Page 1 of The Deepest Lake

PROLOGUE

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THAT NIGHT

I should be terrified stepping into the rowboat, but for the first adrenaline-spiked moment, I’m not. Not when I’m told to hurry up, not when my first questions go unanswered. Not when I lift a leg over the middle seat and feel the wooden boat list to one side until I drop into a squat, just in time to preserve my balance.

For a moment my lifelong fear of water is replaced with something more primal. I’m following orders both external and internal—the barking voice behind me, the quieter voice within.

The volcano ahead is a gray silhouette against a navy sky. The lake is black. Don’t think about it. Don’t look down. But every glimmer and splash draws my attention. How many mimosas did we finish off, followed by how many shots, over how many hours?

As the boat glides away from the dock, I try not to think about how fathomless the lake is: an ancient dark hole in a bowl of mountains. I don’t want to be here. That’s a selfish thought, and I shouldn’t be thinking it, but I can’t help it.

All week I’ve managed to keep a safe distance. No daytime swimming. No nighttime skinny dipping. As few water taxis as possible, and then only reluctantly, my stomach flipping when the spray dampened my face.

But now I’ve violated my own rule. And it’s not because of a dare. It’s not so that someday I’ll have a good story to tell, or to write. It’s only because everything happened so fast. There wasn’t time to make excuses or find others to help. No time, even, to get a life jacket or flashlights. There was only enough time to jump in the boat and hope we weren’t already too late.

Whether someone lives or dies is up to us. That’s what I believe for the first ten minutes as we move through the water, searching and silent. This task should allow us to patch up our differences, finally. Bring us together. That’s what I try to believe, still, as our trajectory incrementally shifts, until we are heading out into the very center of the lake.

“You’re taking us out too far,” I say.

No reply.

I’m shivering. Alarm bells are beginning to ring in my brain. But I have to face the truth.

There is no shared goal.

There is no “we.”

Herringbone clouds slip across the pale face of the moon. One more angry dig of the oars and then we are stopped in a pupil-black slick of still water.

“I want to go back,” I say, but it’s too late.

PART

I

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1

ROSE

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NOW, THREE MONTHS LATER