When the Water Didn't Come

They’d spent all of May waiting for the lake to rise. By June, it became clear that it wasn’t going to.

Every year, for as long as she could remember, it would flood like clockwork. Not literally, of course, just in the sense that it would become fuller. The boats would come out, the fishing poles would emerge from garages, and the kids would start daring each other to jump off the dock.

Instead, the dock hung useless in the air, six feet above dry dirt. Odette stood on it the first weekend of June, holding a popsicle and squinting down at the lakebed like it had personally offended her.

“What a bummer,” her brother, Elias, said, kicking a rock into the nearest puddle. She was surprised there was even a puddle at all with how things were going.

She was seventeen that summer. Old enough to drive, too young to leave.

It was supposed to be the summer. The one she’d remember. The one that would make all the others feel like a prelude. She’d been telling herself since the beginning of spring that everything would finally fall into place: late nights, stolen kisses, dumb road trips. A season made of polaroids to look back on.

Instead, June was dry, loud, and full of mosquitoes. She had very little hope that the lake would fill by the time summer officially began a few weeks later. She was right to feel that way; the lake ultimately stayed the same.

And things got worse.

Her best friend, Leah, got a job in the city and stopped texting back. Elias spent all day in the basement, playing horror games on full volume. And their parents, who swore they wouldn’t go anywhere, abruptly booked a July couples’ cruise “because the lake’s a bust, anyway.”

“Take care of your brother,” her mom had said, which was ridiculous because Elias was almost fifteen and taller than she was.

The second they left, he came down with something and took over the good couch. What rotten luck.

They left behind a sticky note:

Love you both. Eat vegetables. Back in ten days.

On day three, she walked to the edge of the lake and sat down.

It was cracked. Where there should be water, there were weeds and half-buried bottles, and a broken hull of a rowboat that had been forgotten. Without the shimmer of the lake, everything looked barren.

She found a small turtle crawling in circles. She named it Walter and brought it home in an empty box.

Elias said it was gross. She ignored him.

She dreamed of water that night.

She woke up disappointed.

The days stretched long, sticky, and strange.

Leah never responded to the texts.

Odette tried to dye her hair red and ended up with orange streaks. She spent two hours in the bathroom trying to fix it and came out with a hat.

Walter the turtle disappeared from his box on the fourth day, leaving behind nothing but a piece of lettuce and one faint trail of dust leading to the front door.

She hoped he made it to water. Somewhere.

She hoped there was still water to be found.

She wasn’t the only one mourning the missing lake.

She started seeing them more and more: kids from school walking the dry basin in flip-flops, couples taking weirdly artistic photos of driftwood, one girl filming something with a tripod and a sunflower dress.

On day seven, she saw him.

Henry.

She hadn’t expected that.

He was a grade above her, just graduated, headed to college out west. They’d barely spoken during school except for the time when he borrowed a charger in the library and thanked her like he meant it.

And there he was, standing near a stump, taking pictures with an old camera and talking to himself.

She just stood there, watching silently, unsure if she should say anything.

But he turned before she could decide. “Hey.”

She froze. “Hey.”

He smiled. “You here for the apocalypse, too?”

She laughed despite herself. “Guess so. Didn’t get the memo we were having one.”

He walked over slowly, the dirt crunching beneath his boots. He offered a water bottle from his bag. “Want to help me look for bones?”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

“Bones. Coyote. Maybe deer. Someone said a horse died out here two summers ago.”

She took the bottle. “That is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

He grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

For the rest of the week, they met there.

He was weird, kind, and knew too much about clouds. She found herself looking for him before she even arrived. He never asked why she kept coming. She never asked what he was photographing. They just talked. About nothing. About everything. About the ways summer was unraveling and how no one warned them adulthood would feel like this; dry, anticlimactic, and too quiet in all the wrong places.

She mentioned the dream with the lake slowly rising.

He said he dreamed of fire once. Flames fell from the sky. He couldn't explain what it meant. Neither could she.

They created stories about the dried-up lake: post-apocalyptic cults, ghost ships, science experiments gone wrong. She told him about Walter; he hoped the turtle found Atlantis.

It wasn’t the summer she planned, but it felt like something.

On the tenth day, the wind picked up. They cut their conversation short.

By the time she reached the house, the first drops of rain fell. She yanked Elias away from the window just before the power cut out.

For the next hour, the world shook.

Lightning split the yard. Rain slapped the roof. She sat in the dark with a flashlight under her chin, heart hammering, whispering to herself that it was just weather. They'd be fine.

He lit three candles and read aloud from a horror book, badly. They laughed too loudly. It didn’t make the thunder less sharp.

When it finally passed, they stepped outside.

The lakebed, for the first time that summer, had puddles. Not much. Just a start. But it was something, at least.

Their parents came back with sunburns and souvenirs. The cruise had been "fine." The drinks too expensive. The crowds exhausting. She barely listened.

Henry stopped coming after the storm. She checked three times. Left a note in a ziplock bag, weighted with a rock. He never answered.

The remainder of the summer was uneventful.

Years later, she went back.

She parked nearby and walked down the slope barefoot. The dock was in the water again, creaking gently. Kids jumped off it laughing, the way they were supposed to.

She waded in. The lake was warm.

She thought about the summer that didn’t happen. The one that had been promised. The one that had taken its place. She missed it.

When she closed her eyes, she could still see the dry lakebed and the smudge of Henry’s camera lens.

She didn’t hate the summer. But she didn’t quite understand it, either. Some seasons don’t ask for closure; they just ask to be remembered.