In the Same Boat

by Holly Green

  I slapped at Johnny’s arm. “Leave him alone!” I yelled. “It was an accident!”

  Johnny’s eyes didn’t leave Cully, but his hand reached out, rough on my arm, and pushed me away.

  “Everything you eat for the next week is going to be covered in melted ice cream,” Johnny shouted.

  I don’t know if he really would have done it. I just knew it had to end.

  I grabbed the carton and climbed onto the counter behind Johnny, shoes and all. Ice cream soup sloshed around the container. Condensation dripped down my hands as I lifted it high and tipped it over Johnny’s head. Cully’s eyes went wide as saucers. Ice cream poured over Johnny’s hair and splashed on the counter and his shoulders and Cully. A still-frozen blob paused on his head before it slid down the side of his face.

  Cully’s jaw hung open and a stream of ice cream ran down his nose and into his mouth.

  My feet hit the floor with a thud. “Ruuuuun!”

  Cully slipped in the puddle, but his dad didn’t try to stop him. Didn’t move. We bolted out the door and didn’t stop until we got to my house, panting and hot. We fell on the living room floor and just lay there until Mom came home. We didn’t tell. But Cully didn’t go home that night.

  He was a near-permanent fixture at my house until our dads raced together a week later.

  * * *

  “Did he hit you when we were kids?” I ask now, because I never asked back then.

  “He spanked me. When I was little,” Cully says. “But not like you’re thinking of. Not with a fist. He drew a line there. His dad hit him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “For what?” Cully asks. “For my dad?”

  His pace doesn’t lag. His words come short and hard between strokes.

  “I should have held on,” I say. “I should have never left you alone with them. You could have lived at my house.”

  God, what would have happened if I’d never let go?

  Would we still be best friends? Would he be my boyfriend? Would I have felt so desperate to finish the race if I’d still had Cully? Or would our dads have poisoned our relationship in little ways?

  “I’ve missed you. I told you, I missed you every day.” He’s quiet for a couple of quick strokes. “But it got easier at home, after you were gone. He’s—he’s never going to be the dad I wanted. He’ll never be like your dad. Or Gonzo’s. I ate dinner at Gonzo’s just about every night of seventh grade. But when I got to private school, I figured out I was good at soccer. Sports helped. I learned how to tuck my chin and take it. I realized it wasn’t actually about me. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten there with you around to pour ice cream on his head when he got mad at me.”

  “I would have done that a million times for you,” I say.

  “I know. I loved you, too.”

  10:55 A.M. MONDAY

  We’re pulling so hard. So fast.

  I hurt. Every stroke hurts. And with every stroke I hear the words I loved you, too.

  Loved.

  Not love.

  It’s almost eleven fifteen when we pass beneath the Wooden Bridge. It’s the last public access. Last place we’ll see our bank crew. Last chance to put on our spray skirt before we hit the bay.

  Erica and Gonzo are waiting at the boat ramp just downriver. A longboat is pulled out on the grass.

  I hop out of the canoe and bob underwater. The water’s not much cooler than the air, but it still feels good on my face and my scalp. I pull my hat back on when I surface. “We have to dump all the extra weight for the bay crossing.”

  Erica hands me an empanada, and I shove half in my mouth with wet fingers and start chewing. She takes my trash and water bottle. My mosquito net, bug spray, Desitin, and sunscreen go next.

  “Take the lights and the batteries,” Cully tells Gonzo.

  I unscrew the end cap on the stern. My fingers wrap around nylon, and I pull out the bright blue spray skirt like a magician pulling scarves out of her sleeve. I find the stern end and lay it across my seat and spread the rest up toward the bow. It’s like a waterproof tent that lies flat over the top of the boat to keep the waves out of our canoe in the bay. There are openings where Cully and I sit.

  Gonzo leans in next to Cully. “Dude, that’s your dad over there.” His voice is low.

  My head whips from the boat to the shore. Sure enough, Johnny Hink kneels next to his three-man boat, making repairs.

  “No way,” I say, my mouth still half-full.

