Summer at Forsaken Lake (4 page)
Read Summer at Forsaken Lake Online
Authors: Michael D. Beil
“Ah, here it is,” he said, holding up a worn, much-loved hardcover. “
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
. Arthur
Ransome. A classic. You girls read this today, and you will truly be ready to go sailing tomorrow.”
“Looks kind of old,” Hayley said, flipping quickly through the pages.
“It is old. It’s the book that made
me
a sailor. And if it worked for a knucklehead like me, I’m sure it can do the job on you two bright young ladies.”
Hayley smiled at the flattery, but Hetty wrinkled her nose. “It looks kind of
long
. I’m not really a reader, like Hayley. I prefer TV.”
“I see,” said Nick. “Well, seein’ as we don’t really have TV out here—not what you’re used to, anyway—why don’t you give it a try. Maybe you and your sister can take turns reading it out loud.”
“I guess so,” Hetty said with a sigh. Hayley took the book from her and pulled her by the hand onto the porch.
With that task complete, Nick turned to Nicholas. “All right, your turn. I was going to find you some sailing books, too.”
“And a projector, remember?” Nicholas said. “So we can watch the movie.”
“Right. Almost forgot.”
Nicholas thought he detected a little reluctance on his uncle’s part, but he didn’t say anything—he really wanted to see the movie.
“I know there’s one around here somewhere. Your aunt Lillie tried to get me to clean out this closet for years. Now, getting it to work may be a whole ’nother kettle
of worms. Cross your fingers that the bulb is still good.” He opened a crowded, disorganized hall closet and started taking boxes down from the top shelf.
“Have you ever seen it—
The Seaweed Strangler
, I mean?” Nicholas asked.
Uncle Nick looked uncomfortable, like a witness who knew the answer to the question but, for some reason, didn’t want to give it. “Well, uh, sure. The parts that are done. But it’s been twenty-five years or more, and I don’t remember much about it. Some … things … came up, and your dad never finished it. Seem to remember something about the final scenes not turning out right. He set the exposure wrong and they’re too dark—can’t see anything. Something like that. Those old cameras were kind of tricky. Ah, here we go,” he said, setting the projector, enclosed in a sturdy steel case, on the table.
“Wow—they don’t make ’em like that anymore,” Nicholas remarked, feeling the heft of the thing.
A quick test run revealed it to be in perfect working order, but Nick talked Nicholas into waiting until after dark—which meant after nine o’clock—for the screening. “We can take a look at these home movies, too,” he added, holding up a small reel of film that had been lying in the bottom of the case. “We’ll have popcorn and make an evening of it.”
* * *
With the twins happily passing
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
back and forth on the porch swing and Nick looking for an oilcan to stop one of the projector’s wheels from squeaking, Nicholas climbed the stairs to the tower room. He threw himself onto the bed and opened the notebook with the torn cover. The first few pages appeared to be the random scribblings of ideas for the story and some calculations of the cost of buying and processing film, but then came a title page, repeating what appeared on the cover. Nicholas turned the page, finding the heading
Scene 1
, and started to read:
Long shot of the cove, early in the morning. There should be some mist, and the water should be perfectly still.
Close shots of the trees around the cove, birds, crayfish crawling on sand.
Long shot of the cove. A rowboat with one man in it slowly comes into view. The boat stops and he stands up, using binoculars to look into the woods.
Medium shot of the woods. A small branch moves, but you can’t see what is causing it.
Close shot of the man in the boat as he sets down binoculars and picks up a rifle. He aims at something in the woods and fires.
Extreme close-up of the Seaweed Strangler from the back. He turns to face the camera, and one side of his face is covered in blood. He roars and begins to run toward the camera.
Medium shot of the man starting to row like crazy.
Long shot of the cove. The Seaweed Strangler comes crashing out of the woods and into the water after the man. The man has a good head start and gets away.
Close shot of the Seaweed Strangler, standing waist-deep in the water, roaring at the man. Extreme close-up of his fangs.
Fade-out.
Nicholas closed the notebook and leaned his head back against the wall, struggling with the image of his dad,
a doctor who spent two months a year in Africa working for Doctors Without Borders, as a teenager who was creative enough to make a movie. When he really thought about it, he couldn’t even remember his father ever
reading
him a story, let alone making one up. Determined not to read the rest of the script until he saw the movie, Nicholas set the notebook on the floor by the bed and checked the secret hiding place in the wall for anything he might have missed earlier. The search turned up two more items. The first was nothing to get too excited about: an index card with the heading “Deming Public Library” and the title of a book,
Make Your Own Movie!
by Samuel Oswald.
The second, however, was
very
interesting.
It was a piece of paper, folded into a compact triangle, with a heart drawn around the name Will.
Nicholas had just unfolded it enough to read “Dear Will” when the twins interrupted him, their heads appearing simultaneously at the top of the stairs.
“Guess what, Nicholas,” Hayley said.
“You forgot to knock,” he replied, quickly refolding the letter and sticking it in his shirt pocket.
“You don’t have a door, silly,” said Hetty.
“Doesn’t matter. Knock on the stairs before you come up.”
Hayley sighed dramatically. “Oh, fine.” She knocked on the stairs, but didn’t wait for a response. “Guess what the name of the boat in this book is?” She held up
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
.
“I don’t know,” Nicholas said, annoyed.
“Guess!” the twins shouted at him.
“Titanic,”
he said.
“No. Come on, a real guess,” Hetty pleaded.
“Hetty?”
“What?”
“No, that’s my guess.”
“What’s your guess?”
“Hetty.”
“Nicholas!”
“No.
Hetty
.”
“You’re impossible,” said an exasperated Hetty. “It’s
Goblin
.”
