Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Derek
“See where Farah is? That’s where you want to go. Move a little farther left.”
I push on the oars to do as Donovan directs, ignoring the shake in my hands just like I did for the last two rapids. By some miracle, I made it through the first two Big Drops and kept my head while scouting the third, but if ever there’s a time for me to panic, it’s now.
We’re in the river, heading straight for Big Drop 3, and there’s no turning back now.
Though the waves beneath the boat are small right now, up ahead, the tan water roars as the rocks underneath make the river churn.
The whitewater doesn’t look too bad from here, but I saw the size of the rapid from the shore.
It’s mean and isn’t going to forgive any large mistakes.
Even small ones could cause some problems, which means Big Drop 3 is about to become my worst nightmare.
I can’t mess this up.
Desperate to get a better sense of where we are, I rise to my feet, still gripping the oars as I scan the quickly approaching rapid.
“That’s Big Mossy up ahead on the left?” I ask to orient myself.
Water cascades over the giant boulder, and I can barely see the rock itself.
The mountains of whitewater below it, on the other hand…
Donovan puts her hand on my shoulder as she stands to look with me.
She’s taller than I am, standing on bags instead of the bottom of the boat like me, and I’m almost glad I can’t see as much as she can.
“Yep. Avoid that at all costs, or we’re going to get an up-close look at why they call the hole below it Satan’s Gut. ”
That’s going to be a no from me.
The plan is for me to keep right of the giant boulder on the left side of the rapid but not go too far right, where another hole could swallow our boat whole as the water pours over a massive rock and curls back on itself.
Ahead of us, it looks like Farah has set herself up for a run exactly where Donovan said we should go, so as long as I don’t overcompensate and pull too hard in either direction, the current should take me down left of center and help me avoid some of the chunkier waves farther downstream.
With my luck, the current is going to change and drag me into disaster.
“You aced the last two,” Donovan says in my ear and squeezes my shoulder. “Just keep pushing through this one, and we’ll make it through.”
I’m going to be sick. The edges of my vision are hazy. My mouth is so dry that I’m desperate for water, but in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to be in the thick of the beast before me, so I force a swallow and take as deep a breath as I can manage. It’s not enough.
“Tell me what to do,” I beg, even though Donovan was great at directing me through Drops 1 and 2 and would never abandon me now.
With one final squeeze, Donovan sits on the bags behind me, hopefully grabbing on tight because this is going to be a bumpy ride.
“Pull back,” she directs as I sit. “We’re getting too close to Mossy.
But not too hard.” The boat is currently sideways so I can make sure I’m lined up correctly, though I’m itching to turn it straight.
Going through a rapid sideways is a good way to flip the boat. But I have to trust Donovan on this.
I grip the oars tighter, hating how weak I feel as my arms shake from nerves. The river seems to be pulling me closer to Big Mossy again, so I pull back a little more.
“There she goes!” Donovan says.
I hold my breath as Farah straightens out then spins in her seat, facing backward as the boat drops into the rapid, disappearing for half a second before the boat comes back up, crashing into a wave. “Why did she—”
“There’s more power in pulling than pushing, and she knows she’s stronger that way, even if she loses her line of sight.”
Farah glances behind her and pulls hard, bashing through another wave.
“She’s good,” Donovan declares. “Your turn.”
Swearing, I grip the oars as the water roars louder.
My heartbeat in my ears is even louder. I don’t trust myself to do this blind, so I’m going to have to rely on my arm strength to push through the waves instead of pulling like Farah did.
Am I strong enough? Those waves are huge. I have to be strong enough.
Ten more seconds.
“Strong oars,” Donovan instructs, and I adjust my grip. The water is deceptively smooth here, glassy in the sunlight but moving faster than ever. “Pull your right oar. Straighten up. That’s it. Pull back on your right a little. Ready?”
The river is deafening now, and I pray that I’ll still be able to hear Donovan.
We pick up speed, passing Big Mossy on our left and the monstrous mass of whitewater in the hole beneath it.
My eyes dart over the waves in front of us as I try to remember the path Donovan pointed out to me from the shore.
Everything looks wrong.
There’s nowhere to go.
“Push!” she shouts as we slide down into the rapid.
I push, but the oars barely catch any water and fly forward. Swearing, I try again, this time digging deeper.
“Right oar! Push hard!” Donovan curses as the river pulls us right, toward a wave that I swear is bigger than the boat.
A wave I was supposed to avoid.
“Push through it!” Donovan shouts.
Instinct tells me to duck down and hold on, but I force my tired arms to keep moving as we drop into the massive wave.
My fingers slide on the oar handles, making me grip harder, and for a second the oars catch nothing but air.
We hit the bottom of the wave at the same time the top curls over and slams into the boat from above.
Water crashes into me. Into my mouth, my eyes.
Momentarily blind and gasping for air, I push as hard as I can on the oars as our momentum stalls.
I keep pushing, digging into the water and hoping I have the strength to get us up and over the wave before the river decides to pull us back down and swallow us.
I push until the boat crests over the wave and flattens out.
We made it through.
But I’m not done yet.
“Nice! Keep it straight!” Donovan tells me as we hit the next wave and the next.
Water’s coming at the boat from all sides, but I do my best to maneuver the boat to hit each wave with the nose so we aren’t knocked over from the side.
“That’s it! You’re doing—” Her voice cuts out, like she turns to look behind us.
