The Secrets of Lily Graves by Sarah Strohmeyer

and fanned myself with a notebook. “What were the ‘overt acts’ that convinced Woodrow Wilson to go to war?”
    Matt lay in the shadow of a rose granite tombstone, his shirt half off and his hand resting on his tanned, bare flat abs. A line of faint hairs ran tantalizingly from his belly button to the mysterious world under his shorts.
    â€œSomething to do with subs?” he guessed.
    â€œClose.”
    He rolled over onto his stomach. “Subs reminds me of water and water reminds me of swimming. I can’t work in this heat, Graves. Let’s quit this and go somewhere cool.”
    Couple of problems with that. For one thing, with the exam only a week away, we’d added an entire afternoon to our schedule so we could get past World War II by the end of the day. We couldn’t knock off now, with the United Nations, the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor untouched.
    â€œBut the makeup is next week,” I said. “And we’ve barely touched the twentieth century.”
    â€œWho cares? I’ve crammed enough history to pass.”
    In light of how much money he’d forked over, his nonchalance had surprised me.
    â€œWhat if Erin sees us?” I said.
    â€œDon’t worry about her. She’s probably lounging around her own pool with Kate and the rest of them.”
    I wasn’t willing to risk a chance encounter, so I made another suggestion. “Sara and I have a secret spot at Miller’s Creek where hardly anyone goes. We can study there.”
    Our hideaway was a pretty glen of soft green grass surrounded by honeysuckle bushes. With a beach bag of towels, a couple of Diet Cokes, and the latest issues of
Us
magazine, we had spent entire afternoons there reading, laughing, and wading into the babbling brook when we needed to cool off.
    Matt balked. “That thing’s probably a mud hole these days.”
    Possibly. That left only one alternative, besides the disgusting public pool: the quarry.
    My mother had designated the quarry as strictly off-limits due to its unpredictable danger. Last summer, she’d been assigned the unpleasant duty of transporting a body, submerged for days, that thesearch-and-rescue divers had found. He was in his twenties, still wearing his gold chain, with a tattoo of an angel that, along with the rest of his skin, disintegrated upon touch. Boo said that his body felt as slippery as leftover soap in the shower.
    He wasn’t the only one. Over the years, more than a dozen people had drowned in Harper’s Quarry, either hitting their heads on rocks or suffering the misfortune of catching their feet in the crannies that riddled its perimeter. Most of them had been drunk. Or stoned. Often both. Stupidity was a common risk factor. As was darkness.
    There were lots of myths about Harper’s, like that it had no bottom and that the water reached the Earth’s core, where it turned boiling hot. There were pieces of rusting construction equipment (true) and monsters (not so much) in the quarry. It was rumored that swimmers had felt their ankles tugged by invisible creatures below and that the trick was not to resist, because if you fought too hard, you’d use up all your oxygen and die. The best approach was to try to extricate yourself slowly and, most of all, not panic.
    Matt eyed me cautiously. “You really want to go to the quarry?”
    I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? If you know where todive, it’s okay. My aunt Boo took me once and pointed out the safe areas.”
    I did not elaborate that she did this after we got the so-called “sinker” with the soap body, or that in so doing she’d faced one of my mother’s extra special rants. In Aunt Boo’s opinion, it was better to know how to avoid danger than to avoid dangerous places. Those were two distinct concepts people foolishly confused.
    He rolled over and blinked at the sky. “I wish there was somewhere else. Erin has such a sweet