The Drowned Forest Read Online Free PDF Page A

it. Is that what you see?”
    I nod, stuffing my trembling hands under my thighs.
    “You sure? You sure it’s not magical thinking?”
    “Yeah. I’m sure.”
    “Then it doesn’t matter what Pastor Wesley thinks, right? It doesn’t matter what your parents or anybody thinks. We saw what we saw. We’re not losing it. Holly’s soul is trapped in the river somehow. And she needs us, and we can’t worry about what anybody else thinks, okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “For Holly.”
    “For Holly, yeah.”
    He tucks the ring into his pocket again, then gives me a bolstering punch in the arm. We turn onto the road that crosses the top of Wilson Dam, heading toward the southern shore of the lake and my house. The water has turned molten in the sunlight. Staring down at it, I hear Tyler’s melody in my head again, an ugly earworm burrowing into my brain. “That tune you played? It’s been stuck in my head all day.”
    “Oh, ‘The Drowned Forest’?” Tyler laughs. “Sorry.”
    “Just fits with how today’s gone, I guess.”
    “I’ve been working on it with Ultimate Steve. He’s got this great drum break, this sorta dum dum da-da-dum thing for it.”
    When did Tyler start hanging out with Steve the Nine-Digit Idiot again? I bite my tongue. “So why is it called ‘The Drowned Forest’?”
    “Well, it’s named for, y’know, the lake.”
    “Oh.”
    “It’s kind of sick, I know.”
    “Yeah, a little.”
    When the government dammed up the river many de-cades ago, all that backed-up water needed somewhere to go. It flooded acres of pine forest, farms, churches, graveyards, whole communities, creating Wilson Lake. The lake is a great place to fish and ski and swim. But if you swim down and down, past where the water turns suddenly cold, down and down into the slow, strange heartbeat of the river, you find yourself in the pines—dead trees preserved by the cold and dark. Black branches bloom algae and colonies of mussels. The forest has become the dominion of monster catfish and all the slithering things swarming without number.
    The trees make it impossible to dredge the lake. When you drowned, they didn’t even try to bring up your body. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about you down there all alone, Holly. Lost in the drowned forest.

Four
    Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.
    “Jane! Come slice these tomatoes for me.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” The only footnote says that the “piece of money” would have been a silver shekel, worth four drachmas. How the heck does that help us?
    “Jane, I need help here,” Mom calls again.
    “Okay. Give me one second.” My finger moves back up to the beginning of the verse.
    “Jane, your mom asked you to do something.” Dad sits on the floor, trying to keep Yuri interested in their word games. “Your studying can wait.”
    The Bible drops to the coffee table. I stalk into the kitchen without looking at him.
    Spaghetti bubbles on the stove. Steam swirls below the oven hood. The tomatoes are from Dad’s garden, and pieces of fuzzy green stem still poke up from their navels. When Jesus and Peter needed to pay their temple tax, Peter caught a fish with money in its mouth. Is that some clue to what’s happening now? I cut the tomatoes into wedges, pulp oozing between my fingers.
    “When you’re done, Tim needs you to look over his math work.”
    I groan. “I’m kind of doing something right now.”
    “ What, Jane? What’s more important than helping your brother?”
    “It’s … just … nothing.” I glance over at Tim doing his worksheet at the kitchen table. “I’ll help you in a sec, okay, buddy?”
    Tim gives me two thumbs-up. Mom says, “And slow down, honey. You’ll cut yourself.”
    “I know what I’m doing.” I pare a bruise out of the tomato’s drum-tight flesh.
    At least Pastor