Page 11 of Final Drive

“Bodies over,” Reese calls. “Row.”

We change the pause and keep moving. The boat sits level under us, Cameron cleaning up whatever the rest of us miss from bow, and I watch Gray’s shoulders while Reese’s voice comes through the speakers in front of me.

Neither one gives anything away.

“Half-slide. Row.”

I think about the plate I left on the counter this morning. She ate some of it. I know because the foil wasn’t sitting the way I left it when I came home. Normally that would be enough for me. Reese ate, and I’d move on.

Except she also lied to me.

Not a big one. Not that she’d call it one. I asked how her morning was and she said fine, and I’ve lived with enough people to know fine can mean anything from nothing happened to I’m going to need bail money later.

“Good,” Reese says. “Finish the drill, then we’ll build into a thousand at race pace. I want championship focus.”

We paddle around and line up with the far shore. The water runs gold in front of us, smooth enough that I can see the reflection of Gray’s blade when he squares it. In two weeks we’ll be racing the best crews in the country, and if we can row the way we did ten minutes ago, we’re contenders.

If we can hold together on land long enough to get there.

“Ready all,” Reese calls. “Sit ready. Attention. Row!”

We come off the start hard and settle at thirty-two. By halfway my legs are burning, but the boat still has the same run it had on the twenty. Gray creeps up a beat, Reese catches it inside a stroke, and two strokes later we’re long again.

“That’s it. Beautiful ratio. Five hundred to go.”

I put my head down and stay with Gray. The pain is familiar enough to ignore, and it’s almost a comfort to have one problem I know how to solve. Keep the length. Put the blade in. Push.

“Power ten in two,” Reese calls. “One, two, now. Legs down hard!”

We go. Whatever we spent at Hartwell, there’s more. The rate comes up without the boat getting short, and Reese rides us through the last hundred loud enough that I can hear her over eight men trying to breathe.

“That’s Sable Ridge! Five strokes! Four! Three! Two! One!”

We cross the line that isn’t there and fold over our oars. The shell runs out dead level beneath us.

“Way enough.” I can hear the smile in Reese’s voice now. “Time?”

Tyler checks the SpeedCoach. “Three oh four point two.”

Gray sits up despite looking like he has nothing left. “That’s a PR. Almost four seconds.”

“Hell yes it is.” Zane is grinning like a fool from four. “We’re going to crush nationals.”

“One practice doesn’t mean anything,” Jackson says, though even he sounds less funereal than usual.

“It means we can still do this,” Eli says. “Whatever else is going on, we can still row.”

Reese lets us have the moment until the chatter dies down on its own. “Take it in. Easy paddle. And gentlemen, that’s the standard now. Every practice between here and nationals. If we row like that when it counts, nobody in the country can touch us.”

We turn the boat and start the long paddle back. The knot I’ve been carrying between my shoulders since Saturday lets go a little. We did something good out here today, and for an hour nobody’s father or mother or lawyer or administrator got to touch it.

It felt like us.

By the time we come up on the boathouse, I’ve almost talked myself into letting it go. Then Reese pulls out her phone, checks the screen, and puts it away again inside three seconds. Her face goes smooth and empty the way it does when she’s decided nobody else gets a piece of it.

I watch her tuck the phone beneath her leg and call for us to drop the rate coming into the dock. She sounds like herself.

I’m starting to think fine didn’t mean fine.