The Lake, Pt. 1

Here’s the whole thing if you’d like to read it in one sitting.

“Aw, that’s a load o’ crap, dude, and you know it.”

Cole Webber sat back in the booth and it huffed an asthmatic wheeze under his weight. He pulled one leg onto the slick, red vinyl and peered across the scarred, pitted Formica table at Keith Lewis, then turned his ball cap backwards over his close-cropped, chestnut hair. His high-dollar clothes looked and fit like Salvation Army thrift store rags, draping over his wiry frame and cascading into wavy folds. The fasteners of the three-inch wide leather band rattled on his wrist when he shook it to adjust the position. His dark eyes narrowed at Keith, waiting for the response.

“That’s not what I heard, Cole,” Keith said, popping a ketchup-drenched crinkle-cut french fry into his mouth. His eyes never left the greasy stack of bun, lettuce, onion and beef piled on the thick stoneware plate in front of him, the wafting burger scent drifting up to merge with the cloud of aromas hanging in the diner.

“I don’t give a crap what you heard. Who’d you hear it from, your old man?” Cole snorted and snatched one of his own fries before leveling his gaze at Keith again.

Keith shrugged. “I heard lots of times. From a lotta people, not just my dad.” He settled into a tube-steel framed chair topped with the same red vinyl as the booth seats. The deep scratches and marks on the chrome surface gave testament to the fact it was a relic before Keith’s father was born.

Brynn and Seth squirmed, and tried to focus on their food, but the palpable tension almost rang like a taut guitar string in the air.

“It’s still bull crap, no matter how many times you heard it,” Cole spat.

“How would you know?”

“Come on, you guys, cut it out,” Brynn Shaw whined. She giggled at her own interjection and her talc-pale cheeks flushed hot pink beneath her amber hair. She shifted in anxiety on her own vinyl-capped seat. It farted beneath her and all four of them giggled.

“Dang, Brynn!” Seth Deane snorted a laugh through his nose, and the force shifted the thick black-rimmed glasses down his nose. He shoved them back onto face in a habitual subconscious motion, his tightly ringed mouse-brown hair stationary even through gale-force winds.

“Shut up!” Brynn wailed and blushed deeper still. She slammed her torso against the chair back, her body jiggling with chortles.

Keith’s shaggy black locks toppled from his head over his ears like a burst dam, his black T-shirt announcing allegiance to an obscure band no one over 18 would know.

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