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“You’re kidding!” Elijah said. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Not kidding,” I said.

Next to me, Liam shook his head, tight-lipped.

It was squashy in the front seat of the truck. I was jammed up sideways against the door with the handle sticking into my side.

We were getting there, though. We were getting there fast.

Elijah hadn’t even argued.

When we ran toward him babbling,
Finkle
and
lever
and
hurry!,
he just nodded and said, “Get in.” Then he threw the truck into reverse and squealed out of the parking lot.

On the way, we explained. That is, I explained and Liam’s hands clenched slowly into fists on his lap.

“Wow,” Elijah said. “Seriously? Are you sure?”

I glanced at Liam. Were we? Was I? I had felt sure before about Mrs. Finkle, and it turned out I had known exactly nothing.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I think so.”

“Unbelievable.” Elijah flattened his foot on the accelerator.

When we turned off the highway, my heart sank. The barrier across the dirt road was locked in place.

But Elijah didn’t even blink. He slowed only slightly, then veered around the barrier, through the long grass and onto the rough road.

It was a bumpier ride than the one we’d done with Finkle. Elijah’s truck wasn’t really up to this kind of driving any more. It wasn’t up to much of anything.

We struggled and strained up the hill and around the bends, Elijah easing his foot on and off the accelerator, leaning forward, a look of determination on his face.

Finally, we skidded around the last bend, pulling up in front of the fence, with its gate and its warning signs and its chunky, padlocked chain.

Padlocked. Not open.

There were no cars here. No official-looking men. There was no one.

I jumped out of the truck and ran for the break in the fence, sprinting through the tree line and down to the water’s edge.

There was nothing and no one, and for a minute I couldn’t work it out — why Hannah had said that, where Finkle had gone.

And then I looked up. And out. Across the water to the dam wall, which curved up high in the distance.

Of course. Of course, they weren’t here. They were where the controls were, all the way up at the power station, probably. Finkle and the engineers and the computers, deciding where the water went and when it went there.

Meaning here. Meaning now.

But then something moved on the dam wall. There was a figure, a small shape in the distance, silhouetted against the sun.

There was someone there.

And that was closer. Close enough?

“We have to go around,” Liam said, coming up behind me.

“There’s no time.”

Even though it was closer than the power station, it was still too far — all the way back down to the road, all the way around on the highway, the long, stupid distance to a swimming hole that was so far away it never made sense to anyone but Finkle.

We could run around the edge of the lake — through the trees and the scrub, past the Point and the viewing platform, and all the way along the wall. But that was a long way, too. Too long.

What we needed was a straight line from here to there.

I looked out across the lake.

“The raft!” Liam darted across the open ground toward the bush we kept it hidden behind.

But I shook my head.

The raft was too slow. It was heavy. It zigged and zagged.

I was stronger these days. I was faster.

I ran to the water’s edge. I kicked my shoes off and dived in.

Just before I hit the water, I heard Elijah yelling behind me.

“Cassie! Don’t —”

It’s an odd thing when you’re swimming. You can’t hear anything much. It’s like watching a video clip with the sound off, seeing everyone screaming at you from the sidelines as you turn to take a breath.

If I was too slow, I thought, if they flipped the lever and the water came at me, first in a trickle, spilling down the wall, then in a raging torrent, hopefully I wouldn’t hear that, either.

I knew I wouldn’t see it. I was breathing only on the right, not turning my head toward the wall. There was no time for Mr. Henshall today. All of that stuff about rules and technique and following the black line up and down, up and down, felt like it was a million years ago.

Today it was all about speed.

I should probably have thought of that before I dived in with my clothes on. My pants were heavy around my legs, and my shirtsleeves flapped with every stroke I took.

I couldn’t stop now, though. I had to keep going, to keep my head down and just get there.

Out into the middle, past the drowned car and the fire tree and the pointless
NO SWIMMING
sign.

Farther. Faster.

How long would it take? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

It was hard to predict distance across the open water.

I lifted my head for a second, making sure I was still lined up with the edge of the wall. When I got there, I’d haul myself out. I’d run up the little stairs etched into the side of the slope, all the way to the top.

I’d tell whoever was up there everything — about Finkle and the car and the red and . . . just everything.

I looked over at the stairs. Swim there, climb the stairs, run along the top of the wall.

I had come the quickest way, but it was still too long.

There was no time.

I turned back toward the wall. Maybe ten pool lengths away. Fifteen hundred feet.

I couldn’t have swum it a few months ago, not after making it this far already.

Fifteen hundred feet. Less than ten minutes.

And I didn’t need to swim it all. I didn’t need to get right up against the dam wall. Just close enough. Close enough to be seen and heard.

Close enough that I would be in the way.

I reached down and pulled my socks off, then my pants, leaving them floating on the surface of the water in my wake.

Then I set off toward the wall, alternating strokes — swimming freestyle for speed, then the grandma stroke so I could see.

About 150 feet back from the wall, I stopped. I took my shirt off. I peeled it off and held it above my head, waving it around and around.

“Hey!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Hey!”

The figure turned. Even from this distance, I could tell it was the round shape of Finkle.

There was no one else there, but he was waving one arm and yelling. No, not yelling. Just talking loudly. Into the phone he had pressed to one ear.

The phone that connected him to the power station, to the engineers and the computers.

Did he see me? I didn’t know. I only knew that as I watched and yelled and waved my shirt, he turned back toward the river and motioned with one arm, sweeping it down toward the ground in a strong, swift movement like someone dropping the flag for the start of a race.

