Free Monster Lake by Edward Lee Page A

the dictionary
she usually used, but at least it was a dictionary, a slim
paperback with a brick-red cover.
    She looked up the first
word: reagent.
    Oh no! she thought.
    The word wasn’t there! Then
she busily looked up the other words, mutation, transmission, genetic, carnivore, and—
    None of them were in the dictionary!
     
    ««—»»
     
    Just another
disappointment, Terri thought, brooding now
at her desk. And after all the trouble she’d gone to in order to
get the words—sneaking into Uncle Chuck’s room, finding the
briefcase.
    All for nothing, she thought drearily.
    Or—
    Maybe not.
    One thing she hadn’t considered. She looked
then and saw that the dictionary she’d found in her desk was old,
not the one she usually used. Then—
    Oh, man!
    She looked more closely at
the dictionary and saw just how old it actually was. Right there on
the cover, it said Elementary Dictionary,
Preschool-Age 8.
    It was a children’s dictionary, left over
from way back when she was in the first and second grade.
    Of course!
    This was a dictionary for kids, not adults.
And those words she’d written down were definitely adult words.
So—
    I’ll just have to get a
bigger dictionary, she concluded. A dictionary for grownups.
    She knew there must be one
in the house somewhere. The only problem was finding it. Or maybe
she could go to the town library—surely they’d have all kinds of dictionaries
there.
    But who knows when I’ll be
able to do that? she glumly reminded
herself. I’m probably grounded…
    Then she looked up, at the sound of
voices.
    She walked to her door. Yes, she could hear
her mother and Uncle Chuck talking in the kitchen, but their voices
were muffled. Terri pressed her ear against the door and tried to
listen.
    Darn it!
    The voices still couldn’t be heard well
enough to understand.
    Next, she put her hand on the doorknob and
very carefully turned it, so not to make any noise. Then she pulled
the door open to a narrow crack.
    And now she could hear…
    “ Well, what I didn’t tell
you yet,” Uncle Chuck was saying to her mother, “was that Terri got
into the boathouse this morning. You must’ve forgotten to lock the
door last night when you came up.”
    “ How could I have been so
forgetful?” her mother scolded herself. “What did she
see?”
    “ Not much, at least I don’t
think so. I caught her in the office. The only thing she could’ve
seen was the desk, and some preliminary notes.”
    “ But what about the
backroom?” her mother fretted next. “She didn’t get into the
backroom, did she?”
    “ I don’t see how she could
have,” Uncle Chuck replied. “The door was locked.”
    At least that’s one good
thing, Terri thought to herself. They don’t know I used my library card to get in,
and they don’t know I saw the stuff in the backroom…
    “ But I’m really getting
worried,” her uncle continued. “Things are really getting
dangerous.”
    “ I know,” her mother
agreed.
    “ I mean, can you imagine?
If she went to the boathouse and actually got into the backroom,
and saw the specimen tanks? She’d be terrified. Or, worse, if she
got in there and found the key…” Uncle Chuck paused as if troubled.
“And opened the trapdoor?”
    “ Don’t even say it!” her
mother said in the most dreadful voice Terri had ever
heard.
    The kitchen conversation halted for a few
moments, as though Terri’s mother and uncle were thinking about
things. Then her mother said, “What did you do? When you caught her
in the boathouse?”
    “ I sent her to her room,”
Uncle Chuck said. “Didn’t really know what to do.”
    “ The poor thing. She must
be so confused; I never have even a minute to spend with her since
the project, and with her father being gone, that can only make it
worse for her.”
    Terri continued to listen eagerly at the
crack in her opened bedroom door.
    “ But I’m really getting
worried now,” her Uncle Chuck said next. “I mean, they’re