  “A tree fell on their boat.” Erica hands me a new water jug. “They’ve had to keep making repairs. It’s cost them hours.”

  What are the chances we’ll get out of here without him noticing us? I would pay money to see Johnny Hink’s face at the finish if we beat him.

  “Be fast,” I whisper to Cully.

  He nods.

  New water goes in the foam holders. Erica gives me a bag with a few snacks, just to be safe. I duck underwater and come up on the river side of the boat, then slide on my life vest and zip it up. On the spray skirt I find the snap with the black arrow drawn above it, and pop it into the marked snap on the boat. And I keep snapping. So many damn snaps on this thing. Cully does the fastening on the shore side of the boat.

  “Just fasten the middle. Leave the bow and the stern open for us to get in,” I remind him.

  Erica and Gonzo watch in the water. They’re not allowed to help.

  By the time I’m finished, my fingertips bleed. I jump into my seat, but Cully is still snapping behind the bow seat.

  “John Cullen.”

  Cully keeps a hand on the boat as he turns. Johnny Hink stands ankle-deep in the river, mud splattered across his white racing tights and his orange shirt.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” Johnny says.

  Cully’s head jerks back an inch. My head jerks back an inch. Erica’s and Gonzo’s heads jerk back an inch. This has to be the first time those words have crossed his lips. Ever.

  “You’ve done well. Better than I expected.” Johnny’s voice projects, like he knows everyone onshore is listening. “I think you’ve earned that tuition. I think you’ve earned Rhode Island.”

  Did he take a blow to the head?

  Cully’s forehead wrinkles. “You mean that?”

  “I do.” Johnny lifts his chin. “Come talk to me for a minute.”

  Cully’s eyes meet mine before he lets go of the boat, and I bite my tongue to keep from saying that my brother is putting miles between us. Cully stumbles the first step up the boat ramp, but he recovers. He walks to his father. They both stand with hips slung forward, shoulders rounded. It’s the Odyssey posture—what fifty hours in a canoe do to you.

  Johnny brings a hand to Cully’s shoulder.

  “You’ve run a good race,” Johnny says. He tips his head toward the shore. “Your mom’s over there. Why don’t you take a load off? Let her drive you to the finish. I’ll see you there.”

  Oh.

  Oh no.

  “Wait,” Cully says. “You want me to stop?”

  A hush falls over the shore.

  I press my lips together and squeeze the gunnels with my hands.

  “Look,” Johnny says. “You’ve already set out to do what you wanted to do. You’ve proved yourself. You’ve been on the water for, I don’t know, fifty hours. You’ve come two hundred and fifty miles. It’s quite a feat. More than most boys can do. There’s a rough bay up ahead. Let’s just go ahead and call it.”

  Johnny’s hand moves to Cully’s arm, like he’s ready to pull his son the rest of the way up the boat ramp.

  Cully’s head turns. His eyes meet mine. I can’t fight it. I don’t want to. How could I begrudge him this? Without him, I wouldn’t even have started the race this year. And anyway, he deserves to go to that school. If quitting now will make amends for throwing away a friendship so good, so pure, I’ll do it.

  I’d do it a million times for Cully.

  “Go.” I slide out of the boat so there’s no confusion. “Take i
t.”

  His eyes squeeze tight. His chest expands and contracts. When he opens his eyes again, I know he’s going to take it. It’s the whole reason he started this.

  He turns back to his dad. They’re the exact same height.

  Cully straightens an inch.

  “No.” His answer comes down like a hammer.

  What?

  Johnny’s fingers tighten on Cully’s arm. “Think hard about this, John Cullen.”

  Cully jerks out of Johnny’s grip.

  No one moves onshore. Everyone is watching. The rest of Johnny’s boat. Race officials. Other bank crews. My dad.

  My dad.

  My dad is here.

  “You set me an impossible task.” Cully’s words are loud. Forceful. “And when it turns out I can do it, that I might even beat you, you can’t handle it. You try to make me quit. Is that what you call being a man?”

  Cully walks to the river. Through the water. I scramble into the boat.

