Jody Kihara
The Girl Across the Water
Contents
Chapter 1 ................................................................ 1
Chapter 2 ................................................................ 8
Chapter 3 .............................................................. 16
Chapter 4 .............................................................. 24
Chapter 5 .............................................................. 35
Chapter 6 .............................................................. 53
Chapter 7 .............................................................. 59
Chapter 8 .............................................................. 80
Chapter 9 .............................................................. 99
Chapter 10 .......................................................... 113
Chapter 11 .......................................................... 122
Chapter 12 .......................................................... 137
Chapter 13 .......................................................... 157
Chapter 14 .......................................................... 162
Chapter 15 .......................................................... 166
Chapter 16 .......................................................... 176
Chapter 17 .......................................................... 185
Chapter 18 .......................................................... 206
©Jody Kihara 2010
www.jodykihara.com
ISBN 978-0-9813111-3-5
The Girl Across the Water
Chapter 1
My paddle cut into the sparkling ripples of the lake,
sucking them back into darker, almost oily-looking gashes
of water. The canoe moved forward, silent but for the drip
of water off the paddle. Dozens of tiny reflections of myself
skimmed ahead on the surface, always jumping away from
me, always staying the same distance out of reach. The sun
beat down on my left side, casting a shadow to the right
that rippled and undulated just below the surface, like
something that didn't want to come up and face the sun.
The peacefulness of the moment was interrupted by
Jasper banging his paddle against the edge of the canoe.
Four patient lessons from me, and still he couldn’t paddle
properly: he kept switching sides, as if we were in a kayak,
even though I'd explained to him that isn't how it works.
With canoeing, you stick to one side and propel the boat
with deep, straight strokes. I sat in the stern, doing all the
work, while Jasper bounced his paddle along in shallow,
splashing strokes, switching sides randomly and not helping
at all. He looked even bulgier than usual in his lifejacket.
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The Girl Across the Water
He was a chubby thirteen-year-old ― well, let’s be honest,
he was fat ― and the jacket wasn’t doing him any favors.
My stepbrother was a year younger than me, but almost a
foot shorter and a couple of feet wider.
Trying to ignore his ineffective splashing, I steered
the canoe towards the island. The lake, surrounded by
steep hills covered with thick evergreen, curved so that you
couldn’t see either end from the shore. It was about a
quarter-mile in length and maybe half as wide, and was
dotted with tiny islands. Most had steep, rocky sides and
thick clusters of trees that dared anyone to penetrate in.
The island we were approaching was the one closest to our
cabin, and it didn’t look like there was much to it: a pebbly
area of beach where we could land the canoe; rising up
from this, a slope covered in trees and scrub; and at the
northern end, a small cliff. Still, it was the most exciting of
the islands, because we could spy on it from our bedroom
window. It reminded me of the smuggling stories I used to
read as a kid, where night-time signals would flash from
the mainland to guide smugglers in.
My dad had rented the cabin for a month. He’d had a
‘stressful’ year, what with Grandfather dying and all, and
had explained that he needed a peaceful vacation. That
translated to: no Disneyland or crowded beaches with
shrieking toddlers, which was fine by me. I loved the
woods, loved exploring. Me, Mom, and Dad used to camp in
the woods in a huge tent, or even better, would stay in a
tiny, remote cabin. We’d never been to this lake, though.
Then, after the divorce, vacations got a bit mixed-up, and
now that my Dad was married to Jasper’s mom, they
included my stepbrother.
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The Girl Across the Water
I was okay with the whole stepbrother thing,
although truthfully, I wouldn’t have minded some time
alone now and then with my Dad. Jasper was an okay kid, I
guess, the only thing that stung was that he got to spend
more time with my Dad than I did (they lived together).
But seeing as Dad was busy tying up my grandfather’s
estate and stuff, which meant spending these first few days
on his laptop or making trips into town, it might’ve been a
bit lonely without Jasper.
“Almost there,” he said, trying to turn around but
getting stuck by his bulky lifejacket.
“Okay, so when the canoe touches the shore, jump
out and grab the front of it, then pull it up onto the beach.
Got it?”
I gave one last strong stroke before resting the
paddle across the sides and letting the canoe glide nose-
first towards the beach. Jasper stood up (wrong) so that
the canoe wobbled (wrong), and tried to hop onto the
beach rather than step into the water. His back toe caught
on the way over, plunging his front leg thigh-deep into the
water. His hands went down to catch himself, and he
splashed in face-first.
