Mercury

Katelynn's room is made of glass. At least, three sides of it are glass, and with the curtains pulled back, she has a spectacular view of Hawk Lake. Her house occupies a point jutting into the lake. As the tour boat slides into view, right on time, Katelynn sits up in bed and reaches for her binoculars, glad to set aside her homework. She can't concentrate anyway. Only her history teacher, Mr. Stiles, is keeping up even a pretense of assigning work to her. He leaves books with her mother. Pokes his head into her room sometimes to say hi. She's too weak to talk to him for long or to do the work that will allow her to get a diploma. Back in the spring, she was too sick to do any homework or take any tests, too sick to graduate, and she doesn't feel much better now. She's thinner and weaker than she's been in her life, has no appetite for anything except candy corn and Tootsie Rolls, and has hardly been out of the house for weeks. For her, Dr. McKellar makes house calls. Her parents are rich enough to warrant that. He takes samples of her hair, blood, and urine, and packs them off to his lab. She did go to the lakeside convenience store one day with her mother. The store was too dazzling, with the bright boxes of cat food and the bags of potato chips. Katelynn picked out a blue lipstick that promised it would turn pink on her lips. Her mother talked it up and paid for it ("You could do with a little color in your face"), but Katelynn just brought it home and threw it in a drawer, for she is through with makeup now, she who used to slather hundred-dollar lotions on her skin. She hardly even washes her face, and she has cut off her hair. It's a Saturday in late September, ten o'clock in the morning. If she's lucky, she might see the boat three or even four times today, before twilight settles in, as it does earlier every day. The tourist business was good all summer. One day, the boat made a record seven trips, laden with sight-seers. The white-haired guide, Captain Louisa, must have made big money that day. By this time of year, though, the tourist trade is dropping off. Visitors come to the town of Hawk Lake to enjoy the warm-springs spa, shop at the craft fairs, and drop in on the occasional music festival, often just a few fiddles, banjos, and harmonicas on somebody's front porch. Also popular is the nearby diamond mine, not a cave but a plowed-up dirt field where you use your own tools and keep a sharp eye out. Just this summer, a boy found a big yellow gem worth some real money. The boy's photo is everywhere now, on posters in the windows of restaurants, inns, and shops. Katelynn has memorized his face: all buckteeth and sunshine, with the soft jaw of a preteen. The caption reads: "I found a diamond! So can you!" Of course, the best way to see the lake itself, with its two sides, rich and poor, is by taking a cruise on the Arkansas Belle. The tour boata duck boat, salvaged from World War II and refashionedcan't go very fast, but it is amphibious. It putters through the town's narrow streets, tootling along as Captain Louisa points out landmarksmuseum, old-fashioned ice-cream parlor, bathhouse and spaand then, its wheels retracting, its land-self transforming into a sea-self, it noses into the lake and glides on a long circuit, slow and sturdy if not graceful. A yellow-and-white-striped canvas top stretches across it, making a sort of roof to shield passengers from the sun. At the back end of the boat, the canvas top is open. Railings surround the passengers. It would be hard to fall out. Hawk Lake is wide, deep, and complicated by coves. Fishermen love it. The rich sideKatelynn's sidehas mansions made of glass and tile and stone, with gardens of magnolia trees, crape myrtle, fountains, and sculptures. Katelynn's family has not been rich forever, only for a few years, since she was in middle school. It still felt natural to hHolladay, Cary C. is the author of 'Mercury' with ISBN 9780609608142 and ISBN 0609608142.