Chapter 11

The Lake

November 16th, 1993

Dear Luke,

I love the new picture. I hope the Ariados didn't give you any trouble for getting that close to its web. Thank you so, so much.

I completely understand if you don't want to see Aaron, and by no means do I want you to stop writing because of it. Anyway, even if you'd agreed to it, I've since learned that Aaron wouldn't. To get it out of the way, I was able to talk to him recently. It wasn't pleasant, and I didn't believe most of what he had to say. It's hard to see any reconciliation with him for a long time, which makes me angry at him, but mostly sad. When I read your letters, it's like we never left, but with him, it's like we were never close.

But even if it's impossible for all three of us to be friends again, I want to see you. The first and most important reason is because I miss you badly. The second is because there's still a lot I don't understand about what went wrong. I worry it's putting distance between us, and I don't want there to be any distance between us. I also don't want to ask you my questions on paper, because I worry if you don't hear the tone of voice, they won't come across the right way.

I don't want to conceal anything, so I'll tell you that before I wrote this letter, I was waiting for you to get here. I have to go home tomorrow morning to see Nadine, so I'm leaving you this instead. I'll be coming back in your direction soon. My next surveys for the JCS are the Ice Path and Route 45, but I can put those off as long as it takes if it means we can meet in Mahogany Town.

I trust you, and I want you to know you can trust me, too.

Yours, always,
Wendy

November 27th, 1993

Luke left Ecruteak City in a fog. He still didn't know how to respond to Wendy's letter, so he hadn't yet. If he figured it out by the time he got to Mahogany, he could write her there. After all, he knew she'd get it in short order.

Sometime the next day, at the foot of Mt. Mortar, Luke thought about the math relative to the date of the letter. If Wendy stayed in Cianwood for a few days, he was probably still ahead of her. But if she had just popped in and departed right away, she might be waiting in town for him that very moment. What would he do if she were?

Run away? No. He could never beat her in an endurance race, and she was a tracker.

Die on the spot, then?

The only option he couldn't picture was sitting down and talking. He couldn't even imagine what he'd say. What could it possibly amount to besides avoiding eye contact until she eventually walked away in frustration?

One night later, he found himself on the outskirts of town. It was time to decide whether to avoid the Pokémon Center. If Wendy had beat him here, he guessed that was where she'd be waiting. It was out of the question, then. He turned south for a road that would take him home. Halfway there, he stopped, then leaned against a streetlamp and stared at the lit ground to think. It occurred to him she might have thought this through enough to wait at his house instead. He wouldn't put it past her to be so brazen as to ring the doorbell and ask if she could stay until he showed up. His mom certainly wouldn't turn her down.

Whatever he did, there was no avoiding risk. Home was still the safer option. He got moving again.

Soon, he passed the shop door with its "Closed" sign and fished for his key to the house door. It took him a minute to dig it out from the bottom of his pack. When he was finally inside, he quickly shut the door behind him again to keep the cold out of the cramped entryway. He removed his shoes, sighed in relief at the sight of no unfamiliar shoes or coats, then climbed the narrow flight of stairs to the living room. He supposed it had been about a year.

When he reached the landing, his mom's voice came from the kitchen.

"John? Sorry, could you head back out? We're out of—" She stepped into the room, stopped in her tracks when she saw him, and lit up.

"Luke! Come here, come here, let me take a look at you!"

"Hi, Mom."

Luke submitted himself to the obligatory hug and facial examination. His mom's smile didn't falter, but he could tell she was gauging his sleep deprivation. He didn't imagine it was a good grade.

"Well, come on, let me see Zoe, too!"

"Sure." He took her ball from his belt, and with a red flash, she was standing next to him on the carpet.

"And how are you, Miss Zoe?" asked his mom. Zoe, being familiar with the surroundings and comfortable with his parents, also endured inspection without complaint. "Have you been taking good care of each other? Luke, you'll have to tell me—I can't read her face."

"She's doing fine." Luke took the opportunity to set down his pack. "Gets lots of exercise. No wild Pokémon can get close to her, either."

Zoe blinked as his mom patted her on the head. Not her favorite human gesture, but she stayed polite.

"Wonderful, wonderful." His mom straightened her back and her glasses, then scrutinized him some more. "…I suppose you're not here for long?"

