Lake Thirteen (3 page)

“I told them we were just going to drive down to the lake,” Logan admitted. “They don’t have to know exactly where we’re going, do they?”

I bit my lower lip and hoped nothing went wrong.

There was no sound other than the occasional call of a bird piercing the stillness inside the woods. It was so dark I couldn’t even see the lights Mom had left on at our cabin, even though I knew it was just through the forest. There was no one else staying at Mohawk—we had the place to ourselves, although the Bartletts, who owned and ran the place, said some townspeople might come up for dinner at the lodge restaurant every night. The moon came out from behind clouds and shone on the surface of the calm lake. A shiver went down my spine. It had been a lot warmer when we’d arrived, but it was still muggy and warm. The SUV chirped and its lights blinked as Logan clicked the doors unlocked.

Teresa hooked her arm through mine as we walked across the gravel parking lot. “You’re awful quiet,” she said, tilting her head so it rested against my upper arm as we walked. “Not like you. You haven’t said much since we got here.”

I shrugged.

“Is it the gay thing?” she lowered her voice. “Were you worried about how we’d react? Because you didn’t have to be.” She rubbed her hand on my back. “I told you, we’re good. Logan will make some stupid jokes but they won’t mean anything. We have some gay kids at our school and Logan’s fine with it. He may not be the brightest but he’s not mean.” She shrugged. “As for Rachel and Carson, who knows? They live in Beverly Hills, so I’d imagine it’s no big deal for them, either.”

“Yeah, Logan said he was cool with it before dinner, and Carson seems to be pretty cool with everything.” I said cautiously as we reached the SUV. “But Rachel hasn’t said two words to me—not even hello.”

Teresa shook her head as we got into the backseat of the SUV and mouthed the word
later
at me. I slid across the seat, and she climbed in next to me, shutting the door as Logan started the ignition. I was sitting in the middle, with Rachel on my other side. She didn’t look at me—she was fiddling with her phone, trying to get a signal. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes as Logan backed out of the parking spot.

The gay thing.

I swallowed and took a deep breath.

No one back home knew. But I hadn’t wanted to spend another vacation lying to my oldest friends in the world. I’d
always
hated lying to them, pretending I had girlfriends who didn’t really exist, joking with Carson and Logan about how hot some women were—last summer on Sanibel I’d hated being dragged along with Logan when he went on the prowl for some, as he called it,
summer lovin’
.

I hadn’t told my friends at Farmington High School and wasn’t sure if I wanted to, honestly. I hated lying to them and would decide to tell everyone—and then would completely lose my nerve when I was around them. Mom and Dad didn’t even try to hide how relieved they were when I agreed to wait until college to come out. I didn’t like the idea of lying to everyone at school for another year, but I could deal with it if it made my parents feel better. What was another year?

Besides, coming out at Farmington High really depended on what Marc wanted to do.

Marc.

Just thinking about Marc made me smile, the way it always did. Marc was the greatest, Marc was awesome, Marc was the sexiest hunk at school…but Marc also didn’t want anyone to know he was gay.

The Kruegers lived a few houses down the street from us. Marc usually came over to my house, but every once in a while I had to go over to Marc’s, and I never felt comfortable there. I never had, in all the years I’d known Marc. His dad was always home, it seemed, with a beer in his hand. Mr. Krueger didn’t work—he’d gotten an enormous settlement from a work accident a few years before they’d moved to Farmington. Mrs. Krueger worked as the school secretary at the high school. Their television was always turned on to Fox News, and Mr. Krueger was always yelling about faggots and blacks and Mexicans and feminists and pretty much anything the television told him he was supposed to be angry about. One night when I was there and we were doing our geometry homework, he’d lurched into Marc’s bedroom, going on a lengthy tirade about how the whole country was going to hell because of communists and socialists and Nazis and the coloreds and…

I’d felt sick to my stomach the rest of the night, only feeling better when Marc walked me to the front door when our homework was done and stole a quick kiss. I’d walked home on air.

