hannah. She let out a yelp when she saw that Jacob had one arm around Katie’s upper torso. Katie flailed her arms and coughed, spitting up lake water and some sort of brown goop, but she was alive. She was breathing.
“Katie!” Hannah shouted in relief.
“You’re okay,” Jacob said to Katie, using his free arm to crawl toward the boat. “You’re okay now, Katie, you need to calm down.”
“Something grabbed me!” Katie sputtered. “Something’s down there, Jacob. Get me out of this water. We have to get out of here!”
Jacob turned in a slow circle, found Hannah, and shot her a help me look. Hannah swam over to them. Her lungs and throat burned and her legs were beginning to feel the strain of so much treading under so much duress, but she managed to keep her head and shoulders above water.
“Katie, take a deep breath,” she said as calmly as she could. Her own breath was of the panting variety, thanks to all the terror. “Jacob can’t get you back to the boat if you’re flailing, and if you don’t stop, you’re both going to drown.”
It was as if Katie didn’t even hear her. She just kept throwing out her arms and kicking her legs, pushing herself and Jacob farther from the skiff. Hannah grabbed Katie’s wrist as it came close to whacking her across the face.
“Katie Marie Chen! Stop it now!” she shouted.
Katie instantly went still. She blinked, surprised, and then started to cry, going completely limp. But at least she wasn’t freaking out anymore, and it was a lot easier to drag dead weight through the water. Jacob shot Hannah a grateful, exhausted look, took a deep breath, and paddled for the boat one-handed. Hannah swam ahead and grabbed the hull to tug it closer to him and give him less distance to cross. Finally, they got to the skiff’s side and placed Katie’s hands over the edge, so that they gripped the rim. Then Jacob crawled into the boat to counterbalance it and pulled on Katie’s arms, while Hannah did her best to push her stepsister u
p from behind. After what felt like a lifetime of struggling, Katie and Jacob tumbled back onto the bare metal floor of the skiff. Then Jacob reached over to help Hannah up as well. She was grateful. At this point, her arms and legs were like jelly. Swimming for her life was a lot different from swimming to beat her own best time.
On the bench in the center of the boat, Katie and Jacob gripped each other.
“Why’d you take off your stupid life jacket?” Jacob demanded, reaching up to hold both sides of Katie’s face in his hands.
“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry,” Katie replied, heaving with sobs.
Hannah looked away. It was an oddly intimate moment and now was not a time to wallow in jealousy. Katie was alive. That was all that mattered.
“It’s fine. Everyone’s fine,” Jacob said. He stumbled to the rear of the boat and took his position by the motor again. “Let’s just get back to the dock.”
“There’s something out there,” Katie said, sniffling. She touched the side of her hand to her nose. “Something grabbed me.”
Hannah and Katie locked eyes. “So you felt it, too?” Hannah said.
Katie nodded, a movement so small it was almost imperceptible. “It felt like a hand … it grabbed my ankle and pulled me down. I swear. Someone … some … thing was trying to drown me.”
“It was just the weeds,” Jacob said stiffly. “One of them probably wrapped around your ankle and you got tangled up. That’s all. There was way more vegetation out there than I thought there’d be.”
“It wasn’t a weed,” Katie protested. “I felt it … I felt its flesh.”
Hannah shuddered.
The three of them glanced around the lake, which was now silent. Was something circling beneath the boat right now? Were they about to be tipped again?
Jacob tried the rip cord. The motor whirred for half a second—a pathetic, high-pitched sound—and then stopped.
“That’s it. We’re rowing out of here,” Jacob said, getting up and plopping down on the middle bench next to Hannah. “Katie, sit at the front. Hannah, grab that oar.”
Hannah scooted over a bit to give them more room to maneuver, her bare thighs sticking painfully to the bench. Jacob lifted the oar out of the inside of the boat and turned it, locking it into its bracket on his side of the boat. Hannah did the same on her side.