“Hey, that creek’s too small for a whale like you,” laughed Jason.
Charlie’s heart was pounding with rage.
These little boys need to be taught a lesson, don’t they, Charlie? It was the little girl’s voice from the ocean, whispering inside her head.
“Yeah, come on out of there,” said one of the other boys. “We just wanna play with you.”
“What if I don’t want to play?” she retorted.
“Then we’ll make you,” Jason replied, not smiling.
Charlie could feel her shadow spreading beneath her, hiding under the red silt, darkening the water to the color of blood. She could feel the beating of the boys’ hearts, and she knew that the cruel power they’d wielded in the pool was gone in this living water.
“Then I guess you’ll have to come down here and get me, penis breath,” she said. “Unless you’re scared of the water.”
The boys looked at each other, then hopped down the bank and splashed toward her.
“You’re the only one who’s gonna have penis breath,” Jason threatened.
“Jason, did you ever think about what it’s like to die?” she asked.
He frowned, confused. “No.”
“That’s too bad. You should’ve thought about it, ’cause now you’re dead!”
The dark, silty clouds curling around the boys’ ankles suddenly turned to hard, razor-sharp jaws that clamped deep into their flesh. They screamed as their legs were ground down into the watery maws like celery sucked into a garbage disposal. In seconds their bodies were liquefied and consumed. The slashed rags of their swim trunks and sneakers were all that remained.
Charlie stared at the bloody water and rags and started to shiver. Dear God, she hadn’t really wanted this, had she?
Her sandal bobbed to the surface.
Run back to the clubhouse as fast as you can, the voice told her. Tell them you came out here to play hide-and-seek with Jason and his little friends. Two men grabbed the boys, but you got away because you were hiding.
She grabbed the sandal, shoved it onto her foot, scrambled up the bank, and ran through the brush. Oh God, what had she done, what had she done? By the time she made it back to the gate, she was crying and screaming for help at the top of her lungs. It felt good to scream. A half-dozen people crowded around her, and she haltingly told them what the voice had said to tell. Someone ran to fetch Mr. Wilson and the club manager.
They wrapped her in a beach towel, and Mr. Wilson sat with her and tried to soothe her with kind words and a soda from the snack bar. Charlie drank it, even though she felt sick to her stomach. Her lower belly hurt, too, a weird crampy ache she’d never felt before.
The police arrived and searched the arroyo. Soon, the officers came back with the boys’ bloody trunks and sneakers in plastic bags.
When she finally got back to the house, Charlie locked herself in the bathroom and drew a big tub of hot water.
She undressed and eased herself in, wishing that the tub was bigger so that she could get her whole body under the water. The dried mud melted away from her arms and legs, staining the water a brownish red.
Charlie …
Suddenly, there came a bright pain like someone had stabbed her lower belly with an ice pick. She doubled over, bile rising in her throat.
Her eyes widened when she realized she was bleeding. A thin tendril of blood began to spread through the water. The pain was so bad she thought she might faint.
You’re a woman now, Charlie. Hurts, doesn’t it?
“Please, make it stop,” she whimpered.
You’d be hurting a lot worse right now if I hadn’t been there today to save you from those boys. I won’t take away the blood, but I can take away the pain, if you do something for me.
“Yes, anything,” she gasped. It felt as if her womb was trying to turn itself inside out.
Tell your aunt and uncle that you don’t want to go back to the club, not after what happened today. Tell them you’re old enough to be at the house by yourself …
The Wilsons reluctantly agreed to let her stay at home, and the voice took her for long walks around the city. They visited all the playgrounds and parks in the city, and she learned about the best places for her shadow: the river, park ponds, drainage pipes, ditches, even the perpetually sodden ground around the public water fountains.
She also learned to spot the quiet men who lurked near