I was lucky to have Marc, even if Marc wasn’t ready to be as open as I wanted to be.

Marc is perfect
, I reflected as Logan maneuvered the big car out of the parking lot and headed down the winding mountain road.

The Kruegers had moved down the street the summer before I started high school. Eighth grade had been rough for me—I’d started changing physically during the eighth grade, the pimples, my voice deepening, hair sprouting out where hair hadn’t been before—and that was also when I’d started noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. Things like my tennis coach’s strongly muscled hairy legs, for one, or Tommy Gargaro’s biceps and chest for another. The big family trip that summer had been to the Florida Gulf Coast, and I couldn’t stop stealing glances at Logan’s body on the beach, the way his skin turned golden brown from the sun, the golden hairs on his legs and forearms…I’d had some embarrassing dreams about Logan that trip, dreams where we ended up kissing on the beach and…

Those dreams hadn’t stopped when the trip ended, either.

But as soon as I saw Marc, it was like Logan had never existed.

Marc was gorgeous. Logan was good looking, but Marc was maybe the best looking boy I’d ever seen in my life. If Logan was a nine, Marc was at least a twelve plus. Marc was better looking than most models and actors on television, and his body was just amazing.

The first time I saw Marc was when I walked down the street to get a look at the family moving in. There were some movers in coveralls unloading the truck, but just as I reached their property the front door opened and a boy my age came out of the house. I caught my breath and just stared as the boy came down the front steps and walked toward me.

Marc was taller than me—even now as almost-seniors Marc was a good two inches taller—and had thick blond hair the sun had bleached white on the top, but was darker underneath. He had wide blue eyes, thick red lips, and a strong chin. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and had a strong muscular chest and a flat stomach. His arms were also muscular, and the jean shorts he was wearing fit snugly in the thighs. He was one of those lucky blonds who tan golden brown, and he was very deeply tanned. He held out his right hand. “Hey, I’m Marc.”

“Scotty,” I’d somehow managed to blurt out as we shook hands, wondering if Marc felt the same electric shock I had when our hands touched. “Welcome to the neighborhood…I live up the street a bit. Where’d you come from?”
Heaven?

Marc had looked away. “We lived on the south side of the city.” He looked back. “My dad had an accident at work, and he got a settlement.” He seemed ashamed and anxious to change the subject, so we talked about school. Marc, it turned out, also played baseball, like me, but not tennis—he was a football player. It turned out we had a lot in common—comic books, the Hardy Boys, sports—and during our freshmen year we became best friends.

And I was crazy in love with Marc.

And we shared our first kiss last summer.

Everyone was thrown forward suddenly when Logan slammed on the brakes without warning.

“Jesus, Logan!” Teresa snapped. “Pay attention!”

“Sorry,” Logan said as he shifted the vehicle into park. “I almost missed the turn. It just kind of snuck up on me.”

The SUV had stopped just past the gravel road with Cemetery Road on the signpost. Logan shifted into reverse and backed up. We sat there for a moment, the headlights lighting up the woods on either side of the road.

I looked out the back window. The red glow of the taillights seemed to be swallowed up in the thick blackness.

“I wasn’t even going that fast,” Logan said defensively. He shifted the car back into drive and began slowly creeping along the road. “But this is Cemetery Road. Keep an eye out for the cemetery.”

Nobody said anything as the car moved down the road, the only sounds Nicki Minaj on the stereo and the tires crunching the gravel. Teresa squeezed my leg, and when I looked at her, she smiled. I smiled back at her.

The car went around a curve in the road and there was an opening in the trees on the right, just ahead.

“Looks like we found it,” Logan said as he slowed down even more.

There was an iron fence running alongside the road, maybe about six yards away, on the other side of a ditch. I turned my head and could see the entry road to the cemetery and a big gate. Logan carefully turned the SUV off the road, and in the headlights we could see, written in wrought-iron letters across the top of the big iron gate: NORTH HOLLOW CEMETERY.

The gates were open.

