Roger and I stood up at the same time.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, pushing me back down.
“I’m going to the back to make sure Summer’s okay.”
“I’ll send your little girlfriend up to you,” he said mockingly. He moved back to the seat and took the oars.
“Ow!” Gregg yelled suddenly.
“Don’t touch me again, you stupid jerk!” Summer said.
“You better watch it or I’ll throw you off,” Gregg warned.
“Then why go to all this trouble to throw me on?” she asked. She stood up and moved to the front of the raft with me, stepping carefully over the oar.
She sat down next to me on the pontoon and leaned in close. I put an arm around her. “Are you okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I can’t tell if I’m more angry or scared right now.”
“Me too,” I said. “Gregg didn’t hurt you?”
“I scraped my knee pretty good when he tripped me. That’s why I just kicked him.”
“Will you please tell me why we had to bring them along?” Gregg asked Roger.
“Yeah,” one of the girls said in a pouty voice. “Why do we have the kiddies with us?”
“Because otherwise, Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes here would have gone straight home to tell Rocky what was going on. We would have been met at the pullout by the Bureau of Land Management and a bunch of cops.”
“Scott wouldn’t have snitched,” Gregg said. “I got him out of that habit by the time he was six.”
“It wasn’t worth the chance,” Roger said. “Besides, this way he’ll go down with us if he does decide to tell.”
“Right, like I’d get in trouble for being kidnapped,” I snorted.
Roger looked at me with an innocent expression on his face. “You weren’t kidnapped! You agreed to meet us here. This was all planned. And I’ve got three other witnesses to prove it.”
“They’d never believe you.”
“It’d be four witnesses against two. And you two would look like you were just trying to cover your backsides.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t worth arguing with him. Rocky would believe me any day of the week before he’d believe Roger.
Next to me, Summer sighed.
“What’s wrong?”
“My parents are going to be really worried when I’m not home on time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt along the equipment line, searching for the spare life jacket. It wasn’t there.
“Hey, Scott!”
I turned around. Gregg was leaning toward me, holding out his life jacket. “Put this on,” he said.
I took it from him and turned to Summer. “Here,” I said, helping her put it on.
“Scott! That’s for you!” Gregg exclaimed.
“Yeah, right,” I said, “I’m not wearing a jacket when she doesn’t have one.”
“What about you?” Summer asked, looking up at me.
I shrugged. “It’s my fault you got mixed up in this. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I cinched up the last clip as tight as it could get. She smiled at me and then kissed me softly on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
I gave her a tired smile. “You’re welcome.”
“Come on, Roger,” Gregg was saying. “Give him your life jacket.”
“Why?”
“Because we made them come with us.”
“So? Just because they stuck their noses where they don’t belong doesn’t make it my problem.”
“Roger, come on. They didn’t have a chance to get jackets of their own, and we didn’t get any for them. Give him yours.”
“Little brother will be fine, Gregg. It’s not like I haven’t run this river thousands of times. Nothing’s going to happen.” He laughed. “None of us needs a jacket tonight.”
“Then give him yours!”
“No,” he began.
One of the girls began undoing her jacket. “Here. He can have mine.”
“No, Stacey, put that back on,” Gregg said.
“No, Stacey,” Roger said at the same time. He gave a disgusted sigh and put the oars up. “I’ll give him mine if he’s too much of a wuss to ride without one.” He tossed it in my general direction, and I just barely managed to catch it before it went overboard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN We floated on in silence for a while. Debbie had crawled forward and was sitting on Roger’s lap. Stacey and Gregg were in the back, out of sight. I was glad they were. It was embarrassing enough just thinking about what was going on behind us.
Summer and I sat facing forward. I was afraid to touch her, afraid that she’d get upset again. So we just rode in silence, watching the moon throw its light and cast shadows in the canyon, listening to the water lap against the side of the raft. Branches and other debris floated past us in the current.
Since Roger wasn’t doing anything with the oars, the boat just wandered and spun lazy circles in the river without any purpose.
After a little bit, Summer inched closer to me. I took a deep breath and reached out for her hand. She squeezed gently and smiled. Maybe the raft ride wouldn’t be too bad after all.
“So when was the last time you did Brown’s Canyon?” I asked her, keeping my voice low.
“This summer.”
“Really? When?”
“A few weeks before I met you. I go a couple of times every year.”
“You didn’t sound that enthusiastic about rafting when I asked you before. Why didn’t you tell me you’re a pro?”
“No, no,” she laughed. “I’m not a pro. It’s just not really a big deal when I go, since I’ve been so many times,” she said, then she laughed. “This is a big deal, though. I’ve never gone through Brown’s Canyon like this.”
“Me either. I thought the canyon was impressive in the daylight. It’s really fantastic with the moonlight.”
The canyon had an almost ghostlike quality to it. Although the moonlight allowed us to see some things clearly, part of the riverbank seemed to disappear into an inky blackness. The normal chatter of people and birds was replaced only with the sounds of our breathing.
We could hear the static of the first rapid. Summer squeezed my hand briefly. She looked a little nervous.
“We’ll be fine,” I whispered to her. “Roger’s really good at guiding.”
“How often have you ridden with him?” she asked.
“Only once,” I admitted. “But Rocky was always impressed with his rafting skills. It was his people skills that got him in trouble.”