There was a sound, low and heavy, like something shifting. Then another underneath it, or over the top, maybe. They were mixed up together, so I couldn’t separate one from the other. I looked around me to see where it was coming from, what was happening.

And I saw it — slow at first, a trickle. Then faster, steadier.

Water starting to gush out from the dam wall.

Water that had churned and boiled over itself through the massive pipes, rushing at the press of a button all the way down the mountain, all the way here, to the wall, to the lake.

To me.

Then I heard something else.

A horn blaring, over and over, back from the other side of the lake. An old green truck bumping and rattling its way around the edges, broken pieces of wire mesh dragging from its hood.

Liam was leaning out the passenger-side window, pointing and waving his arms wildly toward me.

Water was spilling down the walls, faster now and harder. I shot a glance to the side, toward the bank. Could I swim for it? I didn’t see how. To get to the steps, to get anywhere I’d be able to scramble up for higher ground, I would have to head in toward the wall, where the water was churning.

I looked behind me, toward the fire tree. Maybe I could make it there, stay ahead of the water? I could hang on to the stick, on to the tree, while the lake rose up toward me, and maybe, just maybe, I would be high enough.

A mechanical sound buzzed in the air, and the water around me whipped up suddenly.
It’s coming!,
I thought.
It’s too late
. I braced myself to hang on, to hold my breath for as long as I could, willing myself not to count so I wouldn’t have to notice the exact moment I ran out of air.

But then the sound grew louder and the water fanned out strangely around me, and I realized it wasn’t coming from the wall. And when I looked up, there was a helicopter with
GTV-NEWS
on the side and a man hanging out the door with a camera, waving.

Around me, the water whipped up like the middle of the choppy ocean, but when I could see a path through the spray, I saw that the flow down the dam wall had eased. And as I watched, it slowed and slowed until it came to a stop.

And even from here, even through the spray and the fog of my raggedy breathing and my still-waving shirt, I saw Finkle’s arm drop, the phone falling silent by his side. Then his shoulders slumped, like someone straggling across the line, defeated, at the end of a race.

They didn’t drown the town.

Instead, two days later, they sent down a diver. He had flippers and a face mask and a proper underwater flashlight. And an oxygen tank, so he didn’t have to count and gasp and rocket himself off the bottom.

After a while, he came up. He frog-walked over to talk to the police sergeant, who frowned and nodded, then called to some other men who were waiting on the bank with a truck and a winch and some long metal cables.

Then the diver went back down, hauling the chains under with him, and slowly, carefully, they dragged the car up into the light.

I didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, it was a relief that there was no Mrs. Finkle down there. That there would be no trunk popping open to reveal a skeleton, no bony arm lolling from a window.

But it felt wrong to be relieved. Because there was a body. Just not here. And I couldn’t help thinking about Liam’s brother — about Luke — just down the hall from me in the hospital.

I wasn’t there — not really — but I could remember it all the same.

The whole town gathered to watch the car come up. They came quietly up the hill, without potato salad or sausages.

The sign said
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
, but no one cared. They swung the busted gates open wide and pushed on through.

Liam sat with his mother and father on the edge of the bank and waited. All around, people were craning and leaning forward for the first glimpse, but no one moved in front of them.

Out on the lake, chains clanked and the old metal groaned. As the car broke the surface, tiny creatures scuttled across the hood and jumped for their lives. Water streamed down the sides, and lake weed hung from every angle, strung across the panels like raggedy stitches.

Liam’s dad stood up.

The car wasn’t the flashy bright red of a Mercedes anymore, but it was still red.

The whole town turned toward him.

He watched it hanging from the crane, swinging there like a pendulum, with the long dark wound in its side, the scrape of blue paint they would test later and discover exactly matched the paint on the Prices’ old car.

And he pumped his fist into the air and smiled.

Finkle confessed. As soon as the car came up, as soon as people saw the great smashed dent in its side, he started talking.

It was late. He was tired. It was a steep hill. He may have been going too fast. Oh, but it was hard to remember; it was such a very long time ago.

Wait, yes. No, it wasn’t. He had been going too fast. Much too fast.

He hadn’t stopped.

At the stop sign. Or afterward.

He had plowed into the Prices’ car, sending it spinning and spinning toward the clock tower.

He had spun and spun, too, then found himself straight, back on the road. Panicking. Driving away.

There was no excuse for it. No excuse at all.

He talked on and on. He put his head in his hands. Journalists tried to ask him questions, but they couldn’t get a word in. It was like he had been waiting to let this out all these years. It was like a dam bursting.

He was famous now, just as he’d always hoped. Except instead of “
CENTENARY MAYOR
” and “
LANDMARK EVENT
,” it was “
LOCAL MAYOR ADMITS HIT-AND-RUN
” and “
MYSTERY CAR AT BOTTOM OF LAKE.
”

And my personal favorite: “
UNLIKELY ATLANTIS REVEALS ITS SECRETS
.”

They put me in the paper, too:
“LOCAL GIRL SWIMS LAKE: BRAVE DASH UNCOVERS TRUTH.”

I had made those stories.

And some others.

Already Elijah was saying,
You looked so tiny all the way out there
and
Mate, my brain just went blank
; and Hannah was saying,
That was so sneaky, the way you had your shirt all buttoned up — I knew something was going on
; and Mom was saying,
I can’t believe you went up there all on your own
and
I almost died when I saw it on the news.