Matt didn’t know how the boy got into the lake, but it wasn’t too hard to imagine why.

Usually, it’s the other way around, he thought distantly, watching the flash of blue-red in the distance draw nearer, painting the trees and the cawing sirens effectively repelling most of the birds in the trees.

Usually, it’s not hard to imagine **how **a body got into a lake, it’s harder to imagine **why. **But Jack didn’t have to wonder why, when every copy of the paper dropped off at his dusty doorstep was plastered with the face of another missing boy. It wasn’t hard to imagine why when there was a cop cruiser trailing no more than ten feet behind their schoolbusses every morning. And it wasn’t hard to imagine why when the reason for all this panic, all the sobbing parents at the station, sat across Matt at the dinner table every night.

So it wasn’t hard to imagine why the boy was in the middle of the lake, but it was hard to string together how.

His father had been home last night. He’d been home and he’d made dinner. He’s never home on nights when boys go missing, he’s out at the bar is what he says. But he’d been home. He’d been home and made steak, seared so rare that if Matt let himself sink far enough into the chewy, chewy veal, he could almost imagine the sinuey stretch of muscle that was the baby cow grinding against his molars. His father had been home last night and there was a boy in the lake.

Jack blinked back to himself when the snap of a stray twig against his face burned for a split second. He tipped back a step, untied sneakers squelching in the mud. In the trackless, clear mud. In the mud that should have been upturned and wet and **red **as it surrounded the lake. But it was flat. It was calm, and flat, and still, as if nobody had treaded the path since Matt had just a few minutes ago. But that couldn’t be true because there was a boy in the lake, and he must have gotten there somehow.

He looked again at the still, dark waters past the dock. The only tracks on it were his own from where he’d come up not ten minutes ago before he saw the face staring back at him. It was not one he’d be eager to remember, and he’d seen hsi fair share of cold, blue lipped faces. This one was different.

This one was bloated. He--_it_** **was young. More than young. Probably only just started middle scool at Saint Johns down the road. But it was hard to focus on that when the two purple lips looked like they were barely containing the fat, swollen tongue inside its mouth. It was hard to focus on the superhero bandaids covering his fingers when his wrists were bent all wrong inwards, like the wings of a chicken. It was hard to focus on much else other than the fact that the boy was still in his SJA sweatshirt, Saint Johns Academy — a ratty old thing, that probably had holes and moth bites even before the tears of the knife (or maybe a machete? Something big. A wide arc. Like a gaping maw across the small boys blue tint chest) had gotten to it. What drew Jack’s attention was not the name of his alma matre. What drew Jack’s attention was the fact that there was fabric left on the small, fawnish thing in the water at all.

As the cop cruiser that answered his call to the station blared nearer, and the slam of a car door snapping shut scared away a pair of crows in the pine next to him, Matt realized that the boy in the water was not one of his fathers. He realized that it was no coincidence that the only steps towards the body, the cold, blue body, were his own. And he realized why his sleeve cuffs were sopping wet.

As a vice grip tore his wrists together and the sharp bite of metal cut into his skin, he could not look away from the boy. The boy with the SJA sweatshirt.