My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(2)

He nods, getting it, then stomps his hurt right foot down with authority.

The light glows on.

“Try it,” he says to Lotte.

Hesitant, she does, stomping, getting no response. But then she jumps with both feet, comes down hard enough to jangle whatever bad connection is happening down there.

“Gloeilamp isn’t screwed enough,” Sven diagnoses, pulling her ahead.

“Screwed in enough,” Lotte fixes, traipsing behind.

When they get there, step into that puddle of wavering light, Sven licks the pads of his fingers and reaches up under the rusty cowl to tighten the bulb, the light losing its thready flicker immediately, shining an unwavering cone of warmth down onto their pale thighs now, their shadows stark behind them, bleeding off into the darkness.

“We’re gonna fix this place up right,” Sven says, meaning all of America.

Lotte darts in to kiss him on the cheek, then, her eyes locked on Sven’s the whole while, and still holding his fingertips until she can’t, she steps over the end of the pier as easy as anything.

Sven turns his head against the splash, smiling and cringing both, but the splash doesn’t come.

“Lotte?” he says, stepping forward, shielding his face from the water he knows has to be coming.

She’s in a dark green canoe that’s rocking back and forth— she must have spotted it while he was fiddling with the lightbulb. Sven raises his hands, snaps another make-believe picture of her, says, “Cover up, this one’s for the grandchildrens. I want them to see how amazing their grootmoeder was when I first was knowing her.”

Lotte purses her lips, unable to hide her smile, and Sven steps down with her, arms wide so as not to roll them.

“This isn’t stealing,” he says, reaching up to unhook the canoe’s rope. “It was just floating here—out there, I mean. We had to swim out even to get it, to save it.”

“We’re gonna fix this place up!” Lotte says as loud as she can around Sven, leaning on the shaky little left-behind cooler to push them away from the pier. She trails her hands in the water and, drifting out from the pier now, can just see their rental car. It looks like a laundry bomb exploded over it. No: it looks like two kids from the Netherlands fizzed away from pure joy, disappeared into nothing, leaving only their clothes behind.

“What?” Sven asks in perfect American.

“We don’t have a paddle,” Lotte says. It’s the funniest thing in the world to her. It’s making this little expedition even more perfect.

“Or pants, or shirts…” Sven adds, taking both sides of the canoe and rocking it back and forth.

“Koude,” Lotte agrees, hugging herself. Then, like a dare, “Warmer in the water.”

“Out where it’s diepere,” Sven says, correcting himself before she can: “Deeper.”

They reach over to paddle with their hands, the water bitter cold, and after about twenty yards of this Sven liberates the white lid off the little cooler. It’s a much better paddle than their hands, and—importantly—it doesn’t care about freezing.

“My hero,” Lotte says in precise English, pressing herself into his back.

“It can be warmer up here too,” Sven says, but doesn’t stop drawing them farther out onto the lake.

Lotte presses the side of her face into his back, her new vantage point giving her an angle into the now-open tiny cooler.

“Hey!” she says, and extracts a clear baggie with a sandwich inside, its peanut butter smearing.

“Ew, pindakaas,” Sven says, and pulls deep with the cooler lid, surging them ahead.

Lotte unceremoniously shakes the sandwich out into the water without touching it, crosses her finger over her lips so Sven will know not to tell on her about this, then drops her phone into the baggie and neatly seals the top, blowing into it at the very end so the phone is in a make-do balloon.

“Your ziplock tas can also be a flotatie device,” she says in her best KLM flight attendant voice.

Sven chuckles, says, “Flotation.”

The phone in the bag is still recording. Lotte angles it away from her, holds it up so it can see ahead of them.

“What do you think they are?” Sven asks, nodding to the lights they don’t seem to be any closer to yet.

“Giant fireflies,” Lotte says with a secret thrill. “American fireflies.”

“Mastodons met— with bioluminescente tusks,” Sven says.

“Air jellyfish,” Lotte says, quieter, like a prayer.

“Isn’t there a tree fungus that’s fosforescerend?” Sven asks.

“Being serious, nu.”

“Now,” Lotte corrects, still using her wispy-dreamy voice.

“It’s the Indians. They’re painting their faces and their bodies for revolt.”

“Until John Wayne Gacy hears about it,” Sven says with enough confidence that Lotte has to giggle.

“It’s just John Wa—” she starts, doesn’t finish because Sven is jerking back from leaning over the side of the canoe, jerking back and pulling his hands up fast, something long stringing from them. He stands shaking it off, trying to, and the canoe overbalances, starts to roll. Instead of letting it, he dives off the other side, his Netherbits mostly hidden from the phone’s hungry eye.