In the Same Boat

by Holly Green

  “He remembers me,” John Cullen whispers.

  “He does this to everyone.”

  “He knows I named him.” His eyes go from my dog to my chest, and quickly back to my dog.

  I go to the closet and pull down the biggest sweatshirt I own, and try to press down all the memories of the nights he snuck over to my house and we stayed up playing board games and reading books. Try not to think about the stuffed racoon he gave me, stored in a shoebox on the shelf with a few other mementos I was too soft to throw away.

  I leave the closet and shut the door on all that.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  “None of that was my fault, you know.”

  I slide the sweatshirt over my head. “Stealing our number was your idea,” I say as I put my arms through the sleeves.

  My traitor of a dog rolls onto his back, offering his belly for a scratch to my biggest enemy.

  “Blame your brother. Or the Bynums. It’s not my fault they poached him,” he says.

  News travels fast.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I still need to race tomorrow.”

  “Good news! You’re eighteen.” I do a slow clap. “You didn’t get screwed over by this whole thing like I did.”

  “Could you be a decent person for five minutes? I’m trying to ask you something important.”

  I stop the golf clap. Mazer scrambles to his feet to lean against John Cullen’s leg. That dog is a terrible judge of character.

  “I need to race tomorrow, and I don’t have a boat to solo.” He stops and waits, like I’m supposed to fill in the big blank at the end of his sentence. Like … Like …

  Oh.

  “So are you going to race with me or what?” he asks.

  I can still race tomorrow.

  I can prove my dad wrong.

  I can do it if I race with John Cullen.

  I sit on the bed.

  How am I supposed to decide between my family and finishing? I’m not sure Dad will ever speak to me again if I get in the boat with a Hink. Especially Johnny Hink’s son. Tanner definitely won’t. Not after the fight they had last fall. But Dad and Tanner are the reason I’m stuck without a partner. They don’t even think I can finish.

  I need to finish. It can’t wait another year.

  “Gonzo’s on board to bank crew. We’ll have to use your boat.”

  “Wouldn’t set foot in your boat, anyway,” I say automatically.

  “Wouldn’t want you to.”

  I flip him off.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “No … Do your parents know about this?”

  His hand is on Mazer’s head. “They’d lock me up if they knew.”

  Since Dad and Johnny first raced together, things have gotten ugly. They’ve both called foul on each other in shorter races, and both have been disqualified. I even heard Dad telling Mom that Johnny had cost him business. This is a total betrayal of my family, and it’s not like I can beat Tanner and make him feel bad. He’ll be in first or second place. There’s no way we could beat his boat. But maybe we could make top five. I’m good enough for that. I know I am. I think I am. And if we placed, Dad could see it, too.

  “Goulash.” He spits out the challenge.

  My fingers itch to knock the smug little smile off his face with my fist. “We’re not friends. You can’t freaking goulash me.”

  But I already know my answer.

  One of John Cullen’s copper-colored eyebrows ticks up, like he knows he has the upper hand, and he must see the decision in my eyes, because he says, “Let’s hammer out some details.”

  It’s completely dark in the house when I creep downstairs at five thirty in the morning, carrying my bag of clothes for after the race. Mom and Dad will be up in an hour and I want to be long gone. I flick the switch on the dim light above the sink and heat up a bowl of spaghetti and a slice of garlic bread. I sit on a barstool at the end of the island and eat. The spaghetti is lukewarm, and the cheese on the garlic bread is so hot it burns the roof of my mouth.

  Last year, on this day, I’d had a good night’s sleep. A lot more than four or five hours. The sun was up, and the lights were on. The entire house smelled of eggs, biscuits, and bacon. Mostly bacon. There was a bowl full of berries on the table. Mom, Dad, Tanner, and I all sat down together. That was before Tanner moved into the detached garage.

