Free Surface Tension by Brent Runyon Page B

point the nose of the boat toward the power station and push the throttle forward a little. The boat feels like it wantsto go faster, so I push it a little bit more. Mike opens a beer, drinks it fast, and then crumples up the can and drops it in a paper bag with about ten other empties. Did he drink those all today?
    He taps me on the shoulder and takes the wheel again. I stand in the space between them and hold on to the backs of their seats. When the boat hits a wave, my knuckles touch their sticky backs.
    Mike has slowed down the boat a little so he can talk. He says, “You know the Boy Scout camp over there?” pointing back at our side of the lake.
    I don't, but I say, “Yeah.”
    “Me and Eliza were over there one time. I was fishing.”
    Eliza takes over the story. “I was sunbathing on the front of the boat, you know, topless.”
    “Yeah.” I can imagine.
    He says, “And we kind of drifted over into the area where the Boy Scouts were doing their canoe races.”
    She says, “And I was like, ‘Shit. Mike. Start the boat.'”
    He says, “But the engine wouldn't start, and we kept drifting closer and closer to the canoes. I was …” He mocks himself trying to start the boat. “And she was …” He pretends he's Eliza sitting up on the front of the boat waving to the Boy Scouts.
    I thought she would have at least tried to cover up, but I guess not. She says, “Oh well, they were going to have to see a pair of tits sometime.”
    Mike's laughing. “Yeah, I bet they didn't think they'd get that merit badge at Boy Scout camp.”
    He laughs harder and Eliza hits him and then they kiss. Shit, why did I quit going to Boy Scouts?
    Mike guns the engine again and turns the boat back toward the dock. I guess our little joyride is over.
    The road on our left and all the houses look a little different from out here on the water. There's a big house built on the edge of the rock wall that I've never seen before, with a long wooden staircase down to a fancy boathouse and a weeping willow growing next to it. The branches drip all the way down to the water.
    I'm so lucky that we moved into a cottage where the land is flat and we can walk right down to the lake. What if we moved into one of these other houses and had different neighbors? That would be terrible. Even if our cottage is small and a piece of crap, at least we live next to the Richardsons.
    The night feels warm tonight and I want to be outside. Mom and Dad usually go down to the lake one last time to look at the water and the stars, and I don't usually go down with them. Usually, I stay inside and read, but tonight I want to go. We walk down to our little patch of beach and get our chairs out from where the minister put them next to the woodpile. This could be nice, but now we're all aggravated because of the chairs and because of the floodlight at the end of the minister's dock.
    I don't know why he put that in. I don't know what he thinks he needs to see out there. Now our whole beach is lit up like a prison after an escape.
    Even Mom is mad about it. She says, “That minister is pretty sinister.”
    That's her idea of a joke, and Dad laughs at it.
    Mom says, “
The Sinister Minister
—it sounds like a mystery novel.”
    She should know. She's always reading some mysterywith dumb-ass titles like
A Is for Accidental Homicide
and
B Is for Bathwater Drowning.
    I say, “I should just go unscrew that lightbulb.”
    Dad says, “That's not a bad idea. Let's do it.”
    Mom says, “Please don't. That's trespassing.”
    Dad says, “It'll be fine.”
    I say, “It'll be fine.”
    Mom says, “Fine, but if you get arrested, don't expect me to bail you out.” Dad and I sneak out onto the dock. I've got the
Mission: Impossible
theme in my head. This is fun. I hum a little of it out loud and Dad turns and smiles at me. Now we're both humming it.
    We get to the end and I stretch up, but it's a little higher than I can reach.
    Dad and I are almost the same height, so he