Edward Lee: Monster Lake

“Because you’re so close to the lake, right?” Patricia asked.

Terri’s Mom and Uncle Chuck traded strange glances at Patricia’s remark. And this just reminded Terri how strange overall her mother and Uncle Chuck had been acting lately.

“Well, yes,” Terri’s mother eventually answered Patricia.

But Uncle Chuck looked a little disturbed. “Uh, girls? You weren’t at the lake today, were you?”

“No, Uncle Chuck,” Terri answered. “You said kids shouldn’t go there unless an adult’s around.”

“That’s right, hon. Because lakes can be dangerous. You could fall in, plus, you know, it could be polluted.”

Terri’s brow rose. She’d seen the lake lots of times, and it didn’t look polluted to her. The water was crystal clear, and she’d never seen any garbage or anything floating in it. This seemed like a strange thing for Uncle Chuck to say.

“But I told Patricia that you or Mom would take us down there and show it to us sometime,” Terri said, remembering her promise.

And again—

—Terri’s mother and Uncle Chuck traded weird glances.

“Well, sure, honey,” her Mom said. “We can do that sometime.”

“But not soon,” Uncle Chuck said. “It’s too hot to go down there during the summer. There’re lots of bugs and mosquitoes and things. And snakes.”

“Snakes!” Patricia exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a real snake.”

But Terri raised her brow again.

I’ve never seen any snakes at the lake, she realized.

It almost sounded like Uncle Chuck was making it up, so Terri and Patricia wouldn’t be tempted to go down there on their own…

Hmmm, she wondered. Then she said, “Are we going to get pizza tonight, Mom? Like you said we could this morning?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” her mother apologized. “I hope you’re not too disappointed, but I’ve got so much work to do tonight, I don’t have time, and neither does Uncle Chuck.”

I knew it , Terri thought. Same old story.

“We’ll get pizza soon, though,” Uncle Chuck said.

“Maybe Pamela would like to stay for dinner,” Terri’s mother suggested.

“It’s not Pamela, Mom. It’s Patricia,” Terri corrected.

“Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry, Patricia. Anyway, why don’t you cook some TV dinners for yourselves in the microwave?”

“But aren’t you and Uncle Chuck going to eat?” Terri asked.

“Later,” Uncle Chuck said, and held up the briefcases. “Right now your mother and I have to get to work.”

“Okay,” Terri glumly replied.

“Nice meeting you, Patricia,” Uncle Chuck said as he and Terri’s Mom headed for the back door.

“Bye,” Patricia said.

Then the back sliding glass door slid closed, and they were gone.

Patricia squinted after them.

“You want to stay for dinner?” Terri asked, but it was more for distraction than anything else. She could guess what Patricia was thinking. “We’ve got all kinds of good TV dinners.” She opened the freezer and showed her. “Fish fillets, enchiladas, sliced turkey and gravy. They’re pretty good.”

“Well, okay. But I’ve got to call my parents first.”

“The phone’s right over there,” Terri said, pointing to the end of the kitchen counter.

Patricia dialed her number, then asked if she could stay. Then she hung up, looking weird.

“Did they say you can stay for dinner?” Terri asked.

“Uh, yeah, I can stay.”

“Then why do you look so weird all of a sudden?”

“Well…” She glanced out the back sliding-glass door.

“What is it?”

Patricia turned back to her.

“Your Uncle Chuck said that he and your mother have lots of work to do?”

“Yeah,” Terri said. “They have lots of work almost every night, like I said.”

“You mean like office work, right? From the zoology lab where your Mom works?”

“Yeah.”

Patricia glanced back out the door again. “If they’ve got office work to do, how come they’re walking across the back yard with their briefcases? Toward the lake?”

««—»»

The microwave beeped, and Terri, wearing pot-holder mittens shaped like owls, took the food out. “Well,” she said, to answer Patricia’s question, “remember that trail I showed you, that leads to the lake?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s also a little boathouse down there, right on the water—”

“Wow!” Patricia said excitedly. “You have a boat too?”

“It’s just a little motorboat, we’ve never even used it because it needs to be fixed. But my Dad turned the boathouse into an office.”

“An office? Why?”

Terri shrugged as they sat down at the kitchen table to eat their TV dinners. “I told you, he and my Mom are zoologists, and I guess they wanted their office to be close to the lake so they could study the animals there.”

“Like the frogs and toads and things?”

“Yeah.”

“And the snakes!”

Terri paused. “Well, I don’t think there really are any snakes in the lake.”

“But your Uncle Chuck said there were.”

“Yeah, but he may have been making that up so you and I wouldn’t be tempted to go down there by ourselves. I mean, I’ve never seen any snakes around here… Anyway, that’s why my Mom and Uncle Chuck were going out back. They do their work in the boathouse.”

Patricia turned her fork idly in her cheese enchiladas. “But isn’t that—you know—kind of weird?”

“What?”

“Turning a boathouse into an office?”

Terri thought about that. Sure, her mother was a zoologist—just like her father had been—and the boathouse was close to the lake. But the work she brought home every night came from the laboratory she worked at just outside of town. What could it have to do with the lake?

Yeah, she finally had to admit to herself. I guess it is kind of weird. And that thought only reminded her more of how weird her mother had been acting over the past few months, and Uncle Chuck too.

“And another thing,” Patricia went on. “Did you see the weird way your mother and your Uncle Chuck looked at each other whenever you mentioned the lake?”

Terri had noticed that too, and she couldn’t deny it. “You’re right,” she agreed. “It was almost like they were… hiding something from us.”

“That’s right,” Patricia agreed. “And it must have something to do with the lake or the boathouse.”

Terri couldn’t imagine what it could be. What could they possibly want to hide? she wondered.

Then Patricia asked, “Have you ever been in the boathouse?”

“Yeah, a few times, back when my father lived here.”

“What was it like?”

“Well, like I told you, my father turned it into an office, or I should say he turned the front room into an office.”

“You mean there are other rooms?”

“A few,” Terri recalled.

“What was in them?”

Terri hesitated. “I don’t really know,” she confessed. “Mom and Dad told me to never go into any of the other rooms.”

Patricia held her hands out. “See, there’s another weird thing. Whatever it is they’re hiding, it must be in those other rooms.”

Terri hadn’t considered that. But she had to admit: Patricia was right. There did seem to be an awful lot of weird things going on lately.

Patricia leaned over the kitchen table, lowered her voice. “Don’t you want to know what it is? What they’re hiding?”

“Well, yes,” Terri agreed.

“Well, then…”

“Well, then what? ” But this was a phony question on Terri’s part, because she already had a pretty good idea what Patricia was going to suggest.