Lost on the Water
by D. G. Driver
One girl’s daring adventure
turns into a long frightful night
lost on the water.
Forced to leave the California beach behind to spend the summer with her grandma in rural Tennessee, Dannie is certain this will be the most boring summer of her life. Things start looking up when a group of local kids, mistaking her short hair and boyish figure, invite her on their ‘no girls allowed’ overnight kayaking trip. Obviously, her grandma refuses to let her go. But Dannie suspects the real reason is that the woman is afraid of the lake, only she won't tell Dannie why.
Longing for freedom and adventure, Dannie finds an old rowboat hidden behind the shed and sneaks off on her own to catch up to her new friends. It seems like a simple solution… until everything goes wrong.
Dannie soon discovers this lake is more than just vast. It’s full of danger, family secrets, and ghosts.
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GENRE
Contemporary |
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| Teen | ||
Excerpt
Grandma swung her swivel office chair toward me. “I didn’t expect you back until much later. The Square not quite enough excitement?”
“It was all right. I met a group of guys, and they were pretty friendly.”
Grandma nodded, a soft smile on her lips. “Did you meet any girls?”
“No. I didn’t run into any girls.” Now that I thought about it, where were all the girls? Did they have their own tradition while the boys went camping? I could see a lot of the girls from back home using this boys-only event to strike up their own girls-only gig in retaliation. I imagined a dozen or so popular girls from school renting a room at a hotel somewhere for the night to watch movies and drink champagne that some generous adult supplied for them. “One of the guys showed me a picture of his girlfriend. That’s the only girl I saw.”
Grandma nodded as though that didn’t really surprise her. “There are some good boys around here.”
Oh good, I thought, she likes the boys in town. I took that as a cue to continue. I spoke as nonchalantly as I could. “They invited me to go on their big campout tomorrow night.”
That soft smile faded. Her whole face turned so dark, I admit I actually looked out the window behind her to see if the sky had clouded over. “Did they?”
“Is that weird, that they’d invite someone from out of town?” I asked.
“It’s unexpected,” she said. Her eyes drifted out the window and she sighed so heavily you’d think I just told her that I was invited to spend the night in prison instead of out camping.
“It’s just one overnight,” I said. “I’ll be yours the whole rest of the time.”
I figured she’d look at me then and either say “Okay” or “No, Dannie, I have something planned already.” But she just kept looking out the window, avoiding my face. She raised her hand to push her reading glasses up to her forehead, and I noticed her fingers were trembling.
“Have they changed the rules? Are they letting girls go now?” she asked after a moment. “I thought the girls all gathered at the Robinson’s farm for a party every year.”
I thought about lying, telling her yes, the rules had changed. That would’ve been dumb, because she could check that out easily enough. “Um, no,” I confessed. “I think they didn’t notice I was a girl.”
“And you didn’t bother correcting them?” Her disappointment in me dripped through her words.
“I should have, I know, but I was too curious to find out what it was all about.”
I expected her to get on me about that, but she didn’t say anything. She continued staring out the window, her complexion as pale as the white chiffon curtains around her.
“Did you tell them who you were related to?” she finally asked in such a quiet voice I barely heard her.
“Yeah.”
“Well, then that makes a bit more sense.” She stood up and stretched her back. As she stepped out of her room down the hall, she continued speaking, muttering more to herself really. “I suppose it makes sense. I don’t know if it does or not.”
I followed her. “So, can I go?”
Grandma didn’t look at me, but she slowed her pace as she began to pass by my bedroom. She pressed the splayed fingers of her right hand on the door for a moment and then pulled them away again. The door swung open. Her fingers curled up in her hand like they had felt something awful.
“Is one of them planning to help you out with a boat?”
My hopes that she was going to say, “Sure, there’s a kayak in the garage,” had just been dashed.