Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER FOUR

Bobby had taken Tara to his parents' summer home to a small island in the middle of Lake Capitano. It was the day after Tara had discovered the online chat between Bobby and Dr. Chad, the conversation where Chad had threatened to not only disclose Tara's personal information, but also come to her house, and (his words) "watch her undress from the bedroom window when her daddy's at work, and take my own damn photos."

But on the drive towards Lake Capitano, where the water taxi would meet them at the extreme town limits of Norriswood, and take them over to Spider Island, Tara had kept dancing her fingers along the inside of the door of the small hatchback. She had barely slept, and her head felt strained, tightened. She had awoken at several points during the night before. Each time she did so the amount of light in her room increased through the shaded window on her left, and each time, she reached out and around the small bed she'd slept in since she was a child. Before Bobby had picked her up in her father's driveway that morning, she had sworn to get a knife. Sworn to keep it sheathed beneath her pillow.

On the island, Bobby had dug around inside his parents' cabin for a while. Hockey sticks and boat oars were tied in twine and ran vertically across the ceiling in places where logs had been hammered in for more storage. Tara had run her eyes over Bobby's mother's bookshelf, romance novels, old detective books, while Bobby fished around in the fridge for a can of beer.

"Ah, this is the gear," he'd said. "Dad's Pilsner. From the Netherlands."

Tara brought her eyes away from the bookshelf. He was wearing a pair of jeans shorts that cut off naturally above his knee but he had them rolled up an extra inch or so, the denim rolling up onto his quadriceps. He had been wearing a muscle shirt, and that tattoo that stuck out on his right bicep, three digits poked into his skin: 9/5/15 gleamed in a patch of August sun. The entire kitchen was wood and brown, and glowed, caught in the light petering in from the skylights. Spiders dangled around the inside of the house, and Tara noticed how they revealed themselves after you had brought your gaze onto the wall, the ceiling, and kept it lingering there for a few extra moments. Tara blinked, swallowed.

"You're not going to bring that out on the water with you, are you?" she'd said.

Bobby had flicked the seal open, the pop of the air pressure inside as the can opened. "I was planning on it," he'd said. "Hey, there's one for you too." He opened the door of the fridge again, and tossed a beer can toward her. She'd caught it, the can stinging her palms with the sudden cold.

They had waded out some ways from the dock. Tara sat snug in Bobby's father's kayak. A sleek, slim, one, Bobby had said. "No trouble getting the speed up in that thing, but it'd be risky on a day like today".

The water had rippled beneath Tara's boat, and she felt the kayak move easily to the side. There had been no other boats on the water, no motors throwing wakes kilometers behind them. But the wind had picked up since the two had ventured out, and the waves grew the further Tara steered away from shore.

Bobby stood erect on the water board. Shirtless now, his abdomen catching the breeze, a long wooden ore clutched in his hand which he rotated to the left, and then the right of the board, swooshing water backwards, propelling himself forward. Tara had grinned despite herself, but then gritted her teeth. She barreled forward herself, trying to catch up to him.

They had decided to try and make it all the way around the island, and once they were halfway, Bobby sat himself down on the board. He'd given Tara one end of his ore, and gripping it, Tara brought Bobby together with the kayak. They floated then, the wind easy, the tide steering them slowly west, the right direction anyway, if they wanted to circle the entire rock.