by Alex Tully
She felt herself blushing, but she tried to play it cool, “Um, yeah he seems nice,” she said. And then she quickly changed the subject, “but work was really busy today and I am super tired right now, so do you think we can talk later?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Parker’s face showed a hint of disappointment, “I’ve got to go anyways.”
She smiled, “Come find me later, okay?”
“Okay,” he turned to leave and then added, “I’ll come by later—to find you.”
“Okay,” sometimes the kid was a little much. She just wanted a shower and her bed.
Zoe headed straight for the kitchen and grabbed herself a glass of ice water before walking back to her room. Debbie was in the bathroom getting ready for her shift at the Outrigger. Zoe would have to wait for her shower.
She laid down on her bed and thought about the horrible meeting with Mr. Crawford—and his wife. What a disaster. She pulled the crumpled card out of her skirt pocket and looked at the scribbled numbers in black ink.
Maybe she should just throw it away—if Mr. Crawford asked why she hadn’t texted, she could just say she lost the card. But what if he didn’t believe her, what if it pissed him off so much, that he fired her right on the spot?
Anyway, Heather didn’t seem to think it was a big deal—‘just save the voicemails’, she said. If Mr. Crawford did end up calling her, maybe he’d get paranoid and give her a big bonus at the end of the summer, just like Heather.
Zoe opened up the contacts in her phone and pushed add a contact. She typed in: Crawfish 419-555-4471. She tried about twenty different text messages before she settled on one.
Zoe 3:37 pm: Hi Mr. Crawford, It’s Zoe just texting my number.
Mr. Crawford 3:39 pm: Thank you Zoe and please call me Martin.
Oh, god. Red flag number one, waving high.
She looked up at the ceiling in her tiny room. There was a big brown water stain in the corner which looked like it had grown since last night’s storm. With her luck, there was probably some black mold lurking up there.
She thought of the bedroom on the yacht, Ethan’s sister’s room. The comfy bed with big white pillows, the closet full of cute clothes…why couldn’t she have that? She hated that feeling—jealousy. But she couldn’t help it.
And then a thought suddenly occurred to her, what if Ethan was like her—what if he had nothing? Would it make a difference?
She closed her eyes and thought about the night before. She thought about the way he kissed her on the boat—the perfect, warm, gentle kiss in the cold, stinging rain. She thought about the way he changed after that, about the way he cautiously smiled at her, the way he took charge of the boat, the way he held her hand tightly as they ran down the dock, the way he made her hot chocolate and tucked her in.
Nope, if Ethan had nothing, it wouldn’t matter. He would be enough.
And that was the last thought she had before she fell asleep.
***
There was no pain. There was no panic.
She fell into the darkness and she didn’t fight it—she wanted it.
The darkness comforted her. It held her like a baby as she fell further.
She knew it wasn’t possible to breathe underwater, but breathing wasn’t necessary.
Only being was necessary. And accepting.
Further and further she sank, into the darkness with no end.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The alarm on Zoe’s phone jolted her out of her dream. She sat up in bed, heart racing, and grabbed her phone, hitting the snooze button. She squinted at the late afternoon sun streaming through her window and onto her bed. She looked at the time, 6:31 pm. Shit, she had totally zonked.
She had one text message.
Meredith 4:54 pm: Hey I’m betting you are napping text me when you wake up
Zoe hopped out of bed and went straight to the shower. She stood under the water for ten minutes before she even reached for the shampoo. She towel-dried her hair and threw on a clean t-shirt and shorts. She headed to the kitchen, made a pb&j sandwich, and texted Meredith.
Zoe 7:12 pm: Hey you want to come over?
Meredith 7:13 pm: Yes! Be there in 10.
During work, she had texted Meredith a very abbreviated version of the night before, but she hadn’t been able to give her all the juicy details. She was surprised Meredith wasn’t sitting at the end of her bed waiting when she woke up.
