waterfall in the middle of the river. She just screamed and screamed and screamed, and then remembered to pick up the bucket and bail.
Mitchell was squeezing the dog between his knees so hard that he thought he was going to crush the poor animal. Still, with that first big downward lurch, he was unable to keep the dog from skidding out of his grip when he shifted his feet to keep his balance.
He never even saw the dog go over.
39
Day Eleven
Lava
Susan was so thrilled to be a member of the paddle team for Lava that she forgot to give Amy the customary hug before they boarded their separate boats. By the time she remembered, the lip of the rapid was fast approaching, and she scolded herself for being superstitious. A mother’s hug wasn’t going to keep Amy safe at this point. Amy was going to keep herself safe.
Beyond the lip, the water dropped off into a mad, boiling sea. Sitting in the front left, Susan wedged her foot into the footcup and watched Peter, who was sitting across, for the slightest twitch—for although in theory she expected to hear Abo’s commands herself, she trusted her eyes more than her ears.
Nevertheless she heard Abo’s first command loud and clear.
“Forward!” he shouted, and in one smooth motion Susan dug her paddle deep into the last bit of sinuous black water. They hit the first wall of backwash, which left them jabbing blindly with their paddles. Okay, Susan thought. We can manage this.
And then the boat plummeted straight down into the deluge of the V-wave.
In all the other big rapids, they’d been able to plow straight through the waves. But Lava’s V-wave captured them in its curl. Oceans of water poured down upon them. Susan screamed as the force seemed to erode her flesh. They didn’t go forward or backward; nothing moved, and everything moved. She felt utterly useless; the one time she probed with her paddle, the force yanked it back, so rather than risk losing her paddle or getting her arm torn from its socket, she clutched the shaft and hunkered down and didn’t even bother to try.
“Don’t let up! Come on! Hard forward!” Abo yelled. His voice came from high above, as though he were standing over her—and maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, Susan had no way of knowing whether the boat was pointed up or down or level. Then they slammed into something and the V-wave lessened; now the water merely sloshed over her shoulders. The boat pitched again, and Susan felt her foot get wrenched from its cup. Frantically she wedged it back in.
“Keep going!” Abo yelled. “Hard forward!”
And then, drawing on some reserve that she didn’t know she had, Susan straightened up and dug down with her paddle one more time, taking the next blast head-on, and found that by doing so she regained both her balance and composure. Again and again she dug her paddle deep into the oncoming waves, and at some point, she felt the resistance that told her that her paddle was catching; she was helping to steer the boat, to propel them out of the chaos and into the smooth black current where it was calm.
A collective cheer rose up.
“Fucking Maid of the Mist!” shouted Abo, standing and jouncing the boat like a child. “You guys are awesome!”
“I thought I was going to drown!” Sam crowed.
“That’s one heck of a lot of water,” Mark observed.
“Buckets!” Evelyn cried. “Buckets and buckets and buckets!”
Breathlessly Susan searched upstream. From where they were now, Lava looked like the open spillway of a vast industrial dam. Had they really paddled through all that?
Sam was asking if they could drag the boat up and run it again.
“Sure we can,” said Abo. “Long as you do the loading and unloading.”
“Seriously?” said Sam.
“I’m never serious, Sam. Haven’t you learned that by now? Everybody watch JT,” said Abo.
Their amusement park hilarity fell silent as they watched JT’s boat vanish into the curl of the V-wave. It reared up, then disappeared again. All they could see was the occasional flash of an orange life vest. Hang on, Amy, Susan thought.
Then like a beast JT’s boat rose up out of the froth, water draining off all around, and there was JT half-sitting and half-standing as he struggled with the oars.
“What’s he yelling?” asked Evelyn.
Susan couldn’t hear anything. Upstream, scouters were racing down the path to the water’s edge. Suddenly there was a thump and clatter in the back of the boat as