by Jody Kihara
Jasper’s bed was empty, which meant I must have
slept later than usual. I pulled on my shorts and a T-shirt
and ran downstairs. Jasper was sitting at the table
demolishing a stack of pancakes, while Dad stood at the
stove flipping more.
80
The Girl Across the Water
“Paul!” Dad greeted me with a smile. “Just in time. I
told Jasper to go and wake you.”
Jasper’s eyes widened over his pancake-filled
cheeks. “I was going to,” he said through a mouthful of
food.
As I slid into my chair, Dad set two more plates of
pancakes on the table: one for me, one for him. I poured
myself a glass of orange juice and glugged it down, then
set about drowning my pancakes in syrup. The sugar hit did
a lot to wake me up, but I felt like I still needed more. “Can
I have some coffee?”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t like
coffee.”
I didn’t, but with three spoonfuls of sugar it was
drinkable, and as soon as I got it down, I felt more
charged.
“So what do you two want to do today?” Dad asked.
Oh, rats. Dad was finally ready for some bonding
time, and I needed to get to the island. Alone.
“Um,” I said. “I was thinking of going on another
canoe trip.”
“You’re sure into canoeing this year,” he
commented.
“Well, we are at a lake,” I pointed out, strangely
irritated.
81
The Girl Across the Water
Jasper, as usual, slowed down his eating to shoot
worried looks from me to Dad. “I thought maybe we could
play some games today,” he said. “We’ve got Monopoly,
Cranium, Risk…”
Thank you, Jasper. Saved.
Dad looked torn. I could tell he wanted to go
outdoors and get some exercise. “Well, how about we play
games this morning, then go canoeing in the afternoon?”
he asked.
“Perfect!” I answered. “Uh, you two don’t mind if I
go for a quick canoe trip right now, though, do you? Just to
the island and back. You can start a game, and I’ll catch up
later. I just want to, um, warm up.”
“Well, I thought it would be nice if we all spend some
time together,” Dad said.
I shot him a pained look.
“…but you won’t be that long, right?”
“Sure.”
After we’d cleaned up the breakfast dishes, I
surreptitiously slid some food into my backpack and headed
off.
She’s there, I told myself as I canoed to the island. I
had seen her signals the night before; she had to be real.
And in the morning sunlight, Coralie’s story of a ghost girl
walking into the lake didn’t seem as scary any more.
82
The Girl Across the Water
For some reason, though, it was Jasper’s story of the
kids on the stairs that stuck with me. Each time my paddle
splashed into the water, I imagined the chorus of little
voices: We’re at the bottom of the lake…
Stairs, I told myself. Stairs, not lake.
I didn’t slow down enough as I approached the
island, and the hard crunch of the canoe against ground
pitched me forward. After righting myself, I set the paddle
in the canoe, stepped out, and pulled the canoe up onto the
beach. This time I headed straight for the clearing without
calling out.
When I reached it, she wasn’t there. Again. But
sitting right where I’d left them, stacked the exact same
way, were the blankets, flashlight, and note… as if they’d
never been touched.
Dammit! This was getting beyond annoying. I knew
she existed. She’d signaled back last night. Plus, the food
was gone. I sighed. Okay, this meant for sure she was just
messing with me. And likely someone else was in on it,
because I doubted a young girl could arrange all this by
themselves.
But why? Was it just a stupid practical joke?
I wondered again about the neighbor kids. It had to
be them. Why, though? Just for laughs? It seemed like all
they needed for entertainment was the ability to kick dirt at
each other. Plus, they didn’t seem smart enough to pull
something like this together.
But who else could it be?
83
The Girl Across the Water
I stood there frowning, considering the logistics of
how someone could carry this out. They’d have to be
staying someplace nearby. I thought of the cabin at the top
of the lake. When we’d seen it through the binoculars, it
had looked deserted… but I wanted to check it out to make
sure.
#
When I got back to the cabin, Dad and Jasper were
sitting at the picnic table playing Risk. “Hey, Paul! Coming
to join us?”
“Uh…” We all loved Risk, Dad included, but it’s such
a long game, and I was impatient to get to the deserted
cabin. “I guess so… are we playing right to the end?”
“Of course,” Jasper said, looking indignant. “But the
thing is, I don’t know how you can join in now, Paul, ‘cause
we’ve already started. You might have to wait till the next
game.”
Dad’s eyes widened. Much as he loved Risk, I could
tell he didn’t want to spend the whole day playing it.
