Dark Waters

Brian looked at the notebook Phil held out to him. He shrugged. Ollie thought he looked more embarrassed than anything.

Coco started crying harder.

Brian definitely looked uncomfortable. “Come on, Phil, it might not be me.”

Mike Campbell said, elbowing Brian, “No, it’s totally you.” He eyed the notebook page again. “I guess it could be a dog that looks like you.”

“Give it back!” yelled Coco through her tears. She snatched again. Phil was waving the notebook right over her head, laughing. The sixth grade was laughing too, and now Ollie could see what they were all looking at. It was a picture—a good picture, Coco could really draw—of Brian and Coco’s faces nestled together with a heart around them.

Phil sat behind Coco in math class; he must have seen her drawing. Poor dumb Coco—why would you do that if you were sitting in front of nosy Philip Greenblatt?

“Come on, Brian,” Mike was saying. “Don’t you want to go out with Hot Cocoa here?”

Coco looked like she wanted to run away except that she really wanted her notebook back and Ollie had pretty much had enough of the whole situation, and so she bent down, got a moderate-sized rock, and let it fly.

Numbers and throwing things, those were the two talents of Olivia Adler. She’d quit the softball team last year too, but her aim was still on.

Her rock caught Brian squarely in the back of the head, dropped him thump onto the grass, and turned everyone’s attention from Coco Zintner to her.

Ideally, Ollie would have hit Phil, but Phil was facing her and Ollie didn’t want to put out an eye. Besides, she didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Brian. He knew perfectly well that he was the best at hockey, and half the girls giggled

about him, and he wasn’t coming to Coco’s rescue even though he’d more or less gotten her into this with his dumb friends and his dumb charming smile.

Ollie crossed her arms, thought in her mom’s voice, Well, in for a penny . . . , hefted another rock, and said, “Oops. My hand slipped.” The entire sixth grade was staring. The kids in front started backing away. A lot of them thought she had cracked since last year. “Um, seriously, guys,” she said. “Doesn’t anyone have anything better to do?”

Coco Zintner took advantage of Phil’s distraction to snatch her notebook back. She gave Ollie a long look, and darted away.

Ollie thought, I’m going to have detention for a year, and then Brian got up, spitting out dirt, and said, “That was a pretty good throw.”

The noise began. Ms. Mouton, that day’s lawn monitor, finally noticed the commotion. “Now,” she said, hurrying over. “Now, now.” Ms. Mouton was the librarian and she was not the best lawn monitor.

Ollie decided that she wasn’t going to say sorry or anything. Let them call her dad, let them shake their heads, let them give her detention tomorrow. At least tomorrow the weather would change and she would not be stuck in school on a nice day, answering questions.

Ollie jumped onto her bike and raced out of the school yard, wheels spitting gravel, before anyone could tell her to stop.

2

SHE PEDALED HARD past the hay bales in the roundabout on Main Street, turned onto Daisy Lane, and raced past the clapboard houses, where jack-o’-lanterns grinned on every front porch. She aimed her bike to knock down a rotting gray rubber hand groping up out of the earth in the Steiners’ yard, turned again at Johnson Hill, and climbed, panting, up the steep dirt road.

No one came after her. Well, why would they, Ollie thought. She was Off School Property.

Ollie let her bike coast down the other side of Johnson Hill. It was good to be alone in the warm sunshine. The river ran silver to her right, chattering over rocks. The fire-colored trees shook their leaves down around her. It wasn’t hot, exactly—but warm for October. Just cool enough for jeans, but the sun was warm when you tilted your face to it.

The swimming hole was Ollie’s favorite place. Not far from her house, it had a secret spot on a rock half-hidden by a waterfall. That spot was Ollie’s, especially on fall days. After mid-September, she was the only one who went there. People didn’t go to swimming holes once the weather turned chilly.

Other than her homework, Ollie was carrying Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, a broken-spined paperback that she’d dug out of her dad’s bookshelves. She mostly liked it. Peter Blood outsmarted everyone, which was a feature she liked in heroes, although she wished Peter were a girl, or the villain were a girl, or someone in the book besides his boat and his girlfriend (both named Arabella) were a girl. But at least the book had romance and high-seas adventures and other absolutely not Evansburg things. Ollie liked that. Reading it meant going to a new place where she wasn’t Olivia Adler at all.

Ollie braked her bike. The ground by the road was carpeted with scarlet leaves; sugar maples start losing their leaves before other trees. Ollie kept a running list in her head of sugar maples in Evansburg that didn’t belong to anyone. When the sap ran, she and her mom would—

Nope. No, they wouldn’t. They could buy maple syrup.

The road that ran beside the swimming hole looked like any other stretch of road. A person just driving by wouldn’t know the swimming hole was there. But, if you knew just where to look, you’d see a skinny dirt trail that went from the road to the water. Ollie walked her bike down the trail. The trees seemed to close in around her. Above was a white-railed bridge. Below, the creek paused in its trip down the mountain. It spread out, grew deep and quiet enough for swimming. There was a cliff for jumping and plenty of hiding places for one girl and her book. Ollie hurried. She was eager to go and read by the water and be alone.

The trees ended suddenly, and Ollie was standing on the bank of a cheerful brown swimming hole.

But, to her surprise, someone was already there.

A slender woman, wearing jeans and flannel, stood at the edge of the water.