The Light in the Lake

by Sarah R. Baughman

  “Was that it?” Tai whispers.

  When I finally take a breath, the waves roll in again, but soft and quiet like before. The music’s gone.

  “That was it,” I say, my voice flat.

  Before we get back on our bikes, I pull the notebook out. With such a bright moon, I don’t even need to use the flashlight on my phone to see it. I can’t write fast enough.

  “Don’t forget to write about that silver pattern,” Tai says. “That was really cool.”

  “Didn’t it kind of look like a tail to you?” I ask. “Moving in and out of the water?”

  “Definitely could have been a tail,” Tai says.

  I remember the fish Amos never caught, flashing through the water, the water closing over it. A lake can hold so many secrets.

  Chapter 16

  I guess I was paying too much attention to the cymbals, because I never felt my phone buzz in my pocket. When I reach for it, I see three texts from Dad, all sent in the last fifteen minutes.

  Where are you

  Calling Mama now

  Mama’s heading home, calling police, please answer

  “No!” I shout, pressing my palm into my forehead. My heart races. I fumble with the phone—

  Coming home now

  Don’t call police I’m fine

  “Your dad woke up?” Tai says. “Wow. That sucks.”

  “You’re telling me,” I say. “My parents will be so mad.” Even though I’m annoyed, I feel guilty too. I know they have a right to be upset.

  “You want me to come in with you?” Tai asks. “Try to explain?”

  “No,” I say. “Please don’t come in.” It’s hard to think about the scene Mama will make when she sees me. “Let’s just get back fast.”

  At home, I turn the knob quietly, even though I know Dad’s awake and Mama’s car is already in the driveway. I wonder if they’ll dock her pay for leaving in the middle of a shift. I wonder what she said—an emergency. My daughter. Everybody must have been thinking: Not again. My stomach flip-flops, and I feel sick.

  I tiptoe into the living room. Maybe some small part of me thinks that if I don’t make noise, they’ll forget I snuck out. Forget I scared them to death. I’ll go into the living room and they’ll be watching TV, eating microwave popcorn. Mama will scoot over on the couch and pat the warm spot next to her and tell me to snuggle in, here’s a blanket. Maybe it will be okay.

  But the first thing I see is Mama’s face, wet with tears. Dad’s sitting beside her, one hand on her back, the other over his eyes.

  I stand perfectly still. When Mama sees me, she starts crying for real, and that makes Dad move his hand away from his eyes and stand up like he’s about to say something. Instead, he sits back down and puts his face back in his hands. His shoulders shake.

  It is so weird to watch my parents cry. The last time was at Amos’s funeral. And that wasn’t as weird because I was crying too. I can go back to the memory of that day, but I can’t stay very long. It just comes in flashes. The casket, shiny polished wood. His face, unspeaking. Someone’s voice telling me It’s okay, you can touch him, and me wanting to hit the voice because this wasn’t really him. The preacher opening his Bible, then closing it. Not saying anything for a long, long time. Muffled cries and tissues. So many casseroles afterward, and people telling me to eat even though I didn’t want to, not ever again. And Mama and Dad, crumpled against each other.

  “I’m okay, you guys,” I say, and that makes Mama cry harder. She blows her nose and looks right at me.

  “You don’t get to do this,” Mama says. “Do you have any idea what we—” She stops, buries her face in her hands.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, but—”

  Dad cuts me off. “If you’re going to sneak out, shouldn’t you at least have your phone on you?”

  “I did have it, I…” But I stop then and look at the floor. I know having it isn’t really the point if I’m not going to listen for it.

  “We bought you that phone for a reason,” Dad says. “So we wouldn’t have to wonder where you were, the way we had to wonder about—” Then he stops too, shakes his head. “What were you thinking, Addie?”

  Dad, Mama, me, we all just sit there with springs and wires popping out of our bodies. Anger fizzles inside me, a spitting current. They’re going to worry about me too much forever now. Maybe this is what happens when someone dies. A thing inside everyone else breaks and you just have to know you’ll never really be able to fix it.

  I feel the whale tooth cutting into my pocket, a reminder of everything I lost. And all I have left. And just then, I feel that warmth surround me.