I sat down next to Dad. “Well, how about ditching
this game, seeing as you’re not very far in, and then we
start another one this evening? I’ve thought of something
really cool we can do.”
Jasper looked suspicious. “What?”
“I want to go up to the end of the lake and check out
the deserted cabin.”
84
The Girl Across the Water
Jasper blinked rapidly. “All the way to the end? Isn’t
it really far?”
“Not with three of us paddling.”
“But Paul,” he whined, “We said games first! We
said. And I don’t want to stop this one. Anyway, we’ve
already gone canoeing. Do we have to go again?”
We both transferred our gaze to Dad, who sat there
looking pulled in two directions.
“You decide,” I told him.
Jasper got so much time with my Dad that it
suddenly seemed unfair my stepbrother was even here. He
had Dad all the rest of the year, and alone, apart from the
weekends when I stayed over. I never got alone-time with
Dad anymore. Every time I saw him, Jasper was with us.
And he was my Dad! How come me and Dad couldn’t have
a month together without Jasper?
“Ah…” Dad said. “Well, it is a great day… maybe
games would be better for the evening. We can play them
in the living room when it’s dark out.”
“But you said!” Jasper protested, looking like he
might burst into tears. “Games in the morning!”
“Jasper, we all have to compromise a bit when there
are three of us,” Dad said.
Jasper jumped up from the p
icnic table, knocking the
game so that the pieces bounced. He ran for the cabin, and
I exchanged a startled look with Dad, who, with a sigh, got
85
The Girl Across the Water
up to follow Jasper. I could hear Jasper running up the
stairs. Dad disappeared into the cabin after him.
Irritated, I walked back to the canoe. It looked like
I’d be going on another trip by myself. And even though I’d
wanted to be alone the last few times, this time it nettled
me.
Should I go now, I wondered, or wait and see if
Jasper might change his mind? I picked up the paddle and
drove the end into the dirt, grinding it in small circles.
To my surprise, Dad emerged from the cabin a
minute later. “Jasper doesn’t want to come,” he said, the
pulled-in-two-directions look still on his face. “He’s going to
stay and read while we go.”
“You’re coming with me?” I asked in surprise.
Dad put one arm around my shoulder. “Well, I
explained to him that I don’t get much time with you, so he
has to learn to give on these things sometimes. Plus, it’ll be
nice for us to do something together, just the two of us.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Well…” He flashed me a rueful smile. “Not exactly.”
Through the bedroom window, I thought I could hear
the sound of Jasper’s sobs. I felt vindicated rather than
sorry, though — he could be such a baby! I mean, crying
over a canoe trip?
“Let’s go, then,” I said.
86
The Girl Across the Water
Dad walked to the shed where the canoe was kept
during the winter, and got his lifejacket.
We pushed the canoe into the water and climbed in,
Dad sitting in the stern. We began to paddle, and it was
amazing how fast the canoe cut through the water with two
people doing the work. The shore passed by at speed, and I
peered closely, looking for places a person might hide. It
was all thick scrub and densely clustered trees, with only
here and there little tiny beaches that had no openings or
paths leading to them from the woods. It was an
impenetrable wall of foliage surrounding the lake. Where
would someone come from?
This made me feel even more hopeful about the
cabin.
We continued to paddle, the sparkles on the lake
almost blinding. Again, I’d forgotten my sunglasses. Dad
chatted to me about all kinds of things: school, home, how
mom was doing.
The lake began to curve, and we followed it around.
As we approached the end, my heart began to beat with
anticipation: what would we find? Or who? Imagining some
grizzled old hunter with a rifle and a bad attitude, I was
glad to have Dad with me.
The cabin could be seen through the scattered trees,
its red door standing out against the surrounding greenery.
It looked like the area around the cabin had once been
completely clear all the way down to the lake, but now salal
and salmonberry bushes were taking over.
87
The Girl Across the Water
“Here we are,” Dad said, and we gave another
stroke. The bow of the canoe touched the beach, and I
hopped out first, the lake water cold around my feet and
ankles.
The beach was longer and sandier than ours. We
pulled the canoe up and stood looking back at the lake.
Really, this was a beautiful spot. You couldn’t see as much
of the lake because of the curve, but it was neat seeing it
from a different angle. Like we were in a completely
different place, like our own cabin didn’t exist any more.
“Let’s take a look, then,” Dad said, tossing his
lifejacket into the canoe. I did the same, and we headed for
the cabin.
