Chase

Ten

The next day, Jeff was standing on the end of the dock when a small aluminum boat, no bigger than his own twelve-footer, came speeding towards him from the east. The outboard bolted to the back was going full throttle, which brought the bow up and kept Jeff from seeing who was sitting in the back, driving it.

It got closer and closer without slowing down and Jeff feared the boat was going to crash into the dock.

He took a cautious step back.

A couple of seconds before it would have hit the dock, the boat veered sharply, throwing a large wave over the end and soaking Jeff’s running shoes. That was when he saw that the person sitting in the back of the boat, one hand gripped to the outboard’s throttle, was Emily Winslow. She was in white shorts and a red T-shirt and, on top of this, an orange life jacket.

“Hey!” Jeff shouted. “You got my shoes wet!”

She didn’t hear him over the sound of the motor, and he couldn’t hear her either, but he could see that she was laughing.

“Hey!” Jeff shouted again.

Emily spun the boat around sharply, and Jeff wondered if she was going to try to dowse him a second time, but before she reached the dock she cut the throttle back to a soft put-put-put.

“Look what you did to my shoes!” Jeff said.

She made a sad face. “You live on a lake and you’re afraid to get your shoes wet?”

“You drive like a maniac,” he told her.

“I’ve been driving this boat since I was five,” she said.

“You’d think by now you’d be good at it.”

She scowled at Jeff briefly, then asked, “You wanna go for a ride?”

“With you?”

Her eyes rolled. “No, with Captain Nemo. Of course, with me.”

Jeff glanced back towards the cabins, wondering whether Aunt Flo was spying on him. Just because he didn’t see her didn’t mean she wasn’t lurking behind a tree.

He decided to risk it and said to Emily, “Okay, but I can’t be gone long. I’ve got like five acres of grass to cut.” At least Aunt Flo had a riding mower and he didn’t have to do it all by hand.

“Then get in,” she said. “But you have to put on the life preserver thingy.” There was a second vest on the floor of the boat near the middle seat.

Jeff stepped in, slipping slightly as his wet soles met the metal hull, and threw on the life vest. The second he put his butt on the middle seat Emily twisted the throttle full blast. The boat shot forward, nearly knocking Jeff off his seat. He planted his wet shoes hard against the metal bottom to maintain his position. The metal vibrated on the choppy water as they skimmed across the surface of the lake. The way he was sitting, he was looking at where they’d been, but Emily had her eyes fixed forward, and she had those eyes on something.

Jeff lifted his legs and spun around on the bench-like seat so that he was looking the same way. They were headed towards a huge cabin cruiser that was leaving a large wake behind it.

“Hang on!” Emily said, aiming for the waves.

“What are you doing?” Jeff shouted, but Emily either couldn’t hear him over the roar of the outboard, or wasn’t interested in answering his question.

The tiny boat hit the first wave and it felt like they were in the air! Then there was a huge WHOMP! as the boat came back down on the water. Then there was another wave, and another WHOMP!

Jeff felt his butt lift off the seat, then drop back down. He reached out with both hands and gripped the edges — or gunnels — of the boat to keep his balance.

Emily shouted something he couldn’t hear, so he turned around and said, “What?”

She pointed. “Here comes a huge one!”

By the time he’d turned around, they’d hit a third wave — and she was right. It was a doozy. Jeff’s butt went a full six inches off the seat before it came back down hard.

“Ouch!” he cried.

He noticed that Emily had lifted her own butt off the seat just before they came down. She’d known what was coming and prepared for it, but hadn’t bothered to tell Jeff.

“Sore butt?” she asked, and laughed without waiting for an answer.

She throttled back on the motor, which brought the bow down. She stood, still straddling her seat, reached for a handle on the back of the outboard and pulled hard, exposing the shaft and the propeller. Things had suddenly gone wonderfully quiet.

“Just checking to see if I picked up some weeds on the prop,” she said. “Looks okay.”

Jeff noticed, off to his left about thirty feet away, a red buoy. Basically a metal post, about six to eight feet tall, which marked the route boaters should take through this part of the lake. Much further off was a similar buoy, but that one was black.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

Emily, still standing, was looking into the water as they slowly glided along.

“I think I’ve had enough of hanging out with you,” she said. “I’m out of here.”

And just like that, she stepped out of the boat as casually as if she were stepping out onto a dock.

But there was no dock.

“Emily!”

She went into the water, but Jeff couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. There was a splash as she left the boat, but instead of her entire body plunging in, she was standing next to the boat, the water only up to her knees. She grabbed the boat with two hands to make sure it didn’t drift away.

“So how’s it going?” she asked.

Jeff’s jaw dropped so far a seagull could have flown into his mouth and made a nest there.

“And you thought only Jesus could walk on water,” Emily said.

Jeff peered over the edge of the boat. About a foot down, he could see rocks.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “We’re out in the middle of the lake.”

“I know!” she said. “It’s the coolest thing. So, years and years and years ago, this didn’t used to be a lake. It was farmland. And then they put a dam in up around Canfield, and let this flood over and it became Pickerel Lake.”

“Whoa,” he said. “So what are you standing on?”

