by Holly Green
But if Cully is sleeping, then at least he isn’t lying awake making that face. It’s not like I’m blind to the fact that he turned out good-looking, but I’ve been so busy hating him that I don’t understand where this part of me came from. Maybe race delirium. Because this is absolutely the last time on earth I should be kissing anyone, and he’s the last person I should be kissing.
But in that moment, I didn’t want to stop. I really, really didn’t want to stop.
I press my palms into my eyes. It doesn’t clear any of this up.
Time moves like a sloth, and then there are noises on the other side of the log jam. For a second, I think it might be an animal, and my insides tense. But I hear a grunt, and I know whoever’s on the other side is dealing with the same crap that drove Cully and me to … to what?
The noises come closer, and then there’s a light. I squeeze my eyes tighter.
“Everyone knows Scofields don’t stop and rest.” It’s a man’s voice. I can hear his boat dragging across the gravel.
“Get your light off me.” I click my headlamp on so I can shine it right back and squeeze one eye open.
Robbie Scoggins drags his boat into the water unnecessarily close to us. He’s a friend of Johnny’s and an all-around idiot. “Hey, that’s bright,” he says.
“Right back at you, jerk.”
“I’ll tell your dad I passed you during naptime.”
“I’ll tell him we had to wait here for four hours for you to catch us,” I snap.
Cully puts a hand over his eyes. “Is it morning?” he mumbles.
“Just Scoggins being a butt.”
When Scoggins paddles away, I can already hear someone else on the other side of the jam. Lots of someone elses. Lots of voices. At least one boat. Maybe more.
I want to say it, I want to tell Cully it’s time to leave, but I bite my tongue. I owe him this rest, even if he wants to take it in a freaking train station.
“Might as well go,” he says, rolling over on his hands and knees before slowly climbing to his feet.
I’m kneeling on the gravel when he holds his hand out to me and I take it. His hands are so much thicker now. So substantial.
He lets go as soon as I’m on my feet, and I want to slap the part of myself that feels disappointed.
Back to business.
We pull the boat into the water and take turns climbing in. Even with the pain in my butt and in my hands and in my shoulder, it’s not quite as bad.
Whatever that was, whatever happened between us, I have to press it down. Keep it squashed deep inside me. I have to focus on the race and not let it enter my thoughts, because there’s no place for it on the river.
1:18 A.M. MONDAY
TEXAS RIVER ODYSSEY
MILE 200
KEEP PADDLING!
At this point last year, my boat was cracked, my ribs were cracked, and my shirt was soaked in blood.
This year we paddle into the Victoria checkpoint, and I’m not bleeding. Nothing is broken. But my stomach is sick. I’m about to go farther than I did last year. I’m going to places I’ve never paddled in practice, let alone in the dark with a novice partner. I miss my dad more than ever.
I can’t see the boat ramp in our headlights, but I know it’s there. Another boat is pulled over. Its headlights shine downstream. Headlamps and flashlights dot the shore.
“Everything okay? Are you sick again?” Erica asks as soon as we pull in behind the other boat.
“We’re fine. Why?” I answer, because she’s not asking about all the fear and unsaid things churning inside me.
“You stopped for almost an hour. I was afraid one of you had broken a leg or something.”
“Why would we break a leg?” I ask.
“One of the guys earlier did. A solo. He had to get rescued.”
“That’s awful,” I say, and I should get some sort of gold star for not asking what place that puts us in.
“Why’d you stop, then?” she asks.
“We were resting.”
She puts a hand on my forehead. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“Positive.”
“I’m …” Erica pauses. She’s not a huge talker, but I’ve never seen her at a loss for words. “I thought you were going to destroy yourself.” She holds something out to me. “Here. You’ve earned a cookie.”
If that’s not an I’m proud of you, I don’t know what is.
The cookie is still soft, and it’s orange and creamy. A Creamsicle cookie. One of Mom’s.
Erica pulls my water jugs out of the canoe and replaces them with fresh ones.
“Thanks for the plain water,” I tell her. “How did you know?”
“Cully told Gonzo he was sick of electrolytes. We figured if he was, you might be, too.”
I hand her my old food bag, fasten the new one into place, and wait while Cully and Gonzo finish talking. I wonder if they’re talking about what happened. Maybe Gonzo’s up there telling Cully he should just go ahead and get out of the boat before I try to make another move.
I feel so exposed.
Focus on the race.
“Ready?” I ask Cully.
“Yeah.”
We take off, and a minute later the other boat from the boat ramp pulls up next to us and asks what’s up with our lighting.
“Mark?” I ask, because I recognize his voice.
“Oh, hey, Sadie. Didn’t realize that was you.”
They pull up even with us on the left, giving us a better view of the river, and I explain about the end cap.
Up front, Cully laughs. “We’ve got an alligator gar swimming in our lights.” Alligator gar are huge fish. Prehistoric-looking with long pointy snouts and pointier teeth. But they’re not aggressive.
“How big?” Mark asks.
“Maybe three feet. There are two of them now,” Kimmie answers.
“Just wait till you see them closer to the bay,” Mark says. “They’ll be longer than you are tall.”
