The Devil You Know

by Trish Doller

The river is quiet. There are no other boats on the water, so ours are the only voices we hear. We use them sparingly, comparing our progress to the landmarks we pass or asking for another bottle of water from the cooler. We snack on trail mix and point out deer, herons, or the alligators that stare at us with cold eyes. But mostly we just listen to the creak of the trees, the rolling rattle of gopher frogs, and the rustling of wild turkeys that pay us no mind at all as they forage the riverbank for bugs and seeds.

  Matt gives a low whistle as we pass a large tom. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a shotgun right now.”

  “Right?” Noah agrees. “Turkey dinner over an open fire.”

  The mention of a shotgun calls to mind the handgun in the trunk, and I wonder if Noah is wishing he’d brought it along. Maybe he did. I study the contours of his back, wondering if the gun is stashed in the waist of his shorts under his T-shirt like they do in the movies. Or maybe it’s buried in his duffel. Can you even shoot a turkey with a handgun? “Did you bring—”

  “I brought a pack rod.” Noah interrupts before I can finish the question, but I get the feeling he knows what I was going to ask. “Maybe we can catch some fish for dinner.”

  “That sounds really good.” I don’t know whether I’m relieved to change the subject or bothered that he didn’t answer my question, but I don’t ask again. Maybe I’d rather not know if he has the gun. “If you’ll clean them, I’ll cook them.”

  “Deal.” He grins, and I wish for the millionth time that we were in the same canoe. The distance between us isn’t that much—a few yards, maybe—but all I want to do is touch him. Which is both exciting and scary. I don’t remember feeling like this with Justin. Not even at the beginning when we were all secret smiles in classes and stolen kisses at my locker. Noah has discovered things about me that Justin will never know. That I didn’t even know until last night.

  We’ve paddled for several hours, and the afternoon sun hangs low in the sky, when we reach a stretch of riverbank where the forest thins to grazing pastures dotted with cattle. A handful of cows drink along the river’s edge and a pair of gangly-legged babies—their nubby horns peeking from behind tan-colored ears—frolic along the bank, following us.

  Molly’s bark rings sharp and clear, startling me. “She’s been so quiet that I completely forgot she was here.”

  “She’s like that sometimes,” Noah says. “But it’s about time for her to have a run. Once we get away from the cows, we’ll take a break.”

  “We’ve got to be getting close to town.” Matt speaks for the first time in a while. “Why don’t we just head there so if it starts raining we won’t be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

  The canoes drift along together, bumping gently against each other, as Noah consults the map from the canoe outpost. “Zolfo Springs is still a ways off. We’ll just stop for a couple of minutes to let Molly blow off some steam.”

  My butt is sore from sitting all afternoon and I’ve had to pee for the past hour, so the prospect of stopping sooner rather than later is appealing. “I wouldn’t mind a break.”

  Matt doesn’t look happy about the decision but he doesn’t say anything. He simply digs his paddle into the water and our canoe pulls ahead.

  We haul the boats onto a sand-and-grass island in the middle of the river. Molly leaps out of Noah’s canoe but she doesn’t just run. She goes crazy, zooming around the island in wide circles. Splashing into the water. Rolling in the sand. Noah gets out an orange Frisbee with chew marks around the edge and sends it sailing. Molly leaps high off the ground, snatching it right out of the air. Over and over he throws the Frisbee for her and never once does she miss, even when Noah flies it out over the river.

  Leaving my clothes on the bank, I wade out into the water and sink down to my neck. A tiny part of me is embarrassed because it’s obvious I’m going to the bathroom, but it’s such a sweet relief to pee that I don’t even care. When I’m finished, I stretch out on a patch of grass to let my bathing suit dry. My arms ache from paddling, there’s a dime-size blister at the base of my middle finger, and I’m exhausted. The sky is darker now and the clouds have closed in the gaps. And I’m praying for the rain to come down hard so I don’t have to leave this spot.

  “You guys go on without me,” I say, as Matt drops to the ground beside me. “I’m just going to die right here, okay?”

  He shoves the ball cap down so it covers my face. “Tired?”

