Big, sharp rocks littered the small semicircle of sand the counselors called a beach, and the path to get there wasn’t much smoother. The water was invaded by a series of battered wooden docks in the shape of an H. The younger kids would use the bottom half of that H. Even in such shallow water it looked like a tar pit, and every time Richard walked past it he imagined the eight-and nine-year-olds stuck in it, trying desperately to free their arms and legs. The older kids (at eleven, Richard and Charles were considered such) would use the top half, where the bottom really dropped off and, if you wanted to, it looked like you could swim forever and out…leaving Camp Tanawanna behind. But the camp was already seventeen miles from Goblin, and part of Richard wanted to hug these docks forever. Who knew what swam beneath the dark surface? Who knew what called these depths home?

But the only real monster on Lake Goodbye was the trouble brewing in young Charles’s mind.

How dark the waters were!

On the first day, before jumping in, the campers were instructed to pair off. The counselors explained that every twenty minutes a whistle would blow and the “buddies” would team up. Richard, aware of the counselors’ indifference to the campers, imagined them shoving him and the others in…one by one. He nearly expected to feel the clammy hand of a counselor on his back as he was tossed, then submerged, then stuck in all that dark water.

As Charles knelt on the dock and touched the surface with a finger, Richard could hear the counselors yelling at him.

It’s okay, Richard! It’s natural! Keep your head up…don’t panic! until he felt something bloated and puffed beneath his feet…something like a rubbery limb.

It’s all the children that didn’t make it…that’s all…the ones that couldn’t swim. They’re all below you now, Richard…in piles…a thousand kids who couldn’t handle it…a thousand kids who got too tired…

But of course the counselors didn’t shove him in. And at the first command to jump, Charles dove first…alone.

And even the counselors could see how good a swimmer he was.

Richard frowned. He’d been hoping the two could struggle together. But while Richard was still psyching himself up to leap in, Charles was already swimming laps. And by the time Richard was in the water, cold and shivering, his view of his “buddy” ’ was obscured by the others, treading water beside him.

More playing. More splashing. By then the counselors were talking and flirting, stoned on the dock. Birds called to one another from the big woods. Boats passed farther out on the lake, bringing small waves like toys for the kids to play with.

Richard joined a breath-holding contest with two strangers. He was a little anxious, a little out of step, a little alone. It seemed like everyone else had a friend. And all the chaos concerned him. Hadn’t his mom told him that “an anxious swimmer is a swimmer in danger”? Hadn’t she said worry could cause the muscles to tighten? And that, if you weren’t careful, you could end up sinking to the bottom of a lake?