  I don’t feel like I have very much to lose when I tell them about Amos and the creature. Maybe when Mama hears his name, she’ll cry harder. Maybe Dad will clench his jaw and hold up his hand, tell me to stop talking. But then again, maybe they’ll listen. Because it’s either that, or keep on breaking.

  I take a deep breath. “I was working on a project for Amos.” The warmth gets stronger, holding tight.

  Mama’s face stills then and she looks up, the crumpled tissue rolling from her hand to the floor. Her eyes find mine. It’s hard to look at her—at her forehead, full of lines so deep now they look like the furrows in Uncle Mark’s fields.

  But I do look at her. I keep going. “He believed something about the lake—he thought there was… something living down there. He wanted to prove it.”

  “Something?” Dad says. “Something, like what?”

  “Like a creature,” I say.

  “A creature?” Dad’s voice cracks roughly. “What kind of creature?”

  I squirm under Dad’s gaze. “You know how we read those stories growing up, like about mysterious animals or… magical things living in the woods and the water? Amos thought there could be something like that in Maple Lake.”

  Mama looks up at the ceiling and sighs. “Nothing could beat his imagination,” she says. Then she looks at me. “I suppose he thought only he could see it?”

  “It had more to do with believing,” I say. “I think he figured if you believed in it, you’d see it. He wanted me to help him investigate before he—” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Before he died. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but now I’m kind of trying to go back and see if his clues were real.”

  “And that’s why you snuck out of the house in the middle of the night?” Mama asks, shaking her head. “To find a magical creature?”

  Then her eyes get really big. She doesn’t have to say anything out loud; I see everything in her eyes. Amos sneaking out. The cold, the ice, the slipping and cracking. She knows now what he was looking for.

  The air around us freezes, and I shiver in the summer heat. I need to keep talking, to just answer Mama’s question like I don’t know what she just realized.

  “That’s, um—that’s most of it,” I say. “I mean, I can see how it sounds kind of crazy. But it’s not just about finding a creature. I think the pollution in the lake might be related. And I want to figure out how.”

  Mama just looks at me, and I can tell it isn’t anger that makes her eyes flare like sparklers, then go dim. It’s something else. Sadness, maybe.

  “Well,” Dad says, his voice hard and heavy. “You’re grounded. All week. I bring you to the biological station, your mother or I pick you up, but otherwise you stay in your room. No library, no trips to the ice cream shop or Teddy’s, no bike rides. And no calf. That’s it.”

  “But Liza needs me!” I say. “Why do you want to punish her too?”

  “Your cousin will be fine,” Dad says. “She knows what she’s doing. Besides, I don’t think you’ve been going to the farm nearly as much as she expected you to.”

  I stare at the ground, my cheeks puffed out, my eyes burning. Dad’s right, and it’s not like Liza’s going to be sympathetic when she finds out I can’t help with Rascal because I was out at Maple Lake.

  At least I can still go to the biological station—I really need to get
back to my research.

  Dad stands up and puts his hand on my shoulder. Its heavy weight rests there. “Don’t ever do that again,” he says quietly. Then he leaves the room.

  Mama surprises me then. She leans forward and takes my face in her hands. And even though her eyes are still wet, she smiles. It almost feels like that time in the lake when she held my face and said, “My little girl.” Now, she strokes my hair. And then, so sadly I feel the rest of my heart flop out and slither away, she says: “Don’t you know there isn’t such a thing as magic?”

  I look down at the floor, blinking back tears.

  Chapter 17

  Getting grounded meant I had lots of time alone in my room to go back over Amos’s clues and my own notes. It helped soothe the sting of knowing that Mama and Dad didn’t believe me.

  Still, being stuck at home slowed the week down. I texted Liza to explain why I couldn’t come to the barn, at least sort of, but I definitely left out some of the details. Like all the ones about Maple Lake. So basically, I just told her I was grounded. It took her a while to text back and when she did, she just wrote: OK. She didn’t even ask why.

  Now it’s time for our Fourth of July dinner at her house, and I try to calm the flutter in my chest. Tai’s coming with us and I just want things to go well.

