In the Same Boat

by Holly Green

  “Let’s just flip the canoe over and I’ll explain,” I say.

  We swim the canoe toward the shore, until we can touch bottom. I fill Cully in while we dump out the water and climb back into our seats.

  I wipe my face with my hand to get off any mosquitoes and pull down my bug net. “You should put on some bug spray,” I say. “That’s why I was trying to wake you. They were eating your face.”

  I start paddling, and he joins after he does sunscreen and bug spray and has something to eat.

  “I thought maybe you got tired of me sleeping.”

  I laugh again. “No.”

  “Do you want a nap?” he asks.

  “I’m awake now.”

  He laughs. “Me too.”

  And for the first time in six years, things feel right. It’s like having Cully back. The old Cully. The one who owned half my heart as far back as I can remember. It makes me so ridiculously happy. But this Cully is almost six feet tall, and I can only name a handful of the things he’s done in the last six years. There’s something so sad and wrong about that.

  Cully cracks a joke that makes me laugh, and some of that sadness disappears. We’re still smiling, still making each other laugh, when we pull into the checkpoint at Invista twenty minutes later.

  It was always a relief when Dad came through here at night, while I was at my grandparents’ house. On the years he arrived during the day, we fought back black clouds of mosquitoes.

  Erica and Gonzo wait at the bottom of a steep bank.

  “How are you holding up?” Erica asks when we come to a stop.

  “Hot. Sore. Tired,” I answer. “But good.”

  Cully slides out of the boat, into the water. And really, I might as well join him. So I slide out, too, and the water is cool. It takes my weight, and I don’t hurt so much. Maybe Cully is onto something with this. Maybe I should have been getting out of the boat with him yesterday. Maybe I would have felt better if I had.

  “Your dad says to take the Haymaker cut,” Erica says.

  “What are you talking about?” It doesn’t make sense, and not just because Dad has only bothered to come to one water stop. At orientation, they specifically told us to portage the log jam. That there wasn’t enough water in the cut.

  “I don’t really know what it means. He just said, ‘Tell Sadie to take Haymaker cut to Alligator Lake.’ ” Erica’s face drips with skepticism. And sweat. “Sadie,” she says, “what’s up with these names? Neither of those sound like places you should be going.”

  “They’re exaggerations,” I say, because nobody has gotten seriously injured in either place. I think.

  I stare downriver, like I might be able to see all the narrow channels that branch off river right—collectively called the cut. To see how much water is in them. To see if Alligator Lake is more than a mud patch.

  If it’s possible, if one of the channels really has enough water in it, we can save so much time. So much effort.

  “When did you talk to him?” I ask, turning back to Erica.

  “He showed up about an hour ago.”

  This little happy feeling blooms inside me. Not just happy. Hopeful. Maybe things are going to be okay between us.

  Because Dad’s been watching, and he wants to help.

  6:17 A.M. MONDAY

  The portage is two miles of ranch land, climbing over fences and getting eaten by mosquitoes and stepping in cow patties. And it’s the last thing I want to do.

  “I thought the water was too low for the cut,” Cully says.

  When the water is too low, the channels of the cut are mud and silt. And alligators.

  “Must have been the rain,” I say.

  “That’s fast.”

  “It’s had a day to pour into the river. And I think they got more down here than we did. We passed some creeks that were really flowing last night.”

  “But why would your dad tell us? I thought he was mad that we were doing this together.”

  “I did, too.”

  “Do you think he’s messing with us? That it’s a trick?”

  Sending us down Haymaker when it’s not passable—it would be cruel. Even though Dad is upset I got in the boat with Cully, even if he is furious, he isn’t heartless.

  This is something else.

  “No,” I say. “I think it’s a gift.” A gift, and maybe an apology.

  “Then I guess we should take it.”

  “Guess so,” I agree.

  We paddle on for over an hour, and I eat two breakfast tacos and some salty nuts. The right bank is all scrubby brush.

