There’s Something in the Water Honorable Mention
The world came into focus as slowly as a developing photo under the blazing summer sun and Lucy realized she had fallen asleep on her towel, vibrant colors spread over gray sand beside a lake that was little more than a big black ink blot in the earth. She sat up quickly, hugging her skinned knees to her chest. She didn’t know how long the sun had been beating down upon her back, the smell of sunblock was strong around her, but it wasn’t emanating from her. It was coming from her half siblings, cousins, all the many relations of her current step mother. White skin turned red all around her. Her father didn’t know that black skin needs sunblock too, and so she was left to cook. All the same to her, sunblock stinks and she didn’t like the texture.
Horseflies everywhere, itchy sand in her bathing suit. The lake is gross, she decided. Worse still because she gets dragged along to sit on her towel and watch everyone else. The adults lounging around, half-asleep from too many beers, the kids playing and swimming and splashing together.
Lucy always sits alone.
“Hey.”
Someone addressing her was so unexpected it made her jump, and she looked up to see one of her cousins (second cousins? Third cousins once removed?) Staring vacantly down at her.
“We’re taking the raft out, do you wanna come with us?”
He was a lanky kid, too skinny for his swim trunks which he kept having to pull up, freckles splattered over his sunburnt skin and his blonde hair wet and flopping in front of his eyes.
“Yeah, sure.” Lucy said.
She would have done anything. She had no particular desire to go out on the lake in a little yellow raft full of kids she didn’t know, but she was thrilled to have been invited to anything.
There were five of them, including Lucy. Ryan was the kid who had invited her, TJ, Mille and Buck had waited in the raft. She learned their names quickly and just as quickly forgot them as they paddled the little vessel out onto the lake. They chatted to her as if they had been friends all this time, as if they always did this. As if this wasn’t the first time she had ever met any of them, despite the fact that they were related now (though this mattered very little, next summer she would have a new step mother and new cousins to try to remember.) It wasn’t until they were quite far out that Lucy noticed something strange. When she looked back at the shore, the adults were all standing there watching them. No one was languidly splayed out on a towel or in a lawn chair anymore, no one was talking. All of them, including her father.
“Are we in trouble?” She asked Ryan, though he ignored her as he stared down into the water, looking at his own reflection it would seem. Nothing else was visible.
“Jump in and see how deep it is.” He said.
“What?”
“You’re the tallest.” Mille chimed in,
“Yeah, jump in and see if you can touch the bottom!” Buck chittered, excitedly wringing his hands.
Lucy looked back at the shore, at the adults standing there, unmoving, unblinking. At the group of kids looking at her expectantly. Her new friends. For a moment she thought they might push her in if she kept hesitating.
“Okay.”
The water wasn’t as cold as she had expected, or perhaps she hadn’t even noticed the temperature. She had jumped into a net, her fingers and toes catching in it. She tried to wrench herself free, to resurface, but the more she struggled against it the more entangled her limbs became.
The moment she had disappeared beneath the water’s surface the adults had sat back down, cracked a beer, resumed napping, and the kids began to steer the raft back to the shore.
Lucy kept struggling until she felt the net being pulled downwards, further and further underwater until inexplicably surfacing. It should have been the bottom of the lake, but she took in a big gasp of air as she was thrust out of the water, reeled in by a fisherman on the other side.
Published 8/7/26