by Holly Green
A few months later my brother came home with a broken, bloody nose, and dark bruises already starting to form in the corners of his eyes. Another gift from John Cullen.
I wonder if he’s thinking about any of this, too.
12:27 A.M. SUNDAY
Tonight is an almost full moon, which should be a stroke of luck. But instead of casting a soft glow on everything, it’s hidden behind a thick ceiling of clouds. The flashlights on the front of our boat cast a cone of light ahead. Everything else is inky black.
We hook a left when the San Marcos ends, leaving my river behind. We’ll take the Guadalupe River all the way until it empties into the San Antonio Bay. A flash in the clouds lights the trees rising from the banks and the rain pockmarking the water. It’s gone in an instant.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Crash.
Thunder rattles the boat. Wind blows against the wet clothes that cling to my body. Goose bumps cover my arms. Just keep going.
Constant forward motion.
There’s another flash. And another. The rumble of thunder lasts longer. The drops hit harder, fatter. Like pennies. And then a flash and a crack and John Cullen misses a stroke.
“Keep moving,” I call, and then I wait to match strokes with him.
That’s when the bottom drops out of the clouds and rain falls on us in sheets. I click on my headlamp, but it doesn’t help.
“I can’t see,” John Cullen says.
“Put on your hat.”
He grabs for it, and in a moment it’s on and he’s paddling. Water pours off the brim of mine.
“I think we should pull over,” he says.
“Keep moving!”
We keep going, keep pulling.
1:05 a.m.
Another flash.
One.
Two.
Crash.
“It’s getting closer. We need to pull over,” John Cullen yells over the rain. I don’t answer. “Come on, Sadie. Don’t be stupid.”
I want to scream at him, but it’s too much effort. Erica asking me to pull over made sense—she doesn’t really understand the race. But John Cullen knows better. He knows the serious boats aren’t going to stop. And if anyone ahead of us does stop, this is our chance to get an advantage on them.
The boat rocks as he turns his head. “Stop ignoring me!”
“You’ll ruin your night vision looking at my headlamp,” I shout.
The sky lights up again.
One.
Two.
Crash.
It rumbles me on the inside, like getting passed by a car with its bass turned up too high.
Our lights hit the warning sign suspended across the river by a cable. Which means we’re about five hundred yards upriver of Gonzales Dam.
If you hit it wrong—if you miss your takeout—people have died that way. The takeout spot is about thirty yards before the dam. Last year a boat of race officials hung out on the water, making sure that no one went past the point of no return. But when I spot the red blinking light that marks the takeout spot, the river below it is empty.
“Left,” I call. A jagged bolt of lightning strikes somewhere in the trees on our right.
The crack is almost instantaneous.
We pull out onto a slick grassy bank, muddy from all the boats that came before us. John Cullen clicks off our lights, but not before they catch the edge of a concrete building. The right portage is faster, but more dangerous. Way too dangerous to do in the rain. John Cullen clips a rope onto the bow. I follow behind as he pulls the boat uphill toward a lantern-lit tent. A woman and a man in reflective race official vests sit in plastic lawn chairs and a couple of paddlers sit on the ground, each eating a bag of chips.
“How you two holding up?” I can barely hear the race official’s voice over the rain.
“Fine,” I answer. Water drips off my nose, even though I’m still wearing my hat.
We pull up even with the other canoe, the one we’re about to pass. And then John Cullen drops the rope. My shin bangs against the canoe because I’m still moving. He bends down and—
“Are you getting a snack?” I ask.
He lifts his head and shields his eyes from my headlamp. “Yeah,” he says. “There’s a tent we can sit under. We’re waiting this out right here.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask.
He throws his hands up like I’m being unreasonable. “Sadie, we’re in a boat. On a river. During a freaking lightning storm. Water conducts electricity.”