  “We’re on the lookout for a series of channels on the right,” I tell Cully. It would be so easy to miss our turn, and we probably wouldn’t even realize it until we hit the log jam.

  “Have you ever done this before?” Cully asks.

  “Once. With Dad.” I don’t tell him that we took the second channel that time, Early Bird cut, that it was two years ago, and that the river has changed since then. The river is always changing.

  Haymaker is the third channel.

  I think it’s the third.

  “Well, look who it is, defying the odds.”

  I glance over my left shoulder. The Sirens are coming up even with us. The sea-green shirts they started with are light brown.

  “We weren’t sure you two would make it this far without strangling each other,” Lisa says.

  They pull up even with us.

  “Not me. I put my money on the two of you being hot and heavy by Cuero,” Carrie says.

  That kiss bursts into my mind and I swallow hard. My cheeks burn. I hope she thinks it’s just the heat.

  Cully stays silent, too. At least he doesn’t laugh. At least he doesn’t say that’s the last thing he wants right now.

  “Ready for the log jam?” Melissa asks. Thank god for Melissa.

  “We’re taking Haymaker,” I blurt, so happy for a subject change.

  “The cut’s not supposed to be open,” Melissa says. “That’s what they told us at orientation.”

  “It’s a fool’s errand,” says Carrie. “You’ll end up turning around and portaging. Waste of energy.”

  “My dad said we could make it.”

  Melissa looks at me from the middle of the boat. “Will said you should take it?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “It would be a hell of a lot better than portaging,” she mutters.

  The Sirens spend a good ten minutes debating, until we see the first opening in the scrubby bushes river right. And the second. And the third.

  “This is it,” Lisa says. “What’s the verdict?”

  “We trust Will,” Cully says, and he draws us to the right as I adjust the rudder pedal.

  “I’m in,” Melissa says.

  Carrie shakes her head. “No. Bad idea.”

  Lisa draws right, too. “Overruled.”

  Siren mutiny.

  8:18 A.M. MONDAY

  “I told you this was stupid,” Carrie says as we all portage over another fallen tree blocking the waterway.

  But I still think Dad must have known what he was talking about.

  “We should turn back,” she says when we portage the third fallen tree about a hundred feet later.

  Cully holds my eyes for a moment as I feed the boat down the log to him. “We’ll be okay either way,” he whispers.

  Which is kind. But I wish he didn’t doubt Dad. Not when there’s a snout and a pair of eyes just above the surface of the water ten feet away.

  The first rule of paddling with gators is to give them plenty of space. And we do. The gator stays there. It doesn’t move.

  “It’s still passable,” Melissa says when we see the fourth log we need to climb over.

  But it doesn’t shut Carrie up.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” she says. “Everyone knows Will is pissed at the girl.”

  Her words are like paddling right into a wall. Falling out of the boat onto a rock. As if I weren’t worn down and bea
t up enough already.

  Am I an idiot for thinking that he wants to help me?

  “Shut up, Carrie,” Melissa hisses. “He’s her dad.”

  Cully slaps the water with his paddle. “Carrie’s right,” he says. “This was a bad idea.”

  My paddle stops. My mouth falls open. I can’t believe he’s backing Carrie up when we decided this together.

  “You should turn around. Do the portage.” Cully’s voice is an ax.

  He picks his paddle back up and digs into the water, still going forward, and I understand now. This was a bad idea for them. Not us.

  I’m so grateful for him sticking up for me. For not letting me feel like the chump that Carrie thinks I am. If I could, I would leap across the boat right now and hug him and not let go.

  We leave the sounds of the Sirens fighting behind and move even faster, and when we get to the other side of the fourth log, I don’t get back in the boat.

  That hollow spot in my chest hurts for all the years we lost together. It aches to be close to him. And I don’t care if there’s no room for these feelings in the race, because if I’m being really honest, I want to kiss him again.

  I pick my way through the shallow muck toward Cully and I hug him.

