by Trish Doller
“There’s not an actual line. You know that, right?”
Taylor rolls her eyes. “Just get us in the ballpark.”
Willa’s anticipation ratchets up as she watches their progress on the GPS. About fifteen minutes later, she shifts the tiller, nosing the boat into the wind to bring their forward momentum to a stop. The sails flap as she and Taylor situate themselves—and Taylor’s camera—on the front of the boat. Willa holds the Canada sign while Taylor holds the US sign, her thumb resting on the remote button for her camera. Pumpkin sits in the hollow between them.
“Ready?” Taylor asks.
Willa tucks a flyway curl behind her ear, feeling like Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, preparing to take the step that will put her the farthest away from home she’s ever been. She takes a deep breath and nods. “I’m ready.”
“Finley on three,” Taylor says. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Her name shapes their mouths into smiles as Taylor snaps the picture.
A six hundred-foot freighter overtakes Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as Willa motors toward the entrance to the Port Colborne harbor, the black steel hull rising up beside their small boat like a wall. Willa’s breath catches in her chest as the sailboat dips and bobs on the wake that ripples out from the colossal ship. Gulls cry and swoop in the wake, snatching at fish churned to the surface by the powerful engines. From the rear deck, a crew member waves down at Willa and Taylor.
“That was amazing,” Willa says, at the same time Taylor says, “That was terrifying.”
Willa would be lying if she said she wasn’t afraid of being run over by a freighter, but she feels better when the next ship sounds its horn to indicate it has seen them. Ahead, docked inside the mouth of the canal, is yet another cargo ship, already waiting its turn to go through the locks that bypass Niagara Falls. Their boat looks like a toy in comparison.
“I don’t want to go into a lock with one of those things,” Taylor says.
“We won’t,” Willa says. “Freighters have priority, so we have to wait until they’re through the first lock. We’ll probably go with some other recreational boats.”
“None of this sounds fun.”
“I have a feeling it’s going to be hard and tiring, because we have to keep the boat from hitting the wall of the lock . . . and there are eight locks,” Willa says. “But no one we know has ever done anything like this.”
Taylor laughs. “Yeah, because no one wants to do this.”
“Finley did.”
Taylor sighs. “Couldn’t we just dock here and take a bus to Niagara Falls? I mean, the Welland Canal isn’t one of her clues, and the one about time travel could mean the Erie Canal, couldn’t it? It’s really old.”
“Do you honestly think that’s what she meant?”
“I don’t know! I hate that she’s not here to tell us! I hate these stupid clues! I hate that she’s dead!” The second ship overtakes them and the boat rocks, throwing off Taylor’s equilibrium. She sits down hard on the cockpit bench, tears trickling down her cheeks. “And I really fucking hate freighters!”
A giggle escapes Willa. She clamps a hand over her mouth, but it’s too late to hold back. Gales of laughter roll out of her until tears are leaking from the corner of her eyes. Until Taylor starts laughing. Until Willa’s sides ache. Until the freighter is past and Willa raises both her middle fingers at the back of the ship, yelling, “And I really fucking hate freighters!”
She weighs the idea of sailing back across the lake and entering the Erie Canal at Buffalo. Like she said in her video, Finley will never know what they choose to do or not do—and it would make Taylor more comfortable—but Willa wants the challenge of the Welland and she wants to be able to say she sailed on two Great Lakes.
“Finley wouldn’t take shortcuts,” she says as they pass between the breakwalls into the harbor. “She wouldn’t want this to be too easy.”
Taylor sighs again. “I know.”
“It’s been a long day,” Willa says. “Let’s crash here for the night and see if things feel different in the morning.”
“She still won’t be here,” Taylor says. “She’s never going to see any of this.”
“Then we’ll have to see it for her.”
Willa radios the marina office on the handheld VHF, and she’s given the okay to dock in one of the empty transient slips. Once the boat is tied up, Taylor calls home, while Willa uses a special videophone at the marina to notify the customs office of their arrival. Mr. Nicholson had warned them that Canadian officials might want to inspect the boat, but the man on the screen just verifies that Willa and Taylor are properly documented before welcoming them to Canada.
