Chapter 19
ASHLEY
Dr. Reynard: Accepted.
C arly and I decided to stay right where we were on the end of the dock and let the boys scrap it out on the shore.
It took an incredibly long time for them to inflate the ducks by lung power alone, eventually having to give up trying to sabotage each other to take turns inflating the huge things.
Several times, Royce took swipes at Carter for having thrown the air compressor in the lake because we should have already been passing the finish line by now.
“I would have let you use it too,” he grumbled after passing our black-and-white-striped duck to Nate to take a turn blowing.
Carter scoffed, trading off to Heath. “Sure, when you were finished.”
Royce just shrugged. “Yeah, obviously.”
“Fuck, look!” Carter pointed down the lake to where a pink-and-green duck was already floating on the water. Luckily, it seemed the team who owned that duck had let it go without all climbing on board, and one of them was swimming behind it. “Heath, blow faster!”
“Dirty,” Carly chuckled. “Speaking of blowing …”
“Quit it,” I scolded. “I’m gonna go look for some kind of paddles. Seems pointless trying to steer an inflatable with the power of positive thoughts.”
Carly wrinkled her nose. “Good point. Okay, let’s see what we can find.”
We both groaned and muttered curses as we put our shoes back on, but it was better than accidentally stepping on a sharp rock. We stayed close enough that we heard the boys yelling when they finished inflating the damn ducks and hurried back to present our best options for paddles.
I’d managed to peel some thick bark from a dead tree, while Carly presented huge flat leaves.
“Good girl,” Royce enthused, accepting my two-foot lengths of bark with a whoop of excitement. “You’re fucked, Team Spider-Man! Good luck with your leaf paddles.”
Laughing, I let Nate lift me onto the duck and tossed my shoes back to shore. The last thing we needed was a heel to pop the damn thing.
“Wrap your legs around its neck,” Nate instructed, taking one of the bark oars from Royce and wading into the water a little way to ensure the duck was deep enough before adding his weight to it.
The whole duck wobbled dramatically, and I clung onto its black-and-white neck as Nate found his balance and Royce hoisted himself on the other side.
“Let’s go!” Royce announced, tucking his knees under him and leaning down to scoop the water with his bark. Nate did the same on the other side, and I just held on and tried not to wobble us with any shift of my weight.
We paddled like that for a few minutes, making slow progress, until Nate cursed and drew my attention to the Spider-Man duck quickly gaining on us. They’d abandoned the leaves and seemed to be using wooden planks as oars. Like…decking boards?
“Did you vandalize the dock?” I asked in shock. “Surely that’s cheating!”
“I don’t remember seeing any rules,” Carter replied with a smirk as they pulled up level with us.
Royce stopped paddling and reached into his pocket. “You know what? You’re so right, Sir Carter.” Then he flicked out his pocketknife and stabbed the Spider-Man duck.
Even I was shocked speechless as the duck continued floating for a few moments before rapidly losing air and sinking under the weight of its three passengers.
“Royce, you asshole! ” Carly shrieked as she entered the water. “This is not cool. I thought we were besties!”
“We are!” Royce called back, cackling. “But only one of us can be a winner, bestie!” He put his knife away and grabbed his makeshift oar once more.
“Brutal,” Nate snickered with a wide grin. “Let’s get this!”
He and Royce started paddling in earnest as I sat there with my legs around the duck’s neck like some kind of alternate universe pirate captain, but a splashing behind us made me turn my head to investigate.
“Nate! Watch out!” I yelped, spotting Heath swimming hard to catch up with Nate’s side of the duck. My warning wasn’t enough, though, as Heath grabbed the duck and started hauling himself up, drastically unbalancing us.
Royce and I both grabbed for Nate as the duck tilted up in the air and he started to slip into the water, but our efforts were in vain. If anything, our scrambling made the whole thing less steady, and a moment later, we were all in the lake with our duck totally capsized.
“Heath!” I protested, treading water with the heavy skirt of my gown weighing me down. “Not cool.”
“Aw, I’m sorry, Ashes. Collateral damage is such an ugly thing in these games, but we do what we must for the greater good!” Heath swam over to me with strong strokes and scooped me into his arms, lending me some buoyancy.
“This was for the greater good?” I argued, scowling even as he grinned back at me with pure sunshine in his eyes. He was handsome at the best of times, but when he was genuinely happy, he took my breath away.
He barked a laugh as Royce and Nate flipped our duck upright. “Saving us from Royce gloating about winning? Absolutely the greater good!”