  “Thank you for that,” I mumble into his shoulder.

  His arms fold around me. “He wouldn’t do that to you.”

  I breathe him in. It’s mud and river water and bug spray and body odor, and I take another breath.

  “I missed you, too,” I whisper. It was like I lost a piece of myself.

  He presses his forehead into mine.

  “Good,” he whispers.

  I close my eyes. We exhale at the same time.

  There’s this longing inside me, because even though we’re so close, I want more.

  He brushes his fingers across my cheek. They’re wet and they’re wrinkled, and my entire body goes electric because it’s the kind of touch that means something. Something more than friendship.

  I lean my cheek into his hand before I raise my chin. My nose brushes the side of his. My lips drift open and my eyes close.

  A splash comes from up ahead. Alligator.

  We break apart and look downstream. But we don’t see an alligator. It’s a boat. A four-person coming toward us from the direction we’re heading.

  “Couldn’t make it through Alligator Lake,” the bowman tells us as he climbs out to portage the log. “It turns to muck up there.”

  Cully looks at me for a long moment. I study his face, hoping to see some disappointment there, but I can’t read him.

  “What do you think?” he finally asks.

  We watch them lift their boat over the log and climb over. They couldn’t make it through. But we’re only two people. Less weight. More agile. I have to believe Dad told me this because he knew we could do it.

  “I want to keep going,” I say.

  So we do.

  We paddle the rest of the channel until we reach the wide expanse of Alligator Lake. When there’s not enough water, it’s a muddy field. But when there’s enough water in it, it’s a lake. A lake of shallow, slow water. Full of alligators. More than one pair of eyes follows us from just above the surface. My paddle scrapes mud on the bottom, and I stop digging as deep.

  “Are you catching mud, too?” I ask.

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  We’re halfway across when I feel the scrape vibrate through the boat. We slow to a stop. Must be a log under the surface. I really don’t want to get back out.

  “Pull hard.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I match his stroke and pull with my whole body.

  The head surfaces a few feet ahead of me. The boat tilts left.

  Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit. We can’t go over. Alligators don’t bother you if you don’t bother them. But paddling on top of them is beyond intrusive. My heart thuds in my ears and it’s beating a million miles an hour and the fear is taking over my body.

  Don’t panic. Fix it.

  I take a big, deep breath.

  “Stabilize on the left!” I say. Cully puts his paddle flat on the water to keep us from going over, and I pull as hard as I can. The alligator rises higher. The boat tilts farther.

  I jab my paddle down on the right and push against the mud as I pull us forward.

  “Now paddle!” Cully takes a stroke.

  We budge.

  “Harder!”

  My arms, my legs, my back, my hands all scream in protest, but I pull. And I pull again. We scrape forward. The boat levels. We move forward as the alligator swims away.

  My heart is still a jackrabbit when we reach the channel that dumps us back into the river. Every inch of my skin tingles. That is the most insane thing I’ve ever done, but we made it.

  Dad must have known that in a tandem, we’d be just light enough to get through.

  And I feel a little bit taller, because he didn’t just know we could get through. He trusted that whatever we ran into, we’d be able to handle it.

  9:49 A.M. MONDAY

  Is it wrong that I’m glad that Cully’s not going to RISD next year? Wrong that I’m hoping he’ll stay here and go to Texas State? Wrong that I don’t want this thing between us to just live on the river? That I want it to follow us back home?

  Is it wrong that I keep wondering what he looks like with his shirt off? Am I objectifying him?

  Would he mind?

  These questions roll through my head on the way to the Salt Water Barrier. Mile 249. But they all wash away when Allie is onshore, her arms folded across her chest, her boobs resting on them like they’re a shelf. She’s wearing a minidress. An actual minidress. And it’s covered in cherries.

  CHERRIES.

  Something boils up inside me. What the hell kind of person does this?

  She was lucky to be with Cully. She’s an idiot for throwing that away. Especially for Tanner.