It was hard to get anything by her. "Just tonight. I'm heading up to the Lake tomorrow."

More scrutinizing. By now, she would have guessed he'd been putting off Gyarados Lake as long as he could, meaning he was out of specific destinations after that, meaning he would have no reason not to stay for Christmas and New Year's when he got back. All true enough. She even might have already guessed that he—

"You want one of the one-twenty cameras, right?"

Luke had to crack a smile at this. "If Dad doesn't mind, yeah."

She grinned and pointed at him. "I knew it! I knew you'd have snuck off straight north if you didn't need something from the shop first. But I'll forgive your pragmatism. Have you eaten?"

"No, but we had lunch late. You said we're out of something? I can—"

"Absolutely not. You sit down. After your dad's had a chance to see you, he'll—"

Just then, the sound of the front door opening came up the stairs.

"Oh!" His mom called down, "Honey! Look who's here!"

His dad's reaction upon reaching the living room was tame by his mom's standards, but ebullient by his own. "Look who's here, indeed!" A handshake sufficed as greeting between them, which was more to Luke's speed.

"Five minutes," said his mom, "then I need you to buy some ginger."

Dinner came and went. It must have been good, but Luke didn't notice. Afterward, he again confronted the question of what to write Wendy. Whatever it was, he knew he wanted to have it written in full that night, since it would be safer to have the letter in hand when he went to the Center for Zoe's pre-trip checkup. That way, if Wendy was waiting for him there, he could throw it in her direction and escape in the momentary confusion.

He acknowledged this to be the single stupidest thing he'd ever thought in his life.

But still, what to write? Was there a way to tell her what she wanted to know honestly and un-evasively without putting their correspondence to an end?

"Luke? Are you listening?"

"Huh?"

He hadn't noticed the question. He and his dad were down in the back room of the shop to pick out a camera.

"I said, how many rolls do you think you'll want?"

"Oh. Uh, four black-and-white, two color. Should be enough."

His dad took those quantities off the shelf and set them aside. "Remember, it's fewer shots per roll than the thirty-fives."

"I know."

All the same, his dad added two more rolls of both kinds. "Now," he said, "the main question is how you're going to lug the camera. All the cases are big, so if it's going in your pack, we've got to make sure it fits."

Luke set his pack, now empty, on the table. "I was thinking lash it to the top or bottom?"

While his dad experimented with cases and ropes, Luke lost track of what was happening again. He kept coming back to the question of the letter, but he could think of nothing to write besides the answers to what Wendy's questions likely were. No doubt, telling her exactly what happened would confirm as truthful some things she'd taken Aaron to be lying about. He didn't know if he could bear to do that to her.

But he didn't know how to keep avoiding it, either.

At some point, his dad handed him a Mikon 5050. He tested its heft with his eye to the rangefinder.

"There's an SLR you can use, too, but it's a waist-level viewfinder. You might not be used to that."

Look shook his head. "This one's fine. I'm good with rangefinders."

"Great."

Sometime between then and when he got to sleep in a real bed for a change—on the very sport where, in hindsight, Wendy had properly introduced him to puberty—Luke managed to write the worst letter he'd ever written.

Wendy hadn't been at the Pokémon Center. This left Luke free to hike north safe and miserable in the knowledge that it might be over between them again. His letter, waiting for her at the desk, contained everything he'd misled her about and why. It stuck to explanations, not justifications, and facts over judgments. It was up to her to decide whether she still respected him. Now that it was out of his hands, he didn't want to devote another thought to the matter.

There was one problem, though: He was walking closer to the exact place, the very campsite, where it would be impossible to think about anything else. The best he could do was take the less-familiar way at every fork in the trail. It might take him longer to reach the water doing this, but it was safer and less wearisome.

Early the following afternoon, he emerged from the trees to find himself at the top of a grassy slope, and beyond that, an expanse of shining, rippling blue. He had come to the southern edge of Gyarados Lake. He wasn't done walking, though, since he was given to understand that Gyarados preferred the northern half of the lake. From where he stood, the far shore was a thin line on the horizon: too far to reach before dark with how far east-to-west the lake extended.