“It’s a wall,” she said. “One of the farmers was separating his property from someone else’s, so he made a wall with a huge pile of rocks, to act as a kind of fence.” She pointed — first at the red buoy, and then towards land. “It starts over there, and then goes about halfway back to shore. It’s about six feet wide. Come on, try it out. Your shoes are already wet. Just drop the anchor so we don’t lose the boat.”

Jeff found the anchor — a sand-filled bleach bottle, just like Aunt Flo put in her boats — up front, tied off to the bow. He dropped it over the side onto the top of the wall, then put one leg over the side, and then the second.

Jeff was standing in the middle of the lake.

“This is totally cool,” he said.

Emily was kicking her legs up, like a dancer. “La da la de da!”

Jeff did the same. He started singing a song called ‘One’, from his mother’s favourite musical, A Chorus Line. He’d never seen it, and had never wanted to see it. The idea of going to a musical was not his idea of a good time. But he loved to hear his mom belt it out in the kitchen. If his dad was there, he’d join in, link arms with her, and they’d kick up their legs in sync, like those whaddya-call-’em dancers, the Rockettes.

“Come here,” Jeff said, extending an arm. He slipped it over Emily’s shoulder, and she hooked hers over his. When he kicked up his left leg, she kicked up her left. When he kicked up his right, she kicked up her right.

Anybody passing by wouldn’t have believed it. Two people, practically standing on the water, kicking up their heels like a couple of Broadway stars.

It was pretty neat, except they hadn’t noticed that with each kick, they’d gotten a little closer to the edge.

Jeff was the one who slipped first, and because he had his arm looped around Emily, she went in right after him. They both went in over their heads. They bobbed to the surface, spat out water, then clambered back onto the wall.

“Yuck,” Emily said. “The rocks are all slimy.”

Once they were safely back on the wall, they climbed back into the boat.

“Well, that was fun until it wasn’t,” she said. She looked at what a mess Jeff was and said, “Man, your parents are going to kill me.”

“They’re not going to kill you,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, you’re spending the summer with your aunt, right? Your parents back in the city?”

Like a drenched dog, he gave himself a shake and wiped water out of his eyes. “I don’t have any parents,” he said.

Emily looked baffled. “What? You mean, like, you were made in a test tube?”

“No, you idiot. They’re dead.”

Her face fell and he immediately regretted calling her a name. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said somberly. “Your mom and your dad?”

“Yup.”

“Like, did they get sick? I mean, did one get sick, and then the other get sick?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met a kid whose parents were both dead,” Emily said. “In case you’re wondering why I have so many questions.”

“It’s okay.”

“My mom died a few years ago,” she said. “She had cancer. So it’s just me and my dad now. If something happened to him I don’t know what I would do.”

“My mom and dad died in a plane crash.”

Emily’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding?”

“No. Why would a person kid about something like that? There’d have to be something wrong in your head to make a joke like that.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she agreed. “So like, they were on a big jet and it crashed?”

He shook his head and held up a hand. “Just stop talking and let me tell the story.”

She nodded, made a motion like she was zipping her lips shut.

“So, a year ago, my mom and dad were flying from New Jersey to Boston and—”

“Was this a vacation?”

“No, it was not a vacation. It was work.”

“Your mom and dad worked together?”

He glared at Emily.

“Sorry,” she said. “Go on.”

“Okay, they worked for this drug company doing research into how to help people with allergies, and they were going from one meeting to another meeting and soon after the plane took off in New Jersey something went wrong with the plane.”

“Wowzer,” Emily said.

“So anyway, they were out over water. Long Island Sound. Something went wrong with the plane, and it blew up and went into the water, and my mom and my dad and the pilot and thirty-seven other people were all killed.”

“Whoa. That’s awful. It blew up?”

“They think it was a wiring problem. Like, a short circuit or something, and that caused a spark, and then a fire started. So, now I live with my Aunt Flo. She had to take me in, although I don’t think she really wanted to. But she’s put me to work at her camp. She made me get rid of my dog.”

“What?”

“I had a dog, but she wouldn’t let me live with her if I kept it because she hates dogs, so I had to get rid of it.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. Kinda a lot.”

“So you live here all the time now with your aunt?”

“Well, for a while I still lived in the city with some people who were friends of my parents, while things got wrapped up. Like my house getting sold and stuff like that. But these people didn’t want to adopt me or anything, so my aunt said I could live with her if I helped her out, so here I am. And when I go to school in September, it’ll be in Canfield.”

“Do you, like, know anyone there?”

Jeff shook his head. “All my friends are back in the city. I don’t have any friends up here.”

“That totally sucks,” Emily said.

Jeff suddenly felt very sad. “I think you should take me back.”

Emily smiled. “I’ll drive around some more and so you’ll be mostly dry when I drop you off. I promise not to jump anymore big waves. Grab the anchor.”

Jeff pulled the anchor back into the boat while Emily used an oar to shove them away from the rock wall. She pushed the outboard motor back down so that the prop was again submerged.

But before she pulled the cord to bring it back to life, she looked at Jeff with sympathetic eyes and said, “You want to see something else that’s cool?”

“Like what?”

“Something I’ve never shown anybody before,” she said.

“What?”

“My hideaway,” she said. “A train station in the forest.”

“A train station in the forest? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She smiled. “That’s what makes it so cool.”