“Heath, let our captain go!” Royce yelled. “We’re still in this race, Squirrel. Climb aboard!”
With a teasing smile, I pushed out of Heath’s arms and dog-paddled back to the black-and-white duck where Royce and Nate held it steady for me to resume my position.
To my surprise, Heath was the one who boosted me up onto the duck’s back.
I doubted I’d have managed it on my own, with how heavy my dress was.
“Shit, we lost our oars,” Nate growled once I was safely balanced enough that he could look around. “Thanks a fucking lot, Briggs!”
“My pleasure!” Heath replied before duck-diving below the surface and swimming back toward the shore, where Carter and Carly were crawling out onto the rocks.
It took me some moments to gather up my sodden dress enough to get my legs back around the duck’s neck, and Royce swam to the duck’s tail. Nate followed suit, and the two of them started pushing the duck through the water with me on top.
“Heath should have thought of this,” Nate commented when we started going a whole lot faster than we had with oars. “He used to be a competitive swimmer before he fucked his shoulder.”
That explained how he’d caught up to us so quickly and the pain in his shoulder which I’d worked on at our very first meeting.
“We can’t see much back here,” Royce told me, pausing to shrug out of his jacket.
“Can you tell us left or right to stay on course?” We were aiming for a floating platform in the middle of the lake, where there would be a big red button.
According to the instructions in our gift-wrapped boxes, the first team to reach the button would press it to fire a flare, winning the game and whatever unknown prize was attached.
It occurred to me that I had been so sucked into the fun that I hadn’t even asked what the prize was, but considering the last game had paid off all my debts, this could be really worth winning.
Or it could be a totally worthless token prize.
It seemed to be one or the other with Devil’s Backbone games.
For the next little while, I gave the boys verbal cues to adjust the course of our duck, but it was clear they were getting tired when we started slowing. But that, of course, was when I spotted another two teams approaching the finish platform at a rapid rate. Closer than us.
“Faster!” I exclaimed, sitting up straighter to get a better look.
At some point after we’d set out on the water, mist had started gathering, and the enemy ducks were little more than hazy, brightly colored blobs floating across the water in the distance.
“There’re two more ducks ahead of us! Kick faster! A little to the left!”
As if they could hear me—and they probably could—the other ducks sped up at the same time, all three of us frantically paddling to get to the floating platform first. It was a lost cause for us, though.
We were still easily fifty feet away and the purple-gray duck was close enough that one of their team jumped off to swim the rest of the way.
“ Nooo ,” I sobbed dramatically. “We’re too slow, guys!”
“Seriously?” Nate exclaimed, popping out from behind our duck’s huge ass to peer in the direction of the platform. The swimmer had reached it and was hauling himself up the little ladder already, while Nate muttered a string of curses.
The other duck had accepted their loss too, throwing their hands up with wails of frustration. They’d been a lot closer than us but not close enough to beat the purple-gray duck.
“Suck it, bitches!” the dripping guy in a purple suit crowed, standing atop the platform in victory as his team members scrambled to join him. “We won! Yes! Woo-hoo!”
He cheered and whooped along with his team, dramatically raising his hand high and looking around to ensure we were all watching as he slapped that button to declare their team the winner.
That button was supposed to fire a flare, so when the explosion ripped out from the platform hard enough to wobble my duck, I initially thought it was just a really fucking intense flare detonation.
It was loud , though, and wetness splashed all over me as I bobbed around on the suddenly rough water. I swiped at my eyes, blinking in confusion as I looked around.
The platform was gone. So was the other team. What the fuck?
Dazed and confused, I looked for Nate and Royce in the water, and it took me a minute of panic before I spotted Nate resurface some distance away with Royce following.
“Ashley!” Nate bellowed, splashing around frantically as Royce shook his head. “Ashley! Where are you?”
“Squirrel!” Royce yelled, spotting me and swimming a fast stroke across to my rocking duck with Nate fast on his heels. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“How the fuck did you stay afloat?” Nate gasped, treading water as he reached me.
I frowned, my ears ringing. “Why would I be hu—” But that was when I registered the fact that the duck I rode was no longer black and white … It was black and red. Bloodred. So were my arms and hands and… “ Oh my fucking god! ”
That was the point where I had to accept the fact that Jocelyn was far from done with us, and she was more unpredictable than ever before. I wore the evidence of that realization all over me in the form of atomized human.