If you lie under water long enough, if you are a human, you will become very calm. If the water is the shallows of a lake and the sun which burned too hot on the sandy shore now fills your closed eyelids with bursts of red and orange and even green and the motorboats pulling skiers pass by and send in their long wake soft waves that rock your small body — then that would be almost a perfect way to die. But that is not the aim. The aim is to float so carefully that passers-by might think you are a weed. Your arms are thin and pale-freckled, your legs are so white they glow in evening light. But under this water under this sun this skin is radiant and dappled and it is warm as the womb except for the occasional touch of surprising coolness from a stray lake current that has lost its way only to quickly fade within the heat of the shore water. The lap, lap, laps echoing out from the centre of the lake’s broad basin, from the shrieking waterskiers and the bluebottle-loud machines that spin them round and round, from the northeast breeze that gathers strength and worries the horsetail clouds, all push the human weed ever closer to where the water can barely cover its face. The eyes finally open squinty and unafraid and curious as a bird from its eggshell to see what world has occurred while it was otherwise occupied. What world has occurred? She aches with the not knowing. There is a voice. Oh. She almost wishes it were not there but if it weren’t then who would tell her when she had drowned? Who would tell her how many hours she had bounced so gently, nudging the shore, nibbled at by minnows? “Holy shitters, Mouse. One minute twenty-seven seconds.” She remembers then to breathe. The ache disappears.

This is the lake. The shore here is not far from the small cabin that their mother rents for the three of them: Mother, Bethany, Mouse. Bunk beds and a springy cot; curtains for inside walls; a pump in the kitchen sink that squeaks out rich, cold water; unattached lino with a broken part that skitters if they run too hard through the front and only door. Their very own smelly outhouse down a short (but endless at night-time) path of soft-packed dirt strewn with pine needles and booby-trapped by tree roots. This is the lake of the splintered dock, being the one for boats, further off and way past around the shore’s curve; old car tires halved and stretched like hides and nailed to its edge. Where the water is deeper and blacker near the end and old people might yell for Mouse and Bethany to steer clear and buzz off and it’s only for boats girls you go on now. Where if the sky is dark enough and the fish are only biting on the edges of the islands the dock is deserted and Mouse and Bethany stare into the water and discuss its depth and its flora and its fauna and its monsters and dare one another. Though they both know that Mouse, eleven months older than her sister who turned eleven just a few weeks ago, will be the one to take the dare when the time is right. Eleven years eleven months right now this summer, Mouse knows her body is the best it will ever be in her entire life. Strong and fearless. She knows she could swim to the bear island and back again but Bethany shrieks whenever Mouse mentions it and tells her of outboard motors that will mush her finer than their mother’s blender could and of what lives in the haunted deadhead logs that they both saw on their Brownie Camp canoe trip and of the old bear that swims faster than dolphins and will dunk her under until she is still and then carry her back to the island in his mouth to share with his motherless cubs. That’s only the beginning. Bethany could go on like this a long time whenever Mouse puts up with it until they are both shaking and sick to their stomachs from considering such an endless variety of gruesome death. But today is not dark and there is no thought of diving off the boat dock and swimming to islands, but so yellow hot the sand smells burnt and the horseflies are fewer but meaner and most of the dragonflies they count are blue and “big enough to take a ride on” according to Bethany. Today is so bright their shoulders and noses have already turned red and it isn’t even lunchtime. Today they are glad it is the middle of the week because otherwise their beach would be packed with annoying and strange people with their annoying and strange children. Today is the last day quite like this, for soon they will find a robber.