Read Online Bird Lake Moon by Kevin Henkes - Free Book Online

caught up in a morass. And with a jolt of painful awareness came the thought: I will never again have a life like his.
    Morass.
    As he watched the intruders that morning, Mitch came to the conclusion that his trying to scare them away had been a stupid idea and had had no effect on them anyway. Their behavior—joking around, playing together—was proof enough for him. And something shifted inside him. He no longer wanted the house. He now saw it as shabby and sorry looking. Who needs it?
    He realized that he hadn’t been swimming since the intruders had arrived. This made him angry.
    Morass. Me. Mitch. Mad. Mutt.
    M-M-M-M-M.
    He waited long after the intruders had paddled out of sight, disappearing behind a clump of brush that jutted out into the lake, before he crawled onto their property. He felt detached, as if he were watching it all from a distance, even as he edged closer.
    â€œHey, dog,” he said softly. “Hey, Jasper.”
    Jasper’s tail wagged in greeting. His eyes were large marbles of the deepest brown with wide black centers; his nose was speckled with pink.
    A sudden curiosity inhabited Mitch. It came unbidden and was irresistible.
    A temptation.
    The action required no thought of which he was aware. No plan. His brain was acting on impulse. Brain to fingers: Do this now.
    Mitch extended his hand and unhooked the long lead from around the tree. Click . The simplest of movements. Done in a flash.
    In that flash, Jasper bounded away, the lead trailing behind him like a thick red snake. Gone.
    In that flash, Mitch was filled with overpowering regret.
    The morass had increased tenfold.

6 • SPENCER
    When he was younger, Spencer had believed that his parents could hear all his thoughts. He no longer believed this, but he still wondered about it. He wondered because sometimes his parents seemed to have radar, seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. And then they’d ask probing questions.
    On this particular morning, his thoughts were conflicting and would have been confusing to anyone who was privy to them. On one hand, the odd things that had happened nagged at him and made him wary. On the other hand, the night and the morning had been free of any strangeness, and as he drifted and paddled on the lake, he felt he belonged here, that he was bound to this place. He wore a loose smile to prove it.
    He thought that if nothing else out of the ordinary happened, the nagging would become familiar, common as a hangnail, and eventually go away. This was his hope. He also hoped that his mother would ask no probing questions.
    Spencer and his mother were in an old, dented aluminum canoe. Spencer’s father and Lolly were in the kayak they’d brought from home. And Jasper—he’d refused to get into the wobbly canoe, even when bribed with treats, so they’d left him in the yard, tethered to the maple tree.
    The canoe had been stored on the side of the house, beneath the white pines, along with sections of a rotting wooden pier and haphazardly stacked cinder blocks. Fallen needles from the trees covered everything like a patchy winter coat. They’d had to search for paddles. Lolly had found them in a corner in the basement among a cobwebbed jumble of garden tools.
    The canoe and the kayak had started out together, but now, nearly an hour into the family’s excursion, the two boats were far enough apart that Spencer saw the kayak as a yellow slash on the water, nothing more.
    â€œIf you were a tree, what kind would you be?” his mother asked, out of the blue. It was a game they used to play, years ago.
    Spencer laughed. “We haven’t done this in a long time,” he said. It embarrassed him slightly; it seemed babyish. “Um. An oak?” he said, shrugging. “An oak,” he repeated firmly. He was thinking of the enormous oak tree in the McDermotts’ yard back in Madison. The McDermotts lived next door to the Stones. The oak was good