I repeat Angela’s words to calm myself. Smooth sailing.
Then I stop when I see: “Signature of parent or guardian if under 18.” I look at Justin. He mouths, It’s okay. Just do it.
I hesitate for only a second. This is Justin. Justin, who always checks my seat belt to make sure it’s fastened before he takes Monster out. Justin, who religiously stays to my left when we’re walking down the sidewalk, to protect me from whatever peril might lie in the street. He wouldn’t have me sign anything unless there really was no danger involved. It’ll just be a leisurely jaunt down the river. Smooth sailing. I grab the pen and sign Kiandra Levesque.
“Let’s get you a suit. It’s twenty to rent,” Spiffy says, inspecting me as I fork over the crumpled bill that’s been glued with sweat to my palm. I think he’s probably just trying to figure out what size I am, but when he turns around and walks into the back of the office, Justin winks at me.
“He does not want me,” I mutter.
“Totally does.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m right.”
I stick my tongue out at him just as Spiffy appears in the doorway with an amorphous gray thing with pee-yellow arms that looks like it has seen better days. “You can try it on here,” he tells me, motioning to the back. “Want some help?”
I look at Justin helplessly. Is that some backwoods pickup line?
He grins at me. “Let him help you get dressed,” he whispers. “It will be the highlight of his young life.”
I scowl at him as Spiffy just pulls aside the curtain and lets me pass, as if he’s dressed teenage girls in neoprene a million times before. “You wearing long underwear?”
The curtain swings back, effectively shielding me from Justin’s I told you so expression. I nod, stripping off my North Face jacket. I’m actually wearing two layers of water-resistant skin and two pairs of extra-thick wool socks that go up to my knees because I know I’ll be freezing. Justin is wearing long underwear, and if he, the Snowman himself, the man who is known to traipse around in the dead of winter in nothing but gym shorts, is wearing long underwear on this trip, I know we’re talking about some serious cold. I stare at the suit as Spiffy holds it out to me. “How do I get it on?” I laugh nervously. “I’ve never—”
“Here,” he says, leaning over and helping me step into it. I nearly fall over a few times before zipping it up over my long underwear. As I’m leaning over to fasten the booties, feeling as flexible as a sausage in its casing, I realize the suit smells like feet. Feet with a thin Febreze mask.
I swallow as I look at myself in a floor-to-ceiling mirror. I’m pretty thin, but that doesn’t matter: I look like a sausage, or rather like a plastic bag of potatoes, lumpy and round. “Um, so,” I say, trying to take the focus off my foxy wet-suit-clad body, “your dad started the Outfitters?”
He nods. “My dad and his twin brother.”
“Twin? I was looking at the picture in the lobby. They don’t look very alike.”
“They aren’t. They lead completely different lives. My uncle is really into rafting and convinced my dad to invest in the Outfitters. My dad isn’t into that stuff at all, but he has a lot of capital.” He smiles. “My dad kind of hates this place now. He goes where the money is, and this is pretty much a money suck. I think that picture out front is the only one I have of the two of them together.” He holds out a plate of assorted breakfast goodies. “Pastry?”
I pluck a blueberry muffin off the plate. “Don’t they like each other?”
He shrugs. “Not even close. They may be twins, but Uncle Robert is so different. A free spirit. He was never around much, even after the Outfitters was started. Then he left two years ago to hike the Appalachian Trail and we haven’t heard from him since. But the guy always does things like that. Crazy things. My dad doesn’t know the first thing about rafting, so I pretty much run this place. I’ve been down the Dead a thousand times. Your boyfriend is one of my best customers. And your cousin. They talk about you all the time.”
“They do?” I blurt, almost spitting out a bit of my muffin. I can’t imagine what they would say, other than She’s not exactly an outdoorsy girl.
He checks a clock on the wall and says, “We’d better get you out there. Bus leaves in five.”
“Okay. Are you going to be on our raft?” I ask. Maybe having The Guy Who Knows Everything About the Dead on my raft would stop my stomach from clenching like it is.
He shakes his head. “There’s a group of novices going out, and they’ll need my help more than you. With Justin and Angela, you’re in good hands. Your guide is Michael. He’s a good guy. Been with us a couple years.”
“Oh,” I say, unable to hide my disappointment. “Is it really wild out there?”
I’m hoping he’ll tell me that no, it’s calm, for some reason they just can’t understand. You can see your reflection in the water. Babies can bathe in it. Instead, he says, “Oh yeah. Wildest of the year is right now. Over seven thousand see-eff-esses.”
“See what?”
“Cubic feet per second. Great time to come up. Great time.”
I gulp. Oh yeah. Great time.
I feel all stiff in this getup; bending my limbs is nearly impossible. When I walk, I’m sure I look like I just peed my pants. We step out to the front and I see through the picture window that a bunch of the rafters are already boarding the white school bus that’s going to take us to put-in.
We’re all alone in the building, so when I hear someone behind me breathe What the devil is that? I turn back to Spiffy and try to figure out what he’s talking about. But he’s just looking at me blankly.
“What the devil is what?” I ask, confused.
He stares at me.
“You just said—”
“I didn’t say anything.” He’s staring at me as if I have a horn protruding from my forehead. Come to think of it, it didn’t sound much like his voice. It had a rougher edge to it, but not only that, there was an accent. Australian, I think. I turn back to where the voice came from, but the room is empty. All I see is that picture of the two Skiffington brothers, smiling together.
“Um, okay,” I say, and then try to cover up by saying, “So, what’s over on the other side of the river?”
He waves his hand over there. “Oh, death. Destruction. All that good stuff.” I guess I must be staring at him, because he says, “I’m kidding. Well, only partly. It’s an old cemetery.”
Ah. Perfect.
He continues, “Haven’t you ever heard of what the west bank means?”
I shake my head.
“Many civilizations used to believe the east bank of a river symbolized birth and renewal. The west bank symbolized death. And so people lived on the east bank. They buried their dead on the west bank.”
I shudder. We really should not be talking about death at a time like this. I’m about to say something like “How interesting,” although really I wish he’d talk about bunnies and rainbows, when it comes again:
What the devil is that?
This time I’m sure of it. It came from the direction of the picture. I stall in the doorway and turn to Spiffy right away, but he’s just jingling his keys and trying to usher me out the door so he can lock up the office. I want to ask him, “You didn’t hear that?” but I already know the answer. He didn’t hear a thing.
Maybe it was just the wind whistling through the trees outside.
But when I climb down the stairs to the gravel driveway, the first thing I notice is that the pines surrounding the Outfitters cabin are completely still. Overhead, a blackbird caws. We may be on the living side of the river, but I can’t stop myself from shivering as I board the bus and we rumble down the dirt road toward the put-in site.