  “Addie, can you get the maple pudding?” Mama calls. She’s packing her work clothes in a plastic bag so she can leave for her late shift straight from Aunt Mary and Uncle Mark’s.

  Maple pudding’s just as good as it sounds: maple syrup, milk, eggs, and vanilla stirred together and heated, then cooled to room temperature until it’s light as air and creamy sweet.

  As I carry the bowl toward the front door, I realize this is the first dish Mama’s made for one of Aunt Mary’s dinners since Amos died. She always used to bring something—chicken rice casserole, spinach salad when we could pick it fresh in the garden—but afterward, she just brought herself. And even then, just barely.

  So I feel a lightness inside when I bring the maple pudding out to the truck and set it down carefully next to me on the seat. Dad turns the key and Mama checks her hair in the mirror, patting wisps into place.

  When we pull in, Tai’s already waiting outside. He jogs up to the truck, smiling.

  I push the door open for him. As soon as he hops in, he shakes Mama’s hand. “Hi, Mrs. Lago. I’m Tai.” Then he shakes Dad’s hand too.

  “Good to see you again, son,” Dad says, but he kind of chokes on the last word. Mama’s eyes flash. I know how it feels to say something you didn’t really mean to say, or didn’t expect to hurt as much as it does. Leaves you feeling bumped and bruised.

  We pull onto the road that bends around Maple Lake and up toward Liza’s house. In late-afternoon sunshine, the lake sparkles like someone threw millions of coins right on the surface and made them float.

  When we pull into Liza’s driveway, DeeDee and Sammie run out. As soon as Dad puts the truck in park, they’re on it, slapping their little hands against the windows. Aunt Mary rushes out, holding Baby Katy. “Girls, get away from there! Let Uncle Bruce out.” Bumble howls.

  “It’s loud here,” I say to Tai. “But it’s fun.”

  “Looks like it.” Tai hops out of the truck and the little girls stare.

  “Who are you?” That’s DeeDee, the outgoing one.

  “I’m Tai.” He sticks his hand out for DeeDee to shake. “Who are you?”

  “I’m DeeDee. And this is my sister Sammie.” Sammie’s eyeing Tai suspiciously, arms crossed on her chest. She’s always shy around new people.

  “Pleased to meet you both,” Tai says. “Do you know what I can do?”

  “What?” DeeDee asks. She’s got her hands on her hips.

  “I can walk on my hands. Ever seen anyone do that?”

  “You cannot,” DeeDee says. “Feet are for walking, not hands.”

  Tai shrugs. “Well, watch this.” And then he flips up into an easy handstand, moves forward a few steps, and flops down. “See?”

  DeeDee and Sammie both stare, their jaws hanging open. Sammie’s got her arms uncrossed now.

  A split second later, they’re hanging on Tai: “I want to do it! Teach me!” One at a time, Tai helps them flip over and steadies their ankles as they move their hands forward. He gently lowers their legs and they pop back up, shrieking. “Again! Again!”

  Aunt Mary smiles. “You’re pretty good with little kids,” she says. But Mama just stares and clutches Dad’s elbow.

  “Come on, Laura,” Aunt Mary says gently. “Get yourselves inside. Did you bring maple pudding? Oh, you did! Best news I’ve heard all day.”

  Mama turns to follow her. She moves slowly, like a robot, looking over her shoulder at Tai with DeeDee and Sammie.

  I know what she sees. Anyone who knew him would. The only other person who made DeeDee and Sammie giggle like that, the one who always got them riled up with freeze tag and magic tricks and tickle-fests, was Amos.

  It’s so warm outside that Aunt Mary decides to move us all out onto her two big picnic tables in the backyard. Tai and I help her pin tablecloths down and set plates and cups out. I don’t ask where Liza is or why she hasn’t come out to say hi yet, because I’m pretty sure she’s now officially one hundred percent mad at me.

  Aunt Mary takes Baby Katy inside for a diaper change and Tai and I sit on the grass. Mama and Dad walk arm in arm at the edges of Uncle Mark’s pasture, where the little stream of water that feeds into the Pine River begins. They’re out of earshot, but I see their heads tilted toward each other, Mama’s lips moving.

