Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

“Be careful, Henry,” one of the boys mocked.

Henry bellyflopped into the lake, the cold sending prickles over his flesh and knocking out his breath. He thrashed his arms and kicked his legs, scraping his feet on the rocks in the shallow water and gasping as waves hit him in the face. He wanted to turn back to the shore’s safety, but after a minute he realized his feet could still touch the lake’s bottom and he could bob along easily, only pretending to swim like the other boys. If he found himself too far, losing the feeling of sand between his toes, he simply paddled himself around and went back. The water was no longer cold but felt pleasant and Henry began to feel as calm as the pure, fluffy clouds drifting overhead. Shouts and laughter bounced over the water as he buoyed himself along. “Ello,” he said in his cheerful British accent to any boy who crossed his path. “Ello, ello.” The water was clear, his pale toes wiggling like creatures among the glittering rocks on the lake bottom. The boys splashed one another, sending droplets through the air that hit Henry’s smiling face. He drifted over to the dock, where Ben and some friends were doing cannonballs into the water, and he floated underneath, weightless between the cobwebbed pillars. Through the slats he watched the boys’ bare feet slap along the dock; occasionally he poked a finger up and tickled their soles. “Quit it, Henry,” Ben shouted from somewhere above. His head appeared, hanging over the end of the dock, “I see you.”

As Henry drifted back out into the open, someone jumping from the dock landed on him, sending him under. Henry swallowed a large gulp of lake water, panic springing through his body as he flailed to get to the surface. A foot hit him in the side of the head. He reached out to grasp onto something and felt a body in front of him. His fingers clutched at the loose cloth of a pair of swimming trunks that floated around someone’s skinny legs. Henry yanked on them to pull himself out of the water, but the shorts came down, so he grabbed at one of the arms pushing at him and brought himself to the surface, gasping and rubbing the water out of his eyes.

“You pulled my shorts off,” the boy screamed, shoving Henry back under the water.

When Henry surfaced again, all the boys were screaming and swimming away from him farther out into the lake or climbing up onto the dock. The boy scowled at Henry as he climbed up the ladder, hanging onto the back of his swimming trunks as though Henry might try to pull them off again. Henry sunk down until only his nose was above the surface. “Sorry,” he said, but the word was trapped underwater. He could hear the syllables lose themselves in the bubbles. His father glided through the water and scooped him up over his shoulder, the way he used to when Henry was little, carrying him back to the picnic tables. As they walked across the sand, Henry heard someone say pantywaist . At first he thought the word came from his father, but then he realized it was only his mind playing tricks on him. By the time he was back sitting at the picnic tables, the boys were all standing in a line again at the end of the dock, taking turns doing cannonballs.

IN THE KITCHEN, THE moonlight came slanting through the window and made the countertops glow. Henry drank a glass of water, sitting cross-legged on the table in case the spider came alive and escaped its jar, but then he remembered the spider was in Victoria. On the fridge, the white page burned around the lines of Ben’s drawing. Henry stared at the picture of the spider until his eyes started to wobble and its legs started to move.

Earlier that evening, Henry and Ben were brushing their teeth together at the sink when Ben spat and turned to Henry and said, “All my friends think you’re weird.” Henry shrugged and then, with his mouth still rabid with foamy toothpaste, bit Ben on the shoulder.

Eli cried again that night and kept Henry awake. Henry wanted to be in bed with his parents, but he couldn’t ask because their father was angry at him for biting Ben. Instead he hung over the top bunk, watching Ben sleep and thinking about the cave. He thought about how it would be a good place for hiding, how if it was sealed properly nothing could get in.

THE NEXT DAY WAS Sunday, so Henry and Ben headed down to the bunkhouses. They collected bottles at the mill every Sunday and Thursday, storing them in crates under the cabins. Every two weeks they loaded the empties onto the Uchuck that arrived in Tahsis to drop off produce and other supplies. They would receive a cheque made out to their father that he would cash and divide between the two of them. On a good week they made four dollars each. Usually it took them the whole afternoon, because they liked to peer in the windows at the kitchenettes and the beds with untucked blankets. If they were lucky there were dirty clothes on the floor or food left on the tables — egg shells or half-eaten crusts sticky with jam — that hinted to what kind of person might live there. When they had time, they looked in the garbage bins for anything interesting, but today Ben moved quickly, the crate of bottles rattling as he jogged from porch to porch.

“Why are you going so fast?” Henry said.

“I have target practice.”

“With who?”

“The birds.”

At the next cabin something made Ben slow his pace. He bent down and pulled a magazine from the garbage can and tucked it into the back of his pants. Henry followed him around the back of the bunkhouse and they sat side by side on a log. Ben pulled out the magazine. “Wanna see something?”

“Yeah,” Henry said.

Ben turned the colour pages slowly, each one with a naked woman, sometimes several naked women crouching or snarling like animals.

“Which one do you like best?” Ben said.

“I don’t know.”

“You have to pick one.” Ben handed him the magazine.

Henry flipped through the pages until they were a pink blur. “I can’t.”

Ben rolled his eyes and grabbed the magazine out of Henry’s hands.

“What are you going to do with it?” Henry said.

“Keep it.” Ben rolled it up and stuck it back in his pants. “You don’t even know what it is, so what do you care.”

“I know what it is.”

When they got back to the house, Ben ran up the steps and came back out with his BB gun. “Can I come?” Henry called after him. Ben strutted right by Henry and headed for the trees. Henry walked back into the house, letting the screen door slam, and went to the washroom to look at himself in the mirror. His eye was getting better, the edges of the bruise yellowing like an overripe pear. He walked around the house listlessly for half an hour then headed outside.

The forest was alive with noise, sun streaming straight down through the arms of the trees and heating the forest floor, making the air smell green and lush. The birds talked to Henry in such loud chatter, he felt confused about the direction of the cave and kept stopping to wonder if Ben was behind a tree up ahead, aiming the BB gun in his direction.

Henry had a can of gasoline from the garage and under Ben’s bed he had found the matches they’d stolen. The creek bubbled around the stones as Henry crossed to the other side. He knew the gasoline had to be poured in the middle of the cave for the fire to get big enough. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled slowly through the tunnel so he wouldn’t drop the can. His nose filled with the mossy smell of the rock as the cave opened around him and the temperature dropped. He held his breath and kept his head lowered, not wanting to glimpse the hundreds of sleeping bodies above him. Everything was still — the only sound came from the gentle slosh of gasoline in the metal can and soon that stopped too. All the urgency drained from his body and his muscles went slack the way they did when he stood at the edge of a lake. He sat cross-legged in the centre of the cave and after a while he felt peaceful. The spiders minded their own business and nothing bothered him. His arms and legs took a sharp-angled shape and the hair along the nape of his neck stood up in rows of bristles. His fingertips tingled with imaginary gossamer threads.