Dark Water - Laura McNeal [54]
When I came back to the rock, my book was still there. So was my dad’s old backpack. Nothing looked any different until I opened my paperback copy of Wuthering Heights and found, neatly folded like a bookmark, a piece of lined notebook paper.
On the outside was a drawing of an open oyster shell holding a pearl. I unfolded it and shivered. GO TO BLACK OAK, it said. I did a full-circle survey of the surrounding trees, heart pounding, but I didn’t see Amiel. I tugged my shirt and shorts back on over my wet swimsuit and walked to the only place I thought might be the black oak, a huge tree burned to volcanic rock by a fire a long time ago. It was hollow on the inside, so it made me think of elves and dwarves and leprechauns whenever I passed it. It now held a red bandanna tied to form a little bag. The bundle clacked when I opened the knot, and dozens of white shells spilled over the ground.
Carefully, I turned them all over.
“Olly olly in come free,” I said when I stood up, as if Amiel knew the rules of the game.
Nothing and no one.
“That means you can come out!” I said.
Someone brushed against a tree, but when I turned, it was just a hiker with a spaniel on a leash. “Hide-and-seek?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Maybe my Greta will sniff ’em out,” she said, and went striding along with Greta while I picked up my white shells and put them carefully back into the bandanna.
I looked everywhere as I walked back along the trail—up in the trees, down the eroded banks where roots tangled with stones and cobwebs, along the sandbars glittering in the sun. Finally I came to the crossing point. Amiel’s shore, as I thought of it. All I had to do was wade across to the grotto. Perhaps he was in there, his back to the wall, listening and waiting as I used to wait in my favorite hiding place at Greenie’s house, a warm spot between the propane tank and a pink hibiscus. It was that memory that coaxed me to remove my shoes and slosh over, to step with a hammering heart to the wall that was warm and slivery under my touch. I knew Amiel was too skilled at hiding not to hear my approach. I made myself count to ten, and then I sprang into his doorway.
No one.
“Amiel?” I said. All seemed to be in order, though I couldn’t be sure because the room was dark. I stepped in and heard a small sound, no louder than the frisking of a bird or a lizard in dry leaves. I turned around and there he was, seated on the floor beside the wall, waiting for me to spot him. He smiled the way you do when you’re glad to be found.
“You’re supposed to run now,” I said.
He shrugged and stayed where he was.
“Or you’re going to be it.”
I had no idea whether they played hide-and-seek in Mexico. Still, it was a game that let me be confident instead of self-conscious and confused, so I reached out my hand to touch the nearest part of him, which was his knee. “Tag,” I said. “You’re it.”
If he had run, I could have chased him and known what I was doing, because I know how to be eight, nine, ten, and eleven, but he stood up and looked as confused as I felt. He was holding a long, smooth stick in one hand and a knife that he folded and put in his pocket.
“Thank you,” I said, holding up the bandanna. “For the shells.”
He nodded.
He was two inches from me, and I could see the black stone disk between his collar bones rising and falling with