“Your mom called mine, wondering why you haven’t called home,” Taylor says as they meet back on the boat. “I told my mom you accidentally dropped your phone in the lake.”
“Not completely a lie.”
“You can borrow my phone, if you want.”
Willa shrugs as she gathers her toiletry kit and towel. She’s not ready to talk to her mom yet. “I might.”
“She’s probably worried,” Taylor says.
“I said I might.”
“I just think—”
“God, Taylor, leave it alone,” Willa snaps as she steps off the boat onto the dock. “This is none of your business.”
In the shower, Willa thinks about how whiplash fast she and Taylor can go from friendly to fighting. It was never that way with Finley. They debated pizza toppings or which movie to watch on Netflix, but they only ever had one big blowout. It came after a regatta at Indian Lake, during which everything that could go wrong, did. They were on the wrong side of the racecourse. The spinnaker halyard got tangled up. Finley blamed Willa, Willa blamed Finley, and they spent the two-hour ride home not speaking. Except that fight had ended with remorseful tears and sniffly apologies, not the giant, festering mess of a “friendship” Willa has with Taylor. The bad blood between them should have been laid to rest with Finley—and Willa wonders if it will ever die.
She returns to the boat, where a saucepan of water steams on the stove and Taylor is sitting in front of her laptop. “I’m making spaghetti,” she says without looking up from the screen. “Do you want some?”
“Yeah, um—thanks,” Willa says.
Taylor nods. “I’m also creating an Instagram account. We’ve been gone four days and I’ve only taken two pictures.”
“That’s criminal.”
“Right?” Taylor says. “If we’re going to be doing stuff no one we know has ever done, there should be proof we did it.”
“So, wait . . . Does this mean you’re okay with going through the canal?”
“Only if we can take a break and chill here for a day.”
“That’s fair,” Willa says as the water in the saucepan rolls to a boil. She empties a box of spaghetti into the pan. “We could ride our bikes to the beach tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Growing up, they practically lived at the beach across the road from Finley’s house. Their little-girl selves had sculpted elaborate sandcastles with margarine tubs, decorating them with bits of clamshell and seagull feathers. In middle school, they’d spent an inordinate amount of time doing their hair, then screaming when the neighborhood boys—the ones they were trying to impress with their cute hair—tried to splash them. By the time the girls reached high school, they were completely over those boys. Instead, they’d read books and listened to Taylor’s playlists. They’d slept under the stars. If she were here now, Finley would say riding their bikes to the beach is an outstanding idea. But she’s not here, so Willa has to accept that Taylor’s “okay” is better than nothing.
Taylor
THE SUN HASN’T EVEN BROKEN the horizon yet when the VHF radio crackles with an incoming call, informing Taylor and Willa that their transit window through the Welland Canal will open in thirty minutes. Willa scrambles out of bed to acknowledge the call, then quickly changes out of her pajamas and into
her bikini with a pair of cutoff shorts. She seems perfectly at ease getting naked in front of Taylor, but Taylor still hasn’t gotten used to the lack of privacy. She waits until Willa is out of the cabin before she changes into a tank top and shorts.
“I’m going to empty Pumpkin’s litter box and get some coffee,” Taylor says.
“Don’t take too long.” Willa pulls a misshapen fender from the cockpit storage locker. “We don’t want to miss our window.”
“We’re not going to miss our window.”
“I’m just saying . . .”
“Just because I fell asleep one time doesn’t mean you can treat me like I’m going to fuck up everything else,” Taylor snaps.
“What the—” Willa’s eyebrows form a deep crease of confusion. “Are you seriously picking a fight with me right now? Over this?”
“I just—”
“The only thing I care about today is getting this boat through that canal without sinking,” Willa says. “So if you want a fight, it’s going to have to wait until we get to the other end.”
