Running the Gauntlet
I can’t tell you a whole lot about those first ten seconds. All I remember is the screaming.
“Something’s wroooooong!” Thea yelled.
“You THINK?” Carmen yelled back.
“Where’s Pittman and Fish?” Diego said.
I looked back and they were already about a mile behind us.
“SLOW DOWN!” Fish screamed.
“Verrrrrrrrrry funnnnnnnnnnny-y-y-y!” Thea yelled.
“How?!” the rest of us chimed in.
Pretty quick, the water went from fast to faster and white to whiter. We were up to our eyeballs in rapids before Fish and Pittman were anywhere near catching up to us. It didn’t seem to matter how hard they paddled, they just couldn’t make up the distance.
The rapids were like a roller coaster on steroids. We rode up the front of one wave, and—slam! Down on the other side. Up the next swell, and—sploosh! Back down again. That raft was bucking like a bronco, and all we could do was hold tight. Paddling? Forget about that. We were just trying to stay on.
We flew up—and down. And sideways. And around. And back up—and back down.
And here’s the thing. I don’t know exactly how long that part went on, but somewhere along the way, it actually started to get—fun. Sure, we were cold and wet and terrified, but at a certain point, we were also realizing something.
We weren’t just screaming and out of control. We were actually riding those rapids!
And dangerous!
And then…
That’s when I saw what Fish and Pittman later called the Gauntlet, dead ahead. Emphasis on the dead.
When we came around the next bend in the river, we were headed straight at this WALL of white water. And just past the wall, there was another wall, and another. It looked like the whole river was standing up.
“I don’t like… the look… of that!”Arnie said.
“Me neither!” I said.
“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?!” Carmen said.
“What CAN we do?” Thea said.
“EVERYONE HOLD ON!” I said.
“Hey!” Burp said. “This is just like the time when I—”
“SHUT UP, BURP!” everyone yelled—right before we hit that first wall.
All of a sudden, that raft wasn’t underneath me anymore. It was more like in front of me. The whole thing stood up straight and we slid off like fried eggs off the grill at Swifty’s Diner.
I tried to remember what Pittman and Fish had said about falling in. I put my feet out in front of me—at least I remembered that much—and my life vest kept me from going under. Mostly, though, my thoughts were going something like glub-blug-blah-blab-glub-HELP!-blah-blub-glug.…
I wasn’t on the raft anymore. Now I was the raft. We all were. When I looked around, I saw a bunch of helmets and life vests—but I couldn’t tell who was who. It was just a big mess of cockroach soup, shooting downstream toward the calmer part of the river.
The good part about how fast the Gauntlet runs is that it doesn’t take long to get spit back out of it. Pretty soon we were all stumbling up onto the banks and counting heads. We were soaking and bruised and a little shaken up, but we had ridden the rapids. If Pittman and Fish would have let us, I think some of us would have gone again. Myself included.
The Sergeants showed up pretty quick, anyway. Pittman looked scared, but Fish just looked mad. Maybe at the river. Maybe at himself for not catching up. Or maybe at us for not being superheroes.
“Everyone okay?” Pittman said.
“We’re okay,” Arnie said.
And in a weird way—I don’t know if anyone else felt it—I actually felt like we were more than okay. We’d survived! And that’s not all.
My hands were blue. I was shivering like a leaf in the wind. But more than anything, I was wondering how many tags we were going to get for this.
That’s right—it was all about the game for me. Still.
And that’s when I knew for sure that I was in it to win it.