Labor Day we drove an hour out to the lake. The parking lot shimmered with windshields and swells of liquid heat. On the narrow band of sand, sun-drunk toddlers spun round their mothers' chairs, hairy dads strode in the water with kids hanging on their shoulders and hands, teen girls in bikinis lounged on towels. My mom propped her chair on the beach, lifted her face to a sky like blue fire, and immediately fell asleep.
My dad and I waded into the gentle spill of green-brown water: warm at the surface, frigid against my toes and shins. Eventually my dad retreated back up the damp slope with a few words of caution, leaned his head against my mom's legs, and drowsed.
I splashed and paddled around, hoping to win the interest of one of the gaggles of kids nearby. Then, amid the glimmer of lake and sand and sun and sky, I thought I saw Kim. She was maybe a hundred feet from me, and farther into the water, head bobbing on the dappled light.
"Kim!" It seemed that she turned, but when I took a step toward her I slipped on the mossy rocks at the bottom and the lake struck my face, shot up my nose. I stood, spluttered, looked up and saw a dark shape that looked like the back of Kim's head drifting toward where the water turned to a sheet of crumpled foil and stretched toward the green hills.
I called her name again, started swimming her direction. The dark shape kept drifting, rising and settling with the rhythm of the lake. I thrust myself forward, inhaled more water, reached with my feet for the bottom and felt nothing at all. The lake's chill spread through my stomach and lungs. I struggled, thrashed, somehow got myself horizontal and swimming again.
Finally the dark shape loomed into view. It wasn't Kim's head. It wasn't a person at all—just a branch with some dead brown grass hanging off it. I looked back and saw how far I’d gotten from shore: I couldn't pick my parents out in the crowd. My heart sounded like a freight engine, I turned and strained toward the shallows. My legs grew heavy, my arms cramped, my chest felt like it might split with the effort. Water filled my ears and eyes and throat with each stroke. And with each stroke my energy ebbed away. Why fight any more? I was going to die: I accepted it. Finally, I let myself sink.
The lake's ripples rose over my chin, my lips, the tip of my nose...and my feet touched bottom. It was shallow enough I could walk.
I shoved clumsily past several families and straggled gasping onto the beach, my teeth rattling like a handful of dice. I spotted my mom and dad still sleeping, and weaved across the hot sand toward them, coughing and hunched. Finally I reached their chair and dropped on my knees.
My mom's eyes opened. "Ready to go, honey?"
In the truck I ate a hamburger and passed out. When I awoke everything was dark. I sat up sharp, heard footsteps and my dad's voice downstairs. I looked around: my bedroom. I could just make out the Mickey Mouse clock on the shelf. It was a little after nine.
For an hour I sat in the dark, listening to my dad curse and cheer a static-hoarse baseball game on the TV below. I couldn't turn my light on, since I guessed my mom was upstairs already and would see from across the hall. Every time I blinked, my lids felt thicker, stickier, my eyes stayed shut longer. I tried holding them open till they burned. To focus I counted to a hundred, a thousand, got bored and then started again.
When Mickey pointed to 10:37 the TV's knob clicked off, and the stairs strained as my dad climbed to bed.
It was 10:56 by the time the handsaw rhythm of his snores drifted from across the hall. I swung my legs out of bed and stood up: the floorboards squealed as loud as I’d heard them in my life. The noise petrified me, but I glanced at the clock and hurried to my closet, grabbed the plastic bag I’d stuffed with clothes. Luckily, I was dressed still.
I edged into the hallway, tiptoed over the gripes and groans from the stairs, slipped through the kitchen to the back door. The knob whined, the hinges howled, but I got it open enough I could slide into the mudroom, where a breeze sighed at the screen separating me from the outside.
I ran across the blue gloom covering the yard, sweaty despite the chill. I’d be a minute or two late for sure—would Kim wait for me? Cold constellations loomed above, clouds swam across an all-but submerged moon.
I reached the silhouetted trees, plunged into the brush. It snatched at my bare arms and clothes. I tripped twice, sprang back up. At last I reached the clearing.
It was empty.
“Kim,” I tried, weakly, then listened. Nothing but gurgling frogs and the dry rattle of bugs.
Panic wracked my insides. She’d left without me! But she couldn’t have gone far, I realized: I really was just a minute late. She’d planned for us to cut through the woods to the road, follow it till it flowed into Route 20, get a ride from a truck driver like on TV.
“Kim!” I called, and listened again. I should have heard her crashing through the undergrowth.
I went and squinted into the low latticed shadows of the fort, reached inside—and pulled out her bags of clothing and food. She was late too, then. I sighed, sat down on the carpet of dead leaves and bark. And I waited. And waited.
Kim grew up to be one of those teenagers who hung out at the gas station and smoked cigarettes: she’d glance at me when I went in to buy a Mountain Dew or whatever and look away like I bored her. I'd see her riding around sometimes with a twenty-something guy who owned a motorcycle. Could be the same guy with a motorcycle my dad says is living with her in the double-wide now. I ran away by myself, eventually.
But right then I neither knew or even could imagine any of that. Right then, I was just a kid, sitting in the dark, repeating three words.
“We meet here.”
• • •
