JUVEN
The Lake Girls
by Tara Kavasseri
Seattle, late December. Muddy footprints crisscrossed Greenwood Avenue, churning up the previous night’s two and a half inches of snow. Glass lanterns hung like miniature suns outside a long row of shops, which sold everything from customized cat socks to vintage cassette tapes. The late morning sky was a swirl of grey further blurred by the city’s ever-present fog. Two boys hurried down the street, silhouetted by the headlights of passing cars.
“Starbucks.”
“No.”
“Nigel’s Boardwalk Bistro.”
“You wish.”
“A graveyard.”
“Why would I take you to a graveyard?”
“So you have somewhere convenient to dump my body after I die of frostbite.”
“You’re not going to die of frostbite.”
“Easy for you to say. You have a jacket.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Riel Lowe scowled and sunk further into his knitted turtleneck. “There’d better be hot chocolate at the end of this.”
His closest friend and current torturer, Deenu Bannerjee, forged onward with the determined look of a man in pursuit of donuts. Unfortunately, Riel didn’t think their current trek ended with deep-fried dough and rainbow sprinkles.
Still, he held out hope. “Donuts?”
“Better.”
“What’s better than donuts?”
“Suspense.”
“No,” Riel said. “Wrong answer. Nothing is better than donuts.”
“This is,” Deevu promised.
Riel fumbled for his phone. “What time—”
“Ten-forty,” Deevu replied without looking at his watch. He was the sort of person who wore an Audemars slung across his wrist like a sash, for decorative purposes only. He was the sort of person who looked like he would make a fantastic punching bag, if only because his teeth were unnaturally straight and could do with a little reshaping. He was also the sort of person who lived in a mansion beside a lake and considered chasing myths a hobby.
One myth in particular.
The story of Alanis Watherman was a bleak one. Fifty years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl had taken her skates to Green Lake. It was a rare winter, one where snow lined the naked trees and iced covered the water in a fat sheet that reflected the stars on a good night: a little slice of sky, set between snow-covered hills and tangled black tree branches.
This particular night had been beautiful. Snow drenched in starlight, the sounds of fighting families and rowdy holiday gatherings muffled by the rolling hills.
Alanis had gone to the lake alone.
When she didn’t return the next day, her parents sent out search parties. All they found was a desk-sized hole in the ice and a single pair of baby-pink skates lying on the shore twenty yards away. Whatever footprints she’d left had been swallowed by the hungry snow.
There were two theories. The first: she’d fallen into the lake and drowned. The second: she’d shucked off her shoes for no apparent reason and wandered, barefoot, into the thick of the park to die.
The lake had been dredged and the woods had been searched. No body had been found.
This had led to a third, more speculative theory: Alanis Watherman had survived the water and the woods. And she was still there.
It was town folklore, superstition, a campfire tale meant to alarm and delight in equal measures. Nobody truly believed it.
Nobody except Deevu.
For as long as Riel had known him, Deevu Bannerjee had been obsessed with finding Alanis Watherman. She was his religion, his life, and the cause of his slightly crooked nose, which he’d gotten after walking into a Drive as if Your Kid Lives Here sign while reading her biography.
At first, Riel hadn’t understood why Deevu was so invested in Watherman’s death. She was a white, middle-class girl who’d lived and died half a century before Deevu’s family had even set foot on the Pacific shore. Sure, her story was accompanied by strange sightings: picnic baskets of half-eaten food found in the thick of the woods, footprints disappearing in the middle of an empty field, children who swore they heard the trees laughing. Alanis Watherman was the ghost of a Christmas past, an age-old mystery wrapped up in a dark moral lesson. But even this couldn’t justify Deevu’s single-minded fascination.
Perhaps, Riel had thought, it was because Deevu was a wealthy only child without any real friends. Perhaps this was what the rich and privileged did when they had no rent to pay and nobody to celebrate their status with.
The real reason was much, much worse. Deevu, as it turned out, was not an only child.
He’d had an older sister. Four years ago, when Deevu was only thirteen, she had gone to Green Lake. Alone.
She hadn’t come back. Her body was never found, and no amount of wealth could conjure it. She had simply...disappeared.
Riel, who had lived in Portland for the greater part of his life before moving to Seattle, hadn’t known about Deevu’s sister until a good year into their friendship. Now, he understood.
Alanis Watherman had to be real. She had to be alive. If she was, then so was Deevu’s sister. And if Deevu found Watherman, he found his sister.
Still, that didn’t explain why Deevu was currently ruining a perfectly good Saturday morning by dragging Riel through the stubborn cold.
“If it isn’t donuts,” Riel said, “and it isn’t a graveyard…”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“Said every murderer ever.”