There was no hurry, though, so he took a break, then stuck around for the golden hour and shot some landscapes to get accustomed to the larger camera. It soon became apparent it was best to use the tripod whenever possible—his arms simply weren't that strong. A Butterfree in flight served as practice both for tracking a moving subject with a tripod and adjusting focus accordingly. And even if he was "good" with rangefinders as he'd said, it took some getting used to how everything appeared to be in focus regardless of whether or not it was to the actual camera lens.

He made Zoe sleep in her ball that night. Conditions weren't good for healthy dreams. He might have slept an hour.

Come morning, he practiced some more, though he recognized this could only help so much when he couldn't see the results. Around ten o'clock, he began his trek clockwise around the lake. The wind off the water was too cold for his liking, so he took to the wooded paths uphill, instead.

The way was unfamiliar, and Luke was pretty sure he was already past it to the west, so he figured he was safe.

He was wrong.

The eastern approach to the clearing had escaped his memory, but not the clearing itself. His stomach lurched at the sight. The one log by the fire ring… the path to the other clearing, the one with enough room for "practice" battles… the ravine… There was no mistaking it. Everything was where it had been on that day. He stared into space and fought to calm his breathing.

December 21st, 1990

Zoe was near her limit. Luke knew it. He knew Aaron knew it. He knew Aaron didn't care. There was no calling a practice battle early with Aaron—it only made things worse later. Zoe heaved and licked at a cut on her lower lip. Luke wiped his brow, somehow sweaty despite the freezing temperature.

There had to be something he could do to get a victory here—to get this over with quickly and with as few hits to his battered Hypno as possible. But Aaron's new Rhyhorn had barely a scratch on him. And there was nothing Luke could do that Aaron hadn't already planned for. As happened so often when he was at a loss, he fell back on the obvious strategy.

"Hypnosis."

It was too late. Zoe didn't have the wherewithal to keep her pendulum's motion smooth and level. No effect.

"Double Edge."

The Rhyhorn burst forward and crashed into Zoe, sending both of them rolling across the ground. The attacker ended up on his feet, no worse for wear, unlike Zoe. She was bleeding in no fewer than five places. To Luke's dismay, she got her knees back under her. She tried to rise to her feet.

Stay down, thought Luke, sick at himself for not saying it out loud. Just give up.

Five agonizing seconds passed until Zoe's head was halfway up. Luke was about to call for Confusion—something easy for no other reason than to show they weren't throwing it in. The word was in his mouth when the Rhyhorn charged without a command from Aaron, head low. Skull Bash.

If Zoe had been upright, it would have been bad enough, but her head was right in the Rhyhorn's path. The blow landed with a sickening crack. Zoe fell in a heap and didn't move.

Luke was aghast. For a second, he saw red, but he shut his eyes and forced it down. It was over. That was all that mattered. He took her ball in his hand.

"Is she faking it?"

Luke twitched. "…How many times do I have to tell you we aren't doing that anymore?"

Aaron rolled his eyes. "So sue me. It's the one thing your team's any good at. How am I supposed to tell?"

Luke jabbed a finger at the yet-nameless Rhyhorn. "Your Pokémon took a headshot while she was on her last breath! Is that enough? Do you want me to shake her?"

"It's your fault for not recognizing a Head Bash stance. You still think every move's going to come after the trainer calls an attack?"

Luke was so tired. It's pointless, he told himself. There's no arguing with this bastard. Just leave it.

He held out Zoe's ball, but had to stop when Aaron said, "Wait."

Luke groaned. "What is it now?"

"That was too quick. She can keep going." Aaron reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear vial containing a single yellow pill in the shape of an elongated octahedron.

Luke couldn't believe what he was seeing. "…Those are for emergencies."

Aaron glared. "If you're a scrub or a wuss, sure. Every serious trainer uses a Revive to salvage a lousy practice now and then."

Aaron approached Zoe, but Luke stomped into his path before he got to her. "Don't you fucking dare."

They stared each other down. Aaron's face showed a simple, measured disdain. Luke's, try as he might to appear firm, must have looked desperate and manic.

Aaron spoke up first. "I've given you every chance to prove you're taking this seriously again. Wendy and I don't need a hopeless, lazy quitter with a hopeless, lazy team dragging us down when we've got the next level to worry about. Lazy Pokémon are contagious. If yours are going to keep hanging around ours, they need to catch up."