As if to prove my point, Roger said, “Get off me, babe. It’s time to rock and roll.” He took the oars and with three quick strokes he headed the nose of the raft downstream and moved us more toward the right side of the river.
“Time for the first rapid,” Roger said. “And Snotty, what’s its name?”
“Canyon Doors, followed immediately by Pinball,” I said by rote.
“Very good. Too bad you couldn’t have spent more time on my raft. I could have taught you much more than Rocky ever could.”
I shook my head and whispered to Summer, “If I had spent more time with him, I would have quit before Gregg did.”
She nodded in agreement.
We slid through Canyon Doors quickly and went into Pinball right where we wanted to be. It was so smooth and easy, I couldn’t believe it. The tricky sleeper rocks and holes were now so far underwater they were nothing more than standing waves and we cruised through like a roller coaster. This was my first time on an oar boat, and it definitely reacted differently from a paddle boat. It felt strange not to have to worry about paddling. All I had to do was stay in the raft. And the way Roger guided it, staying in was easy.
Stacey and Debbie were screaming in the back, shrieking every time they got wet. Gregg was laughing, whether at them or at the ride I couldn’t tell.
Roger, Summer, and I were quiet, just enjoying the river. About halfway through the rapid, the moon went behind a cloud just for a few seconds.
Without the full moonlight, it was difficult to make out the individual waves and virtually impossible to see the dark rocks. I looked up at the sky to see how many other clouds we would have to worry about, but the narrow canyon walls limited our view of the sky. I hoped that the moon would stay with us for the rest of our ride.
When we got out of Pinball, I could feel Summer relax next to me.
“That was fun,” she said. “It’s so bright out, it’s not real different from running it in cloudy weather.” She laughed. “Maybe this will be worth getting grounded for a month.”
“Don’t say that,” I said quickly. “I’ll go crazy if I don’t get to see you.”
She looked at me. “You don’t think you’ll be grounded too?”
I thought about Rocky telling me to be home at twelve-thirty. “I probably will,” I sighed. “But I don’t think it will be for a month.”
She shrugged. “I probably won’t get grounded for a full month either.
Then again,” she added ruefully, “my parents might ground me for two months instead. I can never tell how they are going to react.”
“I could always tell how my parents were going to react. But Rocky’s not my parent.” I paused and then I grinned just a little. “If we were talking about my parents, we’d be looking at a minimum sentence of two months hard labor. Dishes, laundry, yard work, and general housecleaning without pay.”
She laughed.
The next two rapids were quick and easy too. Everything was going just fine. Roger asked Debbie to come sit next to him again, since we were going into a little stretch without rapids now. Once again we drifted in silence.
The moon ducked behind a large cloud.
Suddenly Summer sat up straight.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you hear something?”
I listened. “It sounds like there’s a rapid ahead.”
She looked at me. “There’s not another one for a while, right?”
I shook my head. “No. We go around this bend and then have almost another mile or so before the next one.” So where’s that noise coming from? I wondered.
We sat still. The raft drifted aimlessly, doing slow turns. The roar of the river got louder.
“Hey, Gregg,” I called to the back of the raft. “Do you hear something? It sounds like a rapid.”
“Scott,” he groaned. “You know there’s not another rapid yet.”
“No, really, listen for a minute.”
We got quiet again. I glanced up at the sky. The moon was still behind the clouds.
Then Gregg said, “You might be right. What do you think, Rog?”
“What?” he asked irritably. I could tell he hadn’t been listening.
“It sounds like there’s a rapid coming up,” I said.
“Snotty, Snotty, clearly you’re not done with your training. The next rapid is Big Drop, and that’s not for another mile.”
“I know, but—” I began.
“You’re just being paranoid. You’re spooked because it’s a midnight run and your adrenaline is pumping. No big deal.”
I bit my tongue and listened helplessly to the river noise change into river thunder as the raft continued to drift.
“Scott,” Summer said nervously, “I think the river’s moving faster now.”
I shook my head. The water doesn’t move faster until you are actually in the rapid, I thought. But there has to be a rapid coming up around the bend. “Hang on,” I said. “We don’t want to get thrown out tonight.”
She shook her head and grabbed the oar frame.
We got to the blind turn in the canyon. The raft had drifted again, and we were on the right side of the river, going down broadside. As we cleared the turn, the roar of the river seemed to triple in volume. The rapid churned and thundered in front of us. We had less than thirty feet before we’d be in it.
“Damn!” Roger yelled. “Get off me, get off me!” he hollered at Debbie.
She scrambled, trying to get to the back of the raft. Twenty feet to the tongue.
The rapid was directly in front of us, but I couldn’t see what was there.
The moon was still behind the cloud. Roger was fumbling with the oars.
One of them got stuck on something and wouldn’t swing out. Ten feet.
Finally he freed the oars, and swung them out. He put all he had into powerful strokes…One…two…three.… Too far! The raft turned wildly—first we were broadside to the rapid, then nose first, then leading with the other side.
The standing wave in front of us was bigger than any I had ever seen.
The first wave took us, and the side of the raft went up so high I was sure we were going to flip. We slammed down on the other side, and water sprayed into the raft. I was vaguely aware that there were no more screams from the back of the raft. The second wave took us up even higher. All I could hear was the thunderous crashing of the rapid. It was angry, and we were in its grasp. The side of the raft kept going up, higher and higher. It was over my head, and I was falling.
We had flipped.