“Yeah, public school kids take physics, too.” I walk to him, leaving a couple of feet of space between us. He puts out a hand to cover my headlamp. I click it off and everything goes dark before my eyes adjust. I pull myself taller. “The only people who have to stop in thunderstorms are aluminums,” I say, even though I’m not actually sure of it.
“They stopped!” He throws an arm back toward the team eating chips. One of them, a young Black woman, gives me a sympathetic little wave.
“Yeah, and everyone else is on the water.” I point upriver. “All those boats are gaining on us. And them—” I point downriver. “They’re all getting away. My brother. Your dad. The gap between us is getting bigger every damn second.”
“We were never going to catch them, anyway. I’m not risking my life for this.”
“Damnit.” I lift my hat and wipe the rain off my forehead. “We are making amazing time for two people who’ve never been in a boat together. If we keep this up, we could make top fifteen. We can make top five. But you’re going to throw it all away.” It’s just like him to take everything from me when I’m finally so close to achieving something. “It’s just like the tree house!”
His eyes widen. For a second, he looks small, before he postures again. “You want to talk about the tree house now?” He steps closer to me. His eyes are only a couple of inches from mine. His chest heaves and his breath is cold on my skin.
I want to look away. Anywhere else. But I can’t back down.
Behind John Cullen, there’s movement in the tent.
“Back to it,” Mark Siegfried says.
Our eye contact breaks. Both our heads turn.
How did I not realize that was Mark Siegfried? Mark Siegfried, walking to his boat, wiping chip crumbs on his shirt.
What was Mark doing taking a break?
He takes the stern and the woman—that must be Kimmie—takes the bow. They disappear through the woods.
We were even with Mark Siegfried. But he said Kimmie was lightning in a boat.
Another flash. Another clap of thunder.
John Cullen’s eyes are back on my face. His mouth is a hard, straight line. The muscles in his jaw flex.
I don’t let my eyes move from his. I push my will at him with my eyeballs. With each breath, I imagine it boring its way into his brain.
He looks away. “God, you’re intense.”
He bends down again, and I think he’s going to pick up the boat, but he comes back with a chip bag. My battle of wills didn’t work. And then I remember.
“Goulash,” I say.
His hand clenches, crunching the chips in the bag. He glances back to the tent, to the spot Mark and Kimmie just left.
“Fine.” He picks up the bow handle. “Let’s move.”
I pick up my half of the boat. My heart is a helium balloon as we carry the canoe through the trees, squelching through the mud, to the bottom of the hill, and put in past the white water at the bottom. We trudge through the muddy shallows and climb into our seats.
The light from Mark and Kimmie’s boat shines into the rain, cruising away, already twenty feet downstream.
In another few minutes, we could be even with them again.
“Ready?” John Cullen asks.
“Ready.”
We dig our paddles in and pull hard.
I just won our battle of wills, and making top five feels more possible than ever.
Th
ere’s another huge rumble of thunder, and even though we’re moving forward, the back current of the dam pulls on the boat, trying to keep us there.
1:18 A.M. SUNDAY
The light from Mark and Kimmie’s boat is like a firefly on the horizon. God, they’re fast. We’re going to lose them.
Another flash of lightning. Another clap of thunder so fierce it shakes the boat. When my night vision returns, their light is gone.
We paddle on for another sixteen minutes. Headlights zoom back and forth across a bridge up ahead. Our light hits the sign.
TEXAS RIVER ODYSSEY
MILE 86
KEEP PADDLING!
Lantern light illuminates an easel holding the sign-in sheet the bank crews use and a couple of race officials sitting under the bridge.
There’s a flash. Crash. The thunder rumbles through my body and rings in my ears.
Erica and Gonzo aren’t knee-deep in the water. They stand on the shore under the bridge. Erica’s arms are crossed tight against her chest and her face is just as tight. The milk crate isn’t with them.
They know stops have to be quick—why aren’t they ready to resupply us? The next stretch is thirty-eight miles. It’s the longest in the race. They’re supposed to stock us up for the next seven hours or more. That’s two jugs of water each and at least fourteen snacks. It’s all in the binder I gave them.