Cully and Kimmie both shudder.
“It’s been a weird race this year,” Mark says as Cully and Kimmie fall into conversation up ahead.
“Yeah,” I agree. I kissed Cully and I’m keeping pace with Mark Siegfried. It doesn’t get any weirder.
“I mean, can you imagine having a tree fall on your boat?” Mark asks.
“Wait, what?” I ask.
“That happened to someone. What did you mean?” Mark asks.
“I just meant, I didn’t think we’d see you again after Gonzales. You guys were flying. You should be coming up on Invista by now.”
“Nah. It’s not that kind of race this year,” Mark tells me.
“What kind of race is it?”
“Kimmie’s better when she rests. I mean, it makes her feel better. She’s not in this to torture herself. So we stop and eat snacks on the shore, and a couple of times we’ve even slept.”
“But …” I don’t know what I’m going to say. But you’re so fast. But you could get first in class. You could maybe be one of the first five boats. But I don’t say any of it.
“I know how your dad runs the race. He’s a machine,” Mark says. “Don’t get me wrong, I like running the race that way, too. But this is how Kimmie wants to do it, and I’m not going to push her to do it my way.”
His words almost knock me out of the boat.
How did Mom and Dad do the race? Did they stop to rest? Did they pack blankets and camp out? I’ve never asked. Mom always says that the race just about tore them apart, and then it put them back together even stronger.
How often does it do that?
Then there’s Ginny, saying she doesn’t want to be responsible for anyone else. There’s Dad and Johnny. One race undid all their years of friendship.
How often do people just stay torn apart?
2:21 A.M. MONDAY
The current is dead. Has been since Mark and Kimmie left us behind at Highway 59. We restocked there, and Erica gave me another cookie, and we
set out for Invista, our next checkpoint.
If you look at the river on a map, this section looks like a piece of old string a cat vomited up. If you’re actually on the water, it’s worse.
A new blister rips open on my hand. You’d think I’d be finished forming blisters by now. I bite off the flap of skin and spit it in the river.
“I just want to pick it up and shake it out,” Cully says.
“Shake what out?” Is this the beginning of him being delirious?
“The river. I want to shake all these kinks out and make it lie in a straight line. Put an end to all this back and forth.”
“Do it,” I tell him. “Please.”
We’re quiet for a while. My eyelids live at half-mast. I reach for an energy shot. God, I’m sick of these.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know?” Cully says like we’re coming back from a pause in a conversation.
“Nothing wrong with what?”
“With letting your parents pay for college,” he says, and I wonder how long he’s been ruminating on this. “Gonzo’s parents are paying his tuition at UT next year. They’ve been saving for it since he was born. It’s a gift. There’s nothing wrong with accepting it.”
I get it. I get what he’s saying. The money my parents saved wasn’t enough to pay for everything, but it would have helped. I would have taken it. But I also understood when it had to go into the house.
And I’d be lying if I said I’m not jealous. Of course I am.
“I understand that,” I say. “But did they force him to paddle two hundred and sixty-five miles in a canoe to get it?”
Because there’s something wrong with being out here because it’s the only way you can get your tuition paid. And it’s not that there’s something wrong with Cully. There’s something wrong with his dad.
3:07 A.M. MONDAY
Cully’s head drops and lifts. Drops and lifts. He’s nodding off.
My mouth opens, the words get a snack fully formed, when I force it shut.
A lot of people have a kind of hammock made for the person in the front. A wide piece of nylon that stretches across the boat from gunnel to gunnel right behind the bow seat. It snaps onto the sides with the same hardware we use for the spray skirt, which keeps the waves out during the bay crossing. The person in front rests their back on the hammock. From what I hear, it’s a decent way to get some rest.
But Scofields don’t buy boat hammocks.
I steer us to the bank river right and hang on to a low branch so we don’t tip.
“What are we doing?” Cully slurs.
With my other hand I dig out the dry bag from behind me. It’s a million times heavier than it was when I put it in the boat on Friday. That’s what paddling two hundred miles will do to you.
“Put this behind you,” I say, pushing the dry bag into the middle of the boat. “Lie down and get some rest.”
“Are you joking?” he asks.
“Of course I’m not.” Maybe it’s a valid question, but it gives me a queasy feeling. Tears burn in my eyes. How could he think I’d joke about this when he’s falling asleep sitting up? It would be cruel.
“Get some rest.” Please don’t let him hear the shake in my voice. “I’ve got you.”
4:07 A.M. MONDAY
I’ve never actually paddled on my own while the bowperson rested.
It’s hard.
Watching the river for logs and rocks from fifteen feet back is almost impossible. I didn’t even manage to do it right in the bow last year. My depth perception is off in the dark. Everything is shades of blue and gray and flat. Most of the left side of the river is only lit by the moon. And pulling deadweight without a current is like paddling through molasses. The boat is unwieldy, and the river bends every hundred feet. Which kind of makes it good there’s no current. The water’s so still the canoe practically comes to a stop when I take a snack break or pee. And when the boat stops, it is so damn tippy.