  “Nobody wants you here!” I yell.

  I put my hands on the gunnels and lift myself up, but my arms fail. Allie’s eyes turn into ping-pong balls. “Nobody likes seeing you play dress-up on the side of the river!” I lift myself up again and swing my legs into the water. I stand up, stumble, and catch myself.

  “If you want to be here, be like that lady!” I point to the costume woman, who’s in a white wig, a crown, and a powder-blue skirt suit, with a handbag crooked in an elbow. “That lifts people’s spirits.”

  Her Royal Majesty forces a smile and waves the little British flag in her hand.

  “Hold up, Sadie,” Erica says, putting her body between Allie and me. “She was just here to see your brother and her car got stuck in the mud. She’s waiting for someone to push it out.”

  “Someone could have helped her ages ago,” I say, because Tanner should be long gone. Hours gone. “She’s trying to mess with us!”

  I look at Cully for confirmation, but he’s not looking at Allie. He’s looking at me with this half smile like I just burped the alphabet or something.

  “Your dad warned Allie off when he found out what she and Tanner were doing,” Erica says. “And your brother left about five minutes ago.”

  “Wait, what?” I snap my eyes away from Cully.

  “Coop Bynum got whacked in the head with a branch,” says Gonzo. “Probably has a concussion. It was kind of a mess. Slowed them down. He’s out of the race. And then you passed a million boats when you took the cut. You’re in seventh place.” Gonzo turns to Cully. “Your dad’s not too far ahead, either.”

  “What?” we both ask this time.

  I turn back to Cully, and the goofy grin has slid right off his face. I did my best to give up the hard-charging, get-to-the-finish attitude when Cully threatened to quit. I thought I was giving up making the top five. But we’re so close. Sixteen miles left. Ten more river miles and then six more across the bay. We could beat them both and make top five. It would be the sweetest victory.

  “There’s a whole mess of boats behind you,
so if you want this, you better move,” Erica says.

  My eyes meet Cully’s and I cock an eyebrow at him.

  All I can see are his brown eyes across the canoe when he says, “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  We paddle hard. Fast. Like when the gun went off. We pull at the brackish water below the Salt Water Barrier.

  Sweat drips down the sides of my face and rolls down my back.

  The river is mostly straight, with big, gradual turns, and we are flying. Past all the low, scrubby bushes. Past people’s houses.

  Once, we catch sight of Tanner and Hank in their bright shirts up ahead, but they disappear around a bend.

  “I don’t—need you—to do that—for me—anymore.” Cully’s words come in a rhythm punctuated with his strokes.

  “Do what?” I ask.

  “Step in. Defend me,” he answers.

  “What?”

  “What you did—with Allie,” he says. He must have been ruminating on this the whole time. “I don’t need it.” He takes a few strokes without speaking. “I had—to figure it out. Without you.”

  “Okay.” My stomach sinks. “I’m sorry.” My words come between quick breaths.

  “No. It’s okay. It was funny,” he says. “I just don’t need it.”

  I guess it’s his call, ignoring Allie. Maybe it’s better.

  We keep going. We keep up our pace. We put miles behind us.

  * * *

  I hated it all those years, watching Johnny put Cully down. It ate at me.

  I was eleven and he was twelve. It was late May, already boiling hot outside, and we’d spent the morning working on the tree house. Cully’s mom had a new half gallon of vanilla ice cream in the freezer. We each ate two scoops for lunch before getting back to work. Around dinnertime we stopped by Cully’s. Johnny was just home from a training run with Dad. He stood in their kitchen with flames coming out of his ears. The ice cream carton sat in a creamy white puddle.

  It had spent half a day on the counter.

  Johnny acted like I wasn’t there. He backed Cully into the corner by the sink, red faced and shaking. And the yelling—he yelled at Cully like he was a grown man instead of a boy.

  I was hot, sweaty, thirsty. But mostly I was done. I was so done with all of it.