Surface Tension Read Free

the gorge.
    Once we get far enough from the smell, Mom opens up the backpack and gives us each a rectangle of Hershey's chocolate. I put it on my tongue and let it melt.
    There must be a car in the gorge up ahead. I keep seeing pieces of it, rusted metal parts decaying in the middle of the creek bed, like they got washed downstream. The walls of the gorge must be fifty feet high now, but there's a road up there somewhere. I wonder how the car got down here. Nobody could have driven it. Maybe it got washed down the waterfall.
    I imagine some old gangsters with tommy guns pushing it off the road and watching it slide down the gorge wall. I bet when we find the car, we'll find a dead body in the trunk with bullet holes in it.
    We walk up the creek bed, through the S turns, and I see the car in the weeds off to the right. I walk over to check it out.
    There are no doors or windows, and even the steering wheel is gone. The seats are just wire springs, and the trunk doesn't have bullet holes, it's just rusty. It's just a busted-up old skeleton of a car. It's not that exciting.
    Mom and Dad kept walking while I was stopped lookingat the car. I hurry across the stones to catch up with them. I can just start to hear the waterfall now. I think I can hear the sound of water against stones.
    We turn the corner, but we're not there yet. The water is getting louder and I can almost feel it now. I can almost feel the mist and the spray, but I know I'm just imagining it.
    I can't wait to turn that next corner and see the waterfall again. My heart is jumping in my chest and I'm running across the rocks.
    I get to the last turn. I know that as soon as I get past these trees on the left, I'll be able to see it.
    I hop up onto a big boulder and look up at the waterfall. It's not like I remember it. There's not much water this year. In other years, the water would be rampaging down the center of the stones, but now it's just trickling.
    I move across the stones, cross the stream, and get up to where the water is bouncing off one of the bigger rocks. I take off my shoes and socks and wade into the shallow water. There's still enough water to dip my head under the falling water, and it feels like a cold, heavy shower on my head.
    Dad tells me to climb up the side of the waterfall so he can take my picture. I climb up and raise my arms above my head, like a gymnast after a really sweet dismount. Dad takes the picture.
    Even though there's not that much water, I feel happy just being here. I look up at the gorge walls, where the shale is crumbling. Now the gorge is over a hundred feet tall, but the waterfall is always cutting through it at the top, so it's probably only forty feet. I always wonder what else is up there.
    There's a few burned logs and a bunch of beer cans nextto us in the woods. Somebody must have camped here recently. I want to do that. Mom opens up the backpack and pulls out a bunch of snacks for us.
    I sit down on the ledge, right before the drop-off where the pool at the base of the waterfall gets super deep, and lean back against the rock. It's not comfortable, but I'm not moving either. Under the water, my toes look bigger than they do in real life.
    Mom brings me over another rectangle of chocolate and a can of soda. A bunch of minnows are swimming around my feet. One swims between my toes and nibbles. It tickles, but I don't move, and now the minnows are swarming around my toes taking little bites and then swimming away.
    They're tickling my feet so much I start laughing. Mom takes pictures of me and the waterfall and my feet and the minnows. This is the best.
    We're all sitting at the picnic table finishing our breakfast. Dad made pancakes, and it's just the best thing to be sitting out here and looking out at the lake, eating pancakes. Mom says, “It's so serene.”
    Dad says, “Serene. Serene.”
    I don't say anything. Mr. Richardson comes over in his Sunday church clothes and asks if we'd mind if he started mowing the