Luke broke eye contact. It was impossible. He was already doing everything in his power. It simply wasn't in him to be that caliber of trainer. It had to end. But he couldn't let it. The same problem, the same non-answer, day after day after day after day.

Aaron went on. "You owe me extra. You think I bought that lame excuse you made up to stay away from the Gym last week? That ain't happening again. We're not going to keep coming back to your hometown over and over just so you can keep not getting this Badge."

Luke shut his eyes and seized his temples. Of course he hadn't fooled him. There was no fooling someone who lived to see that no Pokémon got a second of rest if he could help it. How on earth was Luke going to talk his way out of challenging that Gym again? His team wasn't close to ready. They might not be ready for a year. It was going to be another massacre. And it was going to be nothing but massacres at the hands of Aaron's team until he had all eight Badges.

He had to quit. He had to tell Wendy he was sorry, but it was over.

He had to lose her.

His eyes welled up.

A noise behind him jarred Luke back to the moment. He spun around, then saw Aaron hunched over with his hand at Zoe's mouth. Zoe's limbs spasmed as the instant-dissolving pill took effect. Her eyes opened. They were vacant. She couldn't focus them. Before she could try to stand, Luke aimed the ball and pressed the button. With a flash of red light, Zoe was back inside. He cursed himself for not having the guts to recall her earlier.

Then, Aaron slowly turned his head, furious.

Luke could have killed him.

He didn't know how he would do it, but for an second, he pictured Aaron lying limp on the ground with his head split open.

Aaron rose and walked over to him, getting right in his face. Luke's fingernails dug into his palms.

"Here's how it's gonna be," said Aaron. "You can either get your stuff and go home now, or you can tell Wendy you want to train more, so you'd like us to stay at the lake through the holidays. Pick one of those, or I tell her about you throwing those battles. Your call."

With that, Aaron left for the path to the campsite.

Luke ground his teeth. He could only breathe in fits and starts. His feet moved on their own. A better instinct told him to stay put and stare at the sky for an hour or a day, however long it took him to calm down, but the rest of him wanted to wring Aaron's neck. The tension between these thoughts kept him at a safe distance for now. He thought he started seeing things, but it was just snowflakes. Snow made him think of putting up the tent. Putting up the tent made him think of jamming one of the poles into Aaron's solar plexus.

Before Luke knew it, the campsite was ahead. He slowed his pace, wondering if it was too late to turn around.

"We're back!" said Aaron like nothing had happened.

"Great timing," said Wendy, clueless. "May I ask Ace if I can borrow him?"

"Have at it." Luke heard Ace—the one who'd just left Pauline burned in four different places when even two would have been overkill—emerge from his Poké Ball to light the campfire.

"I'm gonna put up the tent now," said Aaron, "in case the snow picks up."

"Thanks!"

Luke forced himself to walk to his things instead of letting Wendy see him like this. He sat down, took out his camera bag, and pretended to do something with it.

His veins were about to pop out of his head. If someone tried to talk to him, he'd explode, and it would be over. If he left without a word, Aaron would tell Wendy everything as soon as she asked what was wrong, and it would still be over. All the ways to forestall it were gone. It was going to end in a matter of minutes.

He was losing her. She wasn't coming to his house for Christmas. He wasn't going to see her again. There wouldn't be a second time her body leaned against his while she stared into his eyes.

He wouldn't have to pretend nothing was wrong while she smiled and laughed about everything, either.

He wouldn't have to pay for her blissful ignorance with Zoe's blood ever again.

His fists shook.

The words entered his head:

To hell with her.

"Hey, Luke," said Aaron. "You were saying something earlier about our plans for—"

Luke was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. He figured it out exactly when he swung for Aaron's nose, and didn't change his mind from there.

"Hey— OW! The fu—!"

Luke only hit cheek. Not enough. He threw another punch, and another, and another. The first grazed the side of Aaron's head, while the other two hit his raised arms. Aaron swore. Luke screamed.

Aaron made a mistake in punching back. The impact didn't even faze Luke, and the opening let him grab Aaron's shirt and yank down. When Aaron tried to free himself, Luke hit him square in the nose.

There was blood. Still not enough. Luke wanted bone.

You don't get to surrender.

He swung again, harder, and connected again.

See how you like getting hit when you're already beat.