“Gods, Riel. I’m not going to murder you.”
“You won’t have to. Your deodorant will do that for you.” He covered his nose. “Are you wearing Axe?”
“It was all I had,” Deevu said defensively.
“Yes, and I’m sure that sweater was all you had, too.”
Deevu looked down, perplexed. “What’s wrong with my sweater?”
“It has Please Mug Me written all over it.”
“It says December is for DoorDash and Daydreaming.”
“Exactly.” Deevu opened his mouth to protest, but Riel didn’t hear him over the roaring that filled his ears as they turned the corner. His feet came to a sudden stop.
Deevu made it half a block before he realized he was talking to air. “Riel,” he said, turning around.
Riel shook his head. “You can’t go in there.”
“I can go wherever I want—”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too.”
Riel stared at the snow-dusted sign nailed above an empty ticket box: Green Lake Park. “Tell me you’re kidding.” Riel had gone with Deevu to the lake before. Had spat into the wretched water while his friend sat on a metal bench, staring into nothing.
They had never gone in winter. Never.
“I saw something,” Deevu rasped. He was suddenly at Riel’s side. “I was staring at the water last night, and—”
Last night? “Who were you with?” Deevu’s silence was answer enough. “You went there alone? How could you be so—” Foolish. Reckless.
“I saw something,” Deevu repeated, almost fervently. “Someone.”
Riel didn’t know what to think. If Deevu had seen someone, it was a hallucination, a figment of grief, a passersby blurred by snow. “I’m not taking you there. Your parents will kill me.”
Pain flashed across Deevu’s face. “Fine.” He tipped his chin in challenge at the woods. “I’ll go alone.”
“I can’t let you—”
“You can come with me or go back home,” Deevu said sharply. “But I’m going. I need to find her.”
Her. Riel wondered briefly if he should call someone. But who? Deevu’s parents? He couldn’t break Deevu’s trust. But he also couldn’t let anything happen to his best friend.
“Fine,” Riel said, catching up to Deevu. “I’m coming.”
The park was empty in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic sort of way. A pair of crows peered down at the boys from a twisted hemlock tree. Beady black eyes followed them into the hollow silence of creaking limbs and hissing wind.
“This is nice,” Riel said dryly in an effort to break the eerie quiet. “Practically Disneylandian.”
“That’s not a real word.” Deevu’s voice filled Riel with relief. At least they weren’t alone.
“It is now.”
“Who are you, Shakespeare?”
Riel snorted. “Shakespeare wouldn’t have let his moony-eyed friend haul him into a haunted forest.”
“It’s a public park.”
Said park seemed to sway around them, the trees bending in a sudden gust of wind. Riel shivered.
“Here.” Deevu held out his fluffy jacket.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“Have you seen me? I’m too hot to freeze.”
Deevu gave him a long look. “That,” he said, “was awful.”
“Thank you.”
“Truly awful. Never speak to me again, please.”
“It’ll be a boring walk.”
“There are worse things than boredom.”
“Your deodorant?”
“Shut up.”
They continued around the lake. Deevu stopped beside an ancient hawthorn tree. “Here,” he said, toeing the unbroken line of snow. “This is where I saw her.”
“Her?”
“Watherman.” Deevu’s breath clouded the air and goosebumps rose along Riel’s arms. He felt watching eyes crawl along the back of his neck. A twig snapped, the sound cracking through the air.
He whirled around, but the lake behind them was empty.
“There’s no one here,” Riel said, the words more prayer than fact. “Come on, Bannerjee.” His pulse galloped at his throat.
Deevu was staring at the bare trees. “She’s here.” His voice seemed to come from all around. “I can feel her.”
Riel didn’t know if he was talking about Alanis Watherman or his lost sister. “Bannerjee,” he said again, and his friend shook his head, as if coming out of a trance.
“What?” Deevu cleared his throat and gave the shadowy woods a last, longing look.
“There’s no one here, I’m freezing, and you owe me a donut.”
“A donut?”
“Make it two.”
The boys continued across the snow and around the lake, their voices slicing clear through the winter air. One shoved the other good-naturedly, nearly sending him into a snowdrift. They forced laughter from their mouths to cover the old grief in their eyes, and as they walked past the creaking trees and watching crows, they didn’t look back.
If they did, they would have seen a girl step out from behind a hawthorn tree. Her hair was white with frost, and her flesh was the blue-black of thin ice creeping across a bottomless lake. Frozen tears covered her glassy eyes. Her fingers tapped at the tree trunk, and a spider web of ice spread across the bark.