  “You have no idea.” I don’t bother pushing the cap back up because the darkness on my face feels good and it hurts to lift my arms. “I am having more fun than I’ve had in a really long time, but I am not a wilderness girl. You guys make it seem way more easy than it is.”

  “Yeah, but we have years of experience,” Matt says. “I mean, the first time my parents took me paddling was before I could walk. And Noah eats, sleeps, and breathes wilderness. If that Into the Wild dude knew half the shit we do about survival … well, he might not have wound up dead in a bus.”

  “You won’t catch me testing that theory, though,” Noah says, and I feel the heat of his body as he sprawls out on my other side. When he lifts the cap off my face, his smile is the brightness in a cloud-dark world. “Hey, you.”

  “Hey, yourself.” I smile back and my heartbeat kicks up a notch as he leans down to kiss me. His lips are warm and salty from sweat—and he smells like wet dog from letting Molly jump up into his arms—but it doesn’t stop me from bringing my own aching arms up around his neck to pull him closer. We haven’t touched all day and I just want him against me.

  Our mouths are a breath apart when I’m hit in the forehead by a big fat raindrop that trickles down my cheek like sweat. Lightning flashes across the sky over his shoulder, white-hot and jagged.

  “Shit.” Noah falls back on the grass. The three of us lie there collecting the rain on our faces, our skin, our clothes, until the space between the drops gets smaller. Feels colder. “Looks like we’re spending the night right here.”

  I was looking forward to Zolfo Springs. Maybe calling Dad to see if he’s still mad. Finding out if Lindsey’s made it back home. And maybe talking to Danny. But I’m too tired to even groan. Beside me, Matt gets to his feet and stretches out a hand to help me up. “We need to pitch the tent before it starts pouring.”

  We work as quickly as possible to unload the canoes and make camp, but by the time we dive through the tent flap, we’re drenched. The rain drums relentlessly on the fabric over our heads and we sit in a soggy row—even Molly—watching millions of tiny drops dance on the surface of the river. Thunder rumbles the air around us, and each time lightning crackles it looks like the sky is being torn in two.

  “So much for fishing.” Noah peels off his T-shirt and throws it out into the rain-soaked grass since it can’t really get any wetter. He leans back, propping himself on a rolled-up sleeping bag.

  Matt nods. “No building a fire, either.”

  “Yes, but …” Rain spatters on my head and shoulders as I dig through the cooler—just outside the tent flap—grabbing beers for Noah and Matt, Coke for me, and a plastic baggie of slightly watery cheese cubes. My hair is dripping again when I pull back inside. “If the crackers are dry, we’ve got ourselves dinner.”

  Noah laughs a little. “Damn, Cadie, so fancy.”

  “I know, right? You should see what I can do with a box of macaroni and cheese and a pound of ground beef.” I hand him an only-a-little-bit-damp cracker with a cube of Colby Jack on top, and he pops it into his mouth. “I’m practically Betty Crocker.”

  “My mom used to cook the meat with a packet of taco mix and then add the mac and cheese.” Noah opens his beer and foam bubbles out, cascading down the side of the can and dripping all over his already wet shorts. He doesn’t miss a beat. “If we had a jar of jalapeños, she’d throw those in, too.”

  “Yep.” I nod, arranging the crackers and cheese on a paper plate as if we are somewhere nicer than a too-crowded tent in the Middle of Nowhere, Florida. “My
little brother loves it, too.”

  “Well, yeah.” Noah smiles. “That shit’s delicious. Of course, Matty doesn’t know about the wonders of ramen noodles and boxed mac and cheese. Kid’s first solid food was lobster served with a silver spoon.”

  Matt’s eyebrows push together and the atmosphere in the tent feels hot and thick, and I’m pretty sure we’re not really talking about food anymore. Seems odd that Noah would hold a class grudge against the people he’s lived with the past several years. Or maybe he’s trying to paint Matt in a not-one-of-us light because he’s still jealous. Matt doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if he’s still mad that Noah wouldn’t listen to him about Zolfo Springs. He just takes a long drink of beer and extends his middle finger at his cousin.

