That evening, Maya took the rowboat out alone. The water was glass, reflecting a bruised purple sky. She pulled the oars slowly, listening to the plink-plink of her own drips. Halfway to the center, she cut the engine—no engine, just her arms—and drifted.
She stepped onto the groaning pier, her legs shaky but her heart full. “No,” she said. “Just a neighbor.” sharks lagoon
“Hey, old man,” she whispered.
The old pier at Sharks Lagoon didn’t creak anymore. It had given up creaking years ago, settling instead into a weary, permanent groan, like a sleeper trapped in a bad dream. Maya knew every weathered plank by heart. She’d spent every summer of her fifteen years here, watching the water turn from jade to ink as the sun dipped behind the mangrove forest. That evening, Maya took the rowboat out alone
Then she saw it.
“Well? Any man-eaters?”