She watched them walk away from the lake, away from her, and though no sound came from her mouth and no breath clouded the air, her lips shaped the ghosts of three wretched, weary words.
I am here.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow took flight.
“Starbucks.”
“No.”
“Nigel’s Boardwalk Bistro.”
“You wish.”
“A graveyard.”
“Why would I take you to a graveyard?”
“So you have somewhere convenient to dump my body after I die of frostbite.”
“You’re not going to die of frostbite.”
“Easy for you to say. You have a jacket.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Riel Lowe scowled and sunk further into his knitted turtleneck. “There’d better be hot chocolate at the end of this.”
His closest friend and current torturer, Deenu Bannerjee, forged onward with the determined look of a man in pursuit of donuts. Unfortunately, Riel didn’t think their current trek ended with deep-fried dough and rainbow sprinkles.
Still, he held out hope. “Donuts?”
“Better.”
“What’s better than donuts?”
“Suspense.”
“No,” Riel said. “Wrong answer. Nothing is better than donuts.”
“This is,” Deevu promised.
Riel fumbled for his phone. “What time—”
“Ten-forty,” Deevu replied without looking at his watch. He was the sort of person who wore an Audemars slung across his wrist like a sash, for decorative purposes only. He was the sort of person who looked like he would make a fantastic punching bag, if only because his teeth were unnaturally straight and could do with a little reshaping. He was also the sort of person who lived in a mansion beside a lake and considered chasing myths a hobby.
One myth in particular.
The story of Alanis Watherman was a bleak one. Fifty years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl had taken her skates to Green Lake. It was a rare winter, one where snow lined the naked trees and iced covered the water in a fat sheet that reflected the stars on a good night: a little slice of sky, set between snow-covered hills and tangled black tree branches.
This particular night had been beautiful. Snow drenched in starlight, the sounds of fighting families and rowdy holiday gatherings muffled by the rolling hills.
Alanis had gone to the lake alone.
When she didn’t return the next day, her parents sent out search parties. All they found was a desk-sized hole in the ice and a single pair of baby-pink skates lying on the shore twenty yards away. Whatever footprints she’d left had been swallowed by the hungry snow.
There were two theories. The first: she’d fallen into the lake and drowned. The second: she’d shucked off her shoes for no apparent reason and wandered, barefoot, into the thick of the park to die.
The lake had been dredged and the woods had been searched. No body had been found.
This had led to a third, more speculative theory: Alanis Watherman had survived the water and the woods. And she was still there.
It was town folklore, superstition, a campfire tale meant to alarm and delight in equal measures. Nobody truly believed it.
Nobody except Deevu.
For as long as Riel had known him, Deevu Bannerjee had been obsessed with finding Alanis Watherman. She was his religion, his life, and the cause of his slightly crooked nose, which he’d gotten after walking into a Drive as if Your Kid Lives Here sign while reading her biography.
At first, Riel hadn’t understood why Deevu was so invested in Watherman’s death. She was a white, middle-class girl who’d lived and died half a century before Deevu’s family had even set foot on the Pacific shore. Sure, her story was accompanied by strange sightings: picnic baskets of half-eaten food found in the thick of the woods, footprints disappearing in the middle of an empty field, children who swore they heard the trees laughing. Alanis Watherman was the ghost of a Christmas past, an age-old mystery wrapped up in a dark moral lesson. But even this couldn’t justify Deevu’s single-minded fascination.
Perhaps, Riel had thought, it was because Deevu was a wealthy only child without any real friends. Perhaps this was what the rich and privileged did when they had no rent to pay and nobody to celebrate their status with.
The real reason was much, much worse. Deevu, as it turned out, was not an only child.
He’d had an older sister. Four years ago, when Deevu was only thirteen, she had gone to Green Lake. Alone.
She hadn’t come back. Her body was never found, and no amount of wealth could conjure it. She had simply...disappeared.
Riel, who had lived in Portland for the greater part of his life before moving to Seattle, hadn’t known about Deevu’s sister until a good year into their friendship. Now, he understood.
Alanis Watherman had to be real. She had to be alive. If she was, then so was Deevu’s sister. And if Deevu found Watherman, he found his sister.
Still, that didn’t explain why Deevu was currently ruining a perfectly good Saturday morning by dragging Riel through the stubborn cold.
“If it isn’t donuts,” Riel said, “and it isn’t a graveyard…”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“Said every murderer ever.”
“Gods, Riel. I’m not going to murder you.”
“You won’t have to. Your deodorant will do that for you.” He covered his nose. “Are you wearing Axe?”
“It was all I had,” Deevu said defensively.
“Yes, and I’m sure that sweater was all you had, too.”
