going to continue the whole trip?
Because truthfully, she was thinking it might be nice, one of these nights, to go off and camp by herself. Not far, just far enough so she could feel as though she were alone beneath the stars, on her own instead of being safely tucked into bed right there beside her mother. She wanted to sit by herself and write in her journal late into the night without her mother lying there wondering what she was writing about.
And what would she be writing about? High school. Her friends. Her nonfriends. The awful parties she’d made an effort to go to last fall, the ones her mother urged upon her but which turned out to be ugly scenes that Amy had tried to forget, with girls taking their shirts off and guys pouring beer on each other and cops coming and kids running off into the darkness and the few who remained and insisted on sobriety nevertheless getting alcohol tickets for blowing .01. Only once did she herself drink, on Halloween.
Best not to go there. Truly.
Amy knew that if her mother had any inkling of what was going on at those parties, she never would have pushed Amy to go; but Amy didn’t want to tell her, for fear of getting other kids in trouble. These were popular kids, with popular parents, and Amy knew her mother would be on the phone quicker than hello, and then she would be even further ostracized at school. And so she began lying, telling her mother she was going to the parties, which made her mother happy, but then simply going to a coffee place, returning only after midnight.
“How was it?” her mother would ask eagerly from bed, setting down her book.
“Good.”
“Tell me about it!”
“I’m too tired,” Amy would say.
She was not too young to appreciate the irony that here she was, lying to her mother about going to the very parties that all the other kids were lying about not going to. And it hadn’t helped her lose any weight, either, drinking all that cocoa.
A sudden burst of laughter erupted from Dixie’s boat, bringing her back to the moment. She craned her neck and gazed up at the towering walls. High above, two caves had formed right next to each other, like dark empty eye sockets. That was another thing she wanted to write about, this trip and where she was and what it looked like, the colors of the rock, orange and pink and green and gray, and how she felt bad weighing down the boat so much, and how she liked the guides, especially JT and Abo; and Ruth, who was so calm even when she fell and hurt her leg; and how every time she said something to Peter, she got the feeling he was looking straight through her, as though she weren’t even there, which she wasn’t, because why would a single guy in his late twenties want anything to do with a girl like her?
All this, Amy wanted to write.
Without her mother looking over her shoulder.
Up ahead, the river veered to the right. Abo packed away his book, and as they rounded the bend, they all heard the roar of another rapid.
“Party’s over,” said Abo. “Last rapid of the day. Pick up your paddles. Get to work. Quit lollygagging. Sam!”
“What!”
“What do you do if I say ‘right turn’?”
“Paddle backward!”
“Okay then,” said Abo, his voice dropping to its storytelling calm, as though this rapid were nothing much to worry about. “Let’s go forward.”
And they ran that last rapid of the day as experts, with Abo’s serenity infecting them all—even the boat itself—as they glided as one unit straight down the middle of the rapid, right through the petticoat, a neat slice of a run, with only her knees taking an inconsequential splash.
That night there was music. After the dishes were washed, after JT rebandaged Ruth’s leg and found the hydrocortisone for Lena’s eczema and the Tylenol for Mark’s headache and a couple of Ace bandages for the swelling in Amy’s ankles—after all this, Dixie brought out her guitar. Somehow she’d gone off and bathed without anyone noticing; her hair was combed straight back in wet ridges, and she’d tied her sarong around her hips. Now, with the light beginning to fade, she knelt in the sand and began tuning and plucking. Her repertoire was sixties folk—good sing-along music for all ages, she’d found in her five short years as a guide.
Tentatively people joined in.