  “I’m kidding,” Noah tells me. “Except his mom makes the real thing and uses like eight or nine kinds of cheese, and sometimes she really does put lobster in it. Seriously legit.”

  “I could go for some of that right now.” I throw a smile at Matt—a small solidarity—but the equilibrium still feels off. It seems like they’re both angry about nothing, but I don’t know their buttons and bombs. I probably never will. We fall into an uncomfortable silence and just sit awhile, watching for signs the rain is letting up and munching damp cheese crackers.

  Noah falls asleep with his head on the sleeping bag and his legs crossed at the ankles. Molly slinks behind me and curls up between his arm and his side. I smile to myself, only a tiny bit jealous of the dog and only because I know how nice it is right there in that spot.

  “You know what I could go for?” Matt says, as if our long-abandoned conversation was still going. “Pie.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I agree. “Banana cream.”

  “And apple.”

  “Rhubarb.”

  “Chocolate cream.”

  “Key lime.” We say that last one at the same time and laugh together. I glance at Noah to make sure we didn’t wake him, but he’s still sound asleep with his arm flung over his eyes. His mouth open slightly. His face is relaxed, making him look younger than he is. Not so tough. Kind of adorable.

  When I turn back, Matt has a sly grin on his face, and I have a feeling he’s plotting something. “I don’t think we’re as far from the town as he thinks,” he whispers. “Let’s paddle up, walk into town … I mean, there has to be someplace that serves pie.”

  “But it’s raining.”

  “It’s stopped.”

  “We should wake Noah,” I say, but Matt shakes his head.

  “No.” He slowly unzips the screen on the tent. “We shouldn’t.”

  I feel guilty for leaving Noah behind, but I rationalize it away by telling myself he’s tired from having to paddle alone today—even though I know that’s not even remotely true. I was the one dying on the riverbank while he was entertaining a cabin-fevered cattle dog. It might not be as adventurous as sex in a graveyard, but I like the idea of a clandestine pie run.

  The air is swollen with moisture and the ground is squishy beneath my bare feet as we run down to the canoes in the fading light, but Matt is right—the rain has stopped. A slight breeze rustles trees, and it sounds as if rain is still coming down, but overhead slivers of sky peek between the clouds and the glow of the rising moon lurks just behind the bottom of a retreating thunderhead. The frogs and crickets are crazy loud now, masking the sound of the canoe scraping along the sand as we push it into the water.

  Matt and I make a silent getaway, not daring to speak for five minutes, ten minutes. Not until we pass under the State Road 64 bridge and round a little bend that puts us at a park on the edge of Zolfo Springs.

  “Damn it,” Matt swears softly, as we carry the canoe up the paved ramp and turn it upside down on the grass. “I knew we weren’t that far away. We could have had dinner in a restaurant instead of cooped up in the tent.”

  “I don’t mind.” I stash our paddles beneath the boat and slide my feet into my flip-flops. “I kind of like our little island.”

  “Of course you’d side with him.”

  “It’s not about sides.” We walk through a wooded campground and past a pioneer village museum with old-timey buildings and a steam engine. If anyone was around, they’d probably think we were homeless, our clothes having dried on our bodies and our hair flattened by rain. Sand and gravel have worked themselves between my toes and my flip-flops, and once again I’m in desperate need of a shower. “It would have been cool to camp here, but whatever. We’re engaged in Operation Clandestine Pie, Matt. You and me.”

  I wait to be rewarded with a laugh, but when it doesn’t come right away, I wonder if there was something in the rain that soaked into their skin. Turned both him and Noah into testosterone monsters. But then a smile splits Matt’s face and he laughs, lifting his fist for me to bump, the same way he did the first time we met. “Locked and loaded.”

  Chapter 13

  We find a family-style restaurant across the street from the park. It’s nothing fancy, and the place is deserted except for a couple of guys drinking coffee at the lunch counter, but they have pie. An older waitress seats us at a booth with a clear view of a television silently broadcasting the news.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asks, placing plastic-covered menus in front of us on the table.