Shouldn’t they be closed?
A chill went down my spine.
Maybe we shouldn’t go in here.

I had a really bad feeling.

But I didn’t say anything.

“Awesome!” Carson was practically bouncing up and down in his seat with excitement.

“Okay, here we go,” Logan said and drove into the cemetery.

The car rolled to a stop about twenty yards inside the gate.

Logan turned the engine off, and we sat there in a hushed silence.

The only sounds were the tick of the cooling engine and our breathing on the inside—and the windshield started fogging up.

I felt uncomfortable, like something was just not right. I shifted in my seat. I opened my mouth to suggest we leave but stopped myself. It was weird, but I felt anxious, like something was about to happen and the only way to keep it from happening was for us to back up and get the hell away from the North Hollow cemetery. As each second ticked past, the anxiety continued to grow stronger. I swallowed because my mouth and my throat were dry. Teresa gave me an odd look and handed me her bottle of water. I took a big drink and handed it back to her. She gave me a reassuring smile. She gently patted my leg. “It’ll be okay,” she mouthed at me.

I just smiled back at her and swallowed again, closing my eyes and trying to control my growing anxiety. I felt like I’d walked into a class to discover I’d forgotten we were having a midterm and hadn’t studied at all. I shook my head slightly, trying to get a grip on myself. It’s not like I’d never been to a cemetery before. Granted, this was the first time I’d ever been to one at night, but there were no such things as ghosts—no matter how badly Carson wanted to believe they existed. It was no different than being here during the day,
I reminded myself.

But it was still pretty dark out there.

I shifted a bit in my seat again. I inhaled sharply. On my left, Rachel looked away from her phone long enough to give me a weird look, her eyebrows raised. She leaned in close to me and whispered, “Dad’s TV show is a bunch of bullshit, you know, for idiots who
want
to believe in this kind of stupid shit.” She rolled her eyes. “And Carson’s the biggest idiot of them all.” She looked back at her phone and grinned. “Oh my God!” She squealed loudly, holding the phone up so I could see it. “Look!
Bars!
”

“I knew I should have brought my phone,” Logan said from the front seat. “Who knew the cemetery would be the only place up here you can get a signal?” He laughed. “All right, then.” Logan turned to look at us in the backseat. “What’s the plan, yo? We just gonna sit in the car all night, or are we going to find some ghosts?” He reached over and high-fived Carson.

“Let’s go!” Carson said, his voice excited as he opened his door and the dome light came on. He slid down out of his seat and leaned back inside the car. He pushed his glasses up and waved at the backseat. “Come on, you guys, let’s get a move on.” Without another word he slammed his door shut and started walking down the dirt road. I could clearly see him in the headlights. Logan followed suit, slamming his door and hurrying to catch up to him. Rachel opened her door with a sigh and shoved her phone into her shorts pocket.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The feeling was still there and was getting stronger. My stomach felt like it was knotting and my heart was beating fast. I felt like I might throw up.
This isn’t right, this isn’t right, this isn’t right
kept running through my head.

“Aren’t you coming?” Teresa asked, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Or are you just going to sit in the car? You know, that’s not such a bad idea.” She made a face. “There’re probably mosquitoes and bugs everywhere around here. And snakes.” She shuddered. “I
hate
snakes.”

“I don’t think snakes are nocturnal,” I said, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. I let it out. “All right, I’m coming.” I undid the buckle of my seat belt.

But I didn’t want to get out of the car.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid in my life.

I shook my head. “You’re being an idiot,” I said to myself under my breath. “What is there to be afraid of? It’s all in your head.” I forced a smile on my face for Teresa’s benefit and slid across the seat. I stepped down out of the SUV, my feet sinking into the soft dirt on the side of the road.

And as soon as my feet touched the ground, the anxiety disappeared like it had never existed in the first place.

I actually felt a rush of joy so intense I couldn’t stop myself from grinning from ear to ear and almost laughed out loud. I rose up on my toes and turned my head up to look at the stars blinking in the dark purple sky. I felt
alive,
like I could fly, so happy and free—

But just as quickly as it had come, the feeling drained out of me.

