In the Same Boat

by Holly Green

  “Stop it!” I yell, grabbing Randy’s arm, but he shakes me off, and I grab both arms from behind, trying to pull him back. He lunges, yanking me onto his back and pushing Brent, who falls into John Cullen, who tips like a domino. A big green canoe stops his feet, but the rest of his body keeps going. Brent comes down with him.

  The crack is deafening.

  There is one collective gasp, then everything is silent.

  Everything is still.

  We broke a boat.

  And then people in Day-Glo-green race official shirts are pulling Brent and John Cullen off the boat and running their hands over the crack in the hull. They haul the five of us into the building where, on normal days, they sell tickets for the glass-bottom boat tours on the lake.

  God, I wish this had been a normal day.

  * * *

  Inside, the race officials are all tight mouths and wrinkled foreheads while they line up a row of four chairs.

  “Boys, take a seat,” Donny Billingsly says, like I’m not even there, and I don’t know whether to be offended or relieved that I’m not being included.

  Randy and Tanner scoot their chairs a few feet away from the Hinks before they sit down.

  “Disqualified,” Becky Lamont says. Her bright race official shirt is tucked neatly into a belted pair of khaki shorts.

  “No!” Brent shouts.

  “No,” Tanner, Randy, and I echo.

  John Cullen is the only one who stays silent.

  “Yes,” Becky says. “This behavior is completely unacceptable. We pride ourselves on being a supportive community.”

  “And throwing punches at the starting line isn’t supportive,” Donny says, pulling his sun hat off his poofy gray hair and letting it hang around his neck by its cord. “You boys put a hole in a two-thousand-dollar boat.”

  And that’s it. My chance at proving I can do this, at fixing things with Dad, it’s gone. Again.

  “Hold up. What can we do to fix this?” John Cullen says, because he’s a rich, entitled little creep. “I need to race.”

  Which I don’t get. Three months ago, I’d never seen him out on the river, and then suddenly, he and Brent were a near-constant presence.

  “You should have thought about that before starting a fight,” Donny says. “Think about those people whose race you just ruined. Think about all the work they put into getting here. There is absolutely no question that you boys are out.”

  Boys. I’m standing against a wall, and the boys are sitting. They’re not even including me.

  “So I’m still in?” I ask.

  “Well, yes. Of course you’re not in trouble,” Donny says, tilting his head to the side. “But I know you wouldn’t want to race without your brother. You don’t want to be out there at night on your own.”

  I was literally on Randy’s back when he knocked Brent over, and I’m not being disqualified.

  Because I’m a girl.

  “She can’t race by herself. She’s only seventeen,” Becky says, like Donny is just a regular idiot instead of a patronizing, sexist idiot.

  “But I’m still not disqualified because I didn’t fight? Right?” I ask.

  “Of course, dear,” Donny says.

  Becky stares at me like she’s trying to peer inside my brain. “Yes—”

  “Tanner didn’t fight, either.” I cut her off before she can put any conditions on it. “Tanner tried to stop Randy, same as me. So you can’t DQ him, either. There are witnesses.”

  Becky glares at me, like I just caught her in a bear trap. Which I basically did.

  My brother is on the edge of his seat while Donny and Becky conference together in the corner. John Cullen is on the edge of his seat, too. The red second hand ticks its way around the clock on the wall twice.

  “Fine, Tanner can race,” Becky finally says.

  Tanner lets out a breath the size of Houston. So do I.

  Then John Cullen is on his feet. “I didn’t fight, either. I tried to stop it, too.”

  Donny and Becky exchange a look.

  “Ask anyone,” he says.

  Becky turns to me and asks with her eyebrows instead of her mouth.

  I could knock him out of the race right now if I wanted to. It would be perfect payback for taking our number. For being a dick to us out on the river while we trained this spring and for the ways he’s treated us for years. For the tree house.

  He’s staring at me, hope perched on the tip of his nose. I know that look, back from the days when his face was round and soft, before it was ever touched by a razor or acne. Back before his nose lost that cute-as-a-button look. Back when he was my best friend.

