by D. G. Driver
I kept my eye on it as I got closer and closer to shore, hoping the source of the light would become more evident to me. I hoped for the outline of a house, a path up to it, and more lights to turn on, letting me know that people were at home. Go figure, I’d finally get to a house and no one would be there. It didn’t look like they had any neighbors nearby either.
At last, my boat dragged against the pebbled bottom of the lake. It hurt to stand up after hours of being cooped up. My joints creaked like an old lady’s, and my muscles locked, making me crumple back to my seat in the boat. I took a few deep breaths while the pain surged across my back and down my legs and arms. It bothered me, the time I wasted sitting there in agony, but what could I do? I hadn’t been on my feet in over ten hours. For that matter, I hadn’t even had my legs straight in ten hours. Minutes passed, and the sunlight vanished. The sky still had that pale glow, but all the trees had become tall black silhouettes against it. I couldn’t sit there any longer. Steeling myself against the burn, I stood up again. Gingerly, I stepped out of the boat, leaned over, and pulled it all the way onto the shore.
Once I knew the boat was not going to drift off, I collapsed to the ground where, unfortunately, I had to rest for another chunk of minutes until the dizzy feeling in my head stopped. My jeans were completely drenched from the water at the bottom of the boat, and I wondered if I’d peed while I was sleeping. I stretched my legs, back, and arms. I kicked my legs and rolled my arms to get them loosened up. Feeling a bit better, I got up and jumped up and down to the get my blood flowing again. I stepped ankle deep into the water and splashed more water on the insides of my thighs to wash away any lingering pee odor. I couldn’t smell it, but someone might.
Okay, I thought, I’m going to be all right.
I had to get moving. Nothing was going to happen if I stayed on this little beach. I grabbed my sneakers from the boat and wiggled my sunburned feet into them. They felt really tight and uncomfortable on my wet feet, and the little bit of sand and tiny rocks that were stuck to my toes rubbed painfully. Still, it was better than walking all over these rocks barefoot.
As soon as I got in the midst of the trees, the world got really dark. Quickly, I darted back to the boat one more time and rummaged around behind the sleeping bag to pull out the flashlight I’d brought. I was really proud of myself for remembering at least one important thing for this trip! Until I switched it on, that is. Dead. The thing didn’t work.
I threw it hard on the ground and watched it shatter into pieces, wishing, among the other things I’d forgotten, that I’d thought to bring batteries. Why on earth did I think a flashlight from my grandpa’s garage would work? Who knew the last time it had been used?
Gritting my teeth, I focused again on that flickering light up deep behind the trees and marched forward once again. What choice did I have?
Mosquitoes bit every inch of skin I had, and I couldn’t slap them away fast enough. Red wasps flew down from tree branches, making me duck and swerve with every step to avoid their stingers. Bug repellent would have been handy. What person goes camping without that? Even when I had sleepovers in the tree house in my backyard we sprayed ourselves with some heavy duty DEET. I could only imagine how many ticks I’d find on me when this was all over.
My ears picked up the crunch and patter of every small creature around me, and I was glad I couldn’t see them because then I’d really be afraid. Being mostly blind, I imagined they were just harmless squirrels and chipmunks, or perhaps a deer. I thought about Disney movies, and tried to fool myself into thinking they would start talking to me and lead the way to the safety of a cozy cottage up ahead. Preferably one with a phone, as opposed to one inhabited by slovenly dwarves.
Only, in reality I was most likely surrounded by raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes, bats, and snakes. Best not to think too hard about it. My fantasy felt better and kept me from running and screaming my way back to the boat.
The land under my feet rose higher and higher, to the point that I had to use my hands and bear crawl up the hill. When I got to the top of the rise, the light I’d been chasing looked both bigger and lower to the ground. It no longer resembled a porch light. Now, it looked like a flame.
New sounds penetrated the trees. Music from a portable speaker, voices talking, and lots of laughter. None of the voices sounded like girls. None of them sounded like adults.
