by Edward Lee
“Breakfast is ready!” Uncle Chuck announced, placing a large tray down on the kitchen table. Toast, marmalade, assorted jellies. Terri was grateful for the distraction; she felt so confused about things right now that she didn’t want to think about them.
She nibbled at her toast, remembering times not so long ago when breakfast had been a big, happy family affair full of conversation and laughter. Back when Dad was still here, she thought. Now, things were so different. Breakfast, like most meals they had together, were fast, thrown together at the last minute, and over before anyone really had a chance to talk. Her mother was so busy now, always in a rush to go to work, and even when she was home, most of her time was spent—
In the boathouse, Terri thought.
“Well, we’ve got to go now, Terri,” her uncle said after only eating one piece of toast. “I’ve got to take your Mom to work.”
“Have a good day, honey,” her mother said, and leaned over to give Terri a kiss.
“’Bye,” Terri said.
Her mother and Uncle Chuck left, as usual, in a rush. Terri glumly washed the few dishes they’d used, and put them away. She knew she shouldn’t be selfish—after all, the reason her mother had to work so much was because she had to pay the bills. At least Uncle Chuck was helping her out. But—
Things were so much better when Dad was here, she thought. There just didn’t seem to be anything to look forward to anymore.
squeak
Terri glanced over her shoulder. She swore she’d heard a sound, a faint squeak. Like…
Like someone standing in the foyer, she realized just then, because the foyer’s hardwood floor always squeaked the same way. But she’d heard her mother and Uncle Chuck leave the house and close the door behind them, and she’d heard the car engine start and the car drive off, so she knew they hadn’t come back in to get something they’d forgotten.
squeak
There it was again!
Terri’s eyes widened in the kitchen. She could feel her heart racing. It’s nothing, she tried to tell herself. It’s just a house noise. Stop acting like a baby!
So, to prove to herself that no one was there, she boldly left the kitchen and marched right into the foyer, and—
Screamed!
Because the second she’d stepped into the foyer, someone grabbed her from behind—
««—»»
“Patricia!” Terri yelled after spinning around.
Patricia laughed hysterically, standing in the open coat closet in the foyer. “Did I scare you?”
“Yes!” Terri was outraged. “What, you just walked right in the house without even knocking?”
“I was coming up the sidewalk when your Mom and Uncle Chuck were leaving,” Patricia told her, still laughing. “They said I could come in.”
“Well, don’t ever do that again!”
“Chill out, will you, Terri?” Patricia said. “Jeeze, it was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke?”
“Yes, Patricia,” Terri sternly replied. “I can take a joke. But I don’t like to be scared half to death!”
“All right, already.”
But as the scare wore off, Terri realized she was over-reacting, and she knew why. She was still tense from last night, from the restless sleep and the dream she’d had, and, of course, seeing her mother coming up from the lake at 4:30 in the morning. And again she felt immediately confused. She knew she hadn’t dreamed the part about her mother coming up from the lake, but what about the rest? The giant bump-skinned toad with the sharp, pointed teeth…
I must have dreamed that, she decided.
“Well?” Patricia said.
“Well what?”
“Are we going or not?”
Terri’s mind felt in a fog. “Going where?” she asked.
Patricia rolled her eyes. “Don’t you remember what we planned yesterday? We’re supposed to go down to the lake.”
««—»»
That’s right, Terri recalled. In all her anxiety over the dream—or whatever it had been—she’d completely forgotten. Yesterday, they’d planned to sneak down to the lake while Uncle Chuck was driving her mother to work. She still didn’t feel good about it—she knew she’d be in big trouble if she got caught—but, still…
She really wanted to go.
“All right, let’s go,” she said. “But we have to be quick. We can’t hang around down there for too long.”
They went out the back sliding door and crossed the back yard, both in sneakers, shorts, and colorful day-glo T-shirts. The morning was sunny and bright. Sunlight shined on the back yard grass, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“How long does it take your uncle to drive your Mom to work?” Patricia asked mindfully.
“It’s about fifteen minutes each way.”
“So that gives us a half hour.”
“Yeah, but we better make it twenty minutes, just to be safe,” Terri suggested. She didn’t want to take any chances; if her mother or Uncle Chuck knew she’d disobeyed them, and gone down to the lake, she’d be grounded for a month! No TV, no badminton, no nothing!
They crunched down the gravel path behind the house, and descended into the woods. Suddenly, the hot, bright morning darkened and turned cool; the dense trees of the woods shaded the path—Terri imagined herself walking down a tunnel.
Patricia, as they walked, was glancing worriedly around.
“What’s wrong?” Terri asked.
“I’m keeping an eye out for snakes.”
Terri smiled to herself. There she goes again with her snakes. Terri wasn’t worried at all about snakes—she knew there really weren’t any around here—but there were a few things she was worried about, and the boathouse was one of them. She still felt mystified as to why her mother would be working in the boathouse so late. Terri herself had only been in the boathouse a few times, and only in the front room, which her father had turned into an office. But there were other rooms, she knew, rooms she hadn’t seen, rooms that her parents had forbidden her to enter.
