I didn’t want to go to the Lake.
Only because my mother was being particularly dramatic about it. Another body was found in the Lake just that morning, which made four bodies that summer, and it was only June.
Mom said don’t go to the Lake. Especially in the summertime when the sun is bright and people crowd the shore. If you swim too far out, she said, the Lake will pull you down, down, down and if you’re lucky, it’ll spit your dead body back out onto the mud; otherwise it’ll keep you as long as it likes. The Lake is always looking for new flesh to fill its towns and graveyards, she said, but it only keeps the worthy.
Mom was always dramatic like that and I usually didn’t pay her no mind, but I really didn’t want to go to the Lake either.
Still, later that day, I found myself crammed between two friends in the back seat of a car with no air conditioner, our bare thighs sticking together in a way I tried not to think too much about, while some boy I didn’t know drove us too fast up the highway. The inside of the car smelled like sweat, sunscreen, and gas station ice.
We didn’t talk about the body found in the Lake that morning.
We settled on a scrap of empty beach that was all sun-warmed pebbles under our towels. The water lashed the shore with more force than was normal on a clear day. I said as much to my friends but they just laughed that my mom had put ideas in my head again. I couldn’t take my eyes off the water; it looked like claws.
My friends left me there while they stripped down to their swimsuits and clamored into the water. I tried not to look too long at my best friend in her bikini. Her laugh carried over the water, back to my ears, as she raced that boy to a buoy marking the boat lanes. I couldn’t remember the boy’s name. My best friend’s thigh had felt so soft against mine back in the car.
The water curled around my ankles, gently scraping the tops of my feet like a cat trying to get my attention. It repeated the motion one, two, three times, it’s grip on me tighter than the last. The water wanted me.
I should’ve felt scared but I didn’t.
I was so entranced by the water around my feet I almost didn’t hear my friends scream.
They rushed onto shore in a fury of splashes and shouts. I tried to move but the water held me rooted to the pebble beach. I was temporarily forgotten as they talked in rapid fire fearful tones. Hands on their ankles, they said, dragging them down. A voice in the water telling them to get out.
I heard the same voice telling me, come closer.
My feet walked me into the water against my will, giving in to the water now scraping with more urgency, wrapping around my calves like strong fingers, pulling.
I blinked and I was chest deep in the water; I could hear my friends yelling my name from the shore. They sounded so far away.
Clawed hands raked up my legs and my backside to grip my waist. Come closer, come closer, the voice whispered again, hunger in each word. I collapsed into the water, feeling the Lake bed give way underneath me.
Two clouded eyes gazed back at me through the silt; cold, slimy skin pressed against the full length of my body; clawed hands cradled me, pulling me deeper into the water. A gaping mouth full of jagged teeth grinned at me and I grinned back.
She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.