No, I thought to myself, unbelieving.
After all my bad luck all day long, this couldn’t be true. I couldn’t have stumbled onto the campout.
But I had.
10
The Campground and a Ghost Story
I ran through the remaining trees until I finally burst through to their clearing. The flame I’d been following had been the top of one of several tiki torches at the edge of the forest. Below them stretched a wide swath of sandy, smooth beach marked with two dozen or more tents. A couple of bonfires were lit, the one closest to me being the biggest. Kayaks lined the shore at the far end of the camp, so colorful and so tightly packed together that they looked like beads of a necklace. All of them were pulled up far enough on to the beach so that the high tide wouldn’t haul them back off to sea during the night. The boys, ranging from fourteen to eighteen, thin to fat, short to tall, were everywhere.
I was pretty used to being around groups of boys at the skate park, but there was usually a stray girl or two there. Also, the group of boys at the skate park was always fairly small. The enormous amount of testosterone happening around me now was overwhelming. My pulse began to race, and I felt slightly feverish. For the first time, I wondered if I was going to be okay being around so many boys at once. I can’t say I felt super safe. It became more important than ever that none of them found out I was a girl. It wouldn’t just be awkward. It could be potentially dangerous. I didn’t know what these guys were like, after all.
I stiffened my wrists, held my shoulders higher, and concentrated on walking without the slightest sway in my hips as I came out of the trees and moved toward the fires. The boys had been at the beach for hours already and were settling down to eat their supper and relax for the night. The smell of hot dogs made my stomach rumble, but it also made me feel instantly queasy. I was so past hungry that eating might have made me vomit.
No one noticed me at first. They were all busy getting their paper plates and filling them up with beans and chips. I aimed for the closest cluster of guys, hoping to see someone familiar. A breeze sent a huge plume of smoke from the fire right at me, and I breathed in the ash and heat. My lungs and sun-fried eyes couldn’t take it. I passed out.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on my back. My nose was assaulted with the mixed stench of sunscreen, bug repellent, burning wood, and body odor. A dozen dirty faces were in a circle, leaning over me. Among them were Lamont, Chris, Jasper, and Brian. I thought I heard them asking me questions, but it took a moment before I could understand anything.
“Danny, are you all right?” Lamont was asking, his handsome face right over mine, so close I could lift up and kiss him. “Can you hear me?”
“His eyes are open!” Jasper said.
“Dude,” Brian shouted. “What happened to you?”
I think I saw Chris frown. Maybe he was disappointed that I wasn’t dead. “He’s fine,” I heard him say. “I’m going to eat before my hot dog gets cold.”
“Hold on, Chris,” Lamont ordered, and the tough boy stayed put.
I sat up and rubbed the back of my head. A big lump was forming there, and pain shot straight through my brain when I touched it. “What did I hit?”
The guys lowered around me so that they were all kneeling, still circled around me.
“A rock,” Brian said. “A big one.”
Lamont told one of the boys to go get some ice from a cooler. Then he sat down next to me and helped hold me up. “Are you really all right?” he asked again. “Thought I was going to have to do mouth-to-mouth for a minute.”
He grimaced like that
would be horrible, but the thought of it didn’t sound so bad to me. I remembered the way I was supposed to feel about having a boy’s lips on mine and said, “Ew, yuck! No thanks. I’m good. It just hurts.”
“Duh!” Chris said.
The boy came back with some ice in a plastic shopping bag. Lamont took it and put it to my head.
“Ow!” I shouted, but I let him keep pressing it because I knew it would help. This wasn’t the first knock I’d had on my head. Plus, it kept him close to me.
“What are you doing here?” Lamont asked. He was so serious that he almost looked like an adult.
“I’ve been looking for you guys all day,” I said. “I can’t believe I got here.”
Jasper said, “Me either. Not in that rowboat you had.”
