The Way Back from Broken (24 page)

Rakmen spread out the map. “Here's the deal,” he said, showing Jacey where they were. “I think we should try to run these rapids.”

Jacey frowned. “What do we know about running rapids?”

“If we portage around all of them, it'll take hours. When we started the trip, we waded up one, remember? And your mom said the upper section was navigable.”

A tug-of-war played out on her face. “I don't know. It looks scary.”

The top part did look scary. The stream from Pen Lake funneled through a steep, rocky slot and then widened into a channel dotted with exposed rocks, but it sure looked like there was room to get the canoe through.

“After that storm, we know a thing or two,” he said. “It would save us so much time.” Rakmen returned to the map. “If we run them, I think we could make it to Soulé Lake by tonight. That would mean we could be at Edna's by tomorrow after lunch.” The thought of Edna sent a thrill through him. He couldn't wait to see that crotchety old woman lumbering around on her ramshackle dock. He could place his problems in her capable hands.

“Let's do it,” Jacey said, cinching down her life jacket.

Rakmen tied in the packs. “Just in case,” he offered, when Jacey got all deer-in-the headlights. “We're not gonna flip.”

She kicked a rock with her foot. “Don't do that.”

“What?”

“Lie.”

Rakmen stiffened. “I'm not lying.”

“You are! Just like that stupid woman at church who told my mom nothing else bad could happen to her after Jordan died.”

Rakmen felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He'd met people like that too, the idiots who believed life had a grief quota.

“Adults always lie,” said Jacey, “but you—you've never lied to me before.”

He struggled to remain upright as all the lies people had told him came flooding back.
It's better this way. Everything happens for a reason. Your dad and I will be fine.
So many lies, and he'd plummeted slick-tongued right into one of his own. He had lied to Jacey, fallen prey to the delusion that lies were comfort. He'd lied not because he hated her but because he loved her.

Rakmen knelt in front of Jacey and squeezed her sagging shoulders. “You're right. I was bullshitting. We might flip. I'm gonna try hard not to, but we might. Let's make these knots really tight, okay?”

Appeased, she added extra knots to the ones Rakmen had made. Once in the canoe, they knelt on its bottom to get their weight as low as possible. Rakmen pointed them toward the drop-off.

“You don't need to paddle,” he said. “Watch for rocks and give me directions.”

“Okay,” she said in a small voice.

“If it looks like we're going to hit something, do that bow rudder thing with the paddle that Edna taught you. The move that lets you make sharp turns.”

A tremor wobbled through her shoulders. “I'm scared.”

He stopped paddling, but the canoe slid forward anyway, already caught in the current. His breath came fast and shallow. They could still paddle back and change direction. Rakmen sucked in air, his fear laced with something else, something potent. There was no going back, only forward, missing limbs and all.

“Jacey,” said Rakmen, “look at me. This is important.” She twisted around, and he saw the bit of hair clamped between her lips. “We can do this. We've dealt with worse.”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and nodded. “Okay, captain.”

“Together, now,” he said, propelling them into the slick tongue of smooth water at the top of the drop.

The canoe picked up speed.

Their surroundings melted away, and for Rakmen, there was nothing but dark wave and white foam and his hand tight on the paddle ready to rudder the safest possible course through the churning water. As they hit the drop, his stomach flew into his throat, and they plunged down.

Rakmen had wanted fast, and damn, but he had it. When the canoe leapt the foot-high waterfall at the base of the chute, Jacey screamed, and Rakmen watched, horrified, as the bow dipped nearly below the surface. Water threatened to spill over the gunnels. He willed the canoe to levitate. If they filled with water, they would sink. For another second, the water seemed on the verge of winning, but then the body of the canoe bucked beneath him, righting itself, and he hooted his relief.

“Look out!” Jacey yelled.

Rakmen ruddered hard, swerving around a rock. Jacey scooted them away from another moss-covered boulder, and Rakmen knew he couldn't lose focus for an instant. The current swept them along, and they rolled with it, twisting and turning in the central channel. The trees on either side whipped past in a blur of green. This was the speed he'd longed for since they'd left Leah, but now it terrified him.

