52stories

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“I spy with my little eye, something that is…. red!”

I groaned. I hated this game, and it was one of my sister’s favorites. As if there was any doubt as to what she could have picked out of the scene in front of us, given that everything else in our environment was either green or brown or blue. Or white. But I had to be nice — my mother had insisted that I be the patient older sister on this trip.

“Hmm… let me see… ” I played along. I couldn’t disguise the lack of enthusiasm in my voice, but my sister was young enough to be oblivious to such things. “The rooftop on that building across the lake there.”

“How did you guess?” my sister squealed. But I knew she didn’t really care about the answer — her eyes were already scanning the distant hills, looking for the next thing to spy with her little eyes. I didn’t bother answering.

My family had been coming to this lake in the middle of the Cascade mountain range every summer for as long as I could remember. I used to look forward to the trip every year, from helping Dad pack all of our well seasoned camping gear, to swimming and fishing in the frigid clear water, to throwing foil-wrapped potatoes into the massive beach bonfire that Dad would proudly build on our last night. Those were the best baked potatoes ever. But this year was different. I was bored out of my mind. The same old trails, beaches, camp site, and campfire stories. The same old games, the same bland camp food. I was fifteen years old now and I had different ideas of how to have fun. I wanted to be home, hanging out with my friends at the mall, going to the live concerts at the river park where local bands would blare away through-half blown amplifiers and squealing microphones. But here I was yet again, on the same boring lake in the same boring tent with the same boring sister and the same boring parents.

My best friend Maureen had offered to let me stay at her place for the long weekend but Mom wouldn’t hear anything of it. “Absolutely not,” she had said when I asked.

“How about letting me invite Maureen to come with us?” I pleaded.

“No,” Mom said, in the tone of voice that meant no further discussion would be tolerated. “This is a family trip.”

“But it’s so boring!” I whined.

“It’s your choice to be bored, Laura,” she told me. According to my mother, everything was my choice. She always had a long list of things that I could be doing at any given time. It was no use telling her that her ideas regarding fun were a little out of date. I don’t think my mom had ever been fifteen.

Labor Day weekend came around, and as always the four of us piled into the van at 4am on Thursday morning — the better to avoid the Labor Day weekend traffic, according to Dad when we complained about the early hour. My little sister cried when her ears started popping as we drove deeper and higher into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area. I gave her a stick of gum and then suffered through the sound of her chomping with her mouth open for the next however many miles. We arrived at the lake early enough to score a good campsite, and the next few hours were filled with me “minding my sister” while Mom and Dad set up the tent and unpacked our supplies. The first day wasn’t so bad; it was warm enough for us to tolerate swimming in the freezing lake water, and then Dad took my sister out fishing and I was able to just hang out on the beach, reading and basking in the quiet and the sun.

Two days later I was more than ready to go home. Instead, there we sat on the rocky beach while my Dad gutted fish and my sister flitted about, looking for pretty rocks to add to her collection, and asking me to play silly kid games with her to while away the time.

“Dad, do you care if I go for a walk on that hillside trail over there?” I pointed off to the right of the beach, where a well worn trail led up a small hill. I’d walked that trail a hundred times but it was still preferable to an interminable game of “I Spy” with my sister.

“Sure, Laura. Just be careful, okay. Don’t go any further than the next beach.”

“Okay Dad,” I said jumping up.

“Can I go with you?” asked my sister. My father must have seen the expression on my face.

“Honey, I need you to go to the tent and ask your mom for a container that I can put this fish into.” he said to her. “You can take a walk with Laura a little later.”

I got going before she could complain and make Dad think about changing his mind. I sprinted across the beach to the place where the trail started. The trees were thinner up here — we were up pretty high — and there were lots of bare rocky patches where the sun burned through the green canopy to warm the ground beneath. The trail climbed gradually to a rock shelf that was completely bare of trees, and offered a beautiful view of the lake. It was hazy today, and mist still hung over the north side of the lake like a thin layer of gauze. Someone was sailing a tiny sailboat on the far side. I looked up to the cell phone tower on the peak beyond, and as always wondered how a car, let alone a truck or a crane, could have made it up there to build the spindly structure. I sat on the rock shelf for a few minutes, enjoying the silence and the lack of little-sisterly intrusions. But soon my mind turned back to home. I wondered what Maureen was doing right now. Probably hanging out with our other friends from school, talking about boys and music, and going “back to school” shopping. I sighed, my grim mood returning. I decided to keep moving to keep my irritation at bay. The trail headed back down the hill, toward another rocky beach. This one was much smaller that the beach we always camped on, maybe thirty feet in length, if that. The trees came up to within a few feet of the water, so it was much darker there. I walked to the edge of the rocky shore and dipped my foot in the water, cringing as the icy water creeped through my sandal.

I don’t know what made me look up further along the beach at that point. It must have been the bright pink fabric catching my eye, although I swear I didn’t notice any colors at the time. I think it was the motion, tugging at my peripheral vision, forcing my eyes to focus on the strangely shaped object in the water, about fifteen feet further up. The sluggish, lifeless motion of a lump of… something… being gently pulled and pushed in the shallows by the gentle, lapping motion of the water. I started walking towards it, thinking that some hapless camper must have left their bag of dirty laundry too close to the water’s edge. I stopped after going no more than ten paces.

Turned.

Ran.

As I hurtled down the trail leading back to the beach — our beach — I saw that my mom had joined my dad at the water’s edge. She was holding tightly onto my sister’s hand and talking quickly, her eyes scanning the shoreline. She must have heard me clambering down the last part of the trail because she turned towards me and called out in a frantic voice.

“Laura! Thank God! Laura you need to get over here right now! The little girl from the campsite next to ours has disappeared, and we need to help look for her. I need you to watch your little sister while your father and I join the search party.”

I stopped.

“Laura?” My dad this time.

I sat down.

“Laura!” My father again. He was at my side in five seconds.

“Laura, what happened? What’s wrong?” His voice was calm. I think he already knew what I didn’t have the words to tell him yet. But I can’t bring myself to ask him that — even now, many years later.

It took another few seconds for the words to surface.

“I think I found her, Dad.” I whispered. I turned and put my hands down on the rough stones as though I was planning to crawl away from him towards the water. I vomited.

My dad was already halfway up the trail when my mom reached me, understanding clouding her face. “Laura?” she said gently when my back had stopped heaving. I turned back to her and sat heavily. “Laura, can you keep an eye on your sister while I go back to the campsite to find the family?” There were tears in her eyes, her face stricken and pale as my own. I nodded and took my sister’s hand. My mother turned, gravely, and walked slowly back in the direction of the campsite, a few hundred feet into the trees. Only now do I realize how heavy the burden of messenger must have weighed on her at that point.

I hardly noticed as four adults — people whose faces I recognized but whose names I would never learn — raced by to echo the path taken by my father minutes before. I barely registered the scream and the sound of desperate cries that carried over the water, faint as though the mist was filtering and diluting the sound. All I could feel at that moment in time was the warm pressure of my sister’s hand in mine, and the sudden feeling of relief that she was here, she was my sister, she was alive. And that right now there was no else I’d rather be with in the whole wide world.