“Ow!” He came up, spluttering, water dripping off his
face. “I got all wet.” He looked around. “Oh no, I lost my
shoe!”
I picked up the paddle and gave another steering
stroke, this time maneuvering the canoe parallel to the
beach. When I heard the bottom scrape ground, I jumped
out. Jasper was splashing around, looking for his rubber
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The Girl Across the Water
shoe, which was floating nearby but quickly bobbing away.
I dragged the canoe up onto the beach.
“Got it?” I asked.
He retrieved his shoe and sloshed out of the lake, far
wetter than he’d have been if he’d just stepped in to begin
with. His surfer shorts, now soaking, clung to his bulging
stomach and legs. “Wait,” he said, “I think I cut my toe on
a rock.”
If ever there was a twenty-second episode that
completely summed up Jasper, that was it.
He had to take off his lifejacket to get a look at his
toe, so
while he checked it out (not cut), I gratefully took
off my own lifejacket and dropped it into the canoe. It was
still early in the day, but the air was already hot. At some
point, a swim was in order. I wanted to swim to the where
the cliff rose up, to see if the water was deep enough for
jumping.
But first, exploring the island. “Come on,” I said.
Jasper followed, shuffling his foot back into his shoe
and then stopping again to empty it of pebbles. I looked
around. Now that we were on the island, I estimated its
size to equal about three backyards, although the dense
foliage of the slope made it hard to tell. The beach was
roughly thirty feet by twenty, covering the skinny end of
the island, and the rest was all bush that I could barely see
into ten feet. I headed towards it now, searching for some
way to penetrate in. There were no obvious openings.
Pressing my shoulders into a gap, I hoisted some thin tree
branches out my way. Plants and twigs scraped my calves
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The Girl Across the Water
as I pushed in. I turned to say to Jasper, “Stay far enough
back so those branches don’t snap back in your face—”
“Ow!” he squawked.
We pressed on.
The foliage was thick, and I was getting scratched all
over. It would have been better if we’d kept the lifejackets
on.
“This is hard,” Jasper whined. “Hey, maybe we
should’ve brought the paddle to bushwhack.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I didn’t wanted to turn
back, not before seeing if there was easy way to the top of
the slope for cliff-jumping. Finally the trees thinned out and
we made our way, legs so scratched that there was no
point in trying to guard them any more, through low,
scrubby undergrowth. As the sun beat down on us, sweat
began to seep into my shirt. The smell of greenery filled the
air. Cedar, ferns, salal bushes…
“Are those stinging nettles?” Jasper asked.
I stopped and looked around. “No.”
We were in a tiny clearing, but ahead of us, the
trees seemed thicker and more tangled than ever. I walked
on and tried to peer through the branches, but they were
as dense as a jungle.
“Come on,” I said, “Let’s go back and see if we can
walk around the shore.”
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The Girl Across the Water
We made our way back down the slope, getting
slapped by branches and scratched by razor-sharp leaves
on the way, before emerging onto the beach. I went to
check out the far side of the island. The beach came to an
abrupt end where jagged rocks rose up from the water to
the slope. “Nothing,” I called back, aware of a vague feeling
of disappointment. The island had looked more exciting
from shore ― the kind of place you’d send Morse code
signals to if you were a kid. “Never mind,” I said, “let’s go
for a swim.”
“Um… is it okay if we go back and swim near the
cabin? I’m getting kinda hungry. Do you think Dad has
lunch ready?”
I gritted my teeth against the word ‘ Dad.’ I was the
only person who should be allowed to call him that.
But Jasper’s whining was beginning to grate on my
nerves, and it occurred to me that a swim by myself might
be peaceful while he went off snacking. I nodded in reply,
and we put our lifejackets back on.
Jasper climbed into the bow and sat there, ready to
go, until I explained that I had to push the canoe out
befor e he got in and weighed it down. We finally got it
sorted out — I pushed the canoe into the water and held it
still while Jasper climbed in, then I dragged the stern
around, gave it a shove, and hopped in.
As I pushed away from the island, I turned around to
take one last look, and almost dropped the paddle.
