What We Found That Summer

Many summers ago, before the town had streetlights and sidewalks, before the lake was fenced off and called a “protected reserve,” it was just our lake. Unnamed, unclaimed. It lived behind Old Man Dyer’s orchard, down a winding dirt trail the grown-ups didn’t talk about but all the kids knew. We called it the Mirror, because on still days it looked just like one — reflecting back the sky, the trees, and your face if you leaned in far enough.

That summer — I must’ve been eleven — the Mirror dried up.

It didn’t happen all at once. First, the waterline receded, curling in like a snail into its shell. Then the frogs stopped singing at dusk. Then came the cracks in the mud — wide, veiny ones that looked like old hands reaching out from underground.

But this story isn’t really about the lake.

It’s about a boy named Caleb.

Caleb was one of those kids who seemed to appear out of nowhere. He showed up at school one day in a too-big sweater with holes in the sleeves and sneakers wrapped in duct tape. The kind of kid you don’t remember arriving, but once he’s there, you can’t forget him.

He didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was always something strange.

“My brother says the trees can talk if you listen close,” he told me once, his voice low and serious as we crouched beneath a willow near the Mirror.

“You don’t have a brother,” I said, because I was sure of it.

He just grinned.

Caleb and I became summer friends — the kind who only exist during school break, when time feels endless and parents stop asking where you are as long as you’re home by dark. We’d meet at the edge of the orchard with jam sandwiches and apple sodas, daring each other to dive into the shrinking lake, to race barefoot over the prickly grass, to climb the twisted sycamore with the “X” carved into its bark.

One afternoon, maybe mid-July, Caleb brought a shovel.

“What’s that for?” I asked, already sweating from the walk.

“I wanna dig,” he said.

I laughed. “Why? It’s not like we’re gonna find treasure.”

But Caleb was already halfway down the hill, his toned arms, thanks to playing sports, swinging the shovel like a knight charging into battle.

I followed, because that’s what you do with summer friends — even when they’re being weird.

We started digging near the cracked center of the dried-up lake. The earth was brittle at first, flaking like old pie crust, but deeper down it turned dark and soft. We didn’t talk much, just took turns with the shovel, swatting away flies and brushing sweat from our brows.

Then, Caleb hit something.

A clink — not like a rock, more like metal. We froze.

“Treasure?” I whispered, half-joking.

Caleb didn’t answer. He dug faster, hands now clawing at the dirt like a dog in heat. I joined him, heart pounding, unsure why.

Together, we unearthed it — a box. Rusted, heavy, and locked with a crooked latch. No key in sight.

“What if it’s cursed?” I asked, not totally kidding.

Caleb shrugged. “Then let’s open it.”

We pried it open with a flat stone, the lock snapping with a dull crack. Inside were two things: a small glass jar, and a letter sealed in wax.

The jar held a faint green glow, like someone had trapped a firefly inside. We stared at it, wide-eyed.

“You touch it,” I said.

“You’re the one who said it might be cursed,” he shot back.

After a long minute, Caleb picked up the letter. He cracked the seal — a tree symbol, I remember now — and unfolded the parchment.

There was no name, no greeting. Just five words written in neat, looping script:

“Bury the light. Keep watch.”

Caleb read it twice. Then again. His face was unreadable.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just stared into the jar, the soft green light reflecting in his eyes.

We should’ve told someone. Brought it to the sheriff, or Old Man Dyer, or even my mom. But we didn’t.

Instead, Caleb tucked the jar into his backpack. “I’ll keep it,” he said, and that was that.

After that day, something in Caleb changed.

He stopped showing up at the orchard. I’d wait for hours with our sandwiches and apple sodas, but he never came. When I knocked on the door of the little trailer where he lived with his grandma, she’d just shake her head. “Ain’t seen him,” she’d say, then close the door.

Then one night, a storm came.

It hadn’t rained in months, but that night the sky opened up like someone had split it in half. Lightning cracked like whips over the hills. The orchard flooded. And the lake — our dried-up Mirror — filled again.

Not slowly. Not with runoff. All at once.

I went the next morning, heart beating like a drum. The trail was muddy, the trees still dripping. When I got to the edge of the lake, I stopped cold.

The water was back, but not the same. It shimmered strangely, like there was something just beneath the surface. It smelled different, too — not like algae and frogs, but like ozone and burned wood.

Caleb was standing at the far end of the lake.

I yelled his name, but he didn’t answer. He just stared at the water. I started to run toward him, but the path twisted wrong, and when I finally reached the spot, he was gone.

No footprints. No jar. Nothing.

He never came back to school that fall. His trailer sat empty. His grandma left with a broken heart. No one mentioned him. It was like he’d never existed.

But I remember.

Sometimes, on late summer nights when the crickets sing and the wind tastes like rain, I go back to the lake. It's still there. Still calm. Still glowing faintly if you look long enough.

I never told anyone about the box. Or the letter. Or the strange green light.

But I still hear it sometimes, whispering through the trees:

“Bury the light. Keep watch.”

So I do.

Every summer since.