They walk to the bank as we pull up. Erica’s still hugging herself.
“Why aren’t you ready?” I ask.
“Get out. Now. This is dangerous,” Erica insists. “I can’t believe you didn’t pull over.”
“Are you joking?” I ask. “We can’t pull over because of some rain.”
“Not rain. Lightning,” Erica says.
I turn to Gonzo for support. His face isn’t tight like Erica’s. “Come on, tell her, Gonzo.”
His head shakes. “I’m with Erica. Don’t get fried in a boat.”
“John Cullen?” I won our battle of wills. He’ll back me up.
Flash. Lightning branches out of the sky and hits the ground somewhere in the distance.
John Cullen dips a finger in the water, and when he doesn’t get electrocuted, he slides out of the boat. “They’re right. It’s time to pull over.”
“Scofields don’t stop and rest!”
“Well, I’m not a Scofield.” His face is steely. “And don’t you dare goulash me again.”
It’s all slipping away. I have to talk some sense into them. “We’ll be fine. We’re in a carbon fiber.”
“Not a good argument,” Gonzo says. “The race officials say carbon fiber isn’t any safer than aluminum.”
I wince. There goes my best shot. “We’ll stick near the shore. Lightning will hit the trees, not us.”
“Leave it, Sadie,” Erica says. Her hair is covered up in a baseball cap. Her eyeliner has run into raccoon marks under her eyes. “You can’t argue your way out of this one. You’re sitting it out until the storm is over.”
How would Dad convince them? Tell them constant forward motion? But no one would ever try to stop Dad.
“Everyone else is still paddling!” I yell, desperate to get back on the water.
“They’re not.” Erica points under the bridge. Three boats are on the gravel, and at least seven people are curled up on the ground.
My heart thrums in my ears. They’re being unreasonable. Every second that passes is a second wasted. There’s a pull in my chest as the boats ahead get farther and farther away. I have to fix this.
Cars are parked to the right of the bridge. Sooby is there. I climb out of the canoe and pull the stern handle as I press through the murky shallows and drag the boat onto shore. John Cullen is too busy stretching to help.
“I’ll get the water and the food myself,” I snap.
Erica grabs my arm, but my sore muscles barely register her fingers. “I don’t care if you restock your boat yourself, you’re not getting back on that water until the storm is over.”
I yank myself out of her grip. “You can’t stop me.”
“Actually, we can,” Gonzo says. “This is an official checkpoint. You can’t keep going if we don’t sign you in. And we won’t sign you in until the storm passes.”
I take a deep breath and wind up, ready to launch into some amazing argument that I don’t have yet—
“Do you have any more of those empanadas?” John Cullen asks.
“Three flavors,” Gonzo says.
“Savory or sweet? I’m sick of sweet.”
“Two of them are savory,” Gonzo answers, and then the three of them are walking farther under the bridge.
I let all the air out of my chest, and I feel five times smaller. Punctured and flat and defeated.
There’s nothing left to do, so I follow them and eat an empanada. It feels like it’s stuck in my throat.
Erica and Gonzo laugh about getting lost on Highway 80, which should really be impossible, and tell us about the guys who got their car keys stuck in a tree at Palmetto when one of them tossed the keys a bit too high to the other. The first guy had to sit on the other’s shoulders and swat at them with a baseball bat to knock them out of the branch.
Lightning flashes again and the thunder is instantaneous. The rumbles of the cars on the bridge above us are nothing in comparison.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” John Cullen says, commandeering Gonzo’s backpack and putting his wet head on it.
“You should, too,” Gonzo tells me. He pulls off his jacket, wads it into a pillow, and hands it to me.
“I can’t take that from you,” I say before I pull the backpack out from under John Cullen’s head.
He lifts his head off the dirt and rolls onto an elbow. “What was that for?”
“They can only give us food, water, and ice. We’ll get disqualified.”