“Piece of junk,” Chris said. “Surprised you didn’t sink.”
“Well I didn’t,” I said, straightening up a bit more. I put up my hand to take the ice pack from Lamont and hold it myself. “I just got a little lost.”
“A little?” Brian commented. “We’ve been here for, what, at least five hours?”
“Six,” Jasper said.
Seeing that I wasn’t seriously damaged, some of the boys I didn’t know elbowed each other or nodded and then headed back to the food. The guys from the pizza shop stayed with me. That’s when I noticed.
“Where’s Alex?”
The guys looked at one another for a second, confusion all over their faces. Lamont leaned in closer to me. “We thought he was with you.”
Alarms went off in my head. They rang so loud, trying to outplay the deep thumping that suddenly started in my chest. I got up to my feet and the others stood too.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Lamont explained. “He stayed back with you, right? To go slow with you?”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously.
“So, where is he?” Chris demanded to know.
I studied their faces. They looked mad at me, as if I’d done something wrong.
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“We figured you both had chickened out and went back home,” Chris said.
Brian shrugged. “Even in a boat like yours, you should have gotten here a long time ago.”
I put up my hands as though to fend off some attack. “Look, I don’t know where he is because he left me. We were going really slow, and he was worried that we were lost or off course. So, Alex said he was going to catch up to you guys, make sure he knew where to go, and then come back for me.”
Jasper’s eyes grew wide. “We never saw him.”
“No,” Brian said. “He never caught up to us.”
It was getting really hard to breathe. “Wh-where do you think he could be?” I asked.
“He could be anywhere,” Lamont said. “He’s lost.”
“Aw, come on,” I said, trying not to sound as anxious as I was. “The lake’s not that big.”
“It is that big,” Jasper said. “Don’t you know anything?”
“What are we going to do, then?” I wanted to know.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Lamont said. “It’s too dark.”
My mind raced. Poor Alex stuck out there in the dark. He couldn’t read that map and had no idea where he was going. We couldn’t just leave him. Then I remembered something. “What if we call the parents and tell them to keep an eye out for him?”
“We can’t,” Jasper told me. “Cell phones don’t work out here.”
“What do you do if there’s an emergency?”
“We have some flares,” Brian said.
“Well, light them,” I said. “Let’s get some help.”
“Hold on,” Chris said. “You’re all nuts. Alex ain’t lost. He couldn’t find us and then wimped out and rowed home.” He turned to me and added, “Which is what you should’ve done too.” Back to the guys he said, “He’s probably at home right now eating dinner and watching reruns of Family Guy.” Jasper and Brian nodded as though that made sense to them, but it didn’t to me.
“That’s not what happened,” I insisted. “Alex was way too excited about this camping thing you do. He couldn’t stop talking about it the whole time we were together. He wouldn’t have quit.”
“How do you know?” Chris challenged. “You don’t even know him. You’re not from here, remember?”
“Yeah, I know, I’m from out of town. You keep reminding me.”
“Out of town? You’re from out of state! You don’t belong here!”
Lamont stepped between us. “Calm down, Chris.”
“No!” Chris shouted. “I didn’t want him here. I said that from the start. You guys felt sorry for him, but I didn’t. I knew his family was bad luck. I knew he’d jinx the whole thing.”
Sorry for me? Bad luck? Jinx? Nothing Chris was saying made any sense to me.
“And then he goes and gets that same boat,” Chris said. He stared at me, angrily. “Where is it anyway?”
“My boat?” I asked, completely baffled. “It’s on the other side of the woods.”
All of them jerked backward as though I had just let out a huge fart—–which is not what happened. They looked at one another with creased foreheads and shrugging shoulders. Then, as if the smell had evaporated, they leaned back toward me again.
“Is it busted up? Did you crash?” Jasper asked as though that’s what he expected to have happened.
