I crouch next to Allie, helplessly stroking her forehead, my chest clenching as her eyes find mine. They’re wide and terrified. She tries to rise, but cries out in agony instead. “Go help them,” she rasps.
“Stay here,” I tell her, as if she could do anything else. “I’ll come back,” I stammer through my tears. Then I rush down the trail toward Leo and the others, knowing those might be the last words she hears.
Macy and Pam struggle through waist-deep water with the kayak, returning to shore. Refusing to leave Imani and Deborah.
Leo is nearly at the beach, almost on top of the two prone women.
“Leo!” I scream, trying to get him to slow down, to look away, to give Macy and Pam a few seconds longer to make an impossible choice.
They have to get in that kayak and go—now. There isn’t time to save Imani or Deborah. Or Allie.
Or me.
Leo doesn’t look back. And he doesn’t slow down as he passes Imani and Deborah’s motionless forms.
“Go!” I scream again at the two women by the kayak, my voice breaking at the edges. “Get out of here!”
Leo splashes into the water, one arm raised, holding what I’m certain is his pearl-inlaid knife.
I raise my fist and throw my last rock as hard as I can.
It lands with a harmless thud, closer to Imani and Deborah than to Leo.
Pam is halfway inside the kayak, her shape a dark blur as she struggles to situate herself. The deep water is calmer near the shore, but her legs thrash it into a froth as she flounders. Macy tries to hold the inflatable boat steady, her head whipping between Pam and Leo, trying to push the kayak farther into the river where the current moves faster.
As Leo enters the water, Parker whispers: “Fight Night.”
Leo lunges through the water. He’ll be on top of them in seconds. I fly down the last of the steep portage trail, rushing past Deborah and Imani’s dark shapes on the sand.
Again, Parker whispers, “Fight Night!”
I barely understand what I’m saying as I scream the words out loud.
Macy suddenly freezes where she stands waist-deep at the front of the kayak. Does she understand what I’m saying?
I don’t. Not yet.
Then Leo is leaping onto the center of the kayak, the force of his landing nearly sending Pam tumbling out and into the water. In the split second Pam manages to catch herself and sit back up, I notice something: Between Pam’s weight and Leo’s, the kayak is severely unbalanced—teeter-tottering heavily toward the back.
I understand now what Parker is saying. I only hope Macy does, too.
She has to movenow.
Pam tries to whack Leo with her paddle, but he catches it easily, pulling himself closer toward her and raising his knife to strike.
At the same moment, Macy hunches down in the water, then abruptly propels her body up and forward, leaping like a mermaid—and landing hard, stomach down, on the front of that inflatable kayak.
The impact from Macy’s leap doesn’t pop Leo off the kayak completely, like I hoped it would. Like I imagine it did in her Fight Night story. The kayak isn’t big enough for that, and Macy’s too slender to launch Leo very far.
But the impactisenough to send him momentarily off-balance, tipping him sideways into the water—along with Pam.
Water sprays everywhere as I splash into the shallows, racing toward them.
Pam quickly scrambles to her feet in the sluggish current—and brings the point of her elbow down like a brick on Leo’s head as he tries to surface.
A second later, I reach them, my hands clawing under the water until I feel the fabric of his shirt in my hands.
Macy is on him too, diving down to grab hold of whatever she can.