Sticking out from the thick foliage was a girl’s head
and shoulders. She looked about eight or nine years old,
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The Girl Across the Water
with shoulder-length, brown hair pulled into braids at the
sides of her head. Her eyes were dark and fierce, and they
glared at me as she held her finger up to her lips. The
message was clear: ‘ Don’t tell.’
And then she disappeared.
My whole body jerked. I blinked a few times, letting
the canoe drift around.
“Hey, Paul?” Jasper asked. “Uh, I think we’re
drifting...”
My heart beating in staccato, I gave myself a shake
and began to paddle again. Had I really just seen that?
I looked back one more time. There was nothing
there. But then, after a second or two, the face poked out
once more, eyes still intense and glaring. This time, she
pointed: you.
Me, what?
She disappeared again.
Dumbly, I turned and paddled away, like I’d been
ordered to leave and was obeying like a zombie. Well, a
zombie with its heart going like a jackhammer. As I slid the
paddle through the slippery water, the reason I gave myself
for not going back to investigate was that I’d have to
explain it to Jasper, whereas the girl’s message had been
clear: don’t tell.
But really, I think the reason I paddled away so
quickly was that I was completely spooked. The girl was
creepy-looking, almost surreal. What had I just seen?
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The Girl Across the Water
Chapter 2
I maneuvered the canoe so it butted up parallel to
the shore, and this time Jasper stepped out successfully,
even helping me to drag the boat up the gravely incline
before running off to see if lunch was ready.
I wasn’t hungry, however. I was spooked.
If I hadn’t seen her that second time, I’d have
thought I’d imagined her. Who was she? Was she even
real? She had to be… except that there hadn’t been another
boat.
Could she have swum there? I gazed back toward
the island. A really good swimmer could make it from
shore, but she had looked about eight years old, and
besides, her hair seemed dry and neat. And even if she was
an amazing swimmer, where could she have swum from?
There were only two other cabins in the middle of
these thick woods: an uninhabited one way up near the top
of the lake, and our neighbor’s, a few minutes down the
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The Girl Across the Water
lake. The realtor had told us that the neighbors were
another divorced-dad-with-kids doing the summer-escape
thing. We hadn’t had time to meet them yet. And even if
she was with them… what parent would let their kid swim
out so far by themselves?
The message had been clear, though: don’t tell.
Don’t tell whom? Parents? Authorities?
I felt guilty, knowing I was about to break an
intractable childhood code: ‘ don’t tell the parents’, but I
figured I had to find out if one of the neighbor�
�s kids had
gone missing. This could be serious. What if she tried to
swim back and drowned? Then it would be my fault. Plus,
her parents might be looking for her right now, going nuts
with worry.
“Hey Jasper,” I called. He emerged from the cabin,
followed by my dad.
“Lunch isn’t for another hour,” Jasper said with a
mournful-puppy expression, like he might starve to death
before then.
Dad laughed. “We’ll barbecue some hotdogs. That
okay with you, Paul?”
Before I could answer, Jasper piped up, “Oh, yeah!”
Dad ruffled Jasper’s hair, making me tense up. This whole
scene was way too buddy-buddy, and it was making me
lose my appetite.
“And then I thought we could go for a hike,” Dad
said. “Check out the area. We haven’t done that yet.”
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The Girl Across the Water
“A hike?” Jasper asked, his smile disappearing and
eyes widening. “Is it far?”
I met Dad’s eyes, and we both smiled, trying not to
laugh. Friends again.
“What?” Jasper asked, his gaze darting back and
forth between me and Dad. “What? Is it far? Is it?”
Dad said nothing, but gave me a wink over the top
of Jasper’s head. There ― he was my dad.
“I was thinking of going to say ‘hi’ to the neighbors,”
I told them. “You wanna come?”
“I guess we should go pay them a visit,” Dad said.
“We’ve been here a couple days already. What do you say
we go after lunch? Make it part of the hike?”
“Uh, I think I’d… better go now.” I didn’t know how
to explain it. “In case they go out for the afternoon or
something. Don’t want to miss them.”
“Well, okay. Tell them I say ‘hi’ and that we’ll all
drop by sometime soon. Or have a barbecue together,
something like that.”
“You coming?” I asked Jasper. “It’ll kill an hour.”
He walked down the porch steps, but didn’t go any
farther. “Uh, I think I’ll just sweep up around here.”
“You sure? I could use the company.”
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The Girl Across the Water
“Yeah… well…” He grabbed the broom that was