  Mom and Dad told stories of their Odyssey together, back before they got engaged. They were already training for the race when Dad went to my mom’s dad to ask for permission to marry Mom. “You get in the boat with her and do that race,” my grandpa said. “If the two of you still want to get married when it’s all over, you have my blessing.” Apparently, it was touch and go around the checkpoint at Invista, 230 miles in, but by the end they were solid. Dad got down on one knee at the finish and Mom said yes. They even did the race together again a few years later, but that was the last time for Mom.

  Then Dad and Tanner talked about portaging—carrying their boat around—Gonzales Dam the year they raced together. I’d heard all these stories before, but I never get tired of them. Last year, on this day, I couldn’t wait until our next meal together at the finish, when Dad and I would tell our own crazy stories about the race. I would finally be a part of it.

  But the next meal Mom, Dad, and I had together came from a hospital vending machine. We never tell stories from our race. And I doubt anyone in my family will ever want to hear about me racing with John Cullen, either.

  I force down as much breakfast as I can, but the garlic smell makes me queasy this early in the morning. Maybe it’s just the guilt. Or the anger. I head outside and put my bag in my car. Then I go to the barn and load the race food Tanner and I prepared from the freezer into the cooler. I pack up the water jugs and electrolyte tabs and make a couple of trips from the barn to my car. I double-check the race supply list on my phone and confirm that I have everything. Then I sit in my car with my hands on the steering wheel. I don’t turn the key. Everything about this feels wrong.

  An idea hits me as I stare at the windows of our dark living room. I’ve never turned the Cussing Lamp on in my life, but right now it feels like giving the middle finger to everything that happened yesterday.

  I go inside, straight to the lamp, and turn the knob.

  Light floods the living room, and I turn to go back to my car, but another light flips on. The one in the kitchen. Dad walks in wearing gray pajama pants and a bakery T-shirt.

  “I see you’re dressed for racing.” His voice is scratchy from just waking up.

  Damn.

  White tights under shorts, quick-dry shirt, river shoes. My dark hair in pigtail braids. The orange hat he gave me. There’s no way I could pass this outfit off for anything else. I’d planned for them to find the note I left on my bed after I didn’t come down for breakfast. I thought I could hide in the crowd around Spring Lake and be on the water before anyone could try to stop me.

  “How’d you know I was up?”

  “Your dog tried to climb in bed with us. He only does that when you’re not around.”

  “Did you read my note?”

  “Didn’t see it,” Dad answers.

  I open my mouth a few times, but there’s really nothing helpful I can say right now.

  “How’d you find a partner so fast?” Dad asks. Is he going to try to stop me? “Did you pull Ginny out of retirement?”

  I shake my head to buy some time. “She can’t race,” I say. “Her shoulder.”

  Dad nods. “So who is it?”

  I don’t want him to know. If I could make it so that he never finds out, I would. But there’s no use in lying. I’ve never been good at it, anyway. “John Cullen.”

  Dad’s mouth drops open, and his upper lip goes back. It’s like he’s watching a horror movie. He walks to the couch and sinks into it. He leans back and puts a hand in his hair. Everything stays quiet for a long while. He’s so mad he’s actually not speaking to me. I don’t want t
his. I hate it. But I want to race. It’s best I get out of here, so I head for the door.

  “Wait another year,” Dad says when my hand is on the doorknob.

  “I don’t want to wait any longer,” I say, my back to him.

  “You’ll be eighteen next year. You can solo if you want.”

  I turn my head. He’s still got his hand in his hair.

  “I don’t want to solo. I wanted to do the race with you. Or with Tanner.”

  “Sadie.” He takes his hand out of his hair and puts his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “You don’t have any business getting in a boat with a Hink. You need to be on the water with someone you can trust. And that’s not John Cullen. He’s volatile. Just like his dad. How do you think he’s going to handle it when things go wrong? Look what he did to your brother last fall. I wouldn’t want you on the shore with him, let alone in a boat for the next sixty hours.”

  “Then you get in the boat with me. You race with me. Give me another chance.” I hate the pleading sound in my voice.