A sudden roar split Luke's ears. His head whipped to the side as the oncoming force drove his body was in the other direction. He tumbled downhill, screaming, with a mass of fur and muscle on top of him. He only stopped when his chest hit a tree trunk.

There was no chance to recover. The mass of fur pinned him to the ground with claws digging into his gut and left arm. Then it felt like someone jammed a dozen burning sewing needles straight through his jacket and into his right shoulder.

Everything was on fire.

He howled in pain.

It was supposed to be over.

"They called your parents," said Wendy, barely above a whisper. "They're on their way now."

Luke stared at the ceiling from the hospital bed. His arm was in a sling to keep him from moving it too much, which might open the stitches. He should have been alone, but she was still in the room.

It was supposed to be over.

"I… I want to know what's wrong… why you hit Aaron like that."

It was supposed to be over. Luke breathed in sharp and held it. It was supposed to be over.

"D… did he deserve it? You didn't s… stop after his nose started bleeding."

It was supposed to be over. Luke wasn't supposed to have to explain why Aaron deserved it. Wendy was supposed to have gone away, left town, disappeared before he had to justify any of this. Every time he shifted even an ounce of his weight, his shoulder felt like it was opening again. It was supposed to be over.

She didn't say anything else. Even without looking, Luke could tell she was still waiting for an answer.

What the fuck do you want me to say.

The more he thought about it, the tighter he had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from screaming. He didn't want to scream at her. Screaming at her would hurt even more than ignoring her. He just wanted to never have met her.

It was supposed to be over. But he had to say something, or it would never be over.

What did she want to hear? She wanted an apology, because she thought he was wrong. Was there anything he could bring himself to apologize for?

He dragged the words out of his mouth: "I'll apologize to Ace." He could say that much. Ace was a Pokémon. He was a vicious, ruthless Pokémon, but that was a training defect. "It wasn't his fault. I shouldn't have spooked him."

This wasn't it, he realized. She needed to want to leave. Forever. Or it would never stop hurting.

His voice wobbled and croaked as he spoke. "But if I ever, ever see Aaron's face again, I'm going to break his teeth."

There. That had to have done it. She would hate him for saying that. She would leave. She—

"Please… Just tell me what's wrong."

Luke couldn't believe it. He tried to make a fist, but it just sent an ache running up his arm to stab his shoulder again. Hadn't he said enough? Hadn't he done enough? It was supposed to be over. What was her problem?

"Why."

He sounded angry. He couldn't help it. Why should he say another word to her? Why was she still here?

"Because I need to know how to fix this!"

This was too much to take. There was no "fixing this." Pretending otherwise was what got Zoe sick. It was what got her beat half to death during training. He felt his eyes about to well up. He turned his head to the far wall so she wouldn't see it and say anything. It hurt to move.

"There's no point," he managed to say. There had to be some way he could end this. "You wouldn't even get it." She wouldn't. If she would have, she'd have gotten it by now. "Or you'd be on his side." Why wasn't she leaving? "There's no point." This was supposed to be over. "I'm done." This was supposed to be over. This was supposed to be over. This was supposed to be over.

"I'm on both your sides!" Wendy sounded like she was crying too. "Just tell me what it is! I won't blame you!"

His right hand still couldn't make a fist without his shoulder screaming. He grabbed she sheets with his left instead and squeezed. He didn't know what he'd do if she didn't leave right now. "I said I'm done."

"This doesn't make any sense!"

If you knew why it made sense, you'd leave anyway.

"You were the best of friends this morning!"

Why the fuck do you still think so?

"How can one bad day mean more than all the time you've been together?"

I can't take another second of this. Go the hell away. Get the fuck out of this room.

"We said we were going to Indigo, all three of us, and we're so close!"

Get out. Get out. Go away. Get out. Go away. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.

"You can't just give up like this!"

Luke's back spasmed. It set his shoulder on fire again. He exploded. "GET OUT!"

Yelling hurt his arm even worse than his throat, but he couldn't stop.

"GEEETTT! OUUUUTT!"

The worse it hurt, the louder he screamed, the more his arm shook, the worse it hurt. Some adult rushed over and held him in place, but that hurt too. He kept screaming. His shoulder felt wet under the bandage. The adult called for a doctor.

