“No, no, you’ve got to paddle exactly the same way as your tracer!” Andrea screamed. “You’ve got to sit in the same place! You’ve got to keep it together so I can go help that guy in the front!”
She shoved the boy to the right—an amazing feat, since he was taller and bigger than she was. And then she wrapped her hands around the boy’s hands on the paddle and plunged it into the water, trying to pull the canoe back into place, lined up with its tracer. And . . . to pull the boys into their places, lined up with their tracers?
That’s who those boys are, who appeared out of nowhere, Jonah thought, his brain finally starting to catch up. Sarcasm T-shirt boy and Beatles T-shirt boy—they’re the real versions of our tracer buddies, the fake Indians.
Jonah did nothing but tread water for a few seconds, basking in the glow of actually having figured something out. He refused to let any more questions into his mind—certainly not any of the disturbing, unanswerable questions that threatened to creep in.
“Jonah, would you stop goofing off out there?” Katherine screamed. “We need your help!”
Oh, so she wasn’t interested just in saving his life? She wanted him to solve all the problems with the canoe?
“Katherine, you go to the front and paddle!” Andrea yelled. “We’re losing the tracers!”
“Not until we rescue Jonah!” Katherine screamed back.
Okay, so maybe she did care about saving Jonah’s life.
Did Andrea care so little that she was willing to leave him behind?
Jonah slipped slightly lower in the water, his cramped legs shooting with pain, his exhausted arm muscles barely compensating. The water was over his chin and mouth now; he had to tilt his head slightly to keep his nose above the waterline. For the first time in his life, he could understand how someone who knew how to swim might drown anyway.
“Jonah, swim!” Katherine commanded. “Stop treading water and swim!”
Treading water was easier—and he was so tired—but Jonah obediently launched his body toward the canoe. His flutter kick did nothing—how about a frog kick? Scissors kick? Butterfly kick?
It turned out that Jonah was worthless at everything right now except a modified dog paddle. Still, he struggled forward. Katherine leaned dangerously over the side of the canoe, holding out her hand.
“Don’t tip us over!” Andrea hollered, real panic in her voice.
“Lean . . . other . . . way . . . ,” Jonah panted.
Andrea and Katherine both leaned away from Jonah. Even Dare scrambled back as Jonah grabbed the side of the canoe and, with his last burst of energy, lunged up and over the edge.
For a moment, everything seemed like it could go in any direction. Jonah could pull too hard, tipping the canoe toward him. The girls could lean too far the other way and overturn the canoe in the opposite direction. For all Jonah knew, a hundred more boys could suddenly land in the canoe out of nowhere, completely sinking it with their weight.
But what happened was that Jonah landed inside the canoe, sprawled slightly on top of John White. The canoe rocked, Dare barked . . . and Jonah closed his eyes, completely spent.
The canoe’s rocking settled into stillness.
“Katherine,” Jonah heard Andrea say, softly.
“I’ll paddle now,” Katherine said.
Jonah was barely aware of anything for a while after that. The canoe sped forward, but it was like gliding now, smooth and seemingly effortless. Effortless for Jonah, anyway—he had no effort left in him.
Once he thought he heard Katherine say, “Oh, so that’s what the rake is for,” and then he thought something wet and slimy hit his ankle. But he might have been dreaming. He was dreaming a lot. He dreamed that he was at Boy Scout camp, and there were four new water sports instructors, some guys named John, Paul, Ringo, and George. Jonah thought they looked kind of familiar.
He dreamed that he was in art class in school, and the teacher, Mr. Takanawa, was announcing that they would draw nothing but Native Americans for the rest of the year.
He dreamed that he was at a fish fry, and the air was full of the smell of smoke and cooked fish. And even though Jonah was starving, he couldn’t make himself wake up to eat. But Katherine was shaking his shoulders, and she wouldn’t give up. She just kept shaking and shaking and shaking, and her “Jonah, wake up! Jonah, wake up!” kept getting louder and louder and louder. . . .
Wait. That dream wasn’t a dream. It was real.
Jonah managed to open his eyelids a crack.
“Finally!” Katherine exploded. “You were starting to scare us!”
“Huh?” Jonah mumbled. He’d been asleep—how was that scary?
He forced his eyes open a little wider. He was still in the canoe, but he had it completely to himself now. And, unless Katherine had magically developed the ability to sit on water, the canoe wasn’t floating anymore, but resting on land.
Weakly, Jonah propped himself up on his arms, and saw that they were on a sandy beach, the canoe pulled carefully above the high tide mark.
“Croatoan?” Jonah mumbled. “Is this Croatoan Island?”
“We’re not there yet,” Katherine said. “We . . .” She stopped and bit her lip. Then she tried again, in an overly cheerful voice. “We’re just making a stop along the way.”
Jonah nodded, too dazed to analyze the reason she’d bitten her lip, the reason she’d stopped herself from telling him something. He squinted, trying to bring his vision into focus, to look past Katherine. A few yards away, Andrea and Dare sat near a crackling fire with John White and the tracer boys.
No, Jonah corrected himself. They’re not tracers now. They’re real—the tracers and the real versions of the boys joined once more.
If Jonah squinted really hard, he could make out the slightest hint of a Sarcasm T-shirt and shorter hair on one boy, a Beatles T-shirt and cropped hair on the other.