The Dark Lake (18 page)

Gay. Always popular with the popular girls. I shake my head at her
and roll my eyes at her joke. “I can’t believe what a hypocrite phony you are,” I say to Gay. “And I can't believe you can read that,” I turn and say to Krishna. “I’m really blown away that you can read that. I mean, that’s not even our alphabet.”

Krishna shrugs.

"What's the section you’re reading about?” Ziggy asks.

"It's on
Dukkha
. The stuck mind,” she says.

"A
mind stuck in the past?"

"Not awake, it says,” she reads, "refusal to awaken."

"Stuck, huh?” asks Gay, and she shakes me by the shoulder. “Wake up!” she shouts in my ear.

* * *

Now it was completely dark outside. The snow was really coming down. It had been clear all day and now this. How was I supposed to be out there in that?

Miriam was not there at her office. Not a single soul had come in to the Laundromat.
I felt like it was my new home.

I walked over to the pay
phone and dialed the operator. I told her I wanted to make a collect call. She put the number through and I waited a long time. Then she came back on the line and said there'd been no answer. I walked back over to the bench. I only had two matches left and I didn't want to have to walk out there in that cold to try to get another book of them. I started to have a really heavy, sad feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, like someone had kicked me. Like when you fall off the swing and land on your back.

And I was afraid to leave the Laundromat. If I left it, I might not get back in, like when I left my house. Why did I leave my house? It had been just a day, right?

I lit my second to last match and stood by the door smoking.

***

"She's out of her mind,” Ziggy said.

"No, she's not," Krishna said
. "It's the world that's all distorted. She sees the truth."

"Is that how you define madness?” he asked.

They passed the bong back and forth, and the thing made that bubbling, gurgling sound.

They passed it to Gay
, and after she took a toke she coughed so much they told her, "It's not the coughing that gets you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in."

"What are you guys talking about?"

"Madness."

"She's not mad, she's dead," Gay said.

"Huh?” they both said at once.

It was difficult to smoke a bong in the car, we discovered. Especially when the driver kept taking the curves so fast.

It was the aimless driving that took up most of our time. But the music was so great.

"What do you mean she's dead? She can't be dead. How can she be walking around talking to people then?” I asked.

"No that's not it," Krishna shook her head. "The world is just what you perceive it to be."

"Could someone turn the heat up?” I asked.

I almost spilled the bong water on myself, and bong water smells so horrible. My mom found a bong once and she was literally terrified of it—like her phobia of snakes. What did she call it again? She had the most peculiar name for the thing, as she held it in her pinched fingers and sneered at it in disgust.

"Oh
, I love this song!" Gay shouted, and we all went silent. It was weird how none of us ever spoke during that particular song. But after the song was over, they went back to their debate.

"Well
, what is happening then?" Krishna said.

"We drove out on the ice, don’t you remember?” Ziggy said.

"Oh yeah," everyone said in almost a whisper.

"Just let me out of this fucking car!” I screamed.

“Just drop her off here,” I heard Krishna say, and then she started giggling. They opened the door and I got out. I slammed it on them, and stood shivering and watching as the tires squealed toward the lake.

I could still hear their drunken
, infernal laughter and nonsensical conversation coming from the car along with the smoke from the tailpipe that looked extra thick in the freezing air.

They stopped. I could see them from where I stood. They had dropped me off by the strip of road between the two strips of grass that bordered Menomonee Park, out on the outermost edge by the brick dressing rooms where we changed into our swimsuits as kids. Suddenly the car turned its headlights toward me. It headed toward me very slowly. They were driving my little blue Chevette. The drove toward me, not fast, still very slow. I didn’t move out of the way. I just stared at them. I thought they were going to run into me. But they swerved past me, and drove straight into the lake. I thought the lake was frozen. I was sure the lake was frozen. But they drove straight into the water.

They drove my little blue Chevette into the lake.

I ran toward the lake
and jumped after them into the black depths. The water was ice cold. It should have been frozen. I thought it was frozen.

I swam down, and I could see the car. I got closer. I got so close I could see them inside through the window but they weren’t reacting like they should. They didn’t seem scared. They weren’t trying to get out. They were still laughing and partying and passing the bong.
The car, my car, still sinking, I had to swim fast to keep up with them.

