Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Bower
“Mia’s coming this week, right?” Dean asked me.
We were in the muck, up to our knees. Our feet sank down into the mud beneath the water, where it squished between our toes.
We stood there waiting—we wouldn’t be able to feel the bites.
Leeches had something in their spit that numbed your skin right before they sank their teeth into you.
But they were there. Dean had raised his leg out of the water a minute ago, and he’d already had three attached to his calf. Excellent bait for fishing.
“Yeah, she’ll be here today,” I said. “It’s check-in day.”
“Guess I won’t be seeing much of you this week, then,” Dean said.
My best friend lived just off the resort with his mom.
She didn’t like us hanging out. Something about me being a bad influence on him.
Dean didn’t care, though. He was always around since his mom worked constantly and didn’t have anyone to watch him.
Dean didn’t need watching, though. Neither did I.
We were twelve this summer, about to be thirteen—too old for babysitters.
My grandparents were too busy running the resort to keep tabs on me.
They owned this place, and I lived in the house attached to the lodge with them—where I’d lived since I could remember.
When I’d been a baby, my mom’s parents had taken me in after realizing my mom and dad were more interested in drugs than caring for me.
Betty and Gill had become so much like parents that when my actual parents had died, it hadn’t changed much for me.
My grandma and grandpa had tried their best for my life to continue at Agate Harbors as usual.
Now I tried not to spend a ton of time around the resort. The lodge was always full of guests who wanted to chat and remark on how tall I had become, never bothering to talk about anything that actually interested me, like where the best fishing on the lake was.
Most days Dean and I were in a boat somewhere on the lake or climbing over shoddy ropes that had Private Property signs attached to them to get to the good fishing spots.
Except for one week every summer.
I flicked my wrist at the water level, sending lake water toward Dean’s face. “It’s not like that, dumbass,” I said.
He loved to bait me.
“Oh, I know it isn’t. You haven’t even got pube hair yet.”
I sent another wave of water Dean’s way. “Just ’cause I like hanging out with her doesn’t mean I like like her.”
Mia was a girl I’d met at the resort a few years ago.
Her family always came up the week of the Fourth of July.
She didn’t have anyone else to hang out with while her sister sunbathed and flirted with all the local boys.
I didn’t hang with her out of pity, though.
Mia was fun. She was always up for whatever I wanted to do.
I liked showing her stuff she didn’t get to do in the city where she lived.
“Yeah, girls are weird. All the hair brushing and not wanting to break a nail…”
He snorted, but I knew Dean was lying. I saw the way he stared at the girls at the resort lying out on the beach in their bikinis, tanning in the sun.
He was a half a year older than me, and maybe when I was that old I’d look at girls different too.
But this summer all I wanted to do was fish, explore, and have fun.
“Do you think we got enough?” Dean asked.
I nodded, and we both waded toward the shore. We had ridden our bikes to the swampy part of the lake, where it was shady and the water was murky. A hotspot for leeches. I hoped we’d gotten enough. I was planning on fishing with Mia later today, and leeches were the perfect bait for bass.
The water lowered the closer we got to shore.
Black blobs emerged from the water attached to our legs.
I didn’t have much hair on my legs yet either.
Less hair made them less painful to remove.
Dean’s legs had recently sprouted dark hair that matched the hair on his head.
He’d have some funny patches of leg hair missing when we finished plucking them off.
I studied my legs once our feet hit dry sand. Eight fat black leeches had attached themselves to my calves, and two were suctioned onto the top of my foot. Dean had gotten more than me—a few had attached themselves to the back of his knee.
Now the race was on. Before the leeches burrowed further into our skin, we had to remove them. The best way was with a flat rock. Dean and I scurried around the beach, looking for the perfect rock. It had to be flat and big enough to hold in your hand, plus have at least one thin, sharp edge.
Dean found two next to each other and tossed me one. We walked over to where our bikes were lying on the sand and pulled out the small containers we’d brought for collecting bait from our backpacks.
We bent down along the shore, filling them with lake water.
The gray rock Dean had tossed me was perfect for leech removal.
I slid its tapered edge up close to where the leech had attached itself to my skin and pushed down.
The leech lost suction, its tiny teeth releasing my skin.
With a flick of the rock, the leech fell off my skin and into the container I held below it.
It splashed into the water, rolling and extending its body in its new environment.
It likely was mad after being detached from its dinner.