His voice gave out before the pain did. At some point, the doctor tore the bandage off and said something about needing to redo the stitches. Luke's breaths came between sobs. They hurt each time.

Finally, he heard the words coming from the other side of the door:

"Don't follow me! I said I'm leaving!"

It was over.

Luke stood at the edge of the ravine and stared at the spot where he'd lain in agony three years ago, minus three weeks. Everything from the Fire Fang to the E.R. was a blur, as was much of what had followed. But standing there, as from outside himself and with knowledge of what had happened, he could see Wendy bent over him, frantically holding him down and applying first aid until an emergency crew arrived.

He couldn't recall her face from any point that day. Not when she saved his arm from possible necessity of amputation, nor when she sat at his bedside, nor when he finally scared her away.

He kept coming back to the last words he ever heard her say—not to him, but to Aaron. One question had bothered him during the long months before his shoulder recovered: Had his own outburst been the final straw for Wendy, or was it something Aaron had said? He'd eventually concluded it must have been the latter, but that it wouldn't have taken much. Any suggestion from Aaron that he didn't want to talk it out would have sufficed.

Thinking about it now, Luke supposed Aaron likely hadn't said much for the same reason he hadn't said much: The full explanation would have reflected poorly on both of them. What was Aaron supposed to say? "Luke was losing on purpose, so I told him to cancel Christmas or piss off?" It was hard to imagine him trying that approach unless he wanted to go it solo, which he obviously didn't or Wendy wouldn't have had to tell him not to follow her. No, he would have tried to hide it, not realizing it would backfire.

Luke shook his head. Things should never had reached that point. If he had only spoken up before hitting Aaron, and accepted the breakup like a normal person, he wouldn't have left her alone and friendless, too.

Sure, that one friend would have been Aaron, but this was Wendy. Brilliant, driven, talented, tireless Wendy. There was nothing about her to bring out the sadist in Aaron. She might even have made a decent person out of him if Luke hadn't been in the way.

He sighed. He really had ruined everything.

Then, a few silent minutes later, he shook himself, turned around, and left. Seeing the place again hadn't killed him after all. He could get on with his work now.

Luke had been at the Lake for three days and was through two rolls of each kind of film. He had shots of distinctive fauna, of two Magikarp leaping out of the water, and of battles between a few passing trainers. But none, so far, of his primary subject: Gyarados. A few had popped up in the distance, but none while he was ready for them, which didn't matter so much because none had been close enough to be worth the film, either. It was time to do something about it.

He sat on a boulder by a rocky stretch of the shore and considered the task. If he had ever learned to surf on the back of a Water-type Pokémon, it may have been a different story, but it was a few years late to think about that. As it stood, he could come up with only one edge to be had:

Luck.

Pick the best spot. Have the camera ready on the tripod. Wait and watch for as many days as it took. Then it became a race between his luck and his food supply, and his luck was the one thing he could usually count on.

He took the local topographical map out of his bag. He knew Gyarados preferred the water deep, and he was modestly confident they preferred north to south. Something about distance from human habitation, but this might have been nonsense. In any event, he was on the north shore now, so he may as well believe it.

He took note of a tight bunching of elevation lines in a promising spot. A bit of land jutted out close to where the bottom of the lake fell sharply away. That seemed his best bet to stand close-ish to a surfacing Gyarados.

It was only a mile away. He shouldered his pack, let Zoe out for the exercise, and headed off.

The place, while easy to find, was even more exposed than Luke had expected. Cover was nil. The prospect of sitting still on this micro-cape all day for anywhere up to eleven days suddenly felt more daunting.

"What do you think, Zoe?"

Zoe didn't react. It seemed she didn't think one way or the other. Could be worse. He got to work on the tent.

The first full day of waiting let Luke know what he was in for: Wind. Wind and more wind. Cold and damp wind, at that. It was so bad, he didn't dare leave the lens uncovered until he was ready to shoot. And since it would be too slow to remove the lens cap safely when a subject appeared, on went the lens hood and a rain jacket over that. As long as the inside of the jacket stayed dry, he felt secure enough about it.

At eleven in the morning, the first not-too-distant Gyarados showed itself. Luke didn't have the tripod aimed at it until it was halfway back in the water. One wasted shot, but a lesson learned about how fast he needed to be. He spotted no others that day.

