Surface Tension (6 page)

The boy has a life jacket around his neck, but it's not tied. It's just hanging there. If he goes in the water, it'll pop right off his head. The dad isn't wearing a life jacket, even though he should be. If Mom were here, she'd give him a lecture.

They push the Sunfish into the water and hop on. They probably think that because there's a south wind, it's a good day to sail, but they're wrong, because I can already see the storm clouds over the power station.

They paddle out beyond the end of the dock and put the sail up, and as soon as they do, they fly out into the water.

The wind is so strong. I almost shout to them that a storm is coming, but I don't. They probably wouldn't understand me anyway.

The Sunfish picks up the wind even more and they shoot out across the water toward the other side of the lake. It's two miles from here to there, and on some days it looks close, but today it looks like there's a whole ocean between here and there.

They go farther and farther out toward the center of the lake, into the swells of the waves. The little Sunfish disappears behind a wave and then shoots back up again. Those are big waves. I've never seen them so big on the lake.

I look over at the mom and daughter. They're not even paying attention. Okay, this could be bad. What if they capsize their sailboat? What if they drown?

Nobody is here to save them. The Richardsons are gone, and they're the only people I know with a boat fast enough to get out there and save them.

I look out at the water, but I can't see the sailboat anymore. I scan the whole lake, but I don't see them anywhere. The sky is getting darker, and I see the rain like a gray sheet coming across the water. The power station is gone.

I hope those people know what they're doing. I look back at the mom and daughter, but they've gone inside. I guess I should just mind my own business and forget about it.

I've only got four days left to find a luckystone ring. It's not going too well. I know I'm not going to find a luckystone on our beach. Our beach is only a few feet long, and nothing good ever happens on it. The Richardsons' beach is about forty feet long and covered in stones, and I bet there's one
there somewhere. I don't think there's anyone home at the Richardsons' right now, so I walk slowly across their beach, looking straight down. I open my eyes wide and look at every single stone.

I wish I had a metal detector that I could sweep over the beach, but instead of detecting metal, it would detect lucky-stones.

“What are you doing?”

I think it's Mom for a second, but I look up and it's not. It's Mary.

“Huh?”

“What are you doing?”

“Oh nothing. Sorry. I didn't realize I was on your property. I'll go back. I'm sorry.”

She laughs. “No. I'm not mad. I'm just curious. What are you up to?”

“Looking for a luckystone.”

“Oh, that's fun. My brothers and I used to do that when we were little. I almost never found one, though.”

I smile at her, but I can't think of anything to say.

She says, “Okay then, I'll let you get back to it.” She turns and starts walking back to her house. I want to say something to her to make her turn around and stay, but I can't think of what it would be that I would say.

I almost call out to her and ask if she wants to help me look, but I don't. She turns around anyway, though, like she can hear me thinking, and says, “Hey, do you want a gingerbread man and some milk, by any chance?”

“Sure.”

She motions for me to follow her, and we walk up the steps toward the screened-in porch. I can't believe I'm finally
going inside their cottage. She opens the screen door and holds it open for me. The door creaks as I'm passing through it, and I already love this house. It smells like gingerbread and furniture polish.

There's dark hardwood floors and wicker furniture everywhere. Our cottage is filled with nasty carpeting, plastic chairs, worn-out jigsaw puzzles, and peppermint stick ice cream. Compared to our cottage, this place is like a museum. There are perfect little lamps on the tables and dark oil paintings on the walls. There are tiny closets, and stairs going in different directions. The wood floors are clean and shining everywhere.

I follow Mary into the kitchen, but I walk slowly so I can look at all the pictures on the walls. They're all black-and-white, and every one is of Mary and her brothers through the years. The boys are dressed in suits and have their hair flattened down with oil, and they look really uncomfortable.

Mary is always in a white dress, even when she was a baby, and she always has a ribbon in her hair. They're all smiling in the pictures, but Mary is the only one who looks like she's having fun. Even when they're older, the only one who looks happy is Mary.

