“No one did,” Reyva cut him off, clearly uncomfortable with Jack’s embarrassment. “Big surprise. Ahhh. Okay, let’s move past it and figure out what we do next. Claire, any thoughts on how to avoid the whole dying thing?”
Happy to change the subject, Claire ticked off on her fingers.
“Shelter, water, food. Solved the water problem for now, so of those, I think the most pressing is food.” Her stomach squeezed as if in agreement.
“What do you have in your pack, if not a cheeseburger?” Mariana asked Jack. She walked her fingertips up his arm to his backpack strap.
He flinched, twisting his shoulder away from her fingers. “Not much. Nothing useful.”
Reyva caught Mariana’s wrist in her hand and lifted it away from Jack. “Quit terrorizing the boy. Claire, continue what you were saying. Food?”
Right, Claire thought, taking her eyes off Jack and Mariana.Work the problem. If a fox and a chicken need to cross a lake...“We have a lake, which I assume has fish, and we have a forest that has plants, berries, nuts, and other forest-y things, as well as squirrels, rabbits, birds, and deer.” Also wolves, bears, and mountain lions, but those weren’t part of this calculation.
“I’m not eating a rabbit,” Mariana said.
“You will if you’re hungry enough,” Reyva said.
“Let’s start with the lake,” Claire said. “Jack, have you ever gone fishing?”
“Yeah, of course, but with tackle and rods and bait...” He waved his hand at the water. “You can’t just catch fish barehanded, you know. It takes equipment. Lures and line. Or if we had a gill net—that’s a net you dangle in the water. Fish try to swim through the holes and get themselves tangled. Gill nets work really well. But again, don’t have one in my backpack.”
Unfortunately, Claire hadn’t seen a net in the ruins of the sheds. Melted volleyballs, yes. Old weights, yes. A wheelbarrow. But no fishing supplies.
“The tennis court,” Mariana said suddenly.
Yes! The net on the tennis court! “Brilliant,” Claire said. If it was intact... All they needed was a net with holes the right size to tangle a fish. “So we get the tennis net, tie it to a pole, and extend it from the end of the dock out into the lake. We’ll have to angle it since the dock isn’t flush with the water level, but that should be doable.”
“We’ll need a pole as well as a net,” Mariana said.
Reyva waved her hand at the trees. “Literally in a forest.”
“Fair enough,” Mariana said, nodding. Claire could tell the others were getting excited. “It could work. Sure. Fish for dinner!”
Jack said, “Well, it’s not that easy. There’s no guarantee a fish will—”
“Then we try a whole bunch of different things at once,” Claire said. “How do we make fishhooks?” She thought for a moment. “Bent nails.” There were bound to be nails they could extract from the ruins of the house or the sheds. “Anything we can use for a line?”
“Dental floss?” Mariana said. “I’ve got some of that.”
“Worth a try,” Reyva said.
“It’ll break if the fish fights hard enough,” Jack warned.
Why did he have to be so negative?Wait, she thought,amIcriticizing someone else for being negative?That was a first. She grinned involuntarily. Her cheeks felt stiff, as if she hadn’t smiled in days.
“And not entirely sure they’ll like mint-flavored,” Mariana said. “But maybe fish dislike fish breath too. We could be creating a whole new aquatic dating scene.”
“What else is in the lake that we can eat?” Claire asked. “Crabs? Oysters? Snails?” It was strange how all this optimism felt.Floaty, she decided. She felt full of bubbles.
“Um, we’ve got freshwater mussels,” Jack said. “They burrow in the sand and gravel near where streams dump into the lake. You don’t have to worry about red tide like the saltwater ones with them.” When they looked blankly at him, he clarified, “Safe to eat. But I don’t think—”
“We shouldn’t give up on fishing lines,” Mariana said. “Whole lake out there.”
“What do we have that’s stronger than dental floss?” Claire asked.
“Don’t look at me,” Reyva said. “I’m not the overpacker.”
“How about electrical wire?” Mariana suggested. “Assuming it didn’t all melt, we can pry it out of the walls of the Lake House, strip off the insulation, and ta-da!”
