Kimberly Derting - The Body Finder

Violet sat up all the way. “How long was I sleeping?”

Jay shook his head. “Not long, less than an hour probably. I wanted to see if you want to go out on one of the Wave Runners with me.”

“What about your girlfriends?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Violet was embarrassed for sounding so petty. She tried to make it seem like she was only kidding as she added, “I thought maybe Savannah’s friends were all waiting for their turn down on the dock.”

He just laughed. “No, Savannah was the only one. She wanted me to show her how to drive one.” Violet was glad that he hadn’t seemed to notice the irritation in her voice before.

“So, did you?”

He shrugged. “I tried to, but I don’t think she was really paying attention. I think she just wanted someone to give her a ride.”

Not someone, Violet thought to herself. You . She wanted you to give her a ride. Sometimes she wondered if he was really that dense, or if he just wasn’t interested in returning the girls’ attention. But when she saw the clueless look on his face, she realized that it had to be the former. He was such a guy .

She looked around her then and realized that she’d been abandoned by her friends while she’d been sleeping. “Where’d Chelsea go?” she asked.

“I saw her taking off on one of the Wave Runners with Jules. So, you wanna go with me?”

Violet was reluctant to take off her shorts in front of everyone and expose her knees like a clumsy little girl, but she did want to go out on the Wave Runner with him. She weighed the option of staying where she was, covered up from her hips to her knees in the baggy gym shorts, or cutting a vicious path through the water sitting atop the powerful watercraft in search of a wave to jump.

Her daredevil side won out. “I’ll go, but I get to drive,” she insisted with a grin.

Jay didn’t argue. He never did; he was too easygoing to care whether he was the driver or the passenger.

On the dock, Violet self-consciously dropped the shorts, baring her knees and the swimsuit beneath. She looked around to see if anyone was staring, but no one seemed to notice. She plucked up a life vest and buckled herself into it before straddling the Wave Runner’s seat. Jay followed right behind and casually gripped her hips as she started the engine and attached the coiled key fob to her life jacket, a safety measure that would cut the engine if the driver was thrown from the vehicle.

She leaned forward and began easing the watercraft through the cove, watching cautiously for other vehicles or for people who might have wandered too far from the water’s edge. But once she reached the end of the cove and passed the buoys that signaled the end of the five-mile-an-hour speed limit, she grabbed the handle that controlled the gas and she pulled it, gunning the Wave Runner into high speed. She leaned farther forward and let the wind cool her face. For the first time in weeks, since well before school had started, she was no longer aware of Jay’s proximity to her. He became any other passenger on the back of the vehicle as she got lost in the punching accelerations over the short, choppy waves.

They bounced across the top of the water, sometimes jumping high, reveling in those moments when they caught a larger wave and felt the Wave Runner surge beneath them as it hopped above the water, catching air.

Violet felt so free. She could hear Jay laughing from behind her as he held on tight. She spun the craft first sharply to the right and then quickly to the left. He knew she was trying to buck him free, testing him to see how long he could hold on to her before being tossed into the frigid water of the lake as she maneuvered the miniature speedboat back and forth. But he was stronger now than ever before, and his reflexes were sharper. He seemed to know which way she was going to go even before she did.

After a while, Violet slowed down near a floating dock in the lake and parked the Wave Runner.

“Do you want to jump in?” she asked as she pulled the key from the ignition without waiting for an answer, making it more of a statement than a question.

Jay stood up and hopped from the Wave Runner onto the dock. Violet joined him and instead of diving into the water, she sat down and dangled her feet in.

“It’s quiet here,” he commented absently. He sat down beside her.

“Mm-hmm,” she sighed, kicking her feet and splashing up water.

“How are your knees?” He reached out and brushed his fingers across the damp bandages.

Violet shrugged. “They’re fine…” and then she added with mock adoration, “…thanks to you, of course.” And to show her gratitude, she kicked water in his direction.

He nudged her with his shoulder but didn’t say anything. They stayed like that for a while, enjoying the silence of being alone and enjoying each other’s presence. It was easy…and comfortable.

Violet sighed when it started to feel like too much time had passed. “We should get back. I’m sure someone else is waiting for a turn.”

Jay stood up, silently agreeing with her, and Violet reluctantly followed. Without asking if he wanted to trade places, Violet again got on in front.

They took their time getting back, meandering lazily along the shoreline and staying out of the way of faster vehicles. It took Violet longer than it should have to realize that the path she was taking wasn’t random at all, that she was being pulled…drawn.

Something was calling to her.

Something dead .

She didn’t say anything to Jay, mostly because there wasn’t anything to say yet. Instead she concentrated on where it might be coming from. It was strong, whatever it was, stronger than she would have expected from something out here in the water, and she wondered if that meant it had died recently. Today, even.

She followed the pulling sensation, the tugging that had propelled her almost without her awareness, as she scanned the waters for some sign, some sensory input to guide her. She didn’t taste or smell anything out of place. There were no unexplained sounds coming from any direction…at least not that she could hear over the engine of the Wave Runner.

She thought she saw something in the water ahead of her. It looked like a large oil slick licking across the top of the lake’s surface. It was near a thick stand of grasses and reeds that sprang up from the waters near the shore. It wasn’t completely out of place there, a boat could have leaked the substance into the water, but she eased forward anyway, wanting to get a better look.

Jay didn’t ask her what she was doing; he was just happy to be along for the ride, as usual.

But the closer Violet got to it, the less it looked like oil. It had the same greasy sheen as oil, casting a rainbow of hues across the plane of the water as it was rippled gently by the waves. But there was something different about it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Until she was practically right on top of it.

She was careful not to catch the weedy plant life in the Wave Runner’s engine, and she leaned over the edge as she slowed down to make sure she didn’t take the craft into the too-shallow water.

She needed to see what was there.

“What are you looking at?” Jay finally asked with only a little interest. He was used to Violet’s wandering ways.

“I don’t know” was all she answered, too caught up in her curiosity to attempt any more of an explanation than that.

Violet stood up on the watercraft as she came to a stop. Multihued light seemed to be radiating up from beneath the water, centered among the reeds, and then diffusing outward as it reached the surface. Violet had never seen anything like it, and she knew that the spectrum of light was defying its very nature by behaving in that way.