  “If you get back in that boat, it’s off,” Johnny calls. “Rhode Island. Texas State. I’m not paying for any of it.”

  “I don’t want it,” Cully yells. “Not on your terms.”

  The boat rocks when Cully climbs in. It makes waves big enough to reach the opposite shore.

  To reach Seadrift.

  To reach home.

  The breeze ruffles the spray skirt in the front and back where we didn’t finish snapping it. We’ve rounded a bend and the boat ramp is well out of sight when Cully puts his paddle down. His head bows. He cradles his face in his hands. I can just see the tips of his thumbs below his ears. His shoulders shake.

  “Cully!” God, this stupid boat, this stupid river between us when all I want to do is be up there with him.

  “Cully.” I tuck my paddle under my seat and put my hands on the gunnels. I’m about to slide into the water and swim to him when something crashes through the woods onshore.

  Right. We’re in alligator country.

  The noise comes closer, and I realize it’s not an alligator.

  “You’re strong!” someone shouts from shore.

  Cully’s head lifts.

  “Stronger than you think!”

  I catch a glimpse of him through the bushes. That gray plaid shirt. That orange hat.

  There’s a catch in my chest.

  He’s here. He followed us.

  “You’re almost there!” Dad yells. “Just take the next stroke.”

  Cully wipes his nose across his sleeve. He picks up his paddle. I take mine, buoyed up by Dad’s words.

  “Just take the next stroke.”

  Cully digs his paddle into the water. As I do the same, the first tear spills onto my cheek because I am so ridiculously grateful that he followed us. That we’re not alone.

  “And the next one,” Dad calls. “You’re almost there. Just take the next stroke.”

  We’re moving now. He runs along the shore, dodging trees.

  I sniff up a runny nose. Cully does, too.

  “Paddle through the pain.

  “You’re almost there.

  “Just take the next stroke.”

  Cully laughs. “Only your dad would do this.”

  I laugh a little, too, and say, “Isn’t it great?”

  This is the dad I’ve been missing for the last year. The one who jumps a chain-link fence and runs through someone’s backyard to show us he believes in us.

  “You’re almost there,” Dad calls.

  “You’re so strong.”

  He runs with us, down the river, toward the bay, until he reaches a concrete wall around someone’s yard.

  “You’re almost there.”

  His words carry us the last two miles to the bay.

  12:01 P.M. MONDAY

  Dad told me once that the six miles you paddle across the bay are just as hard as the two hundred sixty you paddle to get there. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never crossed the bay. Not until now.

  But I know how it works.

  The trees end. It’s all marshland and tall grass. We’re almost to the end of the river. The wind lifts my hat and I tuck it inside the spray skirt. Whitecaps cover the bay.

  “Time to suit up,” I say.

  “What?”

  “You need to finish the snaps on the spray skirt and put on your life jacket.”

  “Right,” he says, like he’s just realized where we are.

  I keep paddling while he finishes his bay prep and cinches the spray skirt around his chest, then I cinch mine.

  As soon as we pull into the bay, water crashes into the side of the boat.

  “We’re going to pull as hard as we can till we get to Seadrift, okay?” I tell Cully.

  We’ll enter the bay and paddle out about fifty yards, then hook a right. We’ll follow the shore to Foster Point. Distance-wise, it’s longer than paddling straight for Seadrift, but staying close to shore provides shelter and makes our bay time shorter. Paddling straight out into the bay could mean hours of extra paddling.

  From Foster Point we’ll turn left and cross into the rough waters of the bay, where the wind will toss us around like a leaf. We’ll paddle to the other side, to the spoil island that borders the barge channel. Once we reach the spoil island, we’ll turn right, cross the narrow barge channel, and follow the shoreline to Seadrift.

  While we do this, we’ll do our best not to get hit by any fishing boats or barges.

  There’s a boat in the distance. Highlighter-yellow shirts. Tanner and Hank.

  Voices come from behind us. I check over my shoulder.

  “It’s your dad. He’s catching up to us,” I tell Cully. He doesn’t have to say how much he wants to beat his dad. It radiates off him. And I want it as much as he does.

