The Kids Aren't Alright

Chapter 67: Finn

I lean over the edge of the canoe and plunge my arm into the icy black water. Owen is watching me intently, like he's expecting something special-- for me to start chanting in Latin or perform some dark blood ritual, maybe. I don't remember how I summoned the Kraken last time. I wasn't trying to summon it. The Kraken just came to me. It chose me, not the other way around.

I swish my hand around in the lake and concentrate, silently screaming for the Kraken to come to me, to help me. No response. Maybe it's not listening. Maybe it doesn't even care. Or maybe it doesn't even exist, and that thing— the tentacle— we saw on the beach wasn't a Kraken at all, but some mutant fish, or a trick of the light, just like Ronan said.

Are you there, Kraken? It's me, Finn.

"Can you feel it?" Owen demands. "The Kraken?"

"No," I say. I move my hand around faster— I'm frantic now, desperate, and Owen is tightening his fingers around the handle of the gun, and I know that if I can't summon the Kraken I won't get out of here alive. "Just give me a minute—"

"I'm done waiting, Finn," the counselor says sharply. "I've been waiting my whole damn life, and now just done. Nobody ever listens. Not even the Director listens! I told her that the Kraken was an issue that needed to be addressed, but did she take my advice? No! She told me to keep quiet and forget about it. She said that the Kraken wasn't a problem, but she doesn't understand— nobody does. Nobody except for me and... him. Emory."

I don't know what to say. My whole body has gone numb and the only words my mouth can think of are please don't shoot me. Or maybe I really don't want to die.

I think about condensing all of my fear into a ball and pushing it out into the lake through my hand. I pray for the Kraken, for a miracle, for anything.

Owen's expression morphs into one of grief. There are tears, real tears, sliding down his face, and his cheeks look hollow and sunken. "Of course you have no idea what I'm talking about. You don't know what the Kraken did to him— to Emory, my oldest brother. How could you? The Director covered up his— his 'accident' she called it— and nobody spoke of it again. She even closed the camp for a few years after that summer— the summer of '69. But I didn't forget. Not after I saw what it had done to him, how it had mangled his arm so badly that—" Something in his pale blue eyes snaps, and Owen slams his hand down on the rim of the canoe, the impact like a gunshot. "No! I'm done waiting for this. I spent the last twenty years of my life trying to do right by him, and now I'm done."

The counselor shakes his head frantically, like he's trying to ward off flies. "It wasn't supposed to end this way. My father sent Emory to camp to shape him before college, to make him a man. This was the year of '69. Emory had it all— a football scholarship, a girlfriend, a future— but when he went into the lake and lost his arm, he lost everything else, too. People thought he was crazy, babbling about monsters in the water. I was the only one who ever listened. I loved my brother. I knew that he was telling the truth.

"He wasted away in a mental institution for sixteen years before he finally took his own life. Do you know what that kind of loss feels like? Do you understand what's it like to get a phone call from your mother, sobbing, telling you that your brother, the person you love most in the world, is dead? Of course you don't. You children don't understand pain. Grief. None of you could ever understand."

Owen pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. "After Emory died, I found my purpose. With a little help from the right people, I got a job at Lightlake... I got a new identity, a new name, one that the Director would never recognize... I came back to make things right." A single tear slides down the bridge of his nose. "I have to make things right. For him. For Emory."

The realization of what Owen's words really mean hits me so hard that it almost knocks the air out of my lungs. "You want me to summon the Kraken— so you can kill it?"

"No. Not kill it. I'm not here to kill anything. I'm just here to get justice for Emory, to make sure what happened to him will never happen again."

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened to your brother, but vengeance doesn't excuse murder. Getting rid of the Kraken is still killing it. I don't think that's what Emory would want—"

Ever so casually, Owen clicks off the safety on the gun. I get the message and shut up.

"I've exhausted my options here. The Director won't listen to me, not even after what happened to Clancey— oh, don't look so surprised, I know that your buddy Ronan told you all of that was my fault. I 'forgot' the knife where I knew Clancey would find it... I changed the course of the Hike so we would walk past the cliffs, and the idea would be planted in his small brain... I knew that he was waiting for revenge, and so I gave him the opportunity. Unfortunately, you got away... but I was able to use Clancey instead.

"But that wasn't my only plot. I called the oil company myself... told them that there was a well near camp... there is, actually, but I didn't discover it myself— like I said, I got some help from the right people... and then those pipeline guys arrived and made the Director a very nice deal, but she still wouldn't sell the land. She just wouldn't let the Kraken be destroyed, as it should be. Why are you shaking your head at me? The Kraken is dangerous, it's got to be put down, and I don't see another way of doing it anymore... I'm sick of people like her ignoring me. I'm sick of waiting. I need to put Emory to rest. If the Director won't listen, well, then I'll get the job done myself."

Ideas swirl in my head, spinning about in aimless circles, but nothing sticks— I'm not Ronan, with the ability to talk myself out of any situation, and I'm not Becca, with the physic powers and the guts to take control. I'm just Finn Murphy. Useless. "Please, Owen," I stammer. "Your brother wouldn't want this—"

Anger flashes across the counselor's face, so fiercely that I feel myself flinch. "You don't know him!" Owen yells, blue eyes crackling with a fury I've never seen before. "You don't know me! Nobody does! I'm— I'm all alone!"

"So is the Kraken."

For a moment, Owen's mouth flattens into a thin, rigid line, and I'm sure he's going to shoot me right then and there— but all he does is blink his eyes a few times and take a deep, steadying breath. When he finally speaks again, his voice is far more collected. "Look. I would love to let you go. You're a good kid, and I thought— I thought— that maybe I wouldn't have to threaten you like this. That maybe you'd wise up and just—" He sighs, exhaling a cloud of old hurt."Well? Do you feel it yet? Is the Kraken coming?"

I clench my fist around a fistful of cold water. Deep inside my chest, I feel my heart harden. It's time for me to make a stand. I couldn't save the frogs,

"I'm not summoning the Kraken for you if you're going to kill it," I say, my tone surprisingly bold, even as disbelief and anger flashes across Owen's face. "You can threaten my friends all you want, and you can hold a gun to my head and promise that you'll shoot me, but I won't do it. I'm not. I'm not going to be an accomplice to your crazy murder revenge scheme— I'm not going to help you kill an animal that could be the last of its kind. I'll summon the Kraken for you— but not so you can kill it."

"This is your last chance," Owen warns. "Summon the Kraken now, or I'll find another way to dispose of it."

I hold his gaze unflinchingly. "No."

"Finn—"

"I have three words for you, Owen. Kiss my ass."

Owen's finger brushes against the trigger. "I really wish you'd chosen differently."

He extends his arm, pointing the barrel of the gun directly at my head. For a moment, the only thought that goes through my mind is: I hope that my last word isn't ass.

I close my eyes and beg for a miracle.

A split-second later, the piercing beam of a headlight slices through the air. Then the camp motorboat bursts out of the fog, engines roaring, the black water of the lake parting around its white hull as it flies directly towards our canoe.