“I’m going to get coffee.” Taylor steps off the boat.
“Don’t take too long.”
She flings her arm back and flips her middle finger at Willa, but this time no one laughs.
Taylor wishes they could stay longer in Port Colborne. Yesterday, they rode their bikes along the canal—past art galleries, clothing boutiques, and antique stores—and stopped at a British bakery to buy warm, fresh cinnamon scones with real butter for breakfast before pedaling over the Welland Street lift bridge to the beach. Taylor took pictures of everything, from the charming buildings to the tumbledown sandcastle on the beach that reminded her of the castles she used to make with Finley.
The one thing that bothers Taylor about yesterday is how little she and Willa had to say to each other. Finley was the talkative one. She’d have insisted on going into all the clothing shops to browse. She’d have struck up a conversation with the lady at the bakery. And she would have lost her mind over the fluffy little service-dog-in-training they met while waiting for a cargo ship to pass under the lift bridge. Finley provided the narration for their friendship, and Taylor misses her near-constant stream of chatter, along with Finley’s endless sense of wonder. If she were here, she’d be excited about going through the locks, and maybe Taylor would feel excited too. Instead, she’s stuck with serious, intense, bossy Willa.
Now, in the marina store, Taylor fills a couple of to-go cups with coffee, adding cream and sugar to her own. Willa prefers black.
“Like her soul,” Taylor mutters on her way to the cash register.
She passes a display of boat fenders that are fat and shiny. Their old fenders came from her dad’s collection of cast-off boat supplies, and Taylor isn’t sure they’ll survive the canal. A red sale tag above the display advertises a four-pack for ninety dollars. They’re smaller than their current fenders and ninety bucks is not cheap, but it’s one less thing to worry about. Balancing the coffee carrier with one hand, Taylor grabs the mesh bag and carries it to the register.
Willa is eating a bagel with cream cheese when Taylor gets back to the boat. Her eyebrows lift when she notices the bag of fenders. Taylor shrugs, handing her the cup of black-like-her-soul coffee. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to the boat.”
The first lock is eleven miles beyond Port Colborne. By the time they arrive, Taylor is nearly sick with anticipation. With no frame of reference, her imagination has spun up images of their boat being smashed to pieces against the lock wall. Pleasure boats travel through the Welland Canal all the time, so Taylor knows she’s worrying too much. She just doesn’t know how to turn off her brain.
Willa eases Whiskey Tango Foxtrot toward the wall of the lock, and a shoreman hands Taylor a long coil of rope.
“Most people run it around the cleat and pay it out slowly as the boat goes down,” he instructs. “Do you have gloves? Might come in handy.”
The Captain Norm book recommended boaters protect their hands while traveling through locks, so one of their last purchases before Taylor and Willa left Sandusky was a four-pack of heavy-duty gardening gloves. Taylor pulls a pair from the back pocket of her shorts and slides her hands inside.
“All set,” she says, but she’s not ready. Not really.
Ahead of them in the lock is a large white trawler called Nauti-Gal and an unnamed sleek red go-fast powerboat with a bank of outboard motors stretched across the back. Both boats are loaded with fenders to protect their shiny hulls, and Taylor is glad she bought a few more. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a small boat and they still have so far to go.
The steel doors close slowly and then the water begins its descent. From her place on the bow, Taylor eases out the rope, keeping pace with the water level, while Willa does the same at the back of the boat. It’s less scary than Taylor imagined, but as the lock wall rises up beside them, the boat feels smaller than ever.
It takes about fifteen minutes for the water to drain to the correct level. The doors open at the opposite end of the lock, and Nauti-Gal peels away from the wall first and motors away, followed by the go-fast boat. Taylor releases the rope as Willa steers toward the middle of the channel.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Taylor says.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Willa says. “But this was just the beginning. Next are the flight locks, and that’s not going to be fun.”
“Is there any good news?”
“Not unless you want me to make something up.”