I keep paddling. I keep us moving. And I resist the urge to wake Cully up and ask him to talk to me. To ask him how he feels about what happened between us. No matter how much I try to keep it out of my head, I keep going back to that kiss, wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted. Would he have stepped away, or would he have pulled me closer?
I grasp for other things to occupy my mind.
Water pours into the river at the Coletto Creek Confluence. It actually kicks up the current. They must have gotten even more rain down here than I realized. Also, that marks ten more miles to our checkpoint.
The trees are full of cartoon animals. Pigs and monkeys and snakes. A priest stands on the riverbank performing Mass for squirrels. I see elephants and giants. I even see Mr. Snuffleupagus. There’s a dock on the side of the river with a hammock stretched between the piers. I could tie the boat to it and lie down while Cully sleeps. But when I get there it disappears, like a mirage.
Everything hurts. There’s no other way to say it. My fingers. My feet. My butt. My arms. My back. All of my back. I try shifting left. Shifting right. Holding my elbow higher. Holding it lower. Sucking in my stomach and pooching out my stomach. Nothing helps.
And there’s so far to go.
Invista. Portaging the two-mile log jam. The saltwater barrier. Alligators. Crossing the bay. What if there are three-foot swells?
My eyes fill with tears. I can’t keep going. It’s too much. This is going to be another DNF. Another year where I have completely failed to do something I’ve planned for my whole life. Another year of my dad barely being able to look at me.
I put my paddle down, and I rest my elbows on my knees and my head in my gross, wrinkly hands, and I let loose. Huge heaving sobs. Snot drips out of my nose. I gasp for breath.
“Sadie.”
It’s Dad’s voice, buried somewhere deep inside my brain.
I was eight, and I’d smashed my finger with a hammer. I was crying just like this. Whole-body crying, yelling it hurts, it hurts. The ice wasn’t helping. How long would it last? Was it going to feel like this forever? Would this mess up my dodgeball game in PE the next day?
“Sadie, let me tell you something I learned on the river.” Dad has an Odyssey story for every situation. “Every year there comes a point when I hurt so bad I think I can’t go on. None of the tricks I use to make it hurt less help. I think of all the miles of river I have ahead of me, and I don’t know how I can take one more stroke, let alone the thousands it’ll take to get to Seadrift. And every time, I realize that the pain I’m feeling right now is bearable. What makes it unbearable is thinking about all that future pain. Worrying about it makes me hurt worse. Every year I learn this over again, to accept the pain I feel at that moment. I don’t worry about the pain ahead. It’s what gets me through.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to get knocked out in dodgeball tomorrow,” I said.
“Forget dodgeball. Think about how your finger feels right now,” Dad said.
I did. And it turned out, it was bearable.
Which is not true here. I feel like shit.
But I wipe my nose on my sleeve and I pick up my paddle.
I can survive it, right now, in this moment.
And this one.
And this one.
5:51 A.M. MONDAY
“Cully. Cully, wake up.”
The stars have faded. The horizon glows, and there’s enough light now that I can see, even though the sun won’t be up for another half hour. We’ve made it through the second night.
“Hmmmhmm …”
I pull my bug net and hat out from behind me.
Birds sing in the trees. But they’re hard to hear over the steady buzz that fills my ears. The bugs are out. Mosquitoes. They prick at my neck and my hands. There’s still not enough light to be sure, but I bet they’re feasting on Cully’s face.
Two mornings ago, I probably wouldn’t have cared. I might have thought it served him right. It’s strange how quickly things can change. For the las
t hour I’ve been wishing he were up so he could talk to me and make me laugh.
“Wake up!” I pull my bug net down over my hat.
Cully rubs at his face, but he doesn’t wake up.
“Cully!” I yell.
Nothing.
I pick up some water with my paddle and fling it at him. A dark spot spreads on his shirt, but he stays fast asleep. Should I let him sleep? No. He can’t wake up with a million bites on his face.
I take my paddle by the handle and scoot forward in my seat, reaching with the blade. But the boat’s too long. I put a hand on the cross brace in front of me and take my butt off the seat. My paddle just brushes the ends of his hair. I lean farther.
A geyser of water explodes out of the river right next to me.
“Ahhhh!” I jerk away. Water pummels me.
The boat rocks. Cully’s body rolls with it. I reach to the right, trying steady us, but it’s too late. We roll to the side. I grip my paddle and plunge under the water. Cool water fills my clothes, my hair, my mosquito net. I kick to the surface and tread water. Streams of water pour off my head and down my face. When I open my mouth to take a breath, I inhale water from my mosquito net.
“What the hell just happened?” Cully yells as I pull my mosquito net up and take a breath.
He’s a couple of feet away, his hand on the hull of the canoe. It’s right side up but riding low. Full of water. He grabs his paddle, which is floating a few feet away.
Something huge slides against my leg. I kick away. A second later, silver scales surface and roll.
Cully kicks a few feet back. “What was that?”
“Alligator gar,” I explain. “I was trying to wake you up, and—”
“You didn’t have to dump me in the river!” A dragonfly lands on his head, and my entire chest goes squishy because it is unbearably cute.
“No,” I say, but I can’t help smiling and laughing.
“It’s not funny.”