  His hand goes to his forehead, half covering his eyes and rubbing like he’s trying to get rid of a headache. “I can’t do that.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I turn the knob. He can’t bear the possibility of another DNF with me. “Bye, Dad.”

  As I drive through the morning fog, I try not to think about the worry I saw on his face.

  “Good god, the sun isn’t even up yet,” my best friend, Erica, says, climbing into the passenger seat of my car and shoving a duffel down at her feet. “Your family is extreme.”

  Her dyed black hair is stuffed into a messy bun. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but she still took the time to put a ring of thick black eyeliner around each eye. She intimidated the hell out of me when she first came to my school two years ago, even after we started sharing shifts at my mom’s bakery.

  But two Aprils ago we spent a night and half a day making a million little organza flowers together because Lacy Siddens hired Erica’s grandma to copy a prom dress out of a magazine, and four days before prom, Lacy declared the flowers they’d already made “anemic.” Lacy is horrible, but the dress turned out just like the picture. She didn’t deserve it.

  When I called last night and asked Erica to bank crew, she didn’t even ask for details. She said, “Yeah. Of course.” Which is good, because if I’m going to do this, I need someone on my side.

  I hand Erica the bag of cookies that didn’t get eaten last night. “Payment for taking care of me for the next three days.”

  She crams her hand in and pulls out a sugar cookie with gumdrops in it. Mom calls them Sadie Bears, which is embarrassing. “You’d think I’d be sick of these by now, but I freaking dream about them.” She takes a bite and chews. “What kind of dark magic does your mom put in these things? Crystallized baby joy?”

  “It comes premixed in the flour,” I say. “Special blend.”

  I put the car in reverse and back down her driveway.

  “Shoulda guessed,” she says with a full mouth. “So explain why you’re doing this.”

  “Because it’s hard.”

  Honestly, we’ve had this discussion before. She knows the Odyssey is about digging down and pushing yourself further than you ever dreamed.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the cross-stitched pillow on your couch,” she says. “I can’t believe your family motto is a double entendre. It’s so weird.”

  Ugh. No. “Don’t be gross. It comes from that JFK speech about going to the moon. He says we do things ‘not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ ”

  “Suuuuuure,” Erica says, and even though I’m staring straight at the road, I can feel her side-eye.

  The clock on the dash shows seven fifteen as we drive down the road that cuts through the green grass surrounding Spring Lake. My brother won’t show up until eight, which gives me some time to train my new and completely inexperienced bank crew in peace.

  I take a deep breath.

  This’ll work. It has to work.

  We park next to John Cullen’s truck. It’s navy and shiny. I bet he got it new. I bet he’s never even washed it himself. At least he didn’t pay a bunch of money to have it lifted.

  He’s standing by the tailgate with Ricky Gonzales, who everyone calls Gonzo. He’s one of those guys who stand out, and not just for sharing a nickname with a Muppet. He’s slight, shorter than me, and he wears his hair in a pompadour every day. Even right now. He’s followed by a wake of he’s gay, right? whispers every time he walks down the hall. It’s strange seeing him in shorts and a quick-dry T-shirt instead of a bright-colored button-up shirt and suspenders with dark cuffed jeans. He just graduated a few weeks ago, like Erica. I suppose John Cullen did, too.

  In a million years I would never guess that the two of them would be friends. John Cullen is the kind of guy who breaks people’s noses. And Gonzo’s a really nice guy, the kind of guy at risk for getting his nose broken. They’re an odd pair for sure, but I guess ever since his parents started sending him to a private school a few towns away, I lost track of what John Cullen gets up to, aside from fighting and talking shit about my family and not washing his own car.

  We climb out of my car, and Gonzo picks Erica up in a big hug. They took art together last year.

  “Sooby-sooby-roo,” John Cullen says, walking around the back of my Subaru and running a finger across my VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS bumper sticker. “Can’t believe this thing hasn’t peeled off yet.”

  My insides prickle at the familiarity. I don’t like that we have so many shared memories. That we nicknamed the car together and spent so many hours riding in the back when it was my mom’s. That we spent all those afternoons watching Shaggy and Scooby.

