Free Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan Page A

the surface. I wondered why the other two boys didn’t go after her.
    Then it became clear to me. They couldn’t see her. None of them could.
    “Lexi,” I said.
    Lewis turned around and kicked me in the stomach again. “Shut up, you,” he said. I folded up with the pain. Jack got to his feet in the shallow water but then tripped over again.
    “This is too messed up,” Thorpey said. He started to run toward the path, and Lewis followed him. They didn’t wait for Jack.
    “Where are you going?” Jack called. “Help me, for God’s sake!
    I looked at Lexi. She shook her head at me. I thought she was going to grab Jack again, but she didn’t. He scrambled onto the bank and ran past me, shivering and moaning. “Wait up!” he called after his friends. “Don’t leave me!”
    After a few moments, he disappeared into the forest, and I could no longer hear the noise of his frantic breathing or his wails for help.
    “Lexi,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    But she just shook her head again and plunged back under the water. I saw her rise once, way out in the middle of the lake, and then she was gone. I put my fingers to the cut by my eye and winced. I looked at my hand. There were no longer any grazes on my knuckles. I looked down at my leg. The long bloody gash had completely disappeared, and my ankle was no longer swollen. I held my ribs, in the place where Lewis had kicked me. That still hurt, but nothing stung worse than my regret.

I stumbled back through the forest. It seemed to be getting bigger, thicker. The coming darkness was like a gas swirling through the trees, filling my lungs. I thought of Lexi’s hand reaching out of the water, wrapping itself around Jack’s calf, and pulling him down. She had saved me. I thought of her shaking her head. The disappointment. The bruise around her eye had darkened even since the morning.
    But why couldn’t the boys see her? At certain points it seemed like they couldn’t even see Jack.
    I realized that I was limping, although I didn’t have to. My ankle was healed. I missed the wounds now. They seemed somehow to have connected me to Lexi. It did not take much time to fall in love, but it took even less to ruin it. Exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I sat down by a wide beech tree.
    A few meters from the tree stood five little gravestones, roughly made. Dotty, Jacko, Rex, Tigger, and Ranger. A pet cemetery. In the distance I could see the house that had once been home to some rich family and was now an Italian restaurant. The dogs must have belonged to the people who used to live there. I stared at one of the gravestones.

    My tired mind began to race back through the last few days, making connections. I thought back to eating fish with Lexi, her favorite dinner. I thought of her mother, defying festive tradition for Lexi’s sake, serving fish and corn on the cob for the family Christmas dinner. Her birthday. December twenty-fifth. 12-25.
    I thought back to the numbers carved into the pine tree. The first number. 122593.
    12-25-93
    Her birth date. It had to be. AHC. Alexandria H. Cocker.
    But if that was her date of birth, I had to accept what the second number must be. 10-31-10. The last day of October, two years ago.

I walked back, past the golf driving range and the all-weather soccer fields, where the ball made a tinny squeak as it bounced high off the red sandy surface. Night had fallen, and as I neared the cabins, I saw families riding their bikes out toward the restaurants, their lights visible first, like star clusters in the tunnels of dark between the trees.
    I hated Leisure World, and I wanted to be home. I was scared and shaken, confused. But I knew I had work to do tomorrow. I owed Lexi, big-time, and I was getting closer to understanding her mysteries, strange as they were. Maybe if I could understand her, I could help.
    The cabin was busy when I got back. Dad was laughing, listening to a man with pointed sideburns tell a story. There were other people there,