“You know, like Uncle Nick’s boat,” Hayley added.
Nicholas stared at her. “Yeah, thanks. I think I got that. Let me see.”
Hayley handed him the book, her place marked by the stub of her train ticket from New York. He leafed through a few pages, stopping at an illustration showing a cutaway view of a sailboat. “Wow—looks just like
Goblin
, too. What’s this about, anyway?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s in England,” Hetty started. “And there’s this family on vacation, except for the dad, who’s in the navy and is on his way back from China, I think.”
Hayley took over. “The kids are out in a rowboat, and they end up helping Jim Brading get his boat—
Goblin
—tied
up at the mooring. And then he asks if they want to come aboard, so they do, and then he invites them to go sailing with him. And, um, that’s as far as we got.”
“Well, hurry up and finish it. I want to read it, too.”
“You’re going to read a book?” Hetty teased.
“He has to,” said Hayley. “It’s a rainy day and there’s no TV. Or video games.”
“I read books,” Nicholas said indignantly.
“About baseball,” the girls said together.
“I
like
baseball. Now get out of here and go read your book or I won’t let you watch
The Seaweed Strangler
tonight.”
“You have to let us!” cried Hayley, but she started back down the stairs anyway.
The mention of baseball took him back to the strange experience earlier in the day.
Struck out by a girl
. That was definitely a first for Nicholas, but, oddly enough, it wasn’t that sweeping curveball that was stuck in his mind; it was that
smile
. What
was
it about her that was so … interesting? Or was it irritating? He couldn’t decide which. And why had she smiled like that at him, anyway? Was she making fun of him?
Or did she think I was … Oh, stop
. He shook his head sharply, trying to shake the memory of her face from his mind, and got up to look out the window at
Goblin
. The wind had shifted direction, and she pointed across the lake, bobbing gently. He took the letter out of his pocket and sat down on the edge of his bed to read it.
Dear Will,
I still can’t believe you’re going back to New York. It’s not fair that you got blamed for everything that happened. I know it wasn’t your fault, but nobody believes me, either. My parents don’t even want me to see you, so I’m going to sneak this into Nick’s house when you guys go to church Sunday morning.
Will, I know a lot has happened in the past few days, and I don’t know how you feel about everything, but I have to let you know how I feel before you leave. Even though it’s being cut short, and I have to wear this stupid cast for the next six weeks, this was the best summer of my life. I’ll never forget a single moment we spent together, especially those times we snuck off to our “secret place.” No matter what else happens in my life, you will always be special, because
every
girl remembers her first kiss. I hope you’ll remember, too.
I cried all night when I heard your parents were coming to pick you up on Sunday (I know, not like me at all, right?) and thought about being stuck here in Deming without seeing you for a whole year. Please, please,
PLEASE
write to me when you get this. It’s driving me crazy not being able to talk to you and know what you’re thinking. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t hear from you,
but I guess that will mean it’s over. Everyone keeps saying I’m too young to know what’s best for me, but I don’t care.
I love you, Will Mettleson. There, I said it.
Franny
PS I’m really sorry you didn’t get to finish the movie after all the work you put into it. Maybe by next summer everybody will stop acting so crazy and you can prove to them what I already know: you’re a genius!
PPS Remember, you promised me the first sail in the Heron, so you have to come back.
Nicholas’s mind ran wild with questions. Who was this Franny person who was so in love with his dad? What was he being blamed for? He
kissed
her? The Heron?
He read the letter a second time, but that only led to more questions and the only possible conclusion he could imagine:
Maybe there are two Will Mettlesons in the world
.
F
or Nicholas, Hayley, and Hetty, New Yorkers who were used to the sun setting a little earlier, it seemed as if it would never be dark enough to show the movie.
“Why don’t you two entertain us?” Nick asked. “Your mom tells me that you’re always putting on little shows for her. Show me what you’ve got.”
“You’ll be sorry,” said Nicholas. “Once they get started, it’s practically impossible to get them to stop.”
Hayley stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re just jealous, Nicholas, because me and Hetty have
talent
.”
“Let’s do that song from
Junior High Musical
!” said Hetty. “That’s our best one.”
“Compared to what?” Nicholas scoffed.
“Give them a chance,” said Nick.
The twins, who spent most Saturday mornings during the winter in a song-and-dance program for aspiring Broadway stars, belted out the pop ballad “He Passed Me a Note in the Hall!” like a couple of old pros, bringing Nick to his feet, where he demonstrated his earsplitting whistling ability.
“Bravo! Wow! I had no idea I was host to two
stars
.”
“We
are
both named after actresses, you know,” said a beaming Hayley. “Mom’s favorite when she was a little girl was Hayley Mills—she’s the one in that movie
The Parent Trap
. The
old
one, that is.”
“And Dad has a great-aunt Hetty, who was on Broadway a long time ago,” added Hetty. “I’ve never met her, but he showed us pictures of her. There’s even a drawing of her in this restaurant over by Times Square. She was kind of famous in the fifties and sixties, I think.”
“Well, I never met dear old Aunt Hetty, but I have to say I’m very impressed, and I think both she and Miss Mills would be proud. How about one more song, and then we’ll watch the movie?”
Nicholas groaned, burying his head under the couch pillows. “No-oooo!”
But it was too late; when it came to performing, the twins didn’t need to be asked twice.
* * *
As the sky to the west turned magenta, and then violet, they watched the last few die-hard fishermen pull-start their tired Evinrude outboards and head back down the lake toward the marina.
“Is it dark enough yet?” Nicholas asked.
Nick nodded and threaded the film into the projector. “Now, you have to remember, not only is the movie unfinished, it’s eight-millimeter film, so there’s no sound.”