Chapter 1 - The Splash Before the Music Stopped
The lake was flat and gold that evening and I was already in it before anyone noticed. The party was supposed to be pretty. White chairs in perfect rows, tables with flowers and glass that caught the sunset, string lights waking up on the back of my grandparents' house. Everyone was holding a drink and laughing near the house while I stood at the edge where the grass stopped. My sneakers were right at the water line, white with the red stripe, and Daniel was suddenly not by the tables anymore.
He was running. Not the way grown-ups run when they're playing, low and fast with his charcoal shirt pulled tight across his back and his arms out in front of him like he already knew he wouldn't get there in time. That was the contradiction that never left me. The music was still going behind him. My mom stood in her magenta dress by the chairs looking perfect for pictures, and Richard stood beside her in his navy blazer with his glass raised, at his peak of the night, the host's future son-in-law in the golden light, while I slipped.
My name is Ethan Cole. I was eight that August.
At maybe six thirty the sun had dropped just enough to turn the lake to glass. My grandparents' anniversary party had been going for an hour. I remembered the heat still in the grass under my socks and the way the water looked shallow right at the edge, dark at the center where the trees reflected. Richard had been kneeling near the grass earlier with that little box. I'd seen him take it out of his pocket to show my mom, dark reddish-brown, not much bigger than my palm. He'd set it down on the table beside the champagne, then picked it up again, then said something and laughed. Later he walked near the lake with it, talking on his phone, and set it down again right where the grass got wet and uneven to shake someone's hand.
I didn't fall. Not exactly. I was trying to get it before it tipped in. I leaned out too far. The grass was slick. The cold hit my chest all at once and went up my nose and into my ears. My light blue shirt stuck to me instantly. I could hear the party muffled like it was under water too, and then a splash that wasn't mine and hands grabbing my arms hard. Daniel didn't kneel. He dropped. Both his hands locked around my ribs and he hauled me up out of the lake in one pull while water poured off my pants and my sneakers came up heavy and dripping.
My mom made a sound and Aunt Sarah in her cream dress did too, hands to her mouth. I was coughing and breathing fast onto Daniel's shoulder. He had me up on the grass so quick my feet barely touched before he was standing half over me, one hand on my back, the other wiping water from my face. His shirt was wet now too at the sleeves. He didn't look at the women behind us. He looked past me toward Richard.
That's when Richard came forward grinning like he was going to smooth it over.
"He just slipped," he said.
It was too quick and too light. That was the lie.
Daniel didn't answer right away. He kept his arm around me, breathing hard. I could feel his chest moving. He finally said, quiet, "Did you tell him to get it?"
And I pulled at his wet sleeve and whispered, "Don't be mad, okay?"
Richard's smile tightened. He wasn't used to being questioned in front of everyone, not with my mom right there and all those guests turning around in their chairs. He stepped closer and said Daniel was making a scene, that I was fine, that boys will be boys around a lake. Daniel told him to stay back. Richard didn't. He swung. I didn't even see it start right. His fist came forward in that navy blazer and Daniel moved his head and took it on the shoulder, stumbling back into a small table. Two champagne glasses tipped and rolled onto the grass without breaking right away, then one clinked and lay overturned near my foot, the liquid soaking into the lawn.
Something else had fallen too and that was when I saw it again. The little dark reddish-brown box was on the grass a foot away, right beside an overturned stemmed glass. It hadn't been there before the punch. It must have been in Richard's pocket or knocked off the table. It sat closed, damp at the corner, impossibly still while everything else was moving.
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Daniel crouched. He pulled me straight into his chest and I buried my face against his wet shirt. He smelled like lake water and soap. His arms locked around me so I couldn't see anything but his collar and the grass. He held me tight with his left arm and with his right hand he reached, not for me, but for that box, his fingers hovering just above it without picking it up yet, like he knew if he touched it everything would get worse.
Above us Richard was still standing, breathing hard over us, his shoes inches from the box. I could see my mom's strappy heels sinking a little into the soft lawn as she stepped forward finally, out from behind the white chairs. Her dress caught the last sun. Her hand came up like she was about to speak, her mouth opening, and all the guests had gone silent behind her.