“No,” I said. “It’s fine. I got lost on the lake all afternoon, and I finally saw this stretch of land and decided to give up and try to get home. I didn’t even know I was on the island until I came through the woods and saw your camp.”
“So, after being lost all day,” Lamont repeated, “your boat happened to land on the back of this island. It could have wound up anywhere, miles away, and it wound up here.”
“Weird, huh? Talk about luck.”
Chris snorted at Lamont and hit him in the shoulder. “I told you.” All Lamont did in response was nod slowly.
The guys started talking to one another then, not including me at all.
“I think we should go push it out into the lake and let it drift off,” Jasper said.
“We could put our trash in it and set it on fire,” Brian added.
Chris had a different idea. “Let’s chop it up for firewood.”
“Wait a second!” I shouted. “This is my boat. How will I get back if you destroy it? What’s the matter with you?” I turned to Lamont. “Lamont? Are you going to let them do this?”
Lamont didn’t answer right away. “The boat’s bad luck.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
He looked in my eyes. “How do you not know that?” he came back.
The guys all stared at me. “You’re making me feel really uncomfortable,” I finally told them.
Lamont relaxed a bit and offered a half smile. “Look, why don’t we sit for a minute, eat some food, and then figure out what we’re going to do. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “I am really hungry.”
We all headed to the fire and grabbed some hot dogs and coat hangers. Sitting close to the fire, I let its heat pulse over me. The sunburn made my skin sensitive and the evening breeze had given me a chill. The heat from the fire burned a bit, but it was better than being cold. My jeans were still damp, too, and that didn’t help. I wished I’d remembered to pull the bag with my sweats out of the boat. Mom always told me that old line, “If your head wasn’t attached, you’d lose it.” She wouldn’t have been exaggerating this time.
The hot dog tasted fantastic, so I ate two more. I gobbled up a whole bunch of potato chips and a couple pickles. I’m hardly a dainty eater, but it was neat to be a boy at mealtime and not have to worry about what people thought of me stuffing my face. It was so nice of the guys to share with me, and I told them I would definitely take them all out to lunch when this was over to make up for it. None of them said they’d take me up on it, though.
“So, okay,” I said after everyone was relaxe
d and full. “Tell me why my boat is bad luck.”
Jasper started. “There was this kid who drowned during a storm on the way to this campout.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Alex told me all about it.”
Chris grunted. “I guess he didn’t tell you everything.”
“Sure he did,” I went on. “He told me how there was this storm, and this kid had a handmade boat. He couldn’t keep up with the others, and he overturned the boat when trying to get it to turn. He fell overboard. That’s why there’s the parent patrol now.”
The guys nodded unenthusiastically.
“But did he tell you about what happened next?” Brian asked.
“There’s more?”
“A lot more,” Jasper said. “The boy’s body washed up on shore a few days later, on the opposite side of this island from where the campout is. The boat drifted around on the lake for weeks. No one wanted to go fetch it.”
“Nobody really cared what happened to it,” Chris said. “They probably figured it would eventually crash or sink or something.”
Brian said, “But it didn’t. Weeks after the drowning, the boat washed ashore too. In the same place the boy had.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“I know!” Jasper said. “In this whole lake, what are the odds of that?”
Brian continued. “Everyone said that the ghost of the boy kept rowing on the lake trying to find the camp. The boat was haunted.”
I laughed nervously. “That’s a ridiculous story.”
“Maybe,” Brian said.
Then I squinted at the brothers. “But what does this have to do with my boat?”
Lamont took a deep breath and then said in his oh-so-calm voice, “It’s the same boat.”
I have to admit the hairs on my arms stood on end, but I tried not to show any of the sudden fear that rushed through me. I mean, I was supposed to be a guy. Looking freaked out by a ghost story would either give me away as a girl or at best make me come across as a wimp of a guy. I didn’t need either of those things to happen. “That’s impossible,” I said, trying to sound as cool as Lamont and failing a bit. “Why would that boat be in my grandparent’s backyard?”
