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“You guys ready to race?” Jade asked, grinning from ear to ear. Trevor avoided eye contact but did seem to glance at Mark and smirk.
“I’m ready to do… whatever this is,” I said. “You ready, honey?”
“Absolutely. Let’s do this.”
“Ready?” came a voice up the beach. It was followed almost instantly by a gunshot.
Startled, I began rowing frantically, watching as Jade and Trevor took off ahead of us. There was much splashing and grunting, but not much movement. Finally, we started going, well behind Jade and Trevor, but still ahead of a few of the others.
“Come on,” I said. “We have to catch up!”
“Umm,” Mark said behind me, “so I might not have ever done this before.”
“Now you tell me?” I yelled.
“Well, I thought it was intuitive, you know? Something I could figure out.”
Slowly, we began to move. In a circle. No matter which side either of us put our oar down, it only seemed to speed up our spinning.
“Dammit,” Mark said. “Hang on. You put yours in on this side, and I’ll do the other.”
“Okay,” I said, following his lead.
When we did start moving, it was back toward the shore.
“Well, this isn’t it,” Mark said. “Hang on.”
Paddling as hard as he could, he seemed to get a little bit of the hang of things, and we started heading into the lake. Ahead of us, I saw that Jade and Trevor had gotten stuck along the side of the beach in some reeds, giving us an opening. Paddling hard, we caught up to within a few boat lengths of them as they dislodged and got going again.
We had caught our rhythm, and suddenly the intense competitive spirit was back in full force, urging me to catch up fully. To beat them. To win.
Mark was pushing hard, and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw the determination in his face too, the muscles flexing in his forearms and his brow furrowed. We were almost caught up. It was going to happen.
Suddenly, something brushed by the canoe and startled me. It looked like a large fish, and just after I reacted, I heard Mark behind me do the same.
“Shit,” he said.
“What?” I asked, turning around. “Oh no.”
His oar was in the water, and Mark instinctively reached for it. I could see what was going to happen before it did, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. I reached for him, grabbing at his shirt to pull him back, but it was too late, and he was too big.
“I’ve got it,” he yelled.
“Mark, no!”
We rocked, and Mark froze, turning to meet eyes with me for a single instant before the boat flipped and we both found ourselves dunked in the water. I immediately sank, coming up inside the overturned canoe and gasping for breath. Some of the water had gotten into my lungs, and I coughed hard.
A second later, Mark popped up in front of me, also in the dome of the overturned canoe.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” he said, frustrated.
“Well, so much for beating Jade,” I said.
“Carmela, I am sorry,” he said. “I’m so stupid.”
“Stop,” I said. “It’s fine. Let’s just flip the boat over and go back.”
Nodding, Mark pushed on the boat until he got it turning again and it landed right side up on the water. The problem at that point was that we couldn’t get into it without it tipping again. I sighed and put one hand on the side, prepared to swim it back, but Mark held fast, his hands on both sides of the hull.
“Get in,” he said.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “We can swim it back.”
“What kind of a boyfriend would that make me?” he asked.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve got it. It won’t tip with me holding it. Go ahead and get in,” he said.
Struggling against the rocking of the boat and my jacked-up ankle, I crawled up the side and into the canoe. My oar was nearby, and I grabbed it, but we had to swim the boat along a little way until Mark could grab his and toss it inside. As we got closer to the shore, I could hear the laughter. Everyone had seen what happened, and some of the people I used to call friends were pointing and laughing like high school kids. Embarrassed, we pushed the canoe ashore, and I sat down on the rocky beach while Jade and Trevor made their way back, having gone all the way around the island and returning to shore.
“That was a hell of a flip,” Trevor said smugly as he tossed the oars back in the canoe and handed the rope to someone I assumed worked for the island. “Thought you two drowned.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t,” I muttered.
“Catch any fish there, Mark?” Trevor asked, loud enough that it caught the attention of several others around us and making the embarrassment even more miserable.