Zoe finished her sandwich and went outside. She looked down to the water, but from her vantage point, she couldn’t see the Sea-quester. She waited on the screened porch until she heard Meredith’s Civic come rumbling down the gravel road.
“Hey!” Meredith bounced her way into the porch and sat across from Zoe, “Tell me everything! And don’t skip any details!”
Zoe felt giddy, “Well so I went out to Frankie’s boat to get the hell away from Debbie and I hear this, ‘Hey! Zoe right?’ and it scared the crap out of me! And I look over and he was like running over to me—.”
“Oh my God!” Meredith squealed, “What were you thinking?!”
“Honestly, I didn’t want him to see me crying, so I was wiping my face trying to pull myself together.”
Meredith’s eyes were huge, “Was he still as cute as you remembered?”
“Uh, cuter.”
“Well go on! Tell me!”
So Zoe relayed the rest of the night in vivid detail, “So…I was in such a hurry in the morning, I didn’t realize we didn’t exchange numbers. But oh my god Meredith, the whole thing was so crazy!”
“Well, so much for rule number one!” Meredith threw her hands in the air.
“I know…but he’s different.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” Meredith quipped, “And I can’t believe you fricking kissed him!”
“I had to!” Zoe yelled, “He was freaking out!”
“But…” Meredith paused, “He never told you what happened to him—like last year?”
“No.”
“What do you think it was?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Zoe shrugged. Not that she hadn’t wondered about it—a lot.
“But it must’ve been something pretty bad.”
“Yeah,” Zoe glanced down toward the water, “I think it must’ve been really bad.”
CHAPTER 20
PARKER
Parker was just about to walk over to Zoe’s when he saw Meredith’s car pull up in front of her trailer. He decided he would go over to Ethan’s instead, and see if he was there. Maybe he’d want to fish. He grabbed his gear from the shed, “Grams, I’m gonna go fish!”
“I don’t need to repeat the rules, do I?” she yelled from inside.
“No! I got it!” He took his stuff down to the water, dropped it at the dock and headed over to the yacht.
Ethan answered the door right away, “Hey Parker, what’s up? You want to come in?”
“Um, I’m not allowed.” It was so embarrassing that he couldn’t go where he wanted.
After he had been so excited about playing Xbox with Ethan, Grams ruined everything. She warned him to stay off the yacht, or there’d be ‘hell to pay’, “How am I supposed to know if you’re on that boat, or at the bottom of the lake?! You are only allowed where I can see you!”
“I can respect that,” Ethan smiled. “You’re actually lucky you have a Grandma that cares so much about you.”
“Uh, not really,” Parker would never think he was lucky, “She cares way too much. It sucks.”
Ethan looked over at the dock, “You doing some fishing?”
“Yeah, and I’ve got an extra pole—I just thought maybe if you weren’t doing anything…”
“Absolutely. Hold on one sec, okay?” He disappeared into the cabin and then yelled out, “You want something to drink? A Coke, or Sprite maybe?”
“Sure! Sprite would be great.” He hardly ever got to drink pop cause all Grams would buy was fricking Kool-Aid.
As they walked back to the dock, Ethan pulled out h
is phone, “Does Grams let you have a phone?”
“Nope.”
“Really?”
“Too expensive she said.”
“Well, what about one of those real cheap ones…you know, just for safety. Then she could call you whenever she wanted—.”
“Trust me,” Parker interrupted, “I’ve tried to convince her. It’s impossible.”
Parker handed Ethan his usual pole because it was the way better of the two. He opened up the styrofoam container of nightcrawlers and pulled out a long, thick one, “You want me to bait your hook?”
Ethan smiled, “No, I think I can handle it.”
Parker stuck the wiggling worm with the sharp point, “See people don’t realize how important this part is.” He then expertly wrapped the worm around the hook and stuck it at the other end, “Most people just stick it on there any old way, but this way is super secure. That way, the fish can’t keep stealing your bait.”