And I’m going to find out what’s in them, she determined to herself.
Because she had the strongest suspicion that those other rooms had something to do with the strange way her mother had been acting over the past few months.
“It sure is pretty down here,” Patricia said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“And look at all the flowers between the trees!”
There were indeed many forest flowers all around them, in a variety of tones and colors, plus lots of pretty green ferns and other plants.
“What kind of flowers are these?” Patricia inquired. “Do you know?”
“Not really. I don’t know that much about flowers.”
“Can I pick some of them and take them home?”
“Sure,” Terri said.
Patricia stepped off the path into the woods, scanning for the biggest and prettiest flowers. Then she spotted some bright orange ones, with bright-yellow centers, growing at the base of one of the big, thick-trunked oak trees. She reached toward the flowers to pick them, then flinched, then…
Shrieked at the top of her lungs.
“Patricia!” Terri exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
Patricia stumbled back out of the brush, and grabbed Terri in trembling fear.
“A snake!” she shouted. “There’s a huge snake right there next to the tree!”
««—»»
Terri’s heart swelled in her chest. A snake! She’d been wrong all along. She and Patricia clung to each other, their faces pale with fear.
“It’s right there!” Patricia wailed, pointing toward the brush at the base of the tree. “See it?”
Terri squinted, trying to focus her eyes. She was looking right at where Patricia was pointing. But—
I don’t see any snake, she thought.
“Where?” she asked. “Where’s the snake?”
“Right there!” Patricia insisted, still pointing. “Can’t you see it? That big, fat gra
y snake right there next to the orange flowers?”
Terri’s mouth hung open when she saw it. She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Patricia! That’s not a snake! That’s a dead tree branch!”
Patricia stared forward; she didn’t seem to believe it. “No, it’s not! It’s a snake, just like your Uncle Chuck said. It’s a snake, and it might bite us!”
Terri’s laughter continued. “Don’t be a moron, Patricia.” Then she stepped into the brush, reaching down.
“Don’t go in there!” Patricia screamed. “It’ll bite you for sure! It’s probably poisonous!”
Terri boldly picked up the scaly branch and held it up. “See?” she said. “Here’s your snake.” Nothing but an old, dead tree branch. She broke it over her knee and cast it back into the woods.
“Jeeze,” Patricia said, relieved now. “I guess I am a moron. I really thought it was a snake.”
“Well, sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you. You’ll think you’ll see something that’s not really there. It turns out to be something else.”
“I guess so. Like when I was little, sometimes I’d think my blouses hanging in my bedroom closet were really people standing there.”
“Yeah, like that.” But then Terri thought about it. Yes, sometimes the eyes did play tricks on you. Is that what happened last night? she questioned herself. She felt sure now that she hadn’t really seen the big toad with teeth. But what of her mother, walking up the trail from the boathouse at 4:30 in the morning?
Maybe I didn’t really see that, either, she considered. Maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.
She hoped so, at least.
“I feel like an idiot,” Patricia said. “I thought that stupid branch was a snake. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Terri promised as they continued down the path. “Everybody’s eyes play tricks on them sometimes. It’s happened to me too.”
“Really? When?”
Last night, Terri thought. But she didn’t want to tell Patricia what she thought she’d seen. Patricia would laugh her head off if Terri told her about the giant toad with teeth trying to eat the rabbit in the yard. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “But it happens to everybody once in a while. It’s no big deal.”
They continued on down the path, their sneakers crunching over the gravel. Little spots of sunlight, shining through the leaves on the trees, seemed to blink at them from above. Along the way they saw lots of birds and mushrooms and many more plants and colorful flowers. Butterflies fluttered around them in the shade, and moths and dragonflies.
And then—
A glare of sunlight shined in their eyes. The lake, Terri realized. Where the trees opened at the end of the path, they could see the water now, and the sun shining brightly on it like a huge mirror.
“Is that it?” Patricia asked excitedly.
“What?” Terri asked, but she already knew the answer to her friend’s question. The brown-shingled building at the very end of the path, propped up over the water on its own pier.
“Is that the boathouse?” Patricia said.
Suddenly, for some reason, a prickling chill ran up Terri’s spine…
“Yeah, that’s it,” she informed. “That’s the boathouse.”
««—»»
“Wow, this is neat!” Patricia exclaimed. They walked up onto the planked pier. If you looked down, you could see the water between the cracks in the planks. And a gentle lapping sound could be heard too: the water at the edge of the lake slapping against the pier posts.
Patricia walked out to the end of the pier, gazing out onto the lake. “This is beautiful. It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”
“It’s not that big,” Terri said. She’d seen much bigger lakes. But it was still a good size.
“Is that your boat?” Patricia asked, pointing down.
“Yeah.” The small boat floated lightly, tied by a thick rope to one of the pier posts. “I’ve never even been out on it.”
