Surface Tension (21 page)
Authors: Brent Runyon
We stop and rest the paddles on our knees and drift. We're both out of breath. I look way down the lake at the smokestacks, like two fingers pointing toward heaven, and up the lake to the places I've never been to. I realize I don't even know what's up there. I turn the bow so that I can see our little cove.
I don't know if it's the night or the moon or how far away we are, but our cottage and the other cottages all the way up and down the lake, they all look pretty much the same. The only thing that makes me sure which cove is ours is the Confederate flag at the end of the minister's dock. The breeze picks up for a moment and the flag catches it like a sail, but the water stays still.
Claire puts her paddle back in the water. I put mine in too and we paddle slowly back toward shore, watching the cottages getting farther apart the closer we get.
I look back over my shoulder. The lake has turned into black glass with silver ribbons where the moonlight catches the ripples we leave behind.
Nothing stays the same. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's the way it should be.
Christina Egloff was my collaborator on this book from first page to last. She has the rarest talent—to take whatever she touches and spin it into something better. She's an artist Rumpelstiltskin.
Brent Runyon
is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir
The Burn Journals
and the novel
Maybe.
He is a regular contributor to public radio, including
This American Life.
Brent Runyon lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Brent Runyon
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Runyon, Brent.
Surface tension : a novel in four summers / Brent Runyon. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: During the summer vacations of his thirteenth through his sixteenth year at the family's lake cottage, Luke realizes that although some things stay the same over the years, many more change.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89168-7
[1. Vacations—Fiction. 2. Family life—New York (State)—Fiction. 3. Change—Fiction. 4. New York (State)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7. R888298Su 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008009193
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