  “Couple of Cokes?” Matt looks at me to check if that’s okay, and I nod. “And we don’t need menus,” he says. “We’ll take one slice of every kind of pie you have.”

  Her going-gray eyebrows shoot up. “Every kind?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hon, we have six.”

  “I know.”

  “This some kind of joke?” Maybe she thinks we’re the dine-and-dash type. The Kendrick brothers and I tried it once at the IHOP in Lake City, but I snuck back to pay for our food. It was busy that morning, and we weren’t even gone long enough for our waitress to notice we skipped out, but I still felt bad. Maybe she was a single mom or weighed down by debt. What if IHOP made her pay our bill?

  Matt leans to fish his wallet from his back pocket and slaps a hundred on the table. “Will this cover it?”

  “Well.” The waitress sighs as if she still thinks we’re pulling some sort of scam on her, but Matt flashes her one of his sweet smiles—he’s so good at those—and her demeanor softens. The corner of her mouth twitches. “All right, then.”

  “And could we please have some sound on the TV?”

  She doesn’t acknowledge the request, but after putting in our order for six kinds of pie, she takes a remote from under the counter and unmutes the television.

  “I need to go attend to some business … in my office,” Matt says, as he slides out of his side of the booth. “Save a little pie for me, okay?”

  He heads off to the men’s room, and I turn my attention to the television.

  “… and finally, a tragic ending in the search for a Florida man who went missing Tuesday in Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge,” the newscaster says, as a white banner at the bottom of the screen declares Missing Florida Man Found Dead, and I wonder if that’s the missing guy Duane was talking about this morning. “The body of twenty-four-year-old Brian Patrick Clark was discovered this morning by park rangers. The Jacksonville man, who relatives say was camping alone in the park, was reported missing after he failed to return home last weekend. Cause of death has not been issued, but park officials say Clark was found with a single gunshot wound to the head. No suspects have been named, and Clark’s death remains under investigation.”

  “Such an awful shame,” the waitress says as she places our Cokes on the table. “What kind of person would do such a thing?” She stands there for a moment, looking up at the television as if the answer will appear, then sighs. “I’ll be right back with your pie.”

  Thinking about how Brian Patrick Clark’s family must be feeling right now makes me think about my dad. There’s some small comfort in knowing Duane ran interference for me. Dad knows I’m okay and that I’ll be home soon. As
much as I’d love to go to Flamingo with Noah—and spend every last possible second with him until he heads off into his real life—I need to get back. I miss Danny. I even miss Dad.

  “So what’s happening in the real world?” The booth seat squeaks as Matt returns.

  “A whole lot of nothing.”

  He picks up his fork and taps the tines on the paper placemat in front of him. “So, Cadie, are you going anywhere for school?”

  My grades weren’t great, but good enough to be admitted somewhere. Except Mom left such a hole in our lives that I just stopped thinking about college. My guidance counselor encouraged me to apply. She even gave me the applications, but I had Danny to worry about. And Dad. So the applications sat in my desk drawer until the deadlines passed. They’re still there now.

  “I haven’t really figured out what I want to do yet,” I say. “I’m—well, I’m kind of handy with a sewing machine, so—okay, don’t laugh, but I thought maybe I could start my own shop.”

  Justin used to lie on my bed while I stitched secondhand clothes into new patterns—skirts, tops, and I even tried my hand at shorts once—but I never told him about this private dream. Now that I’ve told Matt, it’s out of my head and into the universe. He doesn’t make fun of me, though, and I’m happy about that.

  “It’s just that I don’t have much money,” I say.

  “Have you thought about selling your stuff online?” Matt asks. “You’d have barely any overhead, you could do it from anywhere, and people love handmade shit. Not that what you make is shit. I’m just saying that’s what I would do.”

  He turns his attention to the TV, where contestants are questioning their way through Jeopardy! answers, as I sit here wondering why an online shop never occurred to me, especially considering how much of my life I’ve wasted on the Internet. Dad dipped into my meager college fund to pay Mom’s hospital bills, so I don’t have enough to pay for even a semester of college. But I do have enough for a new sewing machine and probably enough to set up a virtual shop.