A House at the Bottom of a Lake

13

It wasn’t just the helmet and breathing tube that were gold; the whole suit shimmered.

That night they tried it on in James’s backyard. His parents were asleep inside and so they had to be quiet. They tried. But they laughed, stumbled, and felt like the first men on the moon. Acted like them, too, pretending to place flags on the moon’s surface, jamming actual sticks in the dirt. It was awkward, it was thrilling, it was frightening.

“One rule,” Amelia said as James removed the helmet, exposing his young face in the porch light surrounded by bugs.

“Only one?”

“No hows or whys.”

“What?”

“We don’t ask how the house ended up there and we don’t ask why it’s furnished. We don’t ask how or why it works.”

James understood.

“No hows or whys,” he agreed.

James stuck out one gold gloved mitt and Amelia, smiling, shook it.

With that contact, both felt the full thrilling power of their discovery.

A clubhouse. If they wanted it to be.

And it wasn’t just the house. No. It was the fourth lake they were swimming in, too.

For the first time in either of their lives, they were falling in love.