She pulls a gingerbread man out of a jar and pours me a glass of milk. I'm about to take a bite out of his leg, but Mary stops me. She says, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You were going to eat his leg first?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That's torture.”

“What?”

“You've got to bite off his head first. Put him out of his misery.”

I put his whole head in my mouth and snap it off at the neck. She says, “That's better.”

I nod and smile and take a sip of milk to wash him down. She leans back against the counter and says, “Luckystones, huh?”

“Yeah. I can't find any.”

“They're hard to find. You should take a trip out to Luckystone Point.”

“Where's that?”

“You've never been? Oh, that's the only place I've ever found one. Take a canoe and head out beyond Goonie Island, through the next cove, to the point at the end of the big white house. That's Luckystone Point. Look in the shallow water right where the waves break.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I wonder if I should leave now. I don't know what to do.

“Follow me. I want to show you something.” She doesn't have to say anything else. I follow her out the back door to the garage. Their garage isn't like ours, with the stupid overhead door. Theirs are cool old sliding wooden doors on a metal track, and they're locked up with an ancient, thick padlock.

Mary reaches down into a secret spot on the side of the garage and pulls out a key. She says, “Don't tell anyone where the key is hidden.”

“I won't.”

She puts the key in the lock, but it must be tricky to make it work, because it takes her a few tries to get it just right. I hear it click and she pulls the lock apart and pushes the garage door open with all her strength.

I've never seen such a clean garage before. Everything is all put away exactly where it should be. There's the famous lawn mower with the grass collector. A red metal container of gasoline right next to it. A washer and dryer. And a refrigerator just like ours, but theirs probably works and isn't covered in rust spots. A toy wagon full of leather basketballs, smooth as bowling balls. A wooden lacrosse stick that looks like it's from a museum and a few pairs of cross-country skis hung high in the rafters. A workbench with a hand-powered drill and a collection of screwdrivers in every size and shape, from biggest to smallest, all hanging on hooks from the shelf.

But the coolest thing I've ever seen is the decorations on the walls. Around the whole garage there are hundreds of lucky -stones strung on pieces of string. They look like the popcorn garlands we made in elementary school to decorate for Christmas.

Mary leads me to the back of the garage. She pulls a jar off the shelf and shows it to me. These must be the really special ones. She pours a few into my hands, luckystone rings in all different sizes, some as small as my pinkie and some as big as a Super Bowl ring. These are so cool.

Maybe this is how I get my luckystone ring. I look up at her perfect face and say, “Can I have one?”

She chuckles and says, “Sorry, kiddo. You've got to find your own. Otherwise it doesn't count.”

Right. She's right. “Yeah, I guess I'd better keep looking.” That would have been the coolest thing ever, except for the part where she called me “kiddo.”

I ask Dad if we can get Grandpa's old wooden canoe in the water, and that's all I have to say, because he loves getting the canoe in the water. It's a monster, though. It's really
heavy, but I think I might be able to carry it with Dad this year. Usually, Mom has to help too.

The canoe is upside-down on top of a bunch of old cinder blocks, and Dad and I roll it gently off of them and onto the garage floor. The inside of the canoe is filled with spider-webs, cushions, life jackets, and paddles.

I grab the handle and pick up the front end. Dad takes the back. It's so heavy. It feels like there's a dead body in it. I have to walk kind of sideways to hold on to the handle and still move, and still I can only walk about fifteen feet until my arm gives out and I have to put it down.

Dad says, “Want me to get Mom?”

“No, I just need to switch arms.” I walk around to the other side and lift it with my left arm, but it's still just as heavy. Maybe it's a little heavier, because I'm not as strong on that side. I only get another ten feet and I have to stop again. Dad just holds up his end and waits for me to pick mine up again.

He says, “Want me to get Mom?”

“No, I'm good.” It's stupid that we have to walk along the edge of our property. Why can't we just cut through the Richardsons' lawn? They're not even home. It would be so much shorter.

Finally, we get it to the rock beach, and I stumble down to the edge of the water and drop the canoe. I only drop it about six inches, but Dad freaks out. “Don't drop it!”