We used to use lighters to get the leeches to let go—heat from a flame repelled them too—but Grandma had confiscated all my lighters last month after Dean and I had celebrated the Fourth of July early.
I would have to wait until the end of the summer and scope out the lost-and-found box for some new ones.
One by one, I removed each leech from my legs. Trails of blood dripped down from the wounds their tiny teeth had made. Their saliva made it harder for the body to stop bleeding—it’d be a few minutes before the bleeding stopped—but it was worth it for a good afternoon of fishing.
Dean and I finished at the same time and snapped the lids on our leech containers. They wiggled in the water, trying to find their next meal.
“Guess I’ll be seeing you.” Dean dropped his leeches into his backpack and picked up his bike. He knew he was always welcome to join Mia and me, but he hardly ever did. “Hey, are you and Mia doing the crayfishing contest again this week?”
“Yeah, we are,” I said. “She’ll kick your ass again.”
The resort hosted a crayfish-catching contest each week for the resort goers. I only joined the week Mia was here. It was only fun when she was here to catch them with me.
Mia was super competitive, even though she refused to touch them.
She’d developed a particular way of catching the crayfish so she never had to touch them.
She was good at it too—she’d gotten first place in the contest last year, besting out almost all the boys her age who’d had no problem getting crayfish slime on them.
Dean snickered as he threw his leg over the bike and mounted the seat. He pedaled away, his legs spinning quickly because of the faulty gear system on the old bike.
My bike had its own problems. The gears worked fine, but the brakes were starting to go out. I had to pull the hand brake just right to get the pads to squeeze the wheel tight enough to slow it.
Our bikes were old and our backpacks older.
My grandpa had let us have a couple of bikes that had been sitting in the resort storage shed for several years, still waiting for the guests who had left them there to pick them up.
The backpacks were finds from the lost and found after the summer season was over.
That was the best time of the year, when all the summer families had gone and Grandma gave me free rein over the lost-and-found box. At that point in the summer, everything that had been lost would never be found. Except by me.
The sun was straight up in the sky. Mia would be here soon if she wasn’t already.
I pedaled down the gravel road to my grandparents’ cabin.
It wasn’t a typical cabin. Instead it was attached to the lodge where the resort guests came to check in.
The lodge had an enormous stone fireplace with chairs for guests to relax in and a small coffee station that was busy in the mornings.
Two years ago, Grandpa had added a gift shop to the lodge and ordered T-shirts that said Agate Harbors.
Agates were like little nuggets of gold up here. People came from all over to search the shoreline for the colorful stones. The blue ones were the hardest to find—and my favorite—but guests loved bringing any agate they found up to the lodge to show off.
They were just pieces of striped quartz. I didn’t see what was so special about them. Agates were plentiful—if you knew where to look.
“Bower! What happened to you?” Grandma stood at her clothesline, hanging guest towels with clothespins. We had a whole laundry facility, but she insisted on letting the towels air dry outside. Something about the outdoor smell.
I slowed my bike in front of the lodge. It took a couple of false stops before my bike finally braked. My legs were still bleeding, drops of blood falling onto the gravel where I stood next to my bike.
“Dean and I were out leeching,” I explained as I laid down my bike. It didn’t have a kickstand.
“Come here and let me hose you off. We can’t let guests see you like this. They’ll think you got attacked by something in the woods!”
I followed my grandma over to the side of the lodge where there was a spigot and a green hose.
I let her spray my legs, feeling the cold water wash away the blood.
When she was satisfied, she sent me inside to change and put on antibacterial ointment.
She knew Band-Aids wouldn’t stay on my legs for long—they’d just end up floating in the lake.
It was only noon, and my clothes were done for.
There was mud and blood all over my shirt and shorts.
Fortunately I got a lot of my clothes from the lost and found too.
The cabin cleaning crews always found a stray shirt or pair of shorts tucked in the back of a drawer, forgotten. They all ended up inside my dresser.
In my room, I pulled on a pair of orange shorts that matched the orange shirt I was wearing.
They were the same shade and everything.
I knew that’d annoy Grandma, but I didn’t care.
Maybe I enjoyed getting the reaction from her.
She’d look at me disapprovingly and say, That rebellious streak of yours is gonna get you into a heap of trouble someday.
I swung open the screen door, ready to take the heat. But when I stepped outside, any thoughts of riling up my grandmother flew right out of my head.
There she was, in an embrace with Grandma.
Mia was here.