  I yank my eyes away from him and back to Becky. The words are like tar in my mouth. “He’s telling the truth.”

  Bouncing. That’s the only way to describe how I get to Tanner’s truck. I’m bouncing because we’re still in the race. I’m bouncing because as soon as we walked out of that office, my brother looked at me like I’d suddenly grown a foot and said, “Well played, Sadie.”

  I roll down the window and let the wind whip my hair as we drive back to the house. In three days we’ll be at the finish line and I’ll have earned my patch. Everything will be better. I’ve been dreaming about this for so long. It’s like finishing the race is this hole in my chest because my heart is already there at the finish waiting for the rest of me to arrive.

  “Sucks for Randy, though,” Tanner says, picking up the conversation again after we’ve driven a few miles toward home.

  “It does suck,” I agree, because I was almost in the same situation. But truthfully, I’m not too broken up for Randy. He’s already finished a handful of times and has a first place under his belt. He doesn’t need this. And he’s the one who dove into a fight that had nothing to do with him. Who it sucks for is the rest of the Bynums. They’ve got a three-person boat and only two paddlers.

  “Do you think they’ll run with his seat empty? Or do they have a tandem they can paddle?” I ask.

  “Dunno,” Tanner says.

  “Do you think John Cullen will paddle alone?”

  Tanner’s laugh lasts from County Road 234 all the way to that old broken windmill somebody made look like a T. rex.

  “I don’t think so, either,” I say, although racing seems pretty important to him. Maybe he’ll make it happen. I don’t know what kind of stake he could have in this race, though.

  “He won’t make it to the finish.” Tanner switches on the radio and drums along on his steering wheel.

  I force a laugh so he won’t know how much that stings. “He won’t make it past the first afternoon. I doubt he’ll get to Leisure Camp.”

  The truck kicks up a cloud of dust on the long gravel drive on our property. As we pass the fork where the road splits off and goes down the hill to the river, we decide that I’ll wipe down the ice chest and Tanner will start organizing the water jugs and checking the tubing.

  Tanner’s phone rings and he grabs it from the cup holder as we park next to Dad’s truck in front of the house. He answers with a “Yeah.”

  By now, Dad should be in the kitchen, making spaghetti for the traditional prerace feast. On the front porch, Mazer does a lazy stretch, getting up from his nap. His whole body wags as soon as he sees me step out of the truck. He breathes his warm roadkill breath all over me when I crouch down in front of him on the porch.

  “I’m going to miss you, buddy,” I tell him.

  He leans against my leg and puts his head under my hand. I sit down on the porch and give him the all-over scratch he deserves.

  Tanner steps down from the truck, phone to his ear. “Hey … Wait, seriously? You mean it?” My brother’s eyes hit me for a second before he takes a sharp turn toward the garage.

  “I’ll stink like the river when I see you at the finish Monday,” I tell my dog. “You’ll love it.”

  Mazer rolls over and offers me his belly. I indulge the furry old man for a few minutes, even though I need to get started on th
e cooler. But it’s hard to say no to this dog. Even if most of my heart is already at the finish line, a piece of it will be with him.

  Probably five minutes pass before I hear the creak of the garage door opening and Tanner coming back out, his face tight. His feet thud past me on the porch, and he walks inside the house. Something makes me uneasy. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at me, and I don’t hear any noises from the house.

  Mazer paws at my hand, reminding me that I stopped petting him. I give him a couple more pats. It’s just race nerves. I’d better get to work.

  “Come on, boy,” I tell Mazer.

  He rolls back onto his feet and follows me into the barn.

  By the time I’ve finished washing the cooler, Tanner still isn’t back to work on the water jugs. Slacker. I grab the milk crates and wash the jugs and tubing we’ll need, and then I organize the electrolyte tabs. My stomach growls and I glance at my watch. It’s time for dinner. My brother is so freaking lucky I’m more responsible than he is. But I don’t want to grumble too much. He’s got two finishes under his belt, and one of them is a solo. If I can’t race with Dad, I’m glad I’ll be on the water with my big brother.

