“TONIGHT is the night,” Lena says, pressing the binoculars to her eyes. Her long limbs are tucked under her bony body. She’s all triangles and tan skin and freckles, perched on the end of the ancient, green, bending diving board, her toes just skimming the surface of the lake. She hasn’t brushed her hair in weeks and it’s a tornado, all sand whipped and sea weeded. It makes Holly want to sigh, just looking at her.
“They can probably see you being a creeper,” Holly says, lying flat on the dock, rolling a joint on her belly. The sun is half sunk on the horizon and it’s almost too late to use the boat. This dance that Lena’s been doing with the binoculars and the boathouse boys is a familiar one, has seen many sunsets this summer.
“So then maybe they’ll come over,” Lena says, putting the binoculars down like she has been caught, and then picking them up again, scanning across the lake in some attempt to seem like she isn’t spying on the boy neighbours and is instead spotting something else. “Oh look, a loon!” she shouts, pointing at the empty, calm bay, at the sunset stained across the blue like something spilled on bed sheets.
“You’re retarded,” Holly says, licking her fingers and twisting the end of the joint. Holly can’t figure out why Lena gives so much of a shit about the shirtless white boathouse boys. They could have girlfriends. They might pop their collars. It is entirely possible that they listen to Nickelback.
“I’m going to do it,” Lena says, standing up. The diving board creaks, bows, threatens to snap, like it has been all summer and she hops down onto the dock, leaving it to swing through the air over and over and over again.
“You are.” Holly keeps her voice flat, reserves judgment. This is the sixth consecutive night that Lena has made this pledge. Usually it is in one more beer, and then the sun is down and it is too late to go because they promised their parents they wouldn’t use any of the boats in the dark. Not after that drunk kid drove his boat into the bridge over by Haverbrook last summer. We would rather you hitchhiked, said their father. But don’t do that either, said their mother, wringing her hands, taking another sip of wine. Or at least don’t do it alone.
“I am,” Lena says. “What have I got to lose?”
“Exactly,” Holly says, sticking the joint between her lips.
“Wait,” Lena holds up a hand, as Holly sparks the lighter.
“I’m waiting,” Holly says.
“I’ll see if they want to smoke with us, yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Lena adjusts her bikini top, does up the button on her cutoffs, hops up and down three times, flexes and unflexes her fists, lets out a little squeak and steps down into the little tin boat moored to the edge of their rotting dock.
Holly wants to light the joint anyway. There is a certain amount of weed that she needs to smoke in order to fall asleep these days, and if the boys come over, there’s a big chance that there won’t be enough, and this is the last of it, and if she has to spend another night staring at the clapboard ceiling letting her thoughts roll over one another, she’ll probably drown herself.
“Get the line,” Lena says. The little Evinrude motor starts on the third pull and Lena twists the handle, revs it a few times to get it hot. Holly pulls the rope out of the cleat and pitches it into the boat and Lena takes off, the bow rising too fast.
“Huh,” Holly says. She can’t believe it, watches as Lena does a donut in the bay, hopping her own wake, the tinny slapping the water like hands clapping and approaches the shirtless boys.
Holly stares across the bay at the ring of cottages. Some with small blinking lights in the distance, dots to be connected. Constellations for the stars to see. It’ll be good for you, they said. Get away from the city. She wonders if they just wanted to get rid of her, put her in a capsule, keep all the bad things away.
Holly hears the tinny rev again and looks over at Lena, working her way back to Holly along the shoreline, two new shirtless, tan, passengers sitting backwards in the little boat. That was fast. Two months of binoco stalking, and now this company. This summer has been an inhale and an exhale, a constant simmer in her belly, this need to have people around, until they arrive.
The boat slows as it nears the dock, the engine cutting out a few metres away, leaving them to drift in tip first, on momentum. “I think I flooded it,” Lena says and the two guys laugh, in the way that assholes do when girls talk about motors and car parts and sports.
“That’s okay,” Holly says, kicking the tip of the boat sideways and taking a look at the new passengers. They’re a lot older than the previous stalking had lead Holly to believe. Both of them look like they are at least twenty-five. Which isn’t old. Just older.
Lena tosses her the back line and she pulls the tail of the boat in, ties it up to the ring, as the three of them clamber onto the dock, quiet and barefoot.
“Hey,” one guy says, stepping forward, his voice loud because it is deep. Holly stares at his hand. It is the size of a toaster. She traces a path up his enormous body, across shoulders that probably have to turn when they cross thresholds, and up and up, to his eyes. He towers over her, over them all, likely over most things. “I’m Athan.”