  “So wait a second, Addie,” Tai says. He’s found a rubber ball in the yard and rolls it under his ankles, back and forth. “Your dad and your uncle Mark are brothers, right?”

  “Yup,” I say.

  “So how did they decide who would get the farm?” Tai dribbles the ball a little.

  “Oh,” I explain. “My dad is older, but he actually didn’t want to farm.”

  “Really?” Tai asks. “Why not? It seems fun.”

  “It can be fun,” I say. “But not always. It’s tough too. Uncle Mark and Aunt Mary work really hard.”

  “It seems like a lot to keep up,” Tai says, looking around at the fields spreading out past the lawn, at the barn and silo and implement sheds.

  “Farming isn’t even their only job,” I say. “They always say nobody can make a living from a small farm anymore, that it’s hard enough even with other jobs on top.”

  “Wow,” Tai says. “So what else do they do besides all of this?”

  “Aunt Mary’s a teacher,” I say. “Third grade. Uncle Mark grows hay and corn for feed, and runs the sugaring operation.”

  “What’s sugaring?” Tai asks. “I mean, it sounds delicious.”

  “Making maple syrup.” I point to the long blue sap lines running through the woods at the edge of the field. “Those all carry sap from maple trees to the sugarhouse, where it goes through an evaporator.”

  In the earliest part of spring, Uncle Mark likes to hang just one bucket from a tap in the trunk of the big maple in their yard and let us dip sap out of it with a ladle. The liquid runs clear and thin as water, but there’s this hint of sweetness underneath. And you know that if you just wait, if you boil it long enough, the sweetness will grow.

  “They sound… really busy,” Tai says. Leaning back on his arms, he punches a foot forward to kick the ball my way, and I lob it back.

  “I mean, my parents work really hard too,” I say. “Obviously. But my dad just always wanted to do something different. He likes building things. That’s why he works for a builder. He can start with bare ground and make a whole house.”

  Tai’s eyes widen. “That’s awesome.”

  A little firecracker of pride sparks in my chest. “Yeah. It is.”

  I hear the screen door slam. It’s Liza, holding her sketchbook.

  “Hey,” she says. “Long time no see.” The air feels heavy, thick enough to cut.

&
nbsp; “I know.” I look down at the ground.

  “Hard to keep this one out of trouble,” Tai says.

  Liza walks right up to Tai. “You got that right. I’m Liza.”

  “It’s great to meet you,” Tai says. “I’m Tai. And I happen to love art. Can I see what you’re drawing?”

  Surprise flickers in Liza’s eyes. She flashes a shy smile, but holds the book close to her chest. “Um,” she says. “I’m not finished yet.”

  “Oh, come on,” Tai says. “I promise I’ll like it.”

  The smile widens. “Let’s wait till I’m done,” Liza says.

  “Can you at least say what you’re drawing? A house? A tree? Me—your unsuspecting victim?” Tai’s got his hands on his hips; he’s keeping his distance.

  But now Liza’s laughing. “Okay, fine,” she says, and holds the sketchbook out. But she gives me such a sharp look I shrink back while Tai leans in to see.

  He sucks his breath in a low whistle. “Nice,” he says. “Very nice.”

  Liza blushes and snatches the sketchbook away before I can get a good look.

  “Come on,” I say. “You have to show me now too.”

  Liza narrows her eyes, but she folds a page back after all. I shriek a little when I see it: it’s Rascal. Somehow Liza managed to get all her crazy patterns exactly right.

  “It’s perfect!” I say, and I mean it. “Are you entering this in the Shoreland Art Show too?”

  “It doesn’t have a whole lot to do with moon phases,” Liza says. “So no.”

  Her voice crackles, jagged as broken ice.

  In the barn, Tai recognizes Rascal right away.

  “Those are some crazy-cool markings,” he says. “It’s almost like an artist designed her.”

  Liza smiles and hooks a halter around Rascal’s head, leading her out of the stall. Then she hands the rope to me. “Want to practice?” she asks. Now her voice sounds cautious. Maybe a little hopeful. But as soon as she hands me the rope, she steps back, far enough to put some space between us.