  When I get to the porch, I can just make out the low tones of Dad’s and Tanner’s voices in the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” I call as I walk into the house.

  Their voices stop. The only sound is Mazer’s happy tail thwacking against the end table. A little stone forms in my stomach.

  “Anyone there?” I ask. The smell of spaghetti and garlic greets me in the kitchen.

  Dad and Tanner stand at opposite ends of the island, a loaf of garlic bread between them. Tomato sauce bubbles and pops in a saucepan on the stove behind them, next to a big bowl of noodles.

  Tanner’s eyes move from me to Dad and back to me before he gets interested in the garlic bread. The silence in this room makes the stone in my stomach grow spikes.

  Dad slaps a hand against the counter. “Let’s take this to the living room,” he says, leading the way. He chooses a spot right beside this hideous deer lamp with a plaid shade that he inherited from my grandma.

  When I was little and just experimenting with swear words, I was apparently getting it all wrong, saying things like, “I’m going to punch the damn out of you.” So one day Dad took Tanner and me into the living room and flipped the lamp on. “Kids, I’m going to teach you some shit. Notice I said shit there, not damn or hell. If you’re going to cuss, I want you to do it right.”

  That’s the day the Cussing Lamp was born. If the lamp is on, we can curse all we want.

  Tanner stands beside Dad, his eyes fixed somewhere around my shoes. I’m struck for the millionth time how alike they are. Both just over six feet. Both blue eyed, straight nosed, their skin permanently gold from being on the river. Tanner’s hair is the sandy color Dad’s was before it was taken over by gray. When I was little, I wished I could trade in my dark hair and dark eyes, things I got from Mom, to be more like them.

  The spiky stone inside me grows a size bigger. Something bad is coming. For a moment, I’m back in the river on that dark night last year, clinging to a rock.

  “Whatever it is, just get it over with,” I say.

  Tanner glances at Dad and then at me. “Hank Bynum offered me Randy’s seat in the boat.”

  I know what Tanner’s answer was. I do. But there’s a little part of me hoping that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I still have a partner. “And?”

  “You know the Bynums don’t call twice.”

  “No!”

  I knew it was coming, but his words hit me in the gut, knocking me back a step.

  “Hank’s right. We could be the first three to take the race this century.” His stare pushes against mine, like he’s forcing me to understand. “I had to.”

  I grit my teeth, because he didn’t have to. He ditched me. Betrayed me.

  This is the race I’ve spent a year—no, I’ve spent my whole—life preparing for. You can’t just pick up a new partner at the Buc-ee’s with a tank of gas and some beef jerky.

  Tanner knows this race is supposed to make things right with Dad.

  The lines on Dad’s face are hard and stony.

  My skin vibrates. “You knew? You’re letting him?”

  Dad doesn’t answer. He reaches for the knob on the Cussing Lamp. “Thirty seconds, kid.”

  The lamp clicks and the plaid shade glows.

  “You asshole!” I yell at my brother. “You donkey dick! How could you fucking do this to me? I’ve trained for a year to do this race and you just pissed away all my hard work like a little shit weasel. I fixed that damn boat out there with my own hands and now you’re dicking me over for the damn—”

  The lamp clicks again and goes dark. Mom’s hand is on the knob. I didn’t even know she’d walked in.

  “What on earth? I thought I was coming home to spaghetti and garlic bread, not a cursing war.”

  “Wars aren’t one-sided,” Tanner grumbles, rubbing a hand over his short hair.

  Mom’s dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail because she just came from the bakery she owns. A bag of cookies dangles from her hand. Desserts for the happy night that just vanished.

  “It’s not my fault. It’s them.” My voice shakes. “Randy Bynum got disqualified, and now Tanner’s taking his seat in the Bynum boat and I can’t race. And Dad’s letting him do it.”

  Mom looks at Dad with her eyebrows up in a question.

  “He’s a grown man. He makes his own decisions,” Dad says.

