Summer at Willow Lake

The getting-to-know-you fireside chat was always tedious, which was a shame, because it didn’t have to be. The little kids were best at it because they didn’t know which things to keep to themselves, and which to share. Lolly was a perfect example of that. A year ago, she’d blurted out, “My parents are getting a divorce” and had dissolved into tears, and her life had been a nightmare ever since. But at least back then, her admission had been genuine. In this age group, she already knew the introductions would be totally boring or phony or both.

“I wish we could skip it,” she said. “It’s going to be a complete drag. The younger kids are more interesting because at least they’ll say anything.”

“What do you mean, anything?”

“Like if their uncle is being investigated by the SEC or their brother has a third nipple.”

“A what?” Lolly probably shouldn’t have brought it up, but she knew he’d bug her until she explained. “You heard me,” she said.

“A third nipple. That’s total BS. Nobody has that.”

“Huh. Bebe Blackmun once told the whole group that her brother has three.”

“Did you see it?” he challenged.

“Like I would even want to.” She shuddered. “Ew.”

“It’s bullshit.”

She sniffed, determined to appear unimpressed by his swearing. “I bet you have an extra one.” She didn’t know why she said it. She knew the chances of him having three nipples were zip.

“Yeah, right,” he said, stopping on the trail and turning. In one graceful motion, he peeled off his T-shirt right there in the woods, in front of her face, so fast she didn’t have time to react.

“You want to count ‘em?” he demanded.

Her face lit with a blush and she marched past him, staring straight ahead. Idiot, she thought. I am such an idiot. What was I thinking?

“Maybe you have three nipples,” he said with mocking laughter in his voice. “Maybe I should count yours.”

“You’re crazy.” She kept marching.

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“I was just trying to make conversation because you’re totally, one hundred percent boooring.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “That’s me. Boooring.” He sashayed around her, mimicking her walk. He hadn’t put his shirt back on but had tucked it in the back waistband of his cargo shorts. With the First-Blood headband and the shirt hanging down like the back half of a loincloth, he looked like a savage. Very Lord of the Flies.

He was a total show-off. He—

She stumbled over a tree root, and had to grab for a nearby branch to steady herself. He turned, and she could have sworn she’d seen his arm flash out to keep her from falling, but he quickly resumed walking without touching her. She stared at him, not to be rude or nosy but this time out of concern.

“What’s that on your back?” she asked bluntly.

“What?” Mr. Lord of the Flies scowled unpleasantly at her.

“At first I thought you forgot to bathe, but I think you have a really huge bruise.” She pointed to the back of his rib cage.

He stopped and twisted around, his face almost comically contorted. “I don’t have any stinking bruise. Man, you’re kind of creepy. Extra nipples and now phantom bruises.”

“I’m looking right at it.” In spite of her annoyance at him, she felt a small twinge of compassion. The bruise was healing. She could tell by the way the color bloomed in the middle and faded at the edges. But it must’ve really hurt when it happened.

His eyes narrowed and his face turned hard, and for a second, he looked menacing. “It’s nothing,” he stated. “I fell off my bike. Big deal.” He whipped around and kept going, hurrying so that Lolly had to rush to keep up.

“Look, I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“I’m not mad at you,” he barked at her, and walked even faster.

That was quick, she thought. Her first enemy of the summer. There were sure to be many more to follow. She had a knack for bringing out dislike in people.

Even though Connor said he wasn’t mad at her, he was mad about something. There was fury in his taut muscles, his sharp movements. Big deal, so he hurt himself riding a bike. Usually when you fell off a bike, though, the casualties were elbows and knees, maybe the head. Not the back, unless you went tumbling down a hill and slammed into something really hard. Unless you were lying about what really happened.

She was both intrigued by and disappointed in this boy. Disappointed because she desperately wanted to dislike him and not have to think about him again, all summer long. And intrigued because he was more interesting than he had a right to be. He was kind of edgy, too, with that too-long hair, low-slung pants, high-tops repaired with duct tape. And there was something in his eyes besides the usual stupid boy stuff. Those same ice-cube eyes that had read David Copperfield had probably seen things a girl like Lolly couldn’t even imagine.

They hiked around a hairpin bend in the path, and a loud, steady rush of water greeted them.

“Whoa,” Connor said, tilting back his head to look at the hundred-foot waterfall. It gushed from some unseen source high above, tumbling over rocks, droplets turning to mist on impact. Everywhere the sunlight shone through, rainbows glowed. “That’s awesome,” he said, his cranky mood apparently forgotten.

“Meerskill Falls,” she said, raising her voice over the roar of the falling water. “One of the tallest in the state. Come on, you can get a good view of it from the bridge.”

Meerskill Bridge had been constructed in the 1930s by a government work crew. Dizzyingly tall, the arched concrete structure spanned the gorge, with the falls crashing wildly below. “The locals call this Suicide Bridge because people have killed themselves jumping from it.”

“Yeah, sure.” He seemed drawn to the cascade, which misted the trail on either side, cultivating a carpet of moss and lush ferns.

“I’m serious. That’s why there’s a chain-link fence over the top of the bridge.” She scrambled to keep up with him. “It was supposedly put up, like, fifty years ago, after two teenagers jumped off it.”

“How do you know they jumped?” he asked. The mist clung to his dark hair and his eyelashes, making him look even cuter.

Lolly wondered if the mist made her look cute, too. Probably not. It only fogged her glasses. “I guess they just know,” she said. They reached the bridge deck and passed under the arch formed by the safety fence.

“Maybe they fell by accident. Maybe they were pushed. Maybe they never existed in the first place.”

“Are you always such a skeptic?” she asked.

“Only when somebody’s telling me some bullshit story.”

“It’s not bull. You can ask anybody.” She stuck her nose in the air and marched to the end of the bridge and around the bend without waiting to see if he followed. They hiked along in silence for a while. By now, they were seriously lagging behind the rest of the group but he didn’t seem to care, and Lolly decided that she didn’t, either. Today’s hike wasn’t a race, anyway.

She kept stealing sideways glances at him. Maybe she would experiment with liking this guy, just a little. “Hey, check it out.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as the path skirted a sloping meadow dotted with wildflowers and fringed by birch trees. “Two fawns and a doe.”

“Where?” He craned his neck around the woods.

“Shh. Be really quiet.” She beckoned, leading him off the path. Deer were not exactly rare in these parts, but it was always amazing to see the fawns in their soft-looking spotted coats and their big, shy eyes. The deer were in an open glade, the little ones sticking close to their mother while she browsed on grass and leaves. Lolly and Connor stopped at the edge of the glade and watched.

Lolly motioned for Connor to sit next to her on a fallen log. She took a pair of field glasses from her fanny pack and handed them to him.

“That’s awesome,” he said, peering through the glasses. “I’ve never seen a deer in the wild before.”

She wondered where he was from. It wasn’t like deer were rare or anything. “A fawn eats the equivalent of its body weight every twenty-four hours.”