Opening the door to his cabin, Todd couldn't help but smile as soon as he saw Kirsty standing outside in the rain.
“Hey,” he started to say, “do you want to -”
“Go for a midnight swim in the lake?” she asked, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him out, before leaning past and pulling the door shut. “Sure thing, chicken wing. We've got a date, remember? I was waiting for you.”
“It's pouring with rain,” he pointed out.
“So?”
“So it's gonna be cold.”
“No it's not, and anyway, that's half the fun. We can warm each other up when we're done.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment, staring at him with excited eyes. “You promised, Todd. Come on, it'll be just the two of us. Where's your sense of adventure? I had you pegged as a guy with a romantic soul. Besides, we had fun last night but I think we could have
more
fun this time. You only live once, right?”
Smiling, he reached out to open the door. “Let me get my stuff.”
“You don't need anything,” she replied, grabbing his hand. “Just you and me.”
***
“Oh my God!” Kirsty shouted a little while later as she ran into the lake and threw herself underwater, emerging a few meters further along and turning back toward the shore. “It's freezing!”
“And that's supposed to make me
want
to come in?” Todd asked. He was standing at the edge of the water, his silhouette barely visible, with the moon having long since disappeared behind thick storm-clouds, and rain was falling all around.
“You'll get used to it,” she shouted back at him, turning and swimming a little further out before stopping to tread water for a moment. Staring straight ahead, she saw nothing but pitch darkness, and for a few seconds she allowed her mind to empty completely. All the worries that usually filled her head were gone, or at least much lighter, and as she felt the cold water against her skin, she realized that she'd be quite happy just staying in the lake forever.
Looking up, she felt rain falling onto her face.
“It's beautiful,” she whispered. “I wish the world was always like this.”
“Hey!” Todd shouted from the shore. “Why don't we skip the swim and just get warm?”
“You have to come in!” she shouted, turning back to him. “Don't be a chicken! Chickens aren't hot, Todd! Chickens are lame and unsexy!”
“But -”
“But nothing! Get your butt in here!”
She waited for a moment, and finally she smiled as she heard him making his way cautiously into the water.
“Not like that!” she shouted. “Just crash in, like I did!”
A couple of seconds later, she heard him starting to swim out to her. As she waited, she felt something long and thin brush against her foot, but she quickly kicked it away. Figuring that it must have just been a weed, she watched the darkness and finally she saw Todd swimming closer. When he reached her, they immediately began to kiss. Feeling him pull her even closer, she let the kiss linger for a moment before pulling back just a fraction.
“See?” she said with a smile.
“See what?” he asked, his face just about visible in the darkness. “I was right, it
is
cold.”
“But you're warming up, aren't you?”
“I can think of better ways to do that. Why don't -” He paused. “What the hell was that?”
“What was what?”
“Something hit my foot.” He looked around, as if he expected to be able to see something in the dark water. “I swear, something brushed against the sole of my left foot.”
“It was probably just a weed,” she told him. “I felt it earlier.”
“No way. It was moving. I felt it touch me, it had kind of a sharp tip.”
“Todd -”
“You thought you got bitten last time, remember?”
“And I was wrong!”
“What if you weren't?”
“You're imagining things,” she said with a sigh. “I don't think there's anything in this lake at all, except you and me and a whole load of water.” She waited for him to see things her way, but after a few seconds she realized he was completely preoccupied by what he
thought
had happened. “You're not scared, are you?” she asked finally. “Please don't be scared, Todd. That is so
not
an attractive quality.”
“Let's go back to the shore,” he told her. “We can have way more fun up there.”
“I want to swim.”
“But there -”
“You go,” she replied, turning and moving away using a gentle breast-stroke. “I like being out here. It's so peaceful.”
She kept going for a couple of minutes, making her way further and further out into the darkness, unable to see more than a few inches ahead. Having seen the lake before, she knew that it was a couple of miles across, but the placid water felt beautifully calm, and despite the light rain she was already starting to warm up. Stopping eventually, she turned and looked back, but there was no sign of Todd. With darkness all around, she felt almost as if she was treading water in a void.
She listened, but she couldn't hear Todd at all.
“Hey!” she shouted eventually, feeling a pang of disappointment. “Todd! Stop being lame and get over here!”
She waited, but all she heard was the patter of rain hitting the water all around her.
“Todd!” she yelled. “Come on, don't be a goddamn baby!”
Again she waited, but before she could open her mouth to call again, the rain intensified with surprising suddenness, and within a few seconds she found herself caught in a torrential downpour, as if the heavens had opened above her.
“Jesus,” she muttered, tucking her wet hair behind her ears. “Todd! Come on, get over here!”
Realizing that the sound of the rain might be drowning out her voice, she began to swim back, but after a moment she stopped and looked around, trying to work out which way she'd come. She turned again, but whichever way she looked, she saw only the same thing: darkness.
“Todd!” she shouted. “Where are you? I need to hear your voice so I know which way to -”
She let out a gasp as she felt something brush against her foot again, and this time it definitely felt like more than a weed. She looked down instinctively, but as she continued to tread water for a moment, she saw only darkness. A moment later, she felt her foot being touched again, and this time she could tell it was something long and thin that seemed almost to be trying to wrap itself around her ankle. She kicked it away before swimming a few meters in the direction she thought – or at least hoped – was the right way, but then she stopped again as the rain became even more intense.
