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Then what would we do? Dive down again, probably. We needed to be sure. Absolutely one hundred percent certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. We needed more evidence. And we needed to get it fast, because Finkle had the hood ornament. He knew the car was right there somewhere. He knew something was happening.

I stood up. “We have to go out,” I said. “Now.”

“Cassie.” Liam narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“It’s Mrs. Finkle,” I said. “I think she’s in the car.”

Liam exploded with laughter, sending a storm of white cockatoos fleeing from a nearby tree. “What? Are you joking?” He cocked his head to one side. “You’re joking, right?”

I shook my head. “She ‘left him,’” I said, making air quotes with my fingers. “She —”

Liam laughed again. “She lives in Paterson,” he said. “She calls Mom all the time.”

“Huh?”

“She’s not
dead,
Cassie.”

“Oh. But, then . . .”

“What, did you think he
killed
her? You’ve been watching too much TV or something. And even if he did, why would he put her in the car? Why not just put her in the shed?”

He was right. And suddenly I felt like an idiot. All that late-night reading, the mermaid, the newspaper.

I looked past Liam, out at the water.

It still didn’t make sense. There was still a car under there. Not a clunker but a new car, the kind of car you want to take some kid for a spin in and get your picture in the paper with.

Even if your wife was still alive and well and living in Paterson, why would you lock your fancy new car in someone else’s shed and drown it?

Liam shrugged. “There’s probably some reason.”

“Yeah.” Some reason. Like the invisible line across the lake saying
NO SWIMMING
. Swim here but not here. No need to ask questions. It’s better this way.

“I don’t know.” I reached down beside me to pick up a gum leaf. It was one of those leaves that curls back on itself, like a dog chasing its tail, making a tiny, perfect “o” in its own center. “It doesn’t make sense.”

I couldn’t get that picture out of my head. I had thought the newspaper was the key, that it was moving everything into place around it. Had I really imagined it?

“I don’t get it,” I said. “It was new at the festival, on January 16, and then —”

Beside me, I felt Liam tense, his whole body stiff, like he was bracing to ward something off.

“What?”

Liam shook his head tightly. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . January 16, you know?”

The date. I hadn’t realized at first. Why would I? It wasn’t a date that mattered to me, some random day in January months before I was even born. But it meant something to lots of people. Different things.
Second Friday in January, hottest day in three years, first day of the Lenton Festival, the day I got an award and a ride in a sports car
.

The day I was a baby in the backseat of a car, my father in the front, my calm, steady brother beside me.

“Sorry,” I began. “I . . .”

“It’s okay. It’s just a day.” He reached for a leaf. “You can stop making that face now.”

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop staring at him, and I couldn’t stop my face from doing whatever it was doing, because all of a sudden I had no control over it. All of a sudden it took everything I had to follow the thoughts that tumbled one after the other through my head.

January 16.

HF, HF, HF.

Drawing invisible lines.

Electrifying the fence.

Keeping his name out of the minutes.

Driving his brand-new car home from Lenton on the night of the festival.

The night of the crash.

His red car, his love of speed.

My stomach lurched as I remembered how we’d had to hold on as he careered around the corners, sliding out in the gravel.

Then it lurched again, sickeningly — that last moment on the roller coaster before the bottom drops out of the world.

His red car.

My skin prickled.

“Oh, my God,” I gasped.

“What?” Liam was staring at me.

I didn’t know what to say, where to begin, how to give him the piece that would click everything else into place.

“Your dad hates red,” I said.

“So?”

“He hates red,” I repeated. “It’s his car. It’s that date. He doesn’t want anyone swimming here.”

“There are snags and stuff,” Liam countered. “He’s —”

“No, there aren’t,” I said quietly.

I told him about the minutes. About
HF, HF, HF.

A bubble of silence rose in the space between us.

It was Liam who broke it. “He’s our friend,” he said. “He’s helped us out for years.” He looked up at me, as if willing me to agree with him, to nod and tell him he was right. “Mom said that after the accident, there were two kinds of people. She said some of her so-called friends just disappeared. They didn’t know what to say, how to handle it.” He shoveled one foot in front of him through the dirt. “As if it was something
they
had to handle.”

I nodded.

“But then there were other people who came out of nowhere, helping and stuff.”

“Like the Finkles?”

“Yeah. Mom even said they split up around then. They had their own problems, but it didn’t matter. They were always calling us, seeing how we were doing, helping out with things. Still do.”

“Like with a job for your dad,” I said softly, “and money for camp.”

“And other stuff.” Liam’s words came out in a rush, falling over one another. “I mean, they’ve been really . . .”

He stopped.

And I saw the moment when he saw what I did, laid out before him, the moment the last piece dropped into the pit of his stomach, like a small, cold stone.

“The license plates are gone,” he said slowly. “I thought it was because it was a clunker.”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. Something.” He looked away quickly, blinking.

“We need proof,” I said. Proof that the car was even under there, for a start.

And maybe more.

“Maybe there’ll be something there,” I said. “Something like . . .” I trailed off. Because I didn’t know how to say the words that would bring that fiery picture to life for both of us — words like
scratch
or
dent
.
Something that proved he was there,
I wanted to say,
in his car, going too fast, causing “Local Man/Horror Smash,” something that had nothing at all to do with “fatigue” or “driver error” — or a crying baby.

I didn’t need to say it. Liam turned back to me, his jaw set hard.

“I’m going out again.”