  “He’s nineteen and he lives in our garage and calls it an apartment!” I shout. “That’s hardly a grown man.”

  “Sadie, why don’t you head up to your room for a little while?” Mom says. “Maybe you could take a bath.”

  I look at my brother, but he just shrugs. People don’t say sorry after you call them a shit weasel.

  Mazer follows me to my room, panting because he’s getting old and the stairs take more effort than they used to. I let him climb on the bed and I don’t even care if I get in trouble for it. I snuggle up with my dog and listen. Mom’s and Dad’s words travel up the stairs and through the crack I left in the door. They’ve never figured out that I can hear them.

  “How could you let him, Will?” Mom’s voice is angry. “She worked her ass off for this. She even loaned him the money to register.”

  “This is a chance at first place in a three,” Dad says.

  “Only sixes take first,” Mom snaps.

  “You gotta look at the field. The best guys aren’t in sixes this year,” Dad says. “And Hank, Coop, and Tanner, they’ve got the experience, the strength, and they won’t quit for anything.”

  More salt on the places that never healed.

  “I’ll make sure she gets her money back,” Dad says, his tone a little softer.

  “Do you really think the money is the problem?”

  “Of course it’s not. But it’s better this way.”

  “No. It’s not. He could wait. They could form a six next year.”

  “Nicole.” Dad’s voice is softer now. “Our kids don’t belong in a boat together. Can’t you see how much drive he has? He’ll never slow down. He’ll never quit.”

  There it is.

  No matter how many times Dad’s said that he doesn’t care about it, he’s still upset about our DNF. Did not finish. He doesn’t want me in the boat with Tanner because he doesn’t think I’m as good as my brother. He doesn’t think I can finish.

  I cover my face with my hands and let the tears roll down my cheeks. At least if I’m not paddling, I can’t prove him right.

  * * *

  I turn down dinner when Mom knocks on my door half an hour later. I take a pass on her offer to talk, too. There’s nothing more to talk about. It’s done. On my bed, I play last year’s race over and over in my head. Which is worse, wrecking the boat and ending our race, or never even starting?

  A tapping noise on the window shakes me out o
f some kind of stupor. It’s ten thirty. I must have fallen asleep. I rub my eyes and yawn. There’s the tap again. Probably a tree branch. Or a really big, stupid bug. But then there’s a knock.

  I climb out of bed and flip off the light switch before I pull my curtain aside. I squint until I can make out the shape in the branches. He’s grown over a foot and gained about a hundred pounds since the last time he was in that tree, but there’s no mistaking that it’s John Cullen.

  “Are you spying on me?” I ask as soon as I pull the window open. Then I fold my arms across my chest to hide that I don’t have a bra on under my tank top.

  “If I was spying, would I knock?” he asks.

  “How would I know? If you were a normal person, you’d use the phone. Or the door.”

  “Yeah, I can call your house. ‘Hi, Mr. Scofield. This is Cully Hink. Is Sadie home?’ You know it doesn’t work like that. I don’t have your cell. And your brother would jump me if I knocked.”

  “You did break his nose.”

  His face hardens and looks back at the tree like he might climb down. But then he meets my eyes. “Can I come in or what?” he asks. “You want to hear this. Trust me.”

  I don’t trust John Cullen. I haven’t trusted him since I was eleven and he was twelve. But it would have to be something good to send him up my tree after years of loathing. I give him enough space to climb through. “It’d better be an apology for ruining my life.”

  He thuds onto my floor. Shoot. That was loud. There’s another thud. Mazer jumping off the bed. In an instant he’s wagging his whole body and trying to climb into my enemy’s arms.

  John Cullen bends down, grinning, hands already scratching Mazer’s ears, and the whole thing would be heartwarming if it wasn’t for all the betrayal.

  “Keep quiet,” I whisper.

  I tiptoe to my door, although stealth is useless since Mazer is making enough noise for all three of us. I poke my head through the crack. No sign of my parents. Thank goodness they’re heavy sleepers.

  I pull the door shut and turn on a lamp before I return to the lovefest by my window. “Keep it down.”