  If we can just pass Tanner and Hank, we’ll be in the top five. We’ll have beat them both. It’s better than I could dream of.

  “Does he have his spray skirt on?” Cully asks.

  I glance again and see the bright blue. Damn, they’re fast. “Yeah,” I answer.

  We have the advantage here. It’s harder for the longer boats on the bay. They don’t navigate the swells as well. They tip more easily. More likely to swamp. But they also have more arms. More paddles pulling in the water.

  The wind whips at the hair that’s fallen out of my braids and flattens the tall grasses on the shore to our right. It pushes against us, like it doesn’t want us here. My arms, my shoulders, everything in me wants to lie down and rest. Everything in me is spent, and the water is getting rougher. I dig in and I pull. Over and over again. Sometimes I only catch air, but I keep pulling.

  Stay ahead of Johnny.

  Catch Tanner and Hank.

  “I don’t think we’re moving!” Cully yells over the wind.

  He’s right. Foster Point isn’t any closer.

  But everything onshore looks smaller. “The wind is blowing us off course!” I shout. It’s blowing us into the middle of the channel. Into the rough water.

  But it’s too late to try to correct. Forget the shelter of Foster Point. We’re doing this the hard way, heading diagonal, straight for the tip of the spoil island.

  12:46 P.M. MONDAY

  The constant up and down, back and forth, nauseates me. Plowing perpendicular into a wave doesn’t work. The water breaks over the canoe, pooling in the spray skirt and possibly seeping into the bottom of the boat. Taking them parallel doesn’t work, either. It’s a good way to tip over. The waves roll in from the same direction, and I adjust the rudder, aiming to send us over them at an angle. Cully powers us forward, and I spend half my strokes with my paddle flat on the water, bracing us. We push forward. The waves rock us back and forth, and time drags by like molasses.

  Then a big one comes. The world goes sideways and I slap the water with my paddle, but it’s too late. We crash into the bay.

  I have to get out of the spray skirt quick. I pull and kick my way out. My feet only find water. It’s too deep to stand. The boat floats upside down, on top of the wat
er. I throw my arms onto the canoe before it can blow away and scramble up the hull to lay my chest across the top.

  The boat and I bob up over a big wave.

  Cully’s head breaks the surface.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Okay,” he answers.

  “We can’t flip the boat here. We need feet on the sand.”

  Cully looks to the opposite side of the bay. The side we were headed for. It’s a dot on the horizon. No question we need to backtrack.

  I push my way to the front of the boat and grab one side of the bow. Cully grabs the other. Waves slap me in the face and the taste of salt water fills my mouth. Water shoots up my nose and burns my sinuses and every broken blister on my hands stings as we kick our way to shore.

  We’re twenty feet out when the water gets lighter. My feet touch sand. I stumble, but I find my balance. I stand a foot away from Cully, who sways with the water.

  His eyes are already scanning the bay. I follow his gaze and find what I knew I’d see. Johnny Hink is out there. Ahead of us.

  Cully’s eyes meet mine. They’re dripping in defeat. I want to go to him. For us to collapse into each other. To curl into a ball together onshore and sleep until tomorrow.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  Maybe he’s not defeated. Maybe he still wants to catch his dad. I’d love to see Johnny outraced by the son he never loved properly and the girl who dumped ice cream on his head. It’s not going to happen. We can’t beat him in the race, but I think I’m okay with it, because really, we beat him at something more important.

  “Come on,” Cully says, and I shuffle through the water to the stern and wrap my fingers around the gunnels.

  We lift, and I grunt because I swear the boat weighs eighteen tons. Water pours out of the holes in the spray skirt, and I grab the other gunnel with one hand and we flip the canoe.

  I peer inside the spray skirt and find my water bottles rolling loose inside. I reach in and grab one, find the mouthpiece and pop it in my mouth. I bite down and take a pull.

  Salt water.

  I spit it into the pale brown water around me.

  I take a pull of water from the other and swallow.

  “Check your bottles,” I say. “One of mine has been compromised.”