The Summer List. Amy Mason Doan

the sleek yellow vessel. So you can explore, he’d explained.

      To my quietly fuming mother, he had said, his eyes dodging hers, Because she’s in the double digits now.

      If they fought about it later—him writing such a big check without asking or, the more serious offense, the implication that he knew me best—I hadn’t heard it, and the heating duct in our small house ran right from their bedroom up to mine. I heard their whispered “discussions” all the time.

      Eventually my mother grew to accept the kayak. She told her church friends that she liked me to play outdoors all summer. Sermons in stones and all of that.

      The lake was small, a crescent of water only six miles around. At the narrowest, southernmost point, where we were, it was only four hundred feet wide. I could paddle across our end in two minutes without breaking a sweat.

      Today I took it easy so I could size up the new neighbors as I crossed. I expected them to be outside commanding an army of painters and fix-it people, but the place seemed as run-down as ever, the gutters overflowing with pine needles, the dull wood shingles fringed in moss, the narrow dock as rickety as a gangplank. Whatever the trucks had been there for, it wasn’t visible from the back.

      The house hadn’t been rented in more than six months. We were too far from the good skiing and stores, and you couldn’t take anything motorized on our little lake. Everybody wanted to live in Tahoe, or at least Pinecrest.

      But there were signs of life. A rainbow beach towel draped over the dock ladder, bags of mulch stacked by the garden gate. The small square garden, to the left of the house, had been untended for years and used unofficially as a dog run. It was basically an ugly, deer-proof metal fence surrounding weeds, but obviously the new owners had plans.

      Something else new—a small red spot on the edge of the dock, right at the center. Paddling closer, I saw that it was a kid’s figurine dangling from a nail. A plastic Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, her chest puffed out like when she was on the prow of the ship pretending to be a statue. It definitely had not been there the last time I’d snooped around The Shipwreck.

      I wondered if the famous “daughter my age” had done it. I hoped not. It was the kind of joke I liked, and I didn’t want to like her. There was no way we would be friends, not when she found out what I was at school. The best I could hope for was that she would be what I called a Neutral. Someone I didn’t need to think about at all. Someone who didn’t make my day better or worse.

      “You look exactly like an Indian princess.”

      I jumped in my seat, almost losing my paddle.

      A girl was swimming up to me. Her pale skin had splatters of mud on it and she had threads of green lake gunk in her hair. Red hair. The toy Ariel on the dock had definitely been her idea.

      “You know, like Pocahontas or someone, with your dark braid, in your canoe?” she continued, breaststroking close enough that I could see it was freckles on her shoulders, not dirt. I’d never seen so many freckles. There were goose bumps, too, which didn’t surprise me. The lake wasn’t really comfortable for swimming until after the Fourth of July.

      I composed myself enough to correct her. “Kayak.”

      “Right, canoes are the kneeling ones. You coming to see us?” She tilted her head at the house.

      Before I could answer, she closed her eyes and sank down into the water up to her hairline. When she popped back up, she squeezed her nostrils between her thumb and index finger to clear them.

      “My mother wanted me to bring you this,” I said. I stashed my paddle in the nose of the kayak, yanked my backpack from the front seat, and unzipped it so she could see the cake under its pouf of plastic wrap. “To welcome you and your parents.”

      “Parent. Singular. So you didn’t want to bring it? Your mom made you?”

      I still wasn’t sure what category she belonged to, but she was definitely not a Neutral.

      “I didn’t mean that,” I said.

      I was starting to drift from the dock but she swam close and for a second I worried she would grab the hull and capsize me.

      At the thought, I automatically gripped my shorts pocket, squeezing the familiar shape, smaller than a deck of cards, through the worn cotton. The Ziploc was only insurance. My good-luck charm couldn’t get wet.

      The swimming girl’s eyes darted from my face down to the edge of my shorts, where my hand clutched. She cleared water from her ears, repositioned her purple bathing suit straps, and slicked her red hair back with both hands.

      The whole time she performed this aquatic grooming routine, her eyes didn’t budge from my right hand. I forced myself to let go of my pocket and fidgeted with my braid instead.

      But her eyes didn’t follow my hand. They stayed right on the zippered compartment of my shorts.

      I’d have to invent a new category for this girl. She missed nothing.

      I would set the cake on the dock. I’d paddle over to Meriwether Point like I’d planned and have my picnic. Lie in the sun as long as I wanted, with nobody to bug me, on my favorite spot on the big rock that curved perfectly under my back. Later I’d collect pieces of driftwood for a mirror I was making and go swimming in Jade Cove.

      I had all kinds of plans for the summer.

      “Well, I’ve got to...” I began.

      “Do you want to...” She laughed. “What were you saying?”

      “Just that I should go. I told my mom I’d help around the house.”

      “Where’s your place?”

      I pointed.

      She paddled herself around to face the opposite shore. “Cool. We can swim that, easy. We can go back and forth all the time.”

      She was so sure we’d be friends. She was sure enough for both of us.

      “Come in and we’ll eat the whole cake ourselves,” she said, completing her circle in the water to face me. “My mom’s in Tahoe. She won’t be back ’til late.”

      “I wish I could.” Stop being so nice. I can’t afford to like you.

      “Are you going to be in ninth?” she went on, panting a little as she tread water.

      “Yeah.”

      “Me, too. You can say you were telling me about the high school. That’s helpful.”

      “There’s not much to tell about the school. It’s tiny. It’s not very good. The football team is the Astros, because everyone around here is seriously into the moon thing.”

      “See? I need you. Come on.”

      I didn’t offer the most valuable piece of advice—If you want to make friends at CDL High, don’t hang around with me.

      “Please. Tell your mom I totally forced you to eat a piece of cake and help me unpack.” The girl grinned, sure of her charm.

      It was a wide grin that stretched out the freckles on her nose, and I couldn’t resist it.

      * * *

      Her name was Casey.

      “Casey Katherine Shepherd, named after Casey Kasem, that old DJ,” she said, sprinting ahead of me up the dock to her house. She wrapped the rainbow beach towel around her bottom half as she ran. “My mom was obsessed with him,” she called back, leaping onto the sandy path in the sloping, scrubby patch of lawn behind the house. “She has CD box sets of radio countdowns from 1970 to 1988. What’s your name?”

      “Laura. Named after a great-great-aunt I never met. But I’m guessing she wasn’t a DJ.”

      Casey turned so I could see she was laughing, but she didn’t stop running. She didn’t rinse her feet off, though