Then she swears.
“What?” I gasp as I’m hit with a rush of panic the same size as that first wave. I search the river ahead, but for the most part it looks like we’re through the worst of it. What am I not seeing?
“Mason flipped,” Donovan says.
Fear grips my heart, and I twist my head to look back. I only catch a glimpse of the upside-down boat before the rapid ahead catches my attention, forcing me to keep rowing through it without Donovan’s instructions. “What do we do?” I shout back.
She doesn’t answer.
“Is everyone okay?” I try to remember who was on Mason’s boat, but I was a little preoccupied this morning. If the boat flipped, they’re all in the water, and I can’t stop imagining Zahra or Maverick getting stuck on a rock under the water.
The river is finally calming, so I make sure nothing in front of us will get me into trouble, then stand to search the river behind us.
There’s a spot of orange off to the right, but I can’t tell who’s in the lifejacket.
With Mason’s boat unattended and drifting left, I grab the oars and start pulling in that direction.
“No,” Donovan says, grabbing my arm. “People first. Stuff later. Pull hard to river left.”
Considering she just coached me through a Class V rapid, I’m going to trust her. Sitting back down, I pull with all my strength, rowing upstream as much as I row toward shore so I can try to limit the space between us and the people in the water.
“More left,” Donovan instructs. “That’s great.”
We reach Brody first, and since Donovan can’t pull him into the boat with one hand, I have to drop the oars to help.
I grab the shoulder straps of his life jacket but pause when I meet his wide-eyed gaze, anger flashing through me as I remember what he did to Donovan this morning and all the problems his actions caused.
But then I see the fear in his eyes, and I think about how he just swam most of Big Drop 3.
That rapid was traumatic from inside my boat, so I can’t imagine what he just went through.
And he did apologize…
Gritting my teeth, I shove him deeper into the water to give him some extra buoyancy and haul him into the boat as he comes back up, leaving him flopped on the bags as I jump on the oars again and row to the next person.
It takes a lot longer to rescue everyone than I expected, even with Thiago grabbing Mason and Hunter, so by the time we’ve grabbed the flipped boat and pulled into an eddy, I’m exhausted. That could also be because the adrenaline is wearing off now that everyone is out of danger.
Now that I’ve made it through the Big Drops.
As my wasted arms hang heavy at my sides, I watch as Donovan directs Mason and Thiago.
They loop a rope under the flipped boat, and the boys climb over the top with the rope in hand, using it and their body weight to pull the side up and flip the boat upright again.
Mason is smiling the whole time, laughing with his fellow guides as he recounts how thoroughly he messed up and went too far right—farther than I did—and landed his boat in a hole that showed no mercy.
His mistake was big—huge—and he’s grinning.
“Derek?”
I blink, and my head feels like lead as I turn to look at Brody. He’s sitting hunched in the middle of the bags, his eyes on my knees instead of my face. Drenched and bedraggled, he doesn’t look full of himself for once.
He glances up only long enough to see that I’m looking at him. “Thanks,” he mumbles.
The perfectionist in me would politely respond to his apology because Derek Riley is nothing if not polite. But I’m tired. “You were an idiot this morning,” I tell him. “You’re lucky she wasn’t hurt worse.”
He swallows thickly. “I know.”
“Don’t give me another reason to make my threats real.”
“I won’t.”
With that, I collapse onto the bags behind me and lay there, taking full breaths for the first time since this morning.
I…I did it. I faced the three biggest rapids on this stretch of river and made it out the other side, upright and in one piece without any prior whitewater experience, and that feels…
I feel like something has changed inside me.
As always, my mind runs through the events of the morning, from my decently solid run in Big Drop 1, to dropping an oar in Big Drop 2 but getting hold of it in time to maneuver through the second half of the rapid.
I think about how that last pull I did before going into Big Drop 3 was probably the one that brought me too far right and into that hole.
How easily we could have flipped because of it, just like Mason did.
And I’m…okay.
My run was far from perfect. There are so many things I would do differently if I had another chance to run it. But as I lay here, soaked with river water and sweat, and the sun beating down on my face, all I feel is relief.
No panic.
Just relief and pride and so much respect for people who do this day after day.
“Derek?” As I look over, Hunter scrambles over rocks to where my boat floats on the shore, and I wonder if it took him this long to come over because he was in shock from falling in. He doesn’t look as much like a drowned rat as Brody does, but he has definitely looked better. “You good?”
His question makes me smile. He tried to be on the gear boat with me today, but Donovan wouldn’t let him.
I’m surprised he didn’t fight harder, and I feel bad for the guy.
Even if I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about him as well as Donovan.
Funny—he would have been better off with me.
“Are you good?” I ask instead of answering his question.
He shrugs. “That’s not something I need to do again, but I’m fine. Are you…?”
I nod as warmth starts spreading back into my limbs.
I did it. Going into it, I couldn’t see a win in my situation, but I still made it out the other side.
And everything is okay. “My run could have been better,” I say softly, and my next words come from somewhere deep inside me, like they’ve been desperate to escape for a long time. I grin. “But nobody’s perfect, right?”
To my shock, tears fill Hunter’s eyes as he nods in return. He looks so relieved, like he’s been waiting for me to say that since the day he met me. “Right.”
No, I wasn’t perfect today, but I was enough.
Exactly what Donovan needed me to be.