“God damn it,” she muttered, looking around again. Glancing up at the sky, she hoped against hope that there might be a hint of moonlight soon, to help her find her way. Seeing only darkness, she sighed and decided that her best bet was just to pick a direction and get going, figuring that eventually she'd hit the shore and then she could work out her next move from there. “Fucking guys,” she whispered, starting to swim through the darkness.
***
“That does
not
sound good,” Laura whispered, looking up at the cabin's window as rain came driving down. “Is that lunatic idiot still down at the lake?”
Lizzie couldn't help but smile in the darkness. “She's living the dream.”
“Yeah,” Laura replied, “that's
my
dream, alright. Being in a large body of cold water, in total darkness, during a rainstorm. Oh, and with a brain-dead beef bimbo guy for company.” She shifted on her bunk. “Mind if I turn on a light?”
“Sure,” Lizzie muttered.
“Sorry,” Laura said once she'd switched on the light by her bed, “I woke up when you and Beth went to the toilet, and I haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Did you hear Kirsty creeping out of here, like she actually thought we couldn't hear her?”
“She was probably just worried we'd try to tag along and cramp her style,” Lizzie pointed out. “Which we totally would have done, I guess. What do you think she's doing right now?”
“I hate to think.”
Lizzie smiled, but a moment later she felt a sharp pain in her gut. Letting out a gasp, she reached over the side of her bed and dipped her hand into her backpack. After fumbling around for a moment, she pulled out a packet of pills and popped two out.
“Is it bad?” Laura asked.
She shook her head.
“Bad enough for pills, though,” Laura pointed out.
“I don't even know what good and bad feel like anymore,” Lizzie told her. “It's all merged into one.”
“Tell me about it. I don't know if I'm genuinely pain-free right now, or if I'm just so used to being in agony, my brain filters it out. Some days I get a little jabbing sensation in my leg, or my arm, or pretty much anywhere else in my body. Bone cancer is just the gift that keeps on giving.” She paused. “Do you ever wonder if you've got a really high pain threshold and you're being all tough and strong, or if you've actually got a really
low
pain threshold and you're just being a wimp? I wonder about that a lot.”
“The worst thing is all the needles,” Lizzie replied. “I swear to God, if I ever feel another of those damn things...”
“I'm with you there,” Laura muttered, before turning to look toward Beth's bed. “How about you? With that hairy cell leukemia you've got going on, are you...”
She paused.
“What the fuck?” she muttered, getting out of bed and heading across the room.
“What's wrong?” Lizzie asked.
“She's not here,” Laura pointed out, pulling the duvet off Beth's bed.
“She has to be,” Lizzie replied, looking around the cabin. “She came back from the toilet with me. We'd have heard her leaving again.”
“She's definitely gone,” Laura continued, turning to her. “Is she gonna make a habit of disappearing at inopportune moments? Where the hell would she go at this time of night, in a goddamn storm?”
Looking over at the window, Lizzie watched as beads of rain ran down the glass.
“There's nowhere
to
go,” she pointed out, “not at this time of night. Not unless...” She paused, before turning back to Laura. “Not unless she went to the lake with Kirsty and that guy.”
***
Feeling the muddy lake-bed beneath her feet, Kirsty scrambled out of the water and dropped to her hands and knees. Having swum for almost half an hour, she'd finally reached land, although torrential rain was still driving down, turning the soil to mud. She took a moment to catch her breath, before turning to look back out at the darkness.
“Todd!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “Todd, where the hell are you?” She paused, hoping she might be able to hear him in the distance, before sighing and then shouting again: “Todd!!!”
***
“Bloody idiot,” Todd muttered, sheltering under a tree that afforded him at least a degree of protection from the torrential rain. He took a drag on his cigarette, listening to the sound of raindrops crashing into the leaves above. “If she thinks this is funny...”
He'd been waiting for a while now, hoping that Kirsty would come back out of the lake at any moment, but he was starting to worry that something might have happened to her. At the same time, he already felt that she could be a bitch, and he was considering the possibility that in order to teach him a lesson, she might have quietly crept back out of the water, grabbed her clothes, and headed back to camp.
“Let's go to the lake,” he muttered under his breath. “It'll be fun. We can keep each other warm. Like hell we can. Worst night of my -”
Hearing a noise nearby, he turned and looked back through the forest. He was certain he'd heard something moving through the undergrowth, although the constant rain was enough to give him doubts. Barely able to see more than a few feet away, he squinted as he scoured the darkness, and finally he realized he could just about make out a human figure heading toward him.
“Kirsty?” he called out. “Is that -”
Before he could finish, he saw that the figure was one of Kirsty's cabin-mates, one of the girls he remembered from the previous night. He'd barely noticed the others at the time.
“Hey,” he continued, unable to hide his frustration. “What's up?”
Beth picked her way through the undergrowth until she reached him, at which point she stopped and simply stared into his eyes. She was soaking wet, with her hair matted and her clothes clinging to her body, but she didn't seem to care.
“Smoke?” Todd asked, holding the cigarette out to her.
No reply.
“Before you ask,” he continued, taking another drag before turning to look back out at the dark lake, “no, I
don't
know where she is. I'm pretty sure she's okay, though. She's just messing with me because I didn't want to spend too long out there freezing my ass off.” He sighed, before turning back to Beth. “Sorry, what did you say you're doing out here again?”