Jonah lost his grip on the side of the canoe, and it smashed down on his shoulder, knocking him under the water. He surfaced in the air pocket under the canoe.
Oh, yeah, he thought, remembering something else from the crazy water sports instructor at Boy Scout camp. This is how you’re supposed to turn over a canoe. From underneath.
Something was banging against his head, so he grabbed hold of it as he dipped down, kicked to the right, and resurfaced outside the canoe.
“I figured out how we should do this!” he told the girls, lifting his arms high in the air, triumphantly. He decided not to mention that he should have known all along.
“And you found a paddle!” Andrea exclaimed.
Jonah looked at the thing in his hand. It was a carved piece of wood, vaguely paddle-shaped. Huh. Maybe the crazy water sports instructor at Boy Scout camp had said that was the best place to store paddles, under an overturned canoe.
In the end, once all three of them had dived under the canoe and heaved it into the air, they also found another paddle and a wooden object that looked like a rake. They didn’t have time to figure out what that was for-the tracer boys were paddling farther and farther away-so they just tossed the rake into the canoe. Even after they added John White and his chest, there was plenty of room left for all three kids and Dare.
Didn’t the guy at Boy Scout camp say that sometimes these canoes could hold as many as twenty men? Jonah thought. Or was that something that Mrs. Rorshas told us about the Indians? He wasn’t sure. He felt too dizzy and disoriented and exhausted to think clearly. And now he and one of the girls were going to have a paddle a canoe that was supposed to be powered by twenty men?
He decided not to mention that to the girls.
“I’ll take the front,” Jonah offered, stepping into the canoe. “Can one of you push off?”
“I’ll do it,” Andrea volunteered. “Hurry!”
The tracer boys and their canoe were getting smaller and smaller off in the distance.
Once Jonah and Katherine had settled into position, Andrea was surprisingly quick pushing off from the shore.
“Go!” she yelled.
“You paddle-opposite side from me!” Jonah yelled back over his shoulder. He wished there’d been time to review canoeing strategy. “Katherine, tell Andrea-”
“She knows!” Katherine yelled forward, from where she was crouched beside John White and his chest. “She’s already doing it. Just go faster.”
Jonah paddled desperately. The shoulder the canoe had slammed down on ached with every stroke, but it helped when he switched sides.
“Switch!” he yelled back to Andrea.
“She already did!” Katherine yelled forward.
Jonah kept paddling.
At first, it seemed that they were going only fast enough to keep the tracers from lengthening the distance between them. But then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, Jonah realized that they were gaining on the tracers.
Am I paddling that much faster? Jonah wondered, feeling rather proud that he could outpace the muscular tracers. Then he took a quick glance over his shoulder and realized: He wasn’t the one doing such an awesome job paddling. It was Andrea.
She was paddling frantically, her paddle re-entering the water only a split second after she’d pulled it out. And she pulled the paddle through the water at exactly the right angle to create the most force, to propel the canoe forward as quickly as possible.
Oh, yeah, Jonah remembered. Andrea went to camp too. And she ate that food pellet, so she should have more energy than me. Maybe it had steroids in it? Maybe the pellet made Dare peppier, too?
Jonah didn’t have time to follow that thought.
“Good job!” he yelled back to Andrea.
“Just keep paddling!” Katherine screamed at him.
The paddling was starting to feel grim to Jonah, like punishment. As long as they kept the tracers in sight, did it really matter if John White was joined with his tracer every single second?
He dared to glance back at John White again. How could it be? How could the man look even paler than before? And-was he shivering? Shivering in all this heat, when Jonah himself had just gotten out of the water and was already sweating again?
Jonah went back to focusing on nothing but digging his paddle into the water, shoving it back, pulling it out. Digging, shoving, pulling; digging, shoving, pulling…
With great effort, they drew close to the tracer canoe. The tip of the kids’ canoe touched the end of the tracer version.
“All right!” Katherine cheered. “Almost there!”
Jonah’s arms felt like they were almost ready to fall off. He’d been holding on to the paddle so tightly, for so long, that he couldn’t even feel his hands-which was a good thing, because they had blisters now. He thought he could put on a final burst of speed and draw even with the tracers. But how was he supposed to keep paddling after that?
The canoe lurched forward-Andrea was paddling harder than ever. This shamed Jonah into paddling harder too.
Jonah slipped through the body of the first tracer boy. He drew even with the tracer John White’s feet, with his stomach, with his head. The canoe wavered-losing ground, gaining, losing, gaining-and then with one last yank of his paddle, Jonah ensured that the real canoe and the tracer canoe occupied the exact same space.
Jonah glanced at the second tracer boy, who paddled alongside Jonah.
“Hey,” Jonah mumbled. “Isn’t it time for your coffee break? Er-venison break?”
This seemed hilarious to Jonah in his thirsty, hungry, exhausted state. He couldn’t really see the tracer boy except as an echo of himself: an arm separating every now and then from Jonah’s own, an extra nose leaning forward occasionally from Jonah’s face. It was like talking to his own shadow, like slipping through fog.
And then, quite suddenly, the tracer stopped seeming like a shadow or fog. It stopped seeming like a tracer, too-it seemed like an actual boy, with actual arms and legs and a torso and head, trying to take up the same space as Jonah himself. It was like having someone fall on him from out of the sky and leap up at him from underneath and dive into him from every other side, all at once. And like time and space had hiccupped and the other person somehow had a stronger claim to the place where Jonah was sitting than Jonah did.
Jonah immediately fell out of the canoe.
29
Jonah hit hard, the chilly water a huge shock against his sweaty skin. He slipped beneath the surface but gave a fierce kick and came up sputtering. His legs were already cramping; it seemed to take a huge amount of effort just to keep his head above water.
This is why they always made us wear life jackets at camp, Jonah thought. Be prepared, and all that.
Jonah would have to settle for a backup plan.
Let’s see. Find something to grab on to, something that floats, to hold yourself up?
Jonah had fallen out of the canoe in the middle of acres and acres of water. He was so far from shore that finding a random branch or log floating nearby would require divine intervention. Or Second’s intervention, and Jonah wasn’t going to count on that. But he had been holding on to a paddle when he’d fallen into the water…
Jonah actually lifted his hands up in front of his face, looking at them carefully. Maybe he was still holding on to a paddle?
Nope. His hands were empty.
“Jonah!” Katherine screamed, the sound distorting because of all the water in Jonah’s ears. “Swim back to the canoe!”
Oh. Well, that would do. That would be something to hang on to.
