What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,16

God’s way of saying, This is not land meant for habitation, people! Move to the Twin Cities … but what do I know?

“I want to try Tabor Oaks again,” said Juliet, rocking back in forth on the boat’s little bench. Rob and I treaded water, teeth chattering, avoiding each other’s eyes. “They’ve put floors down now on the other building, to climb up.…”

“Forget to call me that night,” I said. “Like you have the last two weeks.”

“Fine,” Juliet said. “We’ll do it. It’s a good course.”

“Who’s we?” I spat, enraged. “Am I not part of ‘we’?”

“It’s good in a semi-sick way,” Rob said, ignoring me. “The course.”

“Somebody lives in that place now,” Juliet said. “It was probably just, like, the mover, or the new owner’s brother or something and his girlfriend.”

“How do you know?” I demanded.

She shrugged.

Again, later, long after, I would close my eyes in the dark, and see Juliet’s legs, the spokes of a starry-silvery-blue wheel, glowing in the dark that first night above Gitchee Pizza, and wonder, how-did-she-know-how-did-she-know?

“Maybe it was some crazy drifter who dragged some random girl into an empty apartment on a stormy night,” Rob said.

“How would he get in there?” Juliet answered, seriously.

“I was kidding,” Rob muttered.

Juliet shook her head. “Rape is a crime of opportunity.”

“It isn’t usually, in fact,” Rob said. “You should know better, Juliet. Your dad being a cop and all. Some rapists plan very carefully. The smart ones do. They stalk people for weeks and months. If they’re really crazy, they work up this whole thing where the girl is coming out of her house—”

“You read too many books, boy detective,” Juliet interrupted.

“It’s a fact,” Rob said. Their eyes met. They both smiled. “I deal just in facts, ma’am.”

He ducked under the surface. Part of me hoped he would stay there.

THE NEXT NIGHT, I had my job interview. I needed my mom’s car. It was eight o’clock, and there was still plenty of light left in the sky, so I wore a ball cap with my ponytail poking through the gap, and a long-sleeved shirt.

The speed limit in Iron Harbor is 30. My mother’s car is a six-seat Toyota mini-van. Very used. But very sturdy.

“Be careful,” Mom warned. “No speeding.”

“Not even any drag racing,” I said.

“Be back by—”

“Morning. Yes, Mother. Do you know how many other mothers are saying, now, ‘Miss, I don’t want you out one minute after sunrise!’?”

“Don’t change the subject Do you think you should put gloves on? I can still see everything. It’s light out.”

“I already look like some old lady in an English mystery novel, Mom.”

She started laughing. “You do. You look like that woman on an old TV show who was always solving mysteries by herself. I used to think, it was this little town in Maine and people were dying there like flies. How could there be a murder every week in a town that small?”

How, indeed?

I dumped my dinner plate in the sink, hugged Angie until her feet were off the floor and she was literally unable to breathe, and left my mother ranting at the beef stroganoff.

Out on Island Road, I turned off at Red Beach, just to look at the water, since I was too early for my appointment at 9 P.M. The young mom had a certifying class, and it ended late. I’d learned I was going to meet Tessa’s mother, too, also a nurse—and of course, Tavish, the baby boy. I stopped for a while and just breathed. I rarely do this, but Island Road is a little strip that leads to the natural turn onto Lakeshore Road. That night, the lake was too breathtakingly beautiful to miss. Any scrap of daylight counts if you’re protected.

Some of the beaches are black sand. Others, besides being black, have particles of red in them. The other half of the people who work in Iron Harbor—those who don’t work at the clinic—are on the boats, the ones that carry iron ore all over the world. The town tries to cover up the pit mines with fast-growing trees now, birch and maple. My mother says this once was a paradise with everything a person could want (especially if the person wanted mosquitoes). In any other country, Lake Superior would not be considered a lake, but an inland sea.

When I tried to pull away from Red Beach, some asshole practically sideswiped me. So much for the peaceful feeling. I figured he had to be from Chicago, in the kind of Italian convertible guys