Summer at Forsaken Lake Read Online Free Page B

case. “We’ll have popcorn and make an evening of it.”
    * * *
    With the twins happily passing
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
back and forth on the porch swing and Nick looking for an oilcan to stop one of the projector’s wheels from squeaking, Nicholas climbed the stairs to the tower room. He threw himself onto the bed and opened the notebook with the torn cover. The first few pages appeared to be the random scribblings of ideas for the story and some calculations of the cost of buying and processing film, but then came a title page, repeating what appeared on the cover. Nicholas turned the page, finding the heading
Scene 1
, and started to read:
    Long shot of the cove, early in the morning. There should be some mist, and the water should be perfectly still.
    Close shots of the trees around the cove, birds, crayfish crawling on sand.
    Long shot of the cove. A rowboat with one man in it slowly comes into view. The boat stops and he stands up, using binoculars to look into the woods.
    Medium shot of the woods. A small branch moves, but you can’t see what is causing it.
    Close shot of the man in the boat as he sets down binoculars and picks up a rifle. He aims at something in the woods and fires.
    Extreme close-up of the Seaweed Strangler from the back. He turns to face the camera, and one side of his face is covered in blood. He roars and begins to run toward the camera.
    Medium shot of the man starting to row like crazy.
    Long shot of the cove. The Seaweed Strangler comes crashing out of the woods and into the water after the man. The man has a good head start and gets away.
    Close shot of the Seaweed Strangler, standing waist-deep in the water, roaring at the man. Extreme close-up of his fangs.
    Fade-out.
    Nicholas closed the notebook and leaned his head back against the wall, struggling with the image of his dad,a doctor who spent two months a year in Africa working for Doctors Without Borders, as a teenager who was creative enough to make a movie. When he really thought about it, he couldn’t even remember his father ever
reading
him a story, let alone making one up. Determined not to read the rest of the script until he saw the movie, Nicholas set the notebook on the floor by the bed and checked the secret hiding place in the wall for anything he might have missed earlier. The search turned up two more items. The first was nothing to get too excited about: an index card with the heading “Deming Public Library” and the title of a book,
Make Your Own Movie!
by Samuel Oswald.
    The second, however, was
very
interesting.
    It was a piece of paper, folded into a compact triangle, with a heart drawn around the name Will.
    Nicholas had just unfolded it enough to read “Dear Will” when the twins interrupted him, their heads appearing simultaneously at the top of the stairs.
    “Guess what, Nicholas,” Hayley said.
    “You forgot to knock,” he replied, quickly refolding the letter and sticking it in his shirt pocket.
    “You don’t have a door, silly,” said Hetty.
    “Doesn’t matter. Knock on the stairs before you come up.”
    Hayley sighed dramatically. “Oh, fine.” She knocked on the stairs, but didn’t wait for a response. “Guess what the name of the boat in this book is?” She held up
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
.
    “I don’t know,” Nicholas said, annoyed.
    “Guess!” the twins shouted at him.
    “Titanic,”
he said.
    “No. Come on, a real guess,” Hetty pleaded.
    “Hetty?”
    “What?”
    “No, that’s my guess.”
    “What’s your guess?”
    “Hetty.”
    “Nicholas!”
    “No.
Hetty
.”
    “You’re impossible,” said an exasperated Hetty. “It’s
Goblin
.”
    “You know, like Uncle Nick’s boat,” Hayley added.
    Nicholas stared at her. “Yeah, thanks. I think I got that. Let me see.”
    Hayley handed him the book, her place marked by the stub of her train ticket from New York. He leafed through a few pages, stopping at an illustration showing a cutaway view of a sailboat.