“It’s even got a motor!” Patricia noticed. “Do you know how to work it?”
“All I know is you pull that cord there on top of the motor,” Terri said. “But there’re buttons you have to adjust too, and I don’t really know how to do it. There’s something on it called a throttle; you have to set it right first. But I don’t even think it works anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, my Dad told me.”
“Yeah,” Patricia scoffed. “And your Uncle Chuck told you there were snakes all over the place. And all we found were branches. Maybe your Dad told you the boat didn’t work because he didn’t want you to use it.”
Patricia, Terri knew, had a point. It just seemed to her that sometimes grownups said things on purpose that weren’t true, to discourage kids.
“I don’t know,” was all Terri said in response.
“Well, why don’t we try it?”
“What? Riding in the boat?” Terri questioned, astonished.
“Yeah, why not?”
“Because I already told you, my Uncle Chuck’ll be back in a half-hour. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’d get in if he caught us in the boat? I’d get grounded if he even knew we’d come down the path.”
“All right, all right,” Patricia agreed. “But let’s at least look around.”
“Okay.”
They approached the door to the boathouse. Terri was still very curious about what was in there. She knew the front room was just an office, but why would her parents forbid her from ever going in the other rooms? I’m going to find out right now, she decided. Her Mom and Uncle Chuck would never know. What harm could there be in her just looking around real quick?
“All right,” Terri said. “Let’s go in.” And then she put her hand on the doorknob, turned it, and—
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed.
“What’s the matter?” Patricia asked.
Terri looked back at her friend in sheer frustration.
“The door’s locked!” she exclaimed.
««—»»
The wooden door jiggled in its frame but wouldn’t open. Terri could see the lock’s metal bolt between the gap.
“What are we going to do now?” Patricia asked, with more than a little disappointment.
Terri’s eyes thinned. “Well,” she said slowly, thinking. “One time on TV I saw somebody open a locked door with a credit card.”
“A credit card!” Patricia exclaimed. “Where are we going to get a credit card? We’re only twelve! Are you telling me you have a credit card?”
“No,” Terri said. Of course, she didn’t have a credit card; only adults had those. “But I’ve got a library card.”
Patricia watched with amazement as Terri withdrew her plastic covered Devonsville Library card and slipped it in between the edge of the door and the doorframe. Very carefully, she worked the edge of the card against the angled side of the bolt. Gently, gently…
“Aw, it’s not going to work,” Patricia dismissed.
“Wait…”
Terri worked the card in further. The bolt moved a little.
“Wait,” Terri repeated, biting her lower lip as she concentrated.
The bolt moved a little more. Then—
click!
The door opened.
“You did it!” Patricia celebrated.
Yeah, Terri thought, a little surprised herself that she’d actually been able to. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go check it out.”
The front room of the boathouse remained as Terri had last seen it, a refurbished office. There was the big desk next to the window, and on top of the desk sat stacks of papers, a typewriter, and a computer. There were also several high file cabinets.
“What’s all this stuff?” Patricia inquired, reaching out to pick up some of the papers laying on the desk.
“Don’t touch it!” Terri exclaimed. “We can’t touch anything, Patricia! If everything isn’t exactly the way my Mom left it, she’ll know
we were here!”
“Oh,” Patricia slowly realized, pulling her hand away from the papers. “Sorry… But I wonder what all these papers and things are.”
“Just notes, from my mother’s zoology work.” Then Terri walked to the back of the office. There were two more doors against the rear wall. A sign on one door read SUPPLY ROOM, while the sign on the second door read DO NOT ENTER.
“Are those the rooms you were telling me about?” Patricia asked. “The rooms that your father told you to never go in?”
“Yeah,” Terri answered, her curiosity burning. Immediately, she put her hand on the knob to the supply room. The knob turned—the door was unlocked—and she went in, Patricia following close behind.
“Wait a minute,” Terri observed.
“This doesn’t look like any supply room to me,” Patricia noticed at once.
The room was full of more computers on big racks, with lots of blinking lights. There must’ve been half a dozen computer screens the size of small television sets. But one of the screens was turned on, and it had words on it.
Terri squinted at the screen and read some of the brightly lit words:
LOT 2: TRANSMISSION FAILURE
LOT 2a: TRANSMISSION FAILURE
LOT 3: POSITIVE REAGENT
TRANSMISSION OF GENETIC
CARNIVORE MUTATION
“What’s all that mean?” Terri asked.
“I don’t know,” Terri said, disappointed. She didn’t know what any of the words meant.
“Come on,” Patricia urged. “This room is dull. Let’s go into the other one.”
“Good idea.”
The girls went back out; Terri was careful to remember to close the door behind her—she knew it was very important that the boathouse be left as it was, otherwise, her mother and Uncle Chuck would surely guess that she’d been in here.
Terri’s frown was sharp when she turned the knob on the door marked DO NOT ENTER.
“It’s locked,” she said.