And I felt weirdly
empty.

Weird,
I thought to myself as I took a look around. I rubbed my bare arms. Goose bumps were rising on my skin, and I shivered a little bit.

The cemetery was longer than it was wide, stretching maybe thirty yards on either side of the dirt road in the center to where the tree line started again. I could barely make out the wooden fence in the darkness as I shut the door behind me. It looked to be, from the entry gate to where the gradually downward sloping cemetery ended at the fence and the forest, maybe two or three hundred yards long. It looked like there was a big drop-off just on the other side of the fence at the end because the headlights were shining into the tops of pine trees. The moon came out from behind some clouds, and I shivered again. The air was moist and sticky, but it felt colder than it had when we’d gotten into the car. There was a slight fog rising from the ground, and in the beam of the car’s headlights I could see that some of the graves had small American flags planted on them, just in front of the headstones.

“I wonder what’s the deal with the flags?” Teresa asked, wrapping her arms around herself, her voice hushed. “Look at them all. They look relatively new, don’t they?”

“Doesn’t the VFW put flags on the graves of vets on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day?” I whispered back to her, stepping off into the ankle-high grass alongside the road. The tall grass was a little damp, and I itched where it brushed against my legs. Teresa walked around to the front of the car, but I didn’t go with her. The temperature was dropping, and dropping fast. I rubbed my arms just as more goose bumps came out of my skin—the hairs on my forearms were standing straight up. I rubbed my forearms, trying to get warmer, and my teeth started chattering.

Teresa and Rachel hurried to catch up to Logan and Carson, who were talking in hushed voices I could barely hear—all I heard was some mumbling. The cold was getting even more intense, which didn’t make any sense. I blew into my hands, trying to get them warmer. All of the hair on my arms was now standing up, and when I put my hand on the back of my neck, my skin felt like ice. They’d probably make fun of me for not going with them, but I didn’t want to—and I didn’t care if they did tease me or call me a fraidy cat or something equally stupid.

I was starting to feel uncomfortable again, and when the moon went behind some clouds, it took all of my self-control to not open the car door and climb back inside.

I wished I’d grabbed a sweatshirt. I should have known the temperature would drop.

But what I really wanted was for us to just get back into the SUV and head back up to the lodge, where it was warm and—

Safe.

You’re really losing your mind, aren’t you?
I chided myself. Like Rachel had said, it was just a graveyard, and there were no such things as ghosts. I took another deep, calming breath like Mom always told me to do whenever I was nervous and about to panic, and cleared my mind.

When I opened my eyes, I felt a lot better and started looking around. I was still cold, but it wasn’t that bad.

The cemetery was unlike any other I’d ever seen before—not that I had a lot of experience with them. My dad was originally from rural Virginia, in the far western part of the state near the Kentucky state line, and whenever we went there to visit my paternal grandmother, we always made a pilgrimage to visit my grandfather’s grave at Four Corners Cemetery by the Baptist church. That cemetery was different than this one. At Four Corners, the graves were all lined up in neat rows so you could walk around without ever worrying about stepping on a grave by mistake. Here, the graves weren’t placed in even rows—it didn’t look like any thought had been put into placing them at all. They were scattered everywhere haphazardly, like when someone died they just picked an empty space regardless of where the other graves were placed. There was no rhyme or reason to it at all. In some places, the headstones were no more than a few feet away from the side of the road. The headstones themselves were an odd mix of shapes and sizes.

It felt like it was getting even colder, and the fog rising from the ground was getting thicker around my ankles, with little wisps floating up into the air and dissipating. I looked over at my friends. They’d stopped walking about twenty yards down the road and had gathered around a massive headstone about fifteen yards from the side of the road. I bit my lower lip. I wondered what they were doing and if I should join them, but somehow I couldn’t make myself walk down there.

You’re safer here—it’s better not to go down there. Stay close to the car.

I shook my head. Maybe I
was
losing my mind.