It was impossible to pull out of the rushing current.

All they could do was ride it out.

“Go left,” Jacey called, plunging her paddle in and pulling the bow away from a submerged rock. He stroked hard on the right, adding speed that whipped them past the obstacle. Farther on, the stream curved around a small cliff. The land on the other side flattened, and the channel slowed and widened. Rakmen was grateful for the chance to breathe and flex the tensed muscles in his hands.

“Are we through?” Jacey asked, panting.

“Not yet. See how it drops again up ahead?”

“We're doing good, huh?”

“Real good,” Rakmen answered. It was true. He could practically see them ticking off miles, closer every second to help and home.

The smooth pool of water that they were crossing ended abruptly at a submerged shelf of rock. It stretched from bank to bank right under the surface. The stream poured over it in a smooth line. Between the drop and the flat water of the next lake he could see the final stretch of rapids.

This was it.

He and Jacey were ready when the canoe launched itself over the edge and into fast water. Waves surged around them, and the canoe gained speed. Spray rose and caught the sun. Rainbow-colored droplets exploded in fireworks around the edges of the canoe.

Rakmen pushed his paddle into a hard J, pointing them straight at the center of the deep water far ahead. A flash of something dark in the roiling water ahead sent warning flashes sparking through him, but he couldn't fathom what was out there. Nothing that could be a threat, surely.

Jacey screamed, “Tree!”

Her call cut through the roar of the water and the wind in his ears but made no sense. And then, as if grabbed by the claw-tipped hands of an underwater beast, a horrible scraping noise shuddered through the canoe. Rakmen felt something wrench at them from underneath.

The world flipped, and they plunged into the water.

Rakmen thrashed against submerged branches. They scraped across his face and along his body. Water pummeled him, trying to pull him along with the current, but he was held fast. Opening his eyes, he saw stripes of white and dark, foam and wood. A great tree had fallen in the water. Its branches were a net, catching everything. He thrashed violently, and then he saw orange.

A foot below him, Jacey was stuck too. The strap of her life jacket looped around a broken branch. The current swept over her shocked face.

Panic raced through him.

Rakmen's body bucked in the current.

Holding tightly to a branch, he thrashed himself free, broke the surface, gulped air, and went back down. The current clutched at him as he pulled himself, hand over hand, toward Jacey.

His chest ached for air.

Another few inches.

He was there.

But now her face had gone slack, and the current sucked at her limp arms. Rakmen forced himself to look away from her face. Instead, he slid one arm inside her life jacket, behind Jacey's back, looping his hand up over her shoulder. Once he had a hold of her, he let go of the branch. The river sucked against him as he fumbled at the buckles.

Black shadows pressed on his peripheral vision. He needed air, and soon.

He pressed hard on the clasp, and the first one clicked open.

His hand slipped on her shoulder as the water sucked against his legs.

Click
—the second buckle came loose.

Bubbles spun out of Jacey's nose.

Not this girl!

Water was filling his mouth, burning the back of his throat.

Rakmen squeezed hard on the final buckle, and the current swept them downriver and away. He'd never held onto anyone as tightly in his life. Together they burst to the surface, the two of them buoyed up by his life jacket.

Gasping, Rakmen rolled onto his back, flipping Jacey so she rested face up on top of him. He kicked to shore and pulled free of the water. On the bank, he rolled Jacey onto her side, slamming the palm of his hand against her back.

Again and again.

Jacey's body was loose in his arms.

Breathe.

He pounded her back, swallowing back terror.

Rakmen forced a breath of air into her lungs. Her chest rose with his breath then wilted. Another. Then another.

“Breathe,” he cried, the word a strangled prayer.

The world collapsed in on him.

“Please, please, please—not her too,” he moaned, rolling Jacey to her side again. Rakmen could no longer hear the roar of the water or see the sun streaming down around them.

