Edward Lee - Monster Lake

Terri continued to flip through the notepad. Still more of the same words, particularly reagent and transmission, but with different numbers after the word Lot. Another thing she noticed was that each line had a date after it, and the further she went in the notepad, the older the dates got.

And this sparked still more of her curiosity.

How far back do the dates go? she wondered.

So she flipped back to the very first page of the notepad, and read the first line.

The date was six months ago.

But that wasn’t all that Terri noticed. She squinted her eyes, tilted her head.

Something seemed…strange.

She looked harder at that very first handwritten line.

She stared at it.

And then she realized what was strange.

The line wasn’t written in her mother’s handwriting, and it wasn’t written in Uncle Chuck’s either.

All at once, Terri felt dizzy and confused.

That’s…my father’s handwriting! she realized.

««—»»

And just when she realized that, Terri heard the familiar sound coming from outside, at the front of the house:

thunk-thunk!

Two car doors being closed, which meant that her mother and Uncle Chuck had just pulled up in the driveway, and had already gotten out of the car!

Terri moved so fast her hands looked like blurs. She put the notepad and then the textbooks back in the briefcase, closed the briefcase lid, and slid it back under the bed. When she dashed for Uncle Chuck’s bedroom door—

On, no! I’m going to get caught again!

—she heard the front door opening.

Terri, frantic now, froze in the hallway. If she closed her uncle’s door too fast, they’d hear it, but if she didn’t close it fast enough, and get back to her own room, she’d get caught red-handed.

Hurry! she screamed at herself.

Gritting her teeth, she pulled the door shut, then dashed for her own bedroom but not before she could see outside light in the foyer, which meant that her mother and Uncle Chuck were already in the house!

creak-creak! she heard next.

The old wood tiles in the foyer.

Her mother and Uncle Chuck were about to enter the hallway!

Terri managed to edge into her own room just as she saw the two shadows step into the hall.

Then, very softly, she clicked her door shut.

She could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. But her mother and Uncle Chuck weren’t saying anything, and that bothered her. Had they seen Terri duck into her room at the last second?

She leaned against the wall in her bedroom, holding her breath, keeping her fingers crossed.

The footsteps got closer.

And closer.

Then they faded away as Terri’s mother and uncle passed her door and went into the kitchen.

Thank goodness! Terri thought.

They hadn’t seen her after all. She’d made it back to her room at the very last second.

Terri let out the long, deep breath she’d been holding in her chest. For a moment there, she thought she might explode! When she calmed down from her scare, she sat back down on her bed, thinking.

The last thing she’d discovered in Uncle Chuck’s room mystified her. Her father’s handwriting in the notepad. What could it mean? It was true, both her father and mother were zoologists—before the divorce they’d both even worked in the same laboratory, where her mother still worked now—and that meant that they were working on the same research projects, which Terri understood. But what bothered her was just the idea that not only her mother and Uncle Chuck but also her father too had been involved in the strange things going on around here; and Terri didn’t want to think that her father had something to do with the giant toads and salamanders.

But mainly it just made her sad. Seeing the handwriting only reminded her more of her father, and the divorce, and the idea that she hadn’t seen him in months and probably never would again, because he’d moved away.

Don’t think about it, Terri ordered herself. Thinking about it only made it hurt worse.

And, besides, she had plenty of other things to think about now, didn’t she?

She slipped out the piece of paper from her shorts, opened it up, and looked at it.

Now I’ll never forget those words from the boathouse, she thought, because I’ve got them right here in my hand…

Yes, she did. She’d written them all down.

And now that I have them, she realized, I can look them up in the dictionary and finally find out what they mean.

And next she went to do just that, sliding open her top desk drawer and rooting around. She knew she had a dictionary around here somewhere. Or then…

Maybe it was out in the den, where she kept her books during the school year.

Here it is, she thought, relieved. It wasn’t the dictionary she usually used, but at least it was a dictionary, a slim paperback with a brick-red cover.

She looked up the first word: reagent.

Oh no! she thought.

The word wasn’t there! Then she busily looked up the other words, mutation, transmission, genetic, carnivore, and—

None of them were in the dictionary!

««—»»

Just another disappointment, Terri thought, brooding now at her desk. And after all the trouble she’d gone to in order to get the words—sneaking into Uncle Chuck’s room, finding the briefcase.

All for nothing, she thought drearily.

Or—

Maybe not.

One thing she hadn’t considered. She looked then and saw that the dictionary she’d found in her desk was old, not the one she usually used. Then—

Oh, man!

She looked more closely at the dictionary and saw just how old it actually was. Right there on the cover, it said Elementary Dictionary, Preschool-Age 8.

It was a children’s dictionary, left over from way back when she was in the first and second grade.

Of course!

This was a dictionary for kids, not adults. And those words she’d written down were definitely adult words. So—

I’ll just have to get a bigger dictionary, she concluded. A dictionary for grownups.

She knew there must be one in the house somewhere. The only problem was finding it. Or maybe she could go to the town library—surely they’d have all kinds of dictionaries there.

But who knows when I’ll be able to do that? she glumly reminded herself. I’m probably grounded…

Then she looked up, at the sound of voices.

She walked to her door. Yes, she could hear her mother and Uncle Chuck talking in the kitchen, but their voices were muffled. Terri pressed her ear against the door and tried to listen.

Darn it!

The voices still couldn’t be heard well enough to understand.

Next, she put her hand on the doorknob and very carefully turned it, so not to make any noise. Then she pulled the door open to a narrow crack.

And now she could hear…

“Well, what I didn’t tell you yet,” Uncle Chuck was saying to her mother, “was that Terri got into the boathouse this morning. You must’ve forgotten to lock the door last night when you came up.”

“How could I have been so forgetful?” her mother scolded herself. “What did she see?”

“Not much, at least I don’t think so. I caught her in the office. The only thing she could’ve seen was the desk, and some preliminary notes.”

“But what about the backroom?” her mother fretted next. “She didn’t get into the backroom, did she?”

“I don’t see how she could have,” Uncle Chuck replied. “The door was locked.”