Deevu looked down, perplexed. “What’s wrong with my sweater?”
“It has Please Mug Me written all over it.”
“It says December is for DoorDash and Daydreaming.”
“Exactly.” Deevu opened his mouth to protest, but Riel didn’t hear him over the roaring that filled his ears as they turned the corner. His feet came to a sudden stop.
Deevu made it half a block before he realized he was talking to air. “Riel,” he said, turning around.
Riel shook his head. “You can’t go in there.”
“I can go wherever I want—”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too.”
Riel stared at the snow-dusted sign nailed above an empty ticket box: Green Lake Park. “Tell me you’re kidding.” Riel had gone with Deevu to the lake before. Had spat into the wretched water while his friend sat on a metal bench, staring into nothing.
They had never gone in winter. Never.
“I saw something,” Deevu rasped. He was suddenly at Riel’s side. “I was staring at the water last night, and—”
Last night? “Who were you with?” Deevu’s silence was answer enough. “You went there alone? How could you be so—” Foolish. Reckless.
“I saw something,” Deevu repeated, almost fervently. “Someone.”
Riel didn’t know what to think. If Deevu had seen someone, it was a hallucination, a figment of grief, a passersby blurred by snow. “I’m not taking you there. Your parents will kill me.”
Pain flashed across Deevu’s face. “Fine.” He tipped his chin in challenge at the woods. “I’ll go alone.”
“I can’t let you—”
“You can come with me or go back home,” Deevu said sharply. “But I’m going. I need to find her.”
Her. Riel wondered briefly if he should call someone. But who? Deevu’s parents? He couldn’t break Deevu’s trust. But he also couldn’t let anything happen to his best friend.
“Fine,” Riel said, catching up to Deevu. “I’m coming.”
The park was empty in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic sort of way. A pair of crows peered down at the boys from a twisted hemlock tree. Beady black eyes followed them into the hollow silence of creaking limbs and hissing wind.
“This is nice,” Riel said dryly in an effort to break the eerie quiet. “Practically Disneylandian.”
“That’s not a real word.” Deevu’s voice filled Riel with relief. At least they weren’t alone.
“It is now.”
“Who are you, Shakespeare?”
Riel snorted. “Shakespeare wouldn’t have let his moony-eyed friend haul him into a haunted forest.”
“It’s a public park.”
Said park seemed to sway around them, the trees bending in a sudden gust of wind. Riel shivered.
“Here.” Deevu held out his fluffy jacket.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“Have you seen me? I’m too hot to freeze.”
Deevu gave him a long look. “That,” he said, “was awful.”
“Thank you.”
“Truly awful. Never speak to me again, please.”
“It’ll be a boring walk.”
“There are worse things than boredom.”
“Your deodorant?”
“Shut up.”
They continued around the lake. Deevu stopped beside an ancient hawthorn tree. “Here,” he said, toeing the unbroken line of snow. “This is where I saw her.”
“Her?”
“Watherman.” Deevu’s breath clouded the air and goosebumps rose along Riel’s arms. He felt watching eyes crawl along the back of his neck. A twig snapped, the sound cracking through the air.
He whirled around, but the lake behind them was empty.
“There’s no one here,” Riel said, the words more prayer than fact. “Come on, Bannerjee.” His pulse galloped at his throat.
Deevu was staring at the bare trees. “She’s here.” His voice seemed to come from all around. “I can feel her.”
Riel didn’t know if he was talking about Alanis Watherman or his lost sister. “Bannerjee,” he said again, and his friend shook his head, as if coming out of a trance.
“What?” Deevu cleared his throat and gave the shadowy woods a last, longing look.
“There’s no one here, I’m freezing, and you owe me a donut.”
“A donut?”
“Make it two.”
The boys continued across the snow and around the lake, their voices slicing clear through the winter air. One shoved the other good-naturedly, nearly sending him into a snowdrift. They forced laughter from their mouths to cover the old grief in their eyes, and as they walked past the creaking trees and watching crows, they didn’t look back.
If they did, they would have seen a girl step out from behind a hawthorn tree. Her hair was white with frost, and her flesh was the blue-black of thin ice creeping across a bottomless lake. Frozen tears covered her glassy eyes. Her fingers tapped at the tree trunk, and a spider web of ice spread across the bark.
She watched them walk away from the lake, away from her, and though no sound came from her mouth and no breath clouded the air, her lips shaped the ghosts of three wretched, weary words.
I am here.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow took flight.
Tara Kavasseri is a fiction writer from Fremont, California. When she isn't reading and writing, she spends her free time playing soccer, baking, and procrastinating. She can be found on twitter and ig @tarakavasseri