“I’ll get the raft.”

I wouldn’t time him today, wouldn’t count
one-cat-and-dog
or watch the surface for bubbles.

I would just wait. I knew he would stay down as long as he needed to. As long as he could.

“Cassie, stop!”

Liam grabbed my arm and pulled me down into the shade of the tree.

There was a crunch of tires, a rattling of chains.

We edged our way back into the scrub, keeping low.

It was Finkle again, changed back into his clothes but still slightly damp-looking. There were two other men with him. They were nodding as Finkle pointed out across the water and then down at the edge.

Liam gripped my arm. “What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we can swim here today.”

The men were unpacking tripods and cameras and collapsible rulers from a case. One of them was punching buttons on some kind of handheld electronic device.

It looked like they were settling in.

“Tomorrow,” Liam said. “During the centenary.”

Yes. It was perfect. We could show our faces for a while, then slip away. There was no way Finkle could be here then. Not when he had a lever to flip and a head to unveil and a time capsule to bury.

We crouched low and crept along the tree line toward our bikes.

I glanced down at Liam’s leg. Blood was flowing from the graze on his knee. “You should clean that,” I said. “It could get infected.”

Liam shook his head as he slipped ahead of me through the break in the fence. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m going to be fine.”

Hannah made me wear my best clothes.

“Howard will want you in a photo,” she said.

I tucked my shirt into my pants, then did up an extra button near the collar so you couldn’t see my bathing suit underneath.

It wasn’t my normal swimsuit. My Speedo was tumbling around and around in the washing machine, soaked in water and detergent.

“All that chlorine,” Mom said. “It’s good to give it a proper wash every now and then. And it’s not like you’ll be needing it today, is it?”

I shook my head. Then I went and grabbed the stripy bikini from the drawer where I had stuffed it.

It felt wrong, like I was wearing nothing at all. The flimsy straps sat there loosely rather than snapping securely across my back.

It wouldn’t matter today. It wasn’t like I was going to be doing my six or anything. And I could leave my shirt over the top for diving.

The ceremony was at one. The grand unveiling of the Finkle head and the mosaic and the handprints, the flipping of the new fake lever, the burying of the time capsule, the off-key blaring of the brass band.

Then some photos, some potato salad, maybe a ceremonial sausage or two.

But by then, Liam and I would be long gone.

We’d be up at the lake with the underwater camera he had borrowed from his mother’s cousin’s second-best friend. It had a built-in flash that was way better than a leaky flashlight.

We would get evidence. We would piece the puzzle together carefully and exactly so no one could take it apart.

We gathered near the clock tower — the class, the community, everyone in New Lower Grange, and plenty of other people besides.

Hannah was beaming. There were journalists from the city with notebooks and clipboards. There was even a TV crew with microphones and cameras.

Hannah walked around, shaking hands and welcoming everyone.

On a trestle table nearby, copies of the centenary book were stacked in neat, tidy rows.

I stood in my best clothes, buttoned up one hole too high, and waited.

Then Hannah’s phone rang, and I saw her frown. She shook her head. She opened her mouth, said a few words, closed it again. Then she hung up and looked around with a panicked expression at the gathering crowd.

It was 12:45.

She walked to the podium and tapped the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “I do apologize. There may be a slight delay. The mayor has some urgent business to attend to. Rest assured he will be with us as soon as possible.”

A slight delay? How slight was slight? I wondered. And what was urgent business, anyway? Was this more Finkle-spin, and we’d be standing here all afternoon while he trimmed his beard?

I grabbed Hannah before she could disappear into the crowd. “What’s going on?”

“Howard had to go to check on the water guys.”

“What water guys?”

She waved a hand. “Oh, they’re letting more water into the lake or something.”

“They’re what?” My heart raced. “But what for?”

“Howard says it’s too low,” Hannah said. “It’s getting dangerous for boating and stuff. Lots of snags or something.” She sighed. “If I’d known about it, we could have had the ceremony up there. It would have been symbolic. But it was all a bit last minute — too late to move things.” She checked her watch and frowned. “I hope he won’t be long.”

“Finkle’s flipping a lever?”

“What?” She shook her head. “There’s no lever.”

“But he’s drowning the town, right — all over again?”

“Cassie, do you have to be so dramatic? It’s just a bit of extra water. It’s not the same thing at all.” Then she leaned toward me. “Aren’t you hot like that? Why don’t you undo . . .”

I took a step back, out of reach. Then another. Then I turned and hurried through the crowd, searching for Liam.

Finkle was going to drown the town, the car, everything all over again.

It would be sunk deep, so deep we would never get back down there. The water rushing in would break up the car, tumble it over itself, send its rusted pieces flying in all directions.

And we had no proof, just a pile of wood and a mirror that could be from anywhere.

No one would believe us.

I wouldn’t believe us, if I wasn’t already me.

I raced through the crowd and finally spotted Liam over by the headless plinth. He was wearing dark trousers, but underneath I could see the telltale lines of his board shorts.

“We have to go!” he said when I told him. “We have to go now.”

I nodded. But how? There was no time. No time to go back for our bikes and ride up there. There was no time at all.

We stared at each other hopelessly.

There was no way.

Then I heard a familiar noise. An engine chugging and spluttering as it pulled into the parking lot: old, worn brakes squealing in protest.

A faded, rusty, once-green truck held together by duct tape and optimism.

I grabbed Liam by the wrist. “Let’s go.”