Free Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre Page A

a lucky man.”
    B ACK IN E ULA, Winston’s sister, Liz, walked back and forth in front of the high school entrance, her thumbs hooked into the front pockets of her jeans. She was waiting for Winston, and had been for a half-hour. Her car was in the shop, and he was her ride home. All her friends had left already, and his car wasn’t where he had parked it that morning. Maybe he had gone to McDonald’s for lunch, and parked it somewhere else when he returned, or maybe he and Jay had decided to cut school. He was such a show-off, sweet when they were alone, braiding her hair as they watched TV, then disowning her when the guys showed up. She’d give him five more minutes, then call her mom from the pay phone.
    Liz and Winston were easily identifiable as twins, but their sharp features, so delicate they could have been sculpted with a toothpick, made the boy somewhat elfish and the girl simply beautiful. And while Winston’s hair was plain brown, Liz’s was chestnut with strands of real red. Faint freckles splattered her cheeks and forehead like dried rust water on a window.
    A Maverick pulled up in front of her, driven by Jay. He hoisted himself up to sit in the car window so he could talk to her over the roof of the car.
    “Hey, Liz.”
    “Hey, Jay. Have you seen Winston?”
    “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
    “Great,” she said, looking down at the toe of her sneaker, which was grinding into the concrete sidewalk as if Liz were crushing an insect.
    “Do you need a ride?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hop in.”
    They drove out of the parking lot, past the cow field, onto the road that headed out toward Lake Overlook. Eula Schools had been built on the eastern edge of town in the late 1950s, since it was in that direction (toward the interstate and Boise) that the town was predicted to expand. But instead, the town had stretched south toward Lake Overlook, where the rich people lived, and north toward the sugar factory, where poor people worked, leaving Eula Schools still on the edge of town. There was a field next to the high school parking lot that contained what may have been the most abused cows in Idaho. They had been chased, ridden, pelted with rocks, and, once, spray-painted and herded by kids from a rival high school onto the Eula High football field during a game.
    “So, how have you been?” Jay asked.
    “Fine, you?”
    “Fine.”
    “You’re living at your mom’s, right?” Liz asked.
    “Yep.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Oh, excellent. We get along great. She lets me do whatever I want. It really feels more like living on my own than anything.” Liz had never heard such wild insistence in Jay’s voice. He must have heard it too, for when she glanced at him, he jutted his chin up and turned briefly to watch a passing car. Then he added, “I still go to the Van Bekes’ a lot.”
    “Sounds good,” said Liz. She had only asked to be polite. She didn’t really care.
    They crested a hill and Lake Overlook lay sparkling before them.
    “Wonder what happened to Winston,” said Jay.
    “Yeah. I figured he was with you and the guys.”
    “Why?” Jay asked.
    “Why?”
    “We’re not, like, married.”
    “Okay,” Liz said with a whatever-you-say laugh.
    “No, really,” said Jay. “I actually feel like we’re kinda, I don’t know, growing apart. I’m feeling more . . . serious these days. Maybe it’s moving out of Carl and Janet’s, or maybe it’s being a senior. Don’t tell him I said that.”
    “I won’t,” Liz said, then added, turning toward him and nodding condescendingly, “We don’t really talk.” They had reached the Padgetts’. “Thanks for the ride,” Liz said. She leaped out of the car and ran up the lawn.
    Jay pulled away and left the subdivision. He drove calmly until he reached the open road. Then, as if his fist had been set on a spring, it shot out and struck the dashboard. When he withdrew it, there was a crack running between the two air-conditioning vents. A