It appeared as deserted up close as it had through
the binoculars. The cabin itself and the front door looked
solid, but the window to the right was boarded up, and the
left one, which was opaque with dirt, had a hole in one
corner like someone had thrown a rock through it.
The three front steps were weathered and cracked,
so I treaded up them carefully while Dad waited on the
grass. The top step gave a loud creak. We’re on the stairs,
we’re on the stairs, I thought again, then shook my head,
trying not to concentrate on ghost stories as I closed my
fingers around the door handle. I pulled, but the door didn’t
budge, not a millimeter.
“It think it’s nailed shut,” I said. If it was locked, it
would have moved a tiny bit.
“Let’s go around back, then. Probably a door there.”
88
The Girl Across the Water
Just as I stepped back on the ground, a loud bang
like a door slamming came from the back of the cabin. I
glanced at Dad. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” He went to peer through the front
window, and I followed.
All I could see was a dusty room with one straight-
backed chair in it, and nothing else that I could make out
through the grimy glass. I turned to Dad. “Do you think we
should go around back? It sounded like someone’s here.”
I must have looked more scared than I realized,
because he gave me a reassuring grin and said, “Probably
just a raccoon or something.” I remembered, then, the
raccoon from the other night, and tried to relax my
expression.
“Oh, right, yeah.”
Could a raccoon bang a door, though?
We walked to the side of the cabin and began to
make our way around. Dad went ahead, pushing long,
thorny strands of salmonberry bush out the way, holding
them for me so they didn’t snap back into my face. Some
smaller ones scratched against my arm, and we had to
squeeze close to the cabin to get through.
Behind the cabin was more overgrown than the
front. I wasn’t sure whether there had once been a yard or
not, but now only a small clearing surrounded the back
door. There was a window beside the door, and I peered
into a bare-looking cabin. Already, the place made me
89
The Girl Across the Water
shiver. I felt like we were doing something wrong. “Do you
think it’s okay to go in?”
“I don’t see why not. If it’s deserted, we’re not
disturbing anyone or trespassing.” Dad pulled hard on the
back door, and to our surprise, it opened so easily that he
staggered back. He flashed me a grin ― “Well, that was
easy!” ― and held it open for me.
Taking a deep breath, I climbed the steps and
entered.
The room I was standing in was a small kitchen. It
smelled of dust and mice. There were cupboards, an old,
broken-looking stove, and a warped table with one chair.
No refrigerator, no heater.
“No lock,” Dad said, indicating the side of the door
before letting it swing shut. “It was probably just banging
in
the wind.”
Except there was no wind.
I walked over to the cupboards and slowly opened
one, wondering if I’d find food. That would be the surest
sign of someone living here. I peeked in, and then gave a
shout and stepped back.
“What is it?”
“Uck. Dead mouse. No wonder this place smells.”
Dad grinned. “Not afraid of mice, are you Paul?”
“No,” I said, flustered. “It just surprised me, that’s
all.”
90
The Girl Across the Water
“Well, there are probably more of them. You sure
you want to go on?” He winked.
“Very funny,” I snorted. I closed the cupboard and
stalked into the living room. Apart from the straight-backed
chair I’d seen from outside, there was a lumpy old two-
seater sofa covered with fuzzy grey fabric that looked like it
was beginning to decay. Probably the sofa was an
apartment building for mice.
I swung around to look through the back window
again, feeling like there were eyes watching us from
outside. All I could see was trees, though; I guess I was
just jumpy.
My footsteps were loud against the wooden floor as I
made my way to the front door. It wasn’t nailed shut, as I’d
thought, but locked with a deadbolt. Why deadbolt it if the
back door didn’t even lock? Opposite the front door was a
staircase, and beside it, another door. I pushed the door
open to reveal a study or a bedroom, I couldn’t tell which;
there was nothing in it other than an empty set of
bookshelves.
Dad was behind me, looking around, examining the
walls and ceiling with a bemused expression.
“Upstairs?” I suggested.
“Sure, but be careful on the stairs. This place looks
like it’s falling apart.”
It looked pretty solid to me, but nevertheless, I put
my hand on the wall rather than the banister as I began to
climb the stairs.
91
The Girl Across the Water
The words ‘we’re on the stairs, we’re on the stairs’
echoed through my mind again. This time I smiled. It was a
pretty good story — the kind you thought of every time you
climbed a staircase.
There was a small landing at the top, with a door to
each side: one shut, one ajar. I headed for the ajar one and
pushed it further, revealing a bedroom with an army-style