The next day saw three surfacing Gyarados, two of which Luke caught on film. Both were too far away to be worth putting in his portfolio, even with the size of the film. Adding insult to injury was the number of Magikarp that had no problem popping into view to eat bugs. It made Luke want to yell at them to hurry up, ditch the red scales for blue, and evolve.

The third day of waiting was all rain. Luke stayed in his tent and ate every meal cold. As he listened to the pattering of raindrops on the tent's fly, he couldn't help but wonder if there was something he could do tomorrow to help his chances. Zoe didn't seem to be in the mood to offer advice. With how seldom wild Pokémon approached the lakeshore from the woods or the water, she had little to do.

Luke sighed. He bet Wendy would have some insight on where to stand, or better yet on how to provoke a wild Gyarados into surfacing nearby, even if Water-types weren't her specialty.

There he was, thinking about her again. It's probably over, he told himself. She might not even write back. Just forget about her.

He forced his brain to change subjects. "Hey, Zoe," he said. "Would you rather sit outside and do nothing tomorrow, or wait in the ball?"

Zoe tilted her nose toward the entrance of the tent and made a noise that nine times out of ten meant something closer to approval than disapproval.

"You sure? It's going to be cold, damp, and boring. The tent's an option, too."

Zoe snorted.

His best guess was that she ranked being outside as the best of three bad options. "…Yeah. I think I'm with you."

Whatever the conversation had actually meant, Luke decided to keep her out for most of the next day. If she complained, she could always go back in.

That day, Luke found himself distracted by the clouds. Clouds, especially in conjunction with mountains, were a tempting way to get a modestly good picture out of an otherwise unlucky day. When he noticed Zoe staring more intently at the water than he was, he got his act together. If he couldn't stare at a lake for three straight hours without a break, what else did he have to offer as a photographer?

This brought to mind something else that worried him. Was he going to cut it in the professional world if he needed this much time to get a picture that was worth anything? Everyone needed luck, but to rely on it as much as he did was time-consuming. Could someone who knew what he was doing have gotten three genuinely excellent photos by now? What were his options besides sitting here, waiting for a shot that might not come?

Wendy came into his head again. He kicked her out.

A day passed.

Another day passed.

And another.

Luke found himself back in the hospital, telling Wendy to shut up and go away, even as he cried over her absence. Zoe shook him awake just in time for him to see the closest Gyarados yet dive back into the water. It was a good thing his first instinct was to hit his forehead and not the camera.

It was Luke's eighth day on this unlucky peninsula—though he still had no evidence it wasn't the luckiest spot on Gyarados Lake.

He wondered if there was some clue in what he knew about Gyarados behavior. As far as he could tell, they surfaced only because they thought air was a nice change of pace from water for a few seconds a day. Maybe they came out more often in the summer. That would have been a smart thing to look up earlier. He bet Wendy would know.

He sighed. At least Zoe seemed as focused as ever. Maybe she'd learned something he hadn't, staring at the water as if nothing else existed. Without moving her head, she stuck out her arm and shoved his knee.

"I'm watching, girl. I'm watching." It stung his eyes, but he was watching.

He felt terrible about how few dreams she'd gotten to eat lately. The medicine supply was too thin to risk letting her eat nightmares, so he'd been putting her back in her ball every night. She complied each time, but never without at least momentary complaint.

The sun sunk low to their right. The evening golden hour was here. This should have been cause to be especially alert for opportunities, but all it meant to him now was having to endure only ninety more minutes of worthless staring before he could call it a day, eat something that resembled dinner, then pretend to have any chance of falling asleep.

He was so tired.

Zoe shoved him again, but it didn't help.

He rubbed his eyes in a half-hearted attempt to keep them open.

Just then, something in his head jumped. His neck and back straightened up in a sudden, powerful jolt. He didn't know what it was. Before he could consider what it might be, his eyes began to feel funny. A strange blue tint—almost a glow—was spilling into his peripheral vision. He found his focus drawn to a point out on the water to his front and left, closer than it was sensible to hope for.

He didn't think. He pulled the jacket off the camera and turned the tripod to that spot. Focus, aperture, shutter speed, everything checked. He just needed something to come out of the water right there, right now.

A splash. It came with a burst of brilliant red, not blue, from the lake. But it wasn't Magikarp-sized.

