Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

It’s the best first date I’ve ever heard of.

Amelia smiled big and nodded.

“Yes?” James said, not sure he’d read her right.

How can I say no?

“How can I say no? Canoeing with a stranger? Yes. I’d love to.”

Both seventeen. Both afraid. But both saying yes.

James ran sweaty hands through his brown hair then wiped them again on his apron. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen her in his father’s store. It was the fourth.

“My name is Amelia,” she said, wondering if he already knew that, if he’d found her online.

“James,” he said and smiled, too. “And wow was I nervous to ask you out.”

“Really?” She asked it earnestly but knew he was. The fidgeting revealed that. She was anxious, too. “Why?”

James snorted a single awkward chuckle.

“You know… boy girl… people meet… I don’t know! It’s scary!”

Amelia laughed. It felt good to have a boy ask her out. God, it felt great. How long had it been since she’d gone on a date? And here, at the very onset of summer, it felt… natural.

A new day.

A new season.

And a yes to a stranger who’d asked her to go canoeing for a first date.

“So here’s the idea,” James said, checking over his shoulder for his dad. “My uncle has a place on a lake—”

“You said so, yep.”

“Yeah, but there’s a second lake, off the first one, that nobody uses. I mean… some people do, but there won’t be, like, a ton of speedboats. We can actually paddle right up to the shoreline, to the base of the mountains. And we’ll pretty much have them all to ourselves. The mountains.”

“Sounds great,” Amelia said, hooking her thumbs into the belt loops of her jean shorts. She arched her back beneath her yellow tank top. She worried she was augmenting her breasts too much. So she slumped. Then she worried that she was slumping.

James was even more self-conscious than she was. This being his father’s hardware store, he was sure Amelia would have second thoughts if she hung around too long. Is this his future? she might think. A girl said that to him once. Asked if this was his future. James didn’t want Amelia asking that. Didn’t want her walking away. If she was thinking anything like he was, she was already seeing a future together, a life rolling out ruglike from their first date. He saw them laughing on the first lake, kissing on the second, getting married in a canoe, Amelia giving birth in a canoe…

“Saturday then,” she said, and for a crazy second he thought she was saying they should get married on Saturday. His cheeks flushed. He became very aware of that. His cheeks. Then his whole body. He worried suddenly that he didn’t work out enough. Worried that she was going to leave here thinking about the paunch beneath his apron and not the mountains he’d tried to distract her with.

And yet he managed a smile. Even found some confidence in his voice.

“Yes, Saturday. Nine a.m. Wanna meet here?”

“Here?” She looked up and down the aisle of rubber hoses, hose clamps, and bolts. Maybe this was the moment, then, when she realized the scope of the situation, the job he had, his future.

“Unless you wanna meet somewhere else? I don’t care.”

“No no,” Amelia said, attempting to appear casual while worrying that she was being suddenly indecisive in front of him. “Here is fine. Here is great. Saturday. Nine.”

James stuck his hand out for her to shake, then realized how awkward that was.

Here is great.

He brought his hand back just as she reached hers out to shake it. Then she lowered hers, too.

“Great.”

“Great.”

They stared at each other, neither certain how to end their first conversation. A Muzak version of a love song from the 1980s played through the hardware store’s equally archaic speakers. Both felt the cheese.

“Bye,” James said, then scurried back down the aisle.

He nearly knocked a box of garden floodlights from the shelf. He didn’t look back at Amelia as he fixed it. Instead, he set out to find a customer, anybody who looked like they might need help. But when he was far enough away from her, he wished he had looked back.

He just wanted to see her face once more.

Saturday, he thought. You’ll see her again.

Outside, walking quick to her car, Amelia replayed James’s offer. She loved it.

It’s the best first date I’ve ever heard of.

And it didn’t hurt that James had kind eyes. A kind face and kind voice, too.

It wasn’t until she got behind the wheel of her used yellow Omni that she realized she hadn’t bought what she’d gone into the store to buy. A new hose.

She thought of going back in.

No, she decided. Maybe a date was what you came here for.

She started the car.

“Cool,” Amelia said. “It’s green.”

It was cool. A green canoe with brown trim. It looked like the kind of canoe you’d find in a history book, two Native Americans seated inside.

“It’s sturdy, too,” James’s uncle Bob said. His jean shorts and open flannel were straight out of 1995. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t tip.”

Amelia and James exchanged glances. They were already ankle-deep in the cold water.

They hardly knew each other at all.

“We won’t stand up in her,” James said. “I know better.”

“I do, too,” Amelia said.

“You’ve canoed before?” Uncle Bob asked her.

Amelia blushed.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve canoed, you know, but I’ve been in one. Yeah. Is that canoeing?”

Uncle Bob laughed and lifted the paddles from inside the boat.

“These are solid cherrywood. Don’t ask why. Trish wanted them that way. I don’t think she’s used them since we got them. But heck, you two get to use some pretty fancy paddles.”

Bob eyed the cooler James had already placed in the canoe.

“I don’t mind if you two have some beers out there, but be careful, all right?” He turned to Amelia. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Bob considered this. But not for very long.

“A couple of seventeen-year-olds,” he said. His eyes got glassy. Like he was remembering seventeen. “Awesome.”

When James got to the front of the canoe he was shin-deep. He stepped over the edge and sat down on the front bench. Amelia got into the back behind him.

“Thank you for this, Bob,” Amelia said.

“Absolutely.” He placed a sandaled foot on the back end of the canoe. “Now go be seventeen.”

He pushed them out into the water.

“This is the lake,” James said. Then he snapped his fingers, like trying to catch the words as they left him. Of course it was the lake.

“It’s gorgeous,” Amelia said.

James was paddling on the right side of the canoe. Amelia paddled on the left and steered.

Her eyes traveled to the rippling surface of the water.

It was a great blue, the kind of blue you painted.

Amelia felt like she was painting, the oar as her brush. As though all this beauty fanned out from the simple motions she and James made.

“What do you think is down there?’ she asked. Then wished she hadn’t. The question made it sound like she was scared. What’s in there? “I mean… what kind of fish?”