Free Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan

tried to justify it to myself. She had hurt me. Besides, it was just a peep. They were all talk. Nothing would happen. We’d have a quick look as she got out of the water and then go.
    “OK,” I said.
    As we were leaving, I saw that Ryan was back on his lifeguard’s chair. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised and the corners of his mouth turned down.

They’d been complaining about the length of the walk for ten minutes. “Where you taking us, Dan?” Jack said.
    “Fat camp, probably,” Lewis said.
    You get used to biking at Leisure World, but we were on foot now, and it did seem to take an age. Soon, however, we passed the tree where Lexi had carved her initials and the two sets of numbers. The sun was dropping, and shadows of the branches threw us into creeping darkness. “We’re getting closer,” I said.
    “She better be good,
Dan,
” said Thorpey. “I’ll want to see some skin for this kind of travel.”
    The atmosphere had changed. I was under suspicion. Under pressure. “I know where she gets changed,” I said.
    “That’s more like it,” Jack said.
    “But I think it’s best if we hide. If we go and confront her, she’ll just run off.”
    I hushed them and chose a stand of trees a safe distance from the clearing. Her clothes were not on the bank.
    “Where is she, then, this girl?” said Jack.
    “She’ll be here,” I said. “She’s always here.”
    We waited. After a while they started to get restless, started to whisper to each other. Jack spit through his teeth onto the dry ground. I needed her now.
    “Clearly, she’s not here,” Jack said.
    “Maybe if we wait a little bit longer,” I said.
    “I don’t think so, Dan,” Jack said.
    “You’ve made her up, fat boy,” Thorpey said. “You’ve dragged us into this stinking forest to look at an imaginary girlfriend.”
    “No. Listen, I can show you she’s been here. I can prove it.”
    I walked out from behind the trees into the clearing, looking for her footprints, for any sign of her. There was nothing. Just the dark hollow of the cooking pit, covered over with dry earth and sand. “Look,” I said. “This is where she cooks her meals.”
    “What the —?” Thorpey said.
    “Are you for real?” asked Jack. “You bring us all the way out here, and the only tits we get to see are yours?”
    Lewis laughed. Jack slapped at my chest. I parried his blows, but then I felt a sharp chop to the back of my calf. It was Thorpey. I went down onto my knees, and Lewis kicked me in the stomach. “Not talking about my shorts anymore, are you, fatty? Where’s your
banter
now?”
    I was winded by the kick and couldn’t speak.
    “Let’s roll this lying tub of lard into the lake,” Jack said.
    “He’ll float,” Lewis said. “We could ride him to the other side, like a dinghy.”
    Jack cuffed me around the head, and the three of them pushed me down the slope toward the edge of the water. I could smell the lake, the silty dirt in there. The sun was white.
    “Right, grab his arms,” Jack said. He moved around me. I watched his feet, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving, a little ripple on the lake. Then, suddenly, a hand came out of the water, took him by the ankle, and dragged him down. He gave a raucous scream.
    The others jumped back. “Where did he go?” Lewis said.
    Jack screamed again, as he rose back to the surface. The water splashed everywhere and was welcome on my face.
    “What’s happening?” Thorpey shouted. They went toward the edge.
    “Something got me!” Jack screamed. “It just —” He went under again.
    “He just disappeared!” Lewis said. “Did you see that? Before he even —”
    I turned to watch as Thorpey stepped cautiously toward the edge of the lake. I could hear thrashing in the water. Then Jack rose up again, pulling in huge gasps of air.
    “There’s something down there,” Jack said, and he began to splash toward the bank. I saw Lexi behind him, her head and chest above