I try to get my bearings and position my body into proper float pose. It’s not fair! I didn’t even have time to take a deep breath. The towel is tangled around my legs. I kick it to get it free.
That’s when I feel it. It’s moving—all on its own. Slithering. Writhing like a moray eel. It tangles around my legs, on purpose.
No. No, no, no!
I kick and kick again, but the harder I do, the tighter the towel knots. As I struggle, I sink. Oh, God. I’m going to drown!
I spin around and claw at my feet. I figure I have a few seconds to free myself before I pass out.
Beneath me, the water . . . changes. That’s the only word for it. It boils with a sick, green glow.
Every time I get my fingers into the loop of the towel, they slip out. White-hot shocks of pain streak up as my nails bend backward.
My brain explodes with stars. It’s like a headache in color. In my ears, my pulse beats out SOS, over and over. Something like thunder rocks through the water. My bones rattle. My lungs burn in a thousand tiny pinpricks. They’re dying—
I’m dying.
Thrashing, I fight to free myself. But I’ve been down here so long. How long? I don’t even know. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. . . . I’m going to sink to the bottom where the vampire devils live and never be seen again. Three Mississippi, ten Missouris, sixteen Pennsylvanias . . .
It’s getting dark, and I’m getting tired. Even my brain is tired, thinking slowly. My mind wanders: instead of screaming at me to fight, it drifts into daydreams. I knew Old Lifeguard was a bust. He’s probably standing up there stroking his mustache and thinking about bran muffins.
NO! Get with it, Corryn! This is not how you go out! Not here! Not today!
With all my air bubbling out of my mouth, I grab at the towel again.
It’s gone!
I’m free! My body snaps like a rubber band. I shoot back up to the surface. Forget about passing the test, I just want to live!
As soon as I spring up above the water, I gobble up deep breaths. The cold air slaps me in the face, and I’m good with that. Slap away, sweet, sweet breathable oxygen. Slap away!
Treading water, I look around. Right next to me, my towel floats on the waves. I know it’s mine—bright orange-and-green stripes. QUINN is no doubt scribbled on the corner. But it makes no sense. My towel can’t be bobbing on the surface next to me. It was just deep under the water, winding itself around my ankles.
Or, something was.
I dive back under, desperate to see it. If it wasn’t my towel grabbing at my ankles, what was it?
What kind of wild animals live in this lake? Giant squid? An angry octopus? Seaweed? This isn’t the sea! It doesn’t make any sense.
I swim deeper and see . . . nothing. I do, however, hear something. At first, it’s a whine—it comes at a distance, shrill and unnerving. The green glow is no longer, but this sound bubbles up from the deep. It’s not a whistle, it’s not a whine anymore—
It’s screaming.
Not from the campers on the dock. No, there’s no playfulness in this. It’s the ragged, raspy cry of terror. Of hauntings.
It’s the screaming that came from the fire, and it pierces me like icy needles.
What’s worse is that behind the screaming, I hear something else. Something worse.
Laughter. Deep and rumbling.
Something grabs me under the arms and I kick and claw and punch. I burst through the surface, still fighting.
“What the . . . ?!” the voice asks. It is not a sea monster. It’s the Old Lifeguard. Where the heck was he a couple of Mississippis ago when I was actually drowning?!
“Settle down, girl!” He pulls me into shallower water, then roughly drags me onto the shore. He puts a hand to his lip like he expects to see blood.
“I was fine,” I yell. Scrambling to my feet, I drip rivers onto the gravelly sand. The Old Lifeguard hands me a towel, since mine has sunk down into the lake. I look toward the water and shudder. Don’t tell me to settle down. I was trying to save my life!
Scrubbing my face with the towel, I tell him, “There’s something in the water.”
For a moment, the Old Lifeguard stares at me. It’s almost like he recognizes me from somewhere else. But then his face goes blank, and he moves on to the next kid. When I drop the towel, I look for Tez in the crowd of people on the shore, but he’s gone. Still at the infirmary, probably. That means I’m totally alone.
A female lifeguard stands at the end of the dock, urging one of the little girls into the water.
I can’t look when she jumps in.
I can only wait for the sound of her scream.
7
Drip Drip Drip
Tez
The backs of my thighs feel like overrun ant hills, prickly and poky and itchy.
The sheets on this infirmary bed are scratchy, but at least I’m inside. It’s slightly warmer in here. It smells like iodine and lemon, ammonia and bleach. Sort of hospitaly, and Miss Kortepeter has really soft hands.
“Were you unconscious at all?” she asks as she pumps up the blood pressure cuff again.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Did you have breakfast?”
“Yes, lots,” I say. I don’t share that I feel like I threw up about a third more than I ate. It’s probably not relevant. Or, strictly speaking, scientifically possible. Even though the infirmary is far away from the lake, and inside, and warm, I don’t really want to spend nine weeks of camp here. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals, thanks.
She lets the air out of the cuff (to be absolutely correct, it’s called a sphygmomanometer) and then peels it off my arm. Her soft hands tip my head back, then forward. I don’t know what she’s looking for. If she wants to see some loose joint action, I can dislocate my shoulder for her. My head usually stays right where it belongs, though.
Finally, she hmphs.
“Nothing looks broken. You might have a black eye coming in, though. Go ahead and lie down. I’ll get you an ice pack. Try not to fall asleep.”
Sprawling back, I stare at the ceiling. The infirmary, like the Great Hall and the cabins, is made from big beams of wood. They make patterns on the ceiling, stretching toward the peak of the roof.
I trace them with my eyes, but it makes me drowsy. No! Can’t fall asleep!
Still, heavy, heavy, the sleepiness pulls me down; it’s an anchor attached to the middle of my chest, drawing me deep into the mattress.
The angles of the walls shift. It’s subtle at first. The shadows don’t line up. One of the light fixtures hangs at an impossible angle. Maybe I do have a concussion? I rub my head and open my eyes wide. I focus.
Suddenly, the outside wall, with all the windows, seems much taller than the rest. It just stretches way up. I expect the sound of creaking timber as it moves like elastic, but there’s only silence, and the sound of my heart skipping beats.
A little dizzy, I grab the sides of the cot and blink hard. Anytime now, the room should go back to its normal shape. Annnny time now.
Instead, the ceiling staggers into the distance, then drops really close to my face, a rubber band snapped back to its normal shape. It blurs—no, my vision blurs. It has to be my vision, because buildings don’t just rearrange themselves. But I feel like I’m underwater, slow and sinking back into the bed, down into the depths.