Click.

It didn't stop at the surface. It was a red Gyarados.

Click.

Was there color film in the camera right now, or black-and-white?

Click.

The entire, immense length of the creature, whiskers to tail, was out of the water.

Click.

It was diving back in.

Click.

The blue tint shimmered in the corner of Luke's right eye. He rotated the tripod ever so slightly in that direction. Then, without knowing why, he loosened the handle to tilt the camera vertically.

The red Gyarados resurfaced. Luke tracked it, locked the tripod in position, and put his finger on the shutter release.

He was ready at the exact moment to see the Gyarados in the ideal midair pose, filling precisely enough of the frame with perfect orange clouds and blue mountains behind it.

Click.

The red Gyarados dove again, this time for good.

The blue tint abandoned Luke's eyes, and at once the fatigue set back in. Had it been real? Had he loaded black-and-white film that morning by mistake? He maintained the wherewithal to check the film-stock reminder tab on the back of the camera.

Color.

That night, Luke made a proper campfire in the woods. It was sorely welcome after so many days perched on that spot with no better source of heat than a camp stove. Zoe, for all the unsolicited attention she'd paid the vigil, seemed much happier now that it was done with, too.

Luke yawned. "…Zoe, I don't know why, but I suspect I owe you a good deal of thanks."

"Mrrrhmmm."

Noncommittal. Same not-exactly-inscrutable Zoe as ever. He didn't feel any different himself, either. Already, even the memory of that sensation in his eyes was getting fuzzy. If he didn't write it down soon, he wasn't sure he'd believe it was real in a year.

Writing, he remembered. This was absolutely something he would have written to Wendy about. He also would have spent however long it took in the darkroom to print one more immaculate copy so she could keep one.

But he couldn't have "mailed" a copy to her, since this was no basic 35mm shot he was thinking about. He couldn't give her anything short of the best, and this picture would demand a larger print than he could put in an envelope and leave at the Pokémon Center. He'd have to deliver it in person.

That was never going to happen. And even if he were to do her the injustice of leaving her a smaller print, he didn't know—didn't even believe—she would want any more letters from him after reading his last one, which she must have done by now.

His head fell to his knees. When was she going to vacate his brain? Against his better judgment, he considered the possibility that she did still want to write. If this kept going after he admitted to giving up on the pact without telling her—to deceiving her for so long—what would that look like? Would her words turn cautious, distant, merely obligatory? Would the letter-writing end not cold, not hot, but with a slow petering out into meaninglessness?

And what if she somehow still wanted to have this bitter, awkward exchange in person?

"—Oh no," he said out loud as it hit him.

"…Is she waiting for me again?"

Zoe's ears twitched. She turned more or less in his direction.

There was no way. Wendy wouldn't still want to see him. She'd read everything she needed to write him off. She had Nadine to go cry about it to if she wanted. There was no reason for her to try to see him.

But she might.

"…Zoe," he said at length, "what do you think about camping out here for a few more days?"

Zoe's eyes narrowed.

He knew Wendy didn't have an empty schedule. Another day or two might be all it took for her to give up and leave for the Ice Path. If it saved them the grief of seeing each other, it was worth a shot.

But his question for Zoe wasn't rhetorical: She'd done more than enough on this excursion to earn an opinion.

"Well?"

To his surprise, Zoe stood up. She stepped next to him, pushed one hand against the side of his head, and…

And pointed south with the other.

This was unprecedented. She never gave this direct, this human of an answer to a question. He almost said "Okay," "Of course" on the spot. How could he refuse when she was this emphatic about it?

The words died in his mouth. The very thought of going back to town in the morning, without those few days of insurance, made his arms and legs feel too weak to support his own weight. It was impossible.

"…I'm sorry. I can't do it, girl."

Zoe stared at him.

"I shouldn't have asked."

Zoe made a noise he didn't recognize. Then she sat facing him, pushed the side of his head with one hand again, and placed other on his knee. It was hardly comfortable for his head this way, but he could never have objected, not when she was so obviously trying to make him feel better.

He could think of a thousand reasons why she shouldn't. There was no keeping track of all the pain he'd caused her, or failed to prevent for her, everywhere from her stomach to her skull. But here she was, looking out for him.

Maybe she didn't know any better. He felt sorry for her.