The canoe is old and it doesn't float that well, because the wood has to swell up before it gets watertight. I hope we don't sink while we're out there.

Dad and I put our life jackets on and push the canoe out.

We paddle out past the Bells' dock and the Richardsons'. Past Goonie Island and past the buoys. We both whack our paddles against the side of the buoy, just so we get to hear the sound.

I look down where the water is leaking in around my toes, and a daddy longlegs runs across looking for somewhere to escape to.

The water that is leaking in runs to the back of the canoe because Dad is heavier. At least I've got that going for me.

The next cove isn't very big, and I already see the big white house at the point. There's a beacon on the end of the point to keep people from running their boats aground, but Dad and I paddle toward it anyway.

I didn't tell him why I wanted to come out here. I just told him about the spot and that it had a lot of cool fossils and stuff. He's pretty much ready to do anything if it involves using Grandpa's old canoe.

We land the canoe on the point, and the little rocks make a loud scraping sound against the old wood. I can feel Dad flinching in the back of the canoe.

We walk out along the point. It's a lot thinner than I imagined it. It's only a few feet wide at the widest spot, and then it thins as it gets toward the beacon. The waves lap against the rocks from both sides. That must be how the luckystones get washed up here.

I walk along the little ridge of rocks, looking into the water for the shape of a luckystone. I bend over and look in the water for so long that my back starts to hurt. Dad's doing it too. He must have realized what I'm looking for.

I stand up and stretch my back. I think I pulled a muscle in soccer practice, because my lower back is always hurting. I put my hands upside down on my lower back and try and massage the cramping muscles.

I don't want to look like an old guy, though, so I bend over again and look for my luckystone. I see a lot of rocks, but I'm not focusing on the right place or something. I'm seeing the skipping stones, but no luckystones, and definitely not any luckystone rings. I know they've got to be here somewhere. I know I'm going to find one. I know I'm going to find one.

“Hey, son,” says Dad.

“What?” I look up and he's holding something between his fingers. It's a small, round stone. I hope it's not what I think it is. I walk toward him.

Shit. It's a luckystone. He holds it up to the light so I can see that the hole goes all the way through. Why did I bring him with me? I knew he was going to find one. Now everything is ruined. Now I'm never going to get that kitten.

He doesn't even look that impressed that he found it. He looks like it doesn't even mean anything to him.

I'm unlucky. Nothing ever goes the way I want it to.

Dad washes his luckystone off in the water, so it looks brand-new, and then he puts it in his pocket. “We'll put it in the cottage. We'll start a collection.”

He's never seen the Richardsons' collection.

We're leaving tomorrow. The two weeks went so fast. I didn't even do anything. I only went to the waterfall once. I only went fishing twice. I didn't find a luckystone. I didn't
get a kitten. My rock-skipping championship got kind of sidetracked by the turtle bite.

My feet got tough, and I can swim underwater to the end of the Bells' dock, but that's about it.

I don't even know what I did the rest of the time. Wasted it, I guess. I keep hoping Mary will come down to say goodbye, but I haven't seen her in a few days.

Mom's already packed up most of our stuff and given away the food we didn't eat. The day before the last day of vacation is the worst. You know it's going to end and you know you should be having fun, but all the fun has been sucked into a black hole.

It makes me feel terrible. It makes me feel like I want to leave right now.

I walk down to the lake one last time. I bend down and put my hand in the water, but I can't get too close because I'm wearing shoes. It's so much warmer than it was when we first got here. I want to go for one last swim, but my bathing suit is already in the black suitcase. The car is packed up and the water is turned off. So are the phone and the electricity. There's a thousand mothballs in the closet, even though all the sheets and blankets are in a black Hefty bag in the loft of the garage. Dad set off a bug bomb in the living room, so we can't even go into the cottage anymore.

Mom and Dad come up and stand behind me and look at the water, which is flat and smooth today. Dad hugs Mom from behind and I can tell they're both tearing up about leaving.