Stingrays - by Christine Kearney

There are stingrays in the lake, Daddy warned. They wait on the sandy lake bed and when you come crashing through the shallows and step on one, boom! You get a poisoned barb through your foot. The pain, he said, is excruciating. I was eleven years old that summer, and every afternoon when we got back from the beach, Tristan and I went down to the lake with my new dinghy …