“Wow, you are really good at that,” Ethan’s worm was hanging halfway off his hook, “How’d you learn to do that?”
“My mom.”
“Oh yeah. I remember you said she taught you how to fish.”
“Yeah, she taught me a lot of things,” and then he added, “But she died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, she was really sick.” Parker didn’t mind telling people. Grams always said it was good to talk about people after they were gone. She said Mom was up in heaven and she liked it when she heard people down on Earth talking about her, “But she’s in heaven now, and there aren’t any sick people up there.”
Ethan nodded, “Makes sense.”
Parker couldn’t tell if Ethan believed that. He didn’t really know if he believed that. But it did make him feel better. Plus, even though he didn’t like to admit it, Grams was smart and she was usually right about most things.
Just then he got a bite—he felt the line jerk under the water—the best feeling ever. As he slowly reeled it in, he could tell it was a pretty good size. He took little breaks reeling, so the line wouldn’t get too strained, just like mom had taught him to.
“Looks like it could be a big one!” Ethan seemed more excited than him.
Parker pulled the line up out of the water, “What the hell?!”
It was a giant, nasty, slimy, catfish.
Ethan was laughing, “Holy shit, you got a bottom-feeder! Did you put a sinker on your line?”
“No!” He laid the catfish on the dock and it immediately began flopping around, “I hate taking the hooks out of these.”
“Don’t they sting with those whiskers?” Ethan asked.
“No,” he held the catfish down with his towel, “but they can sting you with their dorsal fin, and you have to be super careful because they’re so slippery.”
“You know a lot about fish, huh?”
He knew pretty much everything about every kind of fish in Lake Erie, “Yeah well, not much else to do around here.” Parker carefully pulled the hook out and threw the catfish back in the water.
“You always throw them back?” Ethan asked.
“Always—even the perch. Grams told me if I ever catch perch to keep it, so she can fry it up. She loves perch. But I never tell her when I catch one.”
“I always throw them back too.”
He liked Ethan even more, “Well I’m up—one to nothing.”
“Oh shit,” Ethan laughed, “I didn’t know this was a contest. I guess I better get serious.”
Parker baited another hook and threw in another line. Neither of them got any more bites for a while, but that was okay. It was fun just hanging out with Ethan.
The sun was getting lower in the sky, and it looked like it was going to be an awesome sunset. Parker smiled because at that moment he felt really, really happy.
“Hey, Twerp!”
And of course she would ruin it.
He turned around to see Meredith and Zoe walking up the dock, “Oh great.”
“Hi Ethan, I’m Meredith!” she announced it before she even reached them. She stuck her hand in Ethan’s face like he should kiss it, “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Unbelievable.
Zoe looked like she wanted to kill Meredith, and Parker didn’t blame her.
Ethan stood up and dusted his hands on his shorts, “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you too.”
“Oh, you have?” Meredith whipped her head toward Zoe.
Zoe just smiled and shrugged, “So did you guys catch anything?”
“I did,” Parker said quickly, “Ethan wasn’t so lucky.”
“He’s right,” Ethan looked right at Zoe, “I came up empty.”
Parker watched the two of them. It was so obvious they liked each other—like liked each other.
“Well, we were going to watch the sunset,” Meredith said. “I think we’ll just sit back here a little ways though.” She took a couple of steps back, “Just looking at that bait is making me want to gag.”
Parker couldn’t resist. He pulled a worm out of the dirt in the small white container and waved it in the air, “Like this?”
“Put it back you little shit!”
“You want a taste, Meredith?” He took a step toward her.
Meredith stepped back again, “I swear to god, take another step and I will throw you in that lake so damn fast.”
Parker was a great swimmer if he did say so himself. That was another thing mom had taught him. She always said that learning to swim was more important than anything he’d learn in school.
However, he did not want to get thrown in there, not right by the dock. The water was probably only six or seven feet deep, but it was filled with seaweed. Well, it was technically called algae. And it grew all the way up to the surface—an underwater jungle of the slimiest stuff ever—even slimier than a catfish. It slithered around the legs and up the shorts like thousands of tiny snakes. It was gross, beyond gross.
