Dark Waters

“He’s not okay,” said Phil, in a strange, harsh voice.

Coco spoke over her mom’s shoulder to Brian. “What was it?”

“It looked—it looked like the water snake that we caught,” said Brian. “Except it was bigger. It was a lot bigger.”

“Like baby T. rex and momma T. rex?” said Coco. “In Jurassic Park?”

“Um, maybe,” said Brian. His thoughts felt chaotic and also too slow, like he was thinking through mud. It had been so big. “Something like that.”

“Kids,” said Ms. Zintner. “I appreciate that you are frightened and that this is an emergency, but I am sure there is a better explanation for all this than dinosaurs. Now, what we all need to do is—”

She was interrupted by a huge crash from below. The boat shook. And then another crash. There was the shriek of ripping metal. The boat rocked, sloshing them all with freezing water.

Phil’s eyes went wide. His nose was running again. “It’s coming!” he yelled. “It’s trying to get in!”

Even Ms. Zintner looked uneasy now.

“What—” said Mr. Adler weakly. His face had gone a nasty green-gray color. “What’s that noise?”

“Nothing good,” muttered Coco.

The boat heaved. Metal groaned.

Brian didn’t know what to do. Except . . . his eyes went to the island, less than a hundred yards away. Did they have a choice? He didn’t think so. “We need to get off this boat,” he said. “Phil—do you know where the lifeboats are?”

Phil pointed. Brian saw them, tucked neatly under the boat’s railing: bright yellow, two of them, inflatable.

Coco said, “Don’t you think getting into a rubber lifeboat might be kind of a bad idea if there’s a monster in the lake?”

Brian was thinking fast now, his head clearing. “We’re going to be in the lake pretty soon ourselves if we don’t do something,” he said. A huge thump came from below, as though to punctuate his words. “We just—we just need to make the—the snake think we’re still on the boat. Give ourselves time to paddle to the island.”

“How do we do that?” demanded Phil, sounding as breathless and frightened as Brian felt. “We don’t know how it thinks! If it thinks!”

Brian wasn’t sure either. Coco tugged her lower lip. Coco’s mom had gone back to shouting into the silent radio. The Cassandra was so low in the water . . .

“Two lifeboats on the Cassandra?” Coco asked Phil suddenly.

Phil eyed her. “Yeah, but so? We don’t need two. We’ll all fit on one.” Under their feet the boat tilted, and they all staggered. Freezing water sloshed over their shoes. Behind him, Brian could just hear Ollie talking to her dad, quietly and steadily, not paying attention to what they were doing, trusting that he and Coco could figure something out . . .

“We can launch a decoy boat,” said Coco. “Like in chess. A feint. Launch one boat, empty, on the side away from the island. Put the boat in the water with a lot of splashing. At the same time launch us in the other boat, very quietly, on that side.” She pointed again.

The rock-crowned green island, the one that didn’t have a name, stood quiet, with little wavelets just breaking around the boulders at its foot. “To the island,” added Coco.

“And what if the monster doesn’t take the decoy?” said Phil.

“Do you have a better idea?” Coco asked.

Phil’s shoulders slumped. “No.”

The deck was tilting noticeably; they all had to hold something to stay upright. The back of the boat was sinking faster than the front. Water heaved and foamed around its gashed stern.

“Hurry,” said Brian. “Phil, do you know how to launch the lifeboats?”

“I—yes?” said Phil, but he didn’t sound certain, at all. “At least, my uncle—” His voice wavered, and he tried again, sniffing. “My uncle showed me. Once.”

That didn’t exactly sound like enough training to Brian, but it was what they had. “Okay,” he said. “What do we do?”

“This way,” Phil said. He and Brian ran for the lifeboats.