I knocked on the window
.

They either couldn’t hear me, or they were ignoring me. I was frantic, I madly banged on the glass.

“Get out! You’re drowning!” I tried to scream, but all that happened was water went into my lungs, and bubbles came out of my mouth.

The three of them continued laughing inside the car, passing the bong and partying. I tried to grab the door handle and pull it open. I couldn’t, because the weight of the water was too heavy of a force. They finally looked through the window, put their faces right up to it, and when they saw me, this only made them laugh harder.

I yanked and pulled again at the door handle. The car was sinking fast, and pulling me down with it.

I
suddenly noticed I couldn’t breathe. It was as if before that moment I could breathe just fine, but once I noticed that the car was pulling me down, that’s when I couldn’t breathe anymore.

In fact, I think I was breathing. I think I had been breathing before that moment. Breathing just fine. What happened? Maybe because up till then all I could think about was saving them.

But I couldn’t save them. The car was sinking and I couldn’t stop it. I had to let go.

I swam
, frantic for air, up to the top and crawled out of the lake onto the ice. But that’s weird, I thought. When they went into the water, it was water, not ice. Not frozen. I pulled up onto the ice, only a few feet from the shore. I crawled along the freezing ice.

When I got to the shore I stood up. I started walking along the shore, looking up at the ghastly moon that shone cold in the middle of the liquid sky.

I stopped and stood still
, shivering, looking at the lake. It wasn’t water. It was frozen. I watched my breath come out in clouds and continued walking along the shore.

A pair of headlights now crawled up behind me. I could feel and see them in the brightening snow, the warm light on the trees and the widening horizon. Because in the darkness the horizon just disappears.

The car stopped behind me. Seemed hesitant. I turned around. It was my dad’s car, the one he never let me use. He had named this car. It was his little black car with the stripe across the middle, the one just for himself that he got after we lost the blue car.

“Where are you going?” he said. He had rolled down the window, and I could see his face from inside the car, but in the dark I could barely see him.

“Where have you been?” I shouted at him.

“I’ve been right here. You’re shivering
and wet. Get in the car, Janey Lou. You’ll catch your death.”

“Where are you taking me?”

I said this while walking around the car and opening the door to get in. I said this while still standing with my hands shoved deep inside my coat pockets.

It was a long
, woolen coat I’d borrowed from Ziggy’s sister a long time ago. I never gave it back. I’d forgotten to return it. Now that it was soaking wet, it was much heavier to wear.

“You don’t want to go in there,” he said, pointing to the lake. I turned and looked at it. He was right. You can’t drive on the ice. And shouldn’t walk on it either, at least not very far.

“Into the lake?” I asked, considering telling him what I’d just seen and what had just happened. “Why would I want to go in there?”

“Well, that’s where you’re heading. Why don’t you get in the car? We’ll go get some donuts.”

I walked around, opened the door and got in. Shutting the door, I shut out what I’d just seen and done. I was dry instantly, and warm. It was warm in the car.

I put my head back against the soft, old
, familiar seat. All the fear and loneliness just left me with a sigh. It was so warm. He must have rolled up the window, but I didn’t know if he had, because I didn’t want to look over there, in case he wasn’t there.

I almost didn’t care
, but then I just had to ask, “Are you sure you’re my dad?”

He didn’t say anything. The car had started rolling backward; you could hear the tires crunching on the snow. I stared out at the lake
—it seemed imperceptibly smaller. Then, like as if I knew the answer already, I turned toward him and said, “Or are you who I think you are?”

The light of the dashboard gave his face an eerie glow.

“I am who you think I am,” he said, and then his face began to change. He still looked like my dad, but I was sure it wasn’t him.

He began to back the car away from the lake and I thought I heard him whisper, “
Peccatis in profundum maris.”

And upon hearing that, I just leaned back against the velvety car seat in relief and exhaustion, oddly comforted. I gazed out into the disappearing darkness as the car backed away, leaving them under the ghastly moon.

End of Book One

Book Two,
Call me Jane
, is now available on Kindle