“Okay, okay…” Parker put the worm back in the container, “Don’t get your panties in a bunch!”
“What?!” Meredith let out the most obnoxious laugh ever, “What did you say?”
Shit, he was so used to Grams language, he was starting to speak it!
“Whatever, you know what I mean.”
But Ethan and Zoe were laughing too. He had to divert the attention away from himself! Quick Parker, think!
Then he had an idea, “Hey, did you guys ever wonder why the water is the bluest over there?” he pointed towards Crystal Waters.
They all looked to the left where the sun reflected on the water. A shadowy line was visible under the surface where clean Crystal Waters met murky Sunny Shores.
“Well, technically, the water isn’t really bluest over there, the bluest water is way out there,” Ethan pointed out toward the horizon of Lake Erie, “We just can’t see it from here.”
Zoe was smiling at Ethan again, in that way. Yep, she definitely liked him.
“Okay, whatever,” Parker sighed, “You know what I mean.”
“Obviously,” Meredith know-it-all answered, “They dredge over there.”
“Dredge?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah,” Parker turned to Ethan, “Here, can I see your phone for a sec? I’ll show you.”
Ethan pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Parker.
And then Parker pushed Ethan into the water.
CHAPTER 21
ETHAN
The sensation was so bizarre and unexpected, Ethan almost swallowed a mouthful of lake water when he instinctively opened his mouth to scream.
It was everywhere, moving when he moved, wrapping itself around his arms and legs, finding its way up his shorts and under his shirt—some kind of alien lifeform that wanted to consume him.
His feet touched bottom and he pushed himself upward, bursting through the surface, “Oh my god! What is that?!”
He could hear Parker, Zoe, and Meredith all laughing up on the dock.
&n
bsp; Parker yelled back, “It’s algae!” The kid was definitely amused with himself.
And then Meredith teased, “Bet the water’s not like that over in Crystal Waters!”
“Hell no, it’s not!” Although, as he treaded water, the feeling of the algae became slightly more tolerable, “It’s so—.”
“Gross?” Parker laughed.
“Yeah! But even worse than gross!”
“Sorry!” Parker put his hands up, “But I had to show you!”
“Oh don’t worry Parker! Yours is coming! I promise you that!”
He started swimming toward the dock when out of nowhere, Zoe suddenly jumped into the water. “Woohoo!” she landed a giant cannonball that splashed up all over Meredith and Parker.
She quickly popped up to the surface, “Oh gross!” Her hair was slicked back away from her face, her eyes twinkling, “You never get used to it.”
In that moment, Ethan had an overwhelming urge to swim to her, put his arms around her and kiss her right there in the middle of the algae. But of course, he didn’t move.
“C’mon Twerp, let’s go,” Meredith was setting her phone on the dock next to Zoe’s, “give me the phone.”
Parker did not look eager to jump in, “I don’t think Grams would like it.”
“Screw Grams,” Meredith retorted.
“Hey!” Parker gave Meredith a shove, “Don’t talk that way about Grams!”
“I’ll tell you what? I’ll say I pushed you in, okay?” And in one swift motion, she grabbed the phone and pushed Parker in.
Then she followed with a cannonball of her own. Both of them came up screaming. And then they were all laughing.
“Wow, look at that sunset,” Zoe’s face was lit up with pink light. The sun was going down over the horizon, a giant orange ball sitting on top of the water.
Ethan didn’t care about the sunset—he couldn’t stop looking at her. He sucked in a gulp of air and went beneath the surface. The water was murky and full of seaweed, but the bright sunset provided just enough light to see. And when he saw three pairs of legs dangling, he knew just where to go.
He circled around and grabbed her waist from behind. He heard her let out a scream as she tried to pull away. As he came to the surface, she turned around until their faces were only inches apart, “Gotcha,” he said.
