Chapter Thirty Eight
THIRTY-EIGHT
You hear the water before you open your eyes again.
The now-familiar plunge and suction of the paddle and the soft trickle of water dripping from the blade.
When your eyes open, the sun blurs your vision and turns everything a fiery orange.
A small moan escapes your lips, and it takes everything in your power not to touch the tender spot on the back of your head.
When you can see again, you find Will at the front of your boat, shoulders rotating, dragging the paddle through the dark blue lake and muttering to himself.
“How did you get me in here?” you ask.
Will turns around and smiles through gritted teeth.
“Dragged you, bro,” he says. “You’re heavier than you look. Need to cut back on those grasshoppers.”
As you become more aware of your body, it feels like you were dropped in the canoe from a great height. Your limbs are sprawled everywhere, with a foot hanging over the gunwale to your right.
“I think I need medical attention,” you say.
“No shit,” says Will. “You’re messed up.”
You manage to gather yourself and sit up.
The boat wobbles, then steadies again when you’re upright.
You look around. Behind you, the island is just a dot.
This first lake, you remember from the map, is a long and spindly one.
It’s so quiet, it takes you a minute to realize that nobody else is around you.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” you ask.
Will stops and points ahead of you.
“They were hauling, man. We’re meeting them at the shore. I’ve got dead weight to carry. No offense.”
“None taken,” you say.
You find if you just concentrate on the things around you—the lake, the sounds of the water, the cool breeze—you can kind of ignore the pain. It’s never gone exactly, but it fades into the background like distant music.
“We’re not too far off,” says Will. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that then you’ll have to walk ’cause I’m not about to piggyback you.”
You nod even though you know he can’t see you.
It’s hard to imagine hiking through the woods without a trail, backpack straps digging into your shoulders, but you know if you want to survive, you’re going to have to find a way.
For now, you’re grateful there’s at least one athlete on this trip to transport you.
You lie back, and the sky is so bright you can’t look directly at it, so you peer through heavy lids.
“Hey,” says Will. “Sorry if I was asking too many questions about your brother last night.”
He hasn’t turned around, so you don’t see his face. You’re trying to remember if he was overly aggressive in his questioning, but you only remember one or two.
“That’s okay…”
He keeps propelling you through the water, but you can tell he wants to say something else. And after a few powerful strokes, he speaks again.
“It’s just that, I’m pretty sure that was going to be me.”
He rests his arms for a moment, wincing as he moves them in slow circles. There’s a sunburn turning his thick neck pink.
“How do you mean?” you ask.
“Well, things were bad, and I wasn’t telling anyone.
I’d go through my days like nothing was wrong, but then, in private, I was having these epic breakdowns.
Crying in my car or in a bathroom stall in the locker room.
It’s just me and my dad at home, and he’s not the world’s most open person.
We talk about sports, and my grades, but not much else.
He was raised by immigrants, and there wasn’t a lot of focus on, um …
well-being. They were too busy grinding. ”
He starts rowing again, breathing hard after each pull through the water.
“I didn’t want help. That’s not what I was taught. So I was gonna power through it, you know?”
“Then what happened?” you ask.
He pauses and holds his paddle still.
“I couldn’t power through it.”
You can see the shore in the distance now if you squint.
“I hid some pills in my dresser. I didn’t have a plan, but they were there and my dad found them. He told me he wasn’t going to do anything, then he tricked me into coming here. I guess the joke’s on him because I might die anyway.”
He doesn’t laugh.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” you say.
He turns around and looks at you.
“There’d be nobody to paddle me.”
A half smile. Then he starts in again.
“If we ever get out of this,” he says, “I’ll get some real help. Maybe some medication if I need it. I know I haven’t been easy to deal with out here, but you guys have helped me. Just knowing I’m not alone. It got me thinking about some things.”
As the shore grows closer, he paddles faster, his whole body straining. You can just make out some figures, and as the boat inches closer you see Diana, Fran, and Troy waiting for you. When the canoe hits sand, they all come running to help you out of the boat.
“He’s awake!” you hear from Troy, along with a few other murmurs.
Diana reaches for your hand, and Fran grabs the other.
Will leaves the boat and stands in the shallow water, waiting for you to climb out.
Before you try a step, you look at their dirty, malnourished faces.
Your therapist told you once that friendships formed in trauma aren’t real friendships.
They often don’t outlast the traumatic experience itself.
If you manage to escape those circumstances, the thing that bonded you is gone and everything dissolves.
But as you step out of the teetering canoe and your group of exhausted survivors steadies you with their calloused hands, it’s suddenly hard to imagine a life without them.
One of them especially. But you’re surprised to feel a similar tie to the others as well.
You’re not sure when this happened; you only know, as they help you to the shore, that you all have to make it out of this somehow so you can see one another in better times.
You feel a pull in you to keep moving. It wars against the very real fatigue and pain, but you manage to stay on your feet, which clomp through the cold shallows by the shore.
When you get to the land, everyone watches you.
You realize after a few seconds that they’re waiting to see if you can walk.
What would they do if you couldn’t? They would have to leave you behind, and if they wouldn’t, you would make them.
For now, however, you’re vertical, and when you move one of your feet forward, it goes where you want.
You don’t know how far you can go, or how fast, but for now, you can move yourself in a chosen direction. You look up and face your friends.
“Which way, Fran?” you say.
And everyone sighs in relief.
You’re about to start moving when you suddenly hear a sound coming from across the lake.
You all look up, and at first, all you see is a sky full of tiny pinpricks.
Scattering dots like floaters in your vision.
They morph as they grow closer, until you can finally see that they’re birds.
Whole flocks converging and flying over you.
Some with drab feathers and small bodies.
Others with sharp wings and hooked beaks. Birds of prey. Songbirds. Waterfowl.
They’re making all the possible bird sounds—gurgles, chirps, and screams—that merge together like an out-of-tune orchestra.
Each of you cranes your neck to watch them pass over a thicket of baby birch trees.
It feels like they’re never-ending until finally a few last stragglers disappear into the woods, and the sky is empty once again.
“Migration?” says Fran, staring out in the direction they came.
Troy has a puzzled look on his face.
“Maybe,” he says. “But there were so many different kinds. I guess that happens sometimes…”
“Everybody’s getting out of here but us,” says Diana.
A few of you laugh, but Will still stares intently at the sky.
“It looked super urgent, though,” he says. “Like they were trying to get away from something.”
“Probably just the cold, right?” says Diana, hugging her shoulders.
Everything is quiet again in their absence.
You all wait a moment, wondering what might come tearing through next.
A moose? A herd of deer? But there’s nothing.
And because you have to keep moving if you want to live, you let it go.
You chalk it up to yet another thing you don’t understand about nature.
But as you help Fran lift a canoe over the top of the two of you, your weakened body straining under the weight, you can’t quite get that cacophony of screeches out of your head.
What, you wonder, were they trying to say?