  Our eyes lock. God, it’s annoying that he turned out nice-looking. I’d forgotten how his eyes are that shade of light brown, and I’d forgotten how he got that little scar beside his left one working on the tree house.

  I haven’t forgotten what he did to my tree house.

  A years-old fire ignites inside me. My foot itches to kick him in the shin.

  Am I really stepping into a boat with him for the next 265 miles?

  Dad’s word echoes in my ears.

  Volatile.

  “Is this a staring contest?” Erica asks.

  I snap my eyes away from John Cullen’s.

  “Does not bode well,” Gonzo mutters.

  “Not at all,” agrees Erica.

  I cut both of them down with a glare, and then I pop open the back of my car. “Gather ’round, kids. This is Bank Crew 101.”

  I hand Erica a green binder that has driving directions and a printout of an Excel spreadsheet with every place they meet us and whether it’s a checkpoint where they have to sign us in, or just a place where they need to restock us with water and food.

  She and Gonzo stand under my open hatchback and flip through the laminated pages. Something inside me twitches, because I’ve just handed the Scofield family bible to outsiders.

  “Ice socks,” I say.

  Both their heads pop up and the binder closes. They stand next to me looking at the supplies loaded into my trunk. My thighs bump against the bumper.

  I’ve never been this close to Gonzo before. He’s got a sweet, kind of powdery smell to him. I think it’s coming from his hair.

  My so-called partner sits on his open tailgate, legs dangling, staring into the distance.

  I tear open a bag of tube socks and teach them how to use a Solo cup with the bottom cut off to stuff ice into a sock. I show them the milk crates with pool noodles zip-tied around the edges so they float, even with full water jugs inside. We go over how many electrolyte tabs to put in the jugs and how to attach the tubing we’ll drink from and bite valves that keep the dirty water out. They see the vacuum-sealed food in the cooler and we talk about trash collection. I show them how to check our location on the tracker app so they’ll have an idea of when we might show up at checkpoints and water stops.

  �
��If you run into trouble, don’t be afraid to ask questions. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there among the other bank crews, and Odyssey people are some of the nicest. They’ll help you.”

  I look to John Cullen to fill in the gaps.

  He shrugs.

  Moocher.

  * * *

  By the time we head over to the boat, more cars have arrived. But not my brother’s truck. And I haven’t seen any of the Bynums yet, either. Or Johnny Hink.

  But they’ll be here. They all will be.

  Erica and Gonzo leave us to pick up their team captain shirts and driving guides, and to wander around a bit. They don’t really have a job until our first water stop in a few hours.

  My canoe is twenty-one feet long, narrow and black with low gunnels and a rudder controlled by pedals in the stern. It weighs about fifty pounds. That’s light compared with the aluminums. John Cullen should already be pretty comfortable with it. It’s probably just like the one he and Brent were planning to race. But still, everyone makes their canoe theirs.

  We take out Tanner’s extra shirt and the rest of his stuff and put it on the grass. Part of me wants to throw it in the trash. John Cullen puts his things in. We push his seat forward a bit, since Tanner has a couple of inches on him. He needs to be able to press his feet against something to get a more powerful stroke. Hopefully shifting the seat won’t affect our trim, the way the weight distribution in the boat affects how it sits in the water. I give him the rundown on everything up front. Where to find the life preserver and how the lighting system works. Our food and trash systems. The bilge pump that keeps our boat from swamping if we take on water.

  He examines the pump like he’s never seen one before.

  “You know how to use it, right?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Of course,” he says, and after a long pause, “Ours was just different.”

  I can’t think of anything else to do with the boat, but he’s still crouched close to me. So close I can feel the warmth of his body. So close I can smell him, and it’s not the same dirt and sweat and river scent from when we were kids. It’s shaving cream and deodorant. And greasy diaper cream and sunscreen. Wait. No. The diaper cream and sunscreen are me.