I stepped back up out of the grass and leaned with my back against the SUV. There was a large old headstone not ten feet from where I was standing.

It won’t hurt you to go take a look at it, now would it? What are you so afraid of, really? It’s just a headstone.

I walked through the ankle-high grass until I was standing next to the headstone. It was remarkably large, so big it seemed like it should have more than one name carved it into, like a married couple’s or maybe even an entire family’s. The ones this size at Four Corners in Virginia usually did.

But the carving on the face of this one simply read:

ALBERT TYLER

June 10, 1890–August 20, 1907

“How sad,” I said without thinking about it, “he was only seventeen.”
And we have the same birthday.

As I knelt next to the tombstone, an overwhelming sense of sadness swept over me.

It was so intense I felt tears swimming up in my eyes.

My heart was breaking, and I had to stifle a sob.

How awful to die so young,
I thought, wiping at my eyes and looking over to the next headstone. It was slightly larger, and
Tyler
was also carved into it, close to the top. Underneath, there were two gray boxes with names carved inside. The one on the left said
Abram
with the dates March 7, 1858–September 12, 1920 underneath. The right read
Sarah
, and the dates of her life were April 2, 1866–January 3, 1965.

Another tear ran down the side of my face and I swiped at it. “You poor thing,” I murmured. “You outlived your son by almost fifty-eight years. How
awful
for you that must have been. Did you ever get over it, Mrs. Tyler? Can you get over something like that?”

The sadness—the
sorrow—
swept over me again, and as my eyes filled with more tears, I couldn’t help feeling a little confused.
Why do I feel so bad for these people I don’t even know? What’s wrong with me? Why is this affecting me so strongly?

Almost the moment I thought that, I remembered the day when I was thirteen when Mom and Dad had to have my cocker spaniel, Skipper, put to sleep. I remembered my mother herding him into his kennel and my dad carrying it out to the car—they wouldn’t let me go with, so I’d already had to say good-bye to him, he had cancer and it wasn’t curable, and Mom had wiped her own tears away as I buried my face in his neck and cried, it wasn’t fair, he was a good dog—

I caught my breath as I forced down a sob.

I hadn’t thought about Skipper in years. Why now? Why here, of all places?

And Marc flashed into my head, saying good-bye to him last night, and the sad look on his face as we hugged at my front door, and how he’d said
I don’t know, I’m just afraid I’ll never see you again
before he walked down the driveway and down the street to his own house, and how weird that had been, but I’d felt sad, lonely, and empty. It had taken me a long time to fall asleep.

I shivered a little as the moon went behind a cloud again. My back now felt so cold it was like it had turned to ice, just like my arms and shoulders and the back of my neck, and I wished again I’d brought a sweatshirt with me.

I took another deep breath and touched the tombstone for a moment, tracing the name with my index finger.

“I wonder what you died from, Albert,” I said out loud. Of course, in 1907 it could have been anything—the flu, measles—back then, any number of diseases that nowadays were just nuisances were often fatal—

What is wrong with me?

—and the sorrow, that overwhelming sadness, was growing stronger and seemed to be seeping into every corner of my consciousness. I shivered again.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that everyone else had gathered around yet another tombstone closer to where I was kneeling next to Albert’s grave. Teresa was waving at me frantically, so with one last glance at Albert’s headstone, I stood up and walked down the slight slope, carefully avoiding stepping on graves.

The sadness started fading away but I was still cold.

“What’s—” I started to say, but Carson shushed me.

“Look at the flags,” Carson whispered. He pointed.

I turned my head in the direction they were all staring. Illuminated inside the vast swath of light cast by the headlights of the car were several graves with small American flags planted on them, a few feet from their headstones. There were five or six graves in close proximity, and all the flags hung limply except for one that was waving wildly in a nonexistent breeze.

And it was directly in the center of the grouping of graves.

“That’s not possible,” I heard myself saying in a low voice. “How can the other flags not be moving?”

“There’s not any wind,” Rachel said, her voice shaking a little. “No wind at all.”