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”
It takes Willa and Taylor two hours to reach the first of the flight locks. The sun is higher in the sky and the other two boats have been waiting for their arrival. The owner of the trawler—a man who reminds Taylor of a grumpy version of her granddad—glares at her from his back deck as though she could have made their little outboard motor chug along any faster than it did.
Once Willa has the sailboat in position, the lock doors close and the water begins to drop. With each foot, the boat sinks, until the walls rise high above their heads, until only the top of the mast extends above ground level. Taylor is paying out the rope when a surge of water pushes the boat toward the lock wall. The fenders squish and Taylor’s muscles strain as she and Willa push the boat away from the wall.
The water stops at forty-nine feet, and the doors at the other end are totally exposed. Water cascades down their massive surface, and they remind Taylor of something out of a fantasy movie, the kind of doors from behind which a horde of orcs would swarm. Instead, the doors open into the next lock. This one lowers them another forty-nine feet, and a third lock drops them yet another forty-nine feet.
It takes nine hours to go through the whole canal, and after they pass three giant cargo ships, Taylor’s fear of freighters has worn away. She and Willa swap places periodically to catch a break from the sun under the beach umbrella, but Taylor can feel the heat on the end of her nose and the tops of her feet. The palms of her gloves are blackened with oily dirt and her arms are sore as the boat clears the final lock. Taylor takes over the tiller. “I swear to God, if I have to go through one more lock . . .”
“You do know there are locks in the New York canal system, right?” Willa says, handing her a bottle of water. “And in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.”
Taylor pops the cap and squirts Willa’s forehead. “You shut your filthy mouth.”
Willa retaliates, hitting Taylor in the cheek. “Then I guess you don’t want the good news.”
“What’s the good news?”
“We conquered the Welland Canal.”
Taylor grabs her camera to snap a picture of Willa flexing her biceps, then grins. “We did, didn’t we?”
“Hell yeah, we did,” Willa says. “Because we are Whiskey . . .” Her smile slips. When they first bought the boat, Finley came up with their own version of a pre-game huddle cheer, in which they’d slap a three-way high five while shouting “Whiskey! Tango! Foxtr
ot!”
Taylor’s throat is too thick with tears to say her part, and there is only silence where Finley would shout “Foxtrot!” But after a beat, Taylor taps her water bottle against Willa’s. “Foxtrot would be proud.”
“Yeah.” Willa nods. “She really would.”
43.0962° N, 79.0377° W
Make time for wonder.
Willa
WILLA TURNS A SLOW CIRCLE on the wet deck, her arms outstretched and her face tilted toward the swirling mist. The force of Niagara Falls crashes over the Hurricane Deck railing, splashing hard against her back and crashing over her head. She shrieks and links forearms with Taylor to keep them both steady, and when they look at each other, they crack up laughing. Water streams into the neckline of Willa’s thin yellow poncho, soaking her T-shirt and her bikini underneath. Her makeup has washed away, but she doesn’t care.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done!” she shouts over the roar as the falls batter the rocks beside the deck. Another wave smashes into her and she shrieks again.
Taylor rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she yells back. “You need to get a life.”
“Don’t pretend like you’re not having fun!”
This morning, they boarded a bus in St. Catharines that took them to downtown Niagara Falls, where they rode another bus to the Rainbow Bridge. They crossed on foot, stopping to take pictures of each other with one foot in Canada and the other in the United States, kind of like they’d done on the boat.
The US border guard seems unimpressed that they’d come through the Welland Canal by sailboat. Maybe to him it meant nothing. Maybe to him, Willa and Taylor were just two ordinary tourists. But the guard didn’t know they were doing something important, that they are on a quest.
At the lower levels of the Cave of the Winds tour, the Bridal Veil Falls tumbles over moss-covered rocks, and the photos Taylor took were scenic and beautiful. Now she attempts a selfie with her phone in its waterproof case as they stand with the falls, thundering and white, splashing them from behind. Willa bares fierce teeth, but laughs at the last minute, so she doesn’t know how her face will turn out.