I grab a couple of dry bags from the boat and throw one at him. It hits him in the chest.
“Eff you,” he says as he stuffs it under his head.
I lie down and use the dry bag as a pillow. Oh god that’s good. The weight on my butt, the aches in my back and shoulder, they’re all gone. I let myself relax into a puddle on the ground and close my eyes.
John Cullen lets out a soft little snore. When did he start doing that?
“Lights!” someone calls.
The sounds of people moving, prepping for the boat, meet my ears. My eyes pop open. Everything in me tenses as the light gets closer and closer. Ten minutes off the water and we’re already being passed.
That boat gets restocked and leaves. Ten minutes later, so does another.
The cool night air on my wet clothes makes me cold. My teeth chatter. People who plan to rest on the side of the river bring Mylar blankets to keep warm. I wish I had one right now.
How is John Cullen able to sleep through this?
I bite my tongue between my molars to keep them from chattering. To keep from jumping out of my skin. And then I’m up.
“Lie back down,” Erica mumbles, but I blow right past her to the sign-in sheet and click on my headlamp.
Conner Howell and his team are in first. They came through a couple of hours ago, but they won’t be able to keep up the pace. They always fade on the second day. The Wranglers aren’t far behind Conner. No Sleep till Seadrift is in third place, and I am so happy they’re beating Tanner. Johnny Hink’s boat is in ninth. Mike Lewis in fifteenth. His boat is propelled by cussing that puts me to shame. Tanner and the Bynums are in sixteenth. They came through about an hour ago and are currently putting miles between us.
More lightning.
One.
Two.
Crack.
This storm is never going to end. We now have eighteen boats to pass to make top five, and more could show up at any minute. If I’m lucky, a couple of them might slow down or stop to rest at some point. A couple more might drop out. Especially on the second night.
The second night. That phantom knife stab hits me in the side. I wish I coul
d fast-forward right past the second night.
I’m with someone inexperienced. Untrustworthy. If I choke again, it’ll be so much worse. Everyone will know that last year wasn’t just a fluke. It was something bigger. It was me, not being able to cut it. It’ll mean that nothing has changed, even with an extra year of training.
There’s a hand just barely touching my shoulder. I jump. Gonzo.
“You’re torturing yourself,” he says.
“I’m strategizing.”
“Sadie, I’m all about taking risks. You don’t show up at our school dressed the way I do without getting comfortable with risk. But I don’t get why you’re willing to give your life for a race. It’s not like finishing at the top is going to win you a million dollars or solve global warming.”
I shake my head. Gonzo and I don’t know each other, but I know he’s a good guy because Erica likes him and she hardly likes anyone. If our paths had crossed at school, we might have become friends, aside from the John Cullen thing. Still, I don’t like him being nice to me right now because I’d still be on the water if it weren’t for him and Erica. And he can’t tell me that the race isn’t worth the risk because he can’t understand how that spot on the wall where my finisher patch should go haunts me.
“Did you ever see that movie Cool Runnings?” Gonzo asks.
Well, that turned on a dime. “You want to talk about movies?”
“No.” His forehead wrinkles. “I mean, yes. It’s that movie about the Jamaican bobsledders.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“At one point,” Gonzo continues, “that coach tells the main guy, Derice, that if he’s not enough without a gold medal, he’ll never be enough with it. It’s the whole point of the movie. That’s like you right now.”
That is nothing like me.
“The whole point of the movie,” I say slowly, like a kindergarten teacher, “is that they work their asses off and when everything falls apart, they pick up their fucking sled and keep going.”
“You’re you on either side of that finish,” Gonzo says, like I didn’t just prove him wrong. “And you’re good enough right now.”
“That’s sweet,” I say. Honestly, how did he and John Cullen ever become friends? I wish I could believe him. In my head, though, I see the dinner table at home. Mom, Dad, and Tanner, with me listening to their stories. Theirs. I see Dad’s eyes, sweeping right past me. “But you don’t get it. Everything will change for me.”