“Holly,” she says, forgetting about his hand, trying to swallow his name, which could have been Ethan and is, instead, Athan. Like Tevin, instead of Kevin, or Hichael instead of Michael. Maybe the nurse who wrote out his birth certificate was dyslexic.
“You can shake it. I’ll be gentle.”
Holly tries not to laugh, and then to laugh. She isn’t sure what do, so she takes his hand, tries not to flinch as it closes over hers.
The other guy hovers near Lena, like he’s afraid to be here. He has a shaved head and a weird sunglasses tan that makes him look surprised. “I’m Tripp,” he says, as Athan releases Holly’s hand and she tries not to pull it back towards her body too quickly. This is the first stranger she has touched, since. The hand feels like putty, like waterlogged skin that’s spent too much time in cold water.
“I heard you guys had some reefer to share,” Athan says, nodding, with puckered lips, like it was the weed, and not the girl in the bikini, that brought him here. Holly tries not to roll her eyes.
They all take seats on the dock in a circle. Athan leans back against the boathouse with his legs up. Holly crosses hers and pulls the joint out from behind her ear. The world is quiet as she lights it, takes a hit, holds in the smoke.
“Do you guys know any good ghost stories?” Tripp asks, and Holly can tell that he thinks this is an excellent way to get the conversation moving, that he probably already has a story in mind.
“You should tell us yours,” Holly says.
“Yeah,” Lena says, her posture failing, shoulders slumping over knees as Athan passes to Tripp.
“It’s not really a ghost story though. It actually happened to our cousin,” Tripp says.
“Are you guys brothers?” Holly asks Athan.
“Cousins,” Athan says, reaching over and pressing his thumb onto the nub on Holly’s ankle. She doesn’t know what to do about this, so she just lets him. The thumb, it’s huge, traces circles around the bone.
“Is it about a ghost?” Lena asks.
“Just let him tell the story,” Athan says, with a laugh. Holly takes the joint from Tripp and decides to cut Athan off for being an asshole. She takes a bunch of quick tokes, lets it dangle between her fingers instead of passing. No one seems to notice.
“Our cousin,” Tripp begins.
“Dan,” Athan says.
“Right, our cousin Dan works at this really old boarding school that burned down like six or seven times at the turn of the century.”
“It burned down like six or seven times? Come on,” Holly says.
“Well, maybe three or four,” Athan says.
“Dan lived in one of the oldest buildings. Only one other guy lived in the building, but he was old and couldn’t walk without his cane. Anyway, one night it was late, and Dan was sitting, just
listening to music. The school had a curfew, and security guards, so it’s not like any of the kids could be out of bed. So Dan’s just sitting there, in his apartment, minding his own business, and he hears someone come running down the hallway and then they start pounding on his door. And it’s loud, like a huge fist. And Dan, he’s not a big guy, so he drops to his knees and looks through the crack under the door and there were no feet.”
“Whoa,” Lena exhales and Holly can’t tell if she’s stoned, or interested, or actually thinks the story is true.
“The way Dan tells it,” Athan interrupts, standing up and striding down the dock, stepping up onto the green diving board. Holly wants to tell him that he’s going to break it, that it’s been threatening a snap all summer, but doesn’t. “He says he laid flat on his stomach all night, staring through the crack between the floor and the door and saw nothing, heard nothing, no feet walking away, nothing.” Athan steps on the end of the diving board, bends his knees. The board just flaps, like a bird, like a wave. It bends, threatens, but doesn’t make a sound.
“He’s probably crazy,” Holly says. “Like insane.”
“That’s pretty scary,” says Lena. “Probably the scariest story I’ve ever heard.”
Holly doesn’t know what it is about these guys, about the story, about the black sky that’s been closing around her all summer, but she opens her mouth. “I’ve got a better one.”
“Oh yeah?” says Athan, stepping back down onto the dock, sitting on the edge with his feet in the water, ankles disappearing, leaning back on his hands, away from the three of them.
“Holly,” Lena says, her voice timid, like wading in, like she’s not sure what Holly is doing. They don’t talk about it, Holly doesn’t talk about it, ever.
“The floor is yours,” Tripp says, and Holly stubs out the joint, lets it fall between the crack in the dock, the world so quiet she can hear it snuff out, a tiny burn and then nothing.
“It’s also about our… cousin,” Lena interrupts, her eyes on the dock in front of her. Holly stares across the water, at the stars swallowing up the edges of the horizon, pressing, trying to get in somewhere they’ll never fit. Her stomach is a tumble of rope, tying her to the dock, trying to keep her here, safe.
“Yeah sure,” Athan says.
“It is,” Holly says. “You know those outward bound trips? Well our cousin did a lot of them. And this one time she had to do a solo trip where she went off on her own for an entire week. And you were just supposed to spend a bunch of time living off the land and reflecting. And they had an emergency radio but no one knew where they were. A helicopter dropped them off and they were supposed to hike for an entire day in any direction and not tell anyone where they were going.
And our cousin went and had a good time and whatever. She had this camera, right? Like one of those disposables. Anyway, when she got back she got the film developed and there were all of these pictures of her sleeping. Seven of them. One for every night.”
The story. The words always leave silence behind them, a wake plowed through conversations, waves that need to settle, calm. The idea that someone came back every night, stood over a sleeping body, took care to find the camera, was probably watching the entire time, waiting, watching, waiting, for what reason—
Holly realizes her body is a knot, has twisted itself together, ankles folded over thighs, hands tucked into the bends of her knees, head pressed to one shoulder blade. She thinks about the year that just passed, about the flashes of light and dark that grew all over her, about the boy at school she pressed her body up against in closets and in the back seats of cars, about the nights she spent wandering the streets of Toronto, staring up at the sky, trying to find some freedom from herself, about the tears and the screaming and the anger, and the dull look in her parents eyes when she asked them Why, Why, Why, over and over again, like they had some answer that they were hiding from her, like they knew something she didn’t.
“How did she know it was every night?” Tripp asks, breaking the silence, a timid toe checking the water before jumping. Holly is surprised. She though it would be Athan, can see him still bouncing on the diving board, in her peripheral vision. Athan of the curious, obnoxious words, Athan, whom she’s known for fifteen minutes and has decided she knows all of.
“Because her hair was different. And she was wearing a toque some nights. She knew,” Lena says, looking at Holly across the dock, their eyes joining truth together. “She knew.”
“That’s not a ghost story, that’s fucking creepy,” Tripp says, shivering a little. The sun is down now and they sit in that limbo between dark and light where your eyes see everything in shadow. Skin, all blue and silver, goosebumps, waiting for warmth to erase them, or for cold to freeze them in place.
Holly shivers, staring at the throbbing lights, the boathouses around the bay, tiny microcosms, universes that seem to flit in and out of sight, untouchable, and wonders if it would be better to develop the pictures and have someone lying next to you, if that would somehow make this terrifying moment stick less to her insides.
“Let’s do something fun,” Holly says, cutting through the dark silence that is threatening to divide a space between this circle of people she feels suddenly terrified to be away from.
“Let’s go skinny dipping,” Athan says.
“Yes,” Holly says, staring down at the dock, between the slats, down into the dark water, pictures it swallowing up her pale limbs, watches herself disappearing into the depths of something she’ll never see clearly. She wonders about their cousin Dan, if he could sleep after. That’s a question that no one asks after, no one ever wonders what happens to the person after that terrifying moment.
Clothes drop. The boys bound down the dock. Lena lags behind, her fingers fumbling with the laces of her bikini. “Are you okay?” she whispers, as Athan and Tripp fly through the air, disappear in a flurry of white water, bubbles.
“Yeah,” Holly says, trying and undo the button on her cutoffs. It’s sticking for some reason, like the hole has grown too small, like skin that has healed over a wound.
“Get in here!” Tripp shouts and Lena gives Holly the doe eyes, the raised eyebrows.
“Go,” Holly says. “I’ll see you in there.”
Lena grins, nods and runs, her body flashing in the moonlight for an instant before disappearing, quiet, slipping into the water without explosion.
Holly gives the cutoffs a yank and the button flies off, bounces with a ping, once on the dock and then plops in the water. She shrugs out of her bottoms and top, the moonlight catching her freckled skin. Better to be there, with all of them, naked, then alone, standing on top of the dock, her pale skin throbbing in the darkness. She steps up onto the edge of the diving board, the green, creaking, beast and strides out to the end.
Everything is quiet. “Lena?” she whispers. Nothing. Holly bends her knees and the diving board quivers beneath her, it feels different, loose, and then a crack, and her body moves, seems to float for an instant, before greeting the lake.
As the water pulls her ankles down, down, down, the only thing Holly can see is her own face in the photographs, her hair up, down, shoved up into a toque, spreading across her face like a brush fire, the abandon of sleep so pleasantly framed in the half light, her pale face, the edges of the photographs blurred, as if she is the calmest, the bravest ghost in the entire world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meredith Hambrock moved to Vancouver from Toronto seven years ago to study Creative Writing at the UBC, where she recently completed her MFA. She has been shortlisted twice for the CBC literary awards. Her writing has appeared on the popular blog Thought Catalog. Currently, she lives in Vancouver and is working in television.
LF #010 © Meredith Hambrock. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, March 2012.