He was desperate, plummeting into terror, when a violent spasm rocked Jacey's body. Suddenly, water gushed from between her lips, and she rolled over to vomit in the sand. Jacey's breath came in great, wheezing gasps, her bone-white cheeks flushing red. Rakmen clutched her to him, crying with his whole body in great, racking sobs.

A great flood of loss and fear, relief and resurrection broke loose within him.

The
what ifs
and the
what could've beens
poured out.

There was Dora and there was Jacey.

There was now.

CHAPTER 32

They leaned into each other and sat for a long time. Rakmen's entire world was Jacey's respiration. Each inhalation a gift. Each exhalation a promise. Slowly, his perceptions expanded. His own breath came slow and steady. Rakmen could see the pulse in Jacey's wrist, the twist of the grasses near their feet. Water dripped from their sodden clothes. The river gurgled and splashed. In the deep hole where the tree was lodged, flashes of orange were visible in the swirling depths.

As he stared at the spot where the entangled life jacket twisted in the current, he realized he wasn't angry anymore. Not at Dora for leaving him in the wreckage. Not at himself for being unable to see what was breaking down inside her. He had been the best brother he knew how to be, and he had held her while she passed.

He squeezed Jacey a little closer.

“Rakmen?” said Jacey in a creaky voice.

“Yeah?”

“What about the canoe?”

Launched by another surge of adrenaline, he vaulted to his feet, racing the river downstream. He crashed through the brush, cursing like a madman and oblivious to the welts rising on his legs and arms.

If the canoe was gone or busted up—

Rakmen caught his foot on a root and went down hard. The pain slicing through his shin rebooted some circuit in his brain.

Don't fall.

Don't drown.

Don't get lost.

He had to stay focused. They were balancing on the knife edge.

Rakmen hauled himself up slowly. The shin would bruise but that's all. He looked upstream where Jacey sat, arms coiled around her knees, dripping wet. They hadn't drowned.

They had not drowned.

He picked his way downstream, alternately watching his footing and craning his neck to look for the canoe.

Around the next bend and at the bottom of the last stretch of rapids, he found it floating, mostly submerged, like a harpooned whale in smooth water fifty feet from shore. Tipped by the weight of the tied-in packs, it listed to one side, a single, curving gunnel above the surface. His paddle—intact—floated next to it.

Rakmen unlaced his waterlogged boots and swam out. Dragging the canoe back to shore turned his arms to putty. He could barely fumble loose the knots holding the packs to the thwart. Panting, he carried them to a flat, grassy patch of bank and returned to the canoe.

“Is it ruined?” Jacey asked, coming up beside him holding her broken paddle, retrieved from the rocks alongside the river.

He ran his hands along the canoe, checking for damage. Near the brass plaque that said
Au large
, his fingertips hit splintered wood, and worry surged through him, but as far as he could tell the cracks were above the waterline. The canoe had probably smacked a rock when it was upside down.

“It'll get us home,” said Rakmen. “How's your paddle?” Jacey held it out. The blade had cracked, splitting off a section from one side, but it was still useable. Jacey stared blankly at the ground, arms limp at her sides. Stringy bits of green algae clung to her clothes.

“Come over here,” he called, unbuckling the top of his pack and pulling out a soggy sleeping bag. “We've got to get this stuff dried out a little.”

She didn't move.

“Jacey? Are you okay?”

She turned toward his voice, looking dazed. “Rakmen—”

“Yeah?”

“It's really easy to die, isn't it?”

He dropped the sleeping bag and went to her. “We didn't die.”

Jacey crumpled before him. “Not this time.”

“But—”

“No!” she interrupted, beginning to cry. “Don't say anything lame and stupid. Mom might be dead already.” She slapped away her tears. “Jordan's dead! Dora's dead! All the ones at Promise House. It's what happens to kids. They get dead.”

Rakmen crouched in front of her and held her shoulders. “Jacey—”

She mashed her lips together, daring him to lie to her.

“We didn't die. We're